Hetalia and its characters belong to Hidekaz Himaruya.

Chapter One:

July 21, 1861

Alfred felt the bullet rip through his chest before he heard the gunshot screaming in his ears.

One moment, he had been walking back to the house after three hours of frantic pacing in the woods that did nothing to calm his nerves—it was coming, the war was coming, the war was here—and the next moment, he was sprawled on the ground, facedown, his mouth filling with a bitter combination of dirt from the earth and blood from his lungs. As his mind struggled to piece together what had just happened, his fingers at the same time scrabbling to shove his body upright to face his attacker, a boot slammed into his back, driving a wedge of singular agony into his spine.

"I can' believe he's still alive," a low voice drawled, and Alfred hissed as the pressure on his back increased. "I was sure you got 'im."

"Me too," a second voice said, although this one was shades less steady, and miles less light. "But you know wha' they say. You can't kill these folks too easily."

Alfred felt someone wrench his head up in a sudden blur of motion and drag him to the forest through the muck left by the recent rain. Even though he tried to will his arms, his legs—anything!—to move in place of this humiliating paralysis, nothing responded, and he gasped in wretched pain with every jerk and twist his body was subjected to as he and his two attackers headed deeper into the brambles and bush.

Settling with immobility, Alfred managed to focus for brief snatches of time on one of the men. There was nothing special about him—dressed in simple, practical clothes faded by age and work, tanned to such an extent that his skin looked like leather—he could have passed for any of the farmers in the area. Even his face was decidedly nondescript, lined by labor but definitely young, complete with a pair of blue eyes damp with the type of fear that had spread recently in the country—fear of the uncontrollable and the unknown. The only thing that set the man apart from the tens of hundreds of thousands of people that Alfred had seen in his lifetime was the gun gripped in his hand, too ornate to truly belong in his weathered and tired grasp. An aristocrat's gun…

Alfred had no doubt that the person towing him unceremoniously through the woods looked the same.

In a sudden move, Alfred was dropped at the base of a tree, and in the next moment, a face shoved itself up close to Alfred's head. Alfred fought the urge to vomit as the stink of rotten gums and the sour hint of tobacco assaulted his nostrils.

"Hey, hey! He's still breathing!" the man said after thirty seconds of too close an examination. Alfred identified him as the man who had stepped on his back, the man who seemed to be enjoying Alfred's misery to the point of grotesque levity.

"Well, don' stand there ogling him," the second man snapped, the jumpy one that Alfred had had the pleasure of looking at while he had been manhandled into the woods. "Finish 'im off already."

"Who—who are you?" Alfred managed to gasp out, spitting the words in between coughs of blood. Even with the dizziness hammering his skull, Alfred knew that he had to buy time—he had to buy time so somebody could finish these two bastards off, or at least time so that his wound could heal so that he could snap their necks himself. He healed fast—he could feel his flesh knitting together, the blood flow already stopping, the muscles and skin pulling themselves taut in formation—but it would be another fifteen minutes before he could even be considered functional. Fifteen minutes…anything could happen in fifteen minutes…and he couldn't die here, not now, not with the Union in the state it was in…

"He can talk!" The first man whistled. "Well, I'll be damned."

"Shut your trap, Tom, and kill 'im already." The second man shook his head in disgust, although Alfred, even in his pain-wracked state, could see an edge of panic twitching in the corners of his mouth. "We don't know who saw us, and we don't want to be shot, do we?"

"There ain't nobody out there that matters but us and him. Even if he has darkies up in that house, what are they to come and save their master? Why!" Tom laughed, his lips curling back to reveal frighteningly black teeth. "They'll be just as glad as if they shot 'im themselves. You know how them blacks are, Phil."

"Did you forget where we are?" Phil said. "For God's sake, we're in the North. Them blacks love the whites up here."

"You…you didn't answer my question," Alfred said, and with what seemed like a Herculean effort, shoved himself upright.

"Oh! Now—you just stay down." Phil, with a swift flick of his foot, kicked Alfred in the side in a move that in any other circumstance Alfred would have been able to dodge and sent Alfred tumbling down again, wheezing, to the earth. "Don't get rowdy wi' me."

In the instant that his skin connected with the unforgiving ground, Alfred, in a sickening lurch, felt his vision of the two men tip sideways, fade, and replace itself with…

A man, no younger than thirty shook Alfred awake. Dressed messily in the Union blue, a roll of tobacco dangling lazily at the corner of his mouth, he looked out of place compared to the other soldiers in their stiff collars and impossibly well-polished guns. They were in a forest, the shade providing wonderful, blessed relief from the scorching July heat.

"You can't fall asleep now," the man said. "We're about to move."

"Hmm?" Alfred felt his mouth say. "Now?"

"Soon," the man replied. "Say, Billy, how old are you?"

"Nineteen," Alfred said, although it wasn't him talking; it was whoever he was seeing this moment from. "Why?"

"Well…nothing." The man sighed and threw his tobacco on the ground. "You don't want to miss the first real battle of the Civil War by sleeping do you?"

"No."

"Good. Good. Come on. Pay attention." The man shook his head. "It'd be a shame if you were killed here."

With a gasp, Alfred was back in his body again, and Tom was saying to Phil, "He ain't going to do anything. Jus' look at him all bloody." Tom kneeled down. "In answer to your question, we come from Virginia. You know where tha' is?" He chuckled. "Long ways away."

"Why?" Alfred croaked out, still shaken by what he had just experienced. It had been years since his last "pull-in," as Arthur had called it. Personifications, Arthur had said, especially in times of great stress, could lose control of their bodies for a moment or even longer and see the nation through the eyes of one of its citizens. It was easier for old personifications, such as Arthur or Francis, to remain stable, to keep a handle on their own consciousness. And, it was easy for Alfred too—or it had been until today. God, he hadn't had such a sudden pull-in since the War of 1812.

"Orders are orders," Tom said, smiling. "That's all I know."

"If you're done socializing, let's end this already and get out of here." Phil scowled. "I don' like this."

"All right, all right." Tom shrugged and said, with an emotion bordering almost on childish regret, "Sorry about this, but we have to do what we have to do." He raised his gun, and Alfred couldn't look away from that coldly impersonal and blank barrel, couldn't not think about what would happen after that bullet went through his head, burying itself in a gory mix of tissue and bone. Would he wake up? Or would he stay dead? Would he, the personification of America—no, the Union only now—cease to exist? Would…would the South…would Johnny take over for him…?

Alfred saw the finger press down on the trigger oh-so-slowly, by aching fractions of centimeters. And, with a sudden jerk, Alfred screamed, screamed so loud that the air seemed to shoot out of his lungs with the propulsion of a cannonball, scraping the skin of his throat like blazing sandpaper.

The first man jumped backward. "What the devil?"

"It's starting…" Alfred moaned, and he was back in the mind of that boy, Billy, on the battlefield…

The heavy pounding of artillery fire was deafening. Thumping in his ears—or was that just his heartbeat?—he ran forward, because that was what he was ordered to do, and he knew nothing else but those terse commands of the officers that he trusted with his life. The man from before—William, now that he thought about it—was running alongside him, and they were dodging the fire of shells and bullets together. Around them, he could hear screams as men were blown to pieces by wild aim, and he ducked down as the remnant of an arm flew in his direction.

"Don't stop!" William shouted, his voice sounding hollow and weak compared to the chaos of the battle. "Whatever you do, don't stop. Keep running until you find a spot that you can fire from safely." He waved his rifle to the mass of cannons huddled on the top of a hill. "Aim for that and—" But he was cut off as he dove to the side, an artillery shell barely missing him.

And Billy—Alfred—Billy kept running, but there was no cover for him to stop and rest and start shooting as he had in training. No cover… And he didn't want to die. Not yet. No…

He wanted to go home. He wanted to go home to his mother and little sister. It hadn't seemed so bad when he had first enlisted—in fact, he had felt like a hero. And it hadn't even been that terrible in training—he had felt like a soldier. But now, now, he felt like a little child playing a game too out of his league to win, or for that matter, to comprehend.

"You damn fool! What are you doing?" William screamed, and Billy realized that he had been standing still, frozen and a prime target. "Move, damn you! Move!"

And, in the span of a single second, Billy saw as William fell, a single, clean gunshot wound right in the middle of his chest.

A harsh shriek caused Billy to turn. A man in grey was charging at him. The man's rifle was gleaming in the bright light, and Billy felt his arms move, his fingers close around the trigger of his own rifle, and a loud shot ring through the air, and the grey man dropped to the ground, his eyes wide and very much dead.

Billy kept running, looking for cover when there was none. He had to. He had to, if he wanted to stay alive. And he was still running, when a cannon had whistled toward him and slammed into his stomach.

"What's starting?" Tom said, and Alfred could see him trembling. Alfred heard a thin wail in the air, screeching and cruel, and it took him a few seconds to realize that it was his own voice.

"For God's sake! Shoot him! Shut him up!" Phil cried. "Do it now! What are you waiting for?" When Tom didn't move, Phil dropped his gun and fled into the forest, crashing through the brush like a frightened animal.

Tom looked at the path that Phil had cleared clumsily in his haste to run, looked at Phil's aristocratic gun on the ground and the aristocratic gun in his palm, looked at Alfred writhing and twisting on the ground in absolute agony, and with the look of a cornered rabbit, all humor dropped, he ran.

"God, stop!" Alfred gasped.

Bull Run. Manassas. Bull Run. Manassas. Dying, dying, dead.

Alfred sobbed in broken gurgles as the wound in his chest was ripped open again with his desperate flailing.

"Make it stop!" he screamed. "Make it stop!" Because the men engaged in the fight were all his this time—not like in the War of 1812, not like in the Revolution, when the enemy were foreigners. No, all those engaged in the Civil War were Americans, his boys, boys that were being slaughtered and carved up right this instant.

Blue. Grey. Blue. Grey. Red. Red. RED.

"Please…please…please!"

Alfred saw the gun on the forest floor. And, with a savage burst of strength, he seized it and pressed it against his temple.

Stop. Don't. Stop. What are you doing? Stop! You fool! Stop it! Don't you care about the conseque—!

He pulled the trigger.

Author's Note:

And there it is. Chapter One of my epic (Hah! Right!) Civil War saga (is that the correct word?). It could be more polished-definitely more polished. In any case, if you would like to see more, please leave a review. They are very much appreciated. :)