Versailles, 1919

Versailles is pretty, because Versailles is always pretty, with the sun that shines over the gardens, and summer making Paris nearly as insufferable as during the winter. The relic of a past long gone feels weird to walk in, sometimes, but time has gone by, now. The air feels fresher than it does in the capital, the gardens neatly taken care of as they always were, in a way.

This is a good day. It makes France smile, because victories always make France smile, even though he knows, he knows that things like that are never over, that wars, no matter how big, no matter how bone-crushing awful they are, never really do end all wars.

They'll call it the Great War. The last time anyone called a war Great, France was still full of illusions, of ideas about freedom and republics and peace, ideas that would come crashing down in the snows of Russia, and in the ballrooms of Vienna. How some things never change, in a way... But those days are gone, and France, stripped of his delusions, wins, now.

It shouldn't come of as a surprise to hear Prussia and Germany yelling at each other in the Hall of Mirrors, or to feel himself smile in amusement as he lights a cigarette and leans against the wall, listening to the rather angry German through the closed door.

He's really won, now. Four years of shit and trenches and boots that never seem to ever get dry, of killing and dying and killing and dying, bombshells raining from the sky and hating, hating, hating. Four years of pointless war, millions of men dead for scraps of barren, god-forsaken lands in Alsace-Lorraine. France has won. France has won even though there's bile in the back of his throat whenever he thinks about whatever it was that brought him back to Paris.

"Es ist deine Schuld! Du hast das Vaterland verlassen!"

Germany storms out of without even realising France is there, and Prussia doesn't follow him, still yelling, shouting at him things France doesn't understand. Germany doesn't pay any attention to it. He's already out, his uniform loose over his shoulder and anger radiating from his skin.

France knows it's stupid to piss Prussia off, even when he's on his knees, but he can't help it, and he's won, won at last. He straightens himself up a little bit, throws his cigarette on the ground, and start clapping, making his way towards the now-open door. It's only then that Prussia realises that he's there, and his hands curl into fists in his hands.

"Quelle performance, mon cher !" France says, earning himself a dark, yet desperate look from Prussia as he walks towards him, a grin still on his face.
"Va te faire foutre," Prussia answers simply, and he sounds tired, tired, tired of the West and the East and the trenches and rationing, uprising and death.

Truth to be told, they're all tired, all sick, even though France hates to admit it to himself, sometimes. He wants to be strong. He wants to sign peaces that will have Prussia, Prussia the pretentious, Prussia that made him a fool, half a century ago, boil in shame and self-hatred the way he had done, in this very room, as they toasted to wars, to nations, to victory and to Germany.

Bismarck is dead and so are the men who once sang the Internationale in the streets of Paris. Still, the taste of it all had lingered in his throat, for decades, even up until now, even as he watches Prussia fall on his knees, a sigh coming out of his mouth. There's something striking about the look of him, the sunken eyes and the still impeccable uniform. It's beautiful.

"Is this what you wanted, France? Having me like that? Would you like me to suck your cock for good measure, making you feel like you've somehow won this war even though we both know it isn't really the case?"

There's venom in his mouth as he speaks, and Prussia is burning with rage, of course he is. France's smile does falter a bit, because it isn't all false, not really, that he wouldn't have won this war had it not been of that last year, had it not been because of the new rising empire that had taken all of them by surprise.

Backwards countries in backwards continents taking over the world, bits by bits. It shouldn't piss off France nearly as much as it does.

"Don't flatter yourself. You're nowhere near as good at it as you'd like to think. Besides, I've got treaties to sign with Austria too, and we both know what signing treaties with Austria means."

Prussia gives him a look, but he doesn't rise from his position, not yet.

"Worthless bitch. Of course he's tried every trick in the book on you."
"Oh, les gros mots… You're talking from experience, I believe?"

Prussia doesn't answer that one, another sigh coming out of him, more regrets about bad decisions, about Germany being an idiot, about getting drunk on power and his own pride. France looks down at him, crouches to his level, his hand briefly caressing his hair. He knows he's being cruel, but he doesn't care.

"You were fooled, weren't you? Because even though you hate to admit it to yourself, you wanted him, and after all these years, you finally had him lose to you, properly, almost willingly."
"Shut up."
"And now you know that you're no better than Spain or Hungary or me. That Austria is a toxic flower and that this war, that he has started, has destroyed you, your empire and the brother you loved so much."

It's bad to kick people when they're down, but France has stopped trying to be good in the battlefields of Valmy, Eylau, Waterloo and Sedan. He's learnt that from Prussia, or so he likes to think, and there is a vicious pleasure to be taken out of seeing his enemy break like this, power slipping away from his fingers like water. France doesn't have anything more to say, anything about the so-called clash of the civilisations, about royalties and republics, about the trenches of Belgium. It's nowhere near as personal as what he's just said is.

It take a moment for Prussia to answer, as he's still on his knees, still defeated, that Bavaria, Saxony, Westphalia, Germany, they all still hate him, for everything. Maybe it's something inevitable, in a way, something that happens to all of those that fly too close to the sun. France knows this, intimately, but it doesn't keep him from wanting Prussia to burn, more than now, more than he has ever burnt, for the humiliation of 1870.

"I will crush you," he says at France turned back. There's a bit, a tiny little bit of desperation in his voice. "I will crush you and I will dance on your corpse just as I did the last time around."

But France isn't listening. He'd heading out, in the sunlight, towards the gardens of Versailles, towards his own victory, even though there's an ache in the back of his throat that won't go, even though the past four years' hell of mud and sweat and putrefaction still sticks to the back of his eyelids whenever he closes his eyes.

*

Es ist deine Schuld! Du hast das Vaterland verlassen! = It's your fault! You've betrayed the Fatherland!
Quelle performance, mon cher ! = What a performance, my dear!
Va te faire foutre = Go fuck yourself
Oh, les gros mots… = Oh, the bad words...