They never let anyone see their scars. Emotional or physical.
You see, when you life is centuries long, it's a waste to spend it regretting, hurting, hating… But it's still hard to always have a smile on your face. So everyone copes in their own way.
One of them once told me that their life felt more like a storybook than reality sometimes. I asked them what they would do if it really was only a story.
"Bribe the writer," they had said with a lonely smile.
"To do what?"
They stared at me kindly, but condescendingly, as if I was still a little child. "To kill me off." They replied.
Before any of you Mary-Sue radars out there get the wrong impression, this story is not about me. I am simply the narrator and I do not wish to be put on the same level as those girls that make every guy fall madly in love with them. (Besides, most guys think I'm a bitch.)
Anyways, my brother Celio and I felt the need to write this story down because of how significant it is. No one of the kind I was telling you about earlier would feel comfortable narrating something like this. Vatti still refuses to talk about the events that happened a little over half a century ago.
But Celio and I figured this story was important to tell because, if more than any other, it gives the perfect view into the life of someone who didn't choose to be immortal. And no, I'm not talking about freaking sparkling vampires. Ew.
But more than anything, I believe this story traces back to something majorly important – or at least it should be important to everyone. Celio believes it's all about God. But he's crazy Catholic, so you can't really blame him. (And I have no problem with Catholics, so no trolling!)
However, my opinion is that everything traces back to something that may not be as big as God, but it is no less important: the world.
And this story doesn't even start where Celio and I are going to begin it. It goes way back. But we're not going to kill with an intro that long. (I mean, one hour into math class and I'm out and drooling on my desk anyways.) Even so, I'm just trying to get the point across that everything has a point to it, and we're all here for a reason.
Er…. I probably should get on with the story now and stop boring you with all this philosophical stuff. (Oh God, I was starting to sound like Loreto back there…)
On February 12, 1992 – ten days after the formal end of the Cold War, if any of you fan girls didn't know – 195 nations met to have this really long meeting and sign the 'Twenty Laws of Nations.' The idea behind it was pretty simple: to put on paper what it meant to be a personified nation and how they're different from humans.
Most of these laws had been common sense for centuries, but a few were put in as forms of control, and some needed to be agreed upon. See, when it came to the new or uncertain laws, there was a lot of yelling and adult style temper tantrums involved. Some laws introduced just rubbed people the wrong way.
But soon it became a 'whatever Mr. Superpower says goes' kind of game. These superpowers just happened to be some young nations, but they used their power to get the older and probably smarter nations to agree with them. Then a couple hundred pens hit a paper and boom! There was finally some order created.
Ya' see, these laws were actually really important to everyone, no matter how much they argued over them. These twenty laws gave a feeling of stability and pattern in their usually hellish world. And, for some, it was more of a self-preservation denial than an actual belief that all the laws were true. Some just wanted something – anything really – to hold onto as concrete. Something that wouldn't change as easily as something like alliances would.
For once, the nations wanted to remove one less headache from 'shit to do.' And maybe they could've, but maybe it's also better that things don't go as planned.
Some fifteen years later, in the summer of 2007, my main thoughts were 'So why should I give a fuck that no one wants me?' And I was pretty fine with thinking that way until they just popped into my life. And all because of a cat that one particular Italian wanted to pet.
When the cat just happened to lead them to my orphanage, it didn't take long for me to decide that these were the oddest people I had ever met. One was so serious it looked painful, and the other looked like the world was a playground and he was going to keep that cat.
The serious one had said they had too many at home.
These two were Ludwig Bielschmidt and Feliciano Vargas. Their 'coworkers' know them as Germany and Italy. I would later come to accept them as Vatti and Mutti.
It was because of Italy's nonstop begging and puppy eyes – the kind of puppy eyes that can make a terrorist melt – that these two personified nations were able to adopt me.
See, they had been a part of some strange relationship that no one could really understand for years, but they were and are obviously happy together. But, for whatever reason they liked me – I can't understand Italians either – Italy felt the need to bring home a human kid into their happy life.
So it took a few months, but Germany and Italy finally got the permission to adopt me, and then tell me about personified nations.
It helps that I didn't scream when Vatti had me cut him to show that it wouldn't even make him bleed and the wound would heal in seconds. If I had reacted badly, then word might have spread, and other world leaders wouldn't even allow their nation to bring up the possibility of adopting.
Yup. My weirdo parents started a trend.
About three years later, because they needed another Italian to balance the two-thirds German family, Celio was adopted. He's actually a year older than me, but there's no way you can think he's mature with all his butthead comments. (So it's not my fault that I want to knock him into next week.)
Heh. You probably picked up on the hints that with two emotionally challenged kids, the Germany-Italy family was pretty insane. And my parents are probably more insane to trust us with attending a world meeting. But they did.
And, well, I'm gonna let Mr. Smarty-pants Celio take over narration for awhile cause he remembers things better than I do, and that particular world meeting was so crazy there's no way I can remember everything that happened.
Author's Note: This is a collaboration my friend . and I have been working on for quite awhile. So if you see her story 'Rule 19,' and notice the similarities, I'll let you know now that there's no copyright going on. We, because we don't agree on some points of the story, just decided to write our own versions.
Just to let you know, the girl narrating this obviously isn't me. Her name's Aly and our personalities are very different. But if at any point you think her or Celio are Mary-Sue self-inserts, just tell me.
Really hope you enjoy this. ^_^