Dro: So I gave in and wrote the prequel to The Call of Duty because it was really bugging me. Anyway, do prepare yourself for the angst. This is from America's POV.

Summary: America is falsely accused of destroying a nation. Locked in solitary, he breaks down emotionally. After escaping, he spends the next four years wandering America to find something he desperately desires. And then he finds it.

Warnings: Self-harm; Suicide

Disclaimer: Dro will never own APH.

To think a single mistake could destroy his life.

"Damn it, Alfred! How could you do this to the world? To me?"

"I didn't do anything, Arthur! I was framed!"

"Liar!"

It was an absurd thought, at one time, to ever believe his friends would blame him for something he hadn't done.

"The country is gone, Alfred! The entire fucking country is gone!"

"It wasn't me!"

But that morning at a routine meeting when they fettered him in heavy chains and threw him into solitary, screaming death threats at him the whole way there, he knew his life was over. He'd listened through the small slit of the heavy, black cell door—his only source of light—as they debated loudly what they would do with him. Yao suggested death. Francis perpetual solitary. Arthur sounded upset at their treatment of him, but even the man he trusted most in the world made no attempt to deny what Alfred had done.

Except he hadn't done it.

Every word, every accusation, every threat, every hateful emotion, chipped his heart away. Not a single person defended his innocence. They all wrote him off as guilty. For the first few minutes in his shadowed cage, Alfred was convinced he was dreaming. He'd woken up that morning to a nightmare, finding that a country had been utterly destroyed. He'd rushed outside, driven to the conference center, and walked in to discuss the crisis, only to have the entire room turn on him.

What was it? What was it that made them all blame him? His arrogance? Had they all secretly been waiting for a prime opportunity to get him into a vulnerable position like this? Were they all filthy backstabbers? The pressure on his heart continued to crack it, and he forced those poisonous thoughts away. His friends would surely realize their mistake, right? Because it had to be one. His country hadn't done it. They would do a little investigation and realize the truth, surely. It would probably just be a few hours.

So he'd smiled and sat there quietly, ignoring the voracious gnawing of complete devastation at the bottom of his heart. He'd sat in darkness for minutes that turned into hours, hours that turned into days, days that turned into weeks. And every second that passed caused his smile to falter that much more. The voices of his friends had long since faded away. He knew they were nearby still. He could sense their presences. Surely they'd figured it out by now, right? The real culprit couldn't be too hard to find, right?

But he'd been wrong. So wrong.

No one came to visit him for an entire month. Then Yao appeared. Through the slit in the door, Yao scowled at him, deep hatred in his brown irises. "You have made your last mistake, America." There was no familiarity, no teasing, no warmth. The tense friendship they'd built over the last few decades seemed to have eroded away in weeks. "My people are dying because of you."

"Yao." His throat was dry and his voice was hoarse. "I didn't do it Yao. Please."

"I don't want your denial, America. It is foolish to lie. If I have my way here, you will die next week. You hear me? And I will gladly watch your execution."

"…Execution?"

But Yao said no more. Then he was gone.

It seemed as if the Chinese man had broken some kind of dam. For the next few days, everyone flocked to his little cell, calling him names, cursing his existence, demanding to know why he'd done it. None would turn an ear toward a denial of his involvement. None of them doubted he had done it. None of them trusted him.

And when they'd all left for the night, Alfred still sitting numbly against the wall, staring at that black door with the single slit in it that was his only source of his light, he knew he had died. They wouldn't execute him until next week, no…it was a death far worse than that. Everyone he'd ever known, ever loved, ever trusted…everyone had forsaken him. Everyone. Arthur would not look him in the eye, just rant on, half-sobbing about how betrayed he felt by what Alfred had done. And Alfred stayed silent, still loving Arthur too much to tell him he felt the same way. Francis would spit curses at him, spinning wild tales about he always knew America would end up the villain detested by the world. The only one that Alfred never saw was Matt. Matt, who had returned to Canada in tears, Arthur had said.

In the moment that he realized all his loved ones ceased to love him, Alfred F. Jones died. He felt the heart that been disintegrating for weeks shatter and crumble into dust. His entire life flashed before his eyes, a life filled with laughs and love and happy memories, followed by the acknowledgement that it was over. Perpetual numbness settled over him, and his only cognizant thought was the wonder of how long it would take for his body to follow his heart. Surely not too long. Yao had secured his execution.

One early morning two days before his death, however, he awoke to a sudden bout of desire. Finding it strange—as desire had faded with his emotions—he tried to place it. Home. That was it. His body wanted to go home. It did not want to be reduced to dust in a land that was not its own. It wanted to return from whence it came. Alfred knew he would be restless unless he adhered to this desire, so he broke his chains—he'd always been able to, of course, but…but first his confidence and then his devastation had subdued escape—and wrenched the door right off its hinges. Then he walked right out the door and disappeared from the face of the earth.

Or so the world believed.

When he checked into the first hotel, he did nothing but sit and watch TV, blank-faced and uncaring as the search for a "dangerous killer" went on internationally. That's what they had branded him as to the masses. So his people would turn on him too. He thought of ending his life right there on that dingy blue hotel comforter with a knife to his wrists, but out of respect for the maid and that burning desire screaming "Not yet!" he refrained. Instead, he just moved on.

Every town he came to was the same story. They all appeared so perfectly happy. Children played. Men and women laughed and smiled and loved. But it was all an illusion. He wasn't a fool. He knew with his demise, his country would follow. He considered briefly rethinking his plan to let himself die, but that thought gained little ground in his shattered mind. His life was already over, and his country would fall with or without his presence. Staying on this earth as a phantom traveler, a ghost with no name, would do him no good. So, resolved, he moved on.

Sometimes, they got close. One day he spotted the bitter Yao and a group of police, angrily and furiously searching the town he had thusly occupied. Shaking his head, he had turned the other way, gathered his belongings, and quickly left. It wouldn't do to have Yao catch him. He needed to fulfill the desire. So he hitchhiked down the hallway, and let a stranger carry him to another meaningless town.

One day, a year and a half later, he watched on TV as they called off the search for him. At some point, the other nations had realized their mistake and started searching for him to apologize or something…make sure he was safe? He didn't know or care. It was far too late for that. He had long ceased running for the purpose of escaping. He walked down empty highways and through small, quiet towns for the sake of wandering now. His desire had yet to be filled. The other nations had become an annoyance more than anything. He wanted two things only. Peace and a fulfilled desire. Something told him he should feel relieved that the other nations had decided to finally leave him alone. That was the natural response, right? So Alfred was, of course, confused, when he felt absolutely nothing.

That was the same day he looked in the mirror for the first time in a year. He stepped back, blinking at his appearance. That…was him? That man with the bags under his eyes? Those hopeless blue eyes, dull and worn and tired? That man with the perpetual deep-set frown that controlled his demeanor? That man that looked completely and utterly lost and broken? Hadn't Alfred F. Jones been a hero once? Happy go lucky? High-spirited? Carefree? Joyous? And hadn't he been Alfred F. Jones? His memories seemed to confirm it. So what had happened? And then he remembered.

Alfred F. Jones had died.

He didn't know exactly when the cutting started. He had vague flashes of the episode, when somehow, from somewhere, long dormant emotion had bubbled to the surface and caused him to have a panic attack. He remembered the gleam of a knife and a river of red streaming down his arm. But besides that, he remembered nothing more of it other than that it quelled his emotions again. So he'd started doing it regularly.

He no longer had a need for emotions. They were just uncomfortable nowadays. So he adjusted his jacket to cover his bruised and battered wrists and headed out the door to another town. Emotions were useless to him because he only wanted one thing, and that thing did not involve love or happiness or sadness or anger of any of those other pointless facades. He wanted to fulfill the desire, so he needed to shut up and keep walking and not let foolish things like dead emotions distract him.

Before he realized it, four and a half years had gone by. He'd wondered what he'd been doing in all that time. The days had blended together. The hotels were always the same. Sometimes, the occasional drug would mush his hours together and leave him with a blurry day or two. Sometimes, he would just sleep for hours and hours on end, doing nothing, saying nothing. When was the last time he'd spoken out loud? He honestly couldn't remember.

One day he sat down and tried to think about the past. He hadn't forgotten those memories, that was for sure. He remembered the other nations. Instead of focusing on the nations, he tried to focus on his relationships with them. Some had been friends, right? The word felt like acid on his tongue. Friends. When was the last time he'd had one of those? He shook his head. He never stayed in one place long enough to make any. Plus, he was emotionless now, and he was pretty sure friendship required a few of them.

What else had the other nations been to him? He'd had a few lovers among them, right? Love. That word stung too. Love had killed him, he remembered. He remembered with stark clarity that internal pain that had claimed his life because of love. Love was a murderer. Was there anything about the nations that didn't strike up some painful reminder of his death? He couldn't think of any. Everything he thought rounded back to how so-and-so and such-and-such had played their hand in assassinating him while he was locked away in solitary. The nations seemed to go hand and hand with pain and emotions, so he clucked his tongue, berated himself for being foolish, and stopped thinking about them altogether.

He stopped calling it the desire a few months before he finally fulfilled it. He started referring to instead as the "call." Mostly because that's really what it was. He felt like a voice was beckoning him to go to some special place over the mountains and through the woods and past the hills and valleys. Or perhaps not even that far. He felt himself getting closer and closer to the call's point of origin ever day, so he kept going that direction. He ended up in backwoods such-and-such—he'd lost track of his real location a few days ago, and didn't really care enough to look at a map—and every step he took down the gravel road seemed to draw him closer to the call's destination.

Later that day, as the sun sank lower and lower on the horizon, Alfred began to feel somewhat frantic. He looked around and around at the trees and the tall, scratchy grass and the pink and blue wildflowers that lined the gravel road, and something was desperately scratching at his brain. Something he should know? He thought about it for a while, trying to figure out just what was it was about this place that could warrant such a reaction. It took him four hours of walking late at night to finally understand.

He'd been here before.

He mentally removed the road that scarred the wilderness and took another look around. Then it all made sense. Yes. Yes. He'd been here before! He remembered this place. It was somewhere special. How special? It couldn't have been a recent visit or he would've remembered it sooner. So what was it?

And then he knew where he was being called to.

He rolled the two bottles around in his hand one last time and sighed. It was so nice outside tonight. He laid back in the grass and stared up at the stars, remembering the configuration exactly. The grass had not changed in height or thickness, and it caressed his back like a infant's blanket. Through the thick blades, he could just make out the ancient tree in the distance. It looked so similar to the way it had all those many years ago. He understood exactly why the call had brought him here. It was the perfect place for him to finally find peace.

He'd been born in this place.

His first memory was of opening his eyes to this exact night sky, laying in this exact bed of grass, confused and curious and utterly innocent and thus, completely content and happy. The world had changed, and he with it, but his birthplace had remained the same. It still hushed his fears and whispered soft murmurings in his ears, indistinguishable words soothing him. He'd found the source of the call, and for the first time in four and a half years, he appreciated its presence. It had known exactly to soothe him in his final moments.

He crushed the two plastic bottles with his remaining strength, ground them into the smallest pieces possible, and let the wind carry them away. They'd already been emptied. Then he laid back on the grass and watched the sky, smiling. How foreign it felt, he mused, to smile. The last time he'd done it was for a small child in a park who'd fallen and scraped her knees six and a half months ago in a nameless little town. He'd pulled up his lips and told her everything would be okay. Then she'd smiled back.

He blinked away sleep.

The time before that had been at an ice cream parlor in a city he couldn't remember the name of eight months before that. They'd had his favorite flavor, and it was the first time he'd stepped out to buy something in public for over a year.

Smiling was nice, he supposed. It made his him feel something foreign and strange, though not altogether bad. There was a fading thought in his brain that he'd felt the emotion associated with smiling many times in his life, but he shrugged it off. He knew that already. That really wasn't the point.

His eyelids drooped.

The point was, that, even after being stripped of everything—his love, his friendship, his respect, his strength, his identity, his life—he could still smile. And really, how much more American could he possibly be than that? Being stripped down to an emotionless, cracked, and fragile shell, and yet, still be able to smile at all the little things in life.

Yeah, that was just like America.

Just like himself.

He wondered if Alfred F. Jones would've felt the same way about all this if he hadn't died. He let out one last sleepy breath. Then again, he would find out soon. Perhaps he would meet his heart on the other side and they could be reunited again, and his body would finally warm up from its lingering chill.

He let his eyelids close and block out the cool night sky, stars still sparkling at him from so far away.

Feeling whole again was a nice thought.

It was a wonderful thought.

It was a thought that made him…feel something.

What was it?

Hope? Love? Affection?

No. No….No.

His thoughts start fading away.

Ah! Now he remembered.

He slipped away into a unfeeling sleep.

It was peace.

Dro: Well, there's Alfred's side of that story. Angsty enough for you?