❝but as the water fills my mouth it couldn't wash the echoes out❞
drum beats | axis powers hetalia | 2400 words | vietnam ; taiwan ; france | pg |
in which vietnam and taiwan go shopping in paris, and vietnam relives some old memories.
for amandier.
drum beats
The thing about having been two countries at one point was that Vietnam still feels as though she had two unresolved halves. She finds herself looking back at her memories and wondering how she could have possibly felt that way, or why she had made that decision. It is as though she had completely divorced one side of her brain, and then had to learn to accept it again, though it is now entirely foreign.
In short, it is a headache, and one she wishes she didn’t have to deal with.
She stares at herself in the mirror, now, looking over her partially undressed body with a critical eye. She winces at the scares across her shoulders and stomach, acknowledges that she’s grown a few inches taller. She’s slimmed out, some, though her curves now seem more pronounced. And her eyes are darker and deeper, though no less bright: pools of oil that see all and reveal nothing.
She’s grown up, she decides with a wry smile.
There is a polite, but insistent, knock at the door. “Jiejie, are you coming? The cab just pulled up!”
“Coming!” She calls out her response, suddenly jolted back to the present. “Tell him I’ll be there in two minutes.” And so begins a frantic one hundred and twenty seconds of racing around her hotel room, searching for enough clothes to make a proper ensemble. Finally, once she’s slipped into a short skirt and pulled a shirt over her head, she grabs a pair of heels and purse and races for the door.
›››‹‹‹
“Seriously, what takes you so long?” Taiwan wants to know, crinkling her nose at her sister. “You only brought three days’ worth of clothes, how hard can it be to pick something?”
Vietnam blushes under her little sister’s teasing gaze. “I-I don’t know,” she mumbles. “I guess I’m just ... not used to it. Dressing like this, I mean.” She waves a hand to indicate her new western clothes, now complete with beaded necklaces and delicate heels.
“You’ll get used to it,” Taiwan insists with a laugh. She herself is dressed in a short pink dress, the sleeves long enough to cover her palms the only hint at her more typical Eastern wardrobe. “I mean, I think I’ve only ever seen you in an ao-dai or a military uniform, other than this.”
“I had a ball gown, too, once,” Vietnam murmurs absently. “It was white, with blue and crimson rosettes.” She is staring out the window of the cab, watching the Paris cityscape come slowly into focus with wistful eyes.
“Wait, really?” Taiwan assesses her sister with new eyes, thoughtfully. “And why did I never get to see this, may I ask?”
When Vietnam looks back, there is a dark glint in her eyes. “Because I burned it,” she says simply.
›››‹‹‹
When I look back on that day, the only thing I can say to forgive myself is that I was very young. He swept in like a hero, like a knight, and I fell, more than willing, into his arms because I didn’t know any better. I had yet to learn that such men, who claim to be the connoisseurs of love, have an equally endless capacity for cruelty.
But on that day, I didn’t yet know any of that. I was eager and excited, blushing like a schoolgirl as the seamstresses draped the taffeta around me. I’d only seen the fabric from afar, before: worn by the French ladies who occasionally visited the ports with their men. I was enamored of his culture as much as I was of him; the language, the dancing, the clothes-all of it seemed to belong to a fairytale.
After what seemed like endless preparations, it was finally ready. They powdered me with perfumes and pulled my hair into what is called, somewhat ironically, a French knot. And then I got to put on the dress. It left my shoulders and throat bear, and the flounces draped down over one another, creating a two-foot train. As I twirled before the mirror, I’ll admit I was a bit vain-eyeing myself.
I was sure, at that moment, that no man would be able to resist me, and that he was as much in love with me as I was with him.
›››‹‹‹
Vietnam cuts off her story abruptly as the cab stops in front of the line of boutiques. Taiwan, who had been resting her chin in her hands thoughtfully, looks up as the cabby opened the door for her. “Thank you,” she says in halting French, as she pays him. “We’d like to be picked up in two hours.” The man nods, smiling, and then speeds off.
Taiwan and Vietnam walk side by side into the biggest of boutiques. As they look through the racks and display particularly outrageous items to one another, Taiwan has a thought.
“You look better in black than you do in white,” she says. “I would have thought that he, of all people, might’ve taken that into account.”
Vietnam, who had been pulling a white dress off the wall, places it back sheepishly. “Really?” she asks idly. “I’d never really thought of it.”
“Jiejie,” Taiwan says didactically, “If you’re going to be serious about dressing like this, at least learn the basics. People have pallets, and you’ve got to play to those. For instance, Hungary knows that she never looks better than when she wears forest green-it sets off her eyes. And you can bet that Belarus knows exactly how good she looks in dark blue.”
“What about you? Is pink your best color?”
“No,” Taiwan responds promptly, “red is.” And though it has been decades since Vietnam has seen her sister wear even a spot of red, she knows better than to remark on it.
“Anyway,” Taiwan continues, “you certainly look very good in pale green and sea foam, but I think a darker color would suit you better, now. And it’s just a hunch, mind you, but I really think you should try black.”
›››‹‹‹
Thus began an hour of Taiwan pointing out countless gowns to a sales clerk and then forcing Vietnam to try them on. There is an excess of black amongst these dresses, Vietnam observes wryly. But, when she pulls one last one over her head, and turns to face herself in the mirror, she has to concede that Taiwan may have had a point. The dark, silky fabric hugs her hips and thighs and then fans out right before her ankles, the top is cut low enough to suggest the curve of her breasts without revealing them. She looks taller, older, that black color setting off her pale skin to an advantage. She feels like the lady she tried for so many years to become.
“Jiejie, come on, let me see!” Taiwan pipes from beyond the dressing room door.
“Alright, alright,” Vietnam says, suddenly self-conscious. She gently undoes the lock on the door and steps out, concentrating very hard so as not to trip on her skirts. Taiwan lets out a little, thrilled gasp as she emerges, clapping her hands. Even the sales clerk seems stunned.
And then a bell rings as another patron enters the store. Vietnam takes one look-blonde hair falling softly to the man’s shoulders, his eyes a bright, familiar blue, and her heart stops. And then starts again, faster. She feels as though she’s about to suffocate, her own heartbeat smothering her.
And just before their eyes can meet, she does the only thing she can. She pushes brusquely past him and runs away, out onto the street.
›››‹‹‹
Things have been the same between us for some time. At least, on my end of things. And that night was no different. As I attended the party (pointedly ignoring my Emperor’s scandalized gaze), I searched for him in the crowd. The thought of him warranted a physical reaction in me; my heart beat faster, my skin grew hot. I didn’t yet know what name to put to all these feelings; I just knew that when I was around him, I was happy.
Finally, I spotted him in the crowd. Despite my substantial skirts, I raced towards him. Miraculously, I didn’t trip. But he either didn’t see or didn’t care about my approach. Because as I came upon him, I found him with his lips locked to those of one of his French ladies. Her hair was thick, almost auburn, and she pulled away from him, giggling madly. “I think we’ve been interrupted,” she said slyly. In that moment I wanted to kill her.
He pulled away from her, delicately wiped her lipstick from her cheeks as though such scenes were commonplace. I could see him assessing me with his eyes, as they slowly came back into focus he spoke. “Vi,” he said, in his smooth, charming way. “I was wondering where you were. You look lovely.”
My cheeks burned with humiliation. Impulsively, I reached forward and grabbed him by the shoulders. He leaned down-expecting another woman’s kiss, no doubt-but instead I slammed the heel of my shoe as hard as I could against his foot.
“Get out,” I ordered him. “This is my capital. Take yourself and your sluts, and get out.”
›››‹‹‹
As she finally stops running, she finds herself on the banks of a small tributary of the Seine. Her bare feet-for she’d left her shoes in the dressing room-are aching, bruised from the stones she’s danced across. She had held the dress’s skirts close to her body as she ran, but now she lets them drop, not caring about the dirt trailing on them as she collapses against the riverbanks.
She hates herself some times, for being so weak. After all, she had known that she was bound to run into him at some point during this visit; they were in his capitol, after all. He was bound to notice two nations’ presence, so close to his heart.
But she hadn’t expected him to illicit the same reactions in her that he had a hundred years ago. She had thought herself stronger, but in reality nothing had changed. She still lost control in his presence, of her body, her mind, her emotions. Nothing made any sense when he was around.
“I just wish I had just let go of everything, and not brought half of it back.” Two sides of her mind-polar opposites-battle on most things. But on him, they are united.
›››‹‹‹
“You know, I’ve smoothed things over for now, but the clerk was quite distraught when you ran off with that dress.”
Of course, he would come after her. For all his carelessness and cruelty, there is an almost naïve kindness to him, as well. She refuses to look up as he approaches, but she can hear his every step against the riverbank, and she can smell him-lavender always follows in the air, where he is.
“She’ll get over it,” Vietnam mutters, still not looking up.
“Now that your sister has paid the full asking price for the dress,” he murmurs slyly. “How cruel, ma cheré, to foot her with the bill of a dress you’ve effectively ruined.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” she reminds him.
“It may yet be salvageable,” he says. She clenches her fists as he sits down beside her, willing herself not to run again. “Just a bit of dirt, nothing modern conveniences can’t fix.”
His voice pounds in her ears, and she can feel her heartbeat quickening. It’s not just a girlish crush, it’s nothing so mundane. Her heart goes so fast and so forcefully that she’s afraid it will, quite literally, burst through her chest.
“Vi,” he says very slowly, reaching for her. But just before his fingers touch her face, she can’t take it any more. Acting impulsively, she launches herself into the Seine.
›››‹‹‹
He had not learned enough to run after me, that day. His grave attendance and relentless pursuit of me only began later, once he’d learned that that was the only way to win me over. To give him credit-which I do only begrudgingly-he is a fast learner. He quickly learned that I wasn’t the type of girl who would tolerate other women’s presence while he pursued me. So he learned not to bring French women back to Vietnam.
But I spent that night alone, ripping the rosettes off of the dress and yanking my hair back into its long, accustomed tail. And it was many years later that I found it again, and dragged it out of the back of the wardrobe. It was during the 1960s that I set my first ball gown on fire.
But for as many dark memories as it stirred in me, it proved one very important thing-as much as I had wanted to break with my past, and insist that I was an entirely new person, I wasn’t. Because if I had completely divorced myself from that person I used to be, why would a hundred-year-old dress make me cry as it slowly burned to ash?
›››‹‹‹
The murky waters of the French river rush up and threaten to drown her; she is more used to ocean currents, not these deceptively calm ones of the river. The thin fabric of her dress rushes around her, tangling with her legs and arms. And still her heart beats, in time to the raging of the waters.
And then, when she thinks she will be consumed, strong arms wrap around her waist, and drag her upwards. Something places her roughly on the bank, where she lies braced against her palms and gasping for breath. Her savior drapes his blazer over her shaking shoulders before he even coughs up all the water in his own lungs.
“Ma cheré, do you try to act completely without sense, or does it just escape you from time to time?”
“The latter,” she says tartly. “And then, only when you’re around.” She looks up into his bright eyes, and smiles. The instant he returns the look, her heart calms down, and settles into a happy, trilling beat. Still fast, still excited, but no longer frantic and hopeless.
in which vietnam and taiwan go shopping in paris, and vietnam relives some old memories.
for amandier.
drum beats
The thing about having been two countries at one point was that Vietnam still feels as though she had two unresolved halves. She finds herself looking back at her memories and wondering how she could have possibly felt that way, or why she had made that decision. It is as though she had completely divorced one side of her brain, and then had to learn to accept it again, though it is now entirely foreign.
In short, it is a headache, and one she wishes she didn’t have to deal with.
She stares at herself in the mirror, now, looking over her partially undressed body with a critical eye. She winces at the scares across her shoulders and stomach, acknowledges that she’s grown a few inches taller. She’s slimmed out, some, though her curves now seem more pronounced. And her eyes are darker and deeper, though no less bright: pools of oil that see all and reveal nothing.
She’s grown up, she decides with a wry smile.
There is a polite, but insistent, knock at the door. “Jiejie, are you coming? The cab just pulled up!”
“Coming!” She calls out her response, suddenly jolted back to the present. “Tell him I’ll be there in two minutes.” And so begins a frantic one hundred and twenty seconds of racing around her hotel room, searching for enough clothes to make a proper ensemble. Finally, once she’s slipped into a short skirt and pulled a shirt over her head, she grabs a pair of heels and purse and races for the door.
›››‹‹‹
“Seriously, what takes you so long?” Taiwan wants to know, crinkling her nose at her sister. “You only brought three days’ worth of clothes, how hard can it be to pick something?”
Vietnam blushes under her little sister’s teasing gaze. “I-I don’t know,” she mumbles. “I guess I’m just ... not used to it. Dressing like this, I mean.” She waves a hand to indicate her new western clothes, now complete with beaded necklaces and delicate heels.
“You’ll get used to it,” Taiwan insists with a laugh. She herself is dressed in a short pink dress, the sleeves long enough to cover her palms the only hint at her more typical Eastern wardrobe. “I mean, I think I’ve only ever seen you in an ao-dai or a military uniform, other than this.”
“I had a ball gown, too, once,” Vietnam murmurs absently. “It was white, with blue and crimson rosettes.” She is staring out the window of the cab, watching the Paris cityscape come slowly into focus with wistful eyes.
“Wait, really?” Taiwan assesses her sister with new eyes, thoughtfully. “And why did I never get to see this, may I ask?”
When Vietnam looks back, there is a dark glint in her eyes. “Because I burned it,” she says simply.
›››‹‹‹
When I look back on that day, the only thing I can say to forgive myself is that I was very young. He swept in like a hero, like a knight, and I fell, more than willing, into his arms because I didn’t know any better. I had yet to learn that such men, who claim to be the connoisseurs of love, have an equally endless capacity for cruelty.
But on that day, I didn’t yet know any of that. I was eager and excited, blushing like a schoolgirl as the seamstresses draped the taffeta around me. I’d only seen the fabric from afar, before: worn by the French ladies who occasionally visited the ports with their men. I was enamored of his culture as much as I was of him; the language, the dancing, the clothes-all of it seemed to belong to a fairytale.
After what seemed like endless preparations, it was finally ready. They powdered me with perfumes and pulled my hair into what is called, somewhat ironically, a French knot. And then I got to put on the dress. It left my shoulders and throat bear, and the flounces draped down over one another, creating a two-foot train. As I twirled before the mirror, I’ll admit I was a bit vain-eyeing myself.
I was sure, at that moment, that no man would be able to resist me, and that he was as much in love with me as I was with him.
›››‹‹‹
Vietnam cuts off her story abruptly as the cab stops in front of the line of boutiques. Taiwan, who had been resting her chin in her hands thoughtfully, looks up as the cabby opened the door for her. “Thank you,” she says in halting French, as she pays him. “We’d like to be picked up in two hours.” The man nods, smiling, and then speeds off.
Taiwan and Vietnam walk side by side into the biggest of boutiques. As they look through the racks and display particularly outrageous items to one another, Taiwan has a thought.
“You look better in black than you do in white,” she says. “I would have thought that he, of all people, might’ve taken that into account.”
Vietnam, who had been pulling a white dress off the wall, places it back sheepishly. “Really?” she asks idly. “I’d never really thought of it.”
“Jiejie,” Taiwan says didactically, “If you’re going to be serious about dressing like this, at least learn the basics. People have pallets, and you’ve got to play to those. For instance, Hungary knows that she never looks better than when she wears forest green-it sets off her eyes. And you can bet that Belarus knows exactly how good she looks in dark blue.”
“What about you? Is pink your best color?”
“No,” Taiwan responds promptly, “red is.” And though it has been decades since Vietnam has seen her sister wear even a spot of red, she knows better than to remark on it.
“Anyway,” Taiwan continues, “you certainly look very good in pale green and sea foam, but I think a darker color would suit you better, now. And it’s just a hunch, mind you, but I really think you should try black.”
›››‹‹‹
Thus began an hour of Taiwan pointing out countless gowns to a sales clerk and then forcing Vietnam to try them on. There is an excess of black amongst these dresses, Vietnam observes wryly. But, when she pulls one last one over her head, and turns to face herself in the mirror, she has to concede that Taiwan may have had a point. The dark, silky fabric hugs her hips and thighs and then fans out right before her ankles, the top is cut low enough to suggest the curve of her breasts without revealing them. She looks taller, older, that black color setting off her pale skin to an advantage. She feels like the lady she tried for so many years to become.
“Jiejie, come on, let me see!” Taiwan pipes from beyond the dressing room door.
“Alright, alright,” Vietnam says, suddenly self-conscious. She gently undoes the lock on the door and steps out, concentrating very hard so as not to trip on her skirts. Taiwan lets out a little, thrilled gasp as she emerges, clapping her hands. Even the sales clerk seems stunned.
And then a bell rings as another patron enters the store. Vietnam takes one look-blonde hair falling softly to the man’s shoulders, his eyes a bright, familiar blue, and her heart stops. And then starts again, faster. She feels as though she’s about to suffocate, her own heartbeat smothering her.
And just before their eyes can meet, she does the only thing she can. She pushes brusquely past him and runs away, out onto the street.
›››‹‹‹
Things have been the same between us for some time. At least, on my end of things. And that night was no different. As I attended the party (pointedly ignoring my Emperor’s scandalized gaze), I searched for him in the crowd. The thought of him warranted a physical reaction in me; my heart beat faster, my skin grew hot. I didn’t yet know what name to put to all these feelings; I just knew that when I was around him, I was happy.
Finally, I spotted him in the crowd. Despite my substantial skirts, I raced towards him. Miraculously, I didn’t trip. But he either didn’t see or didn’t care about my approach. Because as I came upon him, I found him with his lips locked to those of one of his French ladies. Her hair was thick, almost auburn, and she pulled away from him, giggling madly. “I think we’ve been interrupted,” she said slyly. In that moment I wanted to kill her.
He pulled away from her, delicately wiped her lipstick from her cheeks as though such scenes were commonplace. I could see him assessing me with his eyes, as they slowly came back into focus he spoke. “Vi,” he said, in his smooth, charming way. “I was wondering where you were. You look lovely.”
My cheeks burned with humiliation. Impulsively, I reached forward and grabbed him by the shoulders. He leaned down-expecting another woman’s kiss, no doubt-but instead I slammed the heel of my shoe as hard as I could against his foot.
“Get out,” I ordered him. “This is my capital. Take yourself and your sluts, and get out.”
›››‹‹‹
As she finally stops running, she finds herself on the banks of a small tributary of the Seine. Her bare feet-for she’d left her shoes in the dressing room-are aching, bruised from the stones she’s danced across. She had held the dress’s skirts close to her body as she ran, but now she lets them drop, not caring about the dirt trailing on them as she collapses against the riverbanks.
She hates herself some times, for being so weak. After all, she had known that she was bound to run into him at some point during this visit; they were in his capitol, after all. He was bound to notice two nations’ presence, so close to his heart.
But she hadn’t expected him to illicit the same reactions in her that he had a hundred years ago. She had thought herself stronger, but in reality nothing had changed. She still lost control in his presence, of her body, her mind, her emotions. Nothing made any sense when he was around.
“I just wish I had just let go of everything, and not brought half of it back.” Two sides of her mind-polar opposites-battle on most things. But on him, they are united.
›››‹‹‹
“You know, I’ve smoothed things over for now, but the clerk was quite distraught when you ran off with that dress.”
Of course, he would come after her. For all his carelessness and cruelty, there is an almost naïve kindness to him, as well. She refuses to look up as he approaches, but she can hear his every step against the riverbank, and she can smell him-lavender always follows in the air, where he is.
“She’ll get over it,” Vietnam mutters, still not looking up.
“Now that your sister has paid the full asking price for the dress,” he murmurs slyly. “How cruel, ma cheré, to foot her with the bill of a dress you’ve effectively ruined.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” she reminds him.
“It may yet be salvageable,” he says. She clenches her fists as he sits down beside her, willing herself not to run again. “Just a bit of dirt, nothing modern conveniences can’t fix.”
His voice pounds in her ears, and she can feel her heartbeat quickening. It’s not just a girlish crush, it’s nothing so mundane. Her heart goes so fast and so forcefully that she’s afraid it will, quite literally, burst through her chest.
“Vi,” he says very slowly, reaching for her. But just before his fingers touch her face, she can’t take it any more. Acting impulsively, she launches herself into the Seine.
›››‹‹‹
He had not learned enough to run after me, that day. His grave attendance and relentless pursuit of me only began later, once he’d learned that that was the only way to win me over. To give him credit-which I do only begrudgingly-he is a fast learner. He quickly learned that I wasn’t the type of girl who would tolerate other women’s presence while he pursued me. So he learned not to bring French women back to Vietnam.
But I spent that night alone, ripping the rosettes off of the dress and yanking my hair back into its long, accustomed tail. And it was many years later that I found it again, and dragged it out of the back of the wardrobe. It was during the 1960s that I set my first ball gown on fire.
But for as many dark memories as it stirred in me, it proved one very important thing-as much as I had wanted to break with my past, and insist that I was an entirely new person, I wasn’t. Because if I had completely divorced myself from that person I used to be, why would a hundred-year-old dress make me cry as it slowly burned to ash?
›››‹‹‹
The murky waters of the French river rush up and threaten to drown her; she is more used to ocean currents, not these deceptively calm ones of the river. The thin fabric of her dress rushes around her, tangling with her legs and arms. And still her heart beats, in time to the raging of the waters.
And then, when she thinks she will be consumed, strong arms wrap around her waist, and drag her upwards. Something places her roughly on the bank, where she lies braced against her palms and gasping for breath. Her savior drapes his blazer over her shaking shoulders before he even coughs up all the water in his own lungs.
“Ma cheré, do you try to act completely without sense, or does it just escape you from time to time?”
“The latter,” she says tartly. “And then, only when you’re around.” She looks up into his bright eyes, and smiles. The instant he returns the look, her heart calms down, and settles into a happy, trilling beat. Still fast, still excited, but no longer frantic and hopeless.