You guys. I have absolutely no idea why I did this. I told myself that I wasn't allowed to post anything until after school had started, but then I was up until four in the morning writing this, and, well... *shrugs*
This is basically just a set of drabbles all put together under the cliche "five times/one time" theme. I think I'm planning to expand upon all of them at some point.
The first time.
America searched the house in an attempt to find the source of the strange, muffled noise that rang out in the midst of the idyllic midafternoon silence. His feet pitter-pattering in time with his heart, the small nation scampered up and down the stairs, through the kitchen, even around the yard. Nothing.
And, perhaps equally unnerving, no sign of his older brother.
"England?"
He walked back into the house, carefully shutting the door behind him, and stood still. Then—there it came again. A strange gasping noise, as if someone had been hurt.
America's little mind put together the two parts of the mystery.
"England!" He stopped trying to listen and continued his frenzied search. Up the stairs and down the halls he ran, until he finally stopped in front of one large door.
England's room.
America pressed his ear to the wood beneath the door handle and listened. His eyes widened and his heart contracted at the sound of his brother… crying?
"England!" He beat on the door with his small fists after finding it was locked. "Are you okay? Can I come in? What's going on?"
"I-It's okay, America." His brother's voice came from inside, shaking despite his fight for control over his tears. "Go play outside for—for a wh-while. I'm just not feeling well, y-you see."
The child scuffed his heel on the floor and bit his lip. Something about this didn't seem right.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I'm positive. G-Go, America."
The second time.
His hands shook uncontrollably, but he still held the rifle in his hands, refusing to point it away from its target: his baby brother. The boy he had found on the plains, the child he had raised from his infancy, the man he had helped to mature and develop—into this horrifyingly unfamiliar person standing in front of him, calm and determined, unwavering and undeterrable.
"It's over, England. We've won. Your men have already surrendered. I am free."
The way America said the last word—I am free from you, free to destroy you, free to kick you around and hate you even though all you ever did was love me—was like an attack directly on England's heart, a perfectly shaped and aimed bullet to tear him and all his emotions to pieces. He wanted to stand tall and spit in his former colony's face—well, then, I am free to take away your "freedom"—but he knew he had no power left to do so. He couldn't muster so much as a raindrop to extinguish the burning fire that was America's newly-found and newly-bled-for independence. His torrent of soldiers and words and bullets had already been consumed in that conflagration that seemed to eat up everything around it.
Including his power, his strength, his love.
The other soldiers and officers slowly walked away behind their American captors, but the two nations remained. One in a heap on the ground with his gun thrown across the field and the other standing with his rifle in his hand, but pointed in another direction, away from the Englishman, as if to shoot anyone who came near him to hurt him, his former enemy and former big brother.
"Go away."
"They're twice as big, you know. You told me yourself. Our hearts are twice as big so we can love and forgive—"
"Fuck off, America."
The third time.
"We've finished rebuilding it. Doesn't it look even nicer now?"
America spread his arms out wide, as if holding the whole White House and all of Washington, from every one of his citizens living there to the waving flag guarding the entrance to the capital. He closed his eyes and smiled.
England, too, closed his eyes, but he did not smile. He instead winced at the sight of flames and the sound of screams in his mind. Beside him stood Canada, begging him not to do this, not to hurt his brother in this way. Part of England had agreed with the Canadian and wished for another way to fight this war—or even a way to avoid it altogether. But the other part of him, the one that had won out in the end (to his horror), had known to obey his military officers. They knew what they were doing, he had convinced himself. This was the only way. Neither America nor England had recourse to peace or mercy now.
Only revenge remained.
With the war over, to haunt him forevermore, vengeance left its shadow: guilt.
"Hey, you okay?"
The Briton's eyes snapped open to find America sitting beside him on the hill, leaning over with concerned eyes that gazed at him… sadly?
Now he had done it. England had made him think of that horrible day he had set his heart on fire. All these years later, he couldn't bind the wounds of the past, erase the plaguing memories that harmed rather than hurt and attacked rather than defended.
Without a word—what could he say? how could he hope to make up for his mistakes and set things aright between them again?—the older nation rose to his feet and walked down the hill, leaving America by himself to wonder what he had done wrong.
Because now, they had to fight wars against themselves instead of against each other.
The fourth time.
America's eyes widened as he saw the trail of smoke and flames from the left wing of England's plane.
"Arthur!"
His fists clenched, white-knuckled beneath his brown gloves, he pulled the control wheel and sent his plane diving through the clouds after his brother. The American heard a few voices yelling at him via the radio, but he ignored them.
No.
He couldn't let this happen. His stomach turned crazily like his brother's plane as it began to spiral out of control, heading straight for the ocean beneath it.
"Bail out! Bail out bail out Artie bail the fuck out of there!"
Inside his cockpit, England slipped out of consciousness, the world turning to blood before his half-open eyes. He vaguely heard America's words from somewhere far away. While he did not understand what they meant, he did know one thing.
He couldn't let this happen.
America wanted to smash the acrylic canopy of his cockpit out of frustration when he heard England say between raspy breaths, "Go… back," but even more so out of shock and rage against the Luftwaffe when he saw the British plane slice through the hungry, bottomless waves.
Instead, he screamed.
The fifth time.
England pulled the blankets over his head with a groan when the younger nation poked his head around the doorframe.
"Dude! France told me you were sick, so I had to come take care of you, obviously!"
The Briton didn't emerge from his cocoon as he said, "Get out of my house. Now."
"Not when you have a—whatchamacallit, again? I don't... Oh, right, a cold. I can't leave when you have such a bad cold!"
"Yes. You can. Get out."
"You saying something? I can't hear at all." America swung around the corner into his brother's room, only to be met with a furious stare.
"America. Out. Now."
"But—"
"I said get out."
The two nations stared at each other for a moment, one gaze angry and stubborn and the other concerned and hurt; then, sighing, America turned to leave.
Before he shut the door all the way behind him, however, he said one thing.
"It's okay to let someone help you every once in a while, y'know. Especially me."
The exception.
England buried his face in his hands as he cried, as if to shield and hide himself from the other nation in whose arms he now found himself. No—not quite found himself. He had been the one to turn America's words from a few weeks previous over in his mind, examining every letter and struggling to understand both sentences. He had been the one to crack, finally pick up his phone, and call the last person in the world he wanted to talk to, much less see.
He had chosen to cry in his younger brother's arms, but his decision embarrassed him nonetheless.
What else could he have done? Continue to sit in his house all alone, feeling as if the world were crashing around him? as if someone had cut out a piece of his heart and throat, then pushed him beneath the waves of suffering and kept him from resurfacing for even a gasp of air?
England may have been alone often (and claimed that he always preferred solitude), but that didn't mean he wanted to be lonely. And loneliness didn't mean he needed to push away the one nation who always offered to stand by his side as his companion, the one who held him close and didn't even ask why he needed him or what had happened.
When England had called and mumbled something about wanting him to come over, America hadn't said anything but "Yeah, right away." For once, the Briton thought, he had seemed to know instantly what had happened and what he had needed to do. What was more, he had fulfilled his obligation to run to the side of his fellow nation—his brother—without messing up somehow, without destroying the atmosphere that he normally pretended not to understand or acknowledge in the slightest.
America understood far more than the older nation credited to him. He knew how England simultaneously pushed people away but tried to pull them close, begged for companionship yet refused it, loved only to have his heart broken.
And although America couldn't break that cycle with a few words of comfort spoken while holding England close as if against the chaos of the world and the confusion of his emotions, he could at least set it in motion, make it begin to turn in his brother's heart.
One day, America thought, this would be the time-tested rule instead of the rare exception.
Just so all y'all are clear on this, the drabbles take place in (or refer to) the colonial period, the American Revolution (the Battle of Yorktown, to be specific), the War of 1812 (the Burning of Washington - this one is meant to take place a few years after the war), WWII, and modern times.
J'adore fear-of-intimacy England. I'm hoping to write a longfic with him at some point, so I guess this was something of a chance to get my feet wet with his character and experience with the disorder.