Paris, 1940
France hates her. He hates her because she is so much like her sister in all the wrong ways, with her serious air and her complete lack of elegance. Everything she ever does is practical, even more than Prussia, and she walks with a resolved, mannish stride that seems to be the new way anyone ever wins wars nowadays. France closes his eyes for a very brief instant, and he tries not to think about the red hot anger that flows through his veins. Now is not the proper time, nor the proper place, to let her know how hard he wishes he could kill her in her sleep.
They're in France's apartment. He hasn't moved to Vichy, not yet, because the city still feels like an open wound over his chest. He remembers running, and he remembers hating himself as he wiped the blood in the corner of his mouth, feeling something inside him break as he'd heard that they had made the red, black and white flags float in the Champs-Élysées. Now it's over. They meet at last.
Germany isn't like three decades ago. There's something new about her, the blue of her eyes that has grown colder, the shape of her face that has lost the soft pudginess of youth, and she looks like the kind of determined killer that Prussia once was, before the world caught up with her and made her pay for everything she did to it. France wonders if they will have one of those angry, hateful fucks, their clothes still on and victory written all over Prussia's face, if she comes to Paris to gloat. Somehow, he doesn't think they will. Times have changed. Prussia has changed, and the last war has destroyed her.
"J'aimerais savoir si vous aviez bien réfléchi au sujet de notre arrangement."
France winces internally. Germany's grammar is perfect, but her accent is thick and ugly, and he would tell her to shut up if he hadn't been in his current position. Suddenly, he misses dealing with Austria, or Russia, before he went crazy with great ideas about equality and freedom like France did, so many years ago. At least she's not making him speak German.
"I did," he answers simply. "Thoroughly."
"Fine. I'm glad that I can rely on your entire cooperation."
She's so young, he can't help but to think, still believing that the likes of them ever had choices in whatever was happening to them, that he maybe didn't wish to dance over her corpse while singing La Marseillaise. Germany looks out the window, the Seine that flows its smelly, muddy water through the city, and she's fascinated in all sorts of way France will never understand. France hates this city, has always had, in a way, the grey skies and the mean spirited, angry people, and he'll never truly understand everyone's fascination with it. He sighs.
"Do you mind if I smoke?"
She does. France knows she does. It's because of that dumb, crazy new boss he hates so much that told her to, and because of Germany's desperate need to follow orders, always. Prussia made her that way, France knows, and he can imagine the both of them now, going through the last decade with resentment and anger about the last war, about the millions of dead men in the trenches, and the feeling that all of this could have been avoided if Prussia hadn't got drunk with power and wished so hard to destroy France a second time around. France doesn't feel sorry about any of this, not any more than England or the rest of them.
"Not at all." Her voice doesn't waver, but she's nowhere near as good a liar as Austria. Different times, different styles. "Please go ahead."
He does as he's told, slipping one between his lips and carefully putting back his pack of Gauloises back in the inside pocket of his suit.
"How is your sister?" he asks matter-of-factly, even though he knows that he's sure to get Germany uncomfortable, a little bit. "I'm surprised she's not here with you."
"She hates Paris."
It's because of 1918, most probably, and of France's last words to her, the triumphant yet tired smile on his face, and the cough in the back of her throat that wouldn't heal.
"And you don't?"
He grins around his cigarette, and she tilts her head to give him a look that isn't anger but that isn't what he had expected it. She's not angry, or even piqued. There's a serene, quiet kind of retreat in her face that isn't what he'd expected. She's young, but she isn't as stupid as France had thought first. Maybe it's true, that the last three decades hardened her into something that isn't quite what Prussia had intended her to be, such a long time ago.
"No. I don't hate it. It's beautiful."
France doesn't believe her for one minute, but she did spare the city a war this time, picking humiliation as a better fit for him, and he isn't sure if he doesn't hate her even more for it, in a way. She isn't Prussia, and she is everything that is wrong with Prussia, now France knows.
He chuckles, crushes his cigarette in the ashtray on the tea table. Then, he rises to his feet, approaching her and the window, putting his hands on her large, muscular shoulders. Her skin is warm, sunkissed from the physical training she puts herself through every day. She doesn't respond to the gesture, not right away, still looking out the window with a stern, concentrated look. Prussia must have told her about France's ways, but she's not actively pushing him away yet. She is so young and it makes him want to see her cry.
"Tu n'es pas venue ici, seule, dans mon appartement, juste pour me parler de la pluie et du beau temps." His lips ghosts over the taut skin of her neck. "Comment tu veux que je te baises cette fois-ci, mon petit coeur, à quatre pattes sur le sol comme une chienne ?"
The wall hits the back of his head, but that's not what makes him dizzy. There's something blocking his windpipe, pressing with the strength and the unforgiveness of steel. Germany's hands are over his throat, and there's a very real, very dangerous spark of anger in her eyes. She is like Prussia, but she isn't like Prussia like that, obviously, and France wonders if it's because she hates him that much or if she's once of those women that prefer other women.
"Ruhe!" Her voice is trembling with anger, switching back to German out of rage, and she's tall, now that France thinks of it, taller than Prussia or Austria, and deadly in a way that he's never seen before.
France's vision is too blurry for him to see anything, but he can hear Germany's voice, low and lethal, with that same atrocious accent in measured French.
"Talk to me like this one more time, and I swear I will break you just like I broke Czechoslovakia, Poland and the others. This is my final warning."
She lets go of him, and he falls on the ground, powerless. France hates this, hates bowing down to a girl that isn't even past her first century and already half insane with a bad case of dictatorship mixed to a healthy dose of sister complex. He hates how powerless he feels, how he's left to wonder if he shouldn't do things like Austria and let this new century swallow him whole without even trying to fight back. Their time is slipping between his fingers, and he looks at Germany's tall, powerful form as she leaves his apartment, her heavy boots making her steps lose all kind of grace or elegance, even though he's sure she never had any to begin with.
He stays there, and looks out the window. Outside, he can see, no, feel, those same heavy steps reverberating all over Paris, the sound of an occupied city.
"J'aimerais savoir si vous aviez bien réfléchi au sujet de notre arrangement." = I'd like to know if you've had time to think about our arrangement.
"Tu n'es pas venue ici, seule, dans mon appartement, juste pour me parler de la pluie et du beau temps. Comment tu veux que je te baises cette fois-ci, mon petit coeur, à quatre pattes sur le sol comme une chienne ?" = You didn't come here alone just to chat. How do you want me to fuck you this time, my darling, on all fours on the ground like a bitch?
"Ruhe!" = Silence!