Poland fighting for the Allies along with France and England and them letting him fall under Soviet rule after the war. Guilt and anger all around, smut optional.
Um. So this didn't go where I wanted it to and I'm pretty sure it isn't remotely what you're looking for. Sorry, OP. :|
--
The gun is a Błyskawica, one of the precious few weapons Poland's army managed to make in secret. Poland lays claim to it early on in the planning stages of his would-be revolution; he slouches at the strategy sessions and secret meetings with his chin propped on his hands and his hair sticky with sweat and dried blood, and he demands to be given something to fight with. A homemade weapon, too, at least until they're supplied with something better – not, like, one of those crappy German ones.
He is deceptively fragile back then, even though he still has a capital and an army. He is all bandages and bruises and half-healed wounds, and since some of his people are starving he is also thin enough to count his ribs in the mirror. All the same, he is cheerfully feral when he makes his demands ("and bullets, lots of bullets") and in the end his people remember what he is and acquiese with quick sharp nods.
Even back then, he knows it's a shitty plan. It puts faith in the other nations that, frankly, Poland is in no mood to have. It assumes that his army – most of which doesn't even have weapons, for God's sake – is capable of pulling off one more miracle, at least beyond actually surviving as long as it has.
But Poland hasn't lasted this long by being a pessimist, so he waves his gun over his head the second some grizzled old soldier who used to have grandchildren hands it to him reverently and he twirls around in the middle of someone's secret basement until he gets dizzy and he teaches one of the very youngest boys how to make really good bombs out of common household materials, because they need to get weapons from somewhere.
It's a shitty plan, but it also puts faith in him and his people – and Poland's never doubted his people, not when he was young and stupid and certainly not now, when they treat him as something precious and fragile and made of glass.
*
Germany has blood on his boots.
For some reason this bothers Poland more than it should. The other nation is otherwise just as crisp and neat as ever, not a single hair out of place and his gun held with the precision and care of a well-trained soldier. If he keeps up the pretense everywhere else, why doesn't he bother about the boots?
"No one is coming," Germany says. There is wariness in the way he clutches his weapon and anger laced through his voice, as if this mess is somehow Poland's fault.
For his part, Poland sways on his feet and glances around him. There are bodies tangled together all around him – not soldiers, he thinks, just an attempt to make the army give up. As if dead civilians are that shocking, these days.
He feels Russia somewhere on what he still considers his soil – waiting for him and Germany to finish trying to blow each other to pieces before he moves in and takes over, the asshole. He also feels the sharp sick pain of the bullets that just killed the people all around him, but dead civilians aren't anything new to him, either.
There is no sign of the others - England, America, the great and powerful nations of the West. His people send messages. They hold out hope.
"You think I want to do this?" Germany asks.
Poland rolls his eyes. "Don't even fucking try to guilt-trip at me." He considers, then smirks as best he can with a split lip and adds, "You've, like, got something on your boots."
Germany's expression changes to something that isn't carefully impassive, but Poland's too busy getting shot again to figure out what it is.
If the hoped-for reinforcements don't get their asses in gear soon, there won't be any of his people left to save.
England drops supplies from time to time, probably to make himself feel better. Poland knows who's behind it because notes come with the precious few crates of food and weapons, reaching him in that inexplicable way countries have of contacting each other. England is, one note says, asking if he can use Russia's airfields to make the flights easier.
Poland laughs himself sick when he reads that, even though it's not funny at all. He'd wish England good luck with that, but it's too much effort to send messages back when it won't do any good – and really, if England thinks he can negotiate with Russia's boss, he's not going to be much help anyway.
France sends nothing, but at least he has an excuse. He has his own people, his own resistance. Maybe he's the captive of his own puppet government - Poland doesn't know, but he can't make himself think unkindly of the other nation; that will come later.
Nothing at all comes from America, land of the free and home of the brave – not until it's too late to do any good.
*
"There's no one coming," the soldiers say, what few of them are left. "They've fucking abandoned us."
They sound bitter and angry and almost surprised, as if the past few decades weren't a clear warning that the rest of the world considers Poland unimportant, as if this isn't '39 bolder and darker and bloodier.
Poland holds his Błyskawica with the bone-thin fingers of his starving city and looks from one face to the next. Not so long ago, he would have considered this unimportant – just a minor setback, nothing for anyone to get so worked up over – but this war is not the same as the rest, with its casualties so high that maybe they will have to invent new numbers to count the dead and new words to describe the horrors, and he thinks his people with their burned-out homes are more than insightful enough to realize that.
There is a real possibility that when they surrender, Poland will simply and finally wink out of existence. This is a new kind of war; there isn't any way to know for sure.
"I'm bored," he says over the whistle of bullets and the moans of the dying, all elaborate casualness. "This sucks. Let's do something else."
His soldiers – clever men, because they're his – hear the sentiment behind the pout, even if Poland doesn't want them to.
*
They surrender in October.
Germany watches impassively as his soldiers raze Warsaw.
Hidden in a non-smoldering part of the rubble, Poland chokes on ashes and runs out of nations to hate and very deliberately doesn't cry.
*
When Russia finally gets around to turning up, he's clearly having one of his saner moments – which is to say he stands in the middle of the ruins of Warsaw, turns around once in a slow deliberate circle, and heaves a sort of full-body sigh.
"Your city's gone," he says.
Poland has his gun slung across his back and is very carefully out of reach. He also wheezes when he speaks, much to his disgust; there's still smoke in his lungs.
"No shit," he says.
Russia smiles, not unkindly. "Don't worry. I care about you," he says, before considering and adding, "I'm the only one who cares about you."
Poland, ignored by anyone who can help and defiant to the last, spends a useless moment wishing his gun still worked. Then he grins like a madman, because his city is gone and his armies are scattered and he's still here.
He throws a brick at Russia, but only because he's out of bullets.
--
The Warsaw Uprising of 1944 was an attempt by the Polish Home Army to kick German forces out of Poland and establish an independent Polish government before the Soviet Union could come marching in. Obviously none of those things happened. For a variety of debated reasons, Poland received almost no support from the Allied nations and what was left of the Home Army surrendered after a little over two months of fighting.
Remnants of the Home Army kept fighting the Soviets after WWII. The very last of these soldiers weren't killed until the 1960s, almost two decades after the war ended.
Yes. Your Poland. Just. Yes. ♥ Scrappy and indomitable and the best kind of silly--because it's the way he rolls and he's not changing it for anyone. Loved his interactions with Russia and Germany--especially Germany, and the blood on his boots. I've read a few interpretations of Poland during WWII by now, but yours is definitely among the best.
You can have my babies anon. Not only did you manage to write about the Warszawa Uprising, you even managed to keep Germany plausible. And the ending is just perfect. Thank you so much for writing this &hearts
Anon, thank you so much for this! Your Poland is amazing and perfect and everything is just so bleak and sad, exactly what I was hoping for. And your prose is absolutely captivating. Thank you so, so much!
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Western Betrayal
(Anonymous) 2009-03-18 12:27 pm (UTC)(link)Poland fighting for the Allies along with France and England and them letting him fall under Soviet rule after the war. Guilt and anger all around, smut optional.
Tempest [1/2]
(Anonymous) 2009-03-26 08:01 am (UTC)(link)--
The gun is a Błyskawica, one of the precious few weapons Poland's army managed to make in secret. Poland lays claim to it early on in the planning stages of his would-be revolution; he slouches at the strategy sessions and secret meetings with his chin propped on his hands and his hair sticky with sweat and dried blood, and he demands to be given something to fight with. A homemade weapon, too, at least until they're supplied with something better – not, like, one of those crappy German ones.
He is deceptively fragile back then, even though he still has a capital and an army. He is all bandages and bruises and half-healed wounds, and since some of his people are starving he is also thin enough to count his ribs in the mirror. All the same, he is cheerfully feral when he makes his demands ("and bullets, lots of bullets") and in the end his people remember what he is and acquiese with quick sharp nods.
Even back then, he knows it's a shitty plan. It puts faith in the other nations that, frankly, Poland is in no mood to have. It assumes that his army – most of which doesn't even have weapons, for God's sake – is capable of pulling off one more miracle, at least beyond actually surviving as long as it has.
But Poland hasn't lasted this long by being a pessimist, so he waves his gun over his head the second some grizzled old soldier who used to have grandchildren hands it to him reverently and he twirls around in the middle of someone's secret basement until he gets dizzy and he teaches one of the very youngest boys how to make really good bombs out of common household materials, because they need to get weapons from somewhere.
It's a shitty plan, but it also puts faith in him and his people – and Poland's never doubted his people, not when he was young and stupid and certainly not now, when they treat him as something precious and fragile and made of glass.
*
Germany has blood on his boots.
For some reason this bothers Poland more than it should. The other nation is otherwise just as crisp and neat as ever, not a single hair out of place and his gun held with the precision and care of a well-trained soldier. If he keeps up the pretense everywhere else, why doesn't he bother about the boots?
"No one is coming," Germany says. There is wariness in the way he clutches his weapon and anger laced through his voice, as if this mess is somehow Poland's fault.
For his part, Poland sways on his feet and glances around him. There are bodies tangled together all around him – not soldiers, he thinks, just an attempt to make the army give up. As if dead civilians are that shocking, these days.
He feels Russia somewhere on what he still considers his soil – waiting for him and Germany to finish trying to blow each other to pieces before he moves in and takes over, the asshole. He also feels the sharp sick pain of the bullets that just killed the people all around him, but dead civilians aren't anything new to him, either.
There is no sign of the others - England, America, the great and powerful nations of the West. His people send messages. They hold out hope.
"You think I want to do this?" Germany asks.
Poland rolls his eyes. "Don't even fucking try to guilt-trip at me." He considers, then smirks as best he can with a split lip and adds, "You've, like, got something on your boots."
Germany's expression changes to something that isn't carefully impassive, but Poland's too busy getting shot again to figure out what it is.
If the hoped-for reinforcements don't get their asses in gear soon, there won't be any of his people left to save.
*
Tempest [2/2]
(Anonymous) 2009-03-26 08:15 am (UTC)(link)Poland laughs himself sick when he reads that, even though it's not funny at all. He'd wish England good luck with that, but it's too much effort to send messages back when it won't do any good – and really, if England thinks he can negotiate with Russia's boss, he's not going to be much help anyway.
France sends nothing, but at least he has an excuse. He has his own people, his own resistance. Maybe he's the captive of his own puppet government - Poland doesn't know, but he can't make himself think unkindly of the other nation; that will come later.
Nothing at all comes from America, land of the free and home of the brave – not until it's too late to do any good.
*
"There's no one coming," the soldiers say, what few of them are left. "They've fucking abandoned us."
They sound bitter and angry and almost surprised, as if the past few decades weren't a clear warning that the rest of the world considers Poland unimportant, as if this isn't '39 bolder and darker and bloodier.
Poland holds his Błyskawica with the bone-thin fingers of his starving city and looks from one face to the next. Not so long ago, he would have considered this unimportant – just a minor setback, nothing for anyone to get so worked up over – but this war is not the same as the rest, with its casualties so high that maybe they will have to invent new numbers to count the dead and new words to describe the horrors, and he thinks his people with their burned-out homes are more than insightful enough to realize that.
There is a real possibility that when they surrender, Poland will simply and finally wink out of existence. This is a new kind of war; there isn't any way to know for sure.
"I'm bored," he says over the whistle of bullets and the moans of the dying, all elaborate casualness. "This sucks. Let's do something else."
His soldiers – clever men, because they're his – hear the sentiment behind the pout, even if Poland doesn't want them to.
*
They surrender in October.
Germany watches impassively as his soldiers raze Warsaw.
Hidden in a non-smoldering part of the rubble, Poland chokes on ashes and runs out of nations to hate and very deliberately doesn't cry.
*
When Russia finally gets around to turning up, he's clearly having one of his saner moments – which is to say he stands in the middle of the ruins of Warsaw, turns around once in a slow deliberate circle, and heaves a sort of full-body sigh.
"Your city's gone," he says.
Poland has his gun slung across his back and is very carefully out of reach. He also wheezes when he speaks, much to his disgust; there's still smoke in his lungs.
"No shit," he says.
Russia smiles, not unkindly. "Don't worry. I care about you," he says, before considering and adding, "I'm the only one who cares about you."
Poland, ignored by anyone who can help and defiant to the last, spends a useless moment wishing his gun still worked. Then he grins like a madman, because his city is gone and his armies are scattered and he's still here.
He throws a brick at Russia, but only because he's out of bullets.
--
The Warsaw Uprising of 1944 was an attempt by the Polish Home Army to kick German forces out of Poland and establish an independent Polish government before the Soviet Union could come marching in. Obviously none of those things happened. For a variety of debated reasons, Poland received almost no support from the Allied nations and what was left of the Home Army surrendered after a little over two months of fighting.
Remnants of the Home Army kept fighting the Soviets after WWII. The very last of these soldiers weren't killed until the 1960s, almost two decades after the war ended.
Non-OP ahoy
(Anonymous) 2009-03-26 09:01 am (UTC)(link)also not OP
(Anonymous) 2009-03-26 03:34 pm (UTC)(link)EVER!
I have no criticism, only vast amounts of love.
Write more Poland for us, please! <3 ~~~
Re: Tempest [2/2]
(Anonymous) 2009-03-26 03:40 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Tempest [2/2]
(Anonymous) 2009-03-26 05:47 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Tempest [2/2]
(Anonymous) 2009-03-26 05:58 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Tempest [2/2]
(Anonymous) 2009-03-26 09:14 pm (UTC)(link)OP
(Anonymous) 2009-03-28 03:12 am (UTC)(link)Re: Tempest [2/2]
(Anonymous) 2009-04-05 11:27 am (UTC)(link)This is amazing and heartwrenching, and the last line just. Just kills me. Wonderful stuff.