The Frenchman shoos the salesmen away to the counter with a gleeful wave of his hand, and his blue eyes fix on something, somewhere, far away. "Do you remember when you had the Olympics at your place, ma belle?"
He offers her his arm, she wraps hers around it. "I wanted to help you...but I couldn't. And then you had dinner with la sourcils." France's face, his expression, is still smiling, but it hardens, somehow, and some of the ice seeps into his tone. It makes a little spark of something tremble in Belgium's gut. "You do not know how much that hurt me."
A beat of silence passes between them, and then Giselle mock-punches her father on the arm, her pretty mouth open in an outrageous laugh and her green eyes scrunching up, blurring in hysterical tears.
"Ohoho-! Father, do not tell me you did all this because - because you thought I was in love with el diablo?"
la vie en rose. life through rose-colored glasses.
hetalia (c) hidekaz himaruya.
Francis walks languidly, gazing past the marionette puppeteers lining the street. If he thought long enough he could still remember clearly when he was still an empire, when he had his children in his arms and clutching onto his hands and clothes as they watched the string puppets twitch one way of another with a flick of a wrist. For some reason, he found himself missing those days.
Which was weird, since now that he had his darling daughters by his side, he should not be thinking of such dark and gloomy matters. He should be happy. He should be content. Now that his cheriés were here with him, Francis should be on top of the world. But as he walked with a sight that caused all they crossed to stop and stare openly at the odd sight - with Giselle and Angelique in each arm, with Anh Linh sulking sullenly behind him and Charlotte casting longing glances to the direction of her home, where presumably some gambling event was going on as usual, he couldn't help but wonder.
Have they really grown that far away from each other?
She's always going to remember the dress.
It is speckled in the pattern of a peacock's tail; orange on her waistline, fading to yellow and green and blue, and purple where the hem grazed the dressing room floor. The belt, cinching the flowing fabric at her midsection, glittered golden under the fluorescent lights. Anh Linh did have a problem, though, with how the neckline descended almost to her waist, but the dress came with a camisole, so she didn't get as disturbed by her father's fashion sense as she was supposed to be.
"You look lovely, ma cherié. Your father's daughter indeed." France took the girl's hand and gave her a little twirl, the flurry of color reminding him of a peacock in flight if there ever was one. "I think you should so wear this to Mathieu's party."
Vietnam's frowning face slowly turns up into a smile, which dissolves as fast as it appeared just as she glimpses the price tag for the first time. She never thought that a piece of fabric, even one this pretty, would have so many zeroes tacked on it.
"...mademoiselle." The older blond calls out to the saleslady smiling behind him with a little wave that bought a flush to the girl's face, "I will be taking this dress for ma fille, so I shall pay, oui?"
The brunette frets and tells her father that it is not at all necessary, but Francis simply smiles and pats her gently on the head. "Humor me, mon cherié. After everything we've been through..." The perpetual smile falls from his face for a moment, and it reminds her of everything that has passed and what should have passed between them (if she should, she could have been her Papa's girl forever, but she couldn't, she never could be), and her mood dims just a moment before her father regains his composure and says: "...let me be your papa for a change."
Vietnam says nothing, but she allows the older man to press a kiss to her clumsily coiffed hair.
Belgium is not one to haggle, or back down from luxury goods, but there is something about how France is taking random Louis Vuitton items and stuffing them into the hands of the disgruntled salesmen that opens up a little hole filled with flutters in her chest (the global recession, maybe?) and say "papa, what are you doing?"
Francis smiles and says, "I heard that cher Daniel's 'pets' made a mess of your precious luggage," but it was only a backpack, i was backpacking, the Belgian adds mentally, "when you came to visit him. So here, your papa is taking care of it." The mountains of brown and gold in the salesmen's hands resembles a sparkling Mount Everest, one about to explode from its sheer weight alone. "Call this my way of making it up to you, oui?"
She is about to smile, but still she wonders. why are you making it up for him, papa? isn't australia england's-"papa," Giselle sighs, yet this makes Francis happy, for she is the only one of his daughters who willingly calls him 'Papa', (not Frog or Stupid Francis or anything close to what England's colonies or Spain's Romano call their masters) - "You do not have to do this."
The Frenchman shoos the salesmen away to the counter with a gleeful wave of his hand, and his blue eyes fix on something, somewhere, far away. "Do you remember when you had the Olympics at your place, ma belle?" He offers her his arm, she wraps hers around it. "I wanted to help you...but I couldn't. And then you had dinner with la sourcils." France's face, his expression, is still smiling, but it hardens, somehow, and some of the ice seeps into his tone. It makes a little spark of something tremble in Belgium's gut. "You do not know how much that hurt me."
A beat of silence passes between them, and then Giselle mock-punches her father on the arm, her pretty mouth open in an outrageous laugh and her green eyes scrunching up, blurring in hysterical tears. "Ohoho-! Father, do not tell me you did all this because - because you thought I was in love with el diablo?" The smaller blond clutches at her stomach, as if she's just heard the joke of a lifetime, the ends of her red hair ribbon swishing back and forth. (Sometimes, Francis forgets that ma petite giselle was just as much Spain's daughter as she was his.) "imposiblé!"
France huffs in a way that is unbecoming for a suburban Frenchman with four adult daughters. "But still, mon angel, I was not pleased. Never do that again, okay?" Giselle merely laughs, takes both of her father's hands, and tiptoes a pack on France's forehead. Still, the mirth that had clouded her expression did not escape his sight, and so he is not surprised when she says: "I did not know that all it took was angleterre to finally get you to notice me again, Papa. Maybe I will be having dinner with him more often, si?"
"again. I said never do that again."
"So how much are the shoes you've been staring at in the window, ma princesse?"
"excusez-moi?"
Angelique, now that France takes another look at her, is but a child - dark hair tied loosely behind her head in a pair of pigtails, the hat over her head blocking out the sunshine her tanned skin soaks up like a sponge, her slipper-clad feet lending a bounce to her gait. Immortal she may be, but she is still young, rambunctious, as much as a lady as Sealand would ever be in his lifetime. Too young, that is, for the abundant amount of male attention his citizens have been throwing her way, Francis thinks with a snarl, his hands gripping on her shoulders lightly, as if with them he could shield her from the world.
In order to keep his mind of taking every man who dared to leer at his little girl by the collar and killing them with his own two hands, Francis thought it best to spare the shoes on the window display another look. It was high-heeled, with golden soles, and shimmering blue ribbons held them to one's feet. Not the ideal shoes to wear in a sandy island paradise like Seychelles' house, but France only gives his daughters the best, and nothing else, and since Angelique had been looking at them for some time they must be the best, and so he smiles and takes her hand, bringing her into the store.
She sits on one of the ottomans in the store, watching as Francis winds the blue ribbons around her honey-skinned legs. "Why, they fit you perfectly, ma belle séchelle." With a final knot, the older blond ties the remaining length into a bow a few inches shy of the back of her knees. "Just like la cendrillion- just without all the scheming and the hurt, but with more love than could feed an army!"
Seychelles looks at him cheerily and smiles; France feels that his heart was about to burst. Oh, how he wished it was true. But Angelique's life did have scheming, it did have hurt, it did have angleterre barging into her house and screaming that she was his, it had the typical tearful goodbye scene as she was wrenched from her papa's hands. Ever since he laid eyes on her and called her Bourdonnais - and even then he had forgotten her - she had been treated worse than Cinderella in the stories, more than a fictional noble forced to do the dishes; Angelique was a nation's princess, forced to be a slave in her own home and watch her people die by the sword of one who called himself her "Papa" and the other, her "master".
And so there is nothing left to do but melt in the sunshine of that smile, and say "Oh, ma belle princesse, I've missed you." France presses his hands to both sides of her face, pressing his pale forehead to her darker one. "I am never going to let you go through that again. This will be your - our fairytale."
"I cannot comprehend how you think trinkets like these will make me happy." Monaco says, nonplussed about the jewels scattered about her as her 'father' puts on different pieces on her ears and neck and wrists and fingers and hair for her to see. "Simply preposterous."
Poker-inspired jewelry is, for some reason, all the rage in Paris these days, and if there is one thing that France's sanest, most serious daughter loves more than anything else in the world, it is poker. And so the glass boxes France holds are filled with ruby hearts and diamonds, clubs and spades fashioned in onyx, set in cards encrusted with plump, glowing diamonds, along with 'poker chips' in every possible precious stone.
"But it looks absolutely darling on you, mon coeur." Francis coos, raises his hand to flit away a small speck of dust from his trump card, his last offering. The bejeweled hair clip shines a rainbow over Charlotte's long blonde curls (she should really keep her hair out of that frumpy braid more often, he thinks, but that is an opinion, merely an opinion), and he keeps that in mind as he hands her the looking-glass. "Here, see for yourself."
Monaco's blue eyes move with a bored air to them as she looks in the mirror and suddenly, she understands. The diamonds are red, and they sparkle in the artificial light, plump and glittering like monsieur españa's tomatoes. They are fashioned in the shape of the emblem of her Papa's favorite suite - a heart. (After all, he said that he was the country of love, so well, it fit perfectly.)
Vietnam, the oldest daughter, has always been ma cherié, his dearest, the mother-figure for the little girls in his dysfunctional, cobbled-together family. Belgium was ma belle angel, his angel, who he still watched over even when she built a house with her brother, stayed by Spain's side, and held England's hand. Seychelles, ma princesse, was his princess, who he slew the English dragons to save. And Monaco, Charlotte herself, was mon coeur- his heart; the daughter most resembling him in appearance but the farthest one from him in terms of attitude, but still, always and forever, his heart.
As to why she was the "heart", Monaco never knew, and even if a quick inquiry right now would help in clearing that up, at this moment, with France's blue eyes crinkling up into a smile behind her reflected in the mirror as he sees her lips turn up into the first real smile she'd made in decades, she has enough sense not to.
Not yet, anyway.
A hallway in a little-known Swiss building, leading to the meeting room that holds one of the most secret meetings ever. This is where France senses the otherworldly aura of the blond in front of him before he reaches and grabs the other man's backside, while winking at a cleverly-installed security camera some seven or eight feet above. (That read, strangely, 'made in the USA'.)
"Fu - For crying out loud, Francis!" England swats away at the offensive hand, wailing and screaming as the Frenchman merely laughs and says something about how he liked that the other man shouted his name to all and sundry, as Arthur simply turned into one cursing, raging English mess.
"Get your stinking bloody mitts off me, you wanker!"
Francis laughs and withdraws his hand, but not before pursing his lips up to give a flying kiss to the direction of America's DSLR whose flash echoed in the hallway a few moments after. As soon as Alfred, with a gleam in his blue eyes, said with complete and utter satisfaction, "Hey, great! Thanks, Francis!" Arthur had directed his attention to his paparazzi son instead, which was good since it meant that he didn't notice France stealing one last pinch from the Englishman's unfortunate rump, and which was bad since the shorter blond nearly tripped over poor Canada in the process of wringing America's neck.
He sighs at the sight, running a hand through long blond locks. Dysfunctional the Kirkland family may be, but a family nonetheless. Through all the wars and secessions and bad trade relations they had stuck together somehow, in their "special relationship". He liked to think that he was a part of it, that he was a part of something, really. But when he sees dear sweet Mathieu laugh at how Daniel is holding both Arthur and Alfred by the ears, yelling at him in his Australian-accented voice about how childish they were, and for the love of God shut up already, France is reminded about how he had to sell Canada, his nouvelle france away to save his empire, and how it was l'angleterre who watched him grow up into a proper Nation, and not him, who had prided himself into being the proper, perfect French papa.
He may give them the world, but he wasn't there when his children included him in theirs. He may spoil them with gifts, but it won't change the fact that he spoiled their homes with visions of war and blood and conquest. He may say that he loves them, but it won't change the fact that he left them in the hands of another, just because he didn't need them.
France is about to cry now, but there is suddenly nothing else, no Arthur or Alfred or Mathieu or Daniel, nothing else but four pairs of arms clinging on to him, holding him close, and something solid and rectangular pressed into his gut. He is about to say "what is it now, ma cherie - " when his voice is drowned out by four jubilant squeals of "joyeux anniversaire, papa!"
Of course. Even Mathieu, his darling little Canada, walks forward, pressing a small beribboned box into his father's hand, the one that he hid in the thick folds of his winter jacket long ago. His sisters - of course they were his sisters, they were his children after all - pull him deep into their hug in the middle of the hallway, and it is the combination of smiles and warmth and - and finally, their love that pushes Francis to the edge once and for all.
He cries. And for once even England could not think of anything else to say, and they both smile.
The 'solid, rectangular box' is actually a photo album, he finds out when he gets home that night. The cover is decked out in sequins mirroring the colors of his beloved tricolore - sapphire blue, ivory white, ruby red. The pages are filled with pictures, some maybe taken when the cameras were first invented, some reproductions of portraits done centuries ago. There is a sketch of him lulling Giselle to sleep, one of him picking up Angelique from the ocean with a worried look on his eyes, one of him teaching little Charlotte to gamble, and another, quite amusing, shot of how, when Anh Linh first laid eyes on the man who called himself her papa, she had taken a nearby paddle and used it to smack him full across the face.
It was obvious that the girls had spent much time on this. There was even a special set of pages for reproductions of his letters, where the girls had taken different colors of markers and gave 'answers' to Francis' prior statements. Vietnam's red lettered scribbles chided him for always, as she said, 'depending' on his scuffles with England for his 'meager happiness', hinting something with "Well, 'Rie told me before, that when she lashed out on Alfred for barging in her house, America said that 'the more you hate the more you love', so the feeling's mutual after all". France smiled and filed it away for future reference when England would lash out at him too; and she was right, she was his daughter after all and it shows, somehow.
Monaco had used plain, simple, black marker, her clipped-off sentences reminding him of telegrams, as if she was only forced to write and hell, she might as well write something for the sake of it. Belgium used green, with little hearts and bobbles, and her rounded handwriting used both flowing French and English. There was something, though, with how Seychelles used blue hearts to dot her blue "i"'s that made him smile; she was just a girl after all.
There is, at the last page, after all the scribbles and sketches and pictures and memories, one last xerox copy. It is a zoom-in focusing on the end of one of his letters - he did not know who he wrote it to, for it is the sentence that ends all his letters to his daughters - with different colored markers in different handwriting scribbled not too hastily under it, as if the girls had planned to make this their best reply yet.
France had written, in his ancient, formal, curlicued script: "je t'aime." i love you.And further below, above and around it were his daughters' handwritings, saying the exact same thing. It made his heart burst.
Further below, is the last picture. It is the one a random tourist took of them at the Avenue des Champs-Élysées; the one where Vietnam wore her dress, long as it was; the one where Seychelles has jumped to showcase her pretty shoes, where Belgium held up an array of Louis Vuitton paper bags; where Monaco, who usually didn't like getting her picture taken, had smiled with her eyes sparkling as much as the hairpin on her hair, loose from its usual braid. And in the middle of everything was him, smiling, looking for all that cared like the happiest man in the world.
And hell, he thinks as he gingerly closes the album and touches a hand to Mathieu's gift, maybe he just was.
though i know i'll never lose affection for the people and things that went before
i know i'll often stop and think about them
in my life, i love you more.
fin.
FOOTNOTES:
~Viet is wearing a dress from Alexander McQueen's collection which I saw somewhere on the interweb. And Sey's shoes were the one that fem!France was wearing in VIVALALIXI 's nyotalia fashion sketches.
~ I don't remember if Belgi spoke Spanish. I don't think she does. Sorry for that little mistake. Y'see, I ship SpainBelgium...*hides*
~In Belgi's bit, the 'dinner' France is referring to is based to a fic for HETALIA_CONTEST 's week 21 prompt "haircuts", entitled cropped. And maybe, I thought after reading MITHRIGIL 's and PUELLA_NERDII 's never before's fourth part, he has reason to be worried.
~Circa 1742 or so, Seychelles was once named Bourdonnais, after the guy who first set sail on her shores. In 1746, monsieur Bourdonnais was kicked out of his position, and so in 1756, they re-named her Seychelles. According to the fic snapshots in history, which is a pretty awesome read.
~And yes, I do ship FrUK. It is FALLENANGELKAT 's fault. I was also supposed to put in some FACE family interaction here, but I was told to focus on the daughters.
~Also, reviews are lovingly accepted. ^^"