Mirage, Heart of Fire, Live Together Die Alone, Motherland, I See the Light.
For the FrUK anniversary thing! First one-shot I've finished in a very long time.
British Bulldog
Summer 1944 – Fall 1945
The first camp he tried was Fort Barreaux in Isere, South-East France, but that was just a waste.
From there he went further south, skirting the border between territory Italy had carved out of the French landscape and what remained of the shambled republic and puppet state. There was word of him at Aix, but only that the man who'd inspired an escape a year before had been shipped off north to Paris.
It was horrible to take good, fighting men away from the front to do all of this, but at the same time liberating camp after camp was rewarding in its own way. Arthur Kirkland- no, the British Empire, would not stop until he found that useless, good for nothing, beaten-to-a-pulp French Frog.
Fort de Romainville was a woman's prison, but sure enough hidden in the documents the German officers had thrown about but failed to burn: Francis Bonnefoy appeared on the roster. He'd only been there for two weeks back in '42, but when General Kirkland read that the prisoner had been 'Executed via firing squad prior to transportation', he ordered his men out of the room and stayed in there, alone, for a solid twenty minutes.
When he left the office looked no different, save that he'd painstakingly picked up every piece of paper and stacked them orderly on the straightened desk, and he'd torn down the Nazi flag and spat on the black swastika. He'd ripped the document with France's name to pieces, stuffing one of them in the front left pocket of his uniform.
At Seine-et-Oise; another office, another torn piece of paper. He'd caused a prison riot and been executed by another firing squad.
At Drancy, Monsieur Bonnefoy was responsible for seeing sixteen of his fellow prisoners, including one complete Jewish family, escape into the night. He'd also been shot in the head when, instead of making a break for it with the last of them, he'd stayed behind and grinned and chattered mindlessly at his German captors. Idiot.
After Drancy Arthur had to cut his escapades short, leaving one of his bulldog commanders in charge of liberation operations. The British Empire couldn't spend the entire war with his nose to the ground tracking down a stupid fop! He had to keep that idiot America focused on Germany (not an easy task with Japan making all kinds of noise in the Pacific) and make sure Russia could handle his two front war along with China shrieking for Japan to let Korea go (years later, Arthur would regret not getting involved here.). There was also Canada, Australia, India, Egypt, New Zealand, and all the dozens of other nations running around for the Empire to co-ordinate and direct across Europe and Asia.
He left Italy for his brother South Italy to deal with, sending Canada and several others to make sure they came up and knifed Germany from the south. Russia was moving ever closer, swallowing Poland and several others as he advanced (only a few months later Britain would deeply, deeply regret not getting involved here).
This was war, and they were finally winning, but it was still a war. Two more pieces of paper came his way via telegram (he tore them like the others, his pocket was getting full), but it wasn't until he received a third telegraph, again from the Drancy camp just outside Paris, that the British Empire and Arthur Kirkland started bickering again.
"America!" But there was only so much bickering to be had, because the simple fact was that any progress was good progress towards Berlin. Furthermore, the territory of Alsace was one France and Germany had bickered and fought and punched and stabbed each other over for decades.
"Dude, Britain, seriously I-" America hadn't lost that bomber jacket in the months since they'd landed in Normandy. Standing under the winter sun now in his tan fatigues and directing servicemen and supplies, he stuck out in the small French town they'd established as a regional checkpoint on the road to Berlin.
"Forget what I said this morning." Arthur stated, expecting to be understood.
"Huh?" The blue-eyed boy was just staring at him, slack-jawed and confused as his gaze searched Arthur's face, then fell to rest on his hands. "Dude, why're you-?"
"If you're worried about Canada and our men in Italy then go. Forget what I said; go and make sure he and Romano have the support they need to take back Rome." Rome actually wasn't the strategic point they were hoping to capture, but right now Arthur wasn't interested in specifics for an entirely different front. He cared about the Western Front. He cared about the Franco-German front.
"Woah, hold up." No! No holding up! Get the hell over to Italy! "Britain, what's with your hands? Why're you doing that?"
"Doing what?" Oh, doing that. Arthur scowled down at his own hands, frowning as his gloved fingers ripped and tugged and tore the yellow paper carrying the information he'd been waiting for, the stroke of good luck one of the boys going through the Drancy files had found for him.
He'd ripped a jagged line across the page, then cut out a long oval with his fingertips. With one more tiny twist, Francis Bonnefoy was liberated from the telegraph and quickly vanished into the palm of Arthur Kirkland's hand.
He squeezed it. He squeezed the name so hard he thought his gloves would pop a stitch.
"Nevermind, America. I'll take those boys out to Natzweiller for you." That was where Arthur had told America to go; a town right near the Franco-German border. He'd said forget Italy and focus on attacking Germany instead, and now he was taking it back.
"Um, but they're mine..?" The men? They were American so why did Arthur want to take them? Because- Well, he-
"We don't have time for this, America, do you want to help your brother or not?"
"Of course! But why are you-?"
"Alfred!" It was an error, a mistake, a faux-pas as the Frog would say, but Arthur shouted America's human name outside, in public, in broad daylight, and he couldn't have taken it back even if he wanted to. The British Empire had felt himself slipping steadily and weakening drastically as the war carried on, but he wasn't so broken as to avoid another nation's gaze (especially not the Yankee's!). So why couldn't he meet it? Why couldn't he look the stupid boy in the eye and go 'yes I called you that you stupid git now go away!'? Why?
Why?
"...You know where he is, don't you?" Whatever the reason, it was probably the same reason why America didn't call him on his mis-step, that would come later. When had the balance of power shifted this far in the boy's direction?
"I know where he might be."
"Then I'll see you in Berlin, England." England he said. Not Britain: England.
Not the British Empire anymore.
Winter, 1945.
'I can't fall before I find him...' Britain, England, Arthur, whatever his name was he refused to fall until that idiot Frog paid for this wild-goose chase.
The Natzweiler-Struthof camp was another Drancy, only it was worse than Drancy.
It was bigger.
It was dirtier.
It was claw-marks on cell walls, and it was rotting flesh, and it was a chamber with large vents that none of them, British, American, or French Resistance, wanted to know what it had been used for. It was a crematorium and it was store rooms filled with ceramic jars Britain warned the men away from touching (not that that stopped them, not until they found one still open and filled with ash.) One of the younger soldiers, a Jewish boy, wept openly when they realized what they were looking at.
It was also abandoned, just like Drancy, and this time the officers had done their job and set fire to the main office.
Arthur found himself back in the crematorium before he knew he'd even started walking, horrified with himself for picking here to hide, but later it made sense.
Later, after he'd screamed out his anger and smashed the oven to pieces with a lead pipe he'd picked up. Anything he could grab he threw across the room, anything he could damage he shattered and bent and twisted until it was unrecognizable. He only stopped because he felt a crippling pain in his side when he tried lifting something too heavy for a normal human to bear: his power was slipping away like the smoke clouding the London air, like the ash dribbling from the shattered body of the oven.
'I am the British Empire...' Maybe, but not for much longer. 'I am the British Empire, and he's the Third French Republic.' No, actually, he was Vichy France, the Third Republic had collapsed back in- 'I am the British Empire, and I will find you God damn it!'
Instead, one of America's men brought him a folded scrap of yellow paper, heaven alone knew where it had come from, but it was folded and folded so many times that it was a miracle the boy even thought to bring it to him.
It was a paper rose.
Arthur was torn between cradling it and burning it, because he hated the gesture. Instead he did something even worse: he pulled apart the petals to reveal the single word written inside, a word that had been scrawled using the burnt edge of a wooden pencil:
Dachau.
April 29h, 1945.
He'd been avoiding India for weeks, not to mention the rest of his colonies. He couldn't look at them, could hardly speak to them, it caused him too much physical pain. They knew he was getting weaker, they could feel it in their bones the same way he could.
The Empire was collapsing.
But they were winning the war.
"Any day now, those Germans'll call it quits."
Rumours were already circulating that Hitler was dead, shot in his bunker or maybe a suicide, and Germany had already pulled out of Finland. Canada had recently reported via telegraph that Italy Veneziano had finally turned up in their search of the north: he'd shot Mussolini and several others on a northern road, then waited for South Italy's resistance members to find him by the bodies. Japan was still fighting like a dog in the east, but America kept dropping hints about something he was working on at home.
It was almost over.
Arthur didn't want anything to do with fighting anymore, he just wanted the war to end. He wanted to rebuild his cities and gather his scattered children, reunite families and put food back on their tables. Real food too, not dehydrated rations and butterless, milkless, meatless packets of something-or-other.
"Sir! Dachau has surrendered!"
Arthur had been sitting with the American 5th Division commander he had travelled to Dachau with when he heard the news. They were in Southern Germany, far from Berlin, but still contributing to the over-all campaign by simply being here. When he heard those three words (four, counting the "sir!"), suddenly he didn't mind the butterless, milkless, meatless life he'd been living for six years.
They'd been pressuring the Dachau prison camp from the outside for days, they'd been camped outside of it, managing a few glimpses of the insides (sending in food, working through unsteady negotiations). It was the first camp Arthur had seen where the occupants hadn't hurried off and death-marched their charges to the next camp, weeks or even months ahead of the Allies. This was the first time he'd been this close, and now, finally, a surrender. Arthur was so happy he jumped up and gave a hoot in the air, pressing one hand over the bulging pocket on the front of his uniform, relishing in the slight push back of all the paper slips and stubs he'd forced inside.
He was so happy, until he actually entered the camp himself.
Because when that happened...
Arthur, England, British Empire...
They weren't even his people. Some of them were- there were a dozen or so of his soldiers, prisoners of war, his children, and they came out of the camp so he could see them. He heard their voices (the ones who could speak), and he touched their hands (the ones who had hands), and he kissed their faces (whether living or dead), and he saw them...
And suddenly all of those splitting, crushing pains in his bones made sense to him. Suddenly he realized that he hadn't been feeling the pain of collapse. Suddenly it all became so clear, whether it was the piles of shoes or the boxes of wedding rings, or the numbers tattooed to forearms and shaved heads crawling with lice. It made sense, and when the searches and tallies and questions put to the French prisoners all confirmed what he'd been dreading, Arthur wasn't the least bit surprised. He didn't even have the strength left to get mad and carry on, to scream or throw things, he couldn't even lift his own arms, nevermind topple bricks and posts and barbed-wire fences.
"They took a hundred-and-forty or so prisoners and death marched them south to Tyrol." One gruff looking American officer told him, and Arthur just listened and tried not to process any of it.
"When?"
"Five days ago, sir."
Five days.
"Sir, the men think the war'll be over any day now, what do you-?"
"Any day now, soldier." Arthur's reply was mechanical, his mouth wasn't working right, his head wasn't really settled on his shoulders. Five days... "Italy killed his own boss in cold blood, Japan is in slow but steady retreat, Berlin is on fire." London was in ruins, Paris was grey and empty, the British Empire was crumbling and the French Tricolour was in tatters. "Any day now."
He'd missed him by five days...
"Shall we start for Berlin, sir?"
Berlin...
"That's where all roads lead in this war, isn't it?"
In the end Arthur never did find him.
On May 1st, friendless and broken, Germany surrendered.
Arthur and Alfred assured both of those conditions. America broadcast the German surrender so loudly and clearly over Japanese airways that Kiku's response was unexpectedly harsh; a rebuttal against both American propaganda and gutless European breeding. He vowed to fight to the death.
Alfred also walked Feliciano through the camps so he could see what Germany had done to the children he'd let him ship off in vans and box-cars. He didn't make any vows, he just screamed.
Italy had been just as Fascist as Germany, it was easy to forget that with his naps and smiles, but with Fascism came a possessive nature that was easy to trigger. After all, a Fascist state operated in the belief that its citizens could only be safe and prosper if the nation controlled every aspect of their lives. Order, control, and ownership were integral, and having another state dominate and take that control out of the nation's hands...
Well.
"They were MINE!" The first post-war meeting between Feliciano Vargas and Ludwig Beilschmidt was one Arthur Kirkland made sure to watch, because he wanted Germany to hurt as much as he possibly could. "Gays- MY GAYS! Cripples- MINE! Dissidents, Communists, Blacks; MINE! MINE! ALL MINE! Catholics, Germany! CATHOLICS! I'M CATHOLIC!"
'So was he...' But Arthur wouldn't let himself think like that, he just watched through the one-way glass as a restrained Italian... whatever he was (A Kingdom? A Republic? Italy's identity was in pieces), screamed and kicked despite the chains holding him to his chair, a chair which, in turn, had been chained to the wall to make sure they didn't kill each other. Germany was similarly restrained (similarly shattered too), but he didn't so much as lift his head during Italy's assault. Alfred deemed the 'session' over when Italy lost the will to scream and just sat there sobbing.
Alfred's punishment was cruel in one way, and that satisfied a lot of Arthur's lusts, but not all of them. For his own revenge, Arthur openly discussed Prussia's fate within the new German state, the half of which was being handed over to Russia. They also discussed Poland, who was in the USSR's care and who had never gotten along well with Prussia at all. It only seemed logical that there was no need to preserve Gilbert's special status anymore.
Arthur watched Ludwig listen to the broadcast when Prussia was dissolved. He was also the one who helped keep the brothers from meeting before or immediately after the proposal became law. He didn't care what Gilbert looked like, he wanted his brother to suffer.
That level of expert torture was what finally calmed Arthur's rage to the point where he could function again.
Without it, he doubted he would have survived it when an orderly came running up and handed him a tiny paper rose.
In the end, Francis found him.
"You know what I want? Wine."
"Frog."
"No no, my friend. You see I have not had wine since Romainville; the ladies there were quite nice, you know? For German women at least."
His voice was like leather: thick, dusty and dry. It was completely ill-suited to the speaker.
"Francis."
"Do you have any cigarettes? Ah, merci." Arthur produced the tabbacco before he could stop himself, still standing in the doorway to his small officer's room in the British barracks. He watched the thing that had a french accent busy around back and forth between the bed and the desk, patting its haggard assortment of coats and sweaters looking for something- probably matches for the white paper roll sticking out between chapped lips.
Arthur struck a light without waiting for the beast to ask, holding the tiny flame between his fingers and watching it lean forward until the end of the cig touched the fire.
The beast took its sweet time about that though, standing there like an idiot as the fire crept closer and closer to Arthur's fingertips. But he waited, and once he could smell the smoke from the burning leaf he snapped his wrist and spared himself from any serious burns. Even after he dropped the match-stick, Arthur just kept rubbing his fingertips together.
"Mmm, you're doing that nervous thing with your-"
Arthur punched him. One good, solid knock in the jaw with his whole body behind it, and the shaggy figure with that husky voice and those cloudy blue eyes stumbled and fell back on the floor in a heap. Arthur stood there long enough to hear a weak groan and recognize the expanding pressure in his chest before he turned on his heel and strode out, slamming the door behind him.
About twenty minutes later he was back with a trolly, a basin of hot water, a razor, a cake of soap and a washcloth all sitting on top of it, plus a covered tray of rations (Arthur's rations). He found it too difficult trying to communicate what he wanted right now so he'd settled for taking just one meal from the canteen, he doubted the beast would eat much.
He opened the door and the shaggy thing was still there, and sitting on his bed no less. When Arthur closed the door again this time he locked it.
"You're very rude." The thing said. Arthur grabbed the wooden chair from the desk and set it up in the middle of the room, fixing his green eyes on the blue ones hidden under a pile of scarves and hats. He pulled off his gloves viciously and then pointed at the chair, snapping his fingers for good measure. When he took off his hat Arthur whipped it across the room, furious when he heard a muffled chuckle come from the stinky, smelly, dirty creature that crept up off his soiled bed and sat down again on the chair.
Arthur started with his hands. He pulled the half-eaten gloves off, the mud and grime only really starting at his wrists (he must have washed his hands at some point then). Long, slender fingers had become boney and ended with twisted yellow nails. He handed the rag over to the thing while he trimmed away the yellow, just because it was disgusting and he couldn't imagine having his own hands so knobby and gross. He didn't look up to see how different the face looked without so much filth on it, tossing the rag back in the water when it was handed to him, dealing with the second set of fingers instead.
"On the road to Tyrol... if you're interested;" Five days, five days, five days... "They gave up, the Germans, they just let us go and told us to go where we wanted, wherever we could." Under two hats, a scarf, and what looked like the remains of a child's shirt, Arthur found a bare scalp that was wearing yellow peach fuzz and several patches of inflamed, infected skin. It made washing his hair easier since he just had to drape the rag over his head and (more gently than he'd care to admit) rub away the grime and pestilence.
His chest was hurting again by the time the person who might have been Francis reached up and touched his hand. He pulled away the scarves and first two jackets making up the outer layer of his body and saw the inflamed, infected skin around his throat, the places where a collar had chafed and burnt him.
Arthur left again in a huff, slamming the door just like before. He wasn't gone quite as long that time, and when he came back he was carrying a first aid kit.
"Can't that wait? I-" No, it could not wait. "Ow, ow, ow! Gently!" Suck it up! "It stings!"
"You have been through too much to tell me to stop because 'it stings'." Grabbing him by boney shoulders that should have been heavy and strong, and looking into cloudy, exhausted eyes that should have been bright and mischievous, it was too much. His nose was still the same straight nose, but it was flanked by thin and hollow cheeks, his eyes depressed too far into his skull and his beard was longer than his hair. He looked like a ghost, and the striped blue and white shirts that made up the last three layers of clothing over his skeletal body just made it even worse.
"Angleterre, I've been through too much and I'm still here."
It wasn't fair for Francis to touch his face when he said that. It wasn't fair.
"...I'm going to burn those clothes once you get out of them."
"Not all of them, mon chere, some of them I'd like to keep." Keep? Arthur felt some of his control come back as he carefully undid the buttons over Francis' chest, exposing the welts on his white skin and the grotesque cage of his ribs and collapsed stomach. Under all the shaggy layers, there was nothing keeping him together... "Some of them... the memories..." Memories...
Why a child's shirt? Why a string of lace?
"Fine."
He wore Arthur's shirt and pants once he was clean, Arthur careful to keep his body covered- not just because of the sight, but because Francis literally began shivering and shaking like he would fall apart from the cold. He was walked carefully to the bed after that and buried under the blankets, a spare one bundled up against the headboard so he could sit up while Arthur fetched the food.
"Ah, I was joking, you know?" Francis lifted a hand. "I cannot eat."
"Just try."
"Your food? It will kill me."
"America's, actually." Cracking open the tin of soup, it was chicken and rice with vegetables inside, quite salty, but he let Francis sniff the contents and watched the fog in his eyes clear up a little. It was replaced with a hunger that bellied his protests. "One spoonful?"
Francis accepted the bargain, needing a few minutes to take in and swallow the large mouthful in several bites and slurps. He didn't let a drop go to waste, and once he was done he just stared at the can. Arthur filled the spoon again without comment.
He ate another two before that really was enough, and Arthur was quick to set the can aside. He was a nation, he knew how starvation worked, and he knew how difficult it was to recover from on top of everything else... Watching Francis, bald and almost dying, sink down into the stiff mattress, eyes half-open and breath whistling past his teeth in a sigh... it hurt.
But it was okay. Arthur found himself holding the pocket in his uniform that had become a touch-stone over the last three years, but Francis wasn't quiet asleep and he was watching the gesture.
"Your heart, England?" He spoke, almost slurring the words and, more importantly, slipping into French. 'Votre coeur?' was what he really said.
"No, idiot." Which was English for: 'Oui, mon amore.'
But Francis didn't know that. He just knew that Arthur was getting ready to stand up and leave him in peace when the Frenchman's hand reached out and grabbed his sleeve.
"No... No... Don't go..." Still in French...
"You need to sleep, idiot." Arthur obliged him by slipping into the other language, but only this once.
"Please..." Just this once.
Or, maybe, just until he got through this.
Arthur bent down and unlaced his boots, unbuckling the belt over his shoulder and around his waist, undoing the buttons keeping his green tunic shut but without removing it. He left the boots on the floor and laid down next to Francis, whose eyes were closed, but as soon as he'd settled down the other nation started moving.
It was awkward and it took several minutes. Arthur was first just wary, but then really quite scared of breaking Francis to pieces if he handled him too roughly. Eventually he found a way to join to ruined republic under the blankets, and for once in his life Francis abandoned his pride so completely that he wrapped his boney, skeletal arm around Arthur's chest and curled up as close to him as physically possible.
"Don't go..." He felt like ice, the blankets hadn't warmed him up at all, and Arthur closed his eyes as he cradled his thousand-year rival in his arms.
It felt like as good a time as any.
"You didn't make the rendezvous." Arthur whispered in Francis' language, listening to the other man breathe. He wondered when they'd both become so small: the two of them shouldn't have been able to fit on this bed together... "I stayed two days in Paris, and you never..."
"You shouldn't have, he could have caught you too."
"I wasn't so lucky in Italy." It was compelling when he felt Francis' arm tighten around him, his knobby fingers grasping at his shirt, like he was trying to scratch away the words or hide from them. "I escaped, but I never found you."
"You helped me..." Quiet whispers in French made his voice sound almost the way it was supposed to, just without the music or the laughter or the beauty. But it was almost right. "For years... you helped me."
"The closest I came was five days." He couldn't tell through his shirt if Francis was looking for warmth or skin as he nuzzled him, but Arthur chose to believe it was the former, because now wasn't the time.
"The rumours..." he drawled, sounding half asleep, "of a fierce, ill-tempered, stubborn British bulldog... The guards would talk about it. They would share information right in front of me." How? Or rather, why? "In the beginning? Good conversation. I was Resistance, but I was still France; they thought they could swing me to their side." Arthur found himself rubbing one hand up and down Francis' back. He stopped when he caught himself, but then, why not? He didn't enjoy feeling his spine like that, but he felt warmer for it.
"And near the end?"
"Later it was from fear; they shot me and I would wake up. They gassed me, and I woke up. They boiled me, shocked me, burned me-" Arthur dropped his head and kissed the short, bristly yellow hairs covering Francis' pale scalp. The caress cut him off and he sighed weakly into Arthur's chest, "But the bulldog kept coming... over and over again..."
"That was probably my man then," Arthur said, thinking back and remembering how he'd given up the task of finding prisons and work camps to one of his officers. "He's good at it, a brave man, he has a long career ahead-"
"To me, it was always you."
Arthur didn't answer him. He didn't know how to. Of the two of them Francis was the one who needed his sleep, but it was the Frenchman again who broke the silence, voice muffled by Arthur's arms and chest surrounding him.
"Why are you crying, England?"
"You're the only one who ever calls me that, you git." 'git' didn't translate to French, but Arthur didn't care. "It's Britain, damn you, I conquered those other idiots centuries ago." He kept his lips against those stubbly blonde hairs, one hand holding the base of his skull gently.
"Ah, you'll always be England to me. Why are you crying?"
"Because I want to now go to sleep, f- fr..." Ah- he, he couldn't remember-
"Grenouille." Francis mumbled against Arthur's chest. Grenouille, Frog.
"Go to sleep."
"I love you, ..."
"I said go to sleep."
"I love you..."
'And I found you...'
Nooo idea how to end it, so that's what you got. Suggestions to make it better?
History bits:
France surrendered to Germany in 1940 and was split in two; the German occupied north and the puppet government known as Vichy France. Hetalia Canon references this numerous times. The dates given were as accurate as I could make them, everything completely fell apart for the Axis in Europe in April of '45. Nazi Germany surrendered on May 1st.
The camps France was sent to all existed, but while executions and death by exposure/exhaustion were a common threat in any prison, Dachau is the only one that most would consider a "real" Holocaust Death Camp. Most of the Western camps were focused on labour and internment, not the systematic genocide found in the Eastern Front. Whatever France suffered, Poland got it multiple times worse.
Five days before Dachau surrendered to American Allies, they really did pick out 140 multi-national inmates and try to flee to Tyrol in Austria. Amongst these prisoners were several British officers, members of the Bavarian royal family, and the former French Prime Minister. This was the only time during the war that prisoners were "liberated" by German soldiers.
Alsace and Lorraine were two territories that Germany and France fought something like three wars over (including WWI), and are located in eastern France/Western Germany.