It's Ivan who finds him. Twisted and crushed under an arch broken by one of the… arms, for lack of a better word. They're nothing like his arms— green, purple and yellow with orange pustules on top.
For a moment, for one short, brutal moment, he laughs. "I told you they existed!" he says, but the words aren't there.
They never leave his lungs.
His lungs are punctured, along with his neck, and so his jaw flaps soundlessly and it must look like a retarded fish of some kind.
Then, the pain sets in.
His body is regenerating around the wreckage. His throat is sealing up the hole in his neck where it has been ripped until he can sort of gurgle in the way that sounds like a dying frog, but the rest of his throat is occupied by a large metal splinter that he has to work around. His chest is the same, cuts and deep lacerations pushing shrapnel to the surface of his skin and knitting him shut but for the I-beam stabbing through his left chest cavity. His legs are broken, the bones slowly twisting back into shape and mending breaks like they were made of clay.
The process is agonizingly slow, but dying was never very kind, much less coming back. With the pain lashing through his body from broken bones and a pounding headache and gaping holes in his upper half, America almost doesn't realize what's happened for a full thirty minutes when he suddenly realizes he can't see out of his left eye.
He has one arm free and edges it along the ground to rub his glasses, certain that he'll have a lot of explaining to do if a passerby sees a corpse moving around, but there doesn't seem to be a crowd so…
So…
There isn't a crowd.
That's when America realizes something is wrong.
He's in New York, New York— flew in that very morning for Christmas shopping even though it's only early November. He knows if he blinks, it'll be December 26th and England and Canada will be disappointed and God knows he loves sending Lithuania cakes on Christmas just to piss Russia off. People tell him not to, but, well, he's never been good at listening to authority. England can attest to that.
But for New York, especially for New York, New York, it's too quiet. There should be something where there's currently nothing: the hum of electric cars, chattering and gabbing of people, stomping of feet, the slamming of windows, screaming of infants, moaning of prostitutes, booming of rock and clanging of knot tops swinging their chains, the groans of old buildings and sizzle of fast food.
He can't hear it.
America can't hear his Big Apple. It's quiet. So quiet. He hasn't heard this kind of quiet since his colonial days when— no, scratch, not even then. Even then there were birds and crickets, the scratching of quills on paper, conversation of man and animal alike and the rustling of leaves in the wind.
Now.
Now there's just the wind.
It's unnerving. He wants to look. He desperately wants to look around but his neck is run through in such a way that he's pressed to the sidewalk with his right eye's only view being the rise of the sidewalk. He'd been waiting for his left eye to heal so he could get a look around, or at least a better view of the side of the sidewalk in front of him.
The odd thing is, his eye doesn't hurt that badly.
…in fact it doesn't hurt. It doesn't hurt at all. It's simply blind. The thought sends shivers down his chipped spine and right back up. There's always been pain. Whenever something happens, there is always pain.
His first thought is Russia. Russia had launched the nukes and no one called him to give him a literally last-second warning. A last second of 'enjoy your legs' or 'this might be it for you' before the agony began or he was erased off the map. There were only one or two problems with his theory, and after cursing Russia's name in all the languages he knew with his abused vocal system, he settled down with his head on the concrete and thought about them.
Vietnam and Japan were howling in it when their cities were devastated, it made America slightly ill to think about, but he'd done it to them gleefully at the time. iHe'd/i been in pain when the nukes blew in a deserted area for testing. That area had been poisoned, the very grass and wildlife withered and eaten until there was a bruise on his stomach and queasiness that was not helped by Pearl Harbor still aching in his knee and the drain Europe and the Pacific Theatre were having in his energy levels.
But there had been pain.
This had no pain. Only darkness. It was as though a light behind his left eye had suddenly been snuffed out without his attention.
Whatever it was that happened, it wasn't a nuke.
Two hours later, he's managed to turn his head up and it's Russia that finds him. It's Ivan who finds him, twisted and crushed under an arch broken by one of the arms. They're green, purple and yellow with orange pustules on top. They're different. They're like nothing he's ever seen. They're alien.
For a moment, for one short, brutal moment, he laughs. "I told you they existed!" he says, but the words aren't there.
They never leave his throat. Something won't let him form them. His only view is of the fallen arch, the limb and Mr. Fatass himself. It's not a pleasant view, and it doesn't tell him anything.
When Russia leans over his mangled and slowly healing body, he wraps his large, frost-bitten and calloused hands around the iron beam and pulls it out of America's chest and tosses it aside like a toy. America isn't even sure if he can find the strength to roll over and push himself up. So he lays there and says, "Come to gloat?"
Russia leans over America and looks— looks, well, sad. "No," Ivan says. "I am not so cruel."
What strikes America most is the lack of smile. Of glee, of anything that really defines Russia to those that know him. He looks thinner, but the guys from the Middle East reportedly do that to invaders. There's also the lack of a scarf, which America realizes quite suddenly is pushed under his head as a makeshift pillow.
Dread pools in his stomach.
"Ruski," America says, "tell me, what happened?"
Russia blinks and stares down at him. "You do not know?"
"I've been having trouble moving my head and I'm kinda half blind right now," he says. "Spill."
"You can't feel it?" Russia looks no closer to answering.
"I feel a gaping hole in my chest and a smaller one in my neck," America replies, "but those are being fixed. No, you dip, I don't feel anything! If I felt something I'd know what was going on but I've been sitting here staring up at a honest-to-goodness fucking alien and a hunk of metal for the past few hours and I'd really like my peripheral vision back! Christ…" at this point, he'd run his fingers through his hair, but too much energy is already going to repairing his lungs and larynx so sounds gradually come easier as he speaks. Movement is not so easy quite yet.
Still, Russia is looking down at him with eyes so wide it looks like he's an overgrown five-year-old. He might as well be. He pesters like one.
"Russia," America says again, "spit it out or I'll find a scone and shove it down your throat the minute I can move again."
Still, Russia just looks at him. America twitches his left hand and begins to raise it up when Russia finally says, "It's gone."
America pauses.
"What?"
Russia swallows.
"New York."
"New York? My NYC?"
"No. Your state."
"My son?"
"Da," Russia is shivering. Russia is negative fifty degrees on a regular basis, he doesn't shiver. "It's gone."
Oh.
Oh, wow, he's shaking, too.
"Russia," he says. He doesn't like how small his voice is. "Be a nice guy and don't fuck with me. Is anyone alive? Anyone?"
"No," Russia shakes. America shakes. He hasn't been so scared in his life. " They're gone."
"Gone?"
Once more, Russia says, "Gone."
000
This is why I should stop reading Alan Moore's work while in the APH fandom. To my credit, I only thought about this crossover once I stopped crying.
NY is America's baby. If Japan has district personifications, Al has state babies.
Hetalia © H.H.
Watchmen © Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons