Title: Nations Never Die - America
Author: PwnedByPineapple
Summary: A collection of historical, America-centric oneshots, based on prompts. Can be read in any order.
Ratings/Warning(s): Will vary - nothing above T.
Notes: This is part of a Hetalia project on deviantART called "Nations Never Die". The objective of the members is to represent a single character and create an entire headcanon for that character based on prompts. I represent America, so each oneshot posted will be centered on him. All accompanying historical explanations will be located at the end of each oneshot.

Disclaimer: This fangirl owns nothing, though my headcanon is based on my own thoughts and opinions.


Prompt #1: Birth.
The native origins of a nation who will one day come to be known as America.


It was when wildness claimed the land, when the vastness of that continent was untouched and unmarred by the relentless hands of progress, when such things as boundaries and limits had scarce meaning, that he came to know life.

He knew little else. He was the rolling hills, the soaring mountains, the great rivers, the endless plains... he was the earth and the wind and the water, but he did not know such things as identity, as name, as purpose. He knew nothing of solid form and constancy, and he might have passed as quickly as he came into being, a lone manifestation as fleeting as the changing earth itself, had she not taken him in.

It was then that he learned such concepts as 'beautiful', for that she was. She was like him, but different... constant, warm, enduring. She remained even as the world around her shifted, and she taught him to do the same. And that was only the beginning of what she did, what she gave to him. She taught him how to feel, how to embrace existence that was far removed and yet closer to his essence. She set him on solid limbs, taught him to run on two feet. And she gave him things he had never experienced before. Grounded thoughts. Emotions. Family.

She was a Mother. That was the first thing he learned about family. She was his Mother, and that was a distinction he learned quickly. He came to understand that he could lay claim to things, could form attachments that made his own constancy, his own existence, that much stronger. There were brothers and sisters - they were his brothers and sisters.

They were many. Some were nearly as fleeting as he had almost become. Some were more grounded, but they, too, were not permanent. Only a few grew into a form like that of their Mother's, and he was one of them.

Because of this, he came to know love. To love her. To love them. And that, more than anything, anchored him firmly to the physical world.

When she brought him to meet those others that she claimed as her own - her 'people', as she described them - they were the final piece to his existence. She shared with him her claim to them, and they gave him names. He had countless names, for such people were varied, and though his names were as many as his brothers and sisters had once been, the very concept made him just like her, she who was called Mother by all.

He still roved restlessly. His feet carried him far and wide, and never was his location constant. But he did so with her, with them. He swam mighty rivers and balanced on dangerous precipices and wandered great forests at his Mother's side. He experienced the fullness of existence with his siblings, his people, constantly in motion, akin to and never forgetting what he had once been, what he had been born from.

That is, until he was drawn to the rising of the sun.

It began with a whisper, a subtle altering in his mind that he wasn't even truly aware of. All he knew was that he was called - towards the morning, towards that great expanse of endless water called the sea. The sea was as powerful and magnificent and vast as his Mother, but it was a stranger to him - or it had been. Now he was drawn to it, called by something he could not give a name to, and more and more he found himself nearing that place where the sun rose.

And though he did not even realize it, more and more of him was changing.

But she was aware of it, she who had raised him as her own. And she could do nothing to stop what she saw, what she felt. He was slipping away from her, as too many of her children were. More and more he forgot. More and more he did not answer when she called to him. Even his very appearance was altering - his skin, his hair, lightening in tone and texture.

And she knew that what called to him, what drowned out her own voice, was not the sea. It was something else, something she could not stop. It had slowly and surely begun to drain away her own vitality, into him, allowing the most innocent of youth to reclaim him.

All too soon, he did not know her. All too soon, he was no longer hers.

She watched from the shadows of her own twilight as others came, others who took him into their arms as she had once done. Soon their mark would be imprinted on him even more thoroughly than hers had been, no matter what she should try to do to reclaim him... and that was when she knew she would truly lose him.

She could only watch as he forgot - forgot her, forgot his siblings, forgot his very origin... and in doing so, was reborn yet again. Made anew. Ultimately given the singular name she utterly rejected, of one of those that had come to her lands from across the great seas:

America.


Historical Notes:

1. This draws on the concept of animism, which is the belief that everything has a spirit; it's a common concept in many Native American legends. This is also based on the progress of human evolution and advancement, with a 'spirit' or 'personification' having a gradual build of identity and shifting away from an impermanent form based on nature; the process mirrors the arrival, migration, and expansion of Native Americans and their culture, and also the shift in identity with the arrival of the Europeans. This happened to several of Native/North America's children, who originally represented various tribes.

2. In addition, the name 'America' lacks a singular identity that most nation names tend to have; I find it appropriate for him eventually becoming the "melting pot" of the world, so I'm sticking with it despite the broad meaning of the word.