Warning (Please Read): This contains very sensitive material such as racism, slavery, and the use of the "N" word. Please, please, please do not read if you don't think you can handle the thought of America being involved with all three. Particularly rude comments will be deleted.
Disclaimer: I don't own Hetalia
Authoress Note: This was done for a request on the kink meme, which asked for America owning up to the atrocities he performed in the past. I chose slavery as a topic, because I've seen the genocide of natives done a lot, but I've never seen this addressed. If you think of America as never doing any harm, then you probably should't read this.
- -o0o- -
It was 1946.
Alfred uneasily clutches a bouquet of flowers—it isn't much but it's something—as he mentally debates on whether or not he should ring the door bell.
It would be conspicuous—even more conspicuous than he already is as a teenage, well-dressed white male in a poor colored neighborhood—and he isn't quite sure how he will respond if the door opens while he's still there.
He tells himself it's okay for heroes to sometimes take the easy route, and sets the bouquet down on the porch before turning around, walking to his car—shiny, black, also conspicuous—and getting in and waiting.
His fingers grip the steering wheel and he wonders why this means so much to him. His new boss must have thought he was crazy, finding so much about this family and going through all this trouble, but his boss didn't really understand what he saw overseas. His boss didn't see what blind hatred had turned into and his boss didn't know that the entire time he was there, this one memory kept flashing through his mind.
It was a sort of cruel opening of his eyes and, even though he told himself that heroes would never do something that extreme (and even if he hadn't), it was still the fact that all of those people had been de-humanized, treated as though they didn't have feelings, just like he had done so many years ago.
-o0o-
It was the dawn of westward expansion and, after spending most of his time in his original thirteen states, Alfred decided that it was finally time to settle out west. He had been there before, sure, but he didn't own any property and he wanted to beat the rush of people he knew were itching to get out west as well.
This meant that he had to sell some of his property to be able to afford it (His last boss made his new one promise not to let him piggyback funds). More specifically, he had to sell his slaves. His houses were too special for him to part with (a cottage in upstate New York, a small bungalow off of Massachusetts Bay, a small plantation home in Georgia, and a mansion in Virginia). He had already dealt with his plantation slaves, but he spent the most time in his Virginia home, was more familiar with the house-slaves, and felt that they should be told directly.
He gathered all of them a couple of days or so before the move and paced in front of them, the almost rag-tag group of slaves. There were twelve of them.
"I have some news to give to y'all," he said solemnly, his accent reflecting that of the region, and the slaves stood up straighter, sensing the seriousness of the situation.
"As y'all know, I'm expanding more and more every day," he smiled sadly, "and sometimes I feel so…cornered not exploring the rest of my lands, keeping in one place. It's hard for a hero to sit still, you know?" He gave a nervous little laugh.
"I guess what I'm saying is…I'm leaving."
There was a general shift, a whisper of fear travelled through them.
"But…what'll happen to us, mas'r Jones?" A dark complexioned young man spoke.
"Y'all will be sold within the next two days," Alfred answered, displeased, putting his hands in his pockets. They were the finest group of negroes he had ever dealt with. It was a shame, really.
A woman stepped forward, Catherine, with one hand firmly on her thirteen-year-old daughter's shoulder. Her eyes spoke of the fear that was riveting through the group.
"Will we be sold together?"
Alfred paused, caught off guard with the question. It hadn't occurred to him; he didn't think it mattered.
"Don't know," he half-shrugged. "It depends on who buys you. It's hard to say."
But she continued, not satisfied with the answer. "I mean, is there some sort of way for you to make sure we're sold together?"
Alfred frowned. "I just said I don't know."
"But…" She looked at her daughter, a pretty young thing, mixed, with light tan skin and long, curly hair. "If some man was to buy her who ain't as gracious as you, mas'r Jones…"
Alfred held up a hand, cutting her off, annoyance starting to sink under his skin. "Did you grow hard of hearing or something, Cathy? I said I don't know."
"But—"
"But you will take your new master with opens arms and, if you aren't sold together, you'll forget about her like niggers do."
He thought that settled that, but it seemed to strike a chord in the other woman—Alfred always figured she was too proud for her own good—and she stood up straighter, eyes narrowed.
"I thought you was different, mas'r Jones," she said with venom.
It was her tone, her outright contempt, that caused something like a switch to flick in Alfred, who was outraged at her disrespect, and he slapped her, hard, almost forgetting to rein back his super strength. She flew to ground and her daughter immediately went to help her as she tried to push herself back up.
Alfred felt bad for all of few seconds, until she pushed herself up and glared with all she had, eyes blazing with unshed tears.
"You's a sick man, mas'r Jones," she hissed and it was like a match struck inside of him; Alfred grew even angrier. He walked over to her and grabbed a fistful of her hair, yanking her to a sitting position, scowling.
"Now listen here, you low-life nigger, you're gonna show me the respect I deserve or I'll make sure you and your daughter are sold separately."
"No!" She sobbed.
"Then you better get your act together, Cathy, I'm warning you," he let go of her hair and noticed that the other slaves were looking the other way, embarrassed.
"Now let me ask you something, have I ever laid a whip to you?"
She shook her head miserably. "No, sah."
"Don't I keep you fed?"
"Yes, sah."
"Then I don't want another peep out of you. Abigail," he looked at her daughter. "Take her away and calm her down." The girl nodded and helped her mother up.
Alfred stood and stuffed his hands back into his pockets, addressing the rest of the crowd again. After a pause where Abigail assisted her mother out of the room, he spoke.
"I'm sorry y'all had to see that," he said quietly. And it was true; he hated having to punish one of his slaves, especially in front of the others.
"I know they say you're not supposed to get attached to your niggers, but I'm gonna miss y'all," he smiled and a few of them nodded back at him, though some looked plain miserable. He it ignored though, because they would get over eventually, they always did, and flashed a thumbs up, saying, "Wish me good luck!"
A few days later, it was auction day and Alfred decided to see them off. It was the least he could do; they had served him well.
So far, he was happy to see that his slaves were going off at pretty decent prices. They had been washed, slicked with oil, and wore clean clothes when they stood on the auction block along with other slaves. Catherine had already been sold to a middle-aged man with peppery hair. From what Alfred could tell, she was trying to convince him to buy her daughter, who was currently on the block, being poked and prodded by various possible buyers.
The bid went up. Her new master didn't even place one.
Abigail was sold for about seven hundred dollars to a man with cold black eyes who had degraded her the most on the block (even Alfred felt a little put off at how he had examined her thighs and felt her budding chest) and silent tears streamed down her face as he came forward to collect his property.
Alfred had been paying most of his attention to the stage and was startled to hear a pained cry ring out. He turned to see Catherine, hysterical, trying to push her way through the throngs of people to get to her daughter with tearful screams of, "Abigail!"
The daughter turned and tried to pull back, to get to her mother. "Mama!"
It was a pathetic sight and it made something churn in his stomach. Alfred thought he had raised his negroes better than that.
But the crowd seized the mother before she could get any further and the daughter was half-dragged away, screaming, in the clutches of a man who would probably abuse and rape her.
Alfred watched, not doing a thing to stop any of it. When it became too much, he turned and left, telling himself that it was just another day occurrence, so there wasn't anything wrong with it.
-o0o-
Alfred looks out the window, feeling a lump in his throat. It's stupid; of all the horrible things he's done in history, why it's that particular memory stands out to him, but he acknowledges it now. Not just that one incident, but the thousands that took place like it so long ago.
He wonders how he could ever be so hateful, how he could be for something that went against his basic principals as a country, because it wasn't just that one instance; it wasn't until recently that he finally accepted negroes as people, not as something below him, not as something that should be separated from him in public places.
(He remembers his astonishment upon seeing an entire colored sector of the air force; he remembers being humbled by the fact that there were one or two pilots there that could fly better than he could.)
He saw what that hatred, what that dehumanizing, could lead to in the war, rescuing emaciated bodies from behind barbed wire, and it disgusted him. He was disgusted with himself.
So when Alfred came back, he did some digging (and also used his powers as a nation) and found as many descendants of Cathy as he could. He found fifty-two, and that fifty-two had dwindled to thirty-one because of the wars and other, varying causes. Of those thirty-one, there were five intact families, and he is in front of one of their houses now.
He has ten bouquets in his trunk.
It isn't much at all and he knows it isn't. He can't go up to them and say he's sorry, nor can he give flowers to every single colored person in the country. He can't do anything now, not while they still have such shitty lives, while they still fear getting hanged in the South, and while they still can't go to the same movie theatres that he does.
But he can hope for change. He can hope that others will start to see things the way that he now does, he can hope others will take his founding ideas to heart.
Alfred turns away when the front door opens and sees out of the corner of his eye, a child pick up the bouquet with amazement. The child quickly goes back inside and Alfred smiles a little at the thought that none of them even know what the flowers are for.
He finally revs up his engine— he can't stay there much longer or he really will draw attention to himself—and doesn't wait to see the reaction from the adults of the family. The child was easy to guess, but the adults will be harder to judge. That, and part of him doesn't want to, can't stand to, see any of Abigail or Catherine in their faces.
Alfred puts a hat on and tilts it down, obscuring his face. After all, it's okay for heroes to sometimes take the easy route.