SuperSailorCharon: I've been looking forward to doing this chapter for a while! I really like France and I also really love Edith Piaf, so I thought of doing a one-shot around that idea. I did my best to research Edith Piaf, so if I got anything wrong, I am SO sorry in advanced! I do not own "Padam-Padam" or "La Vie En Rose". Enjoy! Also, I would like to thank Deligate Flower for commenting and larrklopp for following!
They say that Jeanne d'Arc was the one woman that France truly loved with all of his heart. He was devastated when she was burned at the stake. But what most of the other countries didn't know about Francis Bonnefoy was that not too terribly long ago, he fell deeply in love with a beautiful woman nicknamed "The Little Sparrow".
No one really knew much about her other than her name. But the country of love and beauty would watch her perform on stage clad in a little black dress, the spotlight bouncing off of her chestnut curls. Francis knew that this little songstress had a reputation for being very popular with men. Even though he had his choice of any woman in Paris, Francis would sit and listen to Edith sing every time she performed and knew that someday he would enjoy being in the company of this beautiful little sparrow.
One day, he got his chance in the middle of World War II.
His boss forbade him to watch her perform. Some people accused her of treason because she would perform in places of the country that were occupied by the Germans. But France, disguised as a German soldier, filtrated the German-occupied parts of his country one night just to hear her sing. He pretended he was trying to spy on Germany. But instead, France longed to hear the angelic voice of Edith Piaf.
"Merci! Bonne nuit!" The diva said, ending her show. The crowds parted, and France crept backstage.
"Mademoiselle zat was beautiful," Francis complimented. The diva stopped and looked at him. A smile rose on her face.
"You're not a German, are you?" She said wryly.
"What? How did you know?" France asked.
"You may be dressed like a German soldier, but no one from Germany would have hair like zhat," Edith pointed out. "And your accent is too much like mine."
"Oui, it is true I am a Frenchman. My name is Francis Bonnefoy. I am a huge fan of yours, Ms. Piaf."
"Call me Edith," the woman said warmly. She stood very petite in the taller shadow of the Frenchman.
"Edith," France said, letting the name roll of his tongue, "would you grant me the honor of your presence tonight at dinner?"
"That sounds très bien."
From then on, Edith and Francis spent a good deal of time together, wrapped up in the full flush of love and lust.
He didn't know why. What made her so much more special than other women in his country? Was it because she was a famous diva? No, it wasn't that. Was she prettier than any of the other women he had been with? France had been with so many women that the comparison didn't matter. Was it because she poured her heart and soul into every single one of her songs?
No, it was none of those things. France adored her because
In the spring, he took her walking as the flowers bloomed and they would sip coffee at a lovely café in plain sight of the Eiffel Tower. On his birthday, they celebrated with a nice picnic in a beautiful park.
And then one day, America happened to be visiting.
"Whoa, Francis! Nice to see ya! Who's this cute girl you're with?" He asked.
France looked over at Edith, who seemed to be lost in America's eyes. France knew that look better than anyone else: the look of infatuation. Jealousy washed over him, but he hid it, locking it away deep down inside. Why jealousy? He had no reason to be jealous. Love wasn't meant to be hoarded to oneself. Love was meant to be shared and adored by everyone.
So why couldn't he let her look?
It wasn't the first time he caught her flirting with other guys in front of him. She loved male attention and loved catching the eyes of other charming men. But why on earth did it have to be with America of all people?
"Zhis is Edith Piaf," France said coldly, wishing America would just go away already. "She is a very famous singing sensation here in my country. Edith, zhis is an acquaintance of mine from ze United States."
"Monsieur, would you be interested in joining Francis and me for an afternoon coffee?" Edith offered.
"Wow! I love coffee! Thanks!" America accepted eagerly.
The war ended. Eventually it turned out Edith Piaf was actually using her fame to help people escape Nazi persecution and she even helped some French prisoners of war escaped when she performed for some high-ranking Germans. France had never been more proud of one of his citizens.
Of course France learned that he couldn't have Edith all to himself. Edith was almost as notorious as Francis of giving her heart freely rather than reserving it for one.
"Mademoiselle, what do you mean when you say you will not see me anymore?" France asked Edith after a night of passion at France's house.
"I don't know," Edith sighed. "Francis, it is all so complicated. I thought I wanted to be with you, but I fell in love with someone else."
"Do you mean when you told me you said you loved me, back when we went on a picnic on Bastille Day, you weren't telling me ze truth?" Francis asked, more than a little hurt.
"Francis, it is not like that," Edith assured him.
France sighed for a moment and embraced Edith one more time as they sat together on the bed watching the sunrise over Paris.
"You cannot force love on someone," Francis told her. "I understand if you wish to leave me, but if you ever want to return, I will be right here waiting."
France wanted everything in his heart to believe what he just told Edith. He watched her leave his house and in an attempt to cheer himself up, he went to the Moulin Rouge the next night in search of a cabaret dancer or two to take home and had a wild night of passion with two women whose names he didn't even know. But he just didn't feel like his old-self anymore.
No matter how many women (and sometimes men depending on the day) he slept with, France couldn't help but think about Edith often. Several years went by and every time he heard one of Edith's songs, he couldn't help but feel a quiet longing in his heart. Why did he feel so much for this woman? There were plenty like her, weren't there? And didn't he learn his lesson about being too deeply involved in the lives of his citizens back when Jeanne d'Arc was alive?
"They say she wrote 'La Vie En Rose' after encountering an American man," someone whispered. Crowds were gathered outside of a venue where Edith Piaf, The Little Sparrow, would be performing.
"Whoever he was, he was certainly lucky," his companion muttered back in agreement. A pang of jealousy tore away at Francis, but he hid behind his normal smile.
Sometimes he read her name in the paper. She was having a love affair with a legendary boxer, who also happened to be married. Apparently it didn't take her very long to forget about Francis at all.
Just when Francis was beginning to forget about The Little Sparrow, a rainy spring night in 1951 changed everything.
"Sacrebleu!" France swore to himself as the rain continued to course down. "Of all the nights it had to rain, it had to rain tonight!"
A car sped by through a puddle, splashing France and soaking him to the bone, his cape covered in mud.
"Watch where you are going, putain!" France cursed. The car slowed down a little further up the road. The driver rolled down the window. France's jaw hit the floor when he saw the driver poke her head out.
"Francis?!" She asked in surprise. "You look soaked. Do you need a ride back home?"
"Oui, merci," Francis said reluctantly as he climbed into the passenger's seat.
"You look well," Edith said. "It has been six years since I last saw you and you haven't aged a day. Not like me."
"Zhat's not true, mademoiselle," Francis assured her. "You look as lovely as you did the day I saw you."
Edith parked the car outside of France's house. He looked longingly into her eyes for a moment.
"Would you care to come in? You shouldn't be driving on a night like zhis," Francis told her.
Edith agreed. The two of them indulged in a night of passion for the first night in a very long time. Somehow, it just wasn't the same to Francis as it was all those years earlier.
"I wanted to say I am sorry," Edith told Francis as they lay together in the dark.
"Por quoi?" Francis asked.
"I am sorry for leading you on as I did so many years ago. I still care about you very much. I should not have deceived you and I should not have spent so much time looking at other men when I had you right in front of me," Edith said ruefully.
"Do not be sorry," Francis said. "Love is meant to be shared with everyone. You cannot lock it away. You must give it away freely. I should have remembered you were not mine to keep all to myself."
That night, France realized her still loved her. But this time, it was a different kind of love. In some ways, he still loved her romantically. But instead, he realized he loved her as a human being, enough to make sure she was always happy no matter what, whether it was with him, or with someone else.
A few months later, Edith had been injured in a car accident. She never truly did get better. She recovered enough to perform again, but she just wasn't quite the same. Francis stayed by her side while she was recovering. Even though she married, divorced, and married again, Francis still remained her biggest fan and her biggest supporter.
"Zhis melody you will hear follows me everywhere I go. I hear it when I am sad, and especially when I am glad. It seems to mock me for my past sins. It taunts me, and it is driving me crazy! Padam…" Edith announced one night at one of her shows. She looked out into the audience at Francis, her gaze never once leaving him as she sang about past mistakes in the realm of love during the naivety of youth and false "I love yous" whispered on Bastille Day. It took Francis a moment, but he soon realized that Edith had written "Padam-Padam" for him.
They remained close friends until the day she died of liver cancer twenty years after she and Francis met. She had been lapsing in and out of consciousness for a little while until one day she finally passed away quietly.
"I appreciate what you are doing," Francis told Edith's husband Theo as they drove through the streets of Paris. "All of Edith's fans would be better off knowing zhat she died here in her hometown of Paris."
The morning after Edith died, Theo decided that the fans would take comfort if they found out Edith Piaf died in Paris, when in actuality, she died at her vacation home along the French Riviera.
"I think more people would appreciate what you did for Edith while she was alive than what I am doing for her now that she is gone," Theo told Francis.
Francis took comfort in knowing that while the woman he adored was gone, she was making beautiful music somewhere else, and that beautiful music would always live on in his heart.
The archbishop of Paris refused to give Edith Piaf a proper funeral because of her wild lifestyle. Yet thousands of mourners showed up to pay their respects to The Little Sparrow bringing traffic in Paris to a complete halt.
"Dude, whatever happened to that cute French girl you used to date? You know, the one that always sang?" America asked many years later after a world meeting one day. "A lot of my citizens are listening to her music now for some weird reason."
"She is no longer with us," France said wistfully. "But her melody lives on in all of our hearts."
SuperSailorCharon: Supposedly, Edith Piaf's second husband drove her body all the way back to Paris the day after she died so her fans would think she died in her hometown. Also "putain" in French is "bitch".