They all have some strange urge to protect Alfred, even when they're children, even though Alfred is so much bigger and stronger than any of them.
So naturally, they want Alfred to be happy.
♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡
The colonies don't really understand, but they know enough.
They know that the other-parent for more than half of them is England, that he's an empire and he takes care of America.
They know that America names East for his queen and West for England himself, that Massachusetts has the same green eyes and America sometimes gets a far-away look when he looks at her.
And they know, in the way that children know, that America is in love with England.
♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡
They all ache with this war.
It's almost over when the letter arrives, one with a familiar seal and they all crowd to look at it because hey, that's England's.
America pales as he reads it, and then he sits them down and explains.
No one else can know about them because they would be at the mercy of empires, would become chess pieces in their wars, would be subject to their whims.
The first time they see England, they understand.
England is harsh and mean, and none of them can understand it because America is bright and golden and shining and it hurts them to hurt him, why doesn't it hurt England too?
♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡
"England is your nation-" America says, and Massachusetts interrupts him, with an accent that belongs in Boston with revolutionaries. "He is not."
♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡
Then there is France.
"It's better than England," Scarlett says. She doesn't sound entirely sure.
♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡
America never has the same look he had when he talked about England before the war again.
♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡
Other nations come and go.
France comes and sells them Louisiana and they all keep their opinions to themselves.
America explores the far north stretches of their territory with Russia for a while, and they hope, that maybe this one will be it.
He isn't.
Years later, they split the country in two and wage a war amongst themselves and Europe merely sits back and watches as they ruin themselves.
♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡
Decades later, England comes to America to ask him to join Europe's war and the United States collectively bristles.
The oldest ones still remember him sitting back and watching as the United States fractured, can still remember how the smell of burning clung to Alfred and Sera for months.
What right does he have to ask them to go to war?
♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡
They join the war anyway, eventually, so it doesn't matter much.
They join it and the war ends, the other side unable to keep up with their soldiers who have not been bombed into exhaustion, who pour in and keep coming. (They have never fought a war like this. They do not want to ever do it again.)
YOU ARE READING
The States
FanfictionThe stories of the United States throughout history. -This is a collection of stories to go along with my other fanfic. -It is not chronological. It isn't really in any order at all. -Can be read in pretty much any order, stories with multiple part...
