ONE HUNDREDTH FANFIC!1111!111!1111!

Multi-chaptered oneshot?

Allow me to explain – this began as a one-shot. In many ways, it IS a one-shot as the "chapters" are more like segments to break up the bigger picture into readable chunks rather than being deliberate chapters to tell a narrative. I had to break it up because it was like 45 pages of Size 8 Verdana all together and I didn't want to scare people off it, haha.

So, yes, this is my one hundredth fanfic. I have been slaving over it for about a month and a half. Not only does it commemorate my hundredth fic to be posted on the site, but it also commemorates my last day in the United States! I have been over here since September on a year abroad programme as part of my English Literature and American Studies degree and I thought that a fic about America would therefore be the most fitting thing I could possibly post. I got into the Hetalia fandom over here, fangirled over it with Narroch, jesusof-suburbia2o2o and some other awesome peeps I have met through Hetalia at anime cons and all of my Hetalia fics have been written on this side of the Atlantic with the tiny exception of Fröhliche Weihnachten, which I wrote over Christmas when I went home to Britain. And I think this fic has a lot of what I have learned over here in it, so...

Oh, and perhaps a bit of America: The Story of Us. Which was made of epic win.

Some notes on the structure:

One: It has the perspectives of both America and England, uses all three types of narration (first person, second person and third person) and uses two tenses (past and present).

Two: Some segments will seem like they focus more on England than on America. This is because they reference things which happened to Britain as opposed to the US – however, because in those parts, America's reaction to what is happening to England is the important part. I felt that to just focus on aspects of American history wouldn't give him too much character development...

Three: A lot of this fic is literal. So sometimes things sound like they are metaphors but they're not. To give you an example right off the bat, in this fic, America has wings. Not a metaphor. He physically has wings.

(Otherwise it's canon lol)

Oh, and this fic draws a lot on lyrics of the songs 'O America' by Celtic Woman, 'America the Beautiful' and several Green Day songs from American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown. All the chapter titles, for example, are Green Day lyrics. This is not a song-fic, however – the lyrics are scattered within the narrative itself as part of it. If you know the songs, you will probably be able to pick them out.

I would recommend looking up 'O America' on YouTube or something. It's beautiful and sung as though to a personification of America. I remain surprised that no-one has ever done an Alfred AMV/slideshow thing to it...

O America

I – I Am A Nation

You throw your arm over your eyes just before he enters you; it might offend him and that's not your intention, really, it's just that it's something that you want to do, something that feels comfortable at the moment – and he already took away your glasses and put them safely in his top pocket so what is there to see?

He's never really gotten any gentler, it's just that his reasons have changed from time to time, greed and lust and pride and envy, each of them have been one of those old biblical sins – but he has always been constant in your life, always there whether you wanted him to be or not.

He has hurt you just as often as he has helped you, subliminally mind-fucked you as he has physically-fucked you, hard and desperate and passionate and gentle, and yet you have no reason to doubt that he loves you.

That he loves you the most.

He answers when you call him where others have ignored you when there was no more to be gained; ah, he has exploited you as the others have, certainly, but he loves you, he loves you and makes love to you on your lands, to your lands, your purple mountain majesties grand and from your prairies to the sea beneath your ageless open spacious skies—

And he calls you beautiful. It might be nothing but his pride talking again or it might be that he's lying, he's lied to you before, but you always want to believe him so you always do, not because you need his praise or his promise but because you love him back.

Do you love him only because he loves you?

"Oh, America, America..." He whispers it low beside your ear. "God shed His grace on thee."

(No, you do need that praise, don't you? He will ever answer thee as long as you call him – and you will call as long as he answers. You have thrived this long on making a name for yourself, pushing yourself forward because you cannot bear to be ignored. Tell me I'm beautiful. Tell me you love me. I know I'm not perfect but as long as you tell me I am then it doesn't matter. God mend thine ev'ry flaw, isn't that what you said before?)

Dream, America, dream

[or]

Scream, America, scream—

Your dreams are emptier now, rinsed of Frontier and Manifest Destiny and American Exceptionalism, real-unrealistic dreams, instead filled with the static noise of television dreams of tomorrow; your screams have more worth and he listens, particularly when they are on his behalf. You take up a hard handful of earth in your fist as you twist wildly beneath him, throwing back your arm and bucking, arching, as he rocks you to that oblivion once more and you scream and you can't be sure if it was words or not.

He smiles at you. The years have changed you both but you especially, that day in September was not like that day in December sixty years before, nothing has been the same since then, even your scream, you have doubted yourself so much ever since (and maybe for good reason), but even though he has hurt you before, he took your hand then and he takes it again now, the dry soil of your land tumbling between your own fingers and his.

You swing your arm back over your eyes, suddenly too shy or too ashamed to look at him with the sun in your sky behind him like that; you think he is beautiful too but you can't say it, you love him but you can't say it, your voice sticks in your throat and you bite at your bottom lip, you are just as proud and awful as him and you feel him inside you, so full of him that you can feel nothing else – but that's always the case, even when he's nowhere near you, his kisses linger and his touches tattoo themselves on your skin and his language is yours, your thoughts, in your head and on your lips.

You hear him laugh, all pretty and musical like church bells, it's not his real laugh, he's half-mocking you; you squeeze your eyes tighter shut beneath your elbow as you feel him lean down, inhale the scent of grass and then him as he presses close, kind of wrap your legs around him as he kisses you.

You are not weaker than him. Nowhere near. He has told you this himself.

He just likes to make you keep your jacket on when he makes love to you so that he doesn't have to remember that you can fly away and be gone if only the mood takes you.

"Oh, America," he says again (and you think he's trying to make you cry), "you are beautiful to me."