Disclaimer: Hetalia is not mine.
Unbroken
She was young, Spain noticed. Sweet, unspoiled and barely a country. This should be easy.
The Philippines stood before him, innocent and naïve. She was beautiful, Spain supposed, with her thick dark hair as black as night itself and her skin as brown as a coconut in the sun. She was still so young. Her dark brown eyes had yet to lose their sparkle and had yet to be hardened from the horrors of war and famine. She was clad in crude clothing fashioned from her surroundings but she was contented with that. A crown of the prettiest flowers from around the island was perched on her head.
This was going to be very, very easy.
When Spain marched his army into her territory, she didn't mind much, aside from one or two uprisings. She fed his people with the fruit of her land. She gave them the freedom to choose their wives from her people. She allowed them to do anything they wanted.
And why wouldn't she?
Spain had given her Christianity. He had christened her with her name. He sweet-talked the Philippines and her people into giving up their rights, their land, and their religion for him. He used her. He tricked her. He threw her away like a mere pebble in a river.
She was only a child, after all.
Spain lured her in with whispers of God and love and culture, only to steal the ground under her feet. The Philippines became a servant in her own house, forced to bend, to kneel, and to become subordinate to this foreign invader. What was the purpose of her existence if only to become an extension of the Motherland? She was forbidden to speak her native language. She and her people were forced to speak the unfamiliar tongue of the Spaniards, to wear the thick clothes that shielded everything from the sun but trapped heat within, to bow their heads and obey orders. They were prisoners inside their own home.
During the war, when he looked the Philippines in the eye and remembered the light that shone there, he smirked. He was the one who tore that light from her. He was the one who made her this way, eyes blank and unseeing, hair limp and oily, body mere skin and bones. He had sucked the life out of this child (or was she a woman now?) and he felt-and still feels- no remorse. He felt the familiar sense of greed and lust rushing through his blood vessels, and that made him think that this was worth it.
It is very simple.
Sometimes Spain could hear her crying late at night, nursing her wounds as more of her people died because of his hands. She was powerless. She could only repeat the prayer Spain taught her, over and over again, as if by repeating it more she would have more chances of her prayers being granted. He listened as she prayed for freedom, for justice, for the end of this abuse. He smirked.
What was she without me?
The end came slowly, after three hundred years. It started with a book. How poetic, that something so deep and great had ended with something so simple. That book, Noli mi Tangere—Touch me Not, he translates—rallied her people together. He laughed at that, at first. That book wasn't even written in her tongue. How dare it use his own language to insult him. He sentenced the author— Rizal was his name— to prison for four years. He wonders now whether that was a good idea. Rizal in prison seemed to ignite the people's ire even more. Soon, he thought then, it will happen soon.
It did.
She fought back. She fought until her fingers were bloody from pulling the trigger so often. She fought until she collapsed from the exhaustion. She was good, he admitted, but not good enough. She still fought with her old fashioned weapons, using up every last drop of her energy and strength, and then some. He admired her for her perseverance, but he could still beat her without lifting a single finger.
Then she called him.
America was on her side after her people fled to him, screaming for help. He was the hero, after all, Spain chuckled. America eventually listened to them. Spain knew America could beat him in a heartbeat. America's army was seemingly never-ending; they knew how to fight, and how to survive long nights and harsh weather. Spain knew he would be defeated. It was too much; he would have too many deaths on his account, too much destruction. To save face, he and America devised a scheme to make the Philippines believe that America had crushed him.
They were both greedy bastards.
Spain handed over the keys to the Philippines's house to America. Spain saw her just this morning as she gathered her men for a drink at the bar to celebrate the defeat of Spain. The Philippines was not free yet. After all this hardship and pain and suffering, after all these months of battle and hiding and secrets, she still was not free. Her previous master merely sold her to yet another avaricious country. She turned to America for help and he stabbed her in the back. She had to learn another language not her own.
It goes on.
As Spain packed his bags and prepared to leave the Philippines, he waited for her to say goodbye. After all, those three hundred years they spent together couldn't have all been bad, could it? He found her in the garage-turned-weapon-storage room, polishing her rusty bolos and guns from the battle against him and he almost feels guilty.
Her thick black hair had gotten some of its luster back and was tied in a bun at the top of her head. She wore what the rest of her guerrilla army did: camouflage pants and a white tank top to relieve some heat. She had a gun slung over her shoulder and army boots. She was surely a woman now, young and still inexperienced, yes, but a woman nonetheless. They made quick eye contact, and Spain would never forget the look in her dark eyes: fear, bitterness, determination and mostly anger, horrifyingly potent anger. He thought he had broken her, but she sewed herself back together and came out stronger than before.
"Leave," she ordered in her language. It's changed, Spain thought, her language sounds like mine. Spain said not a word, and left her house for good as America moved in.
The Philippines had finally achieved independence in 1945. Spain never saw her again.
Note: I wanted to show a side of Spain as a conquistador instead of the happy flowery bubbly idiot people usually portray him as. I also wanted to incorporate my Filipino history into this because nobody seems to mention the thousands of abuses Spain has done to the Philippines. This is historically accurate, by the way. Noli mi Tangere is a real book by Filipino national hero Jose Rizal. Spain signed the Treaty of Paris in 1898 which handed over Guam, the Philippines, Cuba and part of Puerto Rico and the West Indies to America. The Filipino language has been heavily influenced by Spain's three hundred year colonization so some Filipino words sound similar to their Spanish counterparts.