Title: Fight Like A Girl
Author/Artist: Mipp
Character(s) or Pairing(s): Belgium/England
Rating: M+ (Mature Content)
Warnings: Sexual content, violence, war setting (World War 2)
Summary: Originally written for the Hetalia Kink Meme, this version has been cleaned up and edited.
1940.
"Got a light?" England asked her, nervously rolling his cigarette between his fingers. Belgium's gaze flickered from his eyes, peering at her from beneath heavy brows, to his smart-looking clothes, and then down to the noticeable outline of a Zippo tucked into the front pocket of his shirt.
She pulled a small box of matches from her purse, struck one, and lit her own cigarette. She snuffed the match, but before England could shuffle away in embarrassment, she caught his hand and brought it towards her, using the lit end of her cigarette to light England's. He took a long drag, looking everywhere but at her.
Belgium nodded at the empty seat across from her. "Please, join me."
England glanced around the cafe a little guiltily, as though he were a married man making time with an attractive woman who was not his wife. Finally he slid into the seat opposite her. "The Germans -" he began, and then stopped.
Belgium stared at him through a haze of smoke. England tried again.
"The Germans - you can't fight them."
"You're fighting them," Belgium said softly. She listened to forbidden radio broadcasts each night from the BBC on a tiny radio, straining her ears to hear "Ici Londres", followed by the news of the Blitz and Germany's march through France and her brother, Netherlands. She knew that the Germans seemed determined to take apart London brick by brick.
"They'll crush you," England told her, and he unconsciously reached across the table as though to take her hands in his, to rub them, to offer comfort. After a moment he drew his hands awkwardly into his lap. "If you fight, the Nazis will crush you and your brothers."
"They will do that anyway, if we do not fight." Belgium thought of the Germans, well-fed, smiling. Germans packing her streets, riding her streetcars while her people walked. Germans stealing away her Jews. "I am not a young girl," Belgium said, looking for all the world like a bright-eyed Brussels university student, no more than perhaps twenty. "This is not my first war."
England's boot tapped a tattoo against the pavement. Belgium smiled; her lips were naturally red, the only spot of red in this drab world it seemed to England. "Come, let us discuss these matters in private," Belgium said, pushing her chair back and standing in one graceful movement. "I have a room nearby."
Belgium's fingers glided over the window shades, shielding them from prying eyes. She turned towards him, and he could see the long inviting whiteness of her neck, and how her hair glowed gold in the dying light of the sun. She lit a lamp; Belgium never made love in the dark.
The room was small and stifling hot, the few bits of furniture well-worn, but the brass bed was large and inviting. England eased his coat down off his shoulders, watching from the corner of his eye as Belgium placed one foot on a chair, her fingers working smoothly at the black straps of her garter and stockings. She looked up through her golden bangs, and caught him looking, and smiled. He laid his coat across the back of the chair as Belgium finished unhooking the straps on her other leg, and she stepped towards him, not touching him but only just near enough that she could feel the warmth from his body.
England leaned forward slowly, moving to kiss her forehead perhaps, or her cheek. She caught him by his tie and pulled him down, capturing his mouth with hers. Her free hand snaked up to grasp at the hair at the nape of his neck, holding him close. Taken off guard by the ferocity of her kiss, England belatedly clasped her around the waist, their bodies so tight together that nothing could have come between them - not an enemy, not fear, not barbed wire or concrete or poisoned gas.
He lifted her up, much stronger than one might guess from his frame, and her legs wound around his waist. They had not yet broken the kiss. After all these centuries, they had this moment. All the time in the world. "Christ, Bella," England murmured against her lips, carrying them across the room. His hands cupped her bottom, squeezing.
"Arthur," she whispered as he laid her on the bed. Belgium loved the sound of his human name, loved hearing hers from him even more. He stripped off her dress, taking reverent handfuls of her freed breasts (Belgium wore no brassiere) but left on her garter and shoes. She licked her red, red lips as he sat up on his knees, staring down at her. He caressed her from her hips up her legs, putting her knees over his shoulders. England closed his eyes and kissed the softness of her thigh, his breath ghosting over her skin.
He fumbled in his pocket for a packet of condoms. One rubber left in the pack, and Belgium felt an irrational pang of jealousy. She had other lovers, and so did he; he did not belong to her. She swallowed her jealousy and England did not notice. He slid it on one-handed like a professional, and slid into her moments later.
Once he was safely within her Belgium sighed, feeling herself adjust around him, welcome him. His shoulders relaxed, as though every care in the world was melting out of him, and then thrust forward. The second thrust was gentle, but there was a little more force in the third, and she hummed with pleasure, encouraging him. Beneath them the bed began to creak, singing out its love-song.
His hand flew to his face, covering one eye, and Belgium reached up and batted it away. She would not have him hiding from her now in his ecstasy. His hands gripped her legs hard enough to leave bruises, and Belgium arched her back and cried for more. She came first, tossing her head, her hair flying sweaty and wild across her face. He shouted and rocked into her, clenching his eyes shut.
England pulled out and then cleaned himself with shaking hands, wrapping the rubber in its pack and discarding it. He then crawled over beside Belgium and wrapped his arms around her. They dozed lightly for an hour, and then Belgium had to sit up to refill the lamp. He watched her cross the room and when she came back, she brought him a little book.
"By one of your countrymen," Belgium said, placing it into his hands. A French edition of Shakespeare. "Read it to me," she asked.
England flipped open to a random page and began to read, his voice strong and ringing. Belgium lay her head on his chest, listening until all the women in all the tragedies became Ophelias. She blinked her eyes, blinking away tears. All of Shakespeare's women existed only to be beautiful, mad, or dead. She wondered which of those England saw her as, or was it all three? Belgium looked at the cracked mirror on the wall, and when she saw her reflection she did not see a cadaver.
England fell asleep with the book across his bare chest. Belgium stood and dressed, brushing out her hair as she watched him. Tomorrow she would smuggle dynamite to her partisans and destroy a bridge, and with it perhaps a few hundred Nazis. Her men needed her, men who belonged to her, and none of them were named Arthur.
1944.
It was four years before England saw her again, after she gave Nazi Germany 18 days of bloody hell before she was hammered down to her knees. Belgium spent the four years crawling through forests on her belly, a .45 strapped to her chest. In the winter her men froze, for it was too dangerous to light a fire and send up smoke. She hid in haystacks, in peaceful little villages, and lost Nazis in the crowds of Brussels and Liège.
She was alive. Living on her knees was still living.
The Belgian Resistance found him in a field of crocuses, frantically trying to bury his parachute before the Nazis spied it from above. She stepped out of the greenery, wearing men's boots and a man's cap. Her lips were still so red. "Arthur," she said, even as she and her fellows cut him loose from his parachute strings and pulled him into the forest. "I said drop in some time, but not from a plane."
Green eyes met green eyes. He rubbed away a streak of tar and dirt from her cheek. "What can I say?" England shrugged. "You know how I so love making an entrance."
She led him out over the mountains, over rough, treacherous terrain that took his breath away, and was a hairsbreadth away from taking his life, too. They hid in barns at night, huddling together for warmth, Belgium singing him Flemish and French folk songs in the softest of whispers. One night England pulled her closer to him and kissed her, touching her face all over with his lips as though memorizing her through touch and taste. Belgium wanted badly to scratch as his back as he pistoned into her, but her nails were too ragged, so she caressed his shoulders and back with the pads of her fingers until they both came apart.
Belgium woke before him, as was her habit, rising before dawn. She brushed hay off of them and sat up, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest. A corner of what had to be a photograph peered out of his breast pocket, and she slid it out and held it up to the weak rays of the rising sun. It was a photograph; a torn, bedraggled photograph burnt around the edges. A blonde woman she recognized as herself smiled at her, wearing her uniform from the Great War. She turned the photograph over, and on the back in badly smudged and faded ink was written Isabella, 1917.
"Have you carried me beside your heart for so long?" she asked him. England stirred awake, blinking up at her.
"What did you say?"
Belgium stood up and offered him a hand. "I said wake up, Arthur. We must go."
It was nightfall again before she got a chance to slip his photograph back into his pocket. England had fallen asleep sitting up against the barn wall, his head nodding down towards his chin. Belgium waited until his breathing became slow and steady, and then knelt down next to him and tucked the photograph back into his pocket.
His hand closed over hers, heavy and warm. Belgium flinched, then blushed guiltily as England opened his eyes. "So you know my secret," he rasped.
"I don't know you at all, Arthur," Belgium said.
His hand caressed hers, then stroked down her arm. Belgium wondered how he could be so calloused and yet so gentle at the same time. "It's not - it's not what you might think," he began.
She looked down. "You don't have to explain..."
"It's not your body," England said, then more quickly, "I mean, not just that - Christ, your lips and your skin and - it's you. When I'm near you, I feel that I could..." His tongue flicked over his lips nervously. "I feel that I could be the man I see reflected in your eyes."
A thousand years of unspoken words and secret longing hung between them. England lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed the palm of her hand, in a motion so simple and sensual that it sent a delicious chill through her body. Belgium went to remove her gun, but England stayed her hand. "Let it be," he said. "It's part of you."
They walked together quietly the next day, sharing sideways glances from time to time like sweethearts. But the nearer they came to town, the heavier each step seemed to become; ahead lay a train to take England back to his men, and further away from Belgium. She dreaded the smoke rising from the faraway chimneys and the faint sound of a train whistle.
Once they reached the village, it was a simple matter of dodging the Citroën cars careening about the streets and any German patrols to find Belgium's partisans and arrange a ticket for England. She accompanied him to the train station, although it was not her custom, and still they did not speak. England found himself thinking that they were like the hands on a clock, doomed to chase one another endlessly, their meetings brief and blissful - but inevitable. That last bit gave him a spot of hope. It had taken centuries for him to ease this close to her, but they had centuries ahead of them, and there would not always be war dividing them.
"When we meet again," England said, even as he stepped up onto the train, "in Paris, perhaps, we'll celebrate the end of this war together. Would you like me to bring you chocolates? Nylons?"
Belgium smiled at him from the platform. "German medals," she said over the shriek of the train's whistle. "Bring me German medals taken from our enemies."
England threw his head back and laughed. "That's my girl." The train hissed, and then pulled forward. He reached out a hand, his fingertips brushing against her fingertips, and to his surprise as the train began to move Belgium ran alongside, reaching out to touch him.
"Until we meet again," she cried. "In Paris!"
"In Paris!" he agreed.
That September, she came to a tiny village carved out of the forests of the Ardennes, nothing about it notable; it had one cafe and dusty winding streets that had yet to be cobbled. A hundred Nazi soldiers were stationed in wooden barracks in the woods that surrounded the village, here to guard Russian prisoners-of-war that slaved away in an ammunition depot for their captors.
Belgium and a small group of partisans from the Armée Secrète crept into that forest, hiding in holes and pits during the day, slipping into the homes of farmers at night to get bread and milk. The long hours spent in darkness, staying silent, so silent she hardly dared to breath, gave Belgium time to think about this war. All wars. She had been invaded many times in her life, perhaps more than some, perhaps less than others. When she had been young, she had lived with her brothers Luxembourg and Netherlands. Then she had broken away from her brothers, and become a kingdom of her own. Her brothers had not wanted her to go, and had struggled to keep her. Much later, Germany invaded her trying to take her cousin France unawares, and she had given him pure hell.
Belgium wondered if she would hate the Axis Powers after this war. She did not hate her brothers, although they had tried to keep her with them; in fact, the thought of them living as she lived - under Nazi subjugation, skulking in shadows, afraid to proudly fly their own flags - tortured her in her nightmares. She did not hate Germany for what he had done, not even for Ypres, for the endless fields of poppies. Belgium was not sure she could hate him now. In ten years, in two hundred, in a thousand, would they be friends? Would they fight side-by-side one day? She almost felt she was betraying her dead and wounded by thinking this too shall pass- but hadn't her lost soldiers dreamed and prayed for the end of war? Didn't her people ask her for peaceful borders and healthy children and good harvests, not bombed out cities and harvests of broken enemies?
Belgium thought about this all through the long lonely night, until just before dawn, when one of her partisans wordlessly signaled for her to move. She slipped from her hideyhole, following along behind her men to the ammunition depot. They ambushed the German guards, slitting throats while Belgium sabotaged the Nazi trucks and planted a small bomb in amongst the ammunition equipment. That done she went back outside, motioning for her men to fall back, but before Belgium could follow a young German walked around a corner and came right upon her. She looked up, catching a glimpse of his face - a broad, open country boy's face - and quick as the snap of a whip she was on him, smashing her rifle against his temple with all the force in her body. He groaned as he slumped to the ground, but Belgium pressed her rifle to his mouth, warning him to be silent. It would not do for his companions to overhear.
She glanced over her shoulder to make sure her partisans had made it out. The German stared down the barrel of her rifle, and he trembled. "I forgive you," Belgium told him, just before bringing her rifle down against his head again, sending him into unconsciousness.
At the same time, England was rolling into Brussels. It was almost more a victory parade than a war march; Belgian civilians lined the streets, cheering on his men, schoolchildren chasing behind the tanks, catching chocolates and chewing gum and oranges thrown by the British soldiers.
The British took Brussels without incident. The Nazis had slunk away upon hearing of their approach, and two days later the British liberated Antwerp as well, where they were met with wild jubilation. Flowers rained down upon them; beautiful girls wept and kissed their liberators; children waved makeshift Union Jacks. England searched for her face in the crowd, showed her photograph and asked in broken Flemish and French and Dutch if anyone had seen her, Isabella.
She had to see the cities he would return to her. She had to.
"Your lady," said a pale young man with large dark eyes, "she is en la Resistance, yes? Armée Secrète?"
"Yes, yes," England said, betraying his excitement in the way his eyes lit up and his hands shook as he grabbed the young man by the shoulder. "Do you know her? Do you know where she might be?"
"L'Armée, they attack les allemagnes as they retreat en Mons et Jemappes et Quaregnon- look for her there, you will find her there."
It did not take long for England to commandeer a truck and head out onto the roads, following along behind the retreating Nazis. As he drove, he saw the mark they'd left on the landscape, the farmhouses burnt in SS reprisals, the shell casing littering the road. He floored the pedal and drove hell for leather.
He did not really believe the Nazis could kill Belgium, not now, but he did not want to risk it. Their kind were tougher than humans, but none of them had ever been shot in the head before.
Not far out of Quevaucamps England could hear gunshots in the distance. As he approached, the scene was just as he suspected: Belgian partisans attacking a column of retreating Germans. A body lay in the road in a puddle of blood mixed with muck and grime. The Belgians shot at the Germans from the forests, and the Germans returned fire even as they retreated.
England's truck squealed to a stop. "Bella!" he yelled, heedless of the flying bullets. "Bella, I'm here! I've brought you Antwerp! I've brought you Brussels!"
More gunshots, then the Germans rounded a corner, and the fire ceased. The Armée Secrète must've realized they hadn't enough bullets to kill them all. The forest fell silent for a few nerve-racking moments, and then a voice called, "Arthur?"
"Bella!" England plunged into the undergrowth, fighting his way through brambles and the grasping branches of trees. Suddenly he was surrounded by a group of Belgian partisans, still holding their weapons warily, staring in open amazement at his uniform.
Belgium stepped out of the forest. Somewhere she had lost the small pistol she had worn strapped to her chest a few months ago; now she carried a Sten gun - one of his guns. Her hair was cut short to the nape of her neck, and held back by a green kerchief that matched her eyes. He found himself unable to breath.
"Is it true?" Belgium walked up to him, touching his face with the tips of her fingers. "You have freed Brussels and Antwerp?"
England drew a shaky breath. "I came for you."
1945.
They were together in Paris.
England and Belgium held hands as they walked through the streets. Paris was shell-shocked from its recent occupation, and the Parisians were weary and oddly subdued, but still it was a romantic city, and no one blinked an eye at the sight of a British soldier hand-in-hand with his blonde sweetheart.
England looked smart in his uniform, while Belgium wore a faded red dress several decades out of style and a cap sporting a long feather. She felt so young and carefree that she wished they could be the couple they appeared to be. England had freed her, but the war hadn't been finished for her then - when her brothers went free it was as like the sun breaking through storm clouds. Belgium had a feeling that the look on her face when she looked at England was very similar to the look she saw her brother Netherlands give Canada every time he walked into the room.
They'd just left a cafe when the raindrops began to fall. Belgium opened her bright yellow umbrella and held it over them. An arm slipped around her waist, and England pulled her closer to him. "Wouldn't do for you to be soaking wet," he told her.
Belgium sighed and rested her head against his chest. "My hero," she murmured.
England snorted softly at that, and Belgium looked up at him with one of her mysterious smiles. The rain sounded like the clapping of thousands of hands, as though all those they had spent these long years suffering for and fighting for were applauding them. "You deserve applause," she said aloud before really thinking about it. England must've felt her stiffen, and when he looked down her cheeks were flushed.
"You weren't talking about the umbrella just now, were you?"
Belgium didn't feel like answering, so she kissed him; it worked every time.
I couldn't have written this without the following sources:
"Agent for the Resistance: a Belgian saboteur in World War II" by Hermann Bodson.
"The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe" by William Hitchcock.
"Shot down and on the run: the RCAF and Commonwealth aircrews who got home from behind enemy lines 1940-1945" by Graham Pitchfork.