[Fanfiction] Dismantlement
Title: Dismantlement
Fandom: Axis Powers Hetalia
Genre(s): Drama/Historical/Angst
Character(s)|Pairing(s): France, England, Austria, Russia, references to HRE
Rating/Warning(s): R, violence, language, disturbing imagery
Word Count: 2,588
Summary: Long awaited fic trade for kalisona . France goes many steps forward and slides many more back, dragging England, Austria, and Russia in the process.
Dissent
His people were crying to him, but it was not a low, ceaseless murmur of misery (all nations faced that particular cacophony in the back of their minds). No… this was an orchestral piece Austria would have been delighted to create, with maniacal mathematical precision. Or maybe not. Dignified Roderich loved to hold his passions jealously to his breast, only doling them out grudgingly weight by weight.
Noble deaths failed to stir him, though he regretted the violent, mad dismemberment of the pretty princess in the streets, her vacant-eyed head left to rot on a pike. He had danced with her in Tuileries and told her to powder her hair pale blue to better set off her ruby covered hair combs. She did not deserve that terrifying, ignoble end-
No… it was the death of his poorest children that sent him reeling. He had confronted Robespierre about it, just as Madame Guillotine had her dance card filled hourly, daily, weekly, her shining steely grin stained cherry red. The man had dared to look tiredly at him, though his eyes glittered just as coldly as the device he used so often.
“What do you want me to do?” the mild-visaged man asked with feigned good humor but his eyes deliberately held no good will. A warning.
Francis started to laugh, giggles bubbling from his belly like the froth from champagne. He almost bent over in hysteria, leaning heavily on the man’s desk.
“Get a hold of yourself!” barked Robespierre, visibly disturbed.
“Maximilien, if only I could!” howled Francis. “If only I could!” He alternately wept and laughed as his fingernails gouged into the wood.
.
She is calling to him from his mirror. He resists her call, drinking wine by the bottle and feeling it drip from the corners of his mouth. It is a good vintage that has gone sour but he does not care. Her laughter hovers like music, like a series of violins that are not quite tuned correctly, too sharp.
She looks back at him with her heavy-lidded eyes, a mad smile playing on her fleshy lips.
“I hate you,” he spits. Wine dribbles onto his shirt and stains it red.
“You only think you do, cheri,” she says and her expression is terrible in its bloodthirsty ferocity. “You love me, you wretched man. You cannot hate me.”
“You’ll be the death of me.”
“All good things die in their turn, don’t they?”
She throws back her head to laugh and her bodice shifts and tears and falls, exposing her naked, beautiful breast. Her eyes glitter at him and she trails her fingers teasingly, tauntingly along the curve of her breast.
“Do you want me, Francis?” she coos.
“Get out, you whore,” he hisses at her and drunkenly throws the emptied bottle of wine at the mirror. Both shatter and her laughter echoes throughout the room, multiplied innumerous times by the many shining shards of silvered glass scattered on the floor.
.
France grinned and felt the muscles in his cheeks stretch unnaturally. The man before him in the slightly untidy office didn’t seem terribly imposing. But look at Robespierre, whispered a small voice in the back at his mind. Or perhaps not; he was dead, after all.
The man surnamed Bonaparte would later be caricaturized quite cruelly as a dwarf but that could not be further from the truth. He was shorter than most, yes, but somehow incredibly compact, all of his energy and strength pressed together and rebounding. France could not say that he liked the man from the start but it was impossible to ignore the sheer presence of this Corsican.
“Do you wish for me to bow to you?” Francis asked with uncharacteristic wryness.
The dark-haired man before him did not precisely smile but he did laugh. “Not you,” he replied in his thick accent. He walked over to the tall nation and took his hand.
How much things had changed. France’s once pale, beautifully manicured fingers had become scarred and rough, the nails cracked and brittle (that was his own fault, how he had worried his nails down to the quick as he rocked back and forth…). Napoleon’s hands were rough but well-tended, the hands of a former soldier who had not yet gone to seed. The two of them could not have been any different. A tall gold-haired man, a shorter dark-haired man, one lean to the point of gauntness, the other stocky and muscled.
At that touch, one would have expected a spark to pass between them but Francis felt nothing at all, only the warmth of a human’s flesh. The dark-eyed man before him was too well-tutored in the ways of the world to let the barest trace of emotion flicker across the stage of his face. Or perhaps he felt nothing as well. The country let himself be guided to one of the tables that near creaked under a load of papers and books and the various paraphernalia of a study, though an enormous map of Europe, framed in gilt and glass, predominated that carefully organized disarray. Obviously it was meant to be hung on the wall but instead rested here for lack of any other place to put it.
The Corsican placed the country’s fingers upon the map, splaying out the still fair hand across the kingdoms and principalities. France’s thumb touched Spain; his littlest finger brushed against the borders of Russia. His index finger almost completely covered the English isles.
“You see,” breathed Napoleon, his own smaller fingers (but so strong!) covering Francis’s still. “I want all of Europe to bow.”
…
Debacle
[Scene: A stage in an empty theater, once opulent but now left to decay. The curtains of heavy velvet are faded and heavy with dust, the gold cords tarnished and fraying. A single spotlight shines on the stage, where an elegant table is set with a chessboard. Two stools are placed on either side, each one set with a plain cushion. France sits on one of them, setting up the board. Instead of white and black, the pieces are white and red.]
France: [looks up from putting the pieces precisely in their respective squares] Oh- I wasn’t expecting anyone.
[France is in a red and blue gown with white petticoats, a military coat heavy with medals and ribbons and gold braid epaulettes draped over his shoulders. He shifts and adjusts his skirts]
France: Do you like it? The Empire waists are so discreet, you know. You can hide all manner of things under them. [fusses with his lace gloves.]
[England enters. He is in full naval commander attire, holding his hat under his arm with care. His hair is disheveled however and smudges of black powder are dark under his eyes, like makeup.]
France: Ah, England. Good of you to join me.
England: [limps very slightly and sits down across from France] You take white.
France: [smiles and moves a pawn of the appropriate color]
England: [silently moves another pawn, his gloved fingers never touching the pieces any longer than they have to]
France: You repelled me.
[Several moves pass.]
England: [moves a rook] You know better than to go to the sea.
France: [laughs, caressing a bishop before sending it forward] Because they are yours? How… dominating of you.
England: Shut up, frog. [captures one of France’s knights]
France: [eyes half-lidded, captures England’s bishop] Do you remember when I taught you this game?
England: …No.
[The game goes on, their movements growing faster and faster until they almost move at the same time, capturing pieces left and right.]
France: Poor Nelson. You must have loved him so. [He captures England’s queen.] Check.
England: [smiles thinly and brings his last pawn to France’s side of the board] He served me well.
France: [face impassive] “England expects that every man will do his duty.”
[England lazily takes back his captured queen and places it back onto the board, now within reach of the king.]
England: Checkmate.
[Curtain]
…
Dirge
Vienna.
This had been considered the jewel of Europe, once. Even more than Paris, for the musicians flocked here and salons held none of the mummery that France called etiquette.
Etiquette.
How it chafed him now, like newly made, ill-fitting shoes. He considered the young woman being attended by laughing companions and his eyes narrowed behind his spectacles.
“Roderich.”
He knew who it was. Only one person spoke his name with that abominable accent, not in proper German but in slippery French.
“Francis.”
“Did we not have this scene, oh, forty years ago?”
But this was not a shaded grove by the Rhine. The women now wore light dresses of silk and muslin that evoked the draping gowns of Greek goddesses. And Francis’s eyes now looked like cracking glass, sapphire blue growing spider webs and spindly lines of some indescribable color.
Austria had used silence as his shield and cloak so he remained as stony and unresponsive as the marble nymph in an alcove above.
“You have quite a few princesses, Austria,” France said conversationally. “To be giving them about now.”
“You promised.” The words hissed through gritted teeth, like winter wind howling at the door jamb.
Brilliantly blue eyes gazed bemusedly. “What are promises?” he asks jovially with a shrug.
“You promised on your life.”
“You gave her to me. She was mine to do with as I pleased.”
Austria’s fists tightened and he began to see threads of scarlet dance at the corners of his vision. “No, she was not,” he hissed.
France smiled and leaned towards Austria, making the dark-haired man take a step backwards involuntarily. The smile had no mirth in it. “I am not taking that child,” he whispered. “I never took from you, Austria. You gave me them. You always give, my dear. And I receive. With thanks.” A gloved hand rested too familiarly on Austria’s stiffened shoulders. “Prussia, on the other hand… is not so gracious.” There. There is the threat at last, weaving through the deceptively gentle words like the “surprises” in one of Haydn’s symphonies, the tense moments before a cacophony frightens sleepers from their music-induced dreams.
“And you killed him,” Austria whispered without thinking, old grief attracting new grief. “You killed…”
“War is war, my friend,” France replied. “You know that as well as I.” His smile flickered on his face like the flame on the last bit of a candle. “I made it swift.”
It was the dispassion that seemed most frightening to Austria. Passion… Passion could not be easily attributed to the bespectacled, dignified nation but how he knew it, as a friend, a tool, a weapon. He tamed it; he held it more delicately than thinnest glass and used it as carefully as black powder. Passion was fire and flames, which must be mastered or it would devour and destroy without thought.
“The world is changing, my dear Austria,” France said with a reckless smile. “I can only wonder if you can keep up… or will you just mourn over portraits?”
“Get away from me,” rasped Austria, his eyes murderous.
“It is merely some friendly advice. Between friends.” A smile that looked like the edge of a knife, the grotesque features of some antique mask. “But I extend my condolences as well.”
With a cry that he strangled even as it fluttered up his throat, Austria shoved the gloved hand from his shoulder and stalked out of the ballroom, against all protocol. He stripped off his gloves, tore off his stifling coat. The clothing he threw aside without a care, leaving them crumpled upon the ground. He practically hurled himself at his piano and began to play, ignoring the tears that burned upon his fingers.
…
Devastate
[Scene: An empty room. The sound of a match being lit and a warm glow soon illuminates a small portion and France, who now holds a candle that is brighter than it should be.]
France: Fire. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? The dancing motion of the flames. The colors. It warms you, brings you light. But it is dangerous. It destroys. It pollutes. It devours. They say that burning to death is one of the most painful deaths in the world. That is how my beloved died-
[The sounds of footsteps and screams in the distance. France does not look around but his expression grows worried and he shrinks in on himself, gathering around the candle. Snow begins to fall from the ceiling and settles on his hair.]
France: Ice. Snow. It is beautiful too. It covers the ground in white. It preserves. It freezes. It kills everything… and leaves it there. A shroud? Or a wedding dress?
[France’s breath is a cloud in the air and he shivers but it does not seem to be from the cold.]
France: I took Moscow in 1812. A victory. But a costly one. Like trying to eat sea urchins. The meat is tender, sweet… protected by hundred-fold poisoned spines. Russia’s men didn’t need to fight. He did it all himself. [smiles tiredly, viciously, triumphantly] But it didn’t work.
[France drops the candle and the flame grows higher and higher, illuminating the room. It licks at the walls, the ceilings and wood and plaster melt away and reform to the streets of a broken city.]
[Russia materializes into the space beside France, in the middle of saying something.]
Russia: -I ever tell you the story of the firebird?
France: Once, perhaps.
Russia: It is a beautiful thing, the firebird. Tamed and not tamed. Of this world and not of it. It is a thing that has no purpose but to be won. [smiles at France.] Think on that, my friend. [walks away briskly, fading away]
France: [faces the audience] Do not be fooled. He was angry. He was furious. I knew it but I did not realize what he would do…
[Night falls on the war-torn city. The scenery blurs and changes to another part of Moscow, filled with wooden buildings. France walks along the streets alone.]
Russia: [initially unseen] France!
France: [looks around and then upwards]
Russia: [is standing on the flattened roof of a warehouse, a barrel overturned by his side. He holds a glass bottle and a lit torch] France! Would you care to see a firebird?
France: What are you doing?!
[Russia upends the contents of the bottle upon his head, the liquid dripping off his hair, his face, his heavy clothing. Ceremoniously, he brings the torch to his clothing and he instantly is covered in flame. He starts laughing, throwing the torch away. Flame blossoms upon the roofs around him, travelling from building to building.]
Russia: You see, France? Do you see?
France: [stares in horror at the sight but his mouth moves in narration, his voice coming from a distance] A man… made of fire. His arms outstretched, the flames dancing on his massive sleeves. He did look like a firebird then, wings extended. All the while, he laughed. He wasn’t just laughing at me. He was laughing for the joy of it. For the pain. For the wanton destruction. He stretched out again and his wings covered Moscow, destroying what he protected.
[The scene fades, save for the outline of Russia in flames with his arms extended and his head almost grotesquely bent back and France, standing in front of the figure]
France: [reaches to touch the flames but draws his fingers away as the outline slowly extinguishes itself] You see… fire is our greatest slave. Fire is our cruelest master.
Author’s Notes:
I’d like to thank my friend metallic_sweet for the concept of using screenplay format for fics and the last scene of this fic (which had been the topic of a fic trade we had been bandying about for a while).
-The princess France references is the Princess de Lambelle, a confidante and personal friend of Marie Antoinette. She was arrested with the royal family and after refusing to swear an oath of perpetual hatred against the monarchy, was brutally murdered. A probably apocryphal tale is that she was ripped apart, with her breasts cut off, but most accounts generally agree that she was beheaded and her head placed on a pike and paraded through Paris. Her death was widely used by anti-revolutionary pamphlets and other writings about the senseless violence and brutality of the French Revolution.
-Maximilien Robespierre is most famously known as the leader of the Committee of Public Safety and the instigator of the Reign of Terror. He was described by contemporaries as being mild-mannered in person, with a gentle smile. In 1794, he was arrested by the Convention and ironically held in the same cell that had held Marie Antoinette. On July 28, he was guillotined without a trial.
-Marianne is a popular depiction of the personification of France, namely France as a Republic.
-Napoleon was indeed a Corsican though also a French citizen. He was really not as short as many depictions would like to have you believe and he did not speak with a French accent either; contemporary accounts describe him as having a sometimes indecipherable Italian accent.
-The general fashion trend of the Napoleonic era was the introduction of the Empire waist and gowns inspired by Greek and Roman designs generally made from very light materials such as muslin (the wealthy, of course, wore silk). The Empire waist, which was just under the breasts, became an invaluable tool for women of high status who had come “into the family way,” so to speak, as the cut made it very, very easy to hide a pregnancy.
-By the early 1800s, Napoleonic France dominated the Continent but England still controlled key naval routes and had the best navy. After England imposed a naval blockade on France’s ports, France retaliated by shutting off trade, as it controlled almost all the ports of Europe, which forced England to fight by land. In 1805, England defeated France in the Battle of Trafalgar, destroying twenty-two French-Spanish ships without losing a single British vessel. Admiral Nelson, who had orchestrated the British plan of attack, was killed in this battle. Even before the battle, Napoleon abandoned his plan to invade England and after, never seriously engaged the British fleet.
-“England expects that every man will do his duty” was the signal given by Admiral Nelson’s flagship at the beginning of the Battle of Trafalgar.
-When a pawn reaches the other side of the board, its player can choose to “promote” it to a queen, bishop, knight or rook. Most of the time, the promotion is to a queen, a process specifically called “queening.”
-In 1810, Napoleon divorced his wife Josephine and married Marie-Louise, an Austrian princess who was the double-grandniece of Marie Antoinette. The marriage was allegedly proposed and pushed forward by Metternich, a major Austrian political figure. It was around this time that the Holy Roman Empire was finally dissolved (and by implication, killed by France).
-Austria is referencing Symphony No. 9 by Joseph Haydn, informally known as the “Surprise Symphony.” It contains an incredibly loud fortissimo chord after an initially pleasant piano prelude. The story I heard about it was that Haydn was a bit of a prankster and wrote the piece as a sort of joke on those who fell asleep during recitals (a common occurrence, I am led to believe).
-Napoleon’s invasion of Russia is widely considered as a major part of his downfall. During his campaign, he lost much of his military force because of the sheer size of Russia and his underestimation of Russian winters. But he managed to reach and capture Moscow by September 1812. Some days after, much of the city was destroyed by fire. No one is quite sure what the cause of the fire was, with a prevalent theory that it was the Russian forces (and indeed, there is some evidence that a Russian military commander ordered key buildings in the city destroyed). For the sake of this story, the fire was deliberately set by the Russians.
Fandom: Axis Powers Hetalia
Genre(s): Drama/Historical/Angst
Character(s)|Pairing(s): France, England, Austria, Russia, references to HRE
Rating/Warning(s): R, violence, language, disturbing imagery
Word Count: 2,588
Summary: Long awaited fic trade for kalisona . France goes many steps forward and slides many more back, dragging England, Austria, and Russia in the process.
Dissent
His people were crying to him, but it was not a low, ceaseless murmur of misery (all nations faced that particular cacophony in the back of their minds). No… this was an orchestral piece Austria would have been delighted to create, with maniacal mathematical precision. Or maybe not. Dignified Roderich loved to hold his passions jealously to his breast, only doling them out grudgingly weight by weight.
Noble deaths failed to stir him, though he regretted the violent, mad dismemberment of the pretty princess in the streets, her vacant-eyed head left to rot on a pike. He had danced with her in Tuileries and told her to powder her hair pale blue to better set off her ruby covered hair combs. She did not deserve that terrifying, ignoble end-
No… it was the death of his poorest children that sent him reeling. He had confronted Robespierre about it, just as Madame Guillotine had her dance card filled hourly, daily, weekly, her shining steely grin stained cherry red. The man had dared to look tiredly at him, though his eyes glittered just as coldly as the device he used so often.
“What do you want me to do?” the mild-visaged man asked with feigned good humor but his eyes deliberately held no good will. A warning.
Francis started to laugh, giggles bubbling from his belly like the froth from champagne. He almost bent over in hysteria, leaning heavily on the man’s desk.
“Get a hold of yourself!” barked Robespierre, visibly disturbed.
“Maximilien, if only I could!” howled Francis. “If only I could!” He alternately wept and laughed as his fingernails gouged into the wood.
.
She is calling to him from his mirror. He resists her call, drinking wine by the bottle and feeling it drip from the corners of his mouth. It is a good vintage that has gone sour but he does not care. Her laughter hovers like music, like a series of violins that are not quite tuned correctly, too sharp.
She looks back at him with her heavy-lidded eyes, a mad smile playing on her fleshy lips.
“I hate you,” he spits. Wine dribbles onto his shirt and stains it red.
“You only think you do, cheri,” she says and her expression is terrible in its bloodthirsty ferocity. “You love me, you wretched man. You cannot hate me.”
“You’ll be the death of me.”
“All good things die in their turn, don’t they?”
She throws back her head to laugh and her bodice shifts and tears and falls, exposing her naked, beautiful breast. Her eyes glitter at him and she trails her fingers teasingly, tauntingly along the curve of her breast.
“Do you want me, Francis?” she coos.
“Get out, you whore,” he hisses at her and drunkenly throws the emptied bottle of wine at the mirror. Both shatter and her laughter echoes throughout the room, multiplied innumerous times by the many shining shards of silvered glass scattered on the floor.
.
France grinned and felt the muscles in his cheeks stretch unnaturally. The man before him in the slightly untidy office didn’t seem terribly imposing. But look at Robespierre, whispered a small voice in the back at his mind. Or perhaps not; he was dead, after all.
The man surnamed Bonaparte would later be caricaturized quite cruelly as a dwarf but that could not be further from the truth. He was shorter than most, yes, but somehow incredibly compact, all of his energy and strength pressed together and rebounding. France could not say that he liked the man from the start but it was impossible to ignore the sheer presence of this Corsican.
“Do you wish for me to bow to you?” Francis asked with uncharacteristic wryness.
The dark-haired man before him did not precisely smile but he did laugh. “Not you,” he replied in his thick accent. He walked over to the tall nation and took his hand.
How much things had changed. France’s once pale, beautifully manicured fingers had become scarred and rough, the nails cracked and brittle (that was his own fault, how he had worried his nails down to the quick as he rocked back and forth…). Napoleon’s hands were rough but well-tended, the hands of a former soldier who had not yet gone to seed. The two of them could not have been any different. A tall gold-haired man, a shorter dark-haired man, one lean to the point of gauntness, the other stocky and muscled.
At that touch, one would have expected a spark to pass between them but Francis felt nothing at all, only the warmth of a human’s flesh. The dark-eyed man before him was too well-tutored in the ways of the world to let the barest trace of emotion flicker across the stage of his face. Or perhaps he felt nothing as well. The country let himself be guided to one of the tables that near creaked under a load of papers and books and the various paraphernalia of a study, though an enormous map of Europe, framed in gilt and glass, predominated that carefully organized disarray. Obviously it was meant to be hung on the wall but instead rested here for lack of any other place to put it.
The Corsican placed the country’s fingers upon the map, splaying out the still fair hand across the kingdoms and principalities. France’s thumb touched Spain; his littlest finger brushed against the borders of Russia. His index finger almost completely covered the English isles.
“You see,” breathed Napoleon, his own smaller fingers (but so strong!) covering Francis’s still. “I want all of Europe to bow.”
…
Debacle
[Scene: A stage in an empty theater, once opulent but now left to decay. The curtains of heavy velvet are faded and heavy with dust, the gold cords tarnished and fraying. A single spotlight shines on the stage, where an elegant table is set with a chessboard. Two stools are placed on either side, each one set with a plain cushion. France sits on one of them, setting up the board. Instead of white and black, the pieces are white and red.]
France: [looks up from putting the pieces precisely in their respective squares] Oh- I wasn’t expecting anyone.
[France is in a red and blue gown with white petticoats, a military coat heavy with medals and ribbons and gold braid epaulettes draped over his shoulders. He shifts and adjusts his skirts]
France: Do you like it? The Empire waists are so discreet, you know. You can hide all manner of things under them. [fusses with his lace gloves.]
[England enters. He is in full naval commander attire, holding his hat under his arm with care. His hair is disheveled however and smudges of black powder are dark under his eyes, like makeup.]
France: Ah, England. Good of you to join me.
England: [limps very slightly and sits down across from France] You take white.
France: [smiles and moves a pawn of the appropriate color]
England: [silently moves another pawn, his gloved fingers never touching the pieces any longer than they have to]
France: You repelled me.
[Several moves pass.]
England: [moves a rook] You know better than to go to the sea.
France: [laughs, caressing a bishop before sending it forward] Because they are yours? How… dominating of you.
England: Shut up, frog. [captures one of France’s knights]
France: [eyes half-lidded, captures England’s bishop] Do you remember when I taught you this game?
England: …No.
[The game goes on, their movements growing faster and faster until they almost move at the same time, capturing pieces left and right.]
France: Poor Nelson. You must have loved him so. [He captures England’s queen.] Check.
England: [smiles thinly and brings his last pawn to France’s side of the board] He served me well.
France: [face impassive] “England expects that every man will do his duty.”
[England lazily takes back his captured queen and places it back onto the board, now within reach of the king.]
England: Checkmate.
[Curtain]
…
Dirge
Vienna.
This had been considered the jewel of Europe, once. Even more than Paris, for the musicians flocked here and salons held none of the mummery that France called etiquette.
Etiquette.
How it chafed him now, like newly made, ill-fitting shoes. He considered the young woman being attended by laughing companions and his eyes narrowed behind his spectacles.
“Roderich.”
He knew who it was. Only one person spoke his name with that abominable accent, not in proper German but in slippery French.
“Francis.”
“Did we not have this scene, oh, forty years ago?”
But this was not a shaded grove by the Rhine. The women now wore light dresses of silk and muslin that evoked the draping gowns of Greek goddesses. And Francis’s eyes now looked like cracking glass, sapphire blue growing spider webs and spindly lines of some indescribable color.
Austria had used silence as his shield and cloak so he remained as stony and unresponsive as the marble nymph in an alcove above.
“You have quite a few princesses, Austria,” France said conversationally. “To be giving them about now.”
“You promised.” The words hissed through gritted teeth, like winter wind howling at the door jamb.
Brilliantly blue eyes gazed bemusedly. “What are promises?” he asks jovially with a shrug.
“You promised on your life.”
“You gave her to me. She was mine to do with as I pleased.”
Austria’s fists tightened and he began to see threads of scarlet dance at the corners of his vision. “No, she was not,” he hissed.
France smiled and leaned towards Austria, making the dark-haired man take a step backwards involuntarily. The smile had no mirth in it. “I am not taking that child,” he whispered. “I never took from you, Austria. You gave me them. You always give, my dear. And I receive. With thanks.” A gloved hand rested too familiarly on Austria’s stiffened shoulders. “Prussia, on the other hand… is not so gracious.” There. There is the threat at last, weaving through the deceptively gentle words like the “surprises” in one of Haydn’s symphonies, the tense moments before a cacophony frightens sleepers from their music-induced dreams.
“And you killed him,” Austria whispered without thinking, old grief attracting new grief. “You killed…”
“War is war, my friend,” France replied. “You know that as well as I.” His smile flickered on his face like the flame on the last bit of a candle. “I made it swift.”
It was the dispassion that seemed most frightening to Austria. Passion… Passion could not be easily attributed to the bespectacled, dignified nation but how he knew it, as a friend, a tool, a weapon. He tamed it; he held it more delicately than thinnest glass and used it as carefully as black powder. Passion was fire and flames, which must be mastered or it would devour and destroy without thought.
“The world is changing, my dear Austria,” France said with a reckless smile. “I can only wonder if you can keep up… or will you just mourn over portraits?”
“Get away from me,” rasped Austria, his eyes murderous.
“It is merely some friendly advice. Between friends.” A smile that looked like the edge of a knife, the grotesque features of some antique mask. “But I extend my condolences as well.”
With a cry that he strangled even as it fluttered up his throat, Austria shoved the gloved hand from his shoulder and stalked out of the ballroom, against all protocol. He stripped off his gloves, tore off his stifling coat. The clothing he threw aside without a care, leaving them crumpled upon the ground. He practically hurled himself at his piano and began to play, ignoring the tears that burned upon his fingers.
…
Devastate
[Scene: An empty room. The sound of a match being lit and a warm glow soon illuminates a small portion and France, who now holds a candle that is brighter than it should be.]
France: Fire. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? The dancing motion of the flames. The colors. It warms you, brings you light. But it is dangerous. It destroys. It pollutes. It devours. They say that burning to death is one of the most painful deaths in the world. That is how my beloved died-
[The sounds of footsteps and screams in the distance. France does not look around but his expression grows worried and he shrinks in on himself, gathering around the candle. Snow begins to fall from the ceiling and settles on his hair.]
France: Ice. Snow. It is beautiful too. It covers the ground in white. It preserves. It freezes. It kills everything… and leaves it there. A shroud? Or a wedding dress?
[France’s breath is a cloud in the air and he shivers but it does not seem to be from the cold.]
France: I took Moscow in 1812. A victory. But a costly one. Like trying to eat sea urchins. The meat is tender, sweet… protected by hundred-fold poisoned spines. Russia’s men didn’t need to fight. He did it all himself. [smiles tiredly, viciously, triumphantly] But it didn’t work.
[France drops the candle and the flame grows higher and higher, illuminating the room. It licks at the walls, the ceilings and wood and plaster melt away and reform to the streets of a broken city.]
[Russia materializes into the space beside France, in the middle of saying something.]
Russia: -I ever tell you the story of the firebird?
France: Once, perhaps.
Russia: It is a beautiful thing, the firebird. Tamed and not tamed. Of this world and not of it. It is a thing that has no purpose but to be won. [smiles at France.] Think on that, my friend. [walks away briskly, fading away]
France: [faces the audience] Do not be fooled. He was angry. He was furious. I knew it but I did not realize what he would do…
[Night falls on the war-torn city. The scenery blurs and changes to another part of Moscow, filled with wooden buildings. France walks along the streets alone.]
Russia: [initially unseen] France!
France: [looks around and then upwards]
Russia: [is standing on the flattened roof of a warehouse, a barrel overturned by his side. He holds a glass bottle and a lit torch] France! Would you care to see a firebird?
France: What are you doing?!
[Russia upends the contents of the bottle upon his head, the liquid dripping off his hair, his face, his heavy clothing. Ceremoniously, he brings the torch to his clothing and he instantly is covered in flame. He starts laughing, throwing the torch away. Flame blossoms upon the roofs around him, travelling from building to building.]
Russia: You see, France? Do you see?
France: [stares in horror at the sight but his mouth moves in narration, his voice coming from a distance] A man… made of fire. His arms outstretched, the flames dancing on his massive sleeves. He did look like a firebird then, wings extended. All the while, he laughed. He wasn’t just laughing at me. He was laughing for the joy of it. For the pain. For the wanton destruction. He stretched out again and his wings covered Moscow, destroying what he protected.
[The scene fades, save for the outline of Russia in flames with his arms extended and his head almost grotesquely bent back and France, standing in front of the figure]
France: [reaches to touch the flames but draws his fingers away as the outline slowly extinguishes itself] You see… fire is our greatest slave. Fire is our cruelest master.
Author’s Notes:
I’d like to thank my friend metallic_sweet for the concept of using screenplay format for fics and the last scene of this fic (which had been the topic of a fic trade we had been bandying about for a while).
-The princess France references is the Princess de Lambelle, a confidante and personal friend of Marie Antoinette. She was arrested with the royal family and after refusing to swear an oath of perpetual hatred against the monarchy, was brutally murdered. A probably apocryphal tale is that she was ripped apart, with her breasts cut off, but most accounts generally agree that she was beheaded and her head placed on a pike and paraded through Paris. Her death was widely used by anti-revolutionary pamphlets and other writings about the senseless violence and brutality of the French Revolution.
-Maximilien Robespierre is most famously known as the leader of the Committee of Public Safety and the instigator of the Reign of Terror. He was described by contemporaries as being mild-mannered in person, with a gentle smile. In 1794, he was arrested by the Convention and ironically held in the same cell that had held Marie Antoinette. On July 28, he was guillotined without a trial.
-Marianne is a popular depiction of the personification of France, namely France as a Republic.
-Napoleon was indeed a Corsican though also a French citizen. He was really not as short as many depictions would like to have you believe and he did not speak with a French accent either; contemporary accounts describe him as having a sometimes indecipherable Italian accent.
-The general fashion trend of the Napoleonic era was the introduction of the Empire waist and gowns inspired by Greek and Roman designs generally made from very light materials such as muslin (the wealthy, of course, wore silk). The Empire waist, which was just under the breasts, became an invaluable tool for women of high status who had come “into the family way,” so to speak, as the cut made it very, very easy to hide a pregnancy.
-By the early 1800s, Napoleonic France dominated the Continent but England still controlled key naval routes and had the best navy. After England imposed a naval blockade on France’s ports, France retaliated by shutting off trade, as it controlled almost all the ports of Europe, which forced England to fight by land. In 1805, England defeated France in the Battle of Trafalgar, destroying twenty-two French-Spanish ships without losing a single British vessel. Admiral Nelson, who had orchestrated the British plan of attack, was killed in this battle. Even before the battle, Napoleon abandoned his plan to invade England and after, never seriously engaged the British fleet.
-“England expects that every man will do his duty” was the signal given by Admiral Nelson’s flagship at the beginning of the Battle of Trafalgar.
-When a pawn reaches the other side of the board, its player can choose to “promote” it to a queen, bishop, knight or rook. Most of the time, the promotion is to a queen, a process specifically called “queening.”
-In 1810, Napoleon divorced his wife Josephine and married Marie-Louise, an Austrian princess who was the double-grandniece of Marie Antoinette. The marriage was allegedly proposed and pushed forward by Metternich, a major Austrian political figure. It was around this time that the Holy Roman Empire was finally dissolved (and by implication, killed by France).
-Austria is referencing Symphony No. 9 by Joseph Haydn, informally known as the “Surprise Symphony.” It contains an incredibly loud fortissimo chord after an initially pleasant piano prelude. The story I heard about it was that Haydn was a bit of a prankster and wrote the piece as a sort of joke on those who fell asleep during recitals (a common occurrence, I am led to believe).
-Napoleon’s invasion of Russia is widely considered as a major part of his downfall. During his campaign, he lost much of his military force because of the sheer size of Russia and his underestimation of Russian winters. But he managed to reach and capture Moscow by September 1812. Some days after, much of the city was destroyed by fire. No one is quite sure what the cause of the fire was, with a prevalent theory that it was the Russian forces (and indeed, there is some evidence that a Russian military commander ordered key buildings in the city destroyed). For the sake of this story, the fire was deliberately set by the Russians.