Invincible
Invincible - France and Poland.
Poland arrives at the Hotel Lambert in the wake of the failed January Uprising. The two nations discuss what it means to be under foreign occupation, and France is Not Helpful.
Genre: Drama.
1864. PG-13.
My second fill for the aph_rarexchange! It's not very shippy, but hopefully you guys will find it interesting anyway. Thank you erueru_2d and alatherna for the Russian and Polish language assists over Twitter. ♥
---
The train heaved and sobbed to a halt well after midnight, in the furthest unlit corner of the rain-blown Paris station. France folded the train schedule inside his pocket. His hand ached around the handle of his umbrella.
Nothing happened for eight or ten minutes: dark windows, shut doors, rain pouring down the dark iron sides of the train like it were some monstrous insect, twitching and falling still as its pistoned cycled down; some crawler that had dragged itself in under the awnings to escape the rain, and died. A flicker: a lamp in the conductor's car, obscured through the thick grey veil of the rain. France resisted the itch to feel in his pockets for his watch. It was, after all, too dark to read the face.
A door opened to one of the passenger cars. A step dropped down. A single passenger trudged out onto the platform, head down, no luggage in his hands, no coat. Rain spattered upon the back of his golden head and darkened his clothes. He held his hair out of his eyes and found the blot of dark that meant the exit, then started towards it. France followed him--caught up to him--extended his umbrella so that it shielded them both.
"I came to meet you," he said.
Poland kept his eyes down. He shivered inside his sodden clothes. "Fuck you," he muttered. "I seriously don't want to see you."
France blinked. "…Then it is unfortunate for you that you have arrived in Paris."
"I didn't come here to see you." Poland glared up at him, lips tight. "You said you would help me." There was an ugly, serrated vibration rasping through voice. "You promised you would come, and then you totally fucking abandoned me--you sat on your fucking ass and felt so bad for me while Russia and Prussia fucking took me apart--" he whacked his fist into France's shoulder and staggered.
It didn't even hurt. France fed an arm around Poland's waist and bore him up. He guided them together out of the station. "I have a coach waiting for us, mon cher. Let's see you to your hotel."
"You're a total fucking bastard." Poland sagged against France's shoulder, feet dragging on the flagstones.
"Your compatriots are expecting you. You will feel better among your people."
"Like if I just wanted to be surrounded by my people? I would have gone with them to fucking Siberia."
France didn't know what to say; and Poland didn't look at him again. They rode to the Hotel Lambert in silence.
---
France tapped on the door to Poland's suite; white paint, gilded edges, thick carpets, the summer air redolent with wine. Poland looked up from where he lounged in the window seat, his hands laced around his knee.
France smiled. "Have you forgiven me yet?"
Poland's face fell into boredom. "No."
"Such a shame." France strolled in. He touched everything as he went: tables, chair backs, the covers of books. There were books everywhere, spilling off the furniture and arranged in stacks against the walls. France couldn't read any of them, of course: they were in Polish. The Hotel Lambert was Poland's palace: the last one he had left. "But I see you're settling in."
"We're just, like, trying to save what we can." Poland swung his feet to the floor and scanned the room. It looked like someone had upended a library over it and given it a good shake. "You know Russia's suppressing my language?"
"I'm sorry." France slid into a chair across from him.
Poland gave him a flat, thin smile. "I guess you have, like, no idea what that's like."
"Not really."
"Well, it totally blows."
France made a quiet sound of understanding.
Poland exhaled, jaw set, eyes fixed past France to the piles and piles of books. His fingers curled in around the edge of the window seat. "So I guess it's just all gonna have to be…here. In like…three buildings on this one fucking street. …My whole culture."
France had nothing to offer. Poland glanced at him. "But like you care, right?"
"I care enough," France frowned. "I am glad that you have someplace you can keep these things--and all things being equal, I'm glad that it's with me."
"Because it's so super glamorous to have all my exiled royal shit chilling out in your little Poland-zoo, huh?" Poland's lip curled. He drew his knees in against his chest, his heels teetering on the lip of the window seat. "You can be like, 'wow, I am sooo multicultural, I've got like, the limited edition Poland special! It's going fast, you guys!'"
"Excuse me if I didn't lend your escaped expatriates an entire province--" France recovered a wine glass from the side table, poured: "But I think it would be a rather lonely place."
"Oh, fuck you."
France watched him over the rim of his glass. "Why so much venom, mon cher? Paris has been good to you--and I've always sympathized with your cause."
Poland sneered at him, but his shoulders drooped, and his arms hung limp around his knees: his heart wasn't in it. "Sympathy doesn't get my language taught in any fucking schools, France."
"I am sorry, Poland," France repeated, gentler.
"Whatever," Poland muttered, and hunched in against the window.
France drank in silence for a minute, eyes unfocused on the block of light that fell through the window over Poland's shoulder. He began abruptly, "But then, the situation is far from hopeless."
"Oh my God, like who said I was hopeless? Gimme a generation to like…repopulate and find some guns and shit, and I'm gonna kick Russia's ass--"
"What I meant was--" France sat forward.
"And Prussia, oh my God, you do not even want to know what I've got planned for Prussia--" One of Poland's knees slipped out of his grip, and his foot banged to the floor.
"I wasn't referring to--"
"--Gonna end up with the hilt of that saber so far up his ass that--"
"Don't you think it might be wiser to rest for a while?" France raised his voice a touch. Poland stopped and looked at him. "Recuperate, see if you can…get some of the punitive policies relaxed, in the…"
"France. France? Fuck. You."
France drank his wine and watched Poland, eyebrows raised, expectant.
Poland pushed up and sideways in the window seat, gave France his profile; he half-looked down into the courtyard below. "You seriously have no idea what it's like to be occupied and shit, do you."
"I have been occupied before," France demurred, and turned his glass, and tucked his hair over his ear. He adjusted his heel on his knee. "In part, at least. And of course in my childhood I belonged to Rome."
"That's different," Poland dismissed.
"Is it? You are being arbitrary."
"It's totally not arbitrary, and shut up." Poland started picking at his fingernails, bored, affected, but France canted his head at the shiver that crawled in under Poland's voice. "Just like, growing up with somebody who's the boss of you is way different from being conquered. Because when you grow up with somebody, that's just like, part of who you are, yeah?"
France allowed that that was the case.
"Yeah, like. You don't think all the Rome shit getting left in your house is weird."
"It's quite fashionable, really," France agreed. "And a part of our heritage."
"But like, when you get conquered--oh my God, you've never even been conquered, have you." Poland almost sounded disgusted. He tipped his head back against the wall and stared up at the golden tassel hanging from the curtain.
"I was nearly," France grimaced, "By England, of all people. I'm sure you heard about--"
"Oh right, that. Yeah, okay, but he never ruled you so it's still different." Poland shook his head, and his hair dropped out from behind his ear and was backlit into a streak of gold. "It's like--that's totally not my heritage, you know? I mean--Russia and Prussia and Austria, they just like, put their shit into my house, and it's like…oh my God, that's my house! And then they take away my shit, and it's like--oh my God, that's my shit! Where the fuck are you taking it! And then if it's Russia, he like, rounds up all the people saying 'oh my God that's our shit' and ships them off to the coldest crappiest place he can find, and since it's Russia he's kinda lousy with cold crappy places, that's like, ninety percent of what he's got--it's like, cold crap, and then a couple places where it's all 'no we're only cold crap half the time, the other half it's sorta not so bad'…"
France waited for a few seconds after Poland's voice trickled into silence. Then, "I can see how that would be upsetting."
Poland set his jaw, pursed his lips. He braced his hands behind him, hunched down--it made his shoulder blades just up against his white silk shirt like sawed-off wings. "And it's not just the…oh my God where are you taking my shit. It's…it kinda…it gets inside you, you know? --No, you totally don't know, duh, what am I saying…"
"I've heard this before," France murmured. His glass ticked back upon the sterling serving tray, and he slouched deeper into his chair. His gaze followed the white-gold line of Poland's profile. "You wake up knowing things you've never learned, isn't that it? Or forgetting things you've always known…"
A twitch in the side of Poland's neck: his fingertips went pale. "It's so creepy, you have no idea. It's so fucking creepy. They just--ugh, and it always starts with language, they just, like, contaminate you, and then you're walking around some afternoon and some bitch at the butcher counter is like 'hey, good morning,' and you're like 'yeah, sucky weather today huh,' and it's not until you're walking out with your cold cuts that you even realize the whole thing just happened in Russian and how do you even know how to say that."
Poland sucked down a deep breath. France ticked his fingertips on the edge of the serving tray. It gave a quiet ring which only reached his ears.
"But, ugh, that's totally not the worst--I mean, learning shit, whatever, you know? As soon as Russia and Prussia and whoever the hell else gets their hands off my ass, everybody'll go back to speaking Polish and it'll be totally awesome, right?" Poland's voice was a little louder, a little faster, than when France had first sat down; France didn't think Poland had noticed it yet. "It'll just be like, ha, fuck you guys, guess who's still right here! …But then, like…oh God, like, when you start forgetting the words of your own language. I mean, it happened just a couple decades ago, to me, with Prussia, I was just like--making breakfast, and then I realized I couldn't remember the word for 'glass.' I mean, do you know it?"
"Verre?" France wondered.
"In Polish, smartass. Like, I remembered it a couple days later, but until then it was like..." He trailed off.
"Oh…no, I don't speak Polish." France shifted in his chair and crossed his legs the other way.
Poland grimaced. "Right, duh. --But I bet you speak Russian."
"A little." France refilled his glass, then gestured with the bottle to Poland. Poland shook his head and flicked back his hair.
"Did it just seep into you too? Do you remember the first thing you learned how to say?"
"Prosti," France replied, "And no, Russia taught it to me himself."
"'I'm sorry?'" Poland sounded surprised. He sat up, turned to face France again, cross-legged on the platform. "When did you learn that?"
There was a brief silence.
"At Krasny," France said lightly, "In 1812, in the midst of my retreat from Moscow. I learned it at swordpoint."
Poland nibbled on the end of his thumbnail and watched him.
"Of course I didn't mean it," France added, and gave a lazy wave with the stem of his glass, "--At the time; you may be sure I was ruinously sorry to have invaded Russia by the time I staggered home in my darling little emperor's wake, having been forced to eat my own horse--though I don't think that was quite what Russia meant in making me say it. Still, one may say all manner of things to avoid getting one's throat cut in the snow, and isn't it the same for you? You say what you must and you do what you must, and rest, and regain your strength, and wait for your opportunity to come. Your language--your culture--will be kept safe here." France's gaze flicked around the room. "And in your people, in your families, of course."
"Want to learn a few words in Polish?" A humorless quirk at the corner of Poland's mouth.
France inclined his head. "I am listening."
"Przepraszam." Poland leaned back on one hand.
France gave a half-smile over his glass. "And what do I have to be sorry for?"
"How did you know--"
"A lucky guess, mon cher. But I'm afraid I am not usually burdened by regrets."
"You let me down," Poland informed him. "You totally fucking let me down. You should be sorry."
"Un peuple en état de révolution est invincible," France replied.
Poland grimaced like he'd tasted something sour. "Yeah, I'm like, totally feeling invincible right now."
France grazed back a lock of hair and regarded Poland: tired, pale, but--incredibly--alive.
"I think you should," he murmured; and when Poland asked what he had said, did not repeat himself.
+++
--The January Uprising. Napoleon III promised to support the Polish rebels, but in the end, French aid amounted to little more than sympathetic press, and a disorganized and swiftly abandoned supply effort which probably did more harm than good.
--Hôtel Lambert, a French palace converted into a Polish political salon. Also the first home of the Polish Library after the Great Emigration.
--Rome: it's fashionable!
--The Battle of Krasnoi went badly for France, as most things in the winter of 1812 did.
--"A nation in a state of revolution is invincible."
+++
You can look at a directory of all of my Hetalia fic here!
Poland arrives at the Hotel Lambert in the wake of the failed January Uprising. The two nations discuss what it means to be under foreign occupation, and France is Not Helpful.
Genre: Drama.
1864. PG-13.
My second fill for the aph_rarexchange! It's not very shippy, but hopefully you guys will find it interesting anyway. Thank you erueru_2d and alatherna for the Russian and Polish language assists over Twitter. ♥
---
The train heaved and sobbed to a halt well after midnight, in the furthest unlit corner of the rain-blown Paris station. France folded the train schedule inside his pocket. His hand ached around the handle of his umbrella.
Nothing happened for eight or ten minutes: dark windows, shut doors, rain pouring down the dark iron sides of the train like it were some monstrous insect, twitching and falling still as its pistoned cycled down; some crawler that had dragged itself in under the awnings to escape the rain, and died. A flicker: a lamp in the conductor's car, obscured through the thick grey veil of the rain. France resisted the itch to feel in his pockets for his watch. It was, after all, too dark to read the face.
A door opened to one of the passenger cars. A step dropped down. A single passenger trudged out onto the platform, head down, no luggage in his hands, no coat. Rain spattered upon the back of his golden head and darkened his clothes. He held his hair out of his eyes and found the blot of dark that meant the exit, then started towards it. France followed him--caught up to him--extended his umbrella so that it shielded them both.
"I came to meet you," he said.
Poland kept his eyes down. He shivered inside his sodden clothes. "Fuck you," he muttered. "I seriously don't want to see you."
France blinked. "…Then it is unfortunate for you that you have arrived in Paris."
"I didn't come here to see you." Poland glared up at him, lips tight. "You said you would help me." There was an ugly, serrated vibration rasping through voice. "You promised you would come, and then you totally fucking abandoned me--you sat on your fucking ass and felt so bad for me while Russia and Prussia fucking took me apart--" he whacked his fist into France's shoulder and staggered.
It didn't even hurt. France fed an arm around Poland's waist and bore him up. He guided them together out of the station. "I have a coach waiting for us, mon cher. Let's see you to your hotel."
"You're a total fucking bastard." Poland sagged against France's shoulder, feet dragging on the flagstones.
"Your compatriots are expecting you. You will feel better among your people."
"Like if I just wanted to be surrounded by my people? I would have gone with them to fucking Siberia."
France didn't know what to say; and Poland didn't look at him again. They rode to the Hotel Lambert in silence.
---
France tapped on the door to Poland's suite; white paint, gilded edges, thick carpets, the summer air redolent with wine. Poland looked up from where he lounged in the window seat, his hands laced around his knee.
France smiled. "Have you forgiven me yet?"
Poland's face fell into boredom. "No."
"Such a shame." France strolled in. He touched everything as he went: tables, chair backs, the covers of books. There were books everywhere, spilling off the furniture and arranged in stacks against the walls. France couldn't read any of them, of course: they were in Polish. The Hotel Lambert was Poland's palace: the last one he had left. "But I see you're settling in."
"We're just, like, trying to save what we can." Poland swung his feet to the floor and scanned the room. It looked like someone had upended a library over it and given it a good shake. "You know Russia's suppressing my language?"
"I'm sorry." France slid into a chair across from him.
Poland gave him a flat, thin smile. "I guess you have, like, no idea what that's like."
"Not really."
"Well, it totally blows."
France made a quiet sound of understanding.
Poland exhaled, jaw set, eyes fixed past France to the piles and piles of books. His fingers curled in around the edge of the window seat. "So I guess it's just all gonna have to be…here. In like…three buildings on this one fucking street. …My whole culture."
France had nothing to offer. Poland glanced at him. "But like you care, right?"
"I care enough," France frowned. "I am glad that you have someplace you can keep these things--and all things being equal, I'm glad that it's with me."
"Because it's so super glamorous to have all my exiled royal shit chilling out in your little Poland-zoo, huh?" Poland's lip curled. He drew his knees in against his chest, his heels teetering on the lip of the window seat. "You can be like, 'wow, I am sooo multicultural, I've got like, the limited edition Poland special! It's going fast, you guys!'"
"Excuse me if I didn't lend your escaped expatriates an entire province--" France recovered a wine glass from the side table, poured: "But I think it would be a rather lonely place."
"Oh, fuck you."
France watched him over the rim of his glass. "Why so much venom, mon cher? Paris has been good to you--and I've always sympathized with your cause."
Poland sneered at him, but his shoulders drooped, and his arms hung limp around his knees: his heart wasn't in it. "Sympathy doesn't get my language taught in any fucking schools, France."
"I am sorry, Poland," France repeated, gentler.
"Whatever," Poland muttered, and hunched in against the window.
France drank in silence for a minute, eyes unfocused on the block of light that fell through the window over Poland's shoulder. He began abruptly, "But then, the situation is far from hopeless."
"Oh my God, like who said I was hopeless? Gimme a generation to like…repopulate and find some guns and shit, and I'm gonna kick Russia's ass--"
"What I meant was--" France sat forward.
"And Prussia, oh my God, you do not even want to know what I've got planned for Prussia--" One of Poland's knees slipped out of his grip, and his foot banged to the floor.
"I wasn't referring to--"
"--Gonna end up with the hilt of that saber so far up his ass that--"
"Don't you think it might be wiser to rest for a while?" France raised his voice a touch. Poland stopped and looked at him. "Recuperate, see if you can…get some of the punitive policies relaxed, in the…"
"France. France? Fuck. You."
France drank his wine and watched Poland, eyebrows raised, expectant.
Poland pushed up and sideways in the window seat, gave France his profile; he half-looked down into the courtyard below. "You seriously have no idea what it's like to be occupied and shit, do you."
"I have been occupied before," France demurred, and turned his glass, and tucked his hair over his ear. He adjusted his heel on his knee. "In part, at least. And of course in my childhood I belonged to Rome."
"That's different," Poland dismissed.
"Is it? You are being arbitrary."
"It's totally not arbitrary, and shut up." Poland started picking at his fingernails, bored, affected, but France canted his head at the shiver that crawled in under Poland's voice. "Just like, growing up with somebody who's the boss of you is way different from being conquered. Because when you grow up with somebody, that's just like, part of who you are, yeah?"
France allowed that that was the case.
"Yeah, like. You don't think all the Rome shit getting left in your house is weird."
"It's quite fashionable, really," France agreed. "And a part of our heritage."
"But like, when you get conquered--oh my God, you've never even been conquered, have you." Poland almost sounded disgusted. He tipped his head back against the wall and stared up at the golden tassel hanging from the curtain.
"I was nearly," France grimaced, "By England, of all people. I'm sure you heard about--"
"Oh right, that. Yeah, okay, but he never ruled you so it's still different." Poland shook his head, and his hair dropped out from behind his ear and was backlit into a streak of gold. "It's like--that's totally not my heritage, you know? I mean--Russia and Prussia and Austria, they just like, put their shit into my house, and it's like…oh my God, that's my house! And then they take away my shit, and it's like--oh my God, that's my shit! Where the fuck are you taking it! And then if it's Russia, he like, rounds up all the people saying 'oh my God that's our shit' and ships them off to the coldest crappiest place he can find, and since it's Russia he's kinda lousy with cold crappy places, that's like, ninety percent of what he's got--it's like, cold crap, and then a couple places where it's all 'no we're only cold crap half the time, the other half it's sorta not so bad'…"
France waited for a few seconds after Poland's voice trickled into silence. Then, "I can see how that would be upsetting."
Poland set his jaw, pursed his lips. He braced his hands behind him, hunched down--it made his shoulder blades just up against his white silk shirt like sawed-off wings. "And it's not just the…oh my God where are you taking my shit. It's…it kinda…it gets inside you, you know? --No, you totally don't know, duh, what am I saying…"
"I've heard this before," France murmured. His glass ticked back upon the sterling serving tray, and he slouched deeper into his chair. His gaze followed the white-gold line of Poland's profile. "You wake up knowing things you've never learned, isn't that it? Or forgetting things you've always known…"
A twitch in the side of Poland's neck: his fingertips went pale. "It's so creepy, you have no idea. It's so fucking creepy. They just--ugh, and it always starts with language, they just, like, contaminate you, and then you're walking around some afternoon and some bitch at the butcher counter is like 'hey, good morning,' and you're like 'yeah, sucky weather today huh,' and it's not until you're walking out with your cold cuts that you even realize the whole thing just happened in Russian and how do you even know how to say that."
Poland sucked down a deep breath. France ticked his fingertips on the edge of the serving tray. It gave a quiet ring which only reached his ears.
"But, ugh, that's totally not the worst--I mean, learning shit, whatever, you know? As soon as Russia and Prussia and whoever the hell else gets their hands off my ass, everybody'll go back to speaking Polish and it'll be totally awesome, right?" Poland's voice was a little louder, a little faster, than when France had first sat down; France didn't think Poland had noticed it yet. "It'll just be like, ha, fuck you guys, guess who's still right here! …But then, like…oh God, like, when you start forgetting the words of your own language. I mean, it happened just a couple decades ago, to me, with Prussia, I was just like--making breakfast, and then I realized I couldn't remember the word for 'glass.' I mean, do you know it?"
"Verre?" France wondered.
"In Polish, smartass. Like, I remembered it a couple days later, but until then it was like..." He trailed off.
"Oh…no, I don't speak Polish." France shifted in his chair and crossed his legs the other way.
Poland grimaced. "Right, duh. --But I bet you speak Russian."
"A little." France refilled his glass, then gestured with the bottle to Poland. Poland shook his head and flicked back his hair.
"Did it just seep into you too? Do you remember the first thing you learned how to say?"
"Prosti," France replied, "And no, Russia taught it to me himself."
"'I'm sorry?'" Poland sounded surprised. He sat up, turned to face France again, cross-legged on the platform. "When did you learn that?"
There was a brief silence.
"At Krasny," France said lightly, "In 1812, in the midst of my retreat from Moscow. I learned it at swordpoint."
Poland nibbled on the end of his thumbnail and watched him.
"Of course I didn't mean it," France added, and gave a lazy wave with the stem of his glass, "--At the time; you may be sure I was ruinously sorry to have invaded Russia by the time I staggered home in my darling little emperor's wake, having been forced to eat my own horse--though I don't think that was quite what Russia meant in making me say it. Still, one may say all manner of things to avoid getting one's throat cut in the snow, and isn't it the same for you? You say what you must and you do what you must, and rest, and regain your strength, and wait for your opportunity to come. Your language--your culture--will be kept safe here." France's gaze flicked around the room. "And in your people, in your families, of course."
"Want to learn a few words in Polish?" A humorless quirk at the corner of Poland's mouth.
France inclined his head. "I am listening."
"Przepraszam." Poland leaned back on one hand.
France gave a half-smile over his glass. "And what do I have to be sorry for?"
"How did you know--"
"A lucky guess, mon cher. But I'm afraid I am not usually burdened by regrets."
"You let me down," Poland informed him. "You totally fucking let me down. You should be sorry."
"Un peuple en état de révolution est invincible," France replied.
Poland grimaced like he'd tasted something sour. "Yeah, I'm like, totally feeling invincible right now."
France grazed back a lock of hair and regarded Poland: tired, pale, but--incredibly--alive.
"I think you should," he murmured; and when Poland asked what he had said, did not repeat himself.
+++
--The January Uprising. Napoleon III promised to support the Polish rebels, but in the end, French aid amounted to little more than sympathetic press, and a disorganized and swiftly abandoned supply effort which probably did more harm than good.
--Hôtel Lambert, a French palace converted into a Polish political salon. Also the first home of the Polish Library after the Great Emigration.
--Rome: it's fashionable!
--The Battle of Krasnoi went badly for France, as most things in the winter of 1812 did.
--"A nation in a state of revolution is invincible."
+++
You can look at a directory of all of my Hetalia fic here!