Bildungsroman (1/2)
Breaking this one into separate bits because I can and because I guess it's kind of cheeky of me given the content. Part two to come later this week, hopefully with something else not slathered in Einsamkeit coming not far behind or ahead of it. I write too much Germany.
Title: Bildungsroman (1/2)
Character(s): Germany and Italy (mostly the former this time around)
Rating: PG-13 with eventual veers into darker territories? This part only goes to about 1914, so.
Warnings: Internal monologue-ing and weirdness, and dead Romantics.
Summary: Germany learns to read. Twice.
I think Woyzeck is the only footnote I really want to throw at people on this one--there are other works and events that matter, but foggy notions are probably all you need for those.
(The thing with the woman in the river is apparently true, though.)
After
Breathing comes first.
It isn't easy in the blind, pressing dark with ash in the air and bandages tugging at expanding ribs, restraining, but it is better than the alternative, even if the first attempt is a painful, rattling cough.
There is copper in his throat, at the back of his tongue. There is steel in his skin, digging next to bone. This heat oppresses; he does not notice the blankets tangled about his limbs until he kicks them roughly off. "Fever's breaking," someone mutters, and a dry hand brushes his forehead. Whose hand? Brandenburg's? Is there still such a place? It doesn't matter. It's too taxing to open his eyes for long anyway.
Sleep. Breathe. Listen. He tosses fitfully through memories that can't be his, backed by voices he does not recognize and the roar of crackling flames, long since extinguished. Once, in the hour just after sunset or just before dawn, he starts awake and his elbow catches the corner of something solid--a book. The Bible. It is too heavy and his throat burns for water, but he can't not pick it up because of what it is, or maybe because of what he is. The cover is hard leather and smells of smoke.
This Bible is printed, not hand-written. How--oh, that's right. Gutenberg. Gutenberg and his invention, the printing press's clack the heartbeat of a dawning age. He recalls this, and then he doesn't. The pages when he paws through them are clean and neatly aligned in a way he finds more comforting than the pillows he lies propped upon. Each row of letters grows clearer beneath his fingertips, slides patiently into focus.
This Bible is written in his language. How--oh, that's right. Luther. Luther and his pen and words spreading faster than fire in translation; ash on the wind. But he never met Luther, or did he?
Exhaustion sets in again; the book sits next to him with comforting solidity when he pushes it aside to sleep. There are many voices now, soft quill pen whispers and the chattering of older places, of the parts which constitute but do not describe the whole that he is, if he is. How many pages in a book? How many boundaries in a body? There are answers for that now but these are rough drafts, so he turns on his side and clutches the blankets to him against the chills. His dreams when he has them are written in ink and sweat.
Later he will wake for longer than this in the daytime and see the volumes at the foot of his bed, stories and poems about the things he must have imagined piled neatly to demand his attentions. Printed word. Gutenberg made the press and Luther read the Bible, and what came next?
What comes now?
Later
He's sitting on the riverbank watching when they pull the lady out of the water.
Three, four, five people--it's a search party. They've been looking for her for a while, certainly, but whoever she was she won't be found here anymore, just her body. They might try searching for the rest further down river, but the Ilm is long and that is awfully far for anything to wash away, solid or not.
It seems a lonely way to die, he supposes, leaning back against the tree shading him until the bark scratches at his skin. Above him the leaves rustle and murmur, perhaps in answer to the water's own call. Sometimes people talk of building things here, larger but much less grand than his woods. He does not listen to those voices much. He prefers it this way, grass and birdsong and trees with gnarled, knotted roots twisting who knows how deep into the soil below. And also the dead lady, but she wasn't always there.
He is pretty sure it was suicide, if there is any poetry to these things, which there usually is. A spurned lover, maybe. Some will say it is romantic and it might be, though her hair looks less graceful out of the water and the glow is more blue than pale on her skin. He hopes it didn't hurt. Whoever she was she was pretty, once. Fleetingly he wonders how old she was before she died, then realizes that it really doesn't matter anyway.
Oh and they've found something in her pocket now and it's a book, but he already knows which one without being able to read the cover from here, and not just because it's the same one he's holding to mark his place in right now. It's obvious, if you only think about it and the way things come into fashion and if there's any sense of the dramatic in you. It is Herr Goethe's popular story again: the death of the body which naturally follows the death of the heart, self-wrought by less natural means. Werther only used a bullet instead of a riverbed.
You can't help but sigh, if you already know where this is going. Soon someone will blame Goethe for all of this because of what he wrote and because the dead lady read it too, but that isn't fair. The book by itself isn't dangerous, just powerful; it's a part of everything that was already going to happen, because even people who die for love die for the story, whether they notice it or not. He understands that, even if he's never lost a lover before.
Their voices down the bank grow louder: Werther, just like he thought. He tells Herr Goethe about it later that afternoon, but it's hard to say just what Herr Goethe thinks.
Once
There's a boy over there and he paints.
It's probable that there is more to it than that, but after all he is learning about impressions, too, and his first one of the boy is one of easel and brush and a kind of concentration he thinks he can only recall seeing on Austria's face at the piano, though maybe Austria doesn't smile quite so much. The boy's name is Italy but that's not exactly what he is right now, if that makes sense (it does). Italy paints, watches, is watched, a subject of one of his old works or the framer of new ones or maybe both at once somehow, and he smiles an awful lot in fact. He thinks he might like it when Italy smiles.
Dutifully he makes a note of this, next to the other ones on the things Italy teaches him about mixing colors, and then he thinks even more about impressions and firsts and the hues he suspects he might be missing somewhere, but he is not a painter and so sees only the palest shadows of these.
When he quietly finds a book about color theory and starts to read, it doesn't feel like just starting. He wonders if that makes it easier or harder.
Gradually
The creation of words is his fondest occupation. He will work at it for hours at a time some days, piecing them together in his head with painstaking care while in budding, rumbling cities other people build other things with decidedly different foundations. But this is an artisan's work, not an industry, and so the concentration must be that much finer, the tools that much more delicate. Sometimes it is invention and sometimes combination, the discovery of new uses for the words he already has to express a concept he never before thought to voice.
This is his newest word. It is ancient and novel, forged and earth-grown, frightening and unutterably perfect.
This is Germany, and he writes it out over and over until his fingers are tinged with the ink, until the weight of it bleeds through the paper he tears and crumples anyway before the letters can dry.
This is Germany and he is doing new things with old words.
Germany likes Georg Büchner. Büchner is doing new things with old stories.
He curls against the wall next to but not blocking the door and reads by silent candlelight the script, or at least the parts of it that exist on paper now because it is never a whole work while there are still so many things to be added to it. Acknowledgment demands completion--an old notion, but a persistent one. Fortunately for both of them, Büchner is a fast writer.
So he reads. The title of the play will probably be Woyzeck, this being the protagonist's name. Before, Germany was not so sure that he liked this. But Woyzeck is a strange choice for a protagonist, he had protested. And Büchner had asked him, Why is that? And Germany had said, in order, Because Woyzeck is poor. And crazy. And Büchner, with an odd look, had asked him, Are the doctor and the captain who use him--fine upstanding men of society!--are they so much better than he?
And eventually Germany had said, hm, and looked at the script again. It is about someone who was a real person, so it is half a true story if you take some of the romance out of it. Some, not all. He'll die at the end just the same, but everybody knows that part.
Germany likes Büchner. Some people in Hessen did not like him so much because he had new ideas there, too, in the pamphlets he published; which is why he is no longer in Hessen, which is why Germany makes sure not to block the door where he sits in case it turns out that people here don't like him so much either. Instead he accepts the next page that is handed to him and reads quietly, between stolen glances at the author. Büchner is very young and very talented but also very ill, and the pale cast suits him poorly. Germany has seen it before, many times. And yes, there is still something poetic to all of this, but then again there are so many other things Büchner could be if he lived to an unromantic age, and the simple fact remains that the play is not done.
There are few things worse, Germany imagines, than leaving a story unfinished. Even when you do already know the ending. But Büchner must already know this so Germany does not disturb his writing.
Soon
Italy speaks to him and there is dirt instead of paint on his hands.
"...Lots and lots going on out there, alright!" he says in a breathless giddy rush, while he ducks down around the rock Germany is sitting in front of awaiting further orders. From either side. "But don't worry, Prussia says he's got a plan so that must mean it's a good one, especially with the way he's smiling! You know the one, I bet, that one where his teeth all line up all the way to the back and the foreshortening's perfect." Italy offers a cheery grin and settles against the stone next to Germany, quite close. He smells a bit like gunpowder and a lot like canvas, but maybe part of that is the uniform too. Germany watches the light in Italy's hair and agrees that Prussia's teeth foretell impressive things indeed.
"Uh-huh," nods Italy, whose hands move like birds when he gestures. One of his gloves has a tear in the thumb; perhaps this is what one calls a focal point. "And just wait, Austria's going to be so surprised!" He laughs a little, high and clear, and leans against Germany's shoulder as though sharing in an old joke.
Germany's head tilts with the rest of him under the extra weight. "I don't hate Austria," he sighs, as though he must remind Italy as well as the rest of the continent. Not that the rest of it seems as interested in this particular conflict. Prussia calls it a brother's war. Austria calls it the same, though with none of the same biting good humor, and this is why Germany is currently on a battlefield and not within a forty-meter radius of either of the two. But this is all less complicated than it could be, all things considered, and it is nice of Prussia to be calling Germany by name so much lately if nothing else. Still. "I wonder if it's easier being an island."
"Oh, like Sicily?" --And Italy is here, too. Prussia seemed very pleased with himself about that, Germany remembers. "Because we're keeping Sicily, too! My brother and me, I mean. It's ours now. We're ours now!" His elbow digs briefly into Germany's ribs, like something has to press there to check or to prove that it really exists. "And things are going to be so much better once Austria comes around and maybe fratello will even let me see some of his drawings finally because he never wants to show them to me (I think he thinks they're not very good but he's wrong, they're beautiful) but maybe when this is over he'll be so happy that he'll forget to be so silly about--"
The bullet flies through almost perfectly between them, so it is mere luck that Germany veers in the right direction when he pulls himself and Italy out of the way of the next one, down to the cooling dirt. He is still fumbling on his side for his weapon and debating whether or not to return fire this time when something curls over his middle and the shot crackles too close to his ear, deafening. Germany strains to follow its path over his shoulder, but he can't see from this angle and Italy still has his arm pinned.
For a beat, Italy stays as he is, squinting along the line of the smoking rifle barrel, then he slackens. "Aww, missed!"
Whether it is disappointment or relief in the sigh Germany cannot say, but the most important thing is that he has remembered to breathe. "It was a very good effort, Italien," he offers, head thunking gently on the ground.
"Scared him off though, I bet!" Italy laughs and stretches in a way that rolls Germany over onto his back with deceptive fluidity. "So anyway," he chirps, laying the gun to rest beside them. "You like poems, right?" He squirms into what he somehow considers a less uncomfortable position and rests his head in his arms across Germany's chest, feet waving aimlessly in the air behind him. "I have poets too! But I already know all of their poems." Italy's smile, Germany hypothesizes, grows exponentially more difficult to ignore the closer one approaches it. Also there is a smudge on his cheek and Germany would like to rub it away, but that would call for arms that move. "Tell me some of your good ones."
"...Ah." The horizon is ground-over-sky now where Germany tilts his head back to look, an upside-down sunrise that is not illusion enough to keep the sky from darkening at the edges. He clears his throat while meanings without words surface in his head and the music behind his thoughts turns a little less classical, or maybe that's just the ringing in his ears. When he remembers himself, the words follow after. Germany likes the subjunctive case in his language, the wistful sliding vowel sounds of maybes and not exactlys but also what ifs. Italy, he soon discovers, likes those too.
In due course
Versailles is even grander from the inside, doubly so when visitor can also play host. Germany runs a hand over a towering column and looks up into the farthest reaches of the ceiling to find where it ends. It pleases him to discover how far he has to look to make that out.
Beside him, Prussia sniggers. "Almost enough to make up for the whole fucking siege, huh?" he says, cool as his own saber's steel. Germany wonders idly if he has bothered to clean it since Sedan. "And hey, what luck it wasn't booked today, yeah? Used to be a time, a guy had to write in months in advance for this kinda shit. Guess we must be special or something." He leers across the crowded court where France, immaculately dressed despite the circumstances and with not the faintest hint of bandages showing out between the ruffles, catches sight of them over a sea of uniformed shoulders and glowers. From the sound of it, Prussia delights in that even more. He has ideas concerning France's place in all of this, Germany recalls, because while Prussia may not read as much or as often he is still a very good storyteller, and the one he is working on now might be his best yet. "Now there's something for your little diaries," Prussia mumbles, with a mocking little wave across the room, but his next comment dies in the hush as the ceremony starts.
Germany stands dutifully beneath the white-gold palace lights and watches his Kaiser crowned. Prussia watches France watch the same and seems to find more than enough amusement in that for himself. When it ends and the assembly resumes rustling and murmuring not wholly unlike the trees on the riverbank so far away (wait for it, the storm will come when they realize how great a thing they have done today), Prussia claps a hardened hand on his shoulder and says, "So now you're an Empire. How's that feel?"
As though it truly is that simple. Germany closes his eyes and thinks for a long moment, considers all of the things shifting immeasurably inside him, and shrugs Prussia's hand away. "Active voice," he decides. Prussia chuckles his approval and Germany hears steel in that, too.
Before
England, as it transpires some decades later, dislikes the passive voice just as strongly. As does France. As do several people. Germany makes a note of this, and then he underlines it twice. He sends it to his superiors, but somehow his third Kaiser does not read as avidly as the first, or at least not without leaving his own incendiary comments in the margins. Germany pays attention to those. Germany pays attention.
( Part 2)
Title: Bildungsroman (1/2)
Character(s): Germany and Italy (mostly the former this time around)
Rating: PG-13 with eventual veers into darker territories? This part only goes to about 1914, so.
Warnings: Internal monologue-ing and weirdness, and dead Romantics.
Summary: Germany learns to read. Twice.
I think Woyzeck is the only footnote I really want to throw at people on this one--there are other works and events that matter, but foggy notions are probably all you need for those.
(The thing with the woman in the river is apparently true, though.)
After
Breathing comes first.
It isn't easy in the blind, pressing dark with ash in the air and bandages tugging at expanding ribs, restraining, but it is better than the alternative, even if the first attempt is a painful, rattling cough.
There is copper in his throat, at the back of his tongue. There is steel in his skin, digging next to bone. This heat oppresses; he does not notice the blankets tangled about his limbs until he kicks them roughly off. "Fever's breaking," someone mutters, and a dry hand brushes his forehead. Whose hand? Brandenburg's? Is there still such a place? It doesn't matter. It's too taxing to open his eyes for long anyway.
Sleep. Breathe. Listen. He tosses fitfully through memories that can't be his, backed by voices he does not recognize and the roar of crackling flames, long since extinguished. Once, in the hour just after sunset or just before dawn, he starts awake and his elbow catches the corner of something solid--a book. The Bible. It is too heavy and his throat burns for water, but he can't not pick it up because of what it is, or maybe because of what he is. The cover is hard leather and smells of smoke.
This Bible is printed, not hand-written. How--oh, that's right. Gutenberg. Gutenberg and his invention, the printing press's clack the heartbeat of a dawning age. He recalls this, and then he doesn't. The pages when he paws through them are clean and neatly aligned in a way he finds more comforting than the pillows he lies propped upon. Each row of letters grows clearer beneath his fingertips, slides patiently into focus.
This Bible is written in his language. How--oh, that's right. Luther. Luther and his pen and words spreading faster than fire in translation; ash on the wind. But he never met Luther, or did he?
Exhaustion sets in again; the book sits next to him with comforting solidity when he pushes it aside to sleep. There are many voices now, soft quill pen whispers and the chattering of older places, of the parts which constitute but do not describe the whole that he is, if he is. How many pages in a book? How many boundaries in a body? There are answers for that now but these are rough drafts, so he turns on his side and clutches the blankets to him against the chills. His dreams when he has them are written in ink and sweat.
Later he will wake for longer than this in the daytime and see the volumes at the foot of his bed, stories and poems about the things he must have imagined piled neatly to demand his attentions. Printed word. Gutenberg made the press and Luther read the Bible, and what came next?
What comes now?
Later
He's sitting on the riverbank watching when they pull the lady out of the water.
Three, four, five people--it's a search party. They've been looking for her for a while, certainly, but whoever she was she won't be found here anymore, just her body. They might try searching for the rest further down river, but the Ilm is long and that is awfully far for anything to wash away, solid or not.
It seems a lonely way to die, he supposes, leaning back against the tree shading him until the bark scratches at his skin. Above him the leaves rustle and murmur, perhaps in answer to the water's own call. Sometimes people talk of building things here, larger but much less grand than his woods. He does not listen to those voices much. He prefers it this way, grass and birdsong and trees with gnarled, knotted roots twisting who knows how deep into the soil below. And also the dead lady, but she wasn't always there.
He is pretty sure it was suicide, if there is any poetry to these things, which there usually is. A spurned lover, maybe. Some will say it is romantic and it might be, though her hair looks less graceful out of the water and the glow is more blue than pale on her skin. He hopes it didn't hurt. Whoever she was she was pretty, once. Fleetingly he wonders how old she was before she died, then realizes that it really doesn't matter anyway.
Oh and they've found something in her pocket now and it's a book, but he already knows which one without being able to read the cover from here, and not just because it's the same one he's holding to mark his place in right now. It's obvious, if you only think about it and the way things come into fashion and if there's any sense of the dramatic in you. It is Herr Goethe's popular story again: the death of the body which naturally follows the death of the heart, self-wrought by less natural means. Werther only used a bullet instead of a riverbed.
You can't help but sigh, if you already know where this is going. Soon someone will blame Goethe for all of this because of what he wrote and because the dead lady read it too, but that isn't fair. The book by itself isn't dangerous, just powerful; it's a part of everything that was already going to happen, because even people who die for love die for the story, whether they notice it or not. He understands that, even if he's never lost a lover before.
Their voices down the bank grow louder: Werther, just like he thought. He tells Herr Goethe about it later that afternoon, but it's hard to say just what Herr Goethe thinks.
Once
There's a boy over there and he paints.
It's probable that there is more to it than that, but after all he is learning about impressions, too, and his first one of the boy is one of easel and brush and a kind of concentration he thinks he can only recall seeing on Austria's face at the piano, though maybe Austria doesn't smile quite so much. The boy's name is Italy but that's not exactly what he is right now, if that makes sense (it does). Italy paints, watches, is watched, a subject of one of his old works or the framer of new ones or maybe both at once somehow, and he smiles an awful lot in fact. He thinks he might like it when Italy smiles.
Dutifully he makes a note of this, next to the other ones on the things Italy teaches him about mixing colors, and then he thinks even more about impressions and firsts and the hues he suspects he might be missing somewhere, but he is not a painter and so sees only the palest shadows of these.
When he quietly finds a book about color theory and starts to read, it doesn't feel like just starting. He wonders if that makes it easier or harder.
Gradually
The creation of words is his fondest occupation. He will work at it for hours at a time some days, piecing them together in his head with painstaking care while in budding, rumbling cities other people build other things with decidedly different foundations. But this is an artisan's work, not an industry, and so the concentration must be that much finer, the tools that much more delicate. Sometimes it is invention and sometimes combination, the discovery of new uses for the words he already has to express a concept he never before thought to voice.
This is his newest word. It is ancient and novel, forged and earth-grown, frightening and unutterably perfect.
This is Germany, and he writes it out over and over until his fingers are tinged with the ink, until the weight of it bleeds through the paper he tears and crumples anyway before the letters can dry.
This is Germany and he is doing new things with old words.
Germany likes Georg Büchner. Büchner is doing new things with old stories.
He curls against the wall next to but not blocking the door and reads by silent candlelight the script, or at least the parts of it that exist on paper now because it is never a whole work while there are still so many things to be added to it. Acknowledgment demands completion--an old notion, but a persistent one. Fortunately for both of them, Büchner is a fast writer.
So he reads. The title of the play will probably be Woyzeck, this being the protagonist's name. Before, Germany was not so sure that he liked this. But Woyzeck is a strange choice for a protagonist, he had protested. And Büchner had asked him, Why is that? And Germany had said, in order, Because Woyzeck is poor. And crazy. And Büchner, with an odd look, had asked him, Are the doctor and the captain who use him--fine upstanding men of society!--are they so much better than he?
And eventually Germany had said, hm, and looked at the script again. It is about someone who was a real person, so it is half a true story if you take some of the romance out of it. Some, not all. He'll die at the end just the same, but everybody knows that part.
Germany likes Büchner. Some people in Hessen did not like him so much because he had new ideas there, too, in the pamphlets he published; which is why he is no longer in Hessen, which is why Germany makes sure not to block the door where he sits in case it turns out that people here don't like him so much either. Instead he accepts the next page that is handed to him and reads quietly, between stolen glances at the author. Büchner is very young and very talented but also very ill, and the pale cast suits him poorly. Germany has seen it before, many times. And yes, there is still something poetic to all of this, but then again there are so many other things Büchner could be if he lived to an unromantic age, and the simple fact remains that the play is not done.
There are few things worse, Germany imagines, than leaving a story unfinished. Even when you do already know the ending. But Büchner must already know this so Germany does not disturb his writing.
Soon
Italy speaks to him and there is dirt instead of paint on his hands.
"...Lots and lots going on out there, alright!" he says in a breathless giddy rush, while he ducks down around the rock Germany is sitting in front of awaiting further orders. From either side. "But don't worry, Prussia says he's got a plan so that must mean it's a good one, especially with the way he's smiling! You know the one, I bet, that one where his teeth all line up all the way to the back and the foreshortening's perfect." Italy offers a cheery grin and settles against the stone next to Germany, quite close. He smells a bit like gunpowder and a lot like canvas, but maybe part of that is the uniform too. Germany watches the light in Italy's hair and agrees that Prussia's teeth foretell impressive things indeed.
"Uh-huh," nods Italy, whose hands move like birds when he gestures. One of his gloves has a tear in the thumb; perhaps this is what one calls a focal point. "And just wait, Austria's going to be so surprised!" He laughs a little, high and clear, and leans against Germany's shoulder as though sharing in an old joke.
Germany's head tilts with the rest of him under the extra weight. "I don't hate Austria," he sighs, as though he must remind Italy as well as the rest of the continent. Not that the rest of it seems as interested in this particular conflict. Prussia calls it a brother's war. Austria calls it the same, though with none of the same biting good humor, and this is why Germany is currently on a battlefield and not within a forty-meter radius of either of the two. But this is all less complicated than it could be, all things considered, and it is nice of Prussia to be calling Germany by name so much lately if nothing else. Still. "I wonder if it's easier being an island."
"Oh, like Sicily?" --And Italy is here, too. Prussia seemed very pleased with himself about that, Germany remembers. "Because we're keeping Sicily, too! My brother and me, I mean. It's ours now. We're ours now!" His elbow digs briefly into Germany's ribs, like something has to press there to check or to prove that it really exists. "And things are going to be so much better once Austria comes around and maybe fratello will even let me see some of his drawings finally because he never wants to show them to me (I think he thinks they're not very good but he's wrong, they're beautiful) but maybe when this is over he'll be so happy that he'll forget to be so silly about--"
The bullet flies through almost perfectly between them, so it is mere luck that Germany veers in the right direction when he pulls himself and Italy out of the way of the next one, down to the cooling dirt. He is still fumbling on his side for his weapon and debating whether or not to return fire this time when something curls over his middle and the shot crackles too close to his ear, deafening. Germany strains to follow its path over his shoulder, but he can't see from this angle and Italy still has his arm pinned.
For a beat, Italy stays as he is, squinting along the line of the smoking rifle barrel, then he slackens. "Aww, missed!"
Whether it is disappointment or relief in the sigh Germany cannot say, but the most important thing is that he has remembered to breathe. "It was a very good effort, Italien," he offers, head thunking gently on the ground.
"Scared him off though, I bet!" Italy laughs and stretches in a way that rolls Germany over onto his back with deceptive fluidity. "So anyway," he chirps, laying the gun to rest beside them. "You like poems, right?" He squirms into what he somehow considers a less uncomfortable position and rests his head in his arms across Germany's chest, feet waving aimlessly in the air behind him. "I have poets too! But I already know all of their poems." Italy's smile, Germany hypothesizes, grows exponentially more difficult to ignore the closer one approaches it. Also there is a smudge on his cheek and Germany would like to rub it away, but that would call for arms that move. "Tell me some of your good ones."
"...Ah." The horizon is ground-over-sky now where Germany tilts his head back to look, an upside-down sunrise that is not illusion enough to keep the sky from darkening at the edges. He clears his throat while meanings without words surface in his head and the music behind his thoughts turns a little less classical, or maybe that's just the ringing in his ears. When he remembers himself, the words follow after. Germany likes the subjunctive case in his language, the wistful sliding vowel sounds of maybes and not exactlys but also what ifs. Italy, he soon discovers, likes those too.
In due course
Versailles is even grander from the inside, doubly so when visitor can also play host. Germany runs a hand over a towering column and looks up into the farthest reaches of the ceiling to find where it ends. It pleases him to discover how far he has to look to make that out.
Beside him, Prussia sniggers. "Almost enough to make up for the whole fucking siege, huh?" he says, cool as his own saber's steel. Germany wonders idly if he has bothered to clean it since Sedan. "And hey, what luck it wasn't booked today, yeah? Used to be a time, a guy had to write in months in advance for this kinda shit. Guess we must be special or something." He leers across the crowded court where France, immaculately dressed despite the circumstances and with not the faintest hint of bandages showing out between the ruffles, catches sight of them over a sea of uniformed shoulders and glowers. From the sound of it, Prussia delights in that even more. He has ideas concerning France's place in all of this, Germany recalls, because while Prussia may not read as much or as often he is still a very good storyteller, and the one he is working on now might be his best yet. "Now there's something for your little diaries," Prussia mumbles, with a mocking little wave across the room, but his next comment dies in the hush as the ceremony starts.
Germany stands dutifully beneath the white-gold palace lights and watches his Kaiser crowned. Prussia watches France watch the same and seems to find more than enough amusement in that for himself. When it ends and the assembly resumes rustling and murmuring not wholly unlike the trees on the riverbank so far away (wait for it, the storm will come when they realize how great a thing they have done today), Prussia claps a hardened hand on his shoulder and says, "So now you're an Empire. How's that feel?"
As though it truly is that simple. Germany closes his eyes and thinks for a long moment, considers all of the things shifting immeasurably inside him, and shrugs Prussia's hand away. "Active voice," he decides. Prussia chuckles his approval and Germany hears steel in that, too.
Before
England, as it transpires some decades later, dislikes the passive voice just as strongly. As does France. As do several people. Germany makes a note of this, and then he underlines it twice. He sends it to his superiors, but somehow his third Kaiser does not read as avidly as the first, or at least not without leaving his own incendiary comments in the margins. Germany pays attention to those. Germany pays attention.
( Part 2)