For Queen and Captain {|Hetalia Human AU|}

A young boy in London

Ok, winging a new story and seeing where it takes us. *cue Peter Pan voice* Here we goooooo! lol. Moving on, here's the first chapter.  

Arthur Kirkland was rudely awakened by a boot in his ribs. He cringed for a moment at the sharp pain, glancing up in barely concealed hatred at his master, a man by the name of Pierre LaFluer.

Good lord, did Arthur hate that man.

Pierre LaFluer was one hundred and sixty-four centimeteres of pure hate for Arthur, and showed it every day.

"Get up, boy, and get down to the kitchens.You've already slept 'til midday, and I will not tolerate a laggard for an apprentice." Arthur begrudgingly nodded, heaving himself up as the taller man trudged out and getting dressed slowly, despising the filthy fabric of histattered  tunic as it hit his skin. He raked his fingers through his unruly straw-yellow hair and glanced in the broken window pane that he'd found the last week and had been using as a mirror. He still hatlarge eyebrowsed the eyebrows, though they were supposedly a family trait.

He was apprenticed to this French bastard, who was then a well-renownd backsmith, when he was young, no more than five, and everything went to pot from there, his parents dying of the pox, and his once reputable master losing his left hand, rendering him uncapable of the smithy work that he had been so proud of. Arthur had taken the brunt of it as the bloody Frenchman had used the last of his savings to purchase a blasted inn and tavern, where he became his own best customer.

At least, that's what he'd been told. Arthur couldn't remember his parents all that well....

 "Boy! Get down here!" Arthur was snapped from his reverie by the cook's scratchy voice grating against his ears. He begrudgingly climbed down the rungs that led to the kitchen from his tiny attic room, which was more like a closet then something people could live in. He arrived to find the never-dying pile of potatoes that were always waiting to cramp and nick his hands as he peeled them.

Arthur hated potatoes.

"Lad, get your arse out to the well with those buckets or I'll tell mister LaFluer that you been pinchin' carrots, I will!" Arthur nodded lathargically and collected the buckets, dragging his feet as the red-headed cook muttered under her breath about the useless boy.

He paused for a moment as he reached the well in the rear yard, taking a deep breath and looking around at the city. London, the hub of England's power. He could hear the fine throughbred horses pulling the hand-crafted carraiges, the fine lords and ladies all gussied up for lunchon with the other lords and ladies, all of them with somewhere to go and something to do. Arthur felt like he would be good at that, being handsome and courting the fine ladies of the court.

"Lad! hurry up!" Arthur broke from his daydream and stepped quickly, filling the heavy buckets and lightly moving as quickly as he could to the door, his arms used to the strain of the wooden contraptions as he stepped up the stairs as quickly as he could.

"We'll need two today. The master's heard that one of them lords'll be sendin' a crew to spend the night here, cuz he owes the master a favor, so hurry up so you can get to the peelin'." Arthur nodded, stepping back out and filling the second pair of buckets, turning and once more gracefully moving with fairy-light feet to the step.

Arthur's thoughts were blank as he tripped. He knew what would happen, and there was nothing to be done about it.

He let out a breath as the hand struck his face, rougher than usual. "Lad, get your useless hide up and get the water again! I swear, we ought to sell you to an orphanage!" Arthur ignored the familiar feeling of a black eye forming as he nodded meekly, standing and getting the water again, more carefully this time.

The cook grabbed his jaw as he set the buckets down, forcing him to look at her, her ruddy brown eyes meeting his feirce green.

"I been keepin' him from sellin' you, but you got to be smart to help yourself, lad. Keep yourself first and everything falls in place after that." He swallowed nervously, resisting the urge to recoil from her foul breath as he nodded. She released his jaw and he shuddered as she turned back to the fire in the hearth.

"Now get to work on those potatoes. It's going to be a very, very busy day." He nodded firmly, snapping a mock salute and sitting on the stool that was practically a part of his body after so many hours on it. He started peeling and glanced at the other stool, frowning.

"Is... is Catharine going to be here today?" The Cook snorted and shook her head. "No. Her whole family's come down with the pox and the doctor says they're doomed, poor things. It's just you and me today." Arthur tried not to worry about it. Catharine was only a work partner, nothing more. No one to worry about at all.

He glanced at the stool next to him again and shivered. So easy to catch the pox, and so easy to die. He shook his head and kept up his quick pace of peeling, taking off the skins and tossing them into the barrel of water next to him before starting on another. The repititive action was fairly soothing, that is, unless--

"Ouch..." That happened. Arthur studied the gash on his thumb in slight horror as the cook approached.

"Just bloody lovely. Wrap a cloth 'round it and move on." He considered declining the rag she tossed at him, but sighed and bandaged it with the filthty cloth anyway. He could only imagine what the French bastard would say about blood in the potatoes...

"The master is hiring on a new boy. Orphan, just like you. I guess he's sick of your lagging work, eh?" Arthur frowned a bit as she nodded t herself. He finaly spoke up after carefully measuring his response.

"Will he be sharing my quarters?" The thin woman nodded and he silently cursed his luck as she looked back at him suspiciously. "You ain't gonna kill 'im, are you?" Arthur shook his head quickly and she grinned, her rotting teeth exposed. It always amazed him how quickly people aged...

"Good, Lad, because you've got a visitor coming later today, and it wouldn't do for you to be in jail. He'd think we weren't raisin' you right!" Arthur felt a flicker of hope for escape from his hellhole of a life and tried to keep from grinning.

"Really? I didn't know I had an uncle..." The cook laughed harshly, her grating voice tattered at only twenty nine years of age. "Yea, neither did I, lad, but apperantly he's a fine gentleman, indeed. He'll be by this afternoon, God willing."

Arthur found that he had something to look forward to.