When England first sees the little boy with the wide blue eyes and spun-gold hair all he thinks of is the benefits of yet another colony.

So he competes with France for control of this little boy and soon realizes he has nothing much to offer the child, and so he does what he's done oh so many times – he sulks.

Then a tiny hand is touching his arm lightly, as if afraid he will break (which is ridiculous because he's the mighty British Empire, among the strongest the world has ever seen and he won't ever shatter like glass), and when he looks up the disappointed tears blur his vision but he can still see the utter sincerity of the boy's concern in those wide blue eyes.

And suddenly this boy is more than just a colony.

England realizes after a while that while the lad looks small and weak, helpless and vulnerable, he actually possesses a monstrous strength that stuns him for a moment or two. But superhuman strength or no, he's still a child, so England pulls out his brotherly instincts from somewhere (he never even realized he had it, for crying out loud) and takes the fair child under his wing.

The boy is America with the spun-gold hair and wide blue eyes and England feels the stirrings of a long-abandoned hope tug at him again as the possibility of a family – a real family, not like the open hostility and bitterness between him and his brothers – draws closer and closer with every second spent with this child.

So England decides that this boy with the spun-gold hair and wide blue eyes will become his treasured little brother, and he will teach the child the ways of being a nation among other things, such as reading and writing for one. It will take a while, he muses, watching the boy chase a butterfly through the fields, because admittedly the kid has the attention span of a goldfish.

Then the sound of carefree laughter, so delighted in such a simple activity, reaches his ears and for the first time in ages his lips curve upward into a small but genuine smile.

… Because he's been so lonely for so long and he's always wanted a proper family. So America will be his.

(What he doesn't realize at first is the dangers of giving the child his heart, his iron heart, because in his mind there is no way a little boy with the carefree smile, spun-gold hair and cornflower blue eyes will ever hurt him voluntarily.)