Maria sighed looking off into the distance nothing but forest and grass lay before her, though if she turned around she would see the incline with the road that led out from her house in the small valley- or hollow as the locals called it.
The house was nestled into the small valley hidden away from prying eyes. The tree's surrounded her home and at the lip of the valley was flat land with more trees. One was less likely to get lost in as they were thin and the road could clearly be seen through the trunks. Seeing the road to her home from the main highway would show a simple dirt road with a split. If the person continued going straight while on the dirt road it would lead them down to a pond and an old cabin if they turned left they would be led to her house.
This home while not new to Maria was not originally hers' it belonged to her late grandfather. On his deathbed, he had handed her an envelope, simply saying to her that he had given her his most prized treasure. He told her he loved her dearly and said he would watch over her once he passed.
For a long time, she left the letter unopened ignoring her mother's and father's worried calls not wanting to deal with the world, throwing herself into her work. She spiraled into a deep depression every day and night a repeat of the next.
It wasn't until late December when she finally opened the letter that she kept hidden in her work desk. The memory of first reading the letter came easily and clearly in her mind.
"My dear precious Maria, in this letter is the papers to my deed. This is my most special treasure, this house that I had built with my very two hands for my wife sons and daughters. I now give the house and the surrounding land to you. I know this may seem sudden to you but, you remind me of myself when I was young, lost with no sense of place. I hope that this town and my home help you find yourself. I have no right of you to demand of you to take the house or live within it so you may sell it if you wish but I would imporl-"
Maria at the time couldn't read the rest of the letter, tears quickly blurring her vision, scoffing at his words with no vile bite within the sound. "You idiot I could never sell your house." Once her eyes were dry she had skimmed the rest of the letter, her grandfather saying if life ever became hard for her that he hoped the home he built would serve as her retreat from reality.
That's how Maria ended up here, dropping her job, her friends her whole life to come and live here out in the country once more. It was due to that letter and her grandfather's words snapped her out of her episode. He would never want her to waste her life away at a desk in attempts of drowning her pain, he'd want her to go and find peace. At first, her friends called her insane, her boss even held off on accepting her quitting notice holding onto it for as long as humanly possible before turning it in. She got her last paycheck in the mail and that was it for her. Her friends had claimed her a lost cause and stopped calling her, even her parent's messages slowed. Not that she blamed them, it was her fault, she was ignoring them purposely. After his death they had shown up at her apartment to many times to count to check up on her which left her lashing out. After moving into the old home her parents let her have her space, in the end only sending her paper letters forgoing emails and calls like they had been doing. It did grab her attention at first, no one truly wrote letters anymore, but she hadn't opened the few letters just yet.
Once she drove up to her grandfather's old house she was bombarded by memories; they left a bittersweetness in her heart, leaving her choked up with watery eyes. Though she might have also been choked up from the awful smell coming from the house. The home was to put it lightly a mess. The place had sat empty for months collecting dust, the rotten food in the fridge and the trash that hadn't been taken out being the main cause of the smell.
What was one to expect when a house was left untouched? No one wanted to dare set foot near the place filled to the brim with happy memories turned bitter with his loss?
It took a lot of work to clean it up but soon with a few days work the house was spick and span any and all bugs gone, along with anything rotten. Her grandfather's clothes and other personal items packed up and stored away in the attic to be looked at on a later date. It was then that she decided she'd never let this house fall into that type of disarray ever again. She would preserve those precious memories and make happier new ones with this house.
Working outside was far different from the inside, it was back-breaking work not to mention just how large the land was. It was a lot of work for one person to care for... Thankfully she had taken to the more laborest work like a fish to water. Using the tools in the tool shed to cut the grass pull up weeds and fill in holes on the land. Maria took a great liking to planting seeds, working out in the hot sun soothed her, giving her an escape to her less than happy thoughts while still being productive.
The people from town, although she had known them from her brief time living there as a child; she knows them now on a more personal degree, even making some friendly acquaintances. She was just thankful that the neighboring farm, that was outside of her valley and basically across the street was owned by her childhood friends grandparents. Which meant she wasn't all too desperate for human contact as the women that she affectionately called a tick stuck to her side every Saturday and Sunday when she came to visit her own grandparents.
"HEY MARIA!"
Speak of the devil and she shall appear. Maria snorted, her lips twitching into a smile at her best friends yell.
"What is is Alexandria," she called turning around to watch as the other ran down the steep roads incline and towards her house.
Reaching where Maria sat Alexandria threw herself at her. Thankfully for Maria, the muscles she had worked on over the months helped her catch Alexandria and was able to dig her feet into the ground to keep them from falling over. This scene was a quite common one, her friend throwing herself at her and laughing loudly. In the beginning, the two would fall over but now that she was able to catch her there were fewer scraps and bruises- it a great relief to her.
"Hm, hows my little America~" Maria teased ruffling the woman's pink pixy bob cut. Alexandria huffed letting go at the teasing and tried squirming out of Maria's strong grip huffing at the tease. "I'm nowhere near Americas personality, I'm not that obnoxious and loud! Not to mention I don't eat that many burgers!"
To anyone else in the small town they would have thought the two had gone crazy but they had not; they were just referencing their favorite anime. It had been a while since Maria had watched it, the show being a relic of her childhood. How her two mom's and dad let her get away with watching the mature show she still had no clue. You would think with three parents in the house they would be able to watch over one kid and make sure she didn't see anything too bad. They were just lucky it was Hetalia and not something scar worthy, though she would forever be embarrassed by her twelve-year-old self, telling her mom about the condom joke, from the scene with Russia and America as her momma watched on in horror and her dad choking on his breath.
Alexandria had a look of smug realization on her face at the way her friends face froze. The memory taking hold and making her inwardly cry out in shame at how awkward her younger self was. "With the way your brow is furrowing, you're thinking about the time you told that con-"
"No shut up this never happened and no one is supposed to speak of it. Maria quickly slapped her hand over the other's mouth, silencing her, not wanting to even remotely think on it anymore then she had too.
"Yeah, I just find it funny how innocent you were." The other woman snorted having given up on running away and instead clinging to Maria. "Even when you were eighteen you didn't realize that other scene with Italy and Japan in the bath- you know the one about being a grower or a shower~?" Alexandria was wiggling her eyebrows, a smirk lighting up her face.
"I can only deal with so much second-hand embarrassment in one day Alex, let me be," Maria growled in slight irritation now trying to push Alexandria away from her.
Maria felt very close to blurting out some of the embarrassing memories that they both shared as payback. One of them involving their old romantic relationship, how they would cosplay as different Hetalia characters and make out. Wisely she let that be, they hadn't brought up their dating since breaking up in high school.
She always wondered how they had seemed to easily fit back into the old places of best friends, was it because the romantic intent of their old relationship wasn't the main part? That it was their strong bond as best friends that kept them together? Maybe it was because when they started dating the two had a long talk about if they broke up they wouldn't hold hard feeling to each other or maybe it had to do with how the both of them agreed that they should break up?
Either way, Maria was glad that they were still friends, Alexandria was the best thing to happen to her, her one an only true friend...
"Hey why are you looking at me like that," Alex asked her head cocking to the side in confusion. It was that honest to god look of confusion and how cute the other looked while doing it that had made Maria fall for her in the first place. But that was neither here or now, those feelings were a lifetime ago.
"Nothing nothing shut up," she muttered pushing the other away once more. Maria reframed from looking at her, instead looking up at the blue sky, Alex following her lead eagerly searching for whatever the other saw.
Alex seemed to come to the silent realization that Maria didn't feel like speaking anymore. This caused them to both settle down on the ground, laying in the grass and watching the clouds go by. This peaceful silence was more than okay with Maria, it saved her from trying to come up with conversation when she had nothing more to say.
The sun's warm rays shone down on them leaving Maria in a pleasantly warm haze. This state of being saved her from having to think of what her thoughts meant. What her feelings meant, and the scary thought of still having feelings for her best friend.
Maria sometimes wished that moment's like this could last forever.
Authors note: So, one piece has been put on hold. Why you may ask? Simple my dear followers... NOSTALGIA. Nostalgia for the very things you remember as a child and fanfics you remember reading as a child. I remember I use to adore the whole Hetaliod genre of fanfics so I went back to read over them and some of the manual fanfics. Sadly I started to notice very unfavorable patterns in all these fanfics (and the manuals themselves) that made me a bit more- how you put it- enraged? As you can guess that pattern was sexual harassment, joking about rape, and just the blatant disrespect consent in total.
I felt like a friend of mine explained the reasoning for this being a popular thing- "a lot of it has to do with impressionable minors or even victims of helicopter parenting suddenly finding some bit of freedom to express & explore topics that were considered Taboo™ before. To teens & young adults who are new to relationships, they're still discovering themselves & what they want out of a relationship."
Their words opened up my eyes and it made me take another good look at the fics, the patterns of how the person wrote. It also made me take a good look at my younger self and what I did when I was a child. I had some form for right and wrong due to personal experiences while young, so I may not have gone about joking of rape I still had my own issues. So, in the end, it's a learning experience learning of consent and boundaries and other things-
Now those subjects (sexual harassment etc) are hard to write anyway but to me, the proper way to go about it would be to treat these matters realistically and not write about it as if it's a fun time for everyone involved. There are many ways these things can affect people and the way many people wrote about it, in my opinion, was unrealistic. ie the main character laughing their sexual assault off and not having any lasting effects on them. Another one of the things being "when you put a robot in horny mode he's just going to take the nearest person and go at it" which number one- this is an intelligent AI in the form of a person who has a conscious? Just because they were horny doesn't mean they'd grab some random person and have sex with them. Your run of the mill person would just lock themselves up in their room and masturbate until they were satisfied.
All of my rantings aside you may ask. So what does this mean? What are you going to write?
I want to write something that can in the future have a good influence on the younger kids reading Hetalia fics. To show that a fanfic doesn't need to rely on sexual assault for comedy. There are already too many shows out there that rely on it and make a mockery out of relationships in general. I just want something to show what healthy relationships are, what real human reactions to these subjects are, (ironic I know due to how most of the characters in this fanfic will be androids) what actually happens when you go through something traumatic.
I just want to make something real.
I know many of you probably won't read this, or won't even look at this once noticing it's not one piece but I still want to put this out there. I'm not sure how far I'll get with this, or even if this fanfic will actually get completed. I still want to try so thank you for reading through this and giving this fanfic a chance.