[There is a very uncomfortable pause in which this France seems like modern France. He blinks, though his hand is still steady, holding the pistol to aim at England's chest.]
. . .
You are unarmed? When you made the request for supplies, I at least thought you had something with you already.
[France almost slumps in what looks like indignant disappointment.] Why would you meet with me unarmed? You're at least carrying a knife or something, are you not?
Mon Dieu, you have become even more stupid and lacking in intelligence in your old age!
[He raises the pistol to England's face, hardly caring if he is unarmed. This will make things so much more simple.]
See! I am not a coward. I have guessed that I still exist in what is, for me, such a distant year. What I want from you, Angleterre, what you will give me--
--is the truth of the state of my government.
[Yes. He is quite serious. He feels as though he's hanging by a thread, or standing on the fine edge of a sharpened blade. There is no one else he trusts to ask, to tell him the truth or any semblance of it--as England might very well lie to his face. There is almost a wistfulness to his voice; a desire and tiny flickering hope for a time when his government and citizens are more stable than... than this. Is the price paid in blood and terror worth the outcome? Is what he must endure a failure?
That he would even ask these questions and that he would ask this of England reveals to his own mind the desperation of the man left inside. Francis, the lover, the philosopher, hating himself for even losing confidence in the republic, detesting himself for asking his rival or the fact that he must do so in the first place...
It is much easier to do with England at gunpoint.
If he can even believe the nonsense that he is from nearly two centuries in the future. The thought twists his mind and tugs at the beginnings of a headache. There are so many thoughts, memories and feelings that should not be his, that make no sense--there is hardly any room for what is left of Francis Bonnefoy.
Pretending at being a paragon of strength, France inwardly feels as though he's been cut into ribbons.
Let it endure.
Let it fail.
Let there be compromise.
There can be no compromise.
The voices, all belonging to him. They are each France, reaching out with desperate hands to claw him into a new era of existence--possibly, he fears, to obliterate every part of him that once was. For him to become an entirely new nation, to live on, or to die and be replaced by another.
Buried in the dark, Francis screams at them to be silent.
His eyes narrow and his entire body is a mass of outwardly still, inwardly writing tension. He wants to scream at the top of his lungs and strike England across the face with the hard wood of the firearm in his hand. He wants to pull at his own hair and tear away his own skin to bleed out the poison that is making him so sick. So shattered.]
no subject
. . .
You are unarmed? When you made the request for supplies, I at least thought you had something with you already.
[France almost slumps in what looks like indignant disappointment.] Why would you meet with me unarmed? You're at least carrying a knife or something, are you not?
Mon Dieu, you have become even more stupid and lacking in intelligence in your old age!
[He raises the pistol to England's face, hardly caring if he is unarmed. This will make things so much more simple.]
See! I am not a coward. I have guessed that I still exist in what is, for me, such a distant year. What I want from you, Angleterre, what you will give me--
--is the truth of the state of my government.
[Yes. He is quite serious. He feels as though he's hanging by a thread, or standing on the fine edge of a sharpened blade. There is no one else he trusts to ask, to tell him the truth or any semblance of it--as England might very well lie to his face. There is almost a wistfulness to his voice; a desire and tiny flickering hope for a time when his government and citizens are more stable than... than this. Is the price paid in blood and terror worth the outcome? Is what he must endure a failure?
That he would even ask these questions and that he would ask this of England reveals to his own mind the desperation of the man left inside. Francis, the lover, the philosopher, hating himself for even losing confidence in the republic, detesting himself for asking his rival or the fact that he must do so in the first place...
It is much easier to do with England at gunpoint.
If he can even believe the nonsense that he is from nearly two centuries in the future. The thought twists his mind and tugs at the beginnings of a headache. There are so many thoughts, memories and feelings that should not be his, that make no sense--there is hardly any room for what is left of Francis Bonnefoy.
Pretending at being a paragon of strength, France inwardly feels as though he's been cut into ribbons.
Let it endure.
Let it fail.
Let there be compromise.
There can be no compromise.
The voices, all belonging to him. They are each France, reaching out with desperate hands to claw him into a new era of existence--possibly, he fears, to obliterate every part of him that once was. For him to become an entirely new nation, to live on, or to die and be replaced by another.
Buried in the dark, Francis screams at them to be silent.
His eyes narrow and his entire body is a mass of outwardly still, inwardly writing tension. He wants to scream at the top of his lungs and strike England across the face with the hard wood of the firearm in his hand. He wants to pull at his own hair and tear away his own skin to bleed out the poison that is making him so sick. So shattered.]
Has the republic endured? Answer me.
A simple yes or no will suffice.