The Open Seas: The story of Columbia Jones (Hetalia)

[Chapter 8]Words turned upside down

(Again, this chapter is entirely Columbia dream, some is fake, some is real.)  

A woman walked the halls in a blue dress she never remembers wearing, and her short blonde hair is straightened. On her feet are slippers she never remembers getting, and she holds light blue parasol she never remembers having. But she does remember the halls, the halls she ran as a young girl. The halls she ran with a twin, with a brother, with a family. 

She gently touches the wood frame around a white door. The door has small blue and prink flowers painted near the base, flowers she remembers painting. She remembers adding pink flowers for her sister, because she knew she liked the pink color. She remembers finding blue ones the next day, because her sister remembered that she liked blue. 

She smiles at the memories, they are happy memories that she wishes she could live through all over again. 

But the comfortable silence is ruined by a gun shot. It's not a shot she knows, but it makes her worry anyway. She has heard far too many gun shots in her long life for he not too. She turns to the window, gazing out. Surprisingly, she smiles at what she sees. 

She smiles at the sight of a male with dirty blonde hair teaching a young boy how to shoot a gun. The young boy looks so familiar, and she recognizes her own brother. Perhaps at the time he learned to shoot, Alfred had been happy, thinking it was so he could hunt with his older brother. But that was not the case, some decades later, when he turned his gun on the very man who taught him. 

The woman shakes her head, willing these thoughts to flee her mind. She hears a call, someone is calling her name. She looks below the window, and there stands a woman she knows quite well. She smiles, waving down, and the familiar woman motions for the blonde to join her. And the blonde does so with a smile. 

Though, that smile fades when she throws open the door, and lightning splits the sky. Her smile is gone, replaced by a frown, as she puts her hand out to feel the rain. It's hard, cold, and heavy in her palm. She takes her hand back, and goes to retreat inside. But she can't, the house is gone. She backs up, and the rain soaks through her dress. 

She can feel the mud seeping into her slippers, and turns around franticly. No matter where she looks, she can not find any of the people she saw from the window. But then she hears it again, a lone gun shot. She turns around, and is appalled at the scene before her. 

It's a scene she knows well. One with a familiar red head woman in a familiar red coat. It's a memory of familiar gun, a familiar uniform, and a day her words were twisted. 

In front of her stands herself, in a revolutionary uniform she can never forget, hair so short she barley recognizes herself. But the red head does, she recognizes her, the woman she raised, even when she points a musket at her head. 

The woman in the red coat is weeping, holding a bullet wound in her stomach. But she's not weeping out of pain, she's weeping out of sorry. Even with the tip of the musket, the bayonet part, an inch away from her forehead, she looks past it and to the holder of the weapon. She pleads with the blonde, but not for her life, for she knows the blonde can not take that from her. But it feels like she just might. 

"Please-ple-please! Columbia! Just come ba-back! Back to me and Madelyn, and Mathew, and Alfred, and Arthur!"

"Alfred is here, and he's with me. We're staying."

"PLEASE!"

Theres a pause, and Columbia takes a deep breath. She looks at the woman who has raised her since her first memory, and the sight nearly brings tears to her eyes. Do you know what it's like to look down the side of a musket at someone you have considered a mother? No, you don't. Not like Columbia knows at she looks at the ragged and broken woman. 

She exhales, and points her musket at the ground. The women in red smiles, even through the tears. She's just so emotional right now, so open. She doesn't want to be left alone. But any hope is shattered as she looks in Columbia down cast gaze. 

"Wendy...."

"Ye-yes?"

Columbia looks back up, her expression steadfast and serious. Whatever she decides, here and now int he pouring rain, there will be no going back. 

"I'm not your little sister."

And with a wail, the woman in read leans her head against the muddy grass. She cries as her little sister walks away, back into her armies ranks. She cries for everything she has just lost, and every fleeting thing she could have done to keep her here, but didn't. She cries for the death of her little sister. She cried because she does not have a little sister anymore, just a fellow country. 

She does not see Columbia's eyes water and she pushes through her army. She doesn't see her collapse into her brothers arms and cry her eyes out. She doesn't see his tears join hers as the American siblings cry out their own sorrows. 

No, she only see's endless seas through a monotone gaze as she is shipped back to her nation. She only sees the empty halls, and the little capital that once filled them missing. She only see's her older brother mope around the house and cry himself to sleep. She only see's the world through tears for months to come. 

And the woman in the blue dress, the woman who watched her memories from the sidelines only see's what she did, and the sister she broke. As she turns to cry, she feels the rain stop. 

This Columbia stares up at the sky, and finds it too blue for this to be the same memory. She looks around her, and fears the coming memory. She's standing in the ruble of a London building, and she is suddenly hit with hat this memory holds. 

She remembers this conversation very well, it is three days before D-day, and she was speaking with her sister in a destroyed part of London. 

This Columbia runs a little, trying to find them, when she hears the bells known as her sisters laughter. She runs around, and is struck with the heartbreaking sight of her and her twin in identical outfits once again. This is one of the last days they tried to wear something other than a uniform during the war. 

They both wear tan, knee length dresses. And they were laughing their heart out, but the conversation grows somber rather quickly. Maddie speaks up, the silence suddenly becoming too heavy. 

"I feel bad for you, you know."

The other Columbia looks up with a questioning gaze, going to answer her sisters unspoken question. 

"What do you mean?"

Maddie laughs a little, and tilts her head back to look at the sky as she explains her earlier comment. 

"I mean, your troops are going to be taking Omaha, that's, like, the hardest beach."

While the other Columbia smiles sadly at the fact, she does try to lighten the mood again. She doesn't want to have to think about all the bad things right now. 

"Oh yeah? Well, you're taking Juno beach, and that's still gonna be a pretty tough cookie to crack."

Maddie laughs, looking back at her sister. She smiles sadly, fondly, and says-

"I promise-"

"What did we say about promises?"

"That we promise our promises will be broken?"

"Yes, so why are you promising?"

"Because this is the kind of promise I won't have to break."

The other Columbia looks at her skeptically, but crumbles under her sister earnest stare. 

"Alright, what do you promise?"

"That I'll kick some german *ss for you."

The other Columbia breaks out into a fit of laughter, and this Columbia smiles at the memory. It was true, Maddie didn't break her promise. She kicked some real *ss on D-day, and altogether through out the invasion of Normandy. 

If only they could share times like that again.