It was perhaps inevitable that I write something Hetalia about my big historicalcrush, but surprisingly this turned out to not really be about him at all, and not really about England and Ireland's relationship either. It seems to have turned into France/UK fluff, somehow. I'm quite content though.

Warnings: language, a good deal of alcohol, historical gay people, very nearly gay nations, and Ireland.

And The Dead Grow Cold

an axis powers hetalia fanfic by silver_sandals

The poet dies at ten minutes to two, and France stares at the wallpaper. It is indeed exceedingly ugly. He will have to talk to the hotel proprietor about that. Not right now; the man looks rather shocked, and France can't blame him. The first time they catch a true glimpse of mortality is always frightening to these mortals.

Dear Robbie begins to weep, which is not very flattering to his youthful face. Reginald Turner pats him awkwardly on the arm, prevented by the presence of strangers from the slightest gesture of true warmth. France remembers what he had gathered earlier in the evening, from strained conversation; they were the same age, they had neither of them written anything of any importance, they had been defined by the dead poet and they had remained by his side when all others had abandoned him. France regards them now, pale and worn in somber charcoal suits. Not so young after all; going on forty, which is of course not very old at all for France who is, after all, perhaps a little over eighteen centuries old. Still, he looks at them and their lined, anguished faces with death inside and he feels he simply must get away for a bit.

He remembers the wallpaper, though.

Outside he stares at his shoes for a good twenty minutes, thinking about the wallpaper. Eventually he realizes he's being silly. Although the shoes are very expensive, well-made, Italian affairs, they are nothing at all like wallpaper.

So then France goes to the Cafe de Flore and orders absinthe, and from there things get a bit blurry. He can vaguely remember breaking in to the abbey and sloshing wine all over Descartes' tomb, and he feels sorry for that now but what does it matter, he knows he's damned no matter what he does, and then he had decided he was not drunk enough and went back to get more absinthe. In any case, he wakes up after someone tosses him in the Seine. Shivering, he wanders around, looking for a signpost. Ridiculous, really, why should he need a signpost in Paris!- but ah, he knows where he is now, this is the Boulevard Saint-Germain! He has not really come very far at all!

"Frances," someone breathes in surprise, and France wheels around on liquid legs to stare at a dark shape with a mustache. "Are you-" and now France knows who it is, it is Proust, dear Proust, always a welcome sight even with his silly mustache, what possessed him to grow it France cannot imagine, particularly not in his current state-

"Frances, I am ashamed to see you in such a state," Proust says, but fondly, and he takes France's arm, which is good because otherwise France is afraid he might fall down.

He tries to force his mind into Frances-mode- Frances Bonnefoy, the careless spoiled aristocrat with nothing more on his mind than the vintage of the wine or the horribleness of the actors or who to sleep with tonight- "Dear Marcel, what are you doing here?"

"I was visiting my great-uncle in Auteuil," Proust explained carefully, like one would to a slow child. "Frances, why do you do this to yourself?"

France laughs. He looks at Proust's anxious face and sad eyes and laughs again, for he sees only a grinning skull, bleached white. "You're dead," he giggles, "I'm dead, Paris is dead, the whole fucking century is dead, merde! Fin de siecle, cher, it's here and gone! My god!"

Proust's hands are on his shoulders, Proust is shouting, "Calm down, Frances, calm down, what's come over you, what's the reason for this?" France realizes he has scared the poor man. Oh dear, France never meant to do that, no, he is so very sorry, sorry for everything.

"Oscar Wilde is dead," he whispers.

He wakes up with a blinding headache, and Proust is still asleep, all tangled in the sheets. The sun is coming in in slanting rays through the blinds, illuminating each individual hair of Proust's silly mustache. France gets up and dresses quietly, and slips out into the early morning, one of the rare times in which Paris is almost quiet. The bakeries do not open for an hour, and so France goes down and sits by the Seine and remembers being thrown into it last night. My, but that brings back memories, and he would chuckle if he wasn't so awfully sick. I am never drinking absinthe again, he promises God, and knows as he does that this is yet another promise he will break, another sin to add to his list.

(He breaks it exactly three times. Once, with Germany's panzers at the gates of Paris; once with Prussia, because it's tradition; and once in Maastricht when he realized he and England really were married now and everyone knew it)

He has a pan au chocolat for breakfast and then sends a telegram. Two, actually. He owes her that.

The funeral was a pathetic English affair but at least there were flowers. France left his own blossoms after the mourners had gone. They were lilies. Not roses. It seemed to him most important that they not be roses.

Now he is waiting.

At least it isn't raining. That really would have been the last straw.

Ireland is there first. Of course. She is dressed most austerely in black, this perfect pale girl-child with her blazing red hair and the eyes that mark her as England's sister. She is his sister too, France supposes. His big sister, ironically, for she is older than England, even, and her eternal youth is far from natural. But as England would constantly remind him, France is a bastard son of Rome.

She is pretty. But untouchable, somehow, and it's not just that England would kill him if he tried anything. They've fought together, of course, against England, and she is a determined, vicious little fighter, which he respects. He doesn't know her, except through her poets; though lovely poets they be, that he must admit. She has no culture, she is but a mere peasant. Yet France senses something, past that perfectly blank look, some glimpse of a wild creature, all claws and teeth, not suited for captivity.

She holds one brilliant red rose in her black velvet gloves. The thorns pierce her skin, he can tell by the little drops of blood that sink into the velvet. And yet she grips it all the tighter.

"L'Irlande," he tries, and then, because that does not sound quite right, "Hibernia." He will not say Eire, that is an intimacy she has not yet earned. Cannot earn.

"Francogallia," she acknowledges, in turn, accepting the compromise. She does not meet his eyes but instead stares straight ahead. "It's good of you to be here."

-dieu, the headaches are coming back, along with the nausea and it really wouldn't do for him to vomit all over the outcast poet's pathetic little grave, would it-

"Did you telegram my brother?" she asks, voice sharp and piercing, intensifying his headache- he nods.

Her little petite fists clench tighter around the rose. Blood drips onto the rich earth of the cemetary. "He stole him from me."

France tries to look sympathetic, and forces his stomach to unclench.

"He steals all my poets, you know." Her mouth tightens to a thin white line. "It isn't fair."

Life isn't fair, sweetheart, France wants to tell her; you ought to know that better than most. His head is spinning. He's never shared England's unhealthy obsession with allusion- the damn quoting bastard- but there are words spinning through his head right now. To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes-

"He takes all my artists," Ireland continues, harshly, through clenched teeth, as though each word is painful- "he takes them and sucks them dry and then he kills them-"

"My dear," France interrupts, lazily, though his head feels like a squeezed lemon (it is sweet to dance to Violins, when Love and Life are fair-), "can you honestly say you would have treated him any better, had you been allowed to keep him?"

Ireland shoots him a look of pure venom. "If he had not been ashamed of being Irish, who can say what darkness might have been lifted from his spirit?"

"Perhaps." France shrugs. He thinks of Proust and of all the other lovely young men with shadows on their spirits. And I and all the souls in pain who tramped the other ring, Forgot if we ourselves had done a great or little thing-

Gently he takes her hands and pulls apart the fingers, letting the bloodstained rose drop onto the newly raised dirt of the grave. She stares blankly down at their hands entwined. France moves away, slightly. Ah, his head hurts!

"Sister," and this new voice is so cold, ah, so cold, when did it get to be so? and England is dressed in black also, and he is all sharp angles and gloves and a blood-red cravat, and there is no hatred in France's heart, only sadness and exhaustion and hung-over-ness and a longing to be gone from here, to be in some delightful strip club where he can forget this awful blackness and concentrate on beautiful women- but since when did France ever get what he wanted?

"England," she replies, frostily.

"That is The British Empire to you," England hisses.

"Oh please, cher," France laughs, "don't stand on formality!" He has not brought any flowers, France notes with disgust.

"You're cropsick," England tells France with a careful note of well-bred horror, and France wonders when England's ridiculous modesty turned into something so dangerously hypocritical.

"What of it?" he says, and wishes they could all just leave the fucking cemetery and go get drunk like they used to, a splendid hair of the dog cure for this blasted headache, he remembers some time in the seventeenth century when they'd all gone out for a beer, England and Ireland and France and Spain and Portugal and Belgium and Prussia and the Italies and Greece and all the rest of them, and Ireland had shamed them all by drinking them under the table. He wants to see how she'd react to fine champagne.

But England's eyes are full of scorn and disgust, and France is sad and tired.

"Well," England says after some time, "thank you for notifying me."

"I thought you would want to be here," France mumbles.

"Indeed," England says, staring at the stone marker with the wilting flower wreaths.

Something in Ireland snaps. "You could at least act like you're sorry!" she cries.

France could have told her that was the wrong thing to say, but who listens to him these days. "I have nothing to apologize for," England states, and now he's so sharp France is afraid he'll cut himself on those bright edges. "Brilliance is no excuse for moral decrepitude."

France bursts out laughing. He can't help himself. "Moral what? That's not what you said in, when was it, '58, possibly because you were doing more profitable things with your mouth-"

England slaps him across the face, hard, with one velvet-gloved hand.

France is knocked to the ground. He spits, clambering to his feet unsteadily, the feeling of nausea threatening to overwhelm him. Ireland watches, silent, expressionless. France has eyes only for England, for his thin white face, the dark circles beneath those green eyes.

"You will control yourself, for once," England demands coldly. As if France is his subject. As if he's forgotten that once France ruled him, the disrespectful whelp- and oh, France would give anything for it to be Hastings again, for him to be standing over a half-unconscious boy and laughing-

"How's your Empire doing, England?" he hisses with all the bitterness he can muster. "I heard you're having some trouble."

England's eyes narrow. "How dare you-"

"Hear those Africans are putting up a fight! And, what, China's not letting you fuck him any more-"

England's face twists with rage, making him even more ugly than usual. But then he controls it, pulls it all inside himself and smothers it, and that frightens France. It frightens him. The one talent he's always counted on is the ability to wind England up like clockwork, and now it's not working and France feels powerless and lost, and he shouldn't, not in Paris, he shouldn't.

"Dieu," he whispers, almost to himself. "What has happened to you, Angleterre?"

England smiles, tightly, coldly. "Responsibility, my good sir," he says. "Administration of an Empire requires strictness, both military and moral. I have learned my lesson, sir, I will not fall to your level of degeneracy."

France starts laughing again. Ireland frowns, screws up her pretty little face in disgust, and slaps him. It hurts, actually, almost as much as England's did. She's stronger than she looks.

"Pull yourself together," she hisses, and glares at them both. "Quite honestly, I couldn't care less for your little penny dreadful dramatics. Either fuck or declare war, but I have bigger things to worry about."

They all glare at each other for a while. Then England sighs, and rubs his forehead tiredly. "I think perhaps I would like a drink."

France grins a little, wearily.

And so it is that they find themselves sitting on the bank of the Seine, legs dangling over the side, sharing a bottle of wine to the background sound of steamboats chugging up the river and booksellers hawking their wares on the banks.

"It's been an alright century," France says dismissively. "Not as good as some, but not the worst either. I think I am getting the hang of this democracy thing now." He elbows England. "I still haven't forgiven you for Waterloo, by the way."

"I haven't forgiven you for Trafalgar, either," England muses. "Perhaps we could simply cancel it out and declare ourselves even?"

"This century was absolutely dreadful," Ireland announces, "but then, so were all the other ones this Millennium." She takes another swig from the bottle. France calculates she's had twice as much already as both him and England put together.

"All right, Angleterre," France murmurs, slurring his words only a little, "your turn. And it better be good, because you've been pretty messed up this century."

"I need more alcohol," England claims. France refuses to let him weasel out of it so easily, and tells him so.

"If you drink anymore you wonnbe able to sppeak prop'ly."

England straightens his cravat and kicks his tall black leather boots against the brickwork. "...Yes, my empire's falling apart. I admit it." He says it rather fast and hurried, through clenched teeth, and then he grabs the bottle from Ireland and tips it back. France and Ireland watch, one fascinated, one quizzical, as he pours it down his throat in a steady red stream. Finally it's all gone, and he throws it into the Seine. It floats for a while, bobbing about amongst the polluted scum, and then it slowly, bubblingly sinks.

"You've done a fairly complete job of pissing just about everyone off," Ireland observes.

"Get me more alcohol," England moans into France's velvet shoulder. France smiles. He's almost happy. His headache's pretty much gone and it's just possible a drunk and pliant England will be more open to seduction.

"Cheer up and loosen up," France advises. "We're all going to Hell in any case. It will be almost like a fashionable Society party."

"Alcohol," England reminds him, but his determined tone is undermined by the fact that he is steadily sliding further down France's chest. France makes vague hand motions at Ireland, who rolls her eyes but gets up anyway. After she is gone, France pulls England into his arms properly, and begins to stroke his hair. England murmurs contentedly.

France thinks about Hell. He thinks about Proust and Robbie and Reginald Turner. He thinks of the dead poet and his stupid wall paper. He thinks of his wonderful Parisians, who will simply not think about whatever he and England do on this shady walkway. He sighs, and knows for certain that he is damned.

"I'm sorry about your poet," England tells Ireland some time later. It comes out more like "Amsrrybouterpetter," but it's the thought that counts, after all.

Ireland smashes her shot glass into his face.

Notes: the dead poet is of course Oscar Wilde, an Anglo-Irish poet who is possibly the most famous historical LGBT figure. After a five-year stint in prison for "gross indecency" he was exiled from England and died three years later in a hotel in Paris. The poem France is thinking of is "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" although there are references to other of his works. Proust and Robbie and Reginald were all real historical gay writers. The England here is late Victorian England, who has some... shall we say, issues. Ireland was a part of the British Empire until 1922, and I have tried my best to be neutral about that, because as a first generation Irish-American I don't really have the right to an opinion. France and England fought with and against each other throughout the nineteenth century, but beginning in 1900, the year of this story, they began to have a dramatic shift in relationship, and in 1904 they signed the Entente Cordiale. They have been very close allies ever since then.