"Awaken, Israel. Awaken."
Murmuring, yawning, the new Nation opens big brown eyes to see an elderly man stooping gently over her.
"Israel, you're going to have many trials in your life. Keep your faith, little one."
She mutters promises sleepily. God smiles down on her but weeps inside at her future. He wants to spare this small Nation.
He scoops her up and walks to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
"This is your promised land. Treat her well and you shall be profitable."
Abraham reaches out his arms to accept the girl.
She sweats out in the sun. Coughing, Israel looks around at her people, malnourished and working much too hard for their bodies to cope.
"Is-Hali, you should stop. It's fine for us humans if we die, but if you-" the swarthy man breaks off, swallowing hard. He glances at the Egyptian slave-drivers with barely disguised panic.
"I'm fine." says the little girl with the eyes of an old, old thing.
He nods and passes a water bottle to her. Staring at it, she is lost for words. Then, she laughs mirthlessly.
"Don't worry, Akim. As long as my people are watered, I am watered. You forget that I am a Nation."
One of the Egyptians spots them, walks over, trailed by a black dog. Tall and proud, she takes Israel's arm and fixes her with a glare with eyes older than the world.
"As a Nation, you need to work harder," she says in clipped tones. "When I was young, I endured worse. Perhaps you do not have enough incentive?"
Israel shoves her away.
"My time is coming." She murmurs.
Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt, parting the sea and bringing manna from the heavens.
He takes the hand of a small child, female. She escapes the notice of many people, and the artists neglect to paint her.
The child looks up and says thank you with tears in her eyes.
It was so long, so long ago. Those times of peace and happiness were nearly gone. The girl is driven out of cities and conquered by many people, too many people. She is nearly engulfed in the sufferings and murders. But each time she forces herself to be strong, to remember that she is the one that God promised to her people. Even as Rome is crushing her under his feet and the Holy Roman Empire butchers her people, she does not give up.
"Hali! Hali!" A small boy, barely eight summers, runs to her, panting.
"Yes?" asks the slim girl in white.
"My parents created a song for you! Would you like to hear it?" he asks joyfully.
The girl nods and smiles. The boy furrows his brow in concentration and raises his voice in childish rendering;
"O Come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel
Who mourns in lonely exile here-"
The boy breaks off when he sees the girl bending her head, shoulders shaking. Distressed, he flings his arms around her, begging her to not cry, that the song wasn't meant to harm-
But the girl smiles through her tears and says,
"It's a lovely song. It just reminded me of when I was in..." she breaks off. Then, abruptly: "How about you sing the rest for me?"
She lightly touches her back where the scars remains, the scars of her slavery, while the boy sings the rest of the song with as much feeling as he can.
Older, wiser, infinitely sadder, she saw a European man of blond hair and green eyes step towards her.
"Are you going to make this difficult?" he asked. She shook her head mutely.
"Good." He seemed to hesitate, youth shining through his face, [from her perspective; for others he was old], but his eyes hardened and he started to chant the words to the Final Resting that all Nations go when they collapse.
She submitted herself to the void. Before disappearing, she looked at the man, sadness in her eyes.
"Take care of my children for me." She whispered.
Drifting. Floating. Emptiness.
Darkness from every plane of vision.
Isn't this better than war?
No, she answered herself, this was so much worse.
She screamed in agony and at the same time didn't scream, making the nothingness shiver with her pain.
It was years and yet not years later- her essence is wracked with holes of nothingness, but surprisingly holding out-her people still mourn and remember her, it seemed.
She's forgiven the man. After all, she says to herself, aren't Nations simply extensions of their people? So it was the people's fault.
And suddenly like a fissure in space a young man in a dark blue uniform becomes. He is not pushed in, neither is he slowly materializing. He simply is, and has been, since the beginning. Everything is dark, so dark, like the deepest bowels of a well.
Where is this? He wants to scream. But because of the nature of the place, they know each other's thoughts and feelings, only to spin and remember the past.
Everywhere. Nowhere. She says without a sound.
He remembers the burnt-blue skies of her youth, her swirling brown hair. She remembers the snow-capped giants sleeping in peace; she also remembers his eyes of red.
Are you okay if I do something spontaneous? He asks.
She smiles and nods while remaining motionless.
And the darkness reverberated with the sounds of their intermingled singing.
Her darkness was shrinking. Why? She asks soundlessly. She and the man of the snow-capped giants dance and twist and hum the melody of the darkness, forgetting with each step and slowly fading away. She cannot remember the burnt-blue skies, or the sands of time that blew into her doorway. He can barely hold on to his memories of a girl with green eyes. She is pulled from his grasp, the dance broken for a while.
"Hey, Lady! Wake up!"
"You idiot, America. She's an old and respectable nation. We need to call her back with something she remembers. It needs to be fairly poignant."
Does she know that voice of green eyes?
"Hey, Iggy, she's religious, riiiight?"
"Erm…yes…"
"Sing a hymn for her then!"
"I'm not going to do that!"
"Come o-on, Iggy. You're single, it's okay!"
"No way in hell! Especially when you put it like that!"
"I can't sing and you know that!"
A pause and the voices got dimmer. She relaxes, thinking that it was a momentary pause, something that the darkness taunts her with. They resume the singing, faint and indistinct, that reverberates throughout the dimension.
But; so sweetly;
"O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel…"
The voice-of-green-eyes falters.
She remembers the boy in the city of sand and wind, she remembers her conquests, and she remembers all the men who had died with the name of Israel on their lips.
She retreats back into the darkness for a mere second and places a light kiss on the cheek of the one who was with her for so short a long while.
Forgive me, she whispers.
He hugs her tight, and then lets her go.
The black place [not really, she would tell herself, it was more of a nothing place] came away. She was hit with sounds, and smells, and when she opened her eyes she could see a burnt-blue sky and feel the sand beneath her.
Sobbing with relief at the fact the black place had finally gone away, she threw her arms around the nearest thing- the voice-of-green-eyes, her savior.
"Thank you…thank you…" she cried into his chest.
Awkwardly, the voice-of-green-eyes wrapped his arms around her. He grumbles a little but manages to calm her down. He gives her some falafel which he quickly says that he made after she has taken the first bite. She ignores his frantic denials to the other man, also blonde of hair but with spectacles perched rakishly on his nose. It does not matter, she thinks, who made it. It's not that difficult.
She wakes up in the morning and suits up quickly, rifle over one shoulder, knives in the prearranged parts of her uniform. Israel was a nation that everyone could conquer. She used to be a bit like Italy in that respect. No longer.
It came to a surprise to both her and the rest of the world when she had beaten Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the rest. It just goes to show; she thinks grimly, that when Nations come back from the Final Resting they aren't going to be sent back there easily.
America had cheered her on, as did England; she had hated him at first, but they were friends, now. How her rebirth had come about was a secret; even America had not said anything, but he did continue to tease England.
Grinning to herself, she jumps over a short wall and supervises the men and women in her army. Administering a few whacks in the head here and there, she jokes and laughs.
She stays for a few hours, training and working, helping out townspeople and making sure her soldiers are ready for any sort of action.
She runs during a break, calling over her shoulder that she will be late for a meeting. The soldiers smile and yell many things about what that could possibly be. She makes a great show of mock horror at the more indecent suggestions before turning around a corner.
Israel leans against a wall and projects herself to the northernmost tip of her territory. Syria waited for her, on the place her border and his met.
"Bitch." He mutters under his breath as he takes her arm.
"I'm not your mother." She says back to him, equally hostile.
They project to the place Turkey's border is shared with Syria, in complete and very awkward silence. She relaxes as soon as she sees Turkey; he had been one of her first friends after she had come back.
"Hey, Hali." He says, grinning. "So how was yer trip with Asu? As romantic as ever, right?"
Both countries goggle at him. Since he had a very strong political bond with Israel (And a friendship with Syria in the recent years) he was one of the only countries who could joke about their long-standing enmity.
He waves a hand imperiously and makes them step over the border.
"You're one o' the last batches. The African Nations're going on Spain's boat-" He starts to say, and a cell phone beeps. He flips it open and stares at the message displayed proudly on the screen.
"I take that back-you are the last batch. So, Asu, did ya plan t'spirit her away?"
Syria grits his teeth as they project and is about to come up with a reply when Bulgaria shimmers in the distance. He salutes them mockingly and projects them to Romania, tagging along. Romania quietly did the same, to Hungary's border. Everyone winced; the bad relations between Hungary and Romania were near-legendary.
Thankfully, she had a lot of 'boy love' merchandise she had just read so, starry-eyed, completely ignores Romania. She insists, however, that they go to Austria's house, since it was quicker than going through the twins'. Holding her frying pan certainly puts an emphasis on the argument, and everyone quickly agrees.
Austria is as inscrutable as ever, patting Hungary on the head and conducting her with gentlemanly grace across the border; he does the same to Israel, giving the barest hint of a smile as she protests to the gesture and walks over without any prelude.
It takes two trips to get them to the German border; diplomatic as always, Austria separates Syria and Israel. Germany takes the two girls first, depositing them at the meeting place this year; Berlin. Everyone is talking, laughing, sounds falling empty and hollow and forced upon any listener's ear, trying so hard to forget that the wall had stood only a few miles from where they were. The spring morning is still new and fresh, the sky a pale delicate blue like a robin's egg.
At last, the last few stragglers arrive and the doors to the conference are flung open; everyone rushes in gratefully. All except Israel, Germany, and the other few countries that had dignity and didn't mind the tragedy of the wall, since they had gone through much the same.
Germany, however, is troubled. He reaches into his pocket to take out a worn calendar. He checks the date, one last time, as if to try and make it go away. He sighs, puts the calendar back and is striding towards the meeting room when a small hand catches his wrist.
Israel quickens her pace and draws level with him, staring straight ahead.
"Did the wall go down today?" she asks quietly.
He is startled. Of all Nations, Israel was not the one he expected to talk to him. Especially about today.
"No…it's not that…" he says. "It's just…someone very important to me…my brother, he's…" he trails off, unable to say that damning word.
She blinks owlishly. "Gilbert's fine."
His head snaps up, bewildered. Nations only used each other's human names when they knew each other intimately. Most often, when they had shared more than two hundred years of common history.
"But-I never-You never met-"
"You know, better than most people, that I was reborn, after a period of time." She says. They are in the building now, and walking through the winding passages.
"Well," she continues, "I saw your brother there. He's okay."
His face softens as they walk through the double doors into the meeting room.
"Thank you."