It Had Been Simple
A/N: What is this 'historical context' you speak of? (shifty eyes)
Vietnam set filled the kettle with water and set it on the stove. There was already a much larger pot set to boil for her dinner – she opened the lid and glanced in, noting that the noodles were nearly done. That would leave her a few minutes to watch the sun dip a little further in the sky over the ocean.
Vietnam left her summer house and sat on the steps of her porch that faced the sea. As a reward for "going above and beyond the call of duty," the government had discreetly set aside some waterfront property for her. It wasn't said aloud, but they worried that, with her record, she could be dangerous if upset.
She was dangerous when she was upset, but she hadn't been really angry in a long time, not that she would be telling them that. No use in losing a perfect place to live – she still remembered her previous homelessness, a side-effect of living as long as she had. China had gotten used to it, but then, he had two thousand years to himself before running afoul of his own government (repeatedly), which sort of made it necessary to never have a place for other people to target. Come to think of it, South Korea had also spent a majority of his time during World War II as the leader of a group of guerilla fighters within his borders, Taiwan had been torn between her loyalty to Japan and her desire to be independent, Hong Kong had been overseas still, and a number of other nations had been basically rats to be hunted within a maze of their own construction.
Of course, thinking of the past made her think of the present, in a roundabout way, and Vietnam did not like her present, for various reasons.
It had been a long time since Vietnam had seen any of her family. Twenty, thirty years? More? She had realized shortly after she had driven America off that some of them were scared of her and her newfound power. Thailand, for one, refused to speak with her for whatever reason. The sillier of the two Koreas also ran away whenever she tried to say something to him, and it hurt.
Of all her family, it seemed that only China and North Korea would even look at her, and the latter's gaze was almost dead after so many years of torment of which the other Korean twin had been spared. Vietnam thought it was Russia's fault – he was too close to China and North Korea for her liking. A lot of things were "too much" for her liking. It so happened that a lot of them happened to her neighbors.
Vietnam sat on her porch and wondered where it had all gone wrong.
Back when they had all been children, it had been simple.
She had grown up separate from any of the others, raised by Champa and Annam, her grandmother and mother, respectively. They had experience and knew even when they were born that there were great things stirring to the north. It turned out to be China, and his many offshoots, springing up like weeds.
She had been introduced to China first, as a young girl, at the end of the Han. It was an accident.
Champa had been fishing in the river near their home and instead of finding fish, she found China, floating unconscious in the water. She had taken him back to her home, where Annam and Vietnam were, and they had begun to help him recover from the fall of a dynasty into an era of warfare.
China was a kind man. He was unusually soft-spoken and did whatever they asked, so they asked little. It seemed rude to demand. He often told stories to Vietnam, of his childhood and of the other young nations he had become an older brother figure to. Vietnam and Annam were fascinated, but Champa was always busy listening to the king's worries in the great city and had little time for talking with their new guest. In time, China was recovered and they were happy. He would be going home soon, but they were happy he was well.
Vietnam wondered if Champa would have lived if she had just let China drown. It didn't seem like long after that Sui troops came and took China back, ransacking the little hut Champa had lived in and crushing whatever resistance her people could provide. Champa died shortly afterward, withering far faster than any person Annam or Vietnam had seen.
Annam lived her life as a vassal state to China. She didn't take it personally, but it was obvious to Vietnam that her mother resented the older nation's power over her. It was difficult to reconcile the idea of the kind young man they had known with the idea of the near-tyrannical nation that had its claws in most of the land in the world.
One day, Vietnam decided to talk to China about it. She didn't like crossing the river normally, but she found a boat on her side of it and set about paddling over to China's. She, at least, knew how to swim. She had forgotten how many people she and her family had saved over the years who had not known how to even float. China had been one of them.
She arrived with the sun still low in the sky and tied her boat to a post on one of the many piers on the river. Vietnam took the paddle out of the boat and hefted it over her shoulder as a sort of security measure – no one wanted a boat that they could not steer, and unless they carried their oars around like she did, they were "up a creek without a paddle," as the saying went.
China, it turned out, lived along the same river. She thought she had heard her mother say something once about how, unlike Champa, China preferred to stay out of his rulers' affairs if he could. It had paid off – he owned a neat little section of riverbank surrounded by fruit trees and ornamental bamboo groves. According to the sign posted on the tree nearest the road out front, it was also a tea shop.
Vietnam shook her head. For such a large and prosperous nation, China did not seem to think very far off the poverty line.
She spotted a large and sleepy-looking panda lying on the front step, chewing one of the neatly-clipped bamboo shoots. There was another sign above it; Please do not feed Mingming. She has bitten several people already. Vietnam looked from the panda to the sign and back. She decided that China would be a strange person indeed. It had, after all, been nearly a hundred years since she had seen him last. What if he was old now? What if he didn't recognize her?
That last bit, at least, was worrying. She had grown up since then – hadn't she? Vietnam remembered that China had towered over her during their last meeting, but she didn't really think it would be the same now. She wasn't sure if it was possible for China to age at all, given how much older he was than Champa.
She entered the tea shop to mass chaos and was suddenly very unhappy she had left her oar outside. Well, yet another sign had said weapons were forbidden.
It was one of the funny things about trying to control a number of younger siblings, she would reflect later. Mainly because as soon as you grabbed one, the others would start making trouble somewhere else.
Vietnam watched bemusedly as China, still recognizable in red, struggled to control a squirming little cretin in blue and white while another in red and yellow tipped a tray full of clay cups off the table. At about the same time, a young man in blue-gray robes was tripped by a tiger cub.
Vietnam gave a short laugh and shook her head again. "Do you need help?" she asked the young man who was now covered in tea and cursing. He glanced up at her and shook his head.
She pulled him to his feet – he was a little smaller than her, with black hair like they all had and dark eyes. Those eyes were much darker than either her or either of the children, who all had shades of brown or amber with the exception of Vietnam and China, whose eyes were tinted green and bright gold, respectively.
She watched interestedly as he snatched up the tiger cub and held it by the scruff of its neck. By that time, China had managed to keep the other two from further mayhem and the shop was almost normal again, though they all looked terribly scuffed-up at the moment.
Vietnam gave them all a long look and shook her head. "I didn't expect this at all." But she was smiling, making the smallest pair regard her with curious stares. "I'm Vietnam. It's nice to meet you all."
"Oh, you're Annam's daughter, right?" China asked, almost absentmindedly smacking the little boy on the head as he tried to dart off and attack yet another innocent set of crockery. The little fiend was far from subdued – had he just woken up from a nap?
Of course he didn't remember her as her own person. Well, that was fine. She didn't think she'd remember him, either, if it weren't for the fact that he hadn't aged a day in three hundred years. Chinese fashions changed too fast.
"Yes. I came to ask you about something, but now I can't remember what it was." Vietnam said, scratching her head and smiling sheepishly. Of course she remembered, but it wasn't worth bringing up now. She had sort of expected palaces and bureaucracy, not a little tea shop practically sitting on the water.
"That's okay!" It was the little boy in blue who had spoken. "I forget things all the time!"
The young man still covered in tea grumbled, "Like your manners?"
"Oh, yeah. I'm South Korea, and this is North Korea!" He gestured vaguely in the direction of the little girl with the braid, who seemed to be his twin. She smiled back shyly.
"Are you Japan?" Vietnam asked curiously – the young man was about her age, if a little older, maybe. She was never sure about that sort of thing, not when the oldest among them barely aged at all and the children could be old enough to have grown up with Confucius for all she knew.
"Yes. I'm just helping out for the week – China fired the other assistant he used to have." Japan said, before trailing off and leaving to get clean again, muttering about brats and too much slack.
"He was lazy." China said under his breath, though everyone heard it. He sighed and picked up both of the children. "I'm sorry about this, Vietnam. I guess you were expecting a little less chaos, right?"
"Maybe." Vietnam said. She glanced at where she was sure the kitchen was and said rather mildly, "Did you know that your kettle is boiling over?"
China swore loudly enough that Vietnam was sure Annam would have a few choice words for him when she went home, promptly disappearing into the kitchen. Vietnam thought she heard him scream. Something about metal and burning, and Japan's question echoed from what seemed like half a world away.
That left her with the pair of Koreas, who were looking up at her expectantly. She looked at one of the tables left untouched by the chaos. "Do either of you now how to play mahjong?" Two nods. "Well, let's play until your older brothers get back to normal. The tiger can play too."
"His name is Hyung," said the little girl in red and yellow, North Korea. "He doesn't know how."
"Well, we'll just have to teach him, then." Vietnam said. There was a loud clatter as they began to mix up the pieces.
It didn't take long for Vietnam to be considered part of the family, and she wouldn't have had it any other way. Annam did not make her opinions known, but Vietnam thought she was happy, too.
Always thinking, never speaking. Vietnam was like that, but only recently. Watching made her silent, left her to fill the void that sometimes came with her own thoughts. What did that man just say? Oh, he was holding fireworks, he probably wants me to buy something, go away now please.
It was a strange way to go through life. It made a person forget that things changed sometimes, that not everything was predictable. Vietnam had long fallen into the habit of scripting out conversations for the times when she went to the market, so she could be free to think as her body worked on automatic.
She made her way home and thought of the long, long time when America's airplanes had once swarmed the skies above the jungle, killing. She even remembered the stories Taiwan had told her sometimes, of the Flying Tigers she had had fun with. Well, Taiwan had never been a treat to America or anyone else. Even if she was an island…something…she was no world power. She had never really had everything used against her.
That had soured Vietnam's relationship with America permanently, she thought. It wasn't even her existence as a hostile power that was the threat for him – he worried only of Russia and his communism. So what if it spread to all of Asia? Even Russia's infatuation with the concept had ended by now (though Vietnam had never been sure if Russia had actually supported the ideal, since she and China didn't care one way or the other). Everything fell down eventually – America was just too young to see that.
All these thoughts of the past were depressing. It was so easy to blame the Westerners. And she knew something now about trying to simplify things too far.
Vietnam found that her front porch had gained a new background element beyond the little palm she kept in one corner and the plastic beach chair – a bright red package, addressed to her. She was a little like Israel in that she sometimes was a little paranoid of brightly-colored objects (especially if they flashed), but her beachcomber's kit – consisting of a military-strength metal detector and a rather heavy robot, in case of mines – revealed no metal inside the shiny wrapping paper and cardboard. She instantly felt safer.
She brought the box to the rear of the house where she could read the entire tag.
From America
To Vietnam
She flipped the tag open. It read,
I'm really sorry. I didn't want any of this to happen.
And that was it.
She stared at the message for a long time, remembering that she had sent a similar box to America some years ago, but that had been a slightly different kind of gift. If she recalled correctly, her gift had been a small-caliber handgun manufactured in the former Soviet Union. There had been a little handwritten note in the box – I'm sorry about this, I regret everything, but it's too far gone now. Goodbye.
Even if it had taken him fifty or so years to respond with something other than bullets, at least he remembered. That bothered her more than anything – he actually sent something back, even though she had meant to break off all ties with him. It would be less painful that way.
"Stupid kid." Vietnam muttered, rubbing her eyes. "You're just a stupid kid, why do you keep doing things like this?"
She liked China, but in a vaguely-defined sort of way that she knew wasn't going to get any further than that. He was too badly fragmented – the loss of Japan, both Koreas, her, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, especially him, had basically driven China into a sort of death spiral of hopelessness. Oh, Vietnam had tried to help him recover, but what was done was done. He'd shut her out. He was still shutting most of them out.
She had tried to like America, nearly a hundred years ago, or maybe he had liked her as a sort of first crush, but it had never led anywhere. She didn't think it really could have, under the circumstances, but what was past was past. She opened the package.
Inside was a simple gift – a stuffed dragon with big whiskers and oversized eyebrows, along with yellow plush limbs and a pair of wide, green eyes. It wasn't much, considering what America could afford if he wanted something bad enough, but she didn't think a lot of his ideas would have survived international shipping. She liked it anyway.
There was another note inside: Me and Canada hope you and everyone over there get along again soon. I tried to send all the dolls together, but UPS said it was too big. And Canada says he hopes you like it.
Oh. Was this dragon supposed to represent China, then? No…China's would have red on it instead of green. This dragon was her. Vietnam turned it over in her hands and found that there was no sign of machine-made needlework on it. When had either of them learned to sew?
She heard water splashing wildly on the shore and looked up to see what was, for her, a sight for sore eyes. She'd forgotten that this beach on her coast had other vacation houses.
"Hey, Vietnam!" someone shouted, waving at her. He was smiling, his glasses tucked into his breast pocket, his pants rolled up to knee height so he could play in the surf. Nearby, South Korea and the pet tiger he shared with his twin were attempting to catch the odd little crabs that swarmed over the beach sometimes. "Didja get the box?"
Vietnam did something unusual then – she smiled, fully, to the point where she knew it was real. America grinned back. "Yes, it's here. And thank you."
"Cool. Hey, you gonna come out, China? The day's nearly over!" America shouted back at another house Vietnam had never paid much attention to. It had been empty for years, but apparently it wasn't anymore.
"Do you two even know how to pack? Your suitcases exploded!" Yes, that was definitely China. Always the one to worry. No wonder she didn't see him.
"I thought you were afraid of me." Vietnam said to South Korea, still hugging her knew dragon doll.
He laughed, allowing the tiger to steal a crab from him and begin eating it with relish. "Hyung, that's mine – oh, I wasn't really scared. It was just a, um, strategic maneuver. And happy birthday, by the way."
"Huh?"
"Isn't it September 5th?"
Wait, she'd been so wrapped up in her thoughts that she'd almost missed her own birthday?! And hadn't that man she'd told off before been offering fireworks? Vietnam smacked herself in the forehead. "Ugh… I completely forgot."
"You forgot? Seriously? And everyone calls me dense?" South Korea said disbelievingly. "Have you been living under a rock all this week? We only got here today and it was really obvious."
"Canada will be here in a bit – he stopped by North Korea's place and is bringing Taiwan and Hong Kong over. Japan and some of the others – England and France, mainly – said they're coming, too." Here, America and South Korea both wore the same sheepish look and Vietnam was struck by how similar they were. And to think, they belonged to different sets of twins… America went on, "We kinda figured he'd be able to get around easier than most of us – people keep forgetting he exists, even with that polar bear of his…um, Vietnam, are you okay?"
"What?" Was it suddenly raining? Was that a storm blowing in? Why were her hands shaking?
"America, just what the hell did you do?!" China again. Where was he again? When did he come outside?
"I didn't do anything!"
"It's all right, China. He didn't do anything. Vietnam, are you okay?" Blast it, South Korea. Why do you have to be so damn nice?
"I-I think so." She wiped her eyes with the edge of her sleeves, unable to stop her tears. "I-it's just…I didn't expect any of this. I didn't think we would ever get along again, you know?"
China sat down next to her, apparently having defied several laws of physics to do so. Or maybe it was his 'parent teleportation ability,' which Vietnam had heard some teenagers complaining about once upon a time, even though, to her knowledge, China had never demonstrated it. She let him hug her – she felt like she needed it.
"Hey, is that a fishing net?" Trust South Korea to change to subject as tactlessly as possible. However…
"Yes. I haven't used it in years–" But he cut her off, dragging the old net out from under the steps and grinning. Vietnam did not ask what he wanted to do with such a ragged thing that still had crabs shells stuck to it, but she thought she wouldn't have to. South Korea immediately grabbed America's shirt and started whispering excitedly in his ear. South Korea's trademark grin was apparently infectious and both of them were gone down the beach before she or China could get a word in edgewise.
"What are they doing?" Vietnam asked.
"I think it has something to do with America's performance in Beijing. Didn't he win a gold medal or something for beach volleyball?" China's reply was as straightforward as usual.
"You mean the sort they play in the sand with no clearly-defined teams?"
"Probably. Why?"'
"South Korea had a good idea for once." Vietnam said with a rarely-heard giggle. She could hardly remember the last time she had laughed at all. "And I know that America's going to have a tough time taking sides, so I'm on whatever team he and Japan aren't. So, do you want to flip a coin to see who gets to hit Thick-Brows between the eyes first?"
China laughed but willingly produced a silver coin he had clearly planned on saving for another time, which he tossed into the air. Heads or tails, it didn't matter -- they were both going to hit him, and France too, if he came.
Vietnam leaned against him and thought fondly of the warm feeling in her chest -- after over a hundred years, she finally felt like she belonged again.
A/N: Thick-Brows = England. I hope no one is surprised by this.
And by the way, Vietnam's "family" is mostly composed of her own lineage, China's group, and some SE Asia countries like Thailand. And it keeps getting bigger.