Originally posted as Part 17 of Dark Month 2015 and Part 3 of Curses Week on my AO3.
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You have a responsibility.
This is what they tell you, again and again, every day without fail. That you have a responsibility. That there are people, an entire country of people, who depend on you. That you are important, indispensible, and that you cannot, in any case, forsake or question your role.
The room is getting smaller, and the walls are closing in on you.
The room is not made of glass, and you are not being stared at and scrutinized, on display like an exhibit in a museum. But that is how you feel, regardless. Your role and existence are touted and celebrated, but on times and terms not your own. You attend meetings, you attend conferences, you stand in the background of your boss as they make speeches to crowds, to cameras, to microphones and masses.
Then back to your room. Your place. Your prison.
You are the holder of memories and history, they tell you, reverent.
You are the holder of culture, of society, of the past. You are, and you know.
You do not forget. No matter what, you cannot forget.
There are burning brands on your brain, like the country you represent has pressed a cattle prod, again and again. Marked itself here, and here, and here. Every important thing, and every unimportant thing, and everything that was, and everything that is. It is yours to hold. It is a design burnt into your being.
This battle and these people. When this place was grand and lavish and this place was still overgrown with forest and the wild. When the nomads became a tribe, when a tribe became a community, when a community became a city and when the cities came together. When this wall crumbled and this one was built. When this bridge was completed and this river was sailed for the first time.
You close your eyes, and you can follow the border. Natural and political. The place where mountains divide you and him. The place where a checkpoint divides you and her. The memory of a time when it was all blurred together. When this was yours and this was theirs and there was a place in between where you could meet, where you could embrace or fight. Touch each other's immortal skin and be reminded that we are eternal, we are the land, we are not like the ones who control us, and, we are not alone. The shared plight of the timeless, recognizable from the time you were but children.
We are eternal. A truth that is also a lie. You are as enduring as you are made to be enduring. You last as long as you are allowed to last. There are unmarked graves in crumbling coliseums and ancient stone circles that whisper of the truth of your eternity. You rise and you fall, by the grace of the humans who populate you. Who you represent. Whose history you hold. You are beholden to them. It is what you are, and you are only as eternal as that history continues. When it ends, so do you.
We are the land. You are. You are the mountains and the rivers and the valleys and the fields. You are the coast and the sand and the forests. You are the fertile fields and you are the barren wasteland. You are the land that dips into a moat and the land that crests into a castle. You are everything and you are all and you give and you are taken from and you feel the slice of the scythe through the wheat and the blades of the plough and you feel the artillery shells exploding into the earth and the ancient trees eaten up by wild fire. The pain and the death and the life and the growth, together.
We are not like the ones who control us. People and persons and peoples. The girl picking flowers in this village, the man chopping wood here, the general leading an army, the woman robbing a store, the boy being murdered, the politician cheating on his wife, the leader, sleeping restlessly. Him and her and them and all. Each breath is your breath and each tear is your tear and millions of heartbeats beat in different time, and they are all yours. This is the uneven rhythm of your heart; her heartbeat and his heartbeat and their heartbeat and all the heartbeats together. Irregular. An inhuman beat. You are all of them and so you are not them. You are killed a hundred times over each day and so you know of death even though it is not yours. You are born a hundred times over each day and so you know of birth even though it is not yours. Your birth was from war, from necessity, from the crumbling and fading away into obscurity of your predecessor. Your death will occur in the same manner, though with the tenacious, vicious way countries of the modern age hold on to existence, you doubt you will die from anything other than utter obliteration. In this way, you are nothing like your gaolers. You are the humans, you are not human.
We are not alone. Are you? There are many of you, to be sure, but are you together? There are lines separating you, drawn into the sky, projected by satellites, enforced by laws and guns. They are jagged and thick, illogical at some places, following the strict lines of natural topography at others. Their purpose is to divide and to clearly denote difference and they do their job well. You are many and you are born the same and will die the same but are you together? When did you last meet another? When did you touch skin that was land, like yours. Hear breath that carried the voices of millions, like yours. Feel a heartbeat irregular and inhuman, with the beat of a nation, like yours?
When the borders were unclear and everything was blurred. When you were a god and not a prize. When you were exulted and not coveted. When bearing the weight of a country's history meant you were worshipped, not locked away for 'protection'.
Too precious to be let alone. Never to be allowed again to roam as you once did. Because your bodies can die. A terrifying thought for those who own you, the humans. A terrifying thought.
What is death to humans? The end of the story. What human can live beyond death? It is the end of the body and the soul, for they are one and the same. What is death, but the absolute end?
But not for you.
What is the death of your body? You speak through and operate this human form, but it cannot seem to adequately explain that your body is the land. That your soul lives in all souls. That your mind is preserved through centuries of culture and tradition.
But they are afraid. If your body dies, what if you are reborn as something else? Something different? What if you come back embodying parts of the country they dislike? What if you remember history from the wrong side? What if your mind is that of counter-culture, instead of culture?
But you are already all these things. You are already everything they dislike, as well as what they love. You are already the losing side, as well as the winning. You are already every rebellion, every revolution, and every insurrection, past, present, and future.
But they do not understand.
You bear the weight of history and culture. You bear the weight of a country and its people. You are a Nation, and where once the weight made you a deity, now it sits upon you like shackles. Like a curse. Locking you down. Trapping you within glass walls. To be paraded around by your bosses. To be ogled by your people as a status of national pride. What makes you a god has made you a prisoner. What makes you you has made you a prop. You are cursed, you are cursed, you are cursed.