[FIC] A Soft Reboot
Title: A Soft Reboot (5/?)
Fandom: Hetalia
Rating: PG (Subject to change)
Warnings: Swear words
Summary: Once every couple centuries, the nations inexplicably disappear and are reborn as humans. But the memories and nationhood gradually return and they have funny ways of getting back to each other.
*
Danny Bell lives in one of those towns where the local paper is only a few pages long, purely due to a lack of things happening. The summers there are cracked and parched and the clouds boil in an endless, azure sky. The people are just as unexciting as the paper: sluggish, dry and stagnant. If the neighbourhood isn't fanning themselves on the front porch, they'll have retreated to the cool of fridges and air-conditioners. Everyone knows each other.
Since his birth, Danny has been in the newspaper exactly three times.
It isn't into this town that Danny arrives. His father and his heavily pregnant mother had just left a friend's house in North Dakota and they are on their way to Winnipeg, to visit family. The doctor at home said that the baby shouldn't be due for another couple weeks, so a short trip wouldn't be too bad. As soon as they approach the American-Canadian border in their little red car, the contractions hit with a suddenness and a ferocity that make Mrs. Bell cry out.
"It felt like you wanted out, right now, right there," she would later tell him, hoisting him up on her knee. "You were stomping and kicking your way out of my tummy. So we pulled the car over and out you popped! You were so small and pink, like a squirmy little rat." Danny would pull a face, blue eyes screwed shut, but this was one of his favourite stories, so he doesn't mind really. "But could you imagine our surprise when we realised that there was another one still inside me!"
At this point, Mr. Bell would whisper loudly, "No wonder she was so fat!" and the boys would snicker and Mrs. Bell would pretend to be offended, but would smile fondly at her husband. "But Timmy wasn't coming out as easily, he was still happy in mommy's tummy. So we jumped back in the car and we zoomed through the border and into the first hospital we could find." And Tim Bell would clamber on to Mrs. Bell's lap, wriggling next to his brother.
"So Timmy's a Canadian? Ewww!"
"I'd rather be a Canadian than a stinky American!"
Their words would have no real sting, but Mrs. Bell would say, "Boys." And they would stop and duck their heads, grinning at each other under long eyelashes. Then Mr. Bell would have to go to work at the town hall and when he came back, they would have chicken casserole with mashed potatoes and everything was Okay.
Their story is featured in the town paper and the article had been cut out with the care of concentrated children and preserved in a frame in the entrance hall. But even without the article, everyone would have known of the Bell twins. Their two heads are as blond as wheat and their faces are still pudgy with the fat of babyhood. Danny's eyes are cornflower blue while Tim have a queer indigo tint in his when he stands in the light. They spend their spare time adventuring in the tree house their dad built, riding bikes over self-constructed ramps, breaking windows with baseballs and then running like hell so old Mr. Gregor won't shoot them. One is hardly seen without the other.
The second time Danny is in the newspaper is when he is seven. It was a particularly hot summer, where flies were known to drop dead mid-flight because of the heat. Fires are common, which isn't surprising as Danny feels that he himself could burst into flame at any moment and the kids would spend their afternoons under the cooler shade of the trees, panting like dogs.
It is Tim who points at a tall column of smoke, rising straight up into the windless sky. "Hey, reckon someone's having a bonfire?"
"Naw, it's too hot," Danny replies with all the wisdom and self-assurance of an older brother. ("Only by half an hour!") "Let's go have a look." Everyone is inside, sleeping or watching television to escape the oppressive heat, so no one is there to see the two little boys totter off in the direction of the smoke.
It wasn't a bonfire. They stand in front of the burning house, clutching each other's sweaty hand so tightly they didn't know whose fingers were whose. The house is alive; a huge crackling monster with fire in its eyes and mouth. Black ash pours from the windows, tumbling in the streams of boiling air. The smell is acrid and it burnt the throat and the lungs. But they stand, staring, transfixed as the house screamed and fell apart inside.
Tim tugs at him. "Danny, let's go! They might think we did it or something!" But Danny watches, takes in the flames and sees the embers fly and remembers. Remembers screaming, eyes wide and chest straining, as English men threw their torches, one by one through the White House windows. Remembers the clouds of smoke, black as coal, billowing out as the fire raged and gutted his beloved building. Remembers the icy expression on England's face, the shadows deep in his skin, as he stood on Pennsylvania Avenue and watches.
He doesn't realise he's actually screaming and sobbing until Tim hits him hard enough to hurt. And then he is running, tripping over his shoelaces, letting Tim pull him along until they had both collapse on the sidewalk. But the heat on his face and in his lungs and his eyes is still there. Danny feels his breath catch and catch again, and he is throwing up, spewing out his stomach like the house had been spewing black smoke and bile, like the White House had been coughing up smoke.
Tim rubs his back, little presses with his little hand, making hushing sounds like their mom would when they were bedridden with fever or pox. "Hey, Danny, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay."
"How could he," Danny sobs, hot and angry. "How could he, that was against the rules, it's not fair, it's not fair-"
Then Tim stops rubbing his back, and punches him instead.
Danny reels back, red eyes wide as he scrambles away. It hadn't really hurt, to be honest. But it had been an honest-to-god sucker-punch from his own brother. His brother. "Tim, what-"
"It's not fair? It's not stinkin' fair?" Tim yells, fists tight and furious. "You tell that that to my men in York!" And he lauches himself at his brother, limbs wild and flailing and Danny automatically fights back, too angry to make sense of what they are doing.
They would have fought until both of them were dead, they thought, unless the burning house hadn't collapsed with such a crash that they could hear it and they both stopped to think to call the fire brigade.
Even though there had been no one in there at the time, and the house was little more than a glorified shack anyway, the boys are swiftly declared heroes and are treated as such. Free sweets from the store, the adoration of their classmates, mom making their favourite stew - it isn't bad.
Maybe about five days later, after having been tucked in by their dad and given Hero Kisses, Danny stares up at the glowing stars on the ceiling and whispers to Tim, "Hey. Being a hero's pretty sweet, huh."
"Yeah. Jenny looks at me now. Like I'm not invisible." There is a toothy grin in his voice and Danny can practically feel the blush radiating off his brother's face.
"Haha, what? Is she your girlfriend?"
Tim kicks the bottom of Danny's bunk until he hears an Oof! "Shut up!"
Danny just laughs. "I'm going to be a hero when I grow up."
"You're already a hero now," Tim points out.
"Yeah, but you know, like a proper one. You saw how cool Connor's brother was, in the fire truck? That's gonna be me."
"A firefighter?"
"Dunno. Or maybe a policeman!"
"How about a lawyer? Like Uncle Jay?"
"No way! Boringggg!"
They giggle a little and then settle, heads sinking into their pillows.
"Hey, Timmy?"
"Yeah?"
"Sorry about York."
There is such a long silence that Danny thinks that Tim might not have heard him. He debates whether to say it again, before he hears the tiny voice below him.
"I guess it wasn't really me you were fighting. It's okay."
But it isn't, really. The fire had started something inside the both of them, had lit their memories alight. For the first time, they dream of their histories and their peoples, their relationship beyond brothers. And when they wake up, they know that they were no longer normal.
And suddenly, everything isn't Okay anymore.
The changes don't come immediately. They wake up and continue as usual. But the dreams come at full force, as if the thin mental skin that had been holding them back had split and burst when they inhaled the smoke of the Burning House. At night, Danny hunts buffalo on the plains, feels the wind in his hair and the dust on his face, feels the shifting muscles of his horse beneath him. Tim fishes and gathers wood with the First Nations, speak and understands Cree and Inuktitut, as if the languages have always been there, just hiding under his tongue. When wars break out between either of their peoples, Danny and Tim can do nothing but stand back and watch as they tear each other apart in their dreams.
"We can't do anything about it," Tim says as Danny washes the tears-trails stained on his cheeks away. "I asked Dad to check on the internet: it's history. It's already happened, we can't change anything."
"Why can't they just get along? They're all the same! I hate it," Danny says. "I don't want to sleep anymore."
But he has to. Even though he's not completely human, he's not completely something else and sleeps and dreams and watches helplessly as Europeans settlers overwhelm his land, his body, until they're a part of him. They bring weapons and sickness and a cloud of blood with them. But years and decades pass in single nights and before long, the both of them have accepted these invaders into them.
Mr. and Mrs. Bell aren't blind. They notice the nightmares, they notice the changes (however slight) and they notice how their boys seem to have grown up over night. How their skin is smooth, but Mrs. Bell swears that sometimes she sees dark circles under their eyes and a weary expression that bends and breaks her heart.
It takes Danny two years until he feels like he fits in his body again, until he's developed the mental strength to see the difference between the past and today. He starts smiling and running around again and his parents nearly collapse into each other with relief when they see him up in the tree house again. Whenever it's so hot that the road almost melts and the heat rises in palpable waves, he climbs to the highest point and watches the distance for as long as he can bear. He says that he feels like he's waiting for something, for the white sail of ship that would sail over the shiny horizon. "It looks like water! See?"
It had been two years of flash sicknesses, of unexplained tears and of heads pushed close together and whispers that would go silent when Mr. or Mrs. Bell would come in. But now, Danny's grades shoot up, he's the strongest boy in his class and possibly the most popular.
It's not the same case for his brother.
Danny has been in the paper three times, but not before Tim has. The first at his birth, the second at the Burning House and the third a plea for donations for his medical fees. The Bells ask every doctor in the area, but none of them can explain his increasing exhaustion, his brittle bones, his trembling fingers. Tim's gold hair becomes dull and droops and his eyes are glazed like frost on glass.
Their parents try everything.
Danny quits every club he's in, rejects every invitation he receives, so he can run home and be with his brother. "Hey there, Timmy," he says and smiles when Tim grasps his hand. Smiles through the cold of his paper-thin skin. "Jenny asked about you today. She wanted to know when you're coming back."
Tim's voice is ragged and it's an effort to speak. "What did you say?"
"Said as soon as she gives you a kiss, you'll come back."
Tim doesn't have the energy to hit him.
The doctors don't know what it is, even after test after test after test. But Danny might. He has an inkling of what they are, of what makes them different. He feels like he's known it before, but just forgotten somehow. Flashes of the truth sometimes come to him: how calling his brother 'Timmy' feels wrong somehow, how he feels connected to every single person he knows, how he feels like he hasn't met the rest of him yet.
Tim's sleeping fitfully upstairs one night and Danny's pushing his food around his plate, when he says to his parents, "I think we should go to Canada."
Mrs. Bell looks at him with tired eyes, exhausted and miserable after having had to coax Tim into eating small spoonfuls of soup, only to watch him throw it up again. "Why's that, honey?"
"Well, Timmy's always talking about it. I just thought it might make him happy or something. And besides, we haven't gone on vacation for a while! Dad's always working, and so are you, so I just thought…."
Mr. Bell nods, thoughtful. "I could take a couple days off. Maybe the air there might do your brother some good. I think we have some relatives in Toronto we can stay with. How'd you like to see Niagara Falls, son? "
When Danny whispers the news to Tim, all he can do is smile weakly and breathe out, "Finally." Danny feels heroic.
Danny carries Tim through the airport on his back and only with the greatest hesitance gave him to the lady so he could be pushed around on a wheelchair instead. When they're on the plane, Tim perks up with every mile that brings them closer to the border. The light in his eyes returns by the time they land and with an arm around Danny's shoulders, he walks off that plane. Their parents can't believe it when Tim shakes his head at the wheelchair waiting for him.
"Danny," he says, grinning so wide that Danny can't help but grin back. "Danny, I've come home."
Danny punches him on the shoulder. "Don't start kissing the ground. You'll get sick again."
When Tim returns the punch with almost equal force, Danny realises he's got his brother back.
Of course, Tim doesn't want to leave. How could he, when he is so deeply rooted in the soil of his birthplace, when he feels the freshwater run through his veins, the ice in his breath? He feels a deep sense of contentment that engulfs him, a balm that seeps into the holes and cavities worn into his bones.
Danny catches him lying outside in the yard of the house the Bells rented, just inhaling the smell of grass and sun. Tim's flushed and golden and vibrant, his wasted muscles slowly, but not that slowly, strengthening and lengthening. Muscle over bone, grass over soil.
It's great, it's all great. They move there, Mr. Bell finds a new job and Danny and Tim go to a new school and everyone's happy. Tim's on the hockey team, Danny prefers football and both have exceptional grades due to the knowledge that they've been born with.
But Danny knows it's only a matter of time before it goes to great to not okay. He has The Itch. It's a constant tingling just under his skin, a minuscule tremor that barely disturbs the fine golden hairs on his arms and legs. It's easy enough to ignore for the first year, and then the second, but by the third it's become a whine in his head, a rhythmic clenching of his insides. When he notices that his seemingly perpetual tan is starting to fade to the beginnings of a sick pallor, he knows it's time to go back home.
He's only thirteen but Danny's already got it all planned out. They have an uncle in DC, who was always bringing the boys presents and kept pestering them to visit him. They had planned to and they even had dates in diaries and everything. But then Tim got… sick.
Danny didn't forget.
He begs and pleads, says that he wants to start studying law like his uncle, says that he hates school in Canada, says that he doesn't feel American, says hurtful and childish things so his parents send him away.
So he doesn't waste away to nothing.
Finally, finally, they agree, but only with Tim's gentle insistence. Danny races up the stairs and is throwing his things into a suitcase before they even finish nodding.
He promises to visit often, a promise that he intends to keep. Their parents are so confused and soultwisted and it shows on their faces as they say goodbye to him at the airport. Tim hugs him, squeezes his hand and feels the tremour in his fingers. "Talk to me okay?" he says. Talk to me about the dreams and the nightmares, about the memories and what is happening to us. Don't you dare go through this alone.
"Sure." And Danny's through the gate, on his way through security and on his way home.
Mr. and Mrs. Bell stand close to one another, hands tightly intertwined. "Was it just me," Mr. Bell murmurs to his wife. "Or did he feel a little thinner?"
Tim ignores the secret looks they shoot him and he says nothing.
*
Danny lands in DC with his bones solid and his head clean and clear like water and he spends a couple weeks recuperating. His uncle doesn't fuss over him, but is startled when Danny knows his way around Washington despite never having been there before. They get on well enough and Danny's enrolled into the local school and, given everything, his life is pretty normal. Boring, but normal.
Until he's seventeen.
He's seventeen, and he's browsing through universities and colleges on the internet. Tim's going to some fancy art school in Toronto and Danny plans on following his lifelong dream of becoming a hero. He's torn between what kind though. Lawyer? Policeman? Doctor? Danny wants to help his people so much that it's a physical hunger,and something tells him that he has time all the time in the world to learn.
He has Harvard, Yale, Brown, even Cambridge and Oxford websites up on multiple tabs on his browser. Danny knows he can easily get in to wherever he chooses, armed with almost five-hundred years of America's knowledge and the deep, innate understanding he has of everyone with two feet on his soil.
Danny is aimlessly scrolling through Google images after having searched 'Oxford', just out of interest, when he sees something that stops him. The air in his lungs burns and he can't breathe and he stares at this small picture of a face that was there in his memories when all this started. Blond hair and green eyes, formidable eyebrows and a cocky smirk.
It take him an age to click on it and Google takes him to an article about how James Plender won some scholarship for Oxford University and how he left school with six A*s and a whole string of prizes. The article also features an Asian kid from the same school, who has also been accepted into Oxford to study microtechnology.
His face is familiar as well and Danny feels a headache quickly forming. He tastes smoke in his mouth, can hear a soft whine in his ears and the word kamikaze curls across his vision.
When Danny stops shaking, feels the heat against his skin fade, he attaches the pictures to an email and addresses it to Tim. 'Recognize these guys?' he writes. He sends it and the answer is almost immediate.
'Yes. Who are they?'
Danny doesn't know. But what he does know is that he's come to a decision based completely on an age-old feeling in his gut: He's going to Britain to study criminal justice and law at Oxford. He tells Uncle Jay this, who raises an eyebrow.
"England? You sure? You realise that their law courses are completely different there. You won't be able to do pre-law and there's only three years of study, not including a masters and-"
"I'm sure."
Uncle Jay doesn't see the sense in this, but he's also never seen his nephew so resolute about something. So he just nods and says something about finding him a course to help him prepare for the interviews and the entrance LNAT exam next year. Danny wants to go now, to track down these people and ask them 'do you dream? Do you feel ancient and old and different?' But Danny's waited this long to find about what he is exactly.
He can wait a little longer.
Also posted on FF.net and the main APH comm.