WARNING: As always, for readers sensitive to foul language, please note that our lovely, grumpy Southern Italian nation representation has a habit of cursing a whole lot!
Romano appeared in a flash of golden, sparkling light in his kitchen, still swearing as he fell on the floor. "Goddammit, Nonno, I could have walked home, you didn't have to use your sparkly magic crap to dump me ten feet from where I was earlier!" Of course, there was no answer from his grandfather. Romano lived alone, after all.
Even if he wouldn't ever admit it, that fact hurt more than it should. It hurt a lot, actually.
When he was very little, he'd had his idiot brother to keep him company. When they'd been conquered and separated, with Feli going to that idiot Austria and his pretty wife Hungary (even now, he couldn't see for the life of him what she saw in such a stuck up, snobbish person), and Romano himself going to Spain, he'd at least had the soon aptly nicknamed "Tomato Bastard" to keep him company, someone who actually liked him, for reasons Romano himself still didn't understand. He knew he wasn't the nicest person by any means, even if he'd never say so aloud.
He'd had someone who liked him, though. Someone who fed him, clothed him (even if it had been in those stupid pink dresses, he still wondered if Spain had thought he was a girl upon first getting him as a spoil of war), given him a roof over his head, and who'd protected him from all the other crazy Empires of the world. Romano had lost count of the times that he'd gone to bed as a child, thanking God that he had Spain to keep him out of the clutches of that crazy nation called Turkey. Spain, he had to admit, had been "nice", something that he'd rarely seen from other nations at that time period.
But that time of companionship, forced or otherwise, had been years and years ago. Since he and Feliciano had become more or less stronger nations, and had reunified their country, they'd been able to live in their own homes by themselves. But his Northern brother always had been more of a social butterfly than him, always being so sickeningly cheerful and friendly that he'd won the affections of practically everyone he met. He always was friends with someone, and if his house wasn't stuffed full of those friends when they visited, he'd be off in some other country, staying with Japan or the Potato Bastard or someone else who sung his praises.
Not Romano, though. Never Romano. Never the grumpy Southern half of Italy that other nations couldn't stand, because he wasn't "cheerful' enough, or "smiled enough", or "could stand to be more like his brother". He'd never really been able to befriend most other nations because of his surly attitude, but he wished that he was at least liked a bit more. He knew everyone liked his stupid brother more than him, he could see it every single time that he saw their stupid faces and heard them start to say, "Oh hi, Feli-...oh, it's you. Sorry, I thought you were your brother." Every time that he was dragged off to Spain's house so that Spain could have some quality time with his "favorite little underling!", and that stupid Prussia (or as he liked to call him, Stupid Potato Bastard Number 2) showed up uninvited and took up all of Spain's attention, and he'd hear Prussia whisper to Spain why he didn't hang out with Feliciano instead, since stupid Feli was nicer. Stupid fratello, being all nice and crap and getting all the attention.
Romano didn't even want to be jealous of his brother, but he still was. Curse the world for screwing with his emotions.
He'd learned to deal with it over the years, but it still was there, hanging over his head like some sort of dark raincloud, pouring down rain made up of all the negative things that happened in his life. He knew bottling up so many dark feelings wasn't healthy, but what the hell could he do about it? It wasn't as if he had a friend to vent this crap to!
But...maybe, just maybe, even if he'd never, ever, in a million, billion years admit it, he did want a friend. Someone to talk to about this crap in his life, someone he could hang around as himself, and not be judged by that person for not being enough like his stupid brother. Someone who could like him for being him.
And they'd have to love tomatoes. Romano knew that he'd never get along with this person otherwise.
Sitting down on his kitchen floor, he wondered what that person would be like, if he ever met him or her. He'd heard that people often befriended people like them, or people with characteristics that they really liked. Maybe I should make a checklist, so I know what to look for.
He got out a pencil and his grocery store notebook, the spiral kind, with a little tomato sticker on the front, from a nearby kitchen drawer. Spain, the stupid weirdo, had gotten him it when he'd moved into this house, because he claimed that "Lovi needs something to write things on, so he doesn't forget to get food and starve!". Spain had gotten a strong hit in the head for that little comment, but Romano had kept the notebook anyway; he knew that it might come in handy, even if was for other things, like getting pretty girls' phone numbers.
Flipping the notebook open to the nearest empty page, he tapped the pencil point against the lined paper, thinking.
Not too tall, he decided, he didn't want to have to be talked down to like some little kid, the years as Spain's underling had been more than enough of that. And they'd have to be tan, because all the pale people he'd ever met had issues with sunburn and were always too dumb to bring enough sunblock. Hmm, and green eyes would be nice, he decided, because green was the color of life, and as everyone knows, "the eyes are the windows to the soul". He wanted someone full of life and energy. God knows that he needed some energy in such a mundane existence. After a moment of consideration, he added "must smile often". Romano rarely got a real smile from most people, or any smile, for that matter. Even if he'd never ask for one, he admitted, grudgingly, that it might be nice to have a friend that was happy enough with him to smile at him. Feli had those kinds of friends, after all, so he could too, right?
Looking down at what he'd written, Romano realized, to his dismay, that everything on the page could be attributed to Spain. Crap. I've got to start all over now.
Tearing out the page, he got up and went to the kitchen sink, pulling open the cupboard underneath it and finding, to his frustration, that his garbage can was full, to the point of spilling out if he added anything else. Dammit, where the hell do I put this thing then?
He remembered that recycling included paper. But there were no recycling bins in his house, or anywhere near his house, since he lived in a relatively isolated area. He'd chosen this house, he remembered, because it was far enough away from his land's towns, ports, and cities that he didn't get headaches from the noise and air pollution or stomachaches from water pollution, but also close enough that if he drove or walked there early enough, he could still get everything he needed that he couldn't grow or make himself. The fact that his house was also the untouched structure of an abandoned vineyard also was a plus; he got a gorgeous two-story cottage and several large fields of open space (these fields, originally scheduled to be both farmland and a winery grape plantation, were abandoned upon not meeting the standards required to grow the grapes used to make fine wine) all to himself. He'd used his new property as a way to make his own personal paradise: the cottage had its tile roof fixed and glazed, the cottage walls painted a nice butter-yellow color (he'd even painted grapevines and grapes across the walls in reminder of his new home's vineyard origins), he'd put up a picket fence up around property edges, and the fields were converted into a vegetable garden, home to dozens of squash, zucchini, pumpkins (but, out of principle, no potatoes), a small fruit orchard with pears, apples, oranges, and peaches, and one field, his very favorite, was made entirely into a what could only be a giant tomato garden.
His tomato garden was his pride and joy; he'd planted every kind of tomato he could find that could grow in Sicily's soil. He'd lost count of the days he'd spent in this place, tending his garden with a gentle, nurturing hand, bestowing on his own little Eden a love he was unable to express to the outside world. Mouthwatering Ciliegino (Cherry tomatoes), Costoluto (a type of large tomato used in salads), Tondo liscio, and Grappolo ('Grape' tomato) all grew especially well in the volcanic soil, maturing into truly beautiful specimens. Other kinds of tomatoes were types he'd brought back from visits to other countries, or ordered from gardening catalogs. Tomato plants bearing fruit of the Oxheart, Beefsteak, Pear, Plum, and Campari tomatoes all had been grown over the years in the ground, in pots filled with soil from the plants' original country, or hanging upside down in "tomato planters" for the tiny cherry tomatoes, in a mockery of his home's original plan to use the field to grow bunches of wine grapes. Tomato vines spilled out all over the ground with wild abandon, entangling green creepers everywhere. Romano kept no labels on any of his plants; he knew each one by heart, and named each one himself, so he knew immediately which was which.
My fratello isn't the only one who has a way with things. I can grow stuff too, dammit.
Remembering the extant of his lovely property gave Romano an idea: he could bury his stupid list in one of his fields. The tomato garden seemed like a good place to start, there was plenty of places there to bury the list in the dirt. He headed outside.
Entering the garden through the little kissing gate he'd put up front, he walked to the very center, where he'd planted his very first tomato in his new home. The tomato plant was a San Marzano, a variety of the Plum tomato, and by this time, under his watchful eye, he'd nurtured it into a gorgeous adult plant, never once failing to gift him with ripe, plump tomato harvests each and every year since he first planted it so long ago. The bittersweet fruit bounty never failed to make his mouth water every harvest season. In thanks for his good harvest, he'd named the plant "Mataya", his little "Gift from God".
Kneeling down into the dirt in front of the plant, he began scooping up deep brown handfuls of the rich, moist earth with his hands, his pale fingers a startling contrast to the almost black soil. Once he was satisfied that the hole, now almost a foot down into the earth, was deep enough, Romano folded up the piece of paper and began burying it under the mound of dug up soil. When the deed was done, he carefully brushed the topsoil smooth and smirked in satisfaction. It would be impossible, unless you knew, to know that the paper was buried here.
Getting up and brushing the soil off his knees, Romano headed back to his house, not looking back.
If he'd bothered to give a backwards glance, he might have seen the tomato plant glowing a faint gold color, a fruit appearing upon the branches that was not the normal rich, fiery color, or the normal somewhat thin shape, but a tiny, roundish blob of a pale white, tinged with a slight toasted brown, emitting the strangest noise: "Fusososo...".