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Boulogne-sur-Mer, anno domini 507.
The water off the shore is very cold even if it isn't as deep as it could be, and Gallia is still shivering sometimes when he forgets not to, three weeks after he washed himself up on it. He's warm right now, piled under tapestries he's pulled down from the walls and nestled in fresh straw – it's a lovely castle, this one in Boulogne-sur-Mer, with all kinds of beautiful things in it that one of his kings left there, and Gallia can see the sea in la Manche from the slit windows. It's grey, and on the other side there are cliffs.
Shivering feels even better when he does it while he's warm.
It takes a long time to fall off those cliffs, and the water at the end stole the air out of his lungs like he'd been shoved, or maybe that was Britannia's hands on his ribs, before the falling started. Gallia puts his palms there, now, crossed over each other so they don't feel like they're his when they press into what's left of the bruises.
He shuts his eyes.
Britannia's smaller than he is. It would be easier to shove him, and he'd fall just the same, halfway down before he thinks of anything else but the echo of Gallia's hands – he pushes the heels of his down a little harder and gasps into the tapestries when it hurts – and then he'd hit the water and go down, gounder it, and it would steal his air too, and when he washed up he'd be blue all over, like the paint his older brother wears, except for the places he'd be grey like the water.
Gallia thinks his lips especially would be grey, soft grey with just a bit of pink to remember what he looked like before, and Gallia would touch them and there wouldn't be any air in them at all, just wet and cold, and maybe he'd kiss them to see if Britannia was pretending and he wouldn't be, not even a little. No air and no words in his awful language, which means Gallia would have won, and he'd pet him and he wouldn't shiver at all even if he's colder than Gallia is right now.
He curls up tighter in the tapestries and smiles in the dark.
Westminster Abbey, 25 December, anno domini 1066.
The two months since the battle at Hastings haven't really improved England at all, France thinks when he catches sight of him on the south side of the transept, already sitting in the pew reserved for them both. He's probably sitting because he can't really stand up. There are broken things inside him. France knows because France put them there himself.
England's looking right at him, and glaring, or at least trying to through bruise-dark eyes and the way his nose is twisted off to the side where France broke it with his fist, so France waves at him and calls out hello. Twice! Once in his language and once in England's. He's being nice, because they're crowing his William king in Westminister today.
England doesn't wave back but that's all right, there are burns on his arms and chest and they must hurt. Except they're all covered up with red and white cloth, brocade and silk for the occasion, so France has to imagine them.
He imagines them a lot during the coronation. It gives him something to do, and England isn't talking to him even when he reaches over and pets his hair, which does make him twitch and try to hit France in the thigh. Mostly, though, France thinks about what those burns looked like when England first got them, when all of his chest was raw red rings from where his mail had heated up too much, red with charred black on the edges, and not bleeding because burns don't do that, but glistening instead in the light from the torches and the swords and it had been so very pretty – France wanted to touch it then but he had been busy hitting England's face instead.
Sometimes, especially in a battle, there are priorities.
But if he'd only smashed England's nose just a little bit harder, or at a better angle, the bones wouldn't have just moved, they would have shattered, all of the little pieces flying inside his skull, and then France would have had just as much time to get his fingers covered in all of that glistening fluid as he could ever want.
Maybe he can do that later, when there aren't quite so many people watching the King get a crown put on his head.
Between Damascus and Jerusalem. 29 July, anno domini 1148.
There is no sweat to drip down the back of France's neck because all moisture has been baked out of him by the merciless Syrian sun. His tongue is tacky in his mouth, too swollen-thick to talk or sing, and when he kneels in the dusty sand next to this corpse, he cannot help but think that it is for this that he comes back to this God-forsaken, God-hallowing place – this, this refining by thirst and sky, and service to God, and the scrape of sunbleached blond hair between his fingertips, as dry and thin as what remains of this man's flesh.
He is one of theirs, some Crusader, face-down and half-buried in the sand with his head pointed toward Jerusalem. It is as if God Himself had given him a proper funeral. His armor was probably English before it was God's, which makes France laugh even through the choking air. Ah, Angleterre, he imagines saying, perhaps you should build fewer holes into your people's armor for Turks to stick swords into.
Of course, the Turks have been chasing France all day, with swords and arrows and everything else, him and what remains of his people's army, racing the sun through this retreat from Damascus.
It feels like an exquisite ache, somewhere between desire and relief, to lie in the sand next to the corpse and close his eyes while he strokes through its hair and waits to see if God will have more use of him as a martyr than as a Nation. The tension of it pulls sound from his mouth, half-strangled, helpless, and the sand as it works up through his mail shirt is a thousand tiny points of fire. He squirms, except that takes too much effort and redoubles every sparking touch and he is waiting, here with the dead –
It would be so entirely funny if this corpse was truly England, if England had somehow managed to give himself to God first and better and leave France here with an earthly shell – the hair is precisely right, the build slight and young enough, and France cannot see his face, the sand is caressing it. He could be. It would not be fair and he would not have caused it but he almost wants it to be true regardless, wants it and twists harder into the dunes, wanting.
Hadn't they arrived together on Crusade? Wouldn't God punish them both for their failures here in His Holy Land? This could be divine sanction. Desiccation. Desire, that's sanction enough –
Agincourt. 26 October, anno domini 1415.
Blood mixed with dirt is a difficult taste to get out of his mouth.
France picks his way through the copses of trees on the edges of the churned-up mud where the field of Agincourt used to be, before yesterday's exertions turned it into a heaving sea of foam-flecked horseflesh and desperate men. He's collecting arrows. There are a great many arrows, some on the ground, some caught in the branches. Some he has to unseat from where they've sunk deep into the bodies of soldiers – mostly his soldiers, he can always tell his own people, even through the blood that turns every surcoat and every jerkin the same lurid, inevitable dull red.
It occurs to him to remember that he used to perform this precise activity – gathering up the leavings of the victorious and the slaughtered – with Britannia right beside him. Or at least France thinks he remembers that, that boy with his little arms full-up with arrow shafts. If he was there. Britannia, or England. One or the other, and France does not quite recall if it was he himself or Gallia who was there with him, in the trees and the mist, or if he was Gallia, or had been – France has been so many things to so many people – but he remembers at least the way the weight of the arrows rested in England's arms.
At the moment, he would like nothing better than to remember England weighted down by arrows in a much truer sense, but England is not here with him – England is with his army, doubtlessly victory-drunk and insufferable. Not that he is ever sufferable.
France would give him sufficient arrows slowly. He would use one of England's own longbows.
It would take at least an hour, he decides.
Of course England would spend most of that hour cursing him, saying things like come over here and fight me, whoreson—corpse-whore-son— aow!—you speak like a fucking horse and you smell even worse—wish your mother'd never— ah!— shat you out— except the noises he'd make whenever the arrows sunk into him would get closer and closer together, until it wasn't cursing he was giving to France but little sobbing gasps for air enough to shout again –
-- and by then he'd be pierced through at his shoulders and his chest and his throat, as France had made him an effigy to St. Sebastian, every hole dripping bright red in trickles, his head tipped backwards to heaven and to France standing over him – and France thinks he'd put the last arrow in with his own hands, just at the place where England's clavicles meet and dip, where he is just as fragile as he's always been even in places France doesn't quite remember – stab him with the hooked head and say there, there, this is what your King Henry has gotten on you.
Capisterre, Saint Kitts Island. 17 September, 1666 A.D.
The long green fronds of the sugarcane bend nearly double and whip in the wind coming off the eastern shoreline, hissing louder than the incipient thunder. The same wind undoes France's hair from the ribbon he's tied it back with, so he has to swipe it free of his eyes to look out properly over the plantation field and to the sea beyond. There are clouds massed there, stacked higher than the mountains on the island. France leans on his porch railing and proceeds to watch them roll into the harbor.
There are no ships on that horizon save his own, naturallement, but France nevertheless sees England wade hip-deep through the surf, the long tails of his frock coat floating behind him like foam. There is seaweed tangled in his buttons and looped around his cuffs, grey-green and dripping like his hair. The sodden brims of his tricorn, tilted rakish as ever, do not hide the sockets of his eyes, seagull-picked clean and hollow. France thinks him familiar as a revenant, hungry as the devouring waves he loves so much, thinks it and thinks himself walking out to meet him.
His boots scrape and crunch in the wet sand. Both of their swords are drawn before England is free of the water. France sketches a salute – feints with it – is laughing even as they close. The rain makes the steel slick, scatters droplets on their faces. However eyeless and grasping, England is still quite admirably quick.
Their hilts lock together. Water smears from England's sleeve down the front of France's cravat.
"Angleterre," France shouts, over the wind and the sound of his own breath, "you might consider that burning down all those Dutch ships will not get you back an inch of the land in the middle of my colony!"
England throws his head back and laughs, soundlessly, as quiet as the air in his lungs. Tipped up, the sockets of his eyes fill with water, run themselves over in grey streaks the same shade as the sea.
France seizes him by the hair and slams their mouths together, a bruise. The blades of their sabers cross between them, at the neck, close enough that the metal kisses France's throat when he inhales, his lips pressed hot against his teeth by the chill of England's tongue and the rills of water that run down England's cheeks.
He opens his eyes and unclenches his hands from the porch railing.
There are no ships on the horizon save his own.
Yorktown. 18 October, 1781 A.D.
Red-soaked steam rises from the bloodied heaps of corpses which line the riverbank. The rain enshrouds them both, darkening the evening until all France can see is the gold of America's hair, the glinting steel muzzle of England's gun – perhaps green, for England's eyes, if they were not so tightly affixed on his prey as he approaches. It is difficult to tell, six meters back and up an embankment, as France is.
They still. Perhaps they converse. America stands his ground. France is quite proud of him for that bit of fortitude – he is, perhaps, capable of edification, and France ought to be proud of that, all considered! This rain drowns out all intelligible sound. France breathes in the steam until the drag of salt over his tongue is nearly enough to gag on, watches nevertheless. The bright refraction at the tip of England's gun gutters like a doused flame –
He drops his musket from senseless fingers and collapses to his knees at America's feet.
France thinks, with a surety which is almost horrifying, that America has shot him first.
He is perversely and captivatingly proud. It is an uncouth action, entirely, ill-met and abrupt and unfair (and all of that is Prussia's doing) – but it is also elegant and decisive and appropriate, vengeful and appropriate, and that is his. His fingers are as nerveless as England's. Surely, that, that is his, that is what France has given to America. And when England falls to the ground and his blood seeps out to stain every inch of his chest as red as his coat, that will also be –
France would like to catch him as he does, and tell him so. Perhaps that desire is what is making him shake, as if he is furious, or cold.
England remains on his knees. It seems no one has shot anyone at all.
Even through the rain, the heave and shiver of his shoulders in that new-tailored blue coat makes France suspect America may be crying.
He is certain England is.
Smolensk. 14 November, 1812 A.D.
France is covered in snow.
It drips off his eyelashes and the end of his nose, wriggles in under his collar in little freezing rivulets, and it is best not even to contemplate the state of his hair at this point. If he must contemplate the entirely depressing, he can consider that there are terribly few French soldiers here any longer to be covered in snow right along with him! Also, he is not entirely sure where his darling emperor has gone off to.
It is cold, and entirely miserable, and he is surrounded by Russia, who is going to get a lecture on – oh, clearly hospitality is too complex for him, hospitability will have to do. As soon as France manages to get back to civilization.
The effort of getting back to civilization seems entirely untoward in its magnitude just this moment.
Some of his soldiers have opted out of the entire endeavor, after all, preferring to lie down and let the snow turn them first blue and then grey, like a sky covering itself with clouds. France sighs, and the descending flakes do not melt nearly as much as they should from his breath. He shuts his eyes and conjures up some warmer image, or at least some more satisfying one – replace this closest sprawled body with someone more familiar, someone who would be entirely and vastly improved by leeching the color from his skin and hoaring all that blond hair and ridiculous caterpillar-brows with frost –
Really, France considers, he spends a great deal of time imagining England as a corpse.
Also, laughing at oneself while covered in snow sends the snow up one's nostrils and that is exceedingly uncomfortable.
Well. Who is he to deny himself amusement in extremity? He has never bothered to do that. Extremity is perhaps the most amusing state France has ever found himself in, and he is almost used to it, after these past thirty years with the bright fire of egalite, fraternite caught like laughter in his throat and in his blood. And all throughout, hasn't he been finding liberte sweeter with a vision of his dear Angleterre summarily denied it, discarded and conquered and given up to any and all of his whim?
It is nevertheless funny that he spends quite this much effort on it.
But perhaps he can convince England to go to war with Russia next, and get rid of the imagining portion all together!
Beside the river Somme. 4 September, 1916 A.D.
They are both sticky with mud and better substances, and half-undone, England's sweat-slick hipbone pressed against France's thigh – still in uniform, of course, who would get naked in a trench when opened buttons are entirely sufficient? – and England's breathing is shallow, dragging, as torn from his chest as France's own.
"That was not unpleasant," France says.
England snorts into his shoulder. "If memory serves, it was much faster than last time."
"I was only thinking that you would prefer not being distracted by the next artillery barrage," France tells him, and puts his hand in England's matted hair. And takes it out again, in a vain attempt to avoid being further smeared with dirt and dried blood and the tacky aftermath of chlorine gas. He wipes his palm on England's shoulder instead. England, for his part, shoves him, but not hard enough to disarray them from all the places they're touching right now.
"If you for one second assume that I would ignore being shelled merely due to your ministrations, frog –"
"Oh, you seemed entirely absorbed from over here –"
The sky boils over, red-grey and seething, and where the shells hit in no-man's land between the lines the mud sprays upward in stinging, spattering waves. Even curled in the bottom of the trench, it gets in France's eyes, smears across his eyelashes and streaks his face. He curses, spits – both he and England scramble for their helmets and their rifles – England's foot lands in his stomach on the way up, naturallement -- and they plaster themselves against the trench wall.
France's uniform remains unbuttoned and the trench wall is not at all the right kind of sticky.
Then the grenades explode, and the seething of the sky drifts down to become clouds of roiling green gas. It is on them before France can remember just what he has done with his gas helmet, and everything smells of moldy hay. England is laughing, and the laughing is more cough than laugh, which is either phosgene poisoning or the simple and effervescent hilarity of being trapped, half-naked, in a trench with Germany destroying the air itself --
France cannot inhale properly, and that is phosgene poisoning, and not the image of England strangling for less and less breath through the laughter and then finally going still and leaving him here alone.
Not that image at all.
Paris. 30 December, 1940 A.D.
What little late-morning sunlight there is filters down onto the wrought-iron table and sets the foam on top of France's coffee to sparkling. There will always be garden cafés in Paris along the Champs d'Elysees, whichever of his governments holds power. France is entirely sure of that, and there is nothing precisely preventing him from sitting in this one and watching the Parisian winter resolutely envelope everything in grey fog.
He can even read the newspaper.
Admittedly, this newspaper is in German. France has some extensive and unkind descriptive adjectives for the state of German literary culture, if the front page of the Pariser Zeitung is anything to go by. It is an utter convolution of sentences, intermixed with self-congratulation and some extensively theatrical description of the current state of London after last night's portion of air raiding.
England is doubtlessly miserable. At best.
All of his city is on fire and the stones of his churches are falling down around his ears. What isn't ablaze is smoldering, mixed soot-black and the dull red of melting brick. France thinks England would lean against some wall that is truly too hot to touch, collapsed like the London Guildhall, sprawled as if he was fallen roofing beams. The soot darkens his hair and powders his lips where they fall open, softened, all tightness dissolved now. His eyes are almost shut, just slivers of glassy green to catch the light of the flames, and high on one cheekbone is a red smear that would be blood if it wasn't the raw blistering of a burn, creeping down the side of his face to join the larger swathes of crisped and rippled skin that wrap around his arm and shoulder.
If he is breathing, France cannot tell – his chest does not rise, his eyes do not blink – there is no focus at all.
France would touch him, if he was there, trail his fingers through his hair and the slick strangeness of burnt skin. He wonders what it tastes like, the glistening fluid that coats it, whether the soot changes the taste, whether England changes the taste. He could press down with his fingertips on the blisters until they burst and all the air is scented with the same charring fire that caused them, and remembering it, knowing it, would be almost like having caused them himself –
The iron curvature of this chair digs into France's spine when he shifts, and it makes him open his eyes, look at the harsh edges of each printed German word on his newspaper. December is very cold. He is shivering.
It isn't cold where England is –
He puts his elbows down onto the table, frames his coffeecup with them, and drops his head into his hands. He would laugh – amongst other things, some of which even he will not do on the Champs d'Elysees – but really, it isn't very funny.
It's beautiful. England, destroyed, ablaze – at last, conquered, even if it isn't by his hand – but conquered. But not amusing. Not this time. It might still be funny if it wasn't the Luftwaffe but instead L'Armee d'Aire. To imagine England dead and in his arms.
It might be. It isn't now, but France is laughing anyway, bright and not hysterical at all, because even if England's corpse is not amusing the fact that he nevertheless can see it behind his eyes and feel it lodged like shrapnel in his throat remains so.
He abandons the pages of Pariser Zeitung on the table to scatter in the wind and leave German phrases all over the sidewalk.