Notes: For a "meeting at a masquerade ball AU" prompt. This ended up not actually being AU excepting the nyotalia bit and it's more like meeting again at the ball - this is probably some time after these two meet in Paris under these sorts of circumstances:
nyo!france - the iconoclast darling of 1830s Paris - wears a man's suit, sleeps in til two in the afternoon, gives readings in the best salons, and collects beautiful oddities such as
nyo!poland who's neither as fragile as she trades on nor as worldly as she pretends to be, whose occasional concerts and mingled good humour and endearing earnestness for her lost cause enchant absolutely everyone...
cue passionate flirtation. france is simply desperate to draw her into all sorts of disreputability.
Anyway! On with the fic. I should say that 1) Poland could be in a much worse mood with France right now (but she's just here to dance) and 2) France is romanticizing for serious for all she's worth but then what do you expect.
For an instant, she is truly frightened. Immediately after that, furious.
But this time the gloved hands over her eyes are gentle, only teasing. Warm breath, a voice like a purr and the smell of cologne… "Poland. I had no idea you were in town."
Poland's shoulders relax. "You totally did, though. Hello, France."
"…yes, of course I did."
France takes her hand and spins her out by her fingertips, her white tulle skirts circling. They hold a moment gazing at each other, eyes twinkling behind their masks.
"Darling girl," France murmurs, "will you dance?"
France is the perfect partner, extraordinarily easy to dance with. Poland inclines her head and steps back into her hold.
"So," Poland glances up and down France's lavish doublet and hose affair, "is it Marianne or François today?"
"Tonight—" As they take the next step, she pulls Poland in close, body-to-body, with a hand on the small of her back and leans in to whisper in her ear again, "Don Giovanni."
Well, it is not as such an accurate costume: a legendary Spanish libertine by way of a Mozart opera as viewed on the Paris stage. But France is powerfully attractive whether in man's or woman's attire, and never more so than now. She stands tall and handsome in acres of velvet, blood-red like the mask, with her chestnut hair piled and pinned up under an impressively plumed hat, with a cloak that swishes and boots that are frankly epic.
She is exceedingly pleased she wore this costume tonight, for Poland.
"Oh, obviously." Poland's smiling and probably rolling her eyes.
"And who might you be?" France asks, releasing her back into a looser hold, "In this delightful filmy nothing…"
(Fingers play down Poland's rib cage, leather on silk, into the curve of her waist to rest on her hip. So near, her body is warm and thrumming with life.)
"…obviously, I'm a clockwork ballerina."
She has an outsize metal key sticking out of her back, like a knife between her shoulder-blades. It is some ingenious costumiers' paste effect, only affixed to the construction of her bodice, and yet in horrified fascination France can't resist…
"—It doesn't turn," Poland says.
Of course. "The effect is superb,"
The effect is unsettling.
They step on through the dance.
"And the last time I saw you, you were dressed as a lancer."
Ballerina doll? Toy soldier?
"Yeah, but that wasn't a costume," Poland says a little reproachfully. Let's not talk about this now.
"You were splendid," France says, and leaves it at that.
(Who are you, really? France muses. When you're in Paris you seem a dizzy girl who lives on air and macarons and floating phrases of music. Dancing. It's braving of Providence. But then: mounted on a charger, proud and pitiless. In either case, she's fighting for her life. Facing oblivion with wonderful panache.)
"…well, you're not so shabby yourself," Poland admits. "I always like the François suits."
"My town, my rules," France declares. "Jealous? I could put you in touch with my tailor. You do make an insupportably beautiful boy…"
Liminal. Is the word. A threshold, a doorway-person. Between male and female, youth and maturity, this world and the hereafter. Everlasting and endlessly frail, like the flowers of the fields.
(You can't look objectively at the situation and think it likely that Poland will come out of this alive. However, you still wouldn't want to bet against it. A girl at tipping-point. A nation in extremity. Don't push her. Life thrums—)
She dressed as a clockwork dancing girl. But try to twist the key in her back and the mechanism won't go.
"How are you doing, in general?"
Held fast and stepping through a dance, face half-covered, breathing quick and measured, Poland is more reasonable than usual. Any other time she'd snap at the insipidity of the question.
"I…" she starts, and her mouth turns down at the corners. "Oh. You know. The same, only more so? We tried again. We'll try again soon."
(She dressed as a clockwork dancing girl! You can twist—they had her by the hair and twisted her arm behind her back until she was blind with the pain and sobbing—but she still will not dance to your tune.)
Oh gallant and unhappy nation!
Oh ill-starred Félicité.
It's difficult to know what to say.
France kisses her just as the music comes to its final cadence.
"Oh, hey," Poland mumbles, and afterwards: "You missed me, huh?"
"I missed you. Very much."
In the crowded room, loud the sound of their breathing. Poland adjusts her mask.
The musicians strike up again in 3/4.
(Poland claims all polonaises everywhere that ever were or ever more shall be.)
"Listen," she exclaims, and grabs France's hand. "Listen, they're playing my tune."
(The echo of her name will never fade, as long as there is dancing.)