A/N: Oh lookie, I actually updated.
-Inspired by a WWII documentary on Yesterday (heck they have a lot of those) I glimpsed 'bout ten minutes of. Japanese soldiers having to hand all their weapons to the Americans, and this included their samuri-spirit encapsulating swords. Despite being their most treasured possessions and works of art and all, because oh they were so dangerous and what if they all charged into World War Three holding aloft bits of metal? Which doesn't by all means speak of all of their attitudes. But, hhhhhhhhh.
But what kind of pissed me off was that it was filmed. No.
On that lovely note, enjoy.
The Eight Deadly Sins
Pride
It is, as England would put it, with a wave of his hand at once appreciative and dismissive, a fine day.
And it is fine, America reflects, stretching under the cornfield-gold sun that lolls high across the meridian, proud and powerful and smug in its azure throne, if only for the fact that England wasn't here. He snorts to himself as he idly stamps out angular patterns with the thick soles of heavy lace-up boots, then scuffles them out again, yawning, flipping his eyes around the regiment of soldiers, all of whom, unlike him, had something to do.
He grins at the exasperated shaking of heads sent his way, returns thumbs-ups and quasi-sarcastic salutes, shrugs his jacket off. Too hot. It lands at his feet and instantly the dirt is up with a vengeance, clinging onto his boots and pant legs with a coating of brown: pulling a face, he swipes at them with his free hand, bundling the jacket under his arm with the other. New, damn the commander wasn't going to be happy.
Resolute, the dirt transferred itself firmly to his fingers, and of course it had to be at that ignominious moment – bent double, uniform disordered and looking as if he had marched through all the savannas of Africa, hair rumpled and starting to stick with the heat – that the camera panned round. Rolling his eyes, he waved exaggeratedly, fluttering his hands as elaborately as he could – which was quite elaborately, for the record, as it should be, for all the time he'd spent sniggering at England doing the same. Except England had been deadpan-serious. Ah, dear ol' England, the Pied Piper of inclement weather, wish you were here. Not.
The dust, determined not to lose, chose that moment to come unstuck in a last grand finale, and America serenades it with a fit of sneezing. He wipes watering eyes with a wrist, and throws a clot of dirt at the cameraperson, who is shaking with silent mirth. Oh what a fine day.
Fine, Japan's fingers were fine. As were the rest of his features: fine strands of no-longer-so-neat hair graze pale cheeks as he dips his head, and long, fine lashes shutter lowered eyes. And those fingers, those fine, small-boned and porcelain-skinned fingers, they twist and gouge at the starched green fabric atop the arms of the foldaway chair he's been allowed. Because they were gracious and he was not, to have wanted to watch the proceedings standing. And now he is making as if to rip the fabric and all of America with it, belying an indecent fury the rest of him so perfectly conceals. Disgraceful.
America doesn't really think so. Not when one by one, the uniform – a virtue to them, he knew, hand-in-hand with cleanliness and all manner of others, strange to him but observed so very scrupulously by they – lines of thrice-disgraced (to have, inconceivably, lost; to have done the unthinkable, surrendered; and now, horror upon horror afresh, this) soldiers are proffering their swords to the single American at the end of each. Step up, bow, hold out the offending armament (ah but what a crude, brutish word it was here, how it reeked of ignorance in face of these samuriswordsartworksfamilyheirloomssouls), step away, and the next: step up, stoop, hand over; step up, kowtow, have it taken; step up…
It's like watching fish. A little. The same face, Asian and browned by the sun, perhaps with a bruise to differentiate them, the same eyes, wide-open despite the intensity of the sun's glare, the same motions. But then again. Fish didn't expound to the very nuances of their misery just through feet that didn't drag, hands that didn't shake, and eyes that despair, that every so often look towards the camera (whereas the Americans, like him they beam), but didn't weep.
Shoulders are straight as they march away, smartly, years of discipline piled and pressed onto them with no way of lessening it save for absorbing it, until it seeped right through them, and leaden duty chills the blood and puts a stay on anything but itself. In theory. Actuality, mocking as ever, mocking as some of the astoundingly insensitive Americans watching from the side, pointed out with golden fingers that didn't they so tangibly want to slump, drag themselves away, retreat to the sanctuary of the shadows and wear a shroud of darkness instead of the shame they were afraid might snap them. Painfully obvious.
They had to make do with assuming a pride that nobody, least of all themselves, believe is there, because they've all seen it roughly grabbed and carelessly tossed into the pile of ever so prized, painstakingly nurtured, gleaming trash, to be waved off as cheap and worthless and easily dispensable, and burnt. And it doesn't stop there, because it's been immortalised in grainy black-and-white. So that the whole world may watch.
America shakes out his jacket, ducking his head to hide the frown that was all too inappropriate for when he should be savouring his victory. The view is better, a scramble of tramping boots was much less disconcerting than the sight before him. The odd pair of eyes, downcast, confused, still reeling, that sometimes come is way, too preoccupied to actually see him, but drawn to the dawdling, conspicuous figure all the same, is enough to discomfit him, a ripple of secondary humiliation that brings red to his cheeks with nothing to do with the scorching sun. If only they had not treasured their pride so to begin with, their fall needn't be so devastatingly steep.
His peripheral vision nudges him that Japan's fingers are still desperately clawing. Broken nails dig into delicate beds, and yet the frenzy neither flags nor ceases. America averts his eyes. From the suffering of his friend.
He looks up when he has to: there's only so much he can push it. He grins, perfunctorily, mouth gaping and feeling like waxwork that feared to melt, and yet no-one notices – he no longer enjoys the day. Even the most delectable of fruits soured under the sun, it seemed, and it just wasn't fair that all his work, all that fighting, the hard-won victory – his labour, his victory – is turning out to be no different.
Yet another Japanese soldier steps up. Dizzy, and slightly nauseous (heat exhaustion?), he only notices because this one is stirring the cooling wisps of a commotion. Resist, oh, resist and refuse to co-operate, refuse to relinquish your sword, curse us aloud, the more shockingly the better, don't just move along with the conveyer belt of clockwork dolls that do you so proud, make a commotion, stoke one up, so that at least we do not seem so much in the wrong.
Angry shouts are sounding, harsh, commanding, domineering, and America winces: his head throbs, he's thirsty, it's all too loud to him. Other lines, not just the ones with the unruly Japanese, halt too, held up by curious American soldiers peering over one another's shoulders to see the spectacle. Perhaps write it home, a laughing postscript hurriedly squeezed in in the last gap at the bottom of the letter-paper. Whispers are passed round, whispers and sniggers, only a playground of boys after all: the top half of the soldier's sword is missing. They shake their heads and weigh their guns in their hands, compare it to the broken toy the immature child who just wouldn't accept defeat insisted on clinging to. (To be fair, not all were so callous – Davidson, frowning, not just against the sun, and his brother beside him, muttering, troubled.)
A head of black hair thrown back, and America catches a glimpse of fevered eyes that glitter hate and pride. Hands grip the ornate cherrywood hilt, hours and hours of craftsmanship; they angle against his stomach, making as if to punch the thing in. He leers, glances round at his fellowmen in something akin to scorn, readies himself.
America flinches away, all of a sudden wishing England here. Still he doesn't miss the cry, raw and angry and he could fancy the very shriek dripping crimson. But when he looks back, he can see a group of officers shoving the defeated-again man away (because they were merciful, they'd let him live, with full knowledge of being thwarted of an honourable death), and when they disperse again, disgruntled, the ground is quite clear of blood. What he can't see, though, is the broken sword – just another in the pile of dirty metal.
Later, he hits a ramen-shop-turned-pub with a group of his friends – soldiers all, naturally – and they crow over being first to the corner, waving for drinks, happy to have won a war all by themselves. The Davidsons are quiet, but it makes no difference to the rest of them – boisterous, loud, slamming their glasses onto the smooth, aged dark wood tables, upsetting screens that fall and tear, laughing. Placing ridiculous bets on outrageous wagers. Dabbling with a spot of gambling. Boys will be boys.
Fingers drum to the singing – sometimes good, sometimes awful, and when it was they never failed to make this known – from beside the karaoke machine (bright, if not a little battered, plastic, gratingly Western against the subdued, refined shades of the ramen-shop-pub). Surprisingly musical, some of this lot, keeping the tempo along with the backing track as they deliberately choose mushy, unnaturally high songs that they croon, ridiculously, running hands oh-so-seductively through none-existent manes of luscious blond hair, blinking and pouting. Gales of appreciative laughter, taunts in good humour, joking.
All America can see is Japan's fingers, slender and fine and bleeding and quite, quite still.
