Winter is about to fall over Paris, and France's eyes glint with something that might have been happiness if he wasn't feeling so tired and weary from the war. There's this ugly cough in the back of his throat that won't go away ever since he came back from the frontlines, and he treats it the best he can with Gauloises and all the fine drink he can get now that he's back in the capital. It's an ugly day, but fall is always ugly here, grey skies and grey people walking, talking, living fast, short lives. It's a brave new world and a brave new decade in front of them, and he idly wonders if Prussia has stopped screaming, back in Versailles where he left him. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he hopes that he hasn't. There's something delicious in seeing an old enemy hiding himself to die.
Paris is ugly and there are too many Americans here, now, so it doesn't really feel like Paris anymore. France should be mad about it, the same way he's sometimes still mad about this atrocious metal monstrosity Eiffel put up on the Champ de Mars decades ago, but he isn't, not yet. There's a war that's just been won, and he knows that it's not because of him. There's a boy in the body of a man crying because of his brother's ambition and signing papers without even reading them. It's Germany's first real war. France might or might not get this odd, sadistic pleasure of seeing it all end in the same place he lost his last emperor and dignity back in 1871. It's Germany's first war and the real star of the whole mess is missing. France did ask England as to America's whereabouts, but he had only received a bored stare and a dismissal gesture of the hand. England hadn't celebrated victory the same way France had, maybe because it hadn't really been his war to begin with.
It's a surprise, really, to find him here, or maybe it shouldn't. America is America, and he can't smell the bodies buried beneath the ground under their feet or hear the echoes of the guillotine doing its incessant, mechanical work the way France does. To him, this cemetery is just another cemetery, and the stench of blood from years that have gone by can't bother him. It's a kind of horror that belongs to another century, different from the inhuman stench of men dying in line in winter coats and soaked trenches. It's a kind of horror that belonged to the old world and the old ways, a kind of horror America has never seen and hopefully never will. The souvenir strikes him, hard, the screams of the people and that elegant lawyer with Rousseau under his arm and ideas that would make kings fall and men die.
France forces himself back to the present, back to 1918 and the 20th century. America's just standing there, looking at the tombstone with this empty, empty look in his eyes, and France can't help but to be reminded of England, somehow. They're both terribly alike, in a way, and it makes France mad. He doesn't let it show, walks close to him, gives the tombstone a passing glance. It's painfully obvious, now that he think of it, that America had loved the human in a way France never could, never would. Lafayette with an American flag. Fucking typical. He sighs, tries to put words in a way that don't sound too awful.
"Cigarette ?" he offers as he lights himself one. France has always been good at diplomacy.
America shakes his head negatively, smiles a tired smile. He looks so deceptively young when he does that, and it scares France, in a way. He saw him, back in hell, back in the trenches, how he fought Germany and how they both had that same glint in their eyes that lusted for power that had so far been reserved to the likes of France, England, Russia and Austria, long ago.
"I kept telling myself to come and visit the guy, one of these days, you know. But I never did."
France takes a deep breath, exhales smoke slowly. America shouldn't be dwelling over the past when there are dead Germans scattered all over the borders and a bright future for the one everyone knows truly ended the war. He should be looking at his own hands, at all the power everyone except America himself knows they now hold.
"He came back, you know, to the states, to my land, and yet whenever I saw him, I never really could tell him how grateful I was for everything he did for me," America continues, his eyes still focused on the tombstone. "I wanted to write him something in French, you know, because he was one of yours after all, but he died so fast..."
France gives him a commiserating smile, because he can't bring himself to say anything that won't be incredibly rude. It's funny, how time affects memories, and how France can't help but to wonder if America really is talking about the same man France might have known, a long time ago. Lafayette is no hero in France's heart, has never been, fighting for ideas that had never really been France's and thinking into terms that always felt somehow foreign to his ears. He lets America talk about the war, the other war, the one that belonged to another century and another continent. He doesn't want to listen too closely, really. He knows it'll make him mad if he pays too much attention to it and remembers how he wanted to strangle Necker every time the minister with the king about the financing of this war in the Thirteen Colonies France wanted nothing to do with. America is too young to remember the basic rules of the exchanges nations like him have, and he opens his heart like that, like it doesn't matter. It makes France grit his teeth.
"I don't know what he'd think of all of this, of me coming here, paying a long forgotten debt. Here I am, a few decades too late, I'm afraid. Lafayette, nous voilà."
France listens, takes deep breaths from his cigarette, tries, tries his best not to let it show that he really wants nothing more than to squash it over America's eyeball for being so stupidly thick and self-centered. It's a brave new world and even Russia, with his barbaric ways and freezing winters, even Russia is changing now. France cannot do everything he wants anymore. He closes his eyes, smiles around the filter of his cigarette. It tastes bitter.
"Times change. You're not the backward isolated colony you used to be."
"Yeah, I guess," America laughs softly, without emotion. "Times do change. Let's go."
There's an underlying hardness to his otherwise detached tone. Maybe he knows it the same way France knows it, that the world is changing after four years of restless, pointless war. There's room for new blood, even though France cannot, will not accept it. America turns around to leave, and France has no choice but to follow him.
The war is over and there's Germany crying bitterly over his first real defeat. Russia is screaming about ideals and changes now. It reminds France too much of another epoch where he was the one pushing for those exact same things.
They leave the cemetery in silence, and France takes America out for a drink, more for himself than for the sake of being a good host. The new century opened on a war, the greatest war that had ever been, the war to end all wars, and yet he couldn't help but to feel that all the Societies of Nations would never stop that small, nearly imperceptible glint of greed from lighting up times to times in the eyes of the ones who had just woken up to consciousness. There's America and his formidable war machine, and France can't help but to hope that Prussia hates himself for starting this whole mess. He probably doesn't, but his brothers probably do it for him anyway, Bavaria with his unchanged resentment, Saxony with his quiet anger and now Germany, with soft words and glances from ice-cold blue eyes.
Lafayette is dead, and so are the kings, the emperors and the relics of a time that has been gone for so long, or so it seems for France. The new century has this very distinct smell, and it hangs in the air of Paris in November. It smells American.