NOTES: (This is in the same timeline as my other France/Poland stories - don't especially have to have read them; in the story Poland stayed with France in about 1796, after escaping his imprisonment after the the Third Partition.)
In the time since then, we've had Napoleon, and the Polish Legions who fought for him all over the place, and the short-lived Duchy of Warsaw he established. And the restoration of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth which did not remotely in fact happen.
And now, France has just kicked out his monarchy and replaced it with a new one (July Revolution) And Poland is just about to kick off against Russia (November Uprising.) Eh, it's not as history-y as it sounds - more two people dealing with the fallout of all this on their relationship. Or, failing to deal.
Paris, early Autumn 1830
The difference in Poland's appearance isn't just the clothes, although they're a part of it. The perfect polish on his shoes. The fine dark-grey silk at his throat. Everything about him is polished, fined, focused. He even looks taller, and slender not like a reed but like a blade. There's grace still in his movement, but gravity too; he doesn't flit, he strides, pacing out his territory. No longer a stray cat, but a wild one. (France is staring and doesn't care; his eyes drink in the sight of that body in motion quite unashamedly.)
Right now, Poland is prowling around France's reception room as if inspecting it.
"It's the same," he says, sounding surprised.
"This place? Yes. I don't feel the need to change everything every year or two."
"Don't you, though?"
"Now, now," France chides, "don't you start. Why, what did you think it would look like?"
"You might have moved to a palace. I thought you'd have thrown all the furniture out of the window."
France laughs. "The nearest barricade was a few streets away — and I did throw furniture, just not my furniture. I could take you on a walking tour, tomorrow. Are you staying the night?"
"If it's alright with you," Poland says with a shrug, as if he doesn't care one way or the other. Maybe he doesn't. This exquisite young man is no longer France's beloved stray, no longer his anything, if he ever was.
"Certainly!" France says. "To what do I owe the pleasure, incidentally? There is nothing... official I should be aware of?"
"I'm nothing official, remember?"
"You know what I mean."
"Nothing special. Just wanted to see a friendly face. And on that subject — there are certain topics we are not talking about. Unless I say we can, then it's fine. But I didn't come here to be miserable and stressed out."
"How charmingly Absolutist you are today!"
"Those are my terms," Poland says. "If you don't like them then I'll tramp. But I think you'll agree — I think you're really happy to see me."
"Of course I agree!" France exclaims. "It is marvellous to see you — what heartless use you make of my affection."
"Yep," Poland says cheerily. "Heartless, stateless, helpless, reckless and friendless, that's me."
"Not that last. And as for "helpless"…"
"Aha!" Poland interrupts and taps him abruptly and imperiously on the chest. "Yeah, now you're straying into the proscribed conversational territory. It's nice to get these things clear at the outset, isn't it?"
"Well then… what shall we talk about?" France is happy to humour him; the pleasure, the almost intoxicating pleasure, of his company is all he needs.
"Oh please," Poland says, "Haven't you ever heard of small talk? How are you, how is the old place — how's your piano — how's your king? — or should that be who? — joking, calm down. —And as for mine (I'd reply), why he's apparently the Tsar of all Russia, and isn't that a puzzler, still, mustn't complain. The weather's clear; do you think we'll have a very bad winter?"
"Stop, stop!" France protests. "Have mercy. We can't discuss such weighty matters as the weather without coffee."
As he prepares the coffee and they sit down to drink it, he lets Poland do most of the talking.
There's another difference. Before, Poland had been like a spoilt princeling disinherited and horrifically ill-used. His cutting remarks and harsh words all-too-obviously came from a place of his own pain. Now, he's been thirty years a soldier, and is accustomed. The sparkling, jagged edges of his conversation are still there, but perhaps the callousness he only affected before protects him.
There's very little actual news, and a lamentable lack of court scandal these days. France is reasonably certain by now that Poland hasn't come to challenge him to a duel or set fire to his house, which is charitable. So, small talk, unless Poland dictates otherwise.
"I was thinking I should try being a republic," Poland muses. "Since they were all punishing me for anti-monarchist sentiment anyway." He adds slyly, "But, I guess you're not the person to ask about that anymore."
"Go easy," France says, holding up his hands in mock surrender. "Anyway— Louis-Philippe, King by the grace of Barricades… it's a promising start."
"Do you think it'll last?"
"I think…" France rubs his chin, "that we must have faith in the Future."
"Did you always avoid answering questions?" Poland asks abruptly. "I don't remember."
"Well then, neither do I…" France replies. "I'm starting to think you know me entirely too well."
"Probably." Poland fixes him with a look and raises an eyebrow. "It was better when we were these enchanting strangers to each other, do you think?"
"My dear, you remain to me as enchanting as ever."
It feels like a bit like a fencing match.
And Poland apparently decides to forfeit. He looks down. "I still like you," he says in a small voice. "I think you've been a bit of a bitch," - he handles the words too carefully for them to score a hit - "but I get that you didn't necessarily mean it."
"…Let's go to dinner," France says gently, magnanimous or craven in what doesn't feel like victory.
—
Sitting opposite each other gives a good excuse to keep staring at Poland. Poland doesn't even notice most of the time, looking down at his food or around at the other diners. It seems he's only trained himself to hold eye contact, rather than the habit coming easy to him.
"I like this…" France indicates the long thin line down Poland's right cheek.
"You like it?"
"Aesthetically," he clarifies. "It looks like a duelling scar."
"Sure, only that would imply I got a weapon too."
"You didn't?"
"Not by then, no." He looks at France like he's being terribly slow and sighs. "1815?" He raises his glass in ironic toast. "I guess you were busy. It makes four times they cut me up. You were all way more civilised this time, but after a point it just gets so samey." Poland touches his face fretfully, or perhaps theatrically. "I don't know why this is still here."
France thinks he knows. Poland is holding onto the evidence, displaying it for all to see. I exist, his scars say, not as some intangible idea but as a physical reality. It's the same with his manner, his clothes, his gait - definite, determined, in touch with the earth. I exist, I am — and the hurt you do to me isn't a fleeting nothing. He isn't letting anyone forget this time.
He isn't letting me forget, France thinks, that I failed him. Poland's marked face accuses him like nothing that's actually been said all evening.
—
Wine and candlelight conspire to relax the rules of conservation.
"Russia's getting just super-annoying at the moment," Poland admits, as he clears his plate. "Guess I'll have to do something about that pretty soon."
France feels a pleasurable tingle of apprehension, like the calm before a street battle. "What exactly are you planning?"
"That would be telling."
"Don't you trust me?" France teases.
Poland looks right at him then. "I do. Repeatedly. That's kind of been the problem. I want dessert, please. And talk to me about barricades."
—
The topic of barricades: their construction, upkeep and defence, sees them cheerfully through the rest of the meal and the journey home.
A nightcap, and all of a sudden, it's much later than they'd realised, and France says he'll decamp to the study for the night then, like last time Poland visited.
"Uh," says Poland. "You don't have to."
France holds his breath.
"If you're offering me the bed, I'm definitely accepting, it's a nice bed. But, you don't have to inconvenience yourself or anything." He clarifies, he does clarify, with another flash of his old flustered, unguarded appearance, blunt to the point of rudeness to avoid sounding needy: "I don't want to sleep with you. I mean, I just to want to sleep."
France thinks, It's not that I've gotten under his guard even once this evening - a couple times he's just let it down.
A whisper of colour appears on Poland's cheeks, but he meets France's eyes as he says, "I thought, I might try not being alone at night. Being with a friend of my own choosing." Then he adds, with a glance aside and such calculated coyness that it thrills France's old rogue's heart, "…'course… you might not be interested anymore…"
"Interested?" France says, "don't you know by now how you fascinate me?"
Poland smiles and takes his hand, and all the heady mix of what he's long felt for him comes over France with refreshed potency.
—
From the start he'd loved him, and pitied him; wanted him still. Wanted to set him free, but also to hold him here, to keep him close. To save him but also to enjoy him. To see Poland vindicated, and to see him grateful.
And hadn't he come so close to achieving all these things? He'd made Poland so many promises (or almost made them, which is perhaps worse) through the years when he'd strode out across Europe with his Emperor, taking, subduing, remaking. Promises he'd come so close to keeping.
—
Poland takes France by the hand and leads him up to his own bedroom. They wash and dress for bed, and France re-enters the room to see Poland standing by the casement with his back to the door. Poland in the low light, wearing some of France's night clothes, which are too big for him — and incidentally, what an enduring fantasy this fulfils — looking out on the city, and waiting for him.
Yes, France desires more, something beyond what Poland is willing to give — they both know this. But it doesn't matter. As he takes him in his arms, it doesn't matter. As they stand, entwined, in the lamplight and moonlight by the window in France's room, there is no question of 'enough', it is more than he had any right to expect, and what a privilege. He simply glories in the warmth of him, his scent, that very physical reality and weight of his body, the texture of his lips when they kiss, which they do. France keeps himself in check, but allows himself to feel his wanting, to luxuriate — just a little —, like a hero of a mythic courtly love affair, in the consideration of the sweet forbidden. Holding Poland almost as close as he ever wanted, France hears him whisper: "I missed you."
—
He knows objectively that the comparison he's been making all along to Poland's visit in 1796 is a false one, overleaping the intervening years of hopes and dashed hopes and honour and political expediency. Because Poland isn't only the beguiling urchin drowning in a stolen coat, not only the brave boy who'd finally opened his heart and half broken France's that day in the Paris sunshine. Thirty years a soldier. He's the cavalryman that trounced England at Albuhera. He's the friend that France first betrayed to Austria at Mantua.
France kisses Poland again, deeper and more demanding. For a moment, Poland kisses back, eager, inexpert, but only for a moment.
—They come so very close.
After all, it seems today's breezy nonchalance is only another suit of clothes for Poland to try, and suddenly the disguise slips. He goes frozen in France's arms, neither responding nor resisting. France withdraws at once but Poland makes an inarticulate noise of distress and clings tightly to him.
"A friendly face," France repeats, waiting a little before he returns the embrace to give Poland time to leave if he wants to, "that's all. That's fine. Whatever you want."
Poland nods sharply, but doesn't let go.
"What is it?" France asks. "Were you remembering.."
"Shh, shh—" Poland presses his hand to France's lips. "Don't."
A shudder runs right through him, and when after a moment, he peeks up again, and twists a lock of France's hair in his fingers, the atmosphere in the room has changed utterly.
"I know what you want," he whispers, green eyes burning low fire. "I wonder… would you hold back if you didn't still think of me as a sweet martyred wretch who isn't able to defend himself…?"
"You are no such thing," France breathes. The quiet is oppressive. He draws his thumb down the scar on Poland's cheek and elicits another shiver. "You are an angel rather, flame and sword and vengeance… I am fortunate your brightness doesn't blast me to the marrow…"
"You didn't answer the question."
France smiles bitterly. Poland is apparently proof against poetry, but he has other weapons, and he does begin now to feel himself under attack. He feels tired too, and frustrated, and not just quite sober. All of which partially explains but does not excuse what he says next, what he murmurs soft and sensuous by Poland's ear as the fingers of one hand close in the boy's hair.
"Would you tease like this if you didn't trust me?"
Poland extracts himself from France's hold and backs away. He sits down heavily on the bed.
"Evidence suggests I probably would, yeah," he says.
France feels cold and ashamed.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."
"Well." Poland shrugs. Composed again. Determinedly pitiless. "I started it. I didn't mean it to be— I'm not really myself right now. I did miss you. As in, you, like this, in person and not — not at the other end of an order to go and die pointlessly in a tropical pandemonium—"
"Don't," France pleads before he can stop himself; he tries to call the word back, too late. "…Alright," he says miserably. "Let me have it."
"I don't want to!" Poland thumps his fists on the mattress. "I told you! Not now! For one thing, it would take quite a long time, what I could say to you! I mean, I could have told you it was cold in Russia! But I want… I want it to be like back then— no, that's such shit, I am never— I wish. That we could be friends… with no cloud between us."
The wrenching sincerity draws an answer at once. "Are we not friends?" France asks. He can't bear it. He wishes he hadn't said what he said, wishes he hadn't made promises he couldn't keep, wishes he could have kept those promises. And he wishes it wasn't so late, that they had drunk less and that he could think more clearly, could order the imploring words that flow forth. "Let's pretend, just for one day, just for this night, let's pretend it's all right — like you said — maybe it isn't all true but we hurt no-one by so doing, let's start again—"
Poland brings him up short.
"I am hurt," he says, very quietly. "I… have been hurt."
France starts forward towards him, all concern and chivalry.
"I mean by you," Poland says. "No, listen. I'm saying you gave me hope, and it hurt. And I can't thank you enough. I think I could rage and cry and throw things at you for about two hundred years before I was through but what would be the point? I wanted to kiss you and, I even thought, maybe, you know, find out what all the fuss is about — but apparently I can't. I — have been… I'm not—"
France sits down beside him, eyes closed in pain.
"There it is," Poland says after a moment.
"There it is," France echoes. What more can be said?
He puts an arm around Poland's shoulders, the grip familial, comradely, seeking as much comfort as he's giving. He feels his own mouth quiver as if he will weep out of sheer exhaustion.
"Will you…" he says hoarsely, "play me something, on the piano? I have missed that."
Poland laughs, breathy and incredulous. "Piano? I could, I suppose… Alright. Sure. Only… your neighbours…"
"Should think themselves honoured."
He cracks a small tired smile. "You don't know what I'm going to play yet."
"…I would suggest something dolce e tranquillo rather than con fuoco, but it's your choice…"
"Yeah, alright. Alright, I have a couple things. Hey." He leans against France. "Hey, I'm pretty tired - you're probably gonna have to carry me back upstairs."
"I think I can agree to those terms," France whispers.
—
(And tomorrow, they will take the little walking tour of where the barricades were, and France will suddenly wonder just how practical Poland's interest is. And then, at parting: Look after yourself, Poland. Be careful with Russia. But Poland will only scoff, Don't you give me advice, France, specially not on dealing with him. No grand gestures or promises this time? Maybe better not. But, you'll be around if I really need you, won't you? One last searching, unsearchable look into France's face. Hey — wish me luck. I'll see you soon. And France will be left uncertain, with that gnawing cold inside like premonition, like remorse.)
—
But tonight. Tonight, Poland gifts France a prelude, two nocturnes and a melancholy, meandering improvisation during which he does nearly fall asleep and off the piano stool.
And France is able to keep his promise, and catches him up in his arms when the music ends. He carries him up to bed, holding on round France's neck, mumbling nonsense.
They lie together the whole night through. Sleep covers them as snow covers unquiet graves.
Notes:
Here's really hoping I haven't made any too horrendous historical missteps... This is about the Hetalia characters, and particularly how they were relating (tragically wistfully romantically) when we last saw them in the other fics, thinking about how everything that's happened might affect that relationship.
Napoleon famously spoke very highly of the Polish troops and they were very loyal. But he was probably promising, or sort of implying that he was promising, more than he was really going to deliver in terms of restoring Poland as a kingdom, getting Lithuania back etc etc. Polish Legions (later, the Vistula Legion) fought seriously all over the world on France's side at this point (Haiti was really, really bad.)
The Duchy of Warsaw, created mostly out of territory re-taken from Prussia, existed 1807-15, ending after the whole France-invading-Russia thing. Not an independent kingdom, but it felt like it could be heading that way, and basically seen as much better than Congress Poland which was the Russian thing that happened after The Congress of Vienna in 1815. It's going to get a whole lot worse for Poland after the failure of this uprising he's just about to have in 1830-31
So I've got Poland here as somewhat conflicted in his attitude to France. (The two sides of opinion are nicely represented by two war heroes at the time, Dąbrowski (the Legions' most famous commander, he in the anthem) and Kościuszko, c.f. America, and also the namesake of the very awesome 303 Squadron in WW2, who thought all along France was just using them and never meant to be any real help.)
France's new king really was sometimes styled as king 'by the grace of barricades', and at first the people who'd got him into power had high hopes, but were disappointed. (The events of Les Mis are only two years later, when a (less popular) movement tries to get rid of him, don't succeed, spoilers. But then 1848 comes round and he gets booted out!)
Poland's scars are purely my imagination and him looking like a dashing legionnaire + theorizing about when and how nations might get and keep scars.
Further headcanon thoughts. There are supposed to be "rules" for treating fellow nations, like rules of war (and sometimes they get broken to pieces, like the 30 Years War and a lot in the 20th C). But (cf Triptych especially..) Russia, Prussia and Austria were considering they had license because Poland wasn't a real nation anymore - this is an unusual situation so (the utterly terrible excuse would run) no rules now apply. Which would be one reason Poland is so keen to maintain his identity and not disappear again.
France's "would you tease me if you didn't trust me", by the way, is Not Okay.
What up Yeats and Stevenson, thank you for letting me plunder your pretty phrases...