Fic: Scylla and Charybdis
Hi, me again, I have fic this time. Genderbent fic.
Title: Scylla and Charybdis
Characters/Pairings: FrUK, slight England/Scotland, Ireland
Rating: very light R perhaps?
Summary: Sometimes England feels like she's losing control. Meanwhile, France is kind of going crazy.
Warnings: genderbend, femslash, strong language, crossdressing, brief incest, privateers, philosophers.
Notes: for aph_historyswap. This is less about the Enlightenment and more about the femslash than I'd originally intended, and the pirates are totally gratuitous. But there's some history in there, all the same. And I am totally writing a whole fic about the Republic of Letters next, after the absolutely irredeemable Anne Bonny/Mary Read paperback romance I now feel the urge to pen.
IT'S A REAL CUT. WOW.
(Also, we can has genderbend tag?)
England knows this is wrong.
She stands before the best mirror in the house, a modern thing of bronze and utility, and she remembers a time when such a large piece of glass would have been considered a miracle. She pauses for a long moment, looks, tries to remember. Remember painted lips, lace collars, corsets. England blinks.
A man looks back at her.
“You are just as ugly in masculine attire, darling, although I suppose now you can devote less time to plucking your eyebrows,” France tells her lazily, sprawled in the chair like the tart she is.
England growls, or tries to, and sips her coffee. It's bitter and coarse and altogether inferior to tea, which is probably why France likes it so much. Why aren't they in a teahouse anyway? If they were in a teahouse this ridiculous charade would be unnecessary.
She voices this opinion to France. The insufferable woman gleefully launches into her customary “oh Angleterre you are such a Philistine” routine. “Listen,” France says. “Listen to the ideas. The free discussions, between all levels of society.”
“You are a very strange Nation,” England grumbles. “You almost seem to welcome sedition.”
“Intellectual progress, dear, though I can see why you might get them confused.”
England snorts at that. “And what, exactly, has changed since Elizabeth's day? I want only loyalty to the crown. Intelligence is not required.”
“And how are the children, anyway?”
England sets her cup down, at that. There is something biting in France's voice, only vaguely concealed by her veil of disinterested sarcasm. Her eyes gleam, glitter almost, sharp and hard. England takes another sip to disguise her confusion, holding the porcelain very carefully. “As- as you would expect. America is being- difficult.”
“Oh, good for her,” France laughs, and now she is so studiously disinterested that England is starting to feel suspicious.
France is a whore, England thinks, just look at her, rouged and powdered and beribboned, allowed into this place of near-sacred masculinity through the parading of her body. But England is discomforted; surely she herself is no better, with this lie, this illegality, this mockery of something she is not.
More disturbing is how damn sinful France is looking, spread out like that, and in what detail England can imagine that mouth doing more productive things than coyly sipping bad coffee. And oh dear Lord the Women's Petition Against Coffee may have to revise its facts, because the terrible drink is certainly not causing any sort of impotence in England at least.
“I'm finished with this horrible excuse for a beverage,” she mutters. “Shall we go?”
And to kiss France in the shade of an avenue, or in the brightness of a square, and not care for who may be watching, is its own sort of freedom, and England finds the rush of it nearly sickening.
“What God hath conjoined let no man separate. I am the husband and the whole isle is my lawful wife; I am the head and it is my body; I am the shepherd and it is my flock. I hope therefore that no man will think that I, a Christian King under the Gospel, should be a polygamist and husband to two wives; that I being the head should have a divided or monstrous body or that being the shepherd to so fair a flock should have my flock parted in two.”
“Gadzooks, like I'd want to be his wife,” England mutters.
Scotland shakes her red head in fierce amusement. “I cannae understand half o' it, but Jamie seems ta want us t' be wed.”
They both laugh at that, knowing they'll be at each other's throats soon enough, but England quickly falls back into morbid silence. She misses Bess.
She looks at the boy making the speech and wonders if he dreams of his Nations, if he imagines Scotland's lips on England's neck, England's hands tangled in fire-red curls. She shudders.
“This, this... reference book of yours,” England hisses, infuriated, “it is a pathetically obvious imitation of Chambers' Cyclopaedia, which I might add is an altogether more worthy pair of volumes.”
France blinks at her sideways, long lashes fluttering. “...so? The Encyclopédie will be larger. Also, it has a longer name.”
“No,” England gasps, horrified. “That can't be right.”
“Admit it Angleterre, in Paris we do things more thoroughly.”
The next time France is in Edinburgh, she is unexpectedly hit on the head with a brick. On closer inspection, this proves to be a book. The cover is embossed with florid letters: The Encyclopædia Britannica.
“It's got my name on it,” England tells her smugly. “Has yours got your name on it?”
Wincing and rubbing her head, France mutters, “Um.”
“Thought not.”
“'Republic of Letters'?” England scoffs. “What rot.”
“Prove it,” replies France with a smirk. “Come partake of the salons of Paris. I guarantee you will be dazzled.”
“Ha!” the shorter lady cries, “like I'd want anything to do with your decadent dens of sedition!”
“Like anyone with more sanity than I would wish to invite you,” her companion murmurs.
But two weeks later a beautifully printed invitation arrives in the mail, and England finds herself in France's apartment quite by accident.
“The salonierres will do anything to snare a glamorous foreigner of great wit and renown,” France ponders.
“Well, ah, I'm very honored,” England says, flattered despite herself. She grins rakishly at her reflection, adjusting her medals and winking at an imaginary duchess.
“Of course, you're English,” France continues, “so it's a miracle I managed to buy you an invite at all. Now just don't open your mouth all evening and it should go smoothly.”
England scowls, and turns away from the mirror.
“My, what a handsome escort you have tonight,” the lady of the house comments with a light laugh. England turns a dark red and concentrates on looking sullen. France thankfully passes no comment, just rests her weight a little heavier on England's arm, and considering she's several inches taller this is somewhat painful. England grimaces.
England bites her tongue when she is introduced to the clever young editors of the Encyclopédie. One is slightly more rakish than the other, but they both wear the same bright, irritating smile. England glares in their direction as France engages a poet in conversation. Well, England revises, the poet talks and France smiles inappropriately back. That's probably the definition of dinner conversation in this company.
Halfway through the second course the encyclopedists suddenly erupt in a loud and good-natured argument. From what England can make out, the younger one argues that the material world of the senses is the only thing that can definitely be said to exist and so is the only thing that matters. The other exclaims that on the contrary, nothing seen can be trusted and so nothing can be said to exist outside the conscious mind.
England feels her face going redder and redder with the effort not to speak. Finally she can no longer stand it, and she knocks her chair over as she rises to her feet. “But where is God in this dilemma?” she asks desperately. “Where is the eternal soul? Isn't that the most important question?”
A chill descends over the gathering. France slowly closes her eyes.
“Why did I bring you again?” France mutters rhetorically a few hours later. “Why did I possibly think you might benefit from the experience?”
“Aren't you disturbed by them?” England exclaims. “They preach against all authority, not just the Church's!”
France sighs. “Progress, ma cherie. Should we fight the flow of ideas? All men have the right to think!”
“And what about women?” England asks.
“Of course women too, we control the salons! We focus the creative energy of the philosophes-”
“-but, I notice, you don't actually speak yourself,” England shoots out quickly, tripping over the words in her growing anger. “You just smile sweetly and play with their feet under the table!”
France laughs scornfully, but she pales, just slightly. “Like women are more valued in London?”
“At least I'm not a hypocrite,” England spits.
France stares at her for a moment, then turns on her heel and vanishes.
England makes her way home alone, in the rain.
England arrives in the town tired and exhausted, with a half-dead horse, and finds it somewhat deserted. A small, grubby child sits desolate, back to a mud wall. “What's the quickest way to get to the castle?” she asks it, panting.
It points. “Can't you see the flames?”
England looks up, swears colorfully, and clambers back onto the horse, sweaty hands slipping on the reins. Her heart thuds painfully as she whips the poor beast up the hill. There's a dull, pulsing orange light at the top, just about visible in the gathering dusk and clouds of black smoke, and when the animal finally drags them over the lip of the rubble she stares in blank horror. The tower structure has become a raging inferno, a furnace of hell perhaps, and England falls from the horse and prepares to hurl herself into that underworld, for Christ knows she deserves it.
“Albion!” a voice admonishes, and there is a hand on her arm. England falls into Scotland's arms, sobbing in relief. The taller woman's dress is a little singed, but apart from that she appears to be whole. “Ye'll have ta find a new dungeon for me now, Skoosh,” she says sardonically.
“Who did this,” England growls.
“Fat man, name of Jean Bart. Dunkirker, by the accent. Privateer. And-” she pauses for a moment, tiredly, “yer lady France was wi' him. The gailey might still be in the harbor.”
“Damn,” England screams, and makes to get on the horse again. It sighs and falls over. England stares at it a moment, then turns sharply. “And she's not my lady!” she yells over her shoulder as she runs.
The fleet isn't exactly there when she arrives at the shore, but she can see a hint of a sail on the horizon, so she commandeers a sloop that appears to have arrived late as usual. The Dunkirk privateer has a bigger boat- several actually-, but she'll worry about that when she has to.
Which is soon enough, she finds. She reflects on the ironies of her situation as she is roughly hauled over the deck of the French flagship. Bart, it turns out, is an extremely imposing figure, astonishingly tall and corpulent. His loud laugh rings grotesquely in her ears, but it isn't quite as annoying as France's oily chuckles.
“If Francis Drake were still alive-”
“But he's not, is he?”
England looks up, into bitter green eyes.
“Oh,” she says, “fuck.”
Ireland grins lopsidedly at her and runs a hand through his curly red hair, wound even more tightly than Scotland's. “Yeah, that's about right,” he says. Smirks. No, France is the one who's smirking. She leans in and gives Ireland a somewhat wet kiss. Ireland puts his big hands on her ample hips and vigorously responds.
“Please,” England groans, “please, just kill me now.”
“If Henry Morgan were still alive-”
“But he's not,” France whispers soothingly, her pistol tracing England's cheek. They're so close together, in the tangled rigging of two ships, a great one falling, a small one leaping. England's aware of so many tastes, salt and blood and steel. “My Surcouf is.” France smells of sweat and fish and a bit of madness, still, though her blue eyes are piercingly cold. “Outnumbered three to one and yet we're still winning, Angleterre, why do you suppose that is?”
England feels herself sinking, feels freezing waters closing over her head without a ripple. She gasps, “You won't take the Kent. I'll sink it first.”
She can hardly see through the stinging wind but she feels France smile. “Don't you understand, Angleterre?” she chides, in that same voice she once used to mock England's lack of culture. “You've lost. Permanently. You've lost America and you've lost the oceans, you've lost control of the seas you poor, sad fool-”
England spits in her face and France shoves her off of the rigging.
It's a long, long way to fall.
England had thought that without a corset she would breathe easier. She had imagined the breeches and braces would give her tangible power and confidence. But the cravat is tied far too tight and the collar is stiff and itching and her shoes pinch. It may be fitted but it does not fit. Is not fit, either.
Yet the Prussian king calls her Mr. Kirkland and accepts her as a major shareholder in the East India Company, allows her to sit in on discussions of strategy, and so the costume serves its purpose.
Prussia herself is nowhere to be seen. England suspects she is somewhere in Bohemia, kicking Austria's face in. It is a pleasant image.
England sits in the hot room in Bavaria, itching in her gentleman's suit-
-blood spatters on her soldier's uniform in the humid air of Madras, and she swings up her bayonet to block France's downward thrust, close and sweating in the narrow streets-
-Canada's fists knot in England's red vest and the child- young woman, really- screams with a pain that tears at England's heart--
-she lays her weary head in her hands and thinks that world wars are really quite a bad idea and she doesn't really want to have any more of them.
Paris looks- different now. Nevertheless, it is hard to find fault with the running of the place. It's orderly and calm, at least as much as Paris is ever orderly and calm. They walk, down through the elegant covered arcades of the Jardin du Palais Royal, although England guesses it is probably not called that, any more.
France looks a great deal better than the last time England saw her. Her eyes are still a little red, her face a little pale, but she stands straight and without pain, and why wouldn't she with half of Europe bent to her will?
England imagines it, the two of them, standing a little way apart in an apparent bow to decorum, their diaphanous white gowns giving them a sort of neoclassical innocence they most certainly do not deserve. Although the illusion might be broken by England's hair, which is growing back in ragged clumps. France, England thinks, does not look good in white. It is so very unsuited to her handsome features. Nevertheless, it is a warm summer day, and here they stand, like nymphs, like sisters, like friends.
“You expect me to be impressed by your little collection?” England sniffs. “Don't think I didn't notice half of it was stolen.”
“I don't expect anything of you, Angleterre,” France shoots back, “least of all art appreciation. I do not know what possessed me to send that invitation. I should have much preferred Italy's company.”
“Don't think I don't notice what you're doing over there, either.”
“It is not your business what I do with Italy. Please do not stick your nose out over the Channel, I would hate for you to sprain something.”
“It is all of our business when you try and change the shape of the world!” England's voice rises higher and higher. It's starting to sound shrill, even to her ears.
France's eyes widen, and England can see the madness still in them, not gone at all, just hiding behind reflective mirrors and calm broad streets. For a moment she is certain France is going to hit her, and she flinches from a blow that never comes. She opens her eyes slowly. France is staring at her.
“Oh God,” England says, only a little bit broken, “I've missed you.”
Maybe she only says it to surprise France, to break that unnerving calm. It's certainly worked. England reflects with a mounting sense of embarrassment and apprehension that this is probably the first time since the sixth century she has said something to France that did not mean I hate you, at all.
England waits for the pain, for the cutting remark, the disbelieving laugh, or worse, anger at being mocked, that would turn her words into nothing more than a cruel joke.
France gently takes England's hand, and for a moment they just lean into each other.
It's awkward and uncomfortable. England rests her head on France's shoulder and closes her eyes. She can feel the other Nation's hair tickling her nose. France smells of dirt and the dust of Egypt. I am tired of fighting you, she wants to say.
But if we stop, she imagines France answering, what are we then?
England whispers to herself. To herself in her skin, and herself in the mirror, and herself in the man on the throne downstairs. The scissors do not make much noise as they pare away her curls.
“I am not- any one's wife- I am not- any one's mistress- I am a nation, and I-”
There, that is the last of it.
“-make my own alliances.”
Notes:
-Coffeehouses: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_coffeehouses_in_the_seventeenth_and_eighteenth_centuries
-:The Encyclopédie:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A9die
-the Republic of Letters:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_letters
-The Union of the Crowns:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_the_Crowns
-The Nine Years' War:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Years_War
(The fanon about Scotland being held captive in a dungeon is not mine, it is borrowed without permission from http://mithrigil.livejournal.com/, I hope she doesn't mind but I discovered Jean Bart burned down a Scottish castle once and it just seemed to click)
-And the Peace of Amiens:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_Of_Amiens
(There must be FrUK fic of this already, surely?)
-The title is a reference to this picture:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GillrayBritannia.jpg
Title: Scylla and Charybdis
Characters/Pairings: FrUK, slight England/Scotland, Ireland
Rating: very light R perhaps?
Summary: Sometimes England feels like she's losing control. Meanwhile, France is kind of going crazy.
Warnings: genderbend, femslash, strong language, crossdressing, brief incest, privateers, philosophers.
Notes: for aph_historyswap. This is less about the Enlightenment and more about the femslash than I'd originally intended, and the pirates are totally gratuitous. But there's some history in there, all the same. And I am totally writing a whole fic about the Republic of Letters next, after the absolutely irredeemable Anne Bonny/Mary Read paperback romance I now feel the urge to pen.
IT'S A REAL CUT. WOW.
(Also, we can has genderbend tag?)
England knows this is wrong.
She stands before the best mirror in the house, a modern thing of bronze and utility, and she remembers a time when such a large piece of glass would have been considered a miracle. She pauses for a long moment, looks, tries to remember. Remember painted lips, lace collars, corsets. England blinks.
A man looks back at her.
“You are just as ugly in masculine attire, darling, although I suppose now you can devote less time to plucking your eyebrows,” France tells her lazily, sprawled in the chair like the tart she is.
England growls, or tries to, and sips her coffee. It's bitter and coarse and altogether inferior to tea, which is probably why France likes it so much. Why aren't they in a teahouse anyway? If they were in a teahouse this ridiculous charade would be unnecessary.
She voices this opinion to France. The insufferable woman gleefully launches into her customary “oh Angleterre you are such a Philistine” routine. “Listen,” France says. “Listen to the ideas. The free discussions, between all levels of society.”
“You are a very strange Nation,” England grumbles. “You almost seem to welcome sedition.”
“Intellectual progress, dear, though I can see why you might get them confused.”
England snorts at that. “And what, exactly, has changed since Elizabeth's day? I want only loyalty to the crown. Intelligence is not required.”
“And how are the children, anyway?”
England sets her cup down, at that. There is something biting in France's voice, only vaguely concealed by her veil of disinterested sarcasm. Her eyes gleam, glitter almost, sharp and hard. England takes another sip to disguise her confusion, holding the porcelain very carefully. “As- as you would expect. America is being- difficult.”
“Oh, good for her,” France laughs, and now she is so studiously disinterested that England is starting to feel suspicious.
France is a whore, England thinks, just look at her, rouged and powdered and beribboned, allowed into this place of near-sacred masculinity through the parading of her body. But England is discomforted; surely she herself is no better, with this lie, this illegality, this mockery of something she is not.
More disturbing is how damn sinful France is looking, spread out like that, and in what detail England can imagine that mouth doing more productive things than coyly sipping bad coffee. And oh dear Lord the Women's Petition Against Coffee may have to revise its facts, because the terrible drink is certainly not causing any sort of impotence in England at least.
“I'm finished with this horrible excuse for a beverage,” she mutters. “Shall we go?”
And to kiss France in the shade of an avenue, or in the brightness of a square, and not care for who may be watching, is its own sort of freedom, and England finds the rush of it nearly sickening.
“What God hath conjoined let no man separate. I am the husband and the whole isle is my lawful wife; I am the head and it is my body; I am the shepherd and it is my flock. I hope therefore that no man will think that I, a Christian King under the Gospel, should be a polygamist and husband to two wives; that I being the head should have a divided or monstrous body or that being the shepherd to so fair a flock should have my flock parted in two.”
“Gadzooks, like I'd want to be his wife,” England mutters.
Scotland shakes her red head in fierce amusement. “I cannae understand half o' it, but Jamie seems ta want us t' be wed.”
They both laugh at that, knowing they'll be at each other's throats soon enough, but England quickly falls back into morbid silence. She misses Bess.
She looks at the boy making the speech and wonders if he dreams of his Nations, if he imagines Scotland's lips on England's neck, England's hands tangled in fire-red curls. She shudders.
“This, this... reference book of yours,” England hisses, infuriated, “it is a pathetically obvious imitation of Chambers' Cyclopaedia, which I might add is an altogether more worthy pair of volumes.”
France blinks at her sideways, long lashes fluttering. “...so? The Encyclopédie will be larger. Also, it has a longer name.”
“No,” England gasps, horrified. “That can't be right.”
“Admit it Angleterre, in Paris we do things more thoroughly.”
The next time France is in Edinburgh, she is unexpectedly hit on the head with a brick. On closer inspection, this proves to be a book. The cover is embossed with florid letters: The Encyclopædia Britannica.
“It's got my name on it,” England tells her smugly. “Has yours got your name on it?”
Wincing and rubbing her head, France mutters, “Um.”
“Thought not.”
“'Republic of Letters'?” England scoffs. “What rot.”
“Prove it,” replies France with a smirk. “Come partake of the salons of Paris. I guarantee you will be dazzled.”
“Ha!” the shorter lady cries, “like I'd want anything to do with your decadent dens of sedition!”
“Like anyone with more sanity than I would wish to invite you,” her companion murmurs.
But two weeks later a beautifully printed invitation arrives in the mail, and England finds herself in France's apartment quite by accident.
“The salonierres will do anything to snare a glamorous foreigner of great wit and renown,” France ponders.
“Well, ah, I'm very honored,” England says, flattered despite herself. She grins rakishly at her reflection, adjusting her medals and winking at an imaginary duchess.
“Of course, you're English,” France continues, “so it's a miracle I managed to buy you an invite at all. Now just don't open your mouth all evening and it should go smoothly.”
England scowls, and turns away from the mirror.
“My, what a handsome escort you have tonight,” the lady of the house comments with a light laugh. England turns a dark red and concentrates on looking sullen. France thankfully passes no comment, just rests her weight a little heavier on England's arm, and considering she's several inches taller this is somewhat painful. England grimaces.
England bites her tongue when she is introduced to the clever young editors of the Encyclopédie. One is slightly more rakish than the other, but they both wear the same bright, irritating smile. England glares in their direction as France engages a poet in conversation. Well, England revises, the poet talks and France smiles inappropriately back. That's probably the definition of dinner conversation in this company.
Halfway through the second course the encyclopedists suddenly erupt in a loud and good-natured argument. From what England can make out, the younger one argues that the material world of the senses is the only thing that can definitely be said to exist and so is the only thing that matters. The other exclaims that on the contrary, nothing seen can be trusted and so nothing can be said to exist outside the conscious mind.
England feels her face going redder and redder with the effort not to speak. Finally she can no longer stand it, and she knocks her chair over as she rises to her feet. “But where is God in this dilemma?” she asks desperately. “Where is the eternal soul? Isn't that the most important question?”
A chill descends over the gathering. France slowly closes her eyes.
“Why did I bring you again?” France mutters rhetorically a few hours later. “Why did I possibly think you might benefit from the experience?”
“Aren't you disturbed by them?” England exclaims. “They preach against all authority, not just the Church's!”
France sighs. “Progress, ma cherie. Should we fight the flow of ideas? All men have the right to think!”
“And what about women?” England asks.
“Of course women too, we control the salons! We focus the creative energy of the philosophes-”
“-but, I notice, you don't actually speak yourself,” England shoots out quickly, tripping over the words in her growing anger. “You just smile sweetly and play with their feet under the table!”
France laughs scornfully, but she pales, just slightly. “Like women are more valued in London?”
“At least I'm not a hypocrite,” England spits.
France stares at her for a moment, then turns on her heel and vanishes.
England makes her way home alone, in the rain.
England arrives in the town tired and exhausted, with a half-dead horse, and finds it somewhat deserted. A small, grubby child sits desolate, back to a mud wall. “What's the quickest way to get to the castle?” she asks it, panting.
It points. “Can't you see the flames?”
England looks up, swears colorfully, and clambers back onto the horse, sweaty hands slipping on the reins. Her heart thuds painfully as she whips the poor beast up the hill. There's a dull, pulsing orange light at the top, just about visible in the gathering dusk and clouds of black smoke, and when the animal finally drags them over the lip of the rubble she stares in blank horror. The tower structure has become a raging inferno, a furnace of hell perhaps, and England falls from the horse and prepares to hurl herself into that underworld, for Christ knows she deserves it.
“Albion!” a voice admonishes, and there is a hand on her arm. England falls into Scotland's arms, sobbing in relief. The taller woman's dress is a little singed, but apart from that she appears to be whole. “Ye'll have ta find a new dungeon for me now, Skoosh,” she says sardonically.
“Who did this,” England growls.
“Fat man, name of Jean Bart. Dunkirker, by the accent. Privateer. And-” she pauses for a moment, tiredly, “yer lady France was wi' him. The gailey might still be in the harbor.”
“Damn,” England screams, and makes to get on the horse again. It sighs and falls over. England stares at it a moment, then turns sharply. “And she's not my lady!” she yells over her shoulder as she runs.
The fleet isn't exactly there when she arrives at the shore, but she can see a hint of a sail on the horizon, so she commandeers a sloop that appears to have arrived late as usual. The Dunkirk privateer has a bigger boat- several actually-, but she'll worry about that when she has to.
Which is soon enough, she finds. She reflects on the ironies of her situation as she is roughly hauled over the deck of the French flagship. Bart, it turns out, is an extremely imposing figure, astonishingly tall and corpulent. His loud laugh rings grotesquely in her ears, but it isn't quite as annoying as France's oily chuckles.
“If Francis Drake were still alive-”
“But he's not, is he?”
England looks up, into bitter green eyes.
“Oh,” she says, “fuck.”
Ireland grins lopsidedly at her and runs a hand through his curly red hair, wound even more tightly than Scotland's. “Yeah, that's about right,” he says. Smirks. No, France is the one who's smirking. She leans in and gives Ireland a somewhat wet kiss. Ireland puts his big hands on her ample hips and vigorously responds.
“Please,” England groans, “please, just kill me now.”
“If Henry Morgan were still alive-”
“But he's not,” France whispers soothingly, her pistol tracing England's cheek. They're so close together, in the tangled rigging of two ships, a great one falling, a small one leaping. England's aware of so many tastes, salt and blood and steel. “My Surcouf is.” France smells of sweat and fish and a bit of madness, still, though her blue eyes are piercingly cold. “Outnumbered three to one and yet we're still winning, Angleterre, why do you suppose that is?”
England feels herself sinking, feels freezing waters closing over her head without a ripple. She gasps, “You won't take the Kent. I'll sink it first.”
She can hardly see through the stinging wind but she feels France smile. “Don't you understand, Angleterre?” she chides, in that same voice she once used to mock England's lack of culture. “You've lost. Permanently. You've lost America and you've lost the oceans, you've lost control of the seas you poor, sad fool-”
England spits in her face and France shoves her off of the rigging.
It's a long, long way to fall.
England had thought that without a corset she would breathe easier. She had imagined the breeches and braces would give her tangible power and confidence. But the cravat is tied far too tight and the collar is stiff and itching and her shoes pinch. It may be fitted but it does not fit. Is not fit, either.
Yet the Prussian king calls her Mr. Kirkland and accepts her as a major shareholder in the East India Company, allows her to sit in on discussions of strategy, and so the costume serves its purpose.
Prussia herself is nowhere to be seen. England suspects she is somewhere in Bohemia, kicking Austria's face in. It is a pleasant image.
England sits in the hot room in Bavaria, itching in her gentleman's suit-
-blood spatters on her soldier's uniform in the humid air of Madras, and she swings up her bayonet to block France's downward thrust, close and sweating in the narrow streets-
-Canada's fists knot in England's red vest and the child- young woman, really- screams with a pain that tears at England's heart--
-she lays her weary head in her hands and thinks that world wars are really quite a bad idea and she doesn't really want to have any more of them.
Paris looks- different now. Nevertheless, it is hard to find fault with the running of the place. It's orderly and calm, at least as much as Paris is ever orderly and calm. They walk, down through the elegant covered arcades of the Jardin du Palais Royal, although England guesses it is probably not called that, any more.
France looks a great deal better than the last time England saw her. Her eyes are still a little red, her face a little pale, but she stands straight and without pain, and why wouldn't she with half of Europe bent to her will?
England imagines it, the two of them, standing a little way apart in an apparent bow to decorum, their diaphanous white gowns giving them a sort of neoclassical innocence they most certainly do not deserve. Although the illusion might be broken by England's hair, which is growing back in ragged clumps. France, England thinks, does not look good in white. It is so very unsuited to her handsome features. Nevertheless, it is a warm summer day, and here they stand, like nymphs, like sisters, like friends.
“You expect me to be impressed by your little collection?” England sniffs. “Don't think I didn't notice half of it was stolen.”
“I don't expect anything of you, Angleterre,” France shoots back, “least of all art appreciation. I do not know what possessed me to send that invitation. I should have much preferred Italy's company.”
“Don't think I don't notice what you're doing over there, either.”
“It is not your business what I do with Italy. Please do not stick your nose out over the Channel, I would hate for you to sprain something.”
“It is all of our business when you try and change the shape of the world!” England's voice rises higher and higher. It's starting to sound shrill, even to her ears.
France's eyes widen, and England can see the madness still in them, not gone at all, just hiding behind reflective mirrors and calm broad streets. For a moment she is certain France is going to hit her, and she flinches from a blow that never comes. She opens her eyes slowly. France is staring at her.
“Oh God,” England says, only a little bit broken, “I've missed you.”
Maybe she only says it to surprise France, to break that unnerving calm. It's certainly worked. England reflects with a mounting sense of embarrassment and apprehension that this is probably the first time since the sixth century she has said something to France that did not mean I hate you, at all.
England waits for the pain, for the cutting remark, the disbelieving laugh, or worse, anger at being mocked, that would turn her words into nothing more than a cruel joke.
France gently takes England's hand, and for a moment they just lean into each other.
It's awkward and uncomfortable. England rests her head on France's shoulder and closes her eyes. She can feel the other Nation's hair tickling her nose. France smells of dirt and the dust of Egypt. I am tired of fighting you, she wants to say.
But if we stop, she imagines France answering, what are we then?
England whispers to herself. To herself in her skin, and herself in the mirror, and herself in the man on the throne downstairs. The scissors do not make much noise as they pare away her curls.
“I am not- any one's wife- I am not- any one's mistress- I am a nation, and I-”
There, that is the last of it.
“-make my own alliances.”
Notes:
-Coffeehouses: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_coffeehouses_in_the_seventeenth_and_eighteenth_centuries
-:The Encyclopédie:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A9die
-the Republic of Letters:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_letters
-The Union of the Crowns:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_the_Crowns
-The Nine Years' War:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Years_War
(The fanon about Scotland being held captive in a dungeon is not mine, it is borrowed without permission from http://mithrigil.livejournal.com/, I hope she doesn't mind but I discovered Jean Bart burned down a Scottish castle once and it just seemed to click)
-And the Peace of Amiens:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_Of_Amiens
(There must be FrUK fic of this already, surely?)
-The title is a reference to this picture:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GillrayBritannia.jpg
