America was…many things, mostly tired, and worried. He had always been worried though, even since he stood up to England, made the world understand that he was FREE. Freedom. He didn't know what the word meant anymore. He had watched as war in the middle east just kept…going on and the debt, god, watching that debt clock just keeping rolling off numbers made him sick. He had thrown his hands up, said he was going for a walk, going to go get some air. He never told them he was going to Mexico. Mexico was the only nation it seemed, with half a head on her shoulders. Maybe because no matter how hard Spain had tried, she never let go of who she was.
He walked for a long time, letting the sun beat him and make him dizzy before he finally found her house. Her farm of apples and sugar cane. He loved sugar cane, maybe because it made him feel like a child again, safe in his mothers arm, before England came and made her…vanish. She was working hard, three whole trucks of apples ready to go. He called out to her. She looked up from fixing her sandal. She smiled at him. She never seemed to hold a grudge. She waved to him and he hugged her. He needed it.
"What's wrong?" she asked, her whole being warm and strong.
"I don't wanna talk about it." he mumbles into her shoulder. She is getting thinner, the world was getting harder to live in, and yet, she smiled. He just didn't understand why.
"Fine. If you don't wanna talk, you can help me get the last ten barrels into the trucks." she said as she pushed him back and tossed her broken sandal to the side and kicked to other one to follow it's twin. She walked barefoot to the next tree, and he followed after. The sun was hot, his feet hurt and his back and arms began to ache. He was tired no, in both body and mind. She just kept going strong. When the sun set, they finally went into her house. Food was ready and waiting for them.
America stepped back at the, the, the, sheer happiness that slammed into him. Mexico's family ran around, the younger nations playing games and screaming and laughing. The women cooked food of so many colors he got lost looking at them, and the men played cards and drank their beers. She shoved him toward the bathroom and soon people began to call her name. It was a happy home, no matter how hard times were.
They sat down to eat, taking two or three refills of food, nothing went to waste. Words were spoken he didn't understand, and jokes too. He laughed anyway, it was hard not to. Finally, the night was old, and the family began to march to their rooms. He saw only three bedrooms, and too many people for just those three. Mexico fixed up the couch and smiled at him. He shoved the tears back and thanked her. She turned her back on him and the moon made her silver.
"Mexico?"
"Si?" she turned to look back at him.
"Can…can I tell you…what's wrong now?"
She smiled and pulled up the little stool. She sat down and looked at him.
He began to tell her everything, he cried and ranted and raved, and no one in the house woke up. She nodded and said nothing. She didn't speak even after he was done. Nothing but the moon and her watched him look like a child. She leaned back and then sighed, heavily, and her noticed how tired she looked.
"America…"she began, her accent thick, but he understood, he always understood, "I used to envy you."
"Why?"
"Because, you have-had-so much." she snapped at him and leaned in to look him in the eye, "I dreamed-my whole familia dreams!-of the things you had! And what did you do? You sold your soul to earn so much more, and now look at you. Look at what happened to the world, because of greed."
"Don't act like your saint!"
"I'M NOT!" she yelled, "I have sinned too, America, greed, lust, vanity, all of us have! But not everyone is FREE!" she began to cry and he had nothing to say. Her tears looked like glass, and she looked like some silver alien, crying there in front of him with the moonlight making the whole room bright as day, "So many of us want that, that freedom, you have." she sniffed.
The house was stiff, waiting for her to go on. So was he.
"Do you remember…what you said to England?"
"What?"
"Mi hermano, Brazil, told me because Spain told him. Do you remember what you said to England?"
"No."
She laughed and wiped away the tears. She took a deep breath and looked him in the eyes.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." she gulped down her tears and he looked at her.
"Why do you remember that?" he asks her after a tense moment.
"Because…you wanted to be free, and you made it so. The rest of us…even now, we are not free. Freedom to us, is heaven, because it all we have to look forward to. We are happy here, because we are alive, and we have family, even now, when things are rough. We are happy alive because our family keeps us strong. We die happy, because he are free." she shook her head, "And you threw your freedom away." She didn't say anything else as she walked back to her room.
America sat there for a long time, thinking about what she had said. He was free. He had freedom. And to make himself richer, he was selling off the freedoms he had worked so hard for. He stood up and walked out of Mexico's house. He was free. America, he was America. Home of the Brave.
Land of the Free.