Disclaimer: I don't own Hetalia.

Therein lies my first attempt at writing comedy, or at least something vaguely resembling it.

You have been warned.

Condolences

AKA

The one in which America's mold colonies form trading coalitions.

Making his way to America's front door, England offered a nod to the bodyguard posing as an idling gardener in the frosty front yard. The man responded with a half-shrug and a sickly smile which quite suited the shroud of misery that was currently enveloping the house. Neither he nor the other bodyguards scattered around the vicinity of the neighbourhood seemed to be in any fit state to make small talk of any sort, so England simply rang the doorbell and waited to be let in, irritably waving away the white mist his breaths created, his other hand stuffed firmly into the pocket of his coat.

The door soon opened, and he was greeted by the sight of a small grey alien who, for once, did not seem inclined to hurl any profanity his way. In fact, it merely stood there and gazed at him, which he supposed might have been an effect of the blue miasma of despair and horror that permeated the interior of America's house. It seemed that it was up to him to break the silence. He cleared his throat.

"Good day, Tony," he said. That wordless stare was already becoming unsettling, but as long as the alien was willing to be even halfway civil towards him - even if said civility was born of despair thick enough to rival that of sexually frustrated Catholics - he would extend to it the same courtesy. "I don't suppose America is in today?" It was a rhetorical question, really, given the current atmosphere of the place, but Tony nodded tiredly anyway. "Well, I am here to see him, so may I come in?" That, and he was getting bloody cold, and the interior of the house was at least heated.

With a shrug similar to the one that the bodyguard had given him, Tony let him in and directed him down the hallway where the miasma was growing ever thicker, dragging its feet as it wandered off somewhere else. Having left his coat on a hook near the door, the ice that now grasped at England had nothing to do with the weather, and he sighed as he reached the door that doubtless barred the worst of it from him. Without bothering to knock or even announce his presence, he threw open the door, and abruptly gagged as an entirely new stench hit him, one of rotting garbage. Holding his breath, he peered into the dark confines of the room.

It was lit only by the light from the open doorway, which he blocked, and the few rays of daylight that managed to reach around the thick curtains that were firmly drawn shut over the sole window in the room. This scant light illuminated the piles of McDonald's discarded food wrappers strewn about the room. In the corner furthest from both the door and window, a lump of misery and woe lay huddled under several blankets on a thick mattress that sat directly on the floor, surrounded by the largest pile of garbage yet.

... Blast it all, he would have to breathe in order to speak. He turned to the side for a moment, escaping the stench of the garbage, and sucked in a deep breath, before resisting the urge to sigh; he would need to make the most of this marginally cleaner air.

"Honestly, America," England said, with all the exasperation of a parent who has been there, done that, and sold the shirt he got for it, multiple times, "must you be like this after every election?" There was no response from the lump, not that he had expected to elicit one with mere words, so he took another breath of less-garbage-filled air and stepped into the room. His foot hit something, which tipped over with a clink and rolled a metre or so away. "Come now, it's hardly the end of the world, you bloody drama queen."

As he gingerly picked his way through the garbage towards the mattress, cursing the fact that America just had to be the only nation in the world who would drown his sorrows in more hamburgers than alcohol, he accidentally knocked over a pile. It was this noise that finally got the lump to stir, twisting around to peer up at him, before burrowing himself away in the blankets once more.

"Go 'way, England," the lump finally said, his voice muffled but still clearly watery. "You don' know wha' this feels like!"

"You may believe that, but that hardly changes the fact that you will have a new president in a few days, you need to make yourself at least slightly presentable in order to meet him, and that you've been shut away in this room for the past three months!" England said, his last two words hissed. He reached down to pull the blankets off the lump that dared to call himself America, but was rebuffed with a shriek and a more violent twist, and was forced to let go, lest he be thrown bodily into a cushion of garbage. He was certain his suit was already ruined as it was, but he rather fancied not having to completely bleach himself once his task here was complete, thank you very much.

"I don' wanna!" the lump wailed, now accompanied by a round of sobs and sniffles. "He's 'ORRIBLE! I-I don' wanna s-see his stupid face!"

Not for the first time, and certainly not the last, England cursed the men who had decreed and guaranteed that America would change bosses every few years, and in so doing, had condemned him to an eternity of doing this every time an election rolled around. On the other hand, he was hardly vindictive enough to force any human to spend too much longer than four or eight years with America. A new, much more recent target for his ire had been the advent of social media, which was a simply and unfortunately fantastic tool for stirring up political fervour amongst the masses, and had the effect of making America somehow even more insufferable come campaign time. What a fool he had been, to believe that to be impossible.

Well, this was not the time to dwell on his past naïvety, and so he rolled his eyes, though the effect was lost on the lump. "Be that as it may, you still have to get up," he said, making another futile attempt at yanking America up. This time, he was only saved from a garbage burial through his foresight in planting his feet more widely apart.

"NO!" The shriek was followed by the lump actively curling up and shuffling away from him, into the wall. England shut his eyes at this, and counted slowly to ten. Then back to one. Then back to ten again. When he had regained a level of patience that the saints would have envied, he decided to attempt verbal reasoning in lieu of physical coercion. He would never admit it under pain of death, but he supposed he did owe it to America; after all, the exploits of his new president-elect and musing on the effects they had on him had been the source of much amusement for the rest of the nations in post-meeting chats. There was also the sheer disquiet that resulted from witnessing this... incongruity. America should have spent the past three months as he usually spent his time: being his usual loud, obnoxious self, not as this defeated, sobbing heap among trash heaps.

"Come now, America," England said, in a valiant attempt at pacification, "it's just a new boss, same as all the other bosses you've had." He would have preferred to simply haul the lump out of his blankets and toss him outside, he really would, but that risked getting into a struggle, in a room full of garbage, and he had his limits. "At the very least, he's hardly likely to start burning your own people at the stake, or anything like that, and he'll only be around for eight years, at the very most." The lump had stopped shaking by this point, and actually seemed to be taking his words into consideration for once. England considered it progress, and wondered if this counted as a legitimate miracle.

"M-maybe," the lump said, the last of his sobs dying out, "b-but only 'cause he'll kill them with guns, and nobody will ever want to come over again, an-and I can't even go see New Zealand or C-Canada, 'cause I can't find them on the map!" Something had to be seriously wrong if America, of all nations, not only remembered those two nations existed, but got their names right without even trying. Although why he wanted to visit them specifically was another question. "And someone can get a lot of shit done in e-eight years, y-ya know?" His speech was punctuated with hiccups. England had to concede his point. Eight years seemed like hardly anything when viewed amongst the centuries of a nation's history, but humans could be nothing if not productive with their time.

Nonetheless... "I'm here, am I not, America?" he said, his left eyebrow cranking up of its own accord. "I am here, and I'll come visit you again if you want me to, or you can visit me, as you have often done in the past, but first you have to get up and clean yourself and your house." He would have punctuated his statements by kneeling next to the mattress, but found himself hindered by a particularly large pile of stained paper cups, which looked to be on the verge of forming a sentient hive mind. The crumpled burger wrappers next to them, on the other hand, seemed perfectly happy with developing individually, although there might have been a vague notion of unionising floating around there.

"Y-yeah, but you're always around, and m-maybe I don't wanna go over to you, 'cause the last time I did and tried those cookies you made, I had a colon missile crisis!"

... Right, that was it, diplomacy could go bugger itself on the Empire State Building. If America was now well enough to insult his cooking, he was well enough to take the beating England was now ready to serve.

... Not in the middle of a garbage heap, though. The paper boxes over by the window looked just about ready to revolt if they were taxed any further. He had learnt his lesson from Lord North, and he had no intention of forgetting it. An alternative it would have to be, then, and speaking of the window, that gave him an idea.

England promptly turned towards the curtains, and would have marched his way over to them, but was instead forced to tiptoe over the various obstacles in his path, eyeing them carefully all the while, and fighting back the feeling that they were staring back. At length, he finally reached the window, seized the obnoxiously red curtains that had nonetheless been dyed purple by their owner's entirely well-deserved misery, and wrenched them apart. The weak January sunlight immediately flowed into the room, and was greeted by a renewed symphony of satisfying shrieks. Yet, that still was not enough to get America to move off his spot, and so England turned again, looking for an alternative light source. It presented itself in the form of a large ceiling lamp, the switch of which was rather inconveniently located right next to the door, on the other side of the room.

But, he wasn't England for nothing. No sea had yet managed to conquer him, and he was not about to allow this sea of garbage to be the first to earn that accolade, however close it felt. He fought his way through it yet again, slamming his hand over the switch, and the lamp obliged with another flood of yellow light. This time, the shrieks reached their highest pitch yet, before finally dying down into a series of quiet whimpers. Satisfaction now permeating his very being, England turned back to the lump, which had gone still, and perhaps compliant. He could be optimistic when the situation called for it.

"Now, are you finally going to come out of there, or shall I start taking the truly drastic measures?" he said, crossing his arms firmly. When no answer, verbal or otherwise, came, he sighed. "So be it."

America did start protesting when England reached him and began dragging him through the garbage heap in earnest. "H-hey! Cut it out, dude! Let me go, I don't wanna go outside!" he yelled, renewing his earlier struggles.

"No, you have responsibilities that I will not allow you to neglect any further and oh bloody hell!" The exclamation had been elicited by a mound of burger wrappers, different from the individualistic ones, deciding that the noise and light had pushed them to their limits and that it was time for true action. On the bright side, America's protests ceased abruptly upon seeing them rise up to bear arms against their former overlord, and indeed, he somehow made it outside the room before England did. They slammed the door shut behind them, and fortunately the burger wrappers seemed to decide that they could tolerate the light as long as it was quiet.

England slid down the door and sat with his back to it, digesting the implications of their mad dash and the cause of it. "... How strange. I should not be surprised that your trash has managed to gain sentience, and yet here I am," he said, with a flat stare towards America, who was slumped against the opposite wall, panting from his exertion.

America eventually fell silent again, his breathing returning to normal. At this point, England expected some sort of retort. Another insult, perhaps, or some more whining. Even a physical attack did not seem out of the question, although launching one from a sitting position would be difficult.

But none of those options came, and as America remained in his position, slumped over in nothing more than an undershirt and a pair of flag-printed boxers, the silence stretched on, became uncomfortable, developed a terminal illness, and passed away into a funeral attended by no one. As before, England found himself breaking it.

"You really do have to get up and meet him. Your government may be capable of functioning without you around, but you have yet to fail in greeting each of your new bosses over the past two and a half centuries. Why start now?" he asked. He was no stranger to America's ridiculous mood swings when it came to his political opinions - a natural, though unfortunate, consequence of having more than three hundred million, highly opinionated, people living inside of you and divided along defined borders - but this was a new level of reluctance for him. His garbage had never managed to achieve independant locomotion before this, after all.

At last, America responded with a sigh, tipping his head back to rest on the wall behind him. "I know, man, but this time round... it's like they've been getting worse and worse. And this guy's just the worst one of all!" he finally said, in an explosive expelling of breath. "I just... can't bring myself to go meet him. Everyone thinks he's nuts, man! Have you even heard some of the shit he's been saying, dude?"

"If I do recall correctly, you have said something to that effect about other bosses of yours, several times in the past," England said, once again raising an eyebrow. "But perhaps I can see some of your point on this occasion, which now ought to be celebrated as a rare event. We did enjoy a good laugh over his Great Lakes proposal."

America groaned, one hand now coming up to cover his forehead. "Please don't remind me, man. And how can you even laugh about this crap?" he demanded, shifting his fingers to glare at England. "I know you all hate acknowledging it, but what my boss does affects you all and we can't help that!"

England scoffed at this, rolling his eyes again. "Do you truly believe you are the only nation in the world to suffer from incompetent bosses that we hate? Or even worse?" he asked, casting his mind back throughout his own history. "Bloody Mary forced me to bow to Spain and burnt my people, her people, at the stake to suit her own interests. Edward VIII would have gladly seen me as a subject of the Third Reich. John lost Normandy to that bloody frog and managed to get himself excommunicated. Henry VIII tore me apart simply so he could get divorced. And those are merely examples from my own past," he said, finishing with a glare of his own at America. "Your new boss is not the first possibly-insane one you have had, he will not be the last, and you have far more control over who gets to be your boss than most of us have ever had in the past." He was fairly certain that the monarchs he had cited had flown straight over America's head, but his point had been made nonetheless. It was rewarded with silence, but this time it seemed more contrite and thoughtful than merely miserable.

"... You're right. I'm sorry, " America mumbled at length, and the apology almost made having to swim through a sea of garbage worth it. Almost. "It's just... this sucks, man."

"Much as it does, it doesn't change the fact that you need to get up and do your bloody job. In the best-case scenario, he'll be somehow assassinated before you ever meet him. In a slightly more realistic scenario, he only gets four years as your boss. In the absolute worst-case, he'll only be your boss for the next eight years. Pull yourself together and get through it. You can start with a shower, for one," England said, now pushing himself to his feet and offering a hand to the other nation. The unspoken meaning was not lost on either of them, and America slowly blinked up at him, before finally smiling. It was weak, but it managed to disperse some of the gloom that had been his constant companion throughout all this.

"Yeah... yeah, I will. Thanks, man," he said, accepting the offer. An apology and genuine gratitude, all in the same day? Had it not been for the trash heaps, England would have wondered when he had fallen asleep. Trusting America to handle his own personal hygiene, he made his way to the kitchen.

His thoughts of possibly baking some good scones evaporated when he discovered that the mold colonies on the flour had taken the mold on the sugar hostage, and were now trading it as slaves. It took a while for England to successfully fight down the urge to burn everything in the house to the ground, hampered by the distinct lack of tea to be found anywhere in the vicinity. Trust the bloody git to not know how to properly stock a kitchen. In fact, the only halfway edible things he seemed to have at this point consisted of some instant coffee and a collection of Twinkies.

Still, small comfort was better than no comfort, and even a three-in-one mix that functioned more like a slap to the face, than an actual stimulant, could help. So it was that when America arrived in his kitchen, freshly showered and properly-dressed, it was to find England seated at the small table, across from a large, steaming mug and a plate of inexplicably-preserved snack cakes, and reading something on his phone with a smirk.

"My condolences," he said, as he looked up at America, who paused in the middle of a gulp of the foul, yet effective concoction to stare at him in trepidation. He felt his smirk only growing wider at the expression.

"F-for what, dude? Oh man, I'm so gonna regret asking that, aren't I..." America groaned, dropping himself unceremoniously into the other chair at the table.

It was with a cheerful wave of his phone that England replied, "Apparently, your new boss has vowed to put a stop to all banana imports, on account of the fact that they are under suspicion of containing... well, you may want to see for yourself." By this point, America had progressed to a full faceplant on the table, his head nestled firmly between the plate and mug.

"Why..." he said, and the blue shroud materialised to gather around him again. "Don't those idiots have anything better to report?" When the United States of America was calling someone an idiot, it was a special day indeed. Truly, England could have done without the trash heaps and all-encompassing stench of despair, but being able to watch America suffer from the consequences of his choices was always worth it. Even when it came with the certain knowledge that those same consequences would inevitably spill over to you. True entertainment always came at a price, after all, and was rare to boot.

Yet, all good shows had to come to an end, and in this instance, that end came with the arrival of no less than fifteen Green Berets, followed by a full team of exterminators in full hazmat gear, sent by special order of America's boss to ensure that he made it to meet his new one in presentable condition. America screamed something about liberty, protests, and free eagles as they dragged him out his front door, while England saluted the good men who were serving their country well, and then left the cleanup crew to their jobs.

It really was a bit of a pity that this only rolled around once every four years. Perhaps he would bring Canada with him next time.

FIN

Author's Natterings:

Thanks to Presidential Initiation, by Car(as of this posting date, anyway), which partially inspired this. I like to think of this as the "Anti-Presidential Initiation", if you will. The complete opposite in initial conception, anyway.

So this was dashed out over the course of three days, between work, food, sleep, and farming, and edited as I wrote. I'm certain that maybe in a few months' time, I'll look back on this and cringe in horror before attempting to wipe its very memory from existence, but for now, this is the best you'll get due to self-imposed time limits.

I am so very sorry.

Cheers~!

Addendums: It seems I really should explain things a bit more, so: I was fully aware of just how OOC America and England are even as I wrote this. I think of this story as a flirtatious little minx who doesn't know if it wants to be crack comedy, satirical comedy, or satirical comedy dressed up in crack comedy's suit. Either way, when writing this, characterisation was one of the first things to fall on the cutting room floor. I would gladly bring it back if the issue wasn't as divisive as proper characterisation getting in the way of the ideas I wanted to satirise. In that respect, these characters function more as tools for the satire to work, which is unfortunate.

By the by, this entire thing being satire means that what you interpret from here, doesn't necessarily reflect my own opinions on the issues at hand. There's a reason why I never mentioned any specific names or current events: in addition to keeping this relatively ambiguous in time, I'm not making any specific party the sole punching target in all this. Is this set in 2009, or 2017? Which party won? The answer to those questions is, in order, yes and yes. I do know how dubious it is to be claiming satire after the fact, but dubious credibility is just an intrinsic part of the nature of satire, after all.

Admittedly, the thing about Catholics is all me. They should just stick to vampire hunting. Fascinating culture and history, though. Other than that, I'm not bringing my opinions into this, simply because they're not relevant. Expressing them was never the purpose of this story.