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[Fanfiction] Fiddler's Green
Title: Fiddler's Green
Author/Artist: carver
Character(s) or Pairing(s): America, the Confederacy
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Nothing major. Some violent images.
Word count: 2,500
Summary: It's the Civil War. America and his brother...er, self, try to kill each other. Then they laugh at memories together and get existential. Slight references to Neil Gaiman's American Gods.
(Made this for my partner.)
September 1864, Opequon
America had always wondered what happened to countries when they died. He was still really young, so maybe he didn’t need to worry about it. But he’d heard stories of the elder nations before, the ones like Rome, who fell and didn’t have the strength to climb up one last time. It sounded scary, feeling all these things inside you, all that life, and then dying.
Was there even a place for them after death? Would there ever be a place for their kind?
Well, he actually felt like dying. He was still alive after all these years, but it hurt everywhere, and he'd been hurting for such long while now. It was night time, he knew, but the dark had really crept up on him. His eyes were tired and stained with tears, and this one annoying nick on his bottom left eyelid made him flinch every time he looked around. Sheridan rode through earlier in the day on a victory lap, but this didn't feel much like anything at the moment. Definitely not a victory. He still wasn't used to all this death.
The stars were nice tonight, though. The planet, not so much. He was spread eagle in the grass and surrounded on all sides by bodies. A severed arm was also near his head. The chorus of groans and coughs and gasps had been going on for so long that his ears turned them into a symphony, one complete with insect chirps and splashes and rustles. He moved an arm slightly, tested all of his fingers, and did the same with the other.
Once he was certain that he still could move everything, he flipped onto his side and pulled his knees close to his chest. It made him feel like a child again, back when he was just a mess of colonies. Back when he was much more vulnerable. Another man started coughing somewhere to his left, and he immediately sensed who it was.
“Hey.”
Something shifted around him, and the Confederacy turned to meet his eyes. His lips were cracked from dehydration and he had dark spots on his face. The blood everywhere didn’t help his features stand out, either. His brother didn’t say anything, but he grunted in acknowledgement. Farther back, surgeons and their aides were busy gathering soldiers who were prone in the mud.
“It really hurts.”
“Mm. It does. It smells, too.” He snorted loudly.
America breathed in the night air, himself, and had a sudden pulse of memory. “Flesh does have horrible smell. Mud, too. Do you remember that time I was in the mud? Marching with Burnside, you know.” His brother smiled. America wasn’t sure how he knew that he smiled, but he definitely did. Some things you can see without light.
“You were a right fool, I remember. I laughed so hard I nearly died...”
“I remember, too.”
He did.
“This really is not a good idea.”
America--the Union--probably shouldn’t have waited so long to say so. He wanted to give Burnside another chance at things, though. This is what he got for being nice. This is what Lincoln got. But crossing the river was still not a good idea, and the sky was starting to open up again. Like what they needed was more rain? America had left the camps nearly an hour ago, hoping that it would die down for a while, but this war was amazingly good at giving him the most unfavorable conditions for everything, ever.
The Confederates were gathering across the river to assess the situation. It was pretty grim. Mules and carts were jammed inches in the mire on America's side, which was still seeping down the banks of the river, and the fact that the sky had opened up again just to piss on him was making things worse. America rolled up his sleeves as best he could and slicked his hair back. He was freezing cold, but he knew what had to come next. The soldiers on the other side of the river probably did, too, since they were chuckling. His brother cleared his throat and yelled down to him.
“If you’n your men need pontoons placed in the water so bad, why don’t they jus’ go an’ hitch you up to pull ‘em? You’re strong enough for it!” The Confederates surrounding him practically collapsed with laughter, and some actually slipped a bit themselves, which only encouraged them more. “Why, I bet you’re enough of an ass to do all the haulin’!”
America said nothing and focused on dislodging a nearby wagon wheel. He was covered with the stuff. Mud everywhere, even around his eyes and mouth... When he looked up again only a half-hour later, he was greeted by the sight of several crudely lettered signs. He could barely make out the scrawl on some of them, but one in particular had “This way to Richmond” carved into it.
He cursed under his breath and fell back more to help with moving the mules, but his brother appeared again, this time with a board hoisted. America squinted (and regretted it, since his eyelashes had earth on them), and read aloud. “Will send help...to move...pon-tunes?”
“That’s right,” the Confederacy gasped, with a chorus of laughs right behind. “Leave all this war an’ such to the experts, yankee!” America nearly split his gloves open gripping that last wheel.
“Don't call me that! And y-yeah? Yeah? Well, I--at least I can spell, you rube! At least I can do that!” His throat felt raw, so he clamped his mouth shut, and grimaced when he tasted dirt. This seemed to fluster the other troops a bit, but not for long, or long enough.
“Well, if you’re so smart an’ well-learned, why’d you go get yourself stuck in the mud for?” His companions on the other side of the river fell about laughing again, and America, not for the first time that day, felt like killing. Possibly himself.
Another soldier coughed long and hard, and America snapped out of his daydream. His eyes were slightly wet, but thankfully it wasn’t from rain. He could live just fine without ever dealing with rain on a battlefield again. He hesitated for a few minutes, and then called out the only name his people gave his brother.
“Johnny Rebel...Johnny, is it worth it? Why are we still fighting?” He didn’t expect the bold honesty of the next reply, or the crack in his brother’s voice.
“I don’t know.”
--
May 1871, Arkansas
America really hated ghosts. They were everywhere in his land, and some of them just wandered around forever like they had nothing better to do with their after-death-lives. But that thought frightened him a lot more than it comforted. So many of them hated him, probably, and he really didn’t like the sick feeling in his stomach that being hated gave him. People were supposed to like heroes, right? That, and ghosts were just creepy.
He knew he had a visitor when he walked home that evening--just before the sun disappeared behind the trees--and noticed that a light in his cabin was on. He wasn’t staying in Washington. He was actually in Arkansas, helping out with a railroad extension, which was going along well. Reconstruction was also okay, and he was still really hopeful. Hope was always good. He was sticky with sweat and his work clothes needed a good wash in the river, but he could worry about that later.
What was it with people showing up at his house when he looked his worst, anyway? He jogged up the stone pathway to his cabin, skipping every other rock like usual. His cabin was nice, if a little cramped. He had everything he needed, and even a writing desk for his more official stuff. There wasn’t anything bad about it. Yes, there was a lingering tobacco smell. Sometimes America was too lazy to step outside when he smoked. He thought that was part of its charm, though.
He opened the door very deliberately and slowly, and was not at all surprised to see his brother sitting next to the window near his bed. The ghost of the Confederacy was creepy, but not for the usual reasons that ghosts were. He just hated the way that his brother grinned at him when they met eyes. America licked his lips.
“You’re still alive after all these years, huh?”
“An’ jus’ as dead as before.” It was kind of funny how much Johnny had changed over time. He wasn’t quite as skinny as he used to be. He was never very thin, but he always looked like he was a warm meal away from having a healthy glow and life about him. Now he looked like he did the first time America saw him, before he was ravaged by the war. He wasn’t dirty and caked with blood like he used to be, and his hair was clean and combed back past the rims of his spectacles.
America sat on the edge of his bed after removing his boots, just a few feet away from the ghost of his brother, and rolled up his trouser legs. It was unnerving, a bit. He pulled his left stocking off first.
“Awful rude of you to jus’ sit there an’ not even offer a visitor a drink.” He sat on his chair with his arms folded and legs crossed neatly. The light of the sunset from the window framed his brother’s head and gave him an eerie, other-worldly glow.
America frowned. “I thought ghosts ate souls.”
“I don’t think so. But I reckon I don’t get hungry much these days.”
That probably didn’t matter, as America figured, since he doubted that his brother really needed food now that his body was dead. He didn’t seem very hungry on first and second glance. He looked handsome and well-fed, if a little older and a little more distinguished. His uniform was also well-pressed and had polished buttons. He looked far less like the young man of his relatively few glory days and far more like painted marble. The kind of statues that Greece had at his home.
The stories probably helped the Confederacy out a lot with his looks. America was still pretty young (he thinks that a lot), but he knew that nations died when their people had no more stories to tell about them. It was sort of like their food. They still needed to eat, and eating normal food was nice, but stories gave their spirits energy. Or something spooky like that.
But it was weird to call his brother dead, since his spirit was anything but gone. His body was, sort of. Having their bodies die actually freed nations from silly matters like war and economical problems, if they so chose things to be that way. They could wander. The only problem was that a nation without a body could still get theirs back again if they wanted it badly enough. America hoped the Confederacy didn’t. A nation’s spirit was pretty hard to kill, compared to a nation’s body. Yes.
It was scary, though, that his brother now looked healthier than he ever did in his living days.
Well, the war days. And now Johnny looked healthy, and he knew that outside, where he was tied, his horse was eternally lively, too. All the gunshot wounds it collected during past battles didn’t matter so much now.
“I guess I can make you some tea tomorrow,” America sighed. “Sun tea or something...”
“No matter. I’ll be gone by mornin’, anyway.” He cracked his knuckles through his gloves, looking at nothing in particular except the floor.
“I’m surprised you’re still here.” Maybe that was the wrong thing to say, but America didn’t care. He wasn’t exactly rude. “It seems like you should be in me.”
“I am in you,” he chuckled. He paused to think for a minute, still cracking his knuckles. “Yep. You speak a lot like me now. Hell, your soldiers are goin’ home an’ tellin’ my stories.”
“Not even killing you will make you die, huh?”
“I’ll go when I’m good an’ ready. But I ain’t ready to leave this place yet. People still want me. An’ I enjoy it, you know, bein’ able to ride an’ do as I please. I love ridin’ Traveller at night, when he cooperates. Maybe he ain’t got as much salt as his namesake...” He paused, uncrossed his legs. “It’s nice. I was born of war, but I don’t like it, since it hurts. I don’t know where I’ll go when I am ready for the end, since it’s not like I ever known anything other than this. Heaven ain’t a place for our kind, but do we really belong in Hell, neither? We’re what our people make us to be. I think, one day, Fiddler’s Green’ll be my lot. I always worked good with the cavalry.”
America noticed just then that his brother was missing his sword. He always had his sword with him before, and he didn’t look quite the same without it. It was just as well that he couldn’t kill anymore.
He was just a statue, after all, one without flesh and apparently one without teeth.
“Well, it ain’t like I’m alone, neither. There are others like me. I reckon you could say that we’re spirits, but we’re more than just haints. Wisakedjak ain’t a ghost, would you say? And the Nunnehi...”
“They're different. I think you flatter yourself sometimes,” America said, not entirely serious but not quite joking, either. His brother spat at him.
“Shouldn’t talk to spirits like that.” Somewhere outside, his horse whined. His horse was dead. Just thinking about it gave America shivers all over and made his arm hairs stand on end.
It wouldn’t be too long until he was on the road again, on his stupidly majestic dead horse, tearing past forests and hills (and mud...) with his spectacles tucked away safely and his hair blowing wild. It would probably be a while before he came back on another visit. Maybe another few years. Or decades. He guessed everyone needed affirmation sometimes.
But the Confederacy was here for now, sitting in that chair. He still stared, and still cracked his knuckles. And he still grinned, not-alive and not-dead as ever. Truly, America lived in interesting times.
Author's notes:
- Opequon was a decisive battle in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of the Civil War.
- Burnside's Mud March was, um...kind of decisive, I guess. Burnside lost his job afterwards. If you can call a Civil War battle funny, the Mud March was probably the most hilarious.
- Wisakedjak (aka Whiskey Jack) and Nunnehi.
- Fiddler's Green is featured in an old folk song mostly sung by sailors and cavalrymen. It's supposedly a mythic afterlife where fiddles play and people dance constantly, always have enough alcohol to drink, and the usual really-good-afterlife sort of thing.
Halfway down the trail to Hell, in a shady meadow green
Are the Souls of all dead troopers camped, near a good old-time canteen.
And this eternal resting place is known as Fiddlers’ Green.
Marching past, straight through to Hell, the infantry are seen.
Accompanied by the engineers, artillery, and marines.
For none but the shades of cavalrymen dismount at Fiddlers’ Green.
-
Author/Artist: carver
Character(s) or Pairing(s): America, the Confederacy
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Nothing major. Some violent images.
Word count: 2,500
Summary: It's the Civil War. America and his brother...er, self, try to kill each other. Then they laugh at memories together and get existential. Slight references to Neil Gaiman's American Gods.
(Made this for my partner.)
September 1864, Opequon
America had always wondered what happened to countries when they died. He was still really young, so maybe he didn’t need to worry about it. But he’d heard stories of the elder nations before, the ones like Rome, who fell and didn’t have the strength to climb up one last time. It sounded scary, feeling all these things inside you, all that life, and then dying.
Was there even a place for them after death? Would there ever be a place for their kind?
Well, he actually felt like dying. He was still alive after all these years, but it hurt everywhere, and he'd been hurting for such long while now. It was night time, he knew, but the dark had really crept up on him. His eyes were tired and stained with tears, and this one annoying nick on his bottom left eyelid made him flinch every time he looked around. Sheridan rode through earlier in the day on a victory lap, but this didn't feel much like anything at the moment. Definitely not a victory. He still wasn't used to all this death.
The stars were nice tonight, though. The planet, not so much. He was spread eagle in the grass and surrounded on all sides by bodies. A severed arm was also near his head. The chorus of groans and coughs and gasps had been going on for so long that his ears turned them into a symphony, one complete with insect chirps and splashes and rustles. He moved an arm slightly, tested all of his fingers, and did the same with the other.
Once he was certain that he still could move everything, he flipped onto his side and pulled his knees close to his chest. It made him feel like a child again, back when he was just a mess of colonies. Back when he was much more vulnerable. Another man started coughing somewhere to his left, and he immediately sensed who it was.
“Hey.”
Something shifted around him, and the Confederacy turned to meet his eyes. His lips were cracked from dehydration and he had dark spots on his face. The blood everywhere didn’t help his features stand out, either. His brother didn’t say anything, but he grunted in acknowledgement. Farther back, surgeons and their aides were busy gathering soldiers who were prone in the mud.
“It really hurts.”
“Mm. It does. It smells, too.” He snorted loudly.
America breathed in the night air, himself, and had a sudden pulse of memory. “Flesh does have horrible smell. Mud, too. Do you remember that time I was in the mud? Marching with Burnside, you know.” His brother smiled. America wasn’t sure how he knew that he smiled, but he definitely did. Some things you can see without light.
“You were a right fool, I remember. I laughed so hard I nearly died...”
“I remember, too.”
He did.
“This really is not a good idea.”
America--the Union--probably shouldn’t have waited so long to say so. He wanted to give Burnside another chance at things, though. This is what he got for being nice. This is what Lincoln got. But crossing the river was still not a good idea, and the sky was starting to open up again. Like what they needed was more rain? America had left the camps nearly an hour ago, hoping that it would die down for a while, but this war was amazingly good at giving him the most unfavorable conditions for everything, ever.
The Confederates were gathering across the river to assess the situation. It was pretty grim. Mules and carts were jammed inches in the mire on America's side, which was still seeping down the banks of the river, and the fact that the sky had opened up again just to piss on him was making things worse. America rolled up his sleeves as best he could and slicked his hair back. He was freezing cold, but he knew what had to come next. The soldiers on the other side of the river probably did, too, since they were chuckling. His brother cleared his throat and yelled down to him.
“If you’n your men need pontoons placed in the water so bad, why don’t they jus’ go an’ hitch you up to pull ‘em? You’re strong enough for it!” The Confederates surrounding him practically collapsed with laughter, and some actually slipped a bit themselves, which only encouraged them more. “Why, I bet you’re enough of an ass to do all the haulin’!”
America said nothing and focused on dislodging a nearby wagon wheel. He was covered with the stuff. Mud everywhere, even around his eyes and mouth... When he looked up again only a half-hour later, he was greeted by the sight of several crudely lettered signs. He could barely make out the scrawl on some of them, but one in particular had “This way to Richmond” carved into it.
He cursed under his breath and fell back more to help with moving the mules, but his brother appeared again, this time with a board hoisted. America squinted (and regretted it, since his eyelashes had earth on them), and read aloud. “Will send help...to move...pon-tunes?”
“That’s right,” the Confederacy gasped, with a chorus of laughs right behind. “Leave all this war an’ such to the experts, yankee!” America nearly split his gloves open gripping that last wheel.
“Don't call me that! And y-yeah? Yeah? Well, I--at least I can spell, you rube! At least I can do that!” His throat felt raw, so he clamped his mouth shut, and grimaced when he tasted dirt. This seemed to fluster the other troops a bit, but not for long, or long enough.
“Well, if you’re so smart an’ well-learned, why’d you go get yourself stuck in the mud for?” His companions on the other side of the river fell about laughing again, and America, not for the first time that day, felt like killing. Possibly himself.
Another soldier coughed long and hard, and America snapped out of his daydream. His eyes were slightly wet, but thankfully it wasn’t from rain. He could live just fine without ever dealing with rain on a battlefield again. He hesitated for a few minutes, and then called out the only name his people gave his brother.
“Johnny Rebel...Johnny, is it worth it? Why are we still fighting?” He didn’t expect the bold honesty of the next reply, or the crack in his brother’s voice.
“I don’t know.”
--
May 1871, Arkansas
America really hated ghosts. They were everywhere in his land, and some of them just wandered around forever like they had nothing better to do with their after-death-lives. But that thought frightened him a lot more than it comforted. So many of them hated him, probably, and he really didn’t like the sick feeling in his stomach that being hated gave him. People were supposed to like heroes, right? That, and ghosts were just creepy.
He knew he had a visitor when he walked home that evening--just before the sun disappeared behind the trees--and noticed that a light in his cabin was on. He wasn’t staying in Washington. He was actually in Arkansas, helping out with a railroad extension, which was going along well. Reconstruction was also okay, and he was still really hopeful. Hope was always good. He was sticky with sweat and his work clothes needed a good wash in the river, but he could worry about that later.
What was it with people showing up at his house when he looked his worst, anyway? He jogged up the stone pathway to his cabin, skipping every other rock like usual. His cabin was nice, if a little cramped. He had everything he needed, and even a writing desk for his more official stuff. There wasn’t anything bad about it. Yes, there was a lingering tobacco smell. Sometimes America was too lazy to step outside when he smoked. He thought that was part of its charm, though.
He opened the door very deliberately and slowly, and was not at all surprised to see his brother sitting next to the window near his bed. The ghost of the Confederacy was creepy, but not for the usual reasons that ghosts were. He just hated the way that his brother grinned at him when they met eyes. America licked his lips.
“You’re still alive after all these years, huh?”
“An’ jus’ as dead as before.” It was kind of funny how much Johnny had changed over time. He wasn’t quite as skinny as he used to be. He was never very thin, but he always looked like he was a warm meal away from having a healthy glow and life about him. Now he looked like he did the first time America saw him, before he was ravaged by the war. He wasn’t dirty and caked with blood like he used to be, and his hair was clean and combed back past the rims of his spectacles.
America sat on the edge of his bed after removing his boots, just a few feet away from the ghost of his brother, and rolled up his trouser legs. It was unnerving, a bit. He pulled his left stocking off first.
“Awful rude of you to jus’ sit there an’ not even offer a visitor a drink.” He sat on his chair with his arms folded and legs crossed neatly. The light of the sunset from the window framed his brother’s head and gave him an eerie, other-worldly glow.
America frowned. “I thought ghosts ate souls.”
“I don’t think so. But I reckon I don’t get hungry much these days.”
That probably didn’t matter, as America figured, since he doubted that his brother really needed food now that his body was dead. He didn’t seem very hungry on first and second glance. He looked handsome and well-fed, if a little older and a little more distinguished. His uniform was also well-pressed and had polished buttons. He looked far less like the young man of his relatively few glory days and far more like painted marble. The kind of statues that Greece had at his home.
The stories probably helped the Confederacy out a lot with his looks. America was still pretty young (he thinks that a lot), but he knew that nations died when their people had no more stories to tell about them. It was sort of like their food. They still needed to eat, and eating normal food was nice, but stories gave their spirits energy. Or something spooky like that.
But it was weird to call his brother dead, since his spirit was anything but gone. His body was, sort of. Having their bodies die actually freed nations from silly matters like war and economical problems, if they so chose things to be that way. They could wander. The only problem was that a nation without a body could still get theirs back again if they wanted it badly enough. America hoped the Confederacy didn’t. A nation’s spirit was pretty hard to kill, compared to a nation’s body. Yes.
It was scary, though, that his brother now looked healthier than he ever did in his living days.
Well, the war days. And now Johnny looked healthy, and he knew that outside, where he was tied, his horse was eternally lively, too. All the gunshot wounds it collected during past battles didn’t matter so much now.
“I guess I can make you some tea tomorrow,” America sighed. “Sun tea or something...”
“No matter. I’ll be gone by mornin’, anyway.” He cracked his knuckles through his gloves, looking at nothing in particular except the floor.
“I’m surprised you’re still here.” Maybe that was the wrong thing to say, but America didn’t care. He wasn’t exactly rude. “It seems like you should be in me.”
“I am in you,” he chuckled. He paused to think for a minute, still cracking his knuckles. “Yep. You speak a lot like me now. Hell, your soldiers are goin’ home an’ tellin’ my stories.”
“Not even killing you will make you die, huh?”
“I’ll go when I’m good an’ ready. But I ain’t ready to leave this place yet. People still want me. An’ I enjoy it, you know, bein’ able to ride an’ do as I please. I love ridin’ Traveller at night, when he cooperates. Maybe he ain’t got as much salt as his namesake...” He paused, uncrossed his legs. “It’s nice. I was born of war, but I don’t like it, since it hurts. I don’t know where I’ll go when I am ready for the end, since it’s not like I ever known anything other than this. Heaven ain’t a place for our kind, but do we really belong in Hell, neither? We’re what our people make us to be. I think, one day, Fiddler’s Green’ll be my lot. I always worked good with the cavalry.”
America noticed just then that his brother was missing his sword. He always had his sword with him before, and he didn’t look quite the same without it. It was just as well that he couldn’t kill anymore.
He was just a statue, after all, one without flesh and apparently one without teeth.
“Well, it ain’t like I’m alone, neither. There are others like me. I reckon you could say that we’re spirits, but we’re more than just haints. Wisakedjak ain’t a ghost, would you say? And the Nunnehi...”
“They're different. I think you flatter yourself sometimes,” America said, not entirely serious but not quite joking, either. His brother spat at him.
“Shouldn’t talk to spirits like that.” Somewhere outside, his horse whined. His horse was dead. Just thinking about it gave America shivers all over and made his arm hairs stand on end.
It wouldn’t be too long until he was on the road again, on his stupidly majestic dead horse, tearing past forests and hills (and mud...) with his spectacles tucked away safely and his hair blowing wild. It would probably be a while before he came back on another visit. Maybe another few years. Or decades. He guessed everyone needed affirmation sometimes.
But the Confederacy was here for now, sitting in that chair. He still stared, and still cracked his knuckles. And he still grinned, not-alive and not-dead as ever. Truly, America lived in interesting times.
Author's notes:
- Opequon was a decisive battle in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of the Civil War.
- Burnside's Mud March was, um...kind of decisive, I guess. Burnside lost his job afterwards. If you can call a Civil War battle funny, the Mud March was probably the most hilarious.
- Wisakedjak (aka Whiskey Jack) and Nunnehi.
- Fiddler's Green is featured in an old folk song mostly sung by sailors and cavalrymen. It's supposedly a mythic afterlife where fiddles play and people dance constantly, always have enough alcohol to drink, and the usual really-good-afterlife sort of thing.
Halfway down the trail to Hell, in a shady meadow green
Are the Souls of all dead troopers camped, near a good old-time canteen.
And this eternal resting place is known as Fiddlers’ Green.
Marching past, straight through to Hell, the infantry are seen.
Accompanied by the engineers, artillery, and marines.
For none but the shades of cavalrymen dismount at Fiddlers’ Green.
-
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(I didn't read American Gods, but it's nice to encounter a non-murdered Fiddler's Green!)
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