All He Ever Wanted.doc

All He Ever Wanted – Hetalia Alternate Continuity Wherein England is an Axis Power

Written by the Young Turks: lindensphinx, mithrigil and  puella_nerdii

Chapter One: The City of Light by lindensphinx

21 April, 1928 A.D. Copenhagen.

It is such a pity that Dreyer's glorious film has to premiere here in dreary, raining Denmark, but France has come farther for far less. Besides, the entire affair is just one more little offense to hold over England's head and berate the dreary boor with – first he goes and burns poor Jeanne, and now his infuriating and entirely uncultured boss insists that L'Passion de Jeanne d'Arce is insulting to Englishmen and unfit for their eyes.

Of course it is insulting. It concerns the English.

France would laugh but that would spoil the silence in the theatre. It is complete silence, as Dreyer intended, not a whisper of America's Hollywood talkies to interrupt the tears washing down Maria Falconetti's bare and anguished face. She is a very excellent actor, as accomplished in her inexperience as Antonin Artaud, cavernous and terrible on the screen beside her, is in his cruelty. At moments Falconetti even reminds France of Jeanne.

Especially now, all wrapped up in flames and slowly turning to ash and Godliness alone. That is quite good. That is quite right.

France thinks that Dreyer will be pleased to have made him cry.

---

9 December, 1929 A. D. Paris.

"America," France says, waving down a waiter with more pastries and coffee, "you look dreadful!" He does, too, sallow-pale under his tan and with enormous dark smudges right beneath those pretty blue eyes. His hair is limp and unwashed and he is clutching his coffee-cup with one hand and pouring sugar by the kilogram into it with the other. Not that France has anything particular to say about unwashed hair. There have been, oh, decades where bathing was the absolute last thing on his mind.

"I do not," America is saying, but this is mostly immaterial as well as being untrue. France procures for himself the half-unpeeled croissant off America's plate and butters it while he waits for the rest of the pastries. America fails to notice this minor incursion. France considers. Perhaps he is truly distressed.

"Well, then, you look as if something very sad has happened to you. Or perhaps like you have been spending too much time in a library." France pauses to attempt to imagine America in a library. On second thought. "No, something sad. Are you sad, mon cher? I am sorry I have not come to see your Chrysler Building, but I am very busy just now."

America slurps coffee and waves his empty hand around dismissively. "I have a headache," he says.

France leans in, smiling, and taps a fingertip against the rim of America's cup, an inch from his nose. "That's no reason not to enjoy Paris."

It is delightful that he still sputters when he finally realizes what precisely France is saying.

"Dieu, I mean an art exhibit, America," – which increases the sputtering! – "unless you did have something else in mind?"

"—art. Art is fine. Let's go see art."

France takes him to Galerie Pierre Levy, on Avenue Matignon. Even in the early afternoon, it is quite crowded; France is pleased. There are copies of Breton's little pamphlet Surrealism and Painting at the door, and he presses one on America in the most-likely vain hope of advancing his education. France has invested so much in America lately. It would be shameful to ignore his intellectual elevation.

America is smiling, as they go in. An improvement?

"Some of my people just opened an entire museum for this stuff," he says. "In New York."

"Oh?"

"It's bigger than this."

It would be. "To match your very tall buildings," France murmurs. He trails the pads of his fingers against the small of America's back, directing him forward towards the paintings. America flinches, but he doesn't move away. "Oh look," France tells him. "Magritte! This one is new, just this year."

"Ceci n'est pas une pipe?" America says. His accent continues to be atrocious. "France, that is totally a pipe."

"It is a picture of a pipe," France explains.

"So? It's still a pipe."

"Can you smoke it?"

America's expression is somewhat indescribable. "It's a picture."

"Just so," France tells him, draping an arm over his shoulders as best as he can given America's height, and whispering into his ear. "Images are treacherous."

---

13 July, 1928 A.D.

Dreyer sends him a telegram.

NEGATIVE DESTROYED IN LABORATORY FIRE STOP, it says. NO COPIES STOP. I AM SO SORRY FULL STOP.

France is so sorry, too. For Dreyer, and for the lovely mademoiselle Falconetti and especially, especially for Jeanne.

Fire, again, of all impermanent things!

---

19 September, 1931 A.D. Paris.

France folds his newspaper back up (l'Humanitie, today, and for that matter it's been l'Humanitie for the past few weeks) and leans one-handed against the windowpane glass of his apartment in Paris, and sighs.

Mon dieu, America, he thinks, in matters of finance, you are entirely an imbecile.

America, having long since retreated to his own beleaguered cities and left France alone to feel Paris begin to gnaw at itself in depressing solidarity, is not available for him to scold, and that is somewhat disappointing. In an existential sense, disappointing, France clarifies to no one but himself. This nonsense is his fault, is it not?

Besides, France has other errands this afternoon, with other Nations.

It is not cold, yet, in mid-September, but France wears a coat out into the streets regardless. There are chills that have nothing whatsoever to do with the weather that burn fever-bright in the joints of his wrists, his knees, his hips, sparkling distractingly and rarifying his gestures, making him fasten a scarf just so beneath the turned-up collar of his jacket. He grins at himself in the mirror of a shuttered shop-window as he walks. Russia, he suspects, will be amused.

Russia meets him at La Verite sur les Colonies, just before the exhibition opens its doors to the public for the first time. The location was Russia's idea, which France finds endearing – that Russia would bother coming all the way to Paris to see what France's own dear communists are busying themselves with! – and he is, of course, wearing his ever-present white scarf.

Здравствуйте! Russia says.

"Bonjour," France corrects him, and leans in and up on his toes to greet him – with only a shrug's worth of wondering if whatever America has given him is terribly infectious – with a kiss.

France's scarf is red. Sadly, he does not think Russia notices just yet.

He takes Russia's arm as they go in. It is entirely lurid inside, all typeset horrors and posters with weeping natives holding their hands out imploringly. "Mon cher," France says as they round a corner and come face to face with a large cage containing within it a model of a pretty Vietnamese girl in very little clothing, "it has been too long!"

Russia curves one eyebrow up and looks down at him. France laughs, throws up his hands to match the elevation of that expression. "I've had letters, I've had news – such letters, such news! – and all manner of diplomats, but not you, Russia, you here in person, a delight, entirely, you -- dieu, are your hands always this cold-!"

"Yes," Russia says, and does not remove his fingers from under the cuff of France's sleeve, against the bones of his wrist.

"Yes, da, what sort of answer is that!"

"It is always cold in Russia." He smiles, thoughtful and dizzyingly slow, smiles, bends, and abruptly France finds himself pinned against the wall next to that cage with Russia leaning over him and blocking the light. "And I think, perhaps, it is cold in France now as well." His fingertips thread at the loose edge of France's scarf, disarray it from his collar.

Oh, now he notices, France thinks, and shoves Russia unceremoniously off. "Come, let us see the exhibition."

Russia seems content enough, and they stroll in companionable silence past the chattering throngs of Parisian Communists. It really has been far too long since France has spent time with Russia. Since – oh, the last century, wasn't it? That party. The one for his last, dead, executed emperor.

"How angry your people are," Russia says, when they reach the end. "They chafe so at their chains, with all these pretty -- words."

Scorn is an unusual, if somewhat intriguing, tone for Russia. "Words," France says, rolling the syllables around on his tongue, "words and images, yes, to make themselves think."

Russia's gesture encompasses both France's people and the typography of their posters, which is, yes, perhaps a little overwrought. "This makes them think?"

"Cher," France informs him, "they are considering what they have become and telling one another all about it."

"It does not worry you, that your people are so unhappy?"

Does it? France wonders, and then considers that no one is changing the names of the months, so really, posters and exhibitions and art and poetry and all this livid red – it isn't so bad.

"At least," he says brightly, "I am not covering everything with cherry blossoms and sunrises, like England."

Russia laughs. Russia's laughter has never been something that France finds comfortable, but it is usually something he enjoys, and that has not changed. His expression, when he is finished with his amusement, is sweet and encompassing.

"When your people begin to act?" he says. "Then you will come to me." He tucks an escaped strand of France's hair back behind his ear, and France feels shivers radiate, expanding without boundary, down his spine.

---

3 November, 1928 A.D.

Dreyer has recut the film, frame by frame, from the discarded footage he'd abandoned on the studio floor.

At the French premiere, France sits with him and takes his hand gently as the jailers thrown Jeanne into their prison, twines his fingers around his filmmaker's knuckles and raises that hand to his lips.

"All I can see are the differences," Dreyer says. "The light –"

France kisses his palm, shakes his head, and smiles.

---

6 February, 1934 A.D. Paris.

The ballet at the Paris Grand Opera is called at the first intermission on account of the approaching riots. It is entirely too bad; France had been enjoying Serge Lifar and his exquisite feet as the titular role in Balanchine's Prodigal Son.

Nevertheless, he sighs, gathers his coat and hat amidst the chaos of beautifully-dressed Parisians falling over themselves to get out of their chairs – there are signs, they read SORTIE in clearly lit letters, it is not so hard! – and wanders out into the lobby. It is a glorious lobby, all staircases and ivory statues carved like cameos and blazing lights in the sconces on the walls, the marble steps worn smooth and shining by hundreds of years of footfalls belonging to the parishioners of this cathedral to art for art's sake, and also perhaps by the silken dresses and wool suit-pants of the men and women who are seated on those steps now, some of whom are crying in distress.

That is not – France does not like to see it.

At the base of the largest staircase is a concession stand, with small cakes and bottles of chardonnay. It has been summarily abandoned now. France takes one of the bottles with him, when he goes.

It is not snowing.

It is bright and the city is lit from within and also by streetlamps, and full of shouting. France isn't surprised by that; it was only last week that these same anti-parliamentarians were demonstrating against the entirely disgraceful fall of the Credit municipal banks. Now it is not just banks, it is the government entire, which also makes a sort of sense, the same kind of sense that Celine's novels make, that sort of slangy and elliptical style to that says so clearly that everything is pure hypocrisy.

Like banks, and the Third Republic.

He has a bottle of chardonnay; why isn't he drinking it, exactly? He should fix that. If he had a rapier, like he'd carried during the last time there were riots in the streets of Paris, he would slice the top of the bottle off, clean.

Barring that, there is this lamppost, and glass smashes easily, and no Nation ever was hurt by getting a bit of blood in his wine.

He has caught up with some of the rioters themselves! These seem to be shouting about Francisme, which means they are Fascists. France laughs, and shouts with them. They turn right toward Place de la Concorde, his Fascists do, and come shoulder-to-shoulder with a large contingent of Jeunesses Patriotes, who are as young as their name suggests, and have boasted in the past about their influence amongst municipal councilors -- oh, but they have influence now!

Across the Seine, the National Assembly glitters like a trophy, a prize.

Of course, between him and it are the Metropolitan Police. France smiles to see that, too, the machinery of civilization still merrily ticking forward, as precise and elegant as an unmelted clock. He drinks, and disengages from the crowd, licks his lips against the sharpness of the glass, tasting copper under the tannins of the wine.

The copper stays, filling up his mouth so he has to swallow rapidly and press the ragged place on his tongue to his palate and so the next sip of wine stings, a bright flash like the first of the guns going off back amongst the rioters.

It is possible he is a little drunk.

Drunker by the time he makes his way around to another bridge, over it and through the streets – discarding that bottle as he goes, when there's nothing left of it – and to the National Assembly itself, another lobby, not quite as beautiful. Not quite as beautiful, but everyone knows him here, or would if they were paying attention to anything but what is apparently turning into the dissolution of the government under pressure.

How droll.

How –

There are payphones in this lobby!

France dials. Germany picks up after four rings. He must be working late.

"What did you do with all of those right-wing partisans, afterward?" he asks, without preamble. His tongue hurts a bit, now.

"When?" Germany asks. It is so nice to talk to Germany. One does not ever have to explain oneself.

"Oh, 1923," France says.

"They went to prison, and then they got out."

That sounds reasonable enough.

"—France, what precisely is going on?"

Ah, they are still talking. "Oh, nothing much. I think the President of the Council – Daladier, this year – is going to resign."

"Is that all."

No, not entirely, France thinks, but it would take a great deal of effort to explain. There are at least seven different groups all shouting out there across the Seine by now.

"It's true," he says, instead.

---

23 August, 1938 A.D.

"You have not read the book," Artaud says, right before France grabs him by the collar of his shirt and jerks him off his feet, off the stage, and onto the floor. The sound he makes is not startled as much as pained – France sees his knee twist against the ground as he falls – and when he pushes himself up onto his heels he is smiling, as cavernous and horrifying as he was a decade before, up on the screen in Copenhagen.

"Spectacle," France says.

"Ah," Artaud breathes. "Am I your audience, then?"

France laughs. "I read the book. I liked the book."

"Liking it is not at all the point."

France shrugs. "What do you think, Antonin? Can a Nation be engulfed and trapped and powerless in your theatre?"

Artaud actually considers the question. France is gratified by that.

"As much," he says after some time, "as anyone else. You have instincts." And that smile, again. "You have complacency, too."

---

20 April, 1933 A.D.

The American producers of The Passion of Joan of Arc have not only edited Dreyer's new-cut reels, they have added a voice-over, narration by some popular radio personality.

It is, France considers dryly, a shorter film this way.

France does not go to see it.

---

30 November, 1938 A.D. Paris.

Italy sends, along with his list of demands, a letter. France discards the demands – as if he would ever simply cede most of Africa! What would Italy do with Tunisia or Corsica or Somaliland, anyway, it isn't as if he's done all that much with Abyssinia and besides Tunisia and Corsica and the rest are French -- and takes the letter with him, folded into his jacket pocket.

It makes a tidy thick packet there. Amused, France thinks of Bibles over soldiers' hearts, and laughs. Italy would think that was delightful. Sentimental. Same thing, for Italy.

November is not the most pleasant month to walk along the Champs-Elysees, but France wants the air. The air and the lights, to read Italy's letter by.

Dear France! Italy writes, with exclamation marks.

It's a pleasant letter, then.

I hope you aren't very mad about the other letters, the ones from my boss. I know that all of those places are a lot to ask! But I think asking is nice, and we've almost always been nice to each other.

Germany and I have been very busy lately. Germany has so many plans and they are all exciting! Last month we went to see Czechoslovakia. The hills were green, even in October, green and framed in mountains and we walked a lot and sang sometimes –

Exciting. Yes. It sounds it.

France leans against the nearest lamppost and folds the letter up again. He is angry, he thinks. Angry, and perhaps also tired of pretty threats.

Italy is all sentiment; Germany is more, and France assumes he will have to do something --

He is not giving up Africa. Certainly.

He is not giving up anything.

Chapter Two: Thirty Days by lindensphinx

30 September, 1940 A.D. 2:16 PM.

The fashion in which they both grip their guns is intriguingly identical, down to the quirk of knuckles on the safeties, click, click, one and then the other.

"One of these isn't loaded," Italy says, apologetically, with a one-shouldered shrug.

France laughs, throwing his head back and leaning as nonchalant as he can against the sun-warmed brick wall.

"Are you entirely sure I cannot have a cigarette?"

---

30 September, 1940 A.D. 9:07 AM.

Italy's pistol goes off into the air.

The noise is flat and hard and, from half a meter away, exceedingly loud. France blinks, that automatic and senseless reaction of shutting off one's sight when one's hearing is assaulted, and thus misses Italy's agile dart forward and to his left. When he unscrews his eyes and shakes his head, clearing it, Italy has already wrapped gloved fingers around his wrist, and shortly after that Italy's knee takes up brief and unpleasant residence in his kidney. France drops to his knees in the gravel, which stings enough that he'll probably be washing tiny spots of blood out of his pantlegs later, and considers trying to escape.

The cool press of metal along the side of his chin is the slim barrel of that pistol, isn't it. Perhaps escape is not the best plan right this moment. France sighs, lets the tension drain out of his shoulders – it is actually very comfortable to not be actively fleeing anything – and holds up the hand that isn't in Italy's grip, empty.

"Good morning, Italy," he says. "Is this entirely necessary?"

Italy, the sentimental thing, hugs him around the shoulders. With the arm holding the gun, of course. It's a Luger. Which isn't unexpected, but is still amusing.

"Got you!" Italy says cheerfully.

"I've only been wandering around the Piedmont for five days," France tells him, which technically is four days longer than France expected to be wandering around the Piedmont, doesn’t anyone know how to take up a surrender these days, dieu. They knew well enough in the nineteenth century, which was the last time Prussia was in Paris –

Actually, France would prefer not to think about Paris just now.

"I had to make sure that Germany would know where we are," Italy is explaining, "and you're pretty good at hiding or anyway there's a lot of mountains and we stopped in Turin first. To see the factories."

Italy is also helping him up, and keeping that Luger precisely nestled at the small of his back at the same time. The precision reminds France of Germany, but Italy is smiling and babbling as always, and Germany would never bounce to his feet like this, or take his prisoner's hand in a pretty white leather glove as if they were off to wander through a pastoral.

It's a bit late in the year for pastorals, France thinks. Not enough lambs in September.

"And I took Germany to the Cathedral of San Giovanni and showed him all the relics and the paintings, and he really liked them, so that was nice. I'm sorry it took so long!"

"I'm not," says France. Italy ignores him. France shrugs, disregards the fractional slide of metal down his spine, tilts his face up to where the thin morning sun is burning off the clouds. It is going to be very hot later, he suspects.

"Where to, then?" he asks. It really is nice not to be running.

"Germany's going to meet us by the river," Italy tells him, smiling so very brightly.

Almost, France shivers.

-

1 September, 1940 A.D. Paris.

The other end of the line buzzes somewhere in Moscow, tinny rings interspersed with the rapid hissing of overstretched and overstressed telephone cables. France waits the requisite six rings, and then two more for good measure, before he slams the phone back down into its cradle. The buzzing stays inside his head, echoes and rattles around. Panzer tanks running over the wires in Belgium, he thinks, and grits his teeth into an approximation of a smile.

Some ally Russia is! All that talk about fellow-feeling and comradery, thrown neatly away the moment Russia's attention is caught by something so small as a full-scale invasion. Such an ungrateful, easily distracted creature, dear Russia, and perhaps France should have known better than to expect anything concrete from him, he remembers the seventeenth century and the way Russia has always batted at baubles and forgotten to send anniversary presents, but surely he could answer his God-damned phone -- hasn't France taught him that much of basic courtesy -- solidarity in the face of impudence -- fraternite --

Dieu, but he has a headache. Also, someone is knocking at the door of his office.

"Oh, come in already," he says, "it’s not as if I can stop you."

His visitor is General Gamelin, the poor man, travel-stained and gaunter than he should be, which describes them all, this war, the things this war is doing to the Continent, ah. He was never so crass with it, when it was his Empire spreading out on eagle's wings across all of Europe. Different tastes, he supposes. Nothing to be done about it except to prevent Prussia from getting airs like this again any time soon – oh, Gamelin is still waiting. France waves him to a chair, which he folds into like a tall accordion.

"Shall I ask about the Maginot Line," France inquires of him, "or do you have some sort of pleasant news for me?"

Gamelin shakes his head. His mouth purses and opens, wordless, like the face of a grotesque or a man horrified by some secret he dares not say. France goes over to him with a sigh – the room spins distractingly when he does, pounding in time with his head – sinks to one knee and catches lightly at his General's hand, holding the fingers in his own while he smiles up at him.

"If you cannot discuss the fate of your Nation with your Nation, cher, with whom could you? I have already forgiven you for whatever failures you imagine are your responsibility. The line?"

"—holds," Gamelin says, even while he looks anywhere but his enclosed hand. France's heart, traitorous thing, leaps in his chest. "But it will be broken before tomorrow evening. The German forces are simply too quick, too strong – "

Perhaps France should be used, by now, to the way hope melts, over-exposed like a photograph, and renders itself entirely meaningless.

"Well," he says, brightly. "Where is the strategic reserve, then?"

"Aucune," says Gamelin. There is none.

France lets go of Gamelin's fingers so that he can cup his face in his hands while he laughs, harsh convulsions of diaphragm and throat that hurt, hurt enough that the pain is just as amusing as the entire lack of anything standing between Germany and Paris, and really, this is not how this war was supposed to proceed. Gamelin is staring at him, France is sure, so he takes his hands away and lets the laughter lift him to his feet and he is certain that his teeth are ground together tight enough to chip when he grins and stares down at the General's bowed head.

"How do you plan to organize the counter-attack," he asks, for formality's sake – he knows better, he's known better from the moment Gamelin knocked on the door, of course he has! "Perhaps the left flank? Or would you prefer the right?"

"… inferiority of numbers," says Gamelin.

This, after France had mobilized almost a third of all his able-bodied young men, nearly six million armed, this! This, and the piles of the dead in their foxholes in Belgium, rotting in the summer heat, this and the thin frames of human bones crushed under the treads of those same Panzer-tanks that are, surely, the thing that is disrupting the phone lines.

"Inferior...