A/N: Been reading a lot of Hetalia fics and suddenly started remembering random bits from AP History. And yes I do take pleasure in rendering my national heritage into a giant pile of angst.
This new nation is not a calm nation. Within his people are the hearts of adventurers, the spirit that drove them to an alien shore, into the arms of a newborn colony.
They're here now. They have made their marks on that same shore, and changed the being called America into something more than a child wandering in the wilderness.
The land he represents has changed, he has changed, but the hearts of his people are still the same.
To the east, the left-overs of countless other, older nations clamor together in his great cities. To the west … to the west is the nearly-inaudible whispering of territory, new territory. It is land America knows only by a few vague maps. His people want it; their desire gnaws at him like hunger. The deeds are held under his name, but truly the land belongs to itself. Quietly, it keeps its secrets and its mysteries.
It takes his breath away with its beauty and he wants to grasp it in his hands, to break its haughty spirit and remake it into something all his own.
He flies westward on a thousand pairs of wagons, hooves, feet. He revels in each named river and mountain range, each homestead carved out of uncharted woods or plains.
In his wake he sweeps up the people who are not his people, people who need no sovereign state to hold them together. Even after he has swallowed them, they beat their protesting fists against his stomach. What are these nations? What is this America? He can seize them, he can beat them, but he can't make them understand.
He struggles; he limps forward on broken wagons and dying horses. His people cut cautious trails through the wilderness, the tremulous hope in their hearts making his throat tighten.
The first faint shout of "Gold!" goes up and his people barrel across new territories fast as white water. He shudders in wild excitement under the desperate pounding of land rushes. He tears himself apart for profit, for glory, he stitches himself together with the dizzyingly fast thread of train and tracks and his heart races until it aches.
He is stretched and worn – too much distance, too much space and not enough time to connect it all together. The land is his land now, and his land is scarred and weeping from decades of harsh treatment. His towns groan as they overflow their limits, falling over themselves in their efforts to grow too far too fast.
He reaches the western edge of the land that once seemed like it would keep on extending forever. He falls to his knees, soaks his hands in the empty, vast ocean and smiles, for here at last is a border even he cannot cross. Finally he has been stopped; finally he can rest.
But still his people are screaming in his ears – Farther! More! They are his after all; he raised them and taught them their lessons, and they were such eager students.
So he raises his eyes over the water and they swim with tears because he knows that across this ocean there is no more unclaimed land. Anything he wants he will have to take and pay for in lives. His lives, and his people will give them up for him smiling because he taught them to. Their lives, and his people will take them unhesitatingly because he told them they could.
He shakes and gasps for breath and to the nations across the ocean he silently cries, Stop me. Stop me, please.