Title: Radix

Summary: All things have a beginning, this is the story of how four nations came to love one another.

Pairings: F/A/C/E, Netherlands/Canada, Scotland/France, sort-of Russia/America/Canada

Warnings: Swearing, possibly triggering material, references to rape, paedophilia (no actual paedophilia, just to be clear)

Author's notes: So this is a pre-existing but unfinished story on the kink_meme, I've decided to pretty much overhaul it from chapter 5 onward, and have deleted several entirely. I'll be posting the pre-existing chapters one at a time every Sunday evening as I go through and edit them. Any questions or concerns PM or review, and for those of you who may end up figuring out which other fills I've been a bad author to and have been neglecting, feel free to ask if I'm writing them. Then feel free to yell at me via PM to go update them. ;D

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The beginning is hard to pinpoint. Francis and Arthur come together again and again, an unstoppable force and an unmovable object crashing together against one another in constant, bloody clashes.

As they get older, the constant struggles cause fissures and cracks, and they start to give. They don't give in, but they allow for some leeway. No more do they grind the others face in the muck when one falls, but rather they give him the chance to pick himself up. Then they fight.

These gentler version of themselves, however, take a very long time, and that is not the beginning, so it is not where we'll start.

If the two men are feeling incredibly honest with one another, and they seldom are, it starts, just as so much does, with Rome.

Arthur can clearly remember the empire's arrival, even when so many other aspects of that time are irrevocably lost. Arthur remember the exotic man, with his dark skin and flashing eyes, and he remembers the instincts, finely tuned despite youth and callowness, which tell him danger is at hand. This is why, when Rome reaches his shore, smile flashing like a wolf, Arthur runs, his tiny legs carrying him as far as they can.

It is futile, of course. Rome's legs are longer and when Arthur grows tired and rests, the Empire catches up. Arthur, Britannia, no Albion, does not submit however. He fights, long and hard and unyielding, until Rome, frustrated with his surliness, builds a wall, and separates him from Caledonia. Hibernia, or Érie as they used to call him, is more unreachable than ever, across that thin strip of water. Cymyr is useless, holed up in his territory, angry and wary of this foreign monster in the shape of a nation.

The wall is a barrier, it keeps him away from the one person who told him to keep fighting, and so, slowly, Britannia gives, but Arthur does not. Arthur kicks and screams and bites and scratches whenever Rome tries to bed him. Arthur takes the beatings, gives as good as he gets, and scoffs inwardly when a barely in control Rome tries to goad him into bed willingly.

Rome tells stories of another young nation who yields as easily as sand. He tries desperately to make this savage little island nation love him, or at least lust for him the way others do, but Arthur refuses. Arthur is not jealous of the way Rome describes his other province, the one who lives across the waves, the one who Arthur can see from his white cliffs. Instead, he grows contemptuous of Rome's golden child, and in his mind he dubs him nothing more than a silly little whore.

This is where it begins, because while Arthur is sitting in his stone fortress, in one corner of the room while Rome stands poised in another, Francis is also with Rome.

Francis was not Gaul, a mistake many make. He was, in fact, Roman-Gaul. It is a fuzzy distinction, but Francis knows it well. Francis's childhood is not a free one, but rather one spent under the hand of an empire. He can vaguely recall his mother, a wild, happy woman with streaming blonde hair and flashy blue eyes, but mostly he remembers Rome. Unlike Arthur, Francis does not fight, or at least he does not fight with the same enthusiasm, and he certainly does not deny Rome in the bedroom.

Francis is willing, after a while, to let Rome creep into his room, is willing to let Rome kiss and touch and almost anything else. He tells himself he relishes the attention, that it is better than being alone, or worse, being his mother, lost to the annals of history. So Francis is as docile as he can stand to be, and he listens on the nights Rome is feeling violent and restless, as the empire rants.

Rome rants about the nation across the waves, the one with those magnificent white cliffs which call to some basic part of Francis. Rome rants about the little island, cursing his impertinence, his feisty behaviour, his zest. And Francis realizes that while Rome is only vaguely interested in this Britannia, he is dangerously infatuated with the nameless green eyed boy.

So while Arthur is growing contemptuous, Francis is growing bitter. Bitter of how much Rome wants him, but even more bitter about the other boys ability to fight, to resist again and again, until eventually even Rome leaves his island altogether. As the two nations grow and Rome dies and Arthur gains and loses a hero and Francis gains his first kings, the infatuation which will last far, far into the future is born.

That is how the foundation is built.