Hello! This was inspired from a history lesson, I really hope I got everything right. I'm not an expert in american history and the most I know about the Vietnam war is from Full Metal Jacket or Apocalypse Now.

I've never somked weed so that part is probably gonna be incaccurate as well.

This is based on the headcanon that nations always find themselves in the middle of their most important events, so America was on the Enola Gay and in My Lai.

Also, English is not my first language. I apologize for any mistakes.

Hope you enjoy, bye!

WARNING: graphic depiction of blood, unstable sense of self, discussions of genocide and slavery

There was a group of young men in the corner of the pub and were looking dirty at America. From the corner of his eye, he took notice of their colorful clothes and long hair. He grimaced. Hippies.

"Yo, yankee!"

He turned around to a forest of hands raised in a peace sign. He felt the uniform burn on his skin and buried himself back into his beer. He should've changed into civilian clothes. That uniform was nothing but pain, atrocity, death. He hated it. He was proud to wear it. United States Marines. The elite corps of the second largest army in the world… he was the most powerful country in the world…he was the hero … murderer, oppressor, monster.

He took his head in his hands and groaned. He felt like he was splitting in two. It had been like this since the war escalated and his young people had started to march on the streets. He was no hero, they said, but the government fought on… and after last year…

The door burst open, letting in some new people. One was whistling some Beatles tune. Rockers. America snorted.

"Hey, look! A heroic marine of the great United States!" A hand clasped his shoulder. "Back from Vietnam, are you? How many kids did you kill?"

Alfred clenched his teeth. His hands were on the rifle, the screams pierced the air and the blood…

"How many? Huh?" The voice was irreal, distant. Alfred kept staring into his glass, as if it could find the sense into its bottom.

"Tom, look at him, he's a kid himself." The rocker's companion intervened. He could not tell if there was pity or scorn in her voice. "Maybe he is fed up with the war as well"

Yes! No! He wanted it. He was bringing democracy… killing…

The hand forced him to turn around. "Is it true? Are you against the war?"

"I…" He started, but he was cut short by the last rocker of the trio. "Alfred?"

He groaned. He really couldn't find it within himself to deal with Arthur now. The man raised one of his enormous eyebrows and asked in his insufferable British accent. "What are you doing here?"

Right, what was he doing in a third-rate pub in London? Alfred had no answer. He had been on a plane from Saigon to New York, landing in Tokyo to refuel. He had glimpsed out of the window and the city beneath him was on fire. The bombers, American bombers flew in his line of sight and his gloved hand fell to the deadly button again, releasing destruction once again. And then, the fire of 1945 Tokyo became a jungled strangled by napalm flames. When the plane took off again, he was on another one, to London. But he couldn't explain that to England.

"Drinking" He mumbled, turning back to his glass.

"You know him?" Arthur's pacifist friend asked.

Now he's gonna say he knows me only by sight and he's gonna go away with his friends and leave me alone. He thought, sipping some beer. It sucked.

But Arthur surprised him. "He's my little brother. Can I have a moment with him?" And then, to Alfred's dismay, he was sitting next to him.

"Go away, Iggy. I'm not in the mood."

Annoyingly as usual, England didn't move. "You do look different from Woodstock" He commented.

I was a junkie idiot at Woodstock. "I'm back fighting for my greatness"

My boys are dying by the thousands so I can tramp on the world.

Arthur laughed bitterly. "No, Al. You're drinking yourself to death in one of my pubs."

America rolled his eyes. "You are calling me a drunkard? Do I have to remind you how many times I dragged your drunk ass home?"

Arthur chuckled. "Guilty as charged. But you do look miserable."
He shrugged.

"Were you in Vietnam?"

He hadn't ordered a drink yet. He really intended to talk with him. Damn.

When he didn't answer, England pushed on. "That bad, uh?"

This question was left unanswered as well. It was rhetorical, after all. Alfred, whose eyes shone every time he laid them on a gun, the bigger the better, who had stopped playing with toy soldiers only when he had started to play with the real ones, that Alfred was fed up with war.

"Then this..." Arthur pointed to the beer. "Is not strong enough"

"Are you trying to sell me whiskey?"

He chuckled. "Maybe"

The admission failed to make America laugh. He tilted his glass, as if not believing it really empty, then started to roll a joint.

"You smoke" Arthur pointed out.

Thank you, Mr. obvious. "I do, mom. Problems?"

"It wasn't meant as a reproach". He didn't add more. Undoubtedly he was waiting for Alfred to speak. And he wouldn't have, hadn't he drank so much alcohol already.

"You raid a village, you kill men, women, children, you burn it to the ground. And then another, and another... At some point, marijuana is the only thing that can take your mind off it." The worlds flew effortlessly, as the clouds of smoke from the tip of the joint.

"You have to stop." Arthur said. His green eyes were unusually dark, pensive. He sounded older than his physical age, as if all the centuries that weighed on his shoulders were showing.

"What?"

"This. It's killing you."

Alfred huffed. "Please. Weed doesn't kill a human, much less a nation"

Arthur shook his head. "I'm not talking about weed. I'm talking about Vietnam. Give it up."

Give it up? Give it up? Was that man for real?

"I DO NOT GIVE UP!" The yell escaped from his lips. He jumped on his feet, knocking the stool off. Several people turned their heads at the noise, but he couldn't care less. "I'm the United States of America, I'm the most powerful country in the whole fucking world. I. Do. Not. Give. Up."

England sighed and picked the stool up. "Face it, America. You can't win"

Rage cursed through America's veins and he slammed his fist on the counter.

He couldn't win? The United States of America couldn't win against a couple jungle men!?

"I won two World Wars, remember? I saved your own ass two times. I will win this, just like I will win the Cold War" He took a deep breath and filled his lungs with marijuana smoke, but didn't manage to calm himself down at all.

"You have won two wars, alright. You may win the Cold War, too. But you can't win this time we ruled the world is past. We have no right to rule over other countries. Our own citizens are recognizing it."

England was really, really getting on America's nerves. I can't believe my ears…the fucking hypocrite!

"You are giving me this talk? You? Do we want to talk about your colonies?"

England opened his mouth to protest, but Alfred beat him to it. "You want to keep it about me, fine! Let's talk about me. Let's talk about Washington." Arthur stiffened. Alfred had gone too far to stop, and wouldn't have cared anyway. "You know, when I burned Tokyo to the ground I had that in mind"

England crossed his arms. "Now don't come blaming me for your military actions…"

"But you are to blame. Everything I am, you taught me! Never show mercy to your enemy, remember? It was the first lesson I learned from you! You taught me to massacrate the native people of my land, you taught me to buy and sell human beings, you taught me to colonize all the colonizable and burn what I couldn't take!"

Alfred was screaming. The whole pub was looking at him and was probably wondering how much he had drunk. Which was a lot, but still not an excuse. The United States of America, losing control in public. What a shame. He glanced at England, expecting him to be reproachful. He wasn't being a gentleman at all. But for once, his damned mouth stayed shut. He looked taken aback, the bitch.

Alfred's voice lowered. He was out of breath. "You made me the monster I am"

He finished in a whisper and felt tears burn in his eyes. No, he couldn't cry. The United States of America didn't cry.

Arthur placed his hands on his shoulders, obviously in an attempt to calm him down. "You're not a monster"

He shook the hands off. "Of course not. I'm the hero. The savior of this world." As he said it, for a moment, he believed in it as he once did. But then, his voice grew bitter and bitter. "The United States of America, the great superpower, surge of democracy, freedom, peace"

The last word was acid in his mouth. It tasted like ashes. He let himself fall on the stool. "I see him every night. Kiku. He came with his delegates to sue for peace. He could barely stand. His skin, his very flesh… hell! I could still see in his eyes the flash of the bombs."

America had been so mad, that 6th of August. Mad about Pearl Harbor, mad about all the young men he had lost in that bloody war over the ocean. When the bomb had fallen, he had felt… exalted. It was the most powerful weapon in the world, after all, and he was the one who had created it. Now, twenty-three years later, the remembrance of that feeling, more than anything else, made him nauseous with disgust. Shame burned through him and ate him alive, excruciating like the blast of the great sun of Hiroshima.

"A glass of whiskey." He ordered the bartender in a shaky voice. "And leave the bottle."

"How are things between you two?" Arthur asked.

"Getting better. But that doesn't change what I did. It doesn't change that I'm doing it again."

He gulped down the glass of whiskey the bartender had laid down for him. "I was there in Son My. I'm always there. Everytime something terrible happens, I'm there, pulling the trigger and laughing. It is madness, total madness. I lost the count of how many I've killed, how many cities I've destroyed. Only in Germany…"

Arthur took the glass and bottle and poured himself to drink. Alfred understood. They had flown together over Dresden that night.

"So much violence, so much death… I guess I kinda got used to it. But sometimes, I'm still that boy who declared his first war." Arthur went for the bottle again, an anguished look on his face, but Alfred beat him to it. He needed it more. "If I close my eyes, I still see York burning. I still hear Matt's screams"

His brother, his reflection in the mirror, crying in the ashes of what had been his capital.

Why, Al!? The yell still pierced Alfred's dreams. WHY?

Freedom, he just wanted his freedom. Power, he had been chasing power since 1775. And he had been leaving a trail of blood behind him.

Arthur's hand was on Alfred's arm. "It was more than one hundred and fifty years ago. He forgave you long ago. "

He had, Kiku had. Everyone always forgave him. But that didn't make it better.

"Well, he shouldn't. I'm a monster." He was crying, now, and it filled him with shame. No, he was ashamed of what he was. What he had done.

"Then what is Germany? Or Russia? What about me, or the frog?"

The wartime nickname that England refused to drop didn't get a laugh out of Alfred. But then again, Arthur hadn't meant to be funny. He continued on. "There isn't any of us who's innocent. We're countries, Alfred. We're made up of humans. We're bound to make mistakes."

"But I can't. I'm the hero. I don't make mistakes. I fight the right wars, for the right things. I protect the world. And I don't lose." He thumped the table with his hands to enlighten the concept. "I don't… what kind of hero would I be…" He stopped mid sentence. His gaze was frantic, tears traced salty trails on his face. "Well, but I am not, am I? I'm just a murderer"

Now Arthur looked seriously worried. "What's going on, Meri?"

He hadn't heard that pet name in ages. He sniffled. "I feel my head is splitting in two. My people… they are tearing me apart. I don't know who I are anymore"

To this, Arthur did not have an answer. He wove an arm around Alfred's back.

"Let's get home, alright?"

Home. He thought of the old house that had been his home for a while, when he was a child and England had brought him to be shown to his king. It is no longer my home. It hasn't been for two centuries. And yet, something had compelled him to London when the thought of going back to his homeland was insufferable.

He relaxed his shoulders under Arthur's grip. The man awkwardly patted his back.

He pointed at the bottle of whiskey. "Let me finish this first. I need it" He had embarrassed himself enough that he needed to drink out his self-conscious self to be able to walk out the door under everyone's gaze.

England ended up having to drag his sorry ass home. "How the tables turn" He commented, as Alfred bent over to retch in the corner of a street.

"F'ck you" he spat out and some splatters of vomit ended up on Arthur's shirt.

"Eww!" He yelled and stepped back. "To hell with you, git"

Alfred burst out laughing, not a drunken laughter, but a mad, joyless one. It took quite a lot for it to die out in the empty dark street.