A/N: I'm sorry that all I've written lately are really short one-shots. I just don't have any ideas for epic plot-tastic stories right now… but I how these one-shots let me take a closer look at characters…
Sealand wasn't afraid of the dark. He appreciated the night light that Finland left in his room when he stayed with them, sure. He also understood Latvia's nightmares, and held him close when he woke up screaming during a sleepover. It wasn't that he couldn't fathom the idea of being afraid of the dark. No, that wasn't the case at all.
The simple fact was that darkness held a promise of freedom. When he stood on the deck of his metal body during the day, he could see the rust spots and hastily cobbled-together railings. However, when night fell, and he lay in his plastic race car bed ("positively gaudy," Jerk England always called it, but Sealand was proud of it.) he shut his ocean-colored eyes and dreamed. With his eyes shut, he could feel not only the soft sheets pressing against his skin, but also his other body. He felt his metal toes pressing into the sand, the saltwater sloshing about his waist. Breathing in, he could smell the sea, no matter where he was.
He wondered if other nations felt this way too, if their landmasses were like an extension of their physical body. Did his artificial status make him different? But he never thought about the others for long. Nighttime was for dreaming. With his eyes shut, he was no longer a tiny scrap of metal, lost in an ocean larger than even the biggest countries.
In the dark, Sealand was a country too. In the dark, before he slept, he pretended. He pretended that he'd be the first space-station country, that he'd hit a growth spurt, that the sea floor beneath him would suddenly rise and cause him to have land of his own.
In the dark, he could pretend that those things were going to happen before he'd fall apart.