AN: Hello all! I am Escritoria, the fangirl responsible for this humble fic. I decided to write this particular fic because this pairing is possibly the best thing ever and I love it :D I love the idea that France is really a sweet and kind person who had a scarring experience, so that's what I tried to explore in this fic. He may seem pretty OOC, but that's because this fic pretty much embodies my headcanon that, had Jeanne lived, France would have turned out a lot differently.
Also, advance warning-you might get whiplash from the POV switches. This chapter is the most spastic, so it gets more normal from here on out, but when things get dramatic expect to be seeing through many eyes. Oh, and if you get lost, the way characters address each other should show you whose perspective it is. England uses France and Joan, France uses France and Jeanne, and Jeanne uses Jeanne and Francis. England is always England, though xD
Please leave me a review if you liked it, or even if you didn't! All feedback is much appreciated :)
The waters of the Seine River flowed past, gurgling cheerfully and dancing with lights under the summer sun. France could remember the days when this river had been much cleaner, but it had never ceased to produce that happy noise and flash with brilliant color every time he came to visit. The birds sang cheerfully, and the city nearby bustled with teeming, vibrant life.
He hated it so much that he wanted to rend it into shreds. If he could have cut this cursed river out of his hide, he would have.
But it didn't work that way. What happened to his country affected him, not the other way around. Cutting into his skin would not erase this cursed river.
And so the river flowed on, as it had since before he could remember, never ceasing. Never offering an apology or even pausing to comfort the man who represented its land and people.
France stared at the river, burning its image into his memory. Jeanne had no tomb. The surging waters were her headstone, the waves the dirt gently enfolding her form. He visited her here every year, on the anniversary of her death.
Everyone in the city knew the legend of the man who came, without fail, to sit by the river's edge on the thirtieth of May, staring into the tossing waters for hours. People speculated that he was a ghost, this man who never aged and continued to appear, year after year after year. No one had any idea that he'd come for the past six hundred May thirtieths, only failing when an international crisis called him elsewhere.
Only one other person on the planet knew of France's annual visit to the watery grave of Jeanne d'Arc. His name was the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and he had killed her.
o~O~o
England hadn't known then how much it would hurt France. Of course, he had known that Joan was important to him, and that had made her valuable. She was a chink in his armor. More than that, she was a symbol of hope to his people, and that just could not be allowed.
England had never seen France cry before that day. In fact, he'd never even known of anything that could mean enough to France to make him cry. As a nation, you learned that things and people were replaceable. When the flow of time left you untouched, it made the humans and objects around you seem so trivial. Here one day, gone tomorrow, a vapor in the sunlight, a bloom consumed by the fatal breath of winter.
But as they scattered her ashes into the Seine, and France arrived just too late, England saw tears. France had ridden his horse to death trying to get there in time to save her, and then he'd nearly run himself to death once his horse collapsed under him. Still too late.
"No," he'd moaned, staring into the water, his face a mask of shock. England had never seen a man look as feeble as France did as his knees gave out and thudded to the hard-packed earth. "She can't… I… No! No!" He crawled towards the river, tears beginning to gather on his eyelashes. "You can't have! No! Jeanne!"
A wordless roar of pain blasted from a chasm of loss so deep within France that England had to step back, away from the terrible noise. He was aghast. The two of them had been fighting for one hundred years now, but as France screamed his misery to unforgiving steel-gray skies, all England could remember was all the times they had been like brothers. They never failed to come to each other's aid when they needed it. Their royal houses were so intermixed they were almost like one. They were more than allies—they were friends.
And he'd killed Joan of Arc.
England never forgot that day. It was impossible. The destitution, the loss, the sheer force of the sorrow he'd seen from France that day was impossible to erase. He could never take back what he'd done, and he could never atone for causing a living person that much pain. It was not the murder he regretted—it was what he had stolen from the living that was the true atrocity. It was an irredeemable sin, what he'd done in killing Joan of Arc. Perhaps in the eyes of God it was not beyond forgiveness, but even if God was willing, England refused to forgive himself for the pain in France's eyes that never truly went away after that day.
o~O~o
France had never hurt so much. People had fleeting lives, he knew, a handful of years. But he had never thought that Jeanne's would be so few.
He had forgiven England—how could he not? He loved England too, as a brother. He could not allow Jeanne's death to steal from him a lover and a brother at once. So he forgave.
o~O~o
England didn't want to be forgiven. He wanted France to blame him, so that he could have an excuse to get angry and not feel the weight of the guilt he had borne all these years, a weight he could not give up. France had forgiven him—so why didn't he put down the burden that felt like it could rival Atlas'?
Because he deserved it. He deserved the weight of his sin pressing him into the earth, reminding him that everyone failed. Everyone was a monster in their own way.
For example, England was a murderer. He'd ripped France's love from this world, erased all the years they could have spent in happiness.
o~O~o
Of course France wished for Jeanne back, but what was past was past. She would have died some other time, some other way. He knew Jeanne would have appreciated the death of a martyr more than lying in bed, wasting away.
But he had so little time, so little time. Maybe if she'd died in bed, he could have held her hand and kissed her brow as her weary heart labored towards its rest. He would have stayed, no matter how old she grew. Maybe if she'd died like that, with his hand in hers, he could have been satisfied. The years she'd lost could have been filled with kisses, touches, words that would never be. They could have been married, and protocol be burned. A nation had never married, but he would have. For her. Marriage was a holy sacrament of God, and she was nothing if not a Godly woman.
If only she could have lived. She had so much left. He had so much left. So many words unuttered. So many things they had never gotten to do together. No nights breathing in synch, pressing darkness to dawn with each exhale. No summers of wildflowers and oceans, of breezes full of campfires and pine trees and fireflies. No…children? Was that possible? Her children, his children. France had never had much fondness for children, but their children… That might be what he missed most, of all the things he'd never gotten the chance to miss.
o~O~o
There's a difference, England thought, between knowing there is death in the world, and having been the one who delivers it.
o~O~o
Nations killed. It was the way of things. Wars happened. People died.
o~O~o
But… A woman. It was so hard. Nowadays weapons were different. A woman could shoot a gun as well as a man—but the power necessary to put pain into a sword or into blunt fists was reserved for men. Joan had not been strong enough.
o~O~o
France had always admired Jeanne's strength. What if there was only one? If every person had only one soul mate, did that count for nations as well? Only a girl, she had been, but she would have been a woman he could love forever. Beyond her flesh, beyond her body, he loved her soul. It had been stolen from him.
Is it good to be free, Jeanne? Is the flesh truly so ugly compared to the soul?
He was trapped in the flesh, and she was a spirit. It was the truest definition of star-crossed love. A love that transcended centuries and even the grave.
o~O~o
Spellbooks, a whole library of them. England had been building up his collection since that day.
o~O~o
France wondered if Jeanne still loved him from Heaven, as he still loved her from Earth. "This is where I belong, Jeanne," he whispered. "I make mistakes. I'm not a saint like you."
You were too perfect for this world. Too perfect to be anything but dead.
o~O~o
Spells, thousands upon thousands. Magic was more widely practiced than people believed.
o~O~o
"Jeanne!" France still woke screaming from nightmares. Had she suffered, burning? Or had God delivered her from the pain of the flames?
o~O~o
Just one spell among those thousands. Like a needle in a haystack, but he needed that needle to lift the weight of the sky off his soul.
o~O~o
Sometimes France doubted God's mercy. But he could understand why He would want Jeanne at his side. France could fault no one, not himself or Jeanne or England or even God, for her death. Death just happened. That was the way it was.
o~O~o
Everything was fluid. Even time, even the grave. If you could get permission.
o~O~o
"What do you want, England?" France asked, not looking up from the watery grave where he mourned his love. The river flowed with his tears.
England paused, as if surprised France had heard him. He should have known. Even when France was in a pensive mood, even though he pretended otherwise, he was no fool. Those who wrote The French Republic off as a fool often found that they had been sadly mistaken.
A moment of silence. Then, "I found a spell to bring her back, France."
France looked up, and his heart began to beat again.
AN: In my head that last scene seemed like a movie or something, where you could actually hear the heartbeat :D I hope everyone else got that breathless sort of anticipation there. Thanks for reading and reviewing!
