Naomh Pádraig | Saint Patrick (naomh_padraig) wrote in nevermore_logs, @ 2011-07-11 17:58:00 |
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Entry tags: | saint george, saint padraig |
Who: English!George and Padraig
What: Brotherly love and stuff
When: Saturday evening
Where: George's London house
Padraig hadn't really come to London just to be there for his brother, though that had most assuredly been part of it. He felt like he had lost all sense of inner peace with the last Irish election. Gerry Adams, the leader of the Sinn Fein party had left the Northern Irish Assembly and been voted into the Oireachtas. It put him on edge, and all the tumult in his countries didn't help one bit. Now there had been fighting and bomb threats and Gerry Adams had confirmed that Sinn Fein were making a bid for the presidency and Padraig had to escape.
And then Patrick, his American self, had been more calm and level-headed than he had been about the situation with his estranged sister, Darerca. Patrick was not the most level-headed person Padraig knew. He wasn't even in the top twenty. For Patrick to calm Padraig down was something of a departure from the normal into the inherently weird. Padraig needed to unburden his soul to his brother.
He had been hiding in the room George had provided him nearly all day. Padraig had requested his old room on this visit. The room George had once kept him captive in. He didn't know what possessed him to do so, but subconsciously he seemed to be acting as if he was being kept there again, not leaving unless it was necessary. Closing his laptop quickly, Padraig slid from the bed and he moved out into the hallway as fast as he could. There were no bars on his windows any more, and yet he still felt trapped. "George?" Padraig called, heading towards his brother's sitting room on the off-chance he was in there.
George was there, in fact. He'd been sitting with his laptop on the couch when he'd heard the tree branch outside the window creaking. Eyes narrowed, he'd gone over and peeked out through the curtains. Sure enough, the black and white tabby cat that had been hanging around his house was back again. He'd found it rummaging through his trash bins the other night, and now it was sitting in the tree outside his house, grooming its paw as thought it had some right to be there.
"We meet again," George muttered, still glaring. He heard Padraig calling his name and said over his shoulder, "In here!"
Padraig wandered into the sitting room and he glanced over at his brother who was glaring out the window. "Are you talking to the tree, George?" Padraig asked, slightly worried about his brother now.
"The cat I was telling you about is out there," George said, pointing to emphasize. "In the tree. Mocking me."
Still, mocking cat or not, he was smiling. He didn't see his brothers nearly enough. Even if he was worried about Padraig (things in Ireland seemed poised to take a turn for the worse, and Padraig was staying in the room where George had once held him prisoner. Two worrying things for the price of one), it was still a relief just to have him here.
Padraig moved to the window to look at the cat. "Ah, I see. Quite the mocker, that. Hello, cat!" Padraig waved and then felt ridiculous.
"I just had a rather long conversation with Patrick in which he was the calm and level-headed one. The world makes no sense any more."
"Don't wave, it'll think it's welcome here," George said, laughing. "And what on Earth was the conversation about?" He held a hand to Padraig's forehead, like he was checking for a fever.
Padraig chuckled at George and he turned away from the window to lean up against the ledge. When George reached up to feel his forehead, Padraig batted his hand away with a laugh. "The conversation started out being about Darerca actually. She saw I was here and I don't think she liked it," he said with a sigh. He hadn't really spent much time with his sister since the 20s. Not since she shot George. He had forgiven her, but every time he saw her, it was all he could think about. "I think he wants me to spend more time with her. You know how he is about family."
George made a rude noise at the mention of Darerca's name. He didn't like her. Unless things took a very unexpected turn in the future, he was never going to like her. But...
"Do you miss her?"
The smile slid from Padraig's face and he sighed heavily. "I haven't really considered it." Padraig moved to sit down on one of the sofas and he leaned his head back against it. "She never really forgave me for siding with the treaty, and I can't really trust her." George would understand. They had once been on opposite sides of a war too. "But I might miss her."
George sat down at the sofa across from Padraig and stretched his legs across the gap between them to rest his feet on the cushions.
"I'd understand, you know," George said. "If you wanted to be at least a little closer to her. She is your sister. Even when we...didn't get along, I always missed you."
Padraig lifted his eyes to meet George's and he admitted a soft, "so did I." How much he had missed George was one of the reasons the unrest in Ireland worried him so much. "I don't know if Dee and I could have a relationship again. What we believe is still so different. George, I'm really worried about everything that is happening in Ireland. I just...need you to know that I won't side against you ever again."
George nudged his brother with his foot. "And I want you to know that I'm never going to side with England over basical human decency again. My country has done terrible, terrible things in the past. I should have done my best to put a stop to it then. If another war breaks out, it doesn't have to be like in the past. I don't ever want to be your enemy again."
"No," Padraig said with a shudder. "Never again." He couldn't stand the thought of it. "All countries have done terrible things, and probably will continue to. But it calms me to know we won't side against each other ever again. I feel so...ill-at-ease in my own skin recently, George. I believe that's one of the reasons I came on to Patrick a few months ago. He doesn't have to be in Ireland, feeling ripped apart from all the worry."
"Ireland's changing," George said. He looked down. "And maybe not for the better. But if things do take a turn for the worse, we'll deal with it together." He shook his head. "Our governments are going to learn from the past, damn it."
Padraig pulled his knees up to his chest though and he let out a half-sigh, half-groan. "I'm tired, George. My country is destitute and one visit from the Queen is enough to cause bomb threats and there's more violence and now Crazy Gerry is talking about the presidency. And I just want to sleep." Padraig didn't often show weakness, but he had been so strong for too long now and he couldn't help it any more.
George looked at his brother, tilting his head, and then crossed the space between the couches to sit next to him. He slung an arm around Padraig's shoulder and hugged him.
"Maybe you can talk to him?" George said. "Does he know about you? What's the fun of being a saint if you can't occasionally tell someone that their idea is terrible?"
"He knows who I am," Padraig admitted quietly. "And I know what I say won't make a bit of difference to him. His point in all this is that my name is on the charter for the IRB when it was started up so my opinion now is invalid. Dammit."
George tightened his grip on his brother. Padraig had done so much for Ireland, suffered so much, and the thought of any of Ireland's citizens not giving him the respect he deserved...
"Do you want me to punch him?" he asked, smiling a little to show that he was joking. Mostly. "I could wear a mask, it would be a good disguise. His face would end up shaped like my fist."
Padraig chuckled and then he actually leaned his head against George's shoulder, as if George needed another sign of how worn out by all of this he was.
"No, let his face stay him-shaped. Violence will just get him sympathy. Anything that comes, I'll handle it. It's just making me feel a trifle horrid." Which was drastically underselling it, but that was what he did.
"If he does run, things will get worse before they get better," George said. "And if he's actually elected..."
George shook his head. "We'll see what happens. But whatever the outcome, I'm on your side. I always made it a point not to talk to the monarchs that I disapproved of once it became clear that they weren't going to listen to me. Sometimes I'd send them letters, asking how they slept at night knowing that their country's saint disapproved of everything they were doing. Manipulative, but satisfying."
Padraig looked up at his brother then and he grinned. "I am rather fond of you," he said with a little laugh. The idea of George sending a stern letter like this was terribly amusing. "And I am glad to know you're on my side. As I am on yours." In the end that was all that really mattered anyway.
George laughed. "And I'm very fond of you." He bumped his head gently against Padraig's. "Don't worry about the things you can't change, you'll drive yourself mad."