Don't even try to understand where I can find this so soon after Christmas. Just know that this is very dark.
I wrote this to a huge selection of songs but started the italics with Conversations with my 13 year old self by P!nk and the normal text with April and October by the rasmus ft. Annette Olzon.
I will explain the layout at the end but I can't without giving you serious spoilers for the fic.
I own nothing and seriously hope this will never become a reality.
"Hey, England, where are you?" called the young American nation, bounding through the now-opened doorway, he was very young, little more than ten human years old.
He wished he was still so very innocent. He had been like that once, a long time ago. World war I I I had ended England, or rather, the five atomic bombs sent at him by their opposition had. The majority of the British Isles had been vaporised, that that was left was a terrible, twisted wasteland. America could still remember the cloud it produced, the cloud had covered the earth for nineteen days. He had been standing next to England at the time it happened, the colour had drained out of the older nation. He then had screamed, the most terrible, gut wrenching sound the American had ever heard, that sound would stay with him for the rest of his life; he knew it.
He skidded to a stop at the sight that met his eyes.
America gave an ironic, insane grin better suited to the Russia of old. He pulled his own clothes off and stared at his body in the mirror.
His eyes ran over his mentors battered and broken body.
He did not know of the younger watching him from the almost closed door. He lowered his head. He now resembled the nation who had raised him, in more ways than one.
He took the final steps up to the elder man, a tiny hand was raised and ran itself down the ribcage, feeling all those shattered ribs. The points of the Britons spine seemed ready to pierce the once-creamy white skin, now streaked with mud, crusted with scabs and blackened with bruises.
Oh to be handsome again. Even his brother, Canada, could barely look at him any more. His body was ruined. It would never truly heal. For years he had wondered why nations such as England would stare at themselves in a mirror and remember all those battles. Now he wondered how they could stand multiple times the beating he had received once.
The injured tore one eye open, the beautiful verdant green eyes surrounded by a bloodshot rim, perfectly matching the whole socket, no, scratch that the whole side of his face. He sighed and stood up. America found himself at eye height with a hip bone, dangerously jutting out from underneath a baggy, ripped pair of trousers that couldn't stay up. They fell to reveal the state of England's legs. Mud and blood, most of it not his, caked his body.
He ran one hand up his leg, his eyes closed. The fighting the sordid mess on him had come from swum in front of his eyes. He had felt so very invincible, until of course, the Enemy had held up a cold, pale and lifeless body. Finland, naked and bruised; and to ram it home Sweden, muzzled, his hands tied behind his back. He looked imploringly up at America and his allies. "Now he will die" that hateful voice had said, a single gunshot had been fired. The Enemy had turned and walked away. Sealand, having remained surprisingly restrained for himself, ran over to his adoptive father. He pulled the muzzle off and cradled the nation, too far gone to save. "Y've gr'n 'p..." Sweden trailed off, his eyes closing and his body becoming a dead, cooling weight in the boy's arms.
America's eyes shimmered, England saw the unasked question in his protégée's blue eyes "what happened?"
America knew the answer all to well, he would repeat it that night for sure.
"I went to war, my child, war... a concept I cannot explain to you. It is something you will face eventually, you see..." he gave a demented laugh, "I am you and you are me. I can protect you for a while, but this world is a terrible place. I have stood in your place, I know, I saw this happen to Celtus, My predecessor. This is not the end and it never will be."
Yes, he would repeat it. And it would be repeated again, and again, until the end of the ball of rock they called home, and even beyond there, to the colony worlds. As much as it was a difficult thing to say, he thought it would go on forever.
America turned tail and ran, he couldn't bare it, he would never be like that. The broken shell in that room, he was himself and England was England.
Back then he had been so young and full of false hope. That false hope would remain his long and distant dream.
As each nation ends it's days of glory, a younger bears witness to that tragedy and deep down, however much they deny it they know it's a vicious, never-ending cycle of death and destruction.
He felt a small hand on his back, he moved to face it. "I'm sorry Brittonis, I am so very sorry."
The italics happen between England and America at some unknown moment pre- American revolution. The rest happens with America after World War I I I and mentions a Colony planet of the future, after all, humans will spread to the stars one day I'm sure.