The Dumbing Down of Love Chapter 3: coalesce your broken heart, a hetalia - axis powers fanfic

Title: The Dumbing Down of Love

Author: The DayDreaming

Rating/Warnings: Rated T…FOR TEEN! Slight language, probably controversial issues, grade-school-esque romantic antics. One-sided US/UK, though it's really only a plot device. More-likely-than-not incorrect information.

Summary: Follow-up to "Love a Lover" That feeling of emptiness that made him question why why why, the sensation of being alone in a crowded room, a wish that for once, there was some mutual strand of affection to be found for him and for someone else—America searches for the meaning of love, and Russia happily obliges, if only to see the one he hates the most fall into despair.

A/N: This story is a chaptered companion piece to a one-shot, "Love a Lover." It's recommended that you read that story first. Otherwise, prepare to feel completely lost.

PLEASE, GUYS. I CAN'T BELIEVE I'M USING CAPSLOCK FOR THIS. READ 'LOVE A LOVER' WHICH CAN BE EASILY FOUND IN MY PROFILE, BEFORE READING THIS STORY. ALSO, EARLY READERS THAT FAVORITED THIS STORY ON CHAPTER 1, PLEASE GO BACK AND READ CHAPTER 1 AGAIN! I UPLOADED THE INCORRECT FILE, AND THEREFORE YOU'VE MISSED ABOUT ONE THIRD OF THE STORY SO FAR. THANK YOU. TRUST ME, THINGS WILL BECOME A LOT CLEARER, IF YOU GUYS DIDN'T SKIP OVER MY NOTES.

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STEP 3: coalesce your broken heart

If I venture to displace ... the microscopical speck of dust... on the point of my finger,... I have done a deed which shakes the Moon in her path, which causes the Sun to be no longer the Sun, and which alters forever the destiny of multitudinous myriads of stars.

-Edgar Allen Poe

Sometimes, Alfred wishes he could just jump out of an eighteenth-story window; to see the world from the eyes of a shooting star.

It's what he feels like most, nowadays.

A brief flash in the night, shocking and beautiful.

Once he's past the atmosphere though, it's all one long fall that ends with a bang.

And he…

Well, most things break when they hit the ground. Right?

Can't stop gravity without a parachute.

The sun is shining today; it burns into the front of his closed lids and makes the darkness red. He could move, but he doesn't; it's distressing and giving him a headache, or maybe it's worsening a headache he's already had, but there's no will to resist. The sun is heat and it is hot and warm and it still feels like summer here, even if it's late September.

If it could stay this way, blue skies and burning sun and cumulus clouds that bring promises of rains not bitten in the frost of isolated islands, he thinks he might…

His head bangs against the glass of the car window, and the embassy worker specifically chosen as his driver looks over worriedly.

It doesn't hurt; he keeps his eyes closed. Everything comes as a numb afterthought to him in this season of wheezing air and flaccid fingers wound into pretend handholds.

He wants to be held. He alone can't do it; it's too hard to love himself.

He thinks about asking the embassy worker to pull over, or maybe he could lean himself against the woman's shoulder. She wouldn't mind; she's used to him, to Alfred and America. He thinks she may be able to tell the difference between he and him.

She gives America paperwork and a Big Mac, and Alfred a blanket and ice cream. And if a human can understand that, he can't help but think that others can, too.

He could remember a time when no one knew his name. He was young then, though if he wants to think about it, he's still young. Two hundred and thirty five years as an official nation, more in his transient colonial phase, and more beyond that.

That was a time he could not clearly define; he left it as vague as possible, when anyone bothered to ask.

'Beyond that.'

Timeless.

He didn't know how old he was, only that people started counting in what he could only assume were the 'late' 1500s. Perhaps earlier, perhaps not. He wasn't like the others, who knew where they began and where they ended. They began with their mothers and fathers, and added centuries and years and days and seconds from there.

But, he was content in his secret age. All those days spent in absolute freedom, traversing the fields that were undeniably his; all those memories of chasing fireflies and sleeping within wolves' dens and sucking from the teats of those animals willing to give themselves to a hungry child in return for the lands' blessing; all those secret, hidden memories that no one knew except for him him him.

Once upon a time, he bowed to no man, and to no other nation. He was wind and water and grass over his terrain, breathed lightning and desert sand. He was special.

There were those like him, South and North, but he wanted nothing to do with them. Borders undefined, his land could be their's, and their's his, and it wouldn't matter because they were vast and the world kind and unforgiving all at once.

Empty and filled, he lived a life that came with no regrets.

There was but the sun and moon and no voice with which to ask his questions that spanned universes, that could merely be answered in smiles.

He must have known the woman for at least thirty years now; he must have, at one point, asked her name. He can never seem to recall it, though, so he lets the thought slide away from him and tries to remember to catch a glimpse of her name tag the next time she wears it.

She walks him to the door, smiles and stretches the wrinkles around her lips, deepening the furrows over her brow. She's old, he thinks. He remembers her as a pretty woman in her thirties. But, age doesn't matter, not to him; he knows her as beautiful, and it's enough that she still blushes and fixes the ring on her finger, though he recalls that she's widowed.

He wants to ask her how it happened, how it was she fell in love and wore the shackles of the deceased; that was ardor and devotion, wasn't it?

No Nation wore a wedding band.

"You'll be okay?" she asks for the third time.

America nods, too tired and numb to smile. Silly human. Silly, caring human. So sweet; so, so sweet.

She wavers on the doorstep, looks at the bags under his eyes and the halting heaves of his chest. He must appear as though he's dying, but she knows better than to think as such. Without much thought she lunges at him, envelopes his torso; she holds on and doesn't let go. America stills, breath flown away to leave a tight, airless void that pulses, almost almost like a heart; the wind rattles in his chest and sun beats across his eyes and catches the fine strands in the woman's grey hair.

She smells like lavender and dust, and he can't help but smile and wrap himself around her, breathe her in. There is warmth, and the swollen numbness in his chest shudders before collapsing. He lets something raw fall from his throat, not quite a sob or moan; it sounds a little like laughter, or a death rattle.

Anything he can get. He'll take anything he can get, because there certainly isn't anyone waiting for him at the end of the long, lightless tunnel.

'America isn't here again.'

Russia scribbles the line on his notes, examines the Cyrillic letters, then blots it out and turns the dark smear into the thick stem of a sunflower, crawling up the spiral notebook's margin.

His chair sits, empty. No one dares to take it; not with the way England is allowing his heated gaze to fall over the seat. How childish and moronic, he thinks, though he doesn't know to whom he's referring.

He catches sight of a familiar blond and almost chuckles darkly at his late arrival and the fact that he's sitting in the wrong chair, before he realizes that the violet gaze plastered to the tabletop isn't what he's looking for.

Russia presses the tip of his pen into his paper and allows the black to bleed into the pages beneath, dark and murky without reason.

The house is dusty. It normally is.

It is too large to keep clean by himself and Tony alone; there are too many rooms and too many ghosts hidden in dark corners. There is space and emptiness, furniture that hasn't been sat in for years, quilts and flags, paintings and books.

He keeps everything. Takes everything in and doesn't let go, because if he does—if he does, it won't come back. There have been too many broken promises, and their presence fills his home with words unspoken. Behind each locked door is a thought best left behind.

In one room, the hardwood floor is gouged, one clean mark. Like a sword. There are dark stains around it, torn leather. Dried husks of white chrysanthemums.

In another room, there is a candle, and the ashes of paper. A pen sits off to the side, rusted and forgotten next to yellowed sheets, curled at the edges with age.

Even if it hurts, even if he has to lock them behind doors of cold, unfeeling wood, he won't let go. They're all he has to turn to in the dark of night.

He thinks maybe once upon a time he could sleep without needing to know that someone would be there tomorrow. And memories; they don't hurt as much as people, do they?

And yet, knowing what he does, what he's experienced, still he—he wants so much for someone to be there. To wake up beside him, to grasp his hand without being asked, upon whom he could lean his head, to help plant his garden and fill a patch with the other's most favorite flowers, to eat dinner with, and—

—say his name. To understand the difference between Alfred and the United States of America, and love him, be with him, for Alfred.

Because no one had ever wanted to be with him in that way; without a political agenda behind each carefully pasted smile, planned touch, hidden opinion. His Father had warned him of the other countries' wiles; the way they would seduce and plunder each other, twist emotions into weapons, tear their hearts out and spit on everyone else's. He listened to his Father, even as his people did not; his Father was a good man, someone whom truly loved him.

He thinks that perhaps a small part of him wanted to give up and die with his passing. Humans came and went so quickly; he had seemed to only barely manage to whisper and impart that name given to him by the land's foreign natives before one of the greatest men he'd ever known slipped through his fingers to a place he wouldn't be able to follow to for ages to come, when at last he was conquered and shorn into nothing by hostile Nations or crumbled into the sea like so much dust on the wind.

He listened and kept his heart in a box, under lock and key; he thinks that maybe, if he were to open one of the doors in his house and beat back the ghosts and creeping creatures that pull themselves along the carpet, he may find the dusty, shriveled corpse, tucked carefully from view and pressed into the pages of an anthology of birds, between chapters depicting the secret of flight and pressed flowers from a childhood spent waiting for a man that remained half-way across the world.

Where other countries had allowed their hearts to rot and decay in the caverns of their chests, America keeps his perfectly preserved, not a mar or scratch to be seen. Alfred is a child, safe from the world while America takes the brunt of each pain. He knows how to keep himself separated; he is not sure that the others', so busy fighting and squabbling and claiming claiming claiming (take take take can't they for one fucking moment give?), can define and understand.

His chest aches at the thought. There is a difference between feeling dead inside, and being dead inside. He hasn't found it, but he thinks on some level he's always known.

The answer merely remains voiceless, like all such things he's locked away into his house, dusty and unused, but still wanted.

Everything came as a blur back then. Self-awareness was merely a passing thought; a glance at the fingers as they were run through a fox's pelt, a dark reflection in still waters, what may have been an inkling of thought as he passed those villages by that held a different sort of creature from all the rest.

There hadn't been a point, as each day and night passed by like a second.

He was always, always moving with the wind. He held no truly defined shape, since the people, the people (strange creatures strange legs they seem happy they seem sad how can I tell?) did not tie themselves to the land and say mine mine mine, didn't lock within their heads the thought (what is thought a thought thinking these things they flow away on the wind like seeds from a Lion's Tooth) that he was there, he was theirs, that he was but an empty mold unto which they could pass on their knowledge and culture and tradition (how quaint they're moving dancing singing just like me just like me just like me except—not).

Perhaps that was their downfall.

Because they didn't hold on, didn't take within their free, untainted arms the spirit of their land, and instead allowed him to go as he pleased, allowed him to be wind water grass over and over and over again

again

again.

When at last strangers came, disturbed the land and shaped his form with their will (what is it what is it that keeps these monsters alive alive alive they creep and crawl but never fall down), the others, these kinder creatures that loved him but could let him go, they—

they—

Well, they didn't last long.

And he—well, neither did he.

He stumbles into the living room, where Tony sits, playing video games and expecting him home in another three days, just barely touching the couch with his legs before he collapses.

His friend is up in an instant, pattering over to him and talking talking talking, but he—he can't take any of it in, there is but a white noise in silence and he's found the station—

He's so, so tired. The chill in his bones hasn't left, but the familiar face of his one true friend (it's been almost fifty four years right and still you've stayed with me I can't thank you enough I love you I love you) it—it makes his still, frozen heart lurch into motion.

Tony asks him in a Voice that is not a voice, but that language with which his species communicates, Are you okay?

Is he—

And he smiles, and it aches a little more. Tony has a beautiful Voice—

No. He isn't.

He hasn't been 'okay' in a very, very long time—days, months, weeks, years and years and years and seconds that creep and crawl like black ants skittering across paper and blooming into gardens—

—and more beyond that.

There has always been a little bit more about him than meets the eye, but they never, never meet his eyes—

He sucks in a breath; it clogs in his throat, pressing into the softness of his trachea and settling like an egg. He still can't quite manage to breathe right, perhaps has gotten worse with an eight-hour flight back over the Atlantic.

He wishes that things could be better in the morning.

Tomorrow is a new day, but they lie, lie, because every day is the same when there is no one there to make it different—when each time he opens his eyes he finds empty space and all he smells are Virginian orchards, and all he has to look forward to is sitting alone and speaking with people that hate hate hate him to the point where they would—they would—

— raises his sword and pushes down down down and lets Alfred taste betrayal like the bitter tang of copper, pennies and wishing wells and tea kettles boiling over—

— how he cried and tried to pry the sword from his jacket his stomach the hardwood floor beneath while the presence of a bone-white mum plucked from America's garden sits like a silent vigil over his heart—

To the point where they wouldn't—

— he'll show up soon, though; any minute now, even—

— rains a little bit harder. How typical for bad weather on a date with England. He should have known. The damp gets into his hair, crawls down his scalp to slip past the neckline of his hoodie—

"Tony—" he moans, and grasps the other's hand, so warm, warm. "Why—why does it hurt so much, when all I feel is cold—?"

The other says nothing; takes his legs, half-sprawled on the floor, and moves them onto the couch, before hoisting himself up and moving America's head to his lap. He stroke's the other's golden hair, in just the way he likes, and grips his shoulder, to hold him, close and safe so that he won't—become lost behind the house's locked doors, that keep memories like faded photo albums, and hide the blood and tears.

Tony doesn't know what to say. In all the many years that he's lived, with and without Alfred, he cannot say he's mastered the affairs of the human heart, because Alfred—he is not like the rest. He is an old man and a child all at once, feeling blindly around with his hands, soft and vulnerable in a world made of sharp knives.

And he wishes so much that he could help the other because they are—friends? Yes, that is what Alfred calls them, and because of that, that word that makes him happy and want to make Alfred happy, too, he—

He feels a little lost.

So, even as the silence stretches into minutes, and the other's labored breathing turns into heavy, pained sobs, he doesn't let go.

Tony croons to Alfred in the Voice that he knows the other likes so, so much, a cradle song. He sings of sunlight, shining on the flowers of his home world as a child plays in clean river water, until night comes and steals away the sky to reveal the vast, brilliant universe.

The place that Tony, and he hopes Alfred, too, call home.

He appeared as nothing but a child to these strangers. And he was.

As they stole the land, he died and lived, lost the will to let everything pass through him and instead stayed to watch and observe.

Strangers.

That's all he could remember thinking back then. And even back then, he hadn't realized that the root of language had formed what these monstercreatures called 'thoughts.' They pulled him in and tempted him, and he—

—he gave in, because he knew no better. They wrote upon his ethereal form (a blank slate ripe for the taking make a wish upon a star then you'll know just who you are), and gave him definition, tamed him, until he—until he…

They gave him a name.

And it tasted foreign, caught in his teeth as he tried to push it out, but the more he said it, the more he came to forget, and the more he came to understand.

And, oh, that was the rub, wasn't it? Understanding.

The world used to just be. But now—now it had meaning behind everything, and he knew, or he would come to know.

He became everything he didn't need, lost everything that he had ever wanted because—because.

Because those others had wanted it, and what they wanted he could not resist because he was what he was and they were selfish selfish selfish and they—they made him into their image, but damned him for wanting to be like them, for being—

—just being.

He became a weed. An unwanted pest among their cultivated crops. But, how did they expect for their dreams of the new world to ever come to fruition when all they did was leave the garden alone, festering and growing out of shape until it became naught but tall tree and thick root, too hardy to cut down?

They left him alone, and hated him for it.

He used to be able to run on the wind and be a single drop of rain in a puddle, used to be the leaf that held aloft a butterfly's cocoon. But now, he was unyielding wood and steel, rigid in his place, reaching for the sun but never, never being able to touch it again.

The room number 648 gleams at Russia in the dim of the hallway, gold and sleek in the lowlights of the hotel. Behind the door, beneath the numbers, is America's room, where the other is, should be, after another day of skipped meetings.

Russia isn't upset. Nor is he happy, or particularly needy to visit America, damned nuisance that the nation is. He should be at the meetings, just as Russia must be at the meetings. An unpleasant affair, but necessary as deemed by—

Well, no one quite knows what started the tradition of meetings. 'World' meetings as they're called, are merely for show. Nothing ever gets done; nothing can be done. In the modern age, nations hold as much sway over their government as a butterfly holds to the wind; they cannot fight against it, only ride the flow and pray that it takes them to a place of fortune.

Just as he could not stop the Bolsheviks as they murdered the last of the Romanovs, so America cannot halt the bickering between his two dominant political parties.

And yet, the Nations still blame and point fingers at each other, hate each other for the things they cannot control. In this world of disbelief, they can no longer speak the voice of the people; only sit prettily beside their elected officials and pray that they don't screw up.

It is a bitter pill to swallow, and Russia idly wonders, as he knocks stiffly on America's door, whether America is deeply affected by the world-wide anti-American sentiment, and whether he realizes that it is the same exact thing that Russia has had to go through before. Surely he doesn't, though; he can't realize, because America keeps smiling (and something tickles at the back of Russia's mind, a familiar memory, a familiar taste in his mouth, like he's read this story before, but he doesn't quite know when).

He waits, but no move is made to open the door, no sign that there is life beyond the quiet border that keeps America from the rest of the world.

America is just being difficult, he thinks. He knocks again, waits, but no one comes, and maybe, maybe he feels a little bit indignant, a little angry. Would the blond open the door if it were his precious England knocking?

"America," he says, sharp and clear, easily audible in the hall. Still, all things remain quiet.

He will not call the other. Will not because he doesn't want to, need to. If America doesn't want to try and go out to dinner again, well—Russia never wanted to in the first place.

Russia is only playing with him, after all. It doesn't matter if America prefers to stay holed up in his room; Russia merely needs to find some other form of entertainment.

Because America is worthless, in the end; undesirable. Not even England will play with his toy if he leaves for a bit to do something else. Nobody wants America.

And Russia is fine with that.

America is awake. His eyes ache, tongue thick and heavy and dry.

Tony sleeps on a cot next to the couch, where America rests, too tired to fall asleep. Despite the thick blankets wrapped around his frame, he can't help feeling tiny and cold, as if he'll curl up and disappear into the cushions should he move.

A part of him wishes he could burrow a hole into the earth and hide there until the sun comes out and warms his bones, draws him up from the soil as a diminutive sprout, reaching for the sky.

He wants, more than anything, warmth.

To feel—whole.

America stays awake and thinks. What it is to be whole, and why he feels empty. What he has done to fill the gaping hole in his chest.

Why it is the feeling began in the first place.

What he can yet do.

America thinks and thinks, until at last his eyelids flutter closed under the strain of fever and exhaustion. But, he smiles contentedly with the knowledge that he has a plan.

If only he could find someone whom is willing to try.

The strangers took the world from him, in the end.

He didn't know how to go back to what he was; only, when the feebleness of his cluttered, knowing mind allowed, revisit the simplicity of his timeless memories.

Maybe someday, when he finds the next person worthy of knowing, who understands, he'll impart his secret name, and taste freedom on his lips.

(WARNING: EXTREMELY LONG AND UNNECESSARILY DETAILED NOTES, AHOY!)

-I have no set interpretation of how North and South America came to be. Written here is the brain-vomit of what was a ten-second thinking session, in which I may or may not have been distracting myself with a rubber chicken. :| So, yeah. If you're confused, know that I'm referring to the fact that Native Americans made no claim on the land, merely living where they could, which is an entirely different approach from the Europeans, whom loved claiming land as theirs like no tomorrow. So, I kind of left the interpretation loose, leaving America to act as a 'great spirit' of sorts before the Europeans came and molded him into their image. And, uh, did anyone catch that bible reference? I know, it made me cringe, too. I don't mean to drag any sort of religion into this, but I do love drawing parallels, and that one came and smacked me in the face. Sorry!

-I've always had the head-canon that America would see George Washington as a father figure, hence why he refers to him as father. Washington was intensely against America intermingling beyond 'friendship' with any foreign powers. Wikipedia sums up his sentiments pretty well (yeah yeah, Wikipedia is bad and the devil and all sorts of shit like that, but I'm too lazy, and I've verified that it is correct; give it a rest people):

"Washington's public political address warned against foreign influence in domestic affairs and American meddling in European affairs. He warned against bitter partisanship in domestic politics and called for men to move beyond partisanship and serve the common good. He warned against 'permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world',[55] saying the United States must concentrate primarily on American interests. He counseled friendship and commerce with all nations, but warned against involvement in European wars and entering into long-term "entangling" alliances."

Uh, well. Sorry George. Looks like we totally spit in your face regarding this and other things in your speech. *looks pointedly and accusingly at the two dominant political parties screwing America over*

-I'm kinda disappointed that you guys haven't voiced any notice of my use of names in this story. I'm trying to be careful with it, to make distinctions between the Nations as the personifications of their countries, and the Nations as individual people. Look back through the chapters and one-shot, and you'll notice at only specific times the Nations call each other by their human names. I'm using this as a sort of meter on how to gauge a person's closeness with another. Notice how America always refers to Canada as 'Matthew' and refers to England half the time as 'Arthur.' In the first chapter, there's a specific instance where America makes the distinction between Ivan and Russia. Tony always calls America 'Alfred.' It's not anything to think about too much until a bit down the road, when the issue is brought up. But, I think it adds something a bit extra to the story. :)

-Tony's 'Voice.' I dunno. I've always found it kinda funny how you hear Tony cussing out England, but never see him talk to America. He just kinda goes along with whatever Alfred does, like play video games or watch horror movies (ahaha so cute!). So I've made it my little head-canon that Tony has a special voice he uses for people he likes, like Alfred and Toris. Also, it is my mega-super-duper-head-canon that Alfred and Tony share epic bromance like woah. And, if you count it, Tony really is the only person/alien/thing that hasn't, ah, fought with America.

-Anti-American sentiment makes me really sad. Because that means people hate me based upon the fact that I'm born in the U.S. D: Actually, anti-American sentiment, sometimes referred to as anti-Americanism, but sometimes not because the issue is confusing and controversial to the extreme, doesn't have an exact definition. But, generally it can be thought of as an aversion to everything that is the United States. We are called 'poison,' and people believe that we should either be destroyed, or they should isolate themselves to avoid the 'tainting.' It's extremely hurtful. Now, why does Ivan think it sounds familiar? It's a little something called 'Anti-Sovietism.' Sound similar? It is. It's what countries, including the U.S. did to the U.S.S.R. They aren't so very different in the idea that they stand against everything a country is, and all those people contained within it. It's disheartening to think about; instead, let's focus on trying to make sure we don't go into war again, please!

-Lion's Tooth is an alternative name for dandelions! Dandelion is a corruption of the French name, 'dent de lion,' which of course means Lion's Tooth. It was named as such because of the shape of the leaves.

-Please please please let me have gotten that little tidbit of information on the execution of the Romanovs correct! Oh god, I can't do research for the life of me.

So, uh. I am not feeling good about this chapter. AT. ALL. I'm sorry for the horrible quality, guys! D:

Eeeee, started college. Yikes. A lot of you will say not to rush chapters out, and take my time, but, uh, this is about as much time as I usually spend on chapters, and bummer for you guys, my updates will become erratic until I can smooth out my schedule. When you say take your time, I say 'take what you can get,' because this has the potential to be the last update for several days, several weeks, or even several months. D: This is around the time where I slow down in writing. I can actually become so depressed in school that I entirely lose inspiration to write, and won't open a Word document for up to six or eight months at a time. If you feel like it's been a bit too long since the last update, feel absolutely free to message me and I'll probably get right on it!

In the meantime, please excuse my absence, since I'm going to be working on two one-shot prizes (one of which is SwizterlandxAustria. Whut. I don't know how to write those two! But, I don't wanna disappoint the requester, either. :( I'll do my best and research what I can!), along with updating 'A Perished Sun' and my KHR fic. Too much…I won't get done until November at this rate…

Once again, I'm extremely sorry for the terrible chapter and the lengthy notes! Please forgive me for disappointing you guys!