The Revolution of the Heart
A Hetalia short story.
Summary: England was suffering, and it was all because of his colony attempting to gain his independence. Nowadays, he has simply given up, knowing the battle is too hard to fight back. He doesn't even realize that he's fighting two wars: One against his colony, and one against his heart.
Warning: This has language, suicidal thoughts, and a slight USUK if you want to think of it that way. You have been warned~!
This is dedicated to the Anniversary of the Revolutionary War, which is April 19, 2014.
+England's Point of View+
The parchment crackles beneath my fingers. It's a crisp sound; one I'm so accustomed to that it sends shivers down my spine as I write. A quill scratches at the surface of the dainty material, wielded by a hand that is my own. My palm ghosts diligently above the paper, my whole arm moving to form the desired phrases my brain is pulling out. Under my gaze, I note my penmanship is exceedingly good, all the curves and lines forming in the proper places as I like them to be. With a fond smile at my handiwork—the only one I can manage nowadays—I dip my quill into a well of ink and continue my thoughts.
The letter is to a colonel whose name was prewritten on another parchment sitting at my desk. I can't quite remember the fellow's name, but he must be quite useful, considering what contents of the letter requires of him. Something as simple as writing letters now has become rather tedious. Key places, assignments, and even people must assume a code name. Too many spies have gotten their greedy hands on personal effects, so these messages are nothing short of an invitation to the enemy. Bloody wankers.
As I adjust in my seat, the wooden back digs hard into my skin; the candlewick on the table stutters and flickers. My wrist groans in protest, begging for a short rest. I've been at this for hours and have only gotten six letters written out of twenty-three. With a long sigh, the flame falters again, threatening to spill the room into darkness. The sun has long since bled out on the horizon and the housemaids have draped the curtains across the window panes. Without looking at my watch, I can only assume it's around eight. I snort. I'm probably the only one still up, taking this far more seriously than any other commander stationed in the area. Things are imperative and at such a telling time in the battle, we need not screw up so soon. I lower the quill when the quiver in my wrist becomes too great, and start rereading my handwork. It is quite brilliant if I do say so myself
Salutations Edward Cartwright,
I am writing to you on a personal level to insure everything is going well for you and your livelihood. I know you well, and I know your father well. How is he? I'm can only be assured he is still working his plantation like he has for the past forty years. What a charming fellow he is. More importantly, how are you kids? I believe you have two under you correct? I can hardly remember their names I'm afraid. I'm sorry about that.
I heard that your sister has been assisting in the war efforts. I cannot tell you how much we appreciate her efforts. I am unable to send a letter personally to her. It's very expensive to send this little note as is. Send my apologizes to her.
I understand this war has been very harsh on you. I hope your accommodations are suiting you nicely, as I only want the best for my brave soldiers fighting for the good of England. How is life in town? Have you met anyone worth sharing a drink with? I know there are a number of those sorts of fellows. Keep an eye out for them would you? I've been in need of a good drinking friend for a while.
I have a favor to ask of you. It is nothing big. You see, where you are staying, my brother is there. He has a letter from a friend of mine that he is unable to deliver to me. It is very important. I would like for you to retrieve it from him and bring it to me as soon as possible. You would be doing England a great service if you do this task for me.
I wish you all the best of luck on your campaign against the rebels. God's speed my dear friend. I am sure you don't need it though. It doesn't take much to defeat a bunch of farmers.
Sincerely,
Lord Campbell
Needs more adjusting, I conclude.
The ending is—in my mind—too easy to figure out. Rubbing my eyes, I take into account how tired I am, the weight of sleeplessness weighing down my eyelids. I wouldn't stay awake long enough to rewrite the bloody letter. The General will be very upset if I don't get this out in time. With another rejected sigh, I toss the parchment away and tenderly open another, beginning to rewrite the entire letter again, even if it takes all night to do so.
Honestly, I'm overworked.
I really am. Not only as a country, but as a human being. But just like… that time, people don't see me. It is like am an apparition from their dreams. They treat me as if I'm a cyborg, and will be unaffected by their treatment. My emotions have bore the brute of it all, and now they are so tender that my heart contracts just considering it. Nowadays living has been hard for me. Too hard in fact.
Submerged so deeply in my thoughts, I neglect the notion of rewriting the message, and even miss the frantic knocking on the door. I'm so tangled that when the door bursts open, I don't even realize it. The edges of my visions have folded over, giving me a single slot to look through, and that is directly into the candle flame. My mind is elsewhere, away from the room with the frantic soldier waiting for relief from the threshold.
"Sir!" He salutes, with such an odd squeak in his voice that I can't help but glance up.
He is nervous and stiff, and through the black dots poking holes in my vision, I can tell he is slightly trembling . His uniform is disheveled; most likely the result of a long horse ride, and his powdered wig is slanted off center. Had I not been a country—instead being an average soldier in the army—I would've burst out laughing. But these things could be serious.
"At ease." The moment the words leeave my throat, he is at my desk side in an instant, shoving a crinkled letter before me. It is not addressed. I raise an eyebrow, but instead he insistently shakes it in front of my face as if I couldn't see it. I gently pry it from his sweaty palms, and again he salutes me.
What strange behavior.
"Who is this for?" I ask softly.
"You sir."
"About what?" It is rather bothersome to read a note when you can be told up front the situation. It's always been a private pet peeve of mine.
He shifts from one foot to the other, assuming he would get in trouble if he told. I flick my hand in a circulating motion, asking him to proceed. It takes him awhile to get enough courage to speak, and by then I could've probably finished the letter.
"A colonel was kidnapped from his post, sir."
I grit my teeth, the tips of my fingers digging tightly into the letter. No.
"Why." I speak through clenched teeth, feeling the roots ache and the throbbing in my heart return.
My mind is a torrent, swirling so fast with bottled up emotions that I almost feel like shattering. Thank God for my ability of self-control. If I did not have it, I would easily be reduced to tears or worse—a sobbing mess.
"The Rebels wish to have a conversation with us."
My hand instinctive wads the letter up. Before I realize what I'm doing, I chunk it across the room forcing him to move out of the trajectory's path. My breath is sputtering in my chest, making me feel lightheaded and small, much smaller than I liked to be. I don't like this feeling churning deep in the folds of my stomach. I don't enjoy the chill in my hands that forces me to wipe my palms along my trousers. It is the feeling of nervousness, and fear. Especially fear.
Why would they want to talk? Are they going to make demands?
Before the soldier can consider himself dismissed, I ask him one final question, "Who will I be speaking with."
The candle flame sputters out, as if the answer is so ominous that it only can reside in the dark. With a squeak, the man hurriedly answers, before saluting again and stumbling out the door.
"Alfred F. Jones."
When the door shuts, everything crumbles inside me. The façade splits the moment hot tears come pouring down my face. Bile and something else rises in my throat and before I can stop it I retch over my desk. I slip from the chair and onto my knees, bent over at the waist, watching as thin trails of blood drip from mouth. I breathe heavily, in and out, so fast that my heart takes to pounding so brutally against my ribcage that it sounds almost like a drummer boy's beat. Observing meekly as my tears water the blood down, my vision swivels, and I collapse to my side.
Any mention of him, whether it is good or bad, does this to me.
"Alfred…" I openly sob, feeling my throat burn, my heart ache, and my lungs crying out for the oxygen it could not collect.
My thoughts jam into one another, forming a stream of similar sentences that are hardly coherent to my recklessly deteriorating mind.
Why does he hate me? Why? I've always loved him, I always told him so. I gave him what he wanted and what he needed. I never once neglected him. I protected him from the savages to the West and the Frenchmen and this is the thanks I get? I've sacrificed so many people, money, time, and energy in order to making America a successful colony. Why must he throw away what I tried so hard to build up?
"I did it for him too!" My voice is hoarse and scrapes against the insides of my throat but I hardly care. It makes me feel something other than the pang of sadness tingling my body from crown to toes.
"I made this all for him. I took care of it. I protected it. I loved it like he does." I don't know what I'm saying anymore. The words, if I'm speaking any at all, are lost in the whirlwind of my thoughts.
"I taught him to do so many things. I taught him how to be such a great caretaker and provider. It was all France's fault!" I wail.
If he hadn't suggested to America about breaking away in the first place, then he would still be here with me.
"You took little Canada away from Angleterre. I'm returning the favor by stealing away your precious America. Let us see if you like it."
"Bloody frog! I hate you! I hate you!" My body is quivering so hard I swear it is rattling the lose floorboards beneath me. There is hardly a rhyme or reason to my fit. It doesn't ever make me feel better. I always feel the same afterwards.
It takes a while for me to calm down. I remain still in place, even when the tears are dry on my face and my breathing has evened out. The room smells horrible, and I can hardly give a damn that I threw up on the General's note. When my senses seem to be recollecting themselves, I stare dejectedly at the wood panel ceiling, noting that light and airy feeling expanding in my chest. It's my body's self-mechanism to numb myself to the pain I'm inflicting with my own mind. I never have enjoyed the feeling.
"What do I do…?" My voice cracks, no longer the voice of me, but of someone who lost everything in the course of a single day.
This isn't the same; I've never experienced this. This isn't like when my mother died and I was left to the torture of my siblings. This is my entire world that was snatched away from me.
I have nothing now.
"Can I really talk to America…?" I reach up, imaging the wood panel ceiling to be a sky in a field, and my single, flat palm facing it is holding up the child he used to be. I had been showing off my strength that day. He proceeded to lift me up to show his.
A bitter chuckle escapes my lips. I suppose I won't have a choice in the matter will I? I will go even when my heart protests so vainly not to. For the sake of my country, I will break my heart over and over again. I can't treasure it any longer. After all this suffering, it's tattered and ugly now.
No wonder they call my heartless. I lost the last bit of it the moment they declared a revolution.
I remain as a statue on the floor until morning light, when the Captain of the Guard finds my petrified state.
The carriage rattles my bones so hard that I am waiting for them to dislocate. I feel far away, yet in my body all at the same time, if that is even possible. My chest and my stomach—my entire torso really—is numb, so I am no longer capable of feeling if I am nervous or not. I think I am. That's only an assumption. I don't particularly feel anything, emotionally or physically as a bump nearly jars me from my seat.
Nope. Defiantly nothing.
I'm alone in the carriage. But when am I not? I think bitterly, glaring out the small frame that is a window. The horse's galloping sounds like a heartbeat I can't sense. It's funny, how nature seems to be so happy, even as blood seeps onto it. It's almost mocking me in the safety of the carriage, mocking the fact that I'm going to God knows where for an alter motive I have yet to see.
I bite my bottom lip. Exactly what could the rebels gain from kidnapping an officer? Negotiating the rebel's freedom would never be that easy. The King would not allow such a resolution to go down in the history books as the end of the war. My pride wouldn't allow it either. There has to be some other reason behind this. And the fact that America is willing to talk…
He doesn't listen to reason remember? If he did, this silly Revolution would not be hurting you so much.
At the thought of it, an acid seeps up into my throat. I cough, feeling the soreness tickle the odd feeling, until I'm launched into a full blown hack, sputtering up blood into the palm of my hand. I can feel is dripping from my nose as well, stinging my eyes until they water.
This never gets any easier.
Without alarming the driver, I tug a handkerchief from the pocket, dapping away the blood as best as I can. Some of it leaves stains on my white trousers, making me scowl at the uncleanliness of my appearance. It doesn't matter that I just spewed blood. That happens on regular basis.
I'm so used to the idea of dying, that I hardly consider it. I sigh softly. Yes, I'm dying. All the physicians in the world, the best of the best, gave me the same diagnoses.
"The stress, the depression, and the war is putting such a strain on your body that it has begun to decay the inside of your body. The decay has reached a blood vessel somewhere, and that's why you are coughing up blood. I'm afraid to say even though we know the problem; there is no way to cure the internal bleeding. It will continue until this war ends or you die. I'm sorry."
I can mouth everything, word from word, even though it has been quite a long time since I last sought advice from a doctor. It hardly matters what they say anyway. No one cares about me. The one person I assumed did, doesn't, because if he did he never would have considered leaving me in the first place. That is how I look at it, and that is how I will continue to look at it.
"Looks like you won France. But this is much more torturous then what I did to you," I reach up, tracing shapes on the window, envying the world that lies beyond it, "I suppose this is revenge for you isn't it? Well you won. I've lost everything."
My fist clenches, "But you still have things, even if they aren't Canada. You have your friends. All I had was him and you knew that."
Bitter resentment breaks through the numbness, filling my heart with the vile of hatred and thirst for vengeance. France would pay for this, that much is clear. It's just a matter of deciding how I'd return that favor. I don't care that in my weakened state, it could get myself killed. Death is a more merciful than continuing to live in a world where I am constantly hated. That's my logic.
The carriage slows to a halt just as I was beginning to dose off. It takes vigorous tapping on the window for me to open my blurry eyes. As he was taught to do, the carriage driver opens the door for my in respect, dipping his bald head.
"We have arrived Lord Kirkland. On schedule of course."
"Thank you Mr. Whitley," I step out of the accommodations, feeling my ligaments pop harshly, "See to it that you do not leave without me."
He chuckles, "Never would consider it, my Lord."
Before me is an impressive plantation, probably belonging to a wealthy Englishman before the revolt forced him to flee with his family. I stare at the house, considering hoping back in the carriage and taking off. Then again, my mind doesn't care which way I should go. It has gone into hibernation, attempting to protect the last humane part in me that hasn't yet been stained by the war.
I do not want to seem like a coward. Not to them. I scale the front lawn and the porch steps, throwing the home's door open so it clangs loudly against the wall. I don't care if it broke the door or even the wall.
I don't care.
I don't care.
I don't care.
The house is eerily silent for a meeting place. There could be any number of spies, or even soldiers, awaiting my arrival to take me out and end the war. It doesn't matter. This is why I requested that guards shouldn't come with me. I could care less which way this meeting takes me. Just like myself, it is meaningless.
I approach the dining hall, passing by abandoned photos of a time that once was but is no longer attainable. It's like I'm passing by the reel of my own life, strewn out across the floor to show how twisted it has become. A bitter laugh escapes my lips before I can catch it. None other than America is waiting for me at the end of the table in the dining hall, his chin cupped in his hands. Had I not known any better, I could have sworn I saw a little boy sitting at the table, clanking his silverware together, demanding that I serve him food quickly.
"England…" He speaks quietly, but manage to I catch it, considering there is no other noise on the entire plantation.
"If we came for formalities, I am wasting my time," Sarcasm scorches my throat, "The world knows I'm England and you are America. Need we say anymore?"
He frowns at my demeanor. Was he expecting worse? More than likely. Wanker.
"What happened England…?" There's pity in his eyes. Damn his pity. I don't want it anymore. It's too late to pretend to care.
"What happened? What happened?" Usually I'm calm. I watch my language and keep it clipped and in place. But ever since yesterday, I've learned to just not give a damn.
"How about you look out the fucking window America. Your stupid game is what happened!"
"It's not a game-" He's quick to defend, but I'm sick of it.
"It's stupid! It's idiotic! You are the densest person I have ever met Alfred F. Jones!" Through the haze of numbness that is my body, I can feel the pang in my stomach, the one that signal the decay is spreading the more I allow my emotions to run unchecked.
Let it eat me alive.
"This isn't like you Arthur." He stands up, like this is so normal. How can he possibly act like that? After all he's done to me; he's acting as if his revolution never happened!
"Oh really?!" Tears are burning my eyes like the acid in my stomach, but I refuse to shed them. Not in front of him. Anyone but him, "I wonder why! I wonder why I could possibly be acting this way! How about you're killing me! How about you're murdering me America! Emotionally, mentally, and physically too! Because of you I just want to die." His eyes widen, and I'm satisfied to get some reaction out of him. I want more. I want to wipe the silly childishness from his brain forever. I have nothing to lose after all.
I whip out a pistol, pressing the steal to my temple. I can see him flinch from across the table.
"This is what it has led to America. This is what you're Revolution has done. And you know what? I don't give a damn."
I smirk when his eyes dart back and forth, from the gun to my eyes and back again. He almost looks scared. Good. He should feel something, even if it's only just an ounce of everything I have endured. I cock the hammer back. There's no going back now, but I recall my own thoughts on the way over here.
Dying would be more merciful.
I begin to squeeze the trigger.
"NO!"
The gun discharges, but instead the bullet is impended in the wall and not in my head. The gun leaves my grasp and I'm falling backwards, something tightly cinched around my waist. It's hard to comprehend the blur of the world as I tumble to the ground, but once I make contact with surface, my senses come rushing back to me.
America had tackled me to prevent me from killing myself. He had tossed the gun so far away, and was squeezing me so tight I almost feel like I will stop breathing.
Why. Why?
"You can't leave me Arthur! You can't!" Something wet is staining my uniform, but my mind is elsewhere.
"Don't weave me Engwand!"
America is shaking me now, shaking me to get my attention, forcing me to stare at him and see the trails of tears running down his face.
"You can't die Arthur. You mean so much to me…"
All I hear is lies.
"If you loved me you wouldn't have let me. If you even had an ounce of care for me, you wouldn't have left me." I bluntly state, avoiding his face and instead glare up at the ceiling.
"How can I prove it to you that I care…?"
"Give up this child's game."
He shakes his head, "You know I can't."
"Then there is nothing more to talk about."
He pulls me into a hug, one that I don't find comforting but full of false securities. He doesn't really care, and I know it to be a fact. There is no point in pretending that he does because I can see through it like a window. He doesn't care and I don't care. We've established that thoroughly, so now it is time to part ways. I push my palms into his chest, and attempt to shove him away; it doesn't work, and instead he winds his arms tighter around me.
"You mean so much to me England." He mummers into my hair, "So much that I don't want you getting hurt anymore. I know what I'm doing doesn't help but… I'm tired of seeing you come home, trying to hide new scars."
I stare at him.
"Think I didn't know? I could see them. And it scared me to death. I had many nightmares that you died… And I don't want to ever experience that. I want to get strong so I can protect you from the world. So I never have to see you get another scar from a pointless battle. I want to be your hero England."
He sighs, "I understand this is hurting you and I'm so sorry… but I have to consider my people. Think about all the times you had to get back on your ship and return to England no matter how much I begged you to stay. You knew you had to take care of your people, and I have to do the same. I'm not doing this because France told me too. I'm doing this because I have to. It's the only way I can get strong and protect you England, because I do love you and you mean a lot to me. If you were to die I wouldn't know what to do. You may think I don't care, but I do.
"Your life matters, even if I have stepped out of it for a moment. Your life matters to someone. Taking it away is just causing more destruction. Suicide is almost like genocide. It kills more than one person."
His arms squeeze me tighter, "Please don't ever consider doing it… please… people need you England… I need you…"
I don't know what to say.
"Do you believe me now…?" He asks meekly, searching my eyes for the answer.
I numbly nod my head. His lips break out into one of those cheesy teenager smiles.
"I love you England."
"I love you Engwand."
I just nod my head again.
He remains like this, just hugging me, even when darkness begins to battle away the light at the horizon.
"So why… why did you even want a meeting…?" I question, my head nestled against his neck in my exhaustion.
"I wanted to tell you that." His smile widens.
"And the captured officer…?"
"That was a lie. I know I couldn't get you to come and hear my corny speech with any other excuse."
In that moment, I realize I'm crying. But even more so, I realize I had laughed. Even though it was brief, it is something, something I thought I would never feel again in a million years.
I do care.
And he does too.
-Soul Spirit-