America was sick. Well, a lot of countries were sick, but America had been the first to fall ill. It was early 1932, and his people were dying; starving, disease, rioting. His people couldn't get jobs, and people were losing their jobs.
And sometimes he just needed to get away, his heart throbbed, his head ached.
Most of his time was stuck and spent in meetings with his boss, where he just sat and his boss would yell at him, a grimace on his face.
"Fix it already! It's your damn country!" His boss would yell over and over again, and America would just look at the wall past him, a straight, pained face plastered on, waiting until he could leave.
Now he just lay in the middle of nowhere in particular, looking up at the night sky, trying not to vomit, trying to clear his mind. He didn't get a lot of chances like these, but these were also painful moments.
Times where his large bed, only one half occupied, is painfully obvious. His big house is suddenly as big as the world, painfully empty. He waltzes around it like he's drunk; it was nothing new, but it was all depressingly obvious now.
That the bags under his eyes and their red rim indicates that he is falling apart. That his empty hands and slumped shoulders inquire that even heroes need a break – that even heroes can reach a brink.
So he lays in the grass, one arm sprawled beside him and one arm reaching for the skies. How dearly he wishes he could reach them, poke them and watch them twinkle; twitch under his touch. For him to be able to grab them, one by one, to keep them, to keep them for himself – for his people.
How he desperately wished to give his people some hope, some future, a certain future. How he hated the broken dreams of the men, the tears running down the children's faces, the houses that are crumbling and the farm fields that are burning. He hates the anxiety that burns in his stomach, the broken pieces that fall to his feet, that sink down in the dirt.
He hates the grasp it all has on his heart, the quiet thump it so often gives, the one that has recently slowed to just a snail; it's lack on enthusiasm – his lack of enthusiasm.
Now, more than ever he wants- he needs to be the hero for his country. To be able to rid it of disease, to save the crying moms, the crying children. To walk out of the field and replenish all the crumbling hearts, to answer the prayers, even if there is no faith to answer. To fix families, to fix the people individually. To stand up and do what he is supposed to do.
But how is supposed to do that? How is he supposed to be able to fix everything?
He's just one person.