Interlude 2 Tony

Tony held his Earthling friend in his arms.

Right now that friend was in the body of a young woman.

He could remember long ago how his friend Alfred would tell him the stories of all his beloved states, their names, and what they were to him.

Since Alfred was kin to Tony and Tony had expert memory, he remembered every single one of the fifty people. But this particular state was special to him as he had seen her before.

A little known fact is that Tony had managed to accidentally activate a worm hole in the fabric of Earth's space-time continuum (explaining how each large enough object in the paradox that humans like to call space has its own rules of theory and etcetera will take way too long to explain) and had managed to time travel himself into the early 1900s. He had met during the time loops Arizona, Alaska, Hawaii, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. He had only seen Alaska and New Mexico die, though, and those were by accident. Tony considered their deaths to be too personal to his friend to intrude.

Alaska, who his friend was right now, was a pretty woman. She had the body of a 19 year old; Alfred had considered her a sister. Her name had been Samantha Vanpool.

Even though Tony knew that Alfred loved her very much, Alfred had once told him that he had a hard time looking directly at her. He said it was because she looked too much like his brother and 'that commie.'

Indeed, she had the silver hair of 'that commie bastard,' but it was soft and silky like the northern brother. Her eyes were a violet color and she had an abnormally tall yet slender frame. Tony felt what humans could liken to amusement as he remembered when he gave the young woman a scarf and a hockey stick for one Christmas. The look on Alfred's face had been priceless.

Now when Tony thought about it, it had been one of the few times that he had ever truly seen his friend Alfred. Most of the time Tony would either see the fake persona that his friend had created to hide his various other personalities from the other nations or he would see the states or a hollow, empty shell.

Tony could remember vividly how his friend would always change form, mind, and identity during the time Tony had lived with him. After some observation and notes, he found that his friend was carrying a staggering amount of souls within his own, most of which were half merged with his own. After many visits and trips to the Inter-Galactic Library of Various Life Forms and talking with several professors on the theory of souls, he found that Alfred's case, though extremely rare, was not unique. It was recorded to have happened before in several species. The only same factor, though, was that all of the lost souls had loved or were in love with the soul that over took him. In each case the latter would become unstable.

However, no matter how much Tony researched, he could find no cure to his friend's or friends' problem. So he made nice with each one of the states' personalities and hoped that Alfred was still there. Tony often worried about Alfred, he could see that his friend was fading away, leaving behind the farce and a body. Many times he would see America and talk and talk and talk to him but never actually get through to Alfred.

Tony had been afraid that Alfred was dead even if before his dissolution.

Through more intense researching, Tony had come to the conclusions that personifications have two sides to them.

One is their human side, like Alfred or Matthew. For the most part their human side acts, well, human. They can be mean or nice, cheerful or depressing, anything really. Human sides don't even have to always be affected by the stereotypes. However, the human side is their weaker side. Alfred was his friend's human side.

The dominant side of them is their nation side. In this case, America. Nations are the people and the people are them. So it meant that nations had just as much control over their people as the people have control over the nations. It was a very complicated matter, even for one as intelligent and well informed as Tony. If a nation is angry at another nation they could drive their people to begin fighting. If the people are angry at other people, they can drive the nations to begin fighting one another. That was a crudely simplified model of the interworking or personifications.

To complicate matters further, the human and nation side can often influence each other, which lead to a even more bizarre puzzle.

One day Tony had to leave America (because he wasn't, couldn't be Alfred) to carry out a mission for his superiors. Tony didn't want to leave his friend in such a bad state (no pun intended) as he was going through another severe depression (in both his country and human side). But it wasn't Tony's choice and he had to leave anyway.

The mission was far more complicated than anyone suspected and it was many Earth revolutions around the Prime Arcrimdus Minimus Sector E6637 star before Tony was able to come back to see his friend. He got there on the day of his dissolution.

It really didn't take long to figure out what happened. Tony had rushed to the house of his fiend's, but he was too late.

4:27 P.M.

Powerful, hungry flames had already consumed the house. The structure had already fallen in on itself and the blistering heat was catching onto the nearby greenery. Tony knew that his friend was in there, letting himself die to see the states that he had loved so much. And Tony would never deny him that.

So he sat down and waited, waited for the flames to finally give out hours later to try to find a piece of the corpse left to bury.

It really wasn't that hard, Tony knew that the room his friend had wanted to die in was the hidden room in the back nobody was ever allowed in. Treading carefully to the approximate location of the room, Tony was in for a surprise. He didn't find his friend's corpse, he found him living and breathing.

Tony stood over the prone body, knowing that he would wake up, yet unsure why he would still be living.

And his friend did wake up.

Then began screaming.

He screamed to someone named Rome.

He screamed about Hell.

He screamed about how it was always his fault.

And he screamed about his states.

At one point his body completely gave out on him and he slumped, unconscious.

Figuring that this was as good a time as any, Tony picked up his friend and put him on the spaceship he had traveled in. After starting up the engine, activating the invisibility shields, and placing his friend in the stabilizer; Tony happened to glance out the observation window.

A young man with silky blond hair and purple eyes was walking among the ashes. He reminded Tony considerably of his friend, and Tony got the vague feeling that he should remember the young man.

As the young man got near where the old circular room once was he seemed to have seen something and ran to it, as Tony observed interestedly. He picked up the remains of America's old bomber jacket. Then he collapsed and began… sobbing…

By this time Tony remembered who he was and had left.

After managing to calm down his friend, Tony managed to extract from his friend what had gone on in his trip to the afterlife.

After a while, it was clear that his friend while his friend was sent back, he suffered other problems than being reincarnated.

One problem was that since Alfred had died and America was dissolved, he didn't know who he was any more.

The second was that, because of the first problem, he began to become his states more and more often.

The third was that he just couldn't-

Think.

Straight.

And the fourth was that he seemed to have problems with his memory. Tony was suspicious that he might have been purposely blocking some memories, but for the others… He wasn't sure. His friend could do something in one body and then have only a vague memory of it in the next.

It was complicated.

And Tony didn't know what to do except hold his friend during the times when he broke down and cried.

I don't own Hetalia.

I love Tony, I really do. He's awesome.

Thanks guys! I really didn't expect to get 100 reviews! It's amazing, oh, and thank you PortiaQuinn especially for all your help.

I believe that either a guest got the 100th review, so thank you! And Glass of H20 for the 99th! Should I do something for you guys? I really don't know fanfiction protocol for this...

As, I said, this will be a double update. But, since I am being kept under watch for finishing my homework and cleaning my room, I'll try to get out the next chapter in a few hours. Please review.