Fic: Reunification
Title: Reunification
Author: gileonnen
Play: Richard II
Characters: Richard II/Anne of Bohemia
Warnings: Academic!AU; probable/likely misuse of German
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Summary: It's the second week in November, 1989, and Richard receives a message from Germany.
Notes: Written for angevin2. This is all in good fun, a historical AU, and not meant as an accurate representation of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
It is a crisp, early morning in November, and Anne has been in Berlin for nearly a week when Richard receives the call. The connection is terrible, fizzing and spitting with static; if it is a public phone or a secret one, if it is even legal for her to be making an international call (what it has cost her to call him), he doesn't know or particularly care. He cradles the phone in his hand and asks again, "What is it, Anne? I can't hear you--"
"I need you in Berlin," she says, for only a moment clear as a bell. "I need you here; something is happening--at the checkpoint in the Wall--"
"I'll come," he answers without hesitating. He was meant to have a tutorial this evening, but this is more important by far--this is the world changing, his world changing; he cannot be in England when all the world is turning toward Berlin. By mid-afternoon, Richard's plane has landed in West Berlin, and within the hour, he is pushing through the crowd at the checkpoint.
He has never seen such a crowd. It pulses, throbbing and shivering like a living thing--the peace of the gathered strangers is as fragile as life, barely restrained by the border guards and the wall itself. Here is a woman in a knit cap, face twisted with fury, shouting Sie will raus! as she holds up a battered photograph of a girl; here is a cluster of boys pressing close and trying to share a cigarette, continually looking up from their huddle to keep a sharp eye out for policemen. He can scarcely move without bashing his elbow against a stranger's chest or treading on a stranger's shoe; the proximity is charged, intimate, nigh-orgiastic. There is a continuous, cacophonous roar on the chill air, hard consonants punctuating a murmur of fluid diphthongs.
Suddenly, a cheer goes up, drowning out every other sound; the crowd surges forward suddenly, and then back just as suddenly, and near the checkpoint there are screams like joy and terror and want. The man at Richard's side catches him and embraces him, kissing him eagerly on the lips--"Wiedervereinigung und Freiheit!" he shouts, although his words are nearly lost.
Deutsche Wiedervereinigung --and glasnost; he can all but hear Anne's voice, almost see her eyes alight. A reunified and reopened Communist Germany, purged of the fascism of East Germany and the capitalism of the West. I hope to see it in my lifetime.
She had thrown her grandfather's Iron Cross in the Channel when she had crossed--and yet she still had his firm jaw, his fine grey eyes. Richard cannot look at her without seeing those strong features, made familiar in his boyhood. This was a brave man, his father had said, touching the frame of the photograph. He was ancient and nearly blind, but he held his line long after the cause was lost. That's what a good man does, Dickie--even a good man on the side of a terrible thing. He holds his line.
The photograph is still on Richard's mother's mantel, with the inscription To Edward; may you be as brave a soldier as your father. Anne's eyes had narrowed when she had seen it--Do you know who this was? she had demanded; Do you know who he was to me? She had shouted at him and berated him and beaten his chest with her fists, and finally she had let him hold her while she leaned against him dry-eyed. I can't get away from it, she had whispered against his neck. Even here, I can never get away--
Through the gate, Richard catches sight of a familiar, wind-raw face, strikingly pale against dark hair and the bright red of a woolen scarf. "Anne!" he shouts, waving his arms at her. "Anne, I'm here!"
At first, her eyes skim the crowd unseeing--then suddenly they meet his own, and she gives a shriek that pierces the din and tries to push through to him. He doesn't see the people that he shoves aside in his haste to get to her; he only feels the briefest of handclasps, the solid warmth emanating through strangers' thick coats, the fierce broil waiting to close over him--and then Anne is in his arms and their lips are pressed together, her arms twined around his neck with force enough to break him.
Further along the wall, one of the boys with cigarettes swings a claw-hammer, striking free a shard of stone from the wall. "I want a piece," Anne shouts against Richard's ear; "I want a piece of the west side of the wall!"
"You'll have it!" he shouts back, laughing and kissing her again for the joy of kissing her. They shove through the press of bodies until they reach the boys with their hammers; a policeman is making his way through to this little clear space, and before he can arrive Anne begs a boy for a hammer. She swings it in a steady arc, the claw striking hard on the stone. "I want to tear it down!" she laughs, in English, and then she says it again for the boys in German.
She has never been so beautiful as she is right now.
"Will you marry me?" Richard asks; "Yes," she answers, without even a pause for thought.
He can't bring himself to care, when the policeman cuffs them and their partners in crime. Fuck the police, and the Nazis, and the Communists, and his tutor, and all the rest of it--the wall is coming down, and he is going to be married, and the world has changed forever.
Author: gileonnen
Play: Richard II
Characters: Richard II/Anne of Bohemia
Warnings: Academic!AU; probable/likely misuse of German
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Summary: It's the second week in November, 1989, and Richard receives a message from Germany.
Notes: Written for angevin2. This is all in good fun, a historical AU, and not meant as an accurate representation of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
It is a crisp, early morning in November, and Anne has been in Berlin for nearly a week when Richard receives the call. The connection is terrible, fizzing and spitting with static; if it is a public phone or a secret one, if it is even legal for her to be making an international call (what it has cost her to call him), he doesn't know or particularly care. He cradles the phone in his hand and asks again, "What is it, Anne? I can't hear you--"
"I need you in Berlin," she says, for only a moment clear as a bell. "I need you here; something is happening--at the checkpoint in the Wall--"
"I'll come," he answers without hesitating. He was meant to have a tutorial this evening, but this is more important by far--this is the world changing, his world changing; he cannot be in England when all the world is turning toward Berlin. By mid-afternoon, Richard's plane has landed in West Berlin, and within the hour, he is pushing through the crowd at the checkpoint.
He has never seen such a crowd. It pulses, throbbing and shivering like a living thing--the peace of the gathered strangers is as fragile as life, barely restrained by the border guards and the wall itself. Here is a woman in a knit cap, face twisted with fury, shouting Sie will raus! as she holds up a battered photograph of a girl; here is a cluster of boys pressing close and trying to share a cigarette, continually looking up from their huddle to keep a sharp eye out for policemen. He can scarcely move without bashing his elbow against a stranger's chest or treading on a stranger's shoe; the proximity is charged, intimate, nigh-orgiastic. There is a continuous, cacophonous roar on the chill air, hard consonants punctuating a murmur of fluid diphthongs.
Suddenly, a cheer goes up, drowning out every other sound; the crowd surges forward suddenly, and then back just as suddenly, and near the checkpoint there are screams like joy and terror and want. The man at Richard's side catches him and embraces him, kissing him eagerly on the lips--"Wiedervereinigung und Freiheit!" he shouts, although his words are nearly lost.
Deutsche Wiedervereinigung --and glasnost; he can all but hear Anne's voice, almost see her eyes alight. A reunified and reopened Communist Germany, purged of the fascism of East Germany and the capitalism of the West. I hope to see it in my lifetime.
She had thrown her grandfather's Iron Cross in the Channel when she had crossed--and yet she still had his firm jaw, his fine grey eyes. Richard cannot look at her without seeing those strong features, made familiar in his boyhood. This was a brave man, his father had said, touching the frame of the photograph. He was ancient and nearly blind, but he held his line long after the cause was lost. That's what a good man does, Dickie--even a good man on the side of a terrible thing. He holds his line.
The photograph is still on Richard's mother's mantel, with the inscription To Edward; may you be as brave a soldier as your father. Anne's eyes had narrowed when she had seen it--Do you know who this was? she had demanded; Do you know who he was to me? She had shouted at him and berated him and beaten his chest with her fists, and finally she had let him hold her while she leaned against him dry-eyed. I can't get away from it, she had whispered against his neck. Even here, I can never get away--
Through the gate, Richard catches sight of a familiar, wind-raw face, strikingly pale against dark hair and the bright red of a woolen scarf. "Anne!" he shouts, waving his arms at her. "Anne, I'm here!"
At first, her eyes skim the crowd unseeing--then suddenly they meet his own, and she gives a shriek that pierces the din and tries to push through to him. He doesn't see the people that he shoves aside in his haste to get to her; he only feels the briefest of handclasps, the solid warmth emanating through strangers' thick coats, the fierce broil waiting to close over him--and then Anne is in his arms and their lips are pressed together, her arms twined around his neck with force enough to break him.
Further along the wall, one of the boys with cigarettes swings a claw-hammer, striking free a shard of stone from the wall. "I want a piece," Anne shouts against Richard's ear; "I want a piece of the west side of the wall!"
"You'll have it!" he shouts back, laughing and kissing her again for the joy of kissing her. They shove through the press of bodies until they reach the boys with their hammers; a policeman is making his way through to this little clear space, and before he can arrive Anne begs a boy for a hammer. She swings it in a steady arc, the claw striking hard on the stone. "I want to tear it down!" she laughs, in English, and then she says it again for the boys in German.
She has never been so beautiful as she is right now.
"Will you marry me?" Richard asks; "Yes," she answers, without even a pause for thought.
He can't bring himself to care, when the policeman cuffs them and their partners in crime. Fuck the police, and the Nazis, and the Communists, and his tutor, and all the rest of it--the wall is coming down, and he is going to be married, and the world has changed forever.