Sub Specie Aeternitatis, part two (Axis Powers Hetalia, America and the Endless)
Yeah, so, um. This is not Wednesday. In my defense, I had finals?
...and this ended up getting longer than I thought it would?
...a lot longer?
Hopefully it doesn't suck. I don't know. In some ways I think this is kind of my love letter to intertextuality. Though in less SRS BIZNESS, it also features America getting stoned with Delirium during Woodstock. So.
Title: Sub Specie Aeternitatis, part two
Author: puella_nerdii, though credit/blame is, as always, due to mithrigil.
Fandom: Axis Powers Hetalia, crossed with the Sandman (though knowledge of either canon should suffice. Or neither canon; anthropomorphic personifications have a way of making themselves understood.)
Characters: America and, in this half, Despair and Delirium, with guest appearances by Lithuania and England and mentions of Death.
Rating: PG-13 for language, a few macabre images, and drug use. (Did I mention that one of the sections takes place during Woodstock?)
Words: 4480 without footnotes.
Summary: Even countries are bound by the forces that embody this world.
Back to Part Two
December 11, 1931
The heater broke. America sighs, shivers, shrugs on another sweater. He should call someone, get it fixed, but he’s not sure he can afford it. He runs through his bills in his head: food, electricity, gas, telephone, the loans, all those loans on his car and his house and even his refrigerator. It boils down to debt, a looming massive mess of bad credit and defaulted payments and I-owe-yous and scraps of paper with numbers written on them that only mean something because he says they do.
Mist kisses his window, chills the glass; America’s breath leaves white clouds frosted over it. New York still shines at night, the shape of the skyline’s stayed the same, but now he looks out his window and sees money leaking out of the lights, can’t help but wonder how much it costs to keep the Chrysler Building sparkling. Below him, men hurry home from work, skirt the shopfronts gathering dust and bump the people huddled in the bread lines-more of them every day, America sees the people, his people, gather half a block away, gather and gather and group together until the line stretches around the street corner. He can’t tell if people stop to talk or not. He wonders what they’ve got to talk about. Central Park’s in the distance, off to the left side of his window. He can’t see the cardboard and tar-paper carpeting where the grass would be if this were summer and if they’d finished the landscaping project by now, which they haven’t. And he gets it-why put up a pretty park when it’s just going to get swarmed by people who don’t and can’t care about that, when people will strip the wood from the benches and trees for fires, when the grass will get crushed by all the people tramping over it-but it hurts. New York’s never been ugly to him before.
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses. Well, he’s got them now.
His sigh condenses on the glass, and the gray doesn’t contract but expands, creeps out until it blankets the lowest pane. It’s like looking at the world without his glasses, everything blends together in this weird haze, the people and the taxis and the lights and the lines, and his reflection shimmers over them-and another reflection overlaps his, an even flatter gray than the one outside, dull and dark and dank. That reflection raises her hand to her lip and drags it back down and there’s a hooked ring on her finger, he sees it because the metal’s glistening with blood, her blood trickling down all black and sluggish and it’s the same color as the sky, the same color as the sewage dribbling through the pipes under the city.
“Stop,” he says. Thinks he says. His mouth twists, yeah, but he, well, he thinks what comes out are words. “Stop, don’t…” Don’t hurt yourself, he should finish, or I don’t want to see that, or maybe it’s both.
The hook drags deeper, splits her chin-
“America?”
Lithuania stands framed in the doorway, clutching a cup of coffee. Is that what he’s doing to keep his hands warm? There are worse ways, America guesses. He’s seen some of them through the window: trashcan fires burning through the night, people bundled in every coat and scarf and sweater they own, camping over sewer and subway grates for the warmth. He shivers. He’s wearing two sweaters and a scarf and long johns under his jeans and he’s shivering.
He can’t afford to keep Lithuania here for much longer.
“Yeah?”
“I thought you might want some coffee,” Lithuania says, pushes the cup into America’s hands. The gray face from earlier swims to the surface as he stares into the coffee, and he squeezes his eyes shut but the image still sears itself in his mind, and Lithuania asks “What’s wrong?” and he just shakes his head, waits for the feeling to prickle back into his fingers.
“If there’s anything more I can do…” Lithuania trails off.
“No,” he says, “no, that’s okay. Get some rest, all right?”
“It’s only seven-twenty-five,” Lithuania says, and America has to check his watch because he doesn’t believe him at first, “and Believe It or Not’s coming on soon, isn’t it?”
He checks his watch again, even though his watch doesn’t tell him what day of the week it is. Friday already. He could’ve sworn yesterday was Wednesday, but he wonders how much it really matters, why he bothers to call the days by different names when they blur together, even day and night blur into this kind of flat gray that doesn’t ever end.
Lithuania clicks the radio on, and President Hoover’s voice crackles over it. His voice sounds so shaky now, shaky and frayed. Maybe it’s the static. They must be replaying a press conference from earlier, because America catches him in the middle of what sounds like a grand old speech or would be a grand old speech if he wasn’t wearing at the same points over and over again until they sound just as tired as everything else does now, just as threadbare and thin. “The maintenance,” he intones, “of the American system of individual initiative and individual and community responsibility-”
“Turn it off,” America says.
“You don’t want to hear-”
“It’s probably nothing you or I haven’t seen, right?” Probably a man who eats cockroaches for fun or a woman with a foot-long beard or a kid with a birthmark shaped like Texas. Sideshow freaks, stuff like that, and he’s-he’s got enough experience with those now, with misshapen people stumbling around. “I mean, you’ve seen a lot,” he adds, and he means it; Lithuania’s older than he is, isn’t he? It’s funny to remember that.
“I,” and America doesn’t see Lithuania turn away but he hears it in his voice, “I don’t want you to see everything I’ve seen.”
Police cars prowl down the street and a pair of officers nudges a sleeping kid awake with their boots, haul him to his feet and dump him in the paddy-wagon. America can’t make out how old he is, exactly, not through the glass and the layer of grime over it, but he catches the kid’s eye for a moment, just a moment, and that’s something he used to love to do, look at kids and smile at them and make them laugh, but all he sees now is the hook reflected back at him, the hook extending from those faded gray eyes and sinking sharp into him, into his skin, into his heart. The hook drags but doesn’t pull, doesn’t propel him out of his chair, and he sags in his seat, half-pinned in place.
Why isn’t his home beautiful?
The phone jangles, Lithuania says, “I’ll get it,” and America nods once or twice, stares through the woman in the window.
Individual responsibility.
He’s not stupid. People treat him like he is, but he’s not. He knows what individual responsibility means. Fine. Fine. He fucked up, and he’s the only one who can make things right again, who can fix himself-
“Where would you begin, America?” the woman in the mirror asks him.
He opens his mouth, closes it, sinks back into the leather until it starts to swallow him. He doesn’t know.
“America? It’s, ah. England’s on the line.” Lithuania covers the receiver. “Would you like to talk to him?”
“Tell him I’m fine,” he says. “Tell him I headed to bed early. Tell him I just needed to get some sleep, that’s all. That’s all that’s wrong.”
The woman’s hook rips through her cheek.
***
August 16, 1969
Maybe it’s the drugs kicking in-America doesn’t quite remember who gave him the acid, just remembers the way the guy’s hipbones protruded and remembers how he swapped his shirt for a few tablets, but he should track him down and thank him or something once he remembers where his legs are-but Janis Joplin is one hell of a woman.
…nah, he doesn’t think it’s the drugs. Or not just the drugs. She strikes up Summertime and fuck, he remembers that one so he hums along and the melody pours out of his mouth in a wash of blue notes, this low quivering whisper. Janis sounds more…more purple, he decides; she shakes her hair and purple trails stream behind each strand so it looks like she’s got this halo except it’s purple and haloes are usually-not. Do any of the kids here remember Summertime? That was-that was the thirties, that was Gershwin, that was back when the world spiraled and sank down down down and everything moved so slow, people shuffled through the streets because they didn’t want to go where they were going. It’s slow now here, too, not everywhere here but here at Woodstock it’s slow even though the world outside Bethel keeps rushing around, time slides and slips and drips and America catches the drops on his tongue and savors them, savors this. Linger. Stay. Feel, don’t think.
He’s himself and he’s not; it’s weird and he’s not exactly sure what himself means either right now but he’s in his body and he’s outside of it, it’s not like he can see himself stretched out on the grass with a joint in one hand and a can of beer in the other and green rubbing off on his jeans but his brain’s unhooked from his body a little so when the girl with multicolored dreads sidles up next to him and runs her hands down his chest he feels it, feels her skin whispering against his, but at the same time there’s a part of him that goes oh, that’s what it is.
“Hey,” he says, and he thinks he sees a school of silver-scaled fish swimming in her left eye, which is blue, even bluer than his eyes are. Her other eye’s green, like England’s, but England’s eyes never, well, never sparkled like hers or if they did it was in a different way, the facets and depths were or would have been different, and even if his eyes did sparkle it was such a long time ago. None of the kids here would remember it, even the kids who aren’t kids but who’ve tricked themselves into thinking they are for this weekend because they want to be new again, they want to remember what it’s like to be born.
Does he even remember that?
“Well, I mean,” the girl says, shrugging and tugging on the tattered strap holding her bra in place, “it’s a little different for you. The being born thing. You don’t incubate the way they do or maybe I mean gestate, what’s the difference again?”
“Not sure.” He holds out the joint to her. She inhales, savors the taste for a second, hands it back.
“It’d be better if it wasn’t all dried up and dead. All you’re doing’s inhaling shadows.” She twirls a pink lock of hair around her finger, and America watches a wave of blue ripple down it, watches the dread stretch and lengthen and thin into a plait. “Just the memory of what it used to be when it was new.”
“I can get some greener stuff, if you want-”
But the girl rattles on like she hasn’t heard him. “But then you wonder if you’re just making it up or if you really remember what you remember or if everything’s better because it was then and then isn’t now and you know what happens after then but you don’t know what happens after now-or did I already say that-my thoughts are fish today and they’re really slippery, oh I guess you’re wondering what my name is, that’s the kind of stuff I always forget about until I remember it again.”
He got maybe twenty percent of what she just said? But that’s okay, because she blinks up at him with those mismatched eyes and chews on her lip for a second and says, “Do you want to call me Lucy?”
“In the sky with diamonds, right?” He grins back at her and feels his teeth break up into triangles, his lips turn into trapezoids. It’s like he’s seeing how simple everything really is, you know? The shapes underneath it all.
“I wanted to hear John Lennon, but he’s not here.” Lucy wriggles out of her sandals, splays her toes on the grass. Her nails glow, soak up the sound of Janis’s guitar-she’s on Ball and Chain now-and pulse in time with the notes. “You want his passport.”
“No, no, not me,” he says, “my boss.” Then: “Wait, you-”
“They’re themselves and you’re all of them bundled together and yourself,” Lucy says. She flops back on the grass and so does he, it’s soft and fluffy and-thatched, like hair, like England’s hair. He buries his nose in it as applause rumbles up through the ground and tickles his skin the way the blades of grass do. Lucy laces her fingers together and stretches them over her head and the parts of the sky that her hands frame turn marmalade. He wonders how much of it’s the drugs and how much of it’s, well, her.
“And then everything gets jumbled up inside you,” she continues, plucking off pieces of her fingernails, “and you can’t pick out where things start and where they end or if there’s a start and a finish at all or if everything just loops around and you don’t see the loops because you’re looking at them from the side because people don’t have wings and they can’t fly overhead and look at the world that way. I think wings would be nice. But then I’d fall if they stopped working and that wouldn’t be nice. Do you want to fly?”
His flight jacket. He left it thrown over the bedpost at home because it looks too military for here, but he remembers how it felt when it settled over his shoulders and kept out the cold, which is what the-it’s what the thing the jacket represents is supposed to do; well, not keep out the cold, but protect, insulate, ward away the bad weather. He shivers. Sweat rolls down his back, his bare back, and he still shivers. The tint on his glasses keeps the worst of the sun’s glare from his eyes, but there’s nothing to protect the rest of him. He doesn’t know how much good a shirt would do, really.
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I liked flying a lot.”
“But that was in another country, and sickles slice across the sky now,” Lucy says, “so you get shredded wherever you go. I got shredded once. And then I put myself back together, only I didn’t remember where everything was supposed to go so I didn’t come out the way I should have and nothing matches up and when I try to push it in place it hurts and stretches and. And. And I wish John Lennon was here.”
America’s arm extends across the grass until his hand wraps around her waist, and he tugs her in closer, it’s not right that there’s all this space between them, between everyone. “Me too,” he says. “I wish he was here, too.”
Janis Joplin became Jerry Garcia at some point when he wasn’t looking, and Jerry stands up there, lets his fingers fly over the frets, sucks on the joint clamped between his teeth. Dark Star, he recognizes this one, or doesn’t, because-
“-it changes every time,” Lucy mumbles.
“Isn’t that the way things are, though?”
Onstage, the dark star crashes, pours its light into ashes.
***
March 27, 2010
Some days, America carries on much as he used to. He’s thinner, yes, though one can hardly say the same for his people, and England suspects the flush in his cheeks is from fever and not excitement, but he strides into summit meetings with hamburger crumbs on his jacket, props his feet up on the table while discussing policy, cracks jokes at inopportune moments. He still draws up plans to save the world, though narrowed in scope, stretched out over decades instead of years, and if his current boss has managed to steer him away from asteroid-destroying robots and towards electric cars, so much the better for everyone. (By tacit agreement, none of them mention the bruises under America’s eyes, the way he occasionally appears ash under his tan. None of them but England, and he does so only in private, or what passes for private with America.)
And then there are days such as this.
America leans against the side of his bed, his fingers knotted in the sheets, his spectacles knocked askew when his head collides with the mattress. Sweat smears his lenses, beads and curls on his forehead, neck, hands. He curls his knees to his chest, or attempts to, but they slump to the floor, stiffen and seize as he throws his head back and bares his teeth-
England’s hold on the water glass weakens; he nearly dashes the damned thing against the floor when he rushes to America’s side, kneels-how can America bear to be brought to his knees like this-calls to him and hopes the sound of his name is enough to draw him back from wherever he’s gone. That name-it’s served such a function in the past, a talisman, a landmark, a beacon of light cast over stormy waters. Here is your hope, here is your refuge.
“America,” he says, and again, “America.” He’d cradle America’s face in his hands, if he dared.
His eyes, at least, are the same blue they always have been, so blue and so bright, nothing’s robbed him of that. “Hey,” he says. His smile cracks with his voice. “Didn’t miss a summit or anything, did I?”
“No. You haven’t.” England presses the glass to his lips. “Drink.”
America sniffs, blinks blearily. “What is this, water?”
“Yes. Just water.”
He lurches towards the glass, and ripples spread over the water’s trembling surface. Droplets of it fleck his lips, the tip of his nose, his specs. “I can take care of-” he begins, but another series of tremors wracks him then, and it’s all he can do to set the glass aside without spilling any of it. England watches his knuckles whiten, his lips draw back from his teeth, his fists tremble. He watches and might normally remark about the irony of his declaration but America can barely keep himself on his knees now and England can’t do it, can’t do much of anything other than dab his forehead with the sheets and hope his hands are cool enough to comfort.
He could have cured or at least eased this, once, and the once-shouldn’t sting him to the quick as readily as it does.
America smiles, or imitates one well enough. “Feels like old times, doesn’t it?”
That-England recoils before he realises what he’s done but not before America notices the space opened between them and raises his eyes to the ceiling. “Sorry,” he apologises to the rafters. “Just trying to lighten the mood a little. It feels like a funeral in here-hey, would you mind opening up the blinds?”
“It’s horrid out,” England says.
“Doesn’t matter, even yucky light’s better than nothing, right?” He pushes himself to sitting or something approximating the position, and England stares through the slats in the blinds at the flat gray beyond so he isn’t forced to witness it. America-America of all nations, America who introduced himself by grabbing a buffalo by the horns and flinging it into the distance-America cannot manoeuvre himself into bed.
England cannot refuse him. No; he cannot conceive of refusing him in this, now. He pulls the blinds open, and a few scattered sunbeams break through the clouds and filter through the window.
“No, seriously, you look like somebody died.” America frowns. “The queen’s still alive, isn’t she?”
“Yes, America. The queen is still alive.”
“Then what’s up?”
England sighs. There’s an ache building behind his brows, but it’s nothing to what America must be feeling now, so he doesn’t and won’t spare it much thought. “You’re-not well,” and the words are utterly inadequate to convey what he means by them, but that tends to be the case with words, he’s found. Perhaps that’s why he appropriated so many of them when he was younger, collected and displayed them with pride, searched for ones that would mean what he meant them to, for all the good it’s doing him now.
“Just economic stuff.” America lets his head loll against the mattress. “I mean, I kind of knew this was coming like a year and a half ago, and this is supposed to be the worst part of it, so I’ll bounce back after this.”
“Will you,” England says, suppresses the urge to whip America’s glasses from his face, as they clearly aren’t functioning as they ought. And why must his vision be corrected at all, a voice within him chides, who blinded him in the first place,, and at that his hand falls slack to his side. If America could have seen, foreseen, would he still-
Would he still be America?
“Well, maybe not-okay, maybe not bounce, but you know what I mean.” America gulps down the last of the water. His skin no longer glistens; has his fever broken? Today, perhaps today it has, but tomorrow the stocks might plummet or the unemployment rate might soar or another corporation might file for bankruptcy or another bank might close and he’ll be too wrenched with pain to walk. And if (when, England corrects himself, when) he recovers, what will this have robbed him of? England rests his hand on America’s ribs, counts them. Recover from this, yes, only to face the next sickness, and the next, until he becomes a shade of what he was. Slowly, nations have always-he steels his mind against the next thought, but it comes unbidden: nations have always died slowly. And that will never satisfy America.
“Hey,” America says. “Hey. England-England, look at me, okay? Just look at me.”
England never has been able to refuse him, save once, and in the end he capitulated anyway.
“So maybe-” America grimaces, grips England’s shoulder, and the gesture shouldn’t please England as much as it does. “Maybe I’m changing. Maybe I’ll have to work some stuff out. But it’s gonna be okay. I’ll do what I have to do and I’ll make it my way of doing things. I mean, I’ve always done that before.”
“And what if you’ve become too-too entrenched? In this?”
“You mean what if I’ve become too much of myself?”
“If you like.”
“You do know that makes no sense, right?”
“What if you can’t change?” England presses. “What if there are things you simply aren’t willing to relinquish?”
“Then I won’t give them up.” America shudders, coughs, but doesn’t let his eyes close through it all. “Look, England, I’m not gonna die.”
“Everyone dies.”
“You haven’t.”
England holds his gaze level. “Haven’t I?”
“Just because you aren’t what you were,” America says, “doesn’t mean you’re dead. Damn, you’re morbid.”
“Death signifies change,” England explains. The pale rider trampling man and woman, adult and child, pope and peasant under his hooves, for none escape what he brings, none pass untouched under his auspices. “Transformation.”
“That’s fucked up,” and England’s almost glad of the indignation even if it’s channeled towards him, because it restores some of the colour to America’s voice and cheeks.
“Is it so untrue?” he asks, chides America further.
“Are you pulling all of this from that black magic stuff you used to do? ‘Cause we disproved all of that.”
Oh have you now, England thinks.
“All I’m saying is that if some dude in a cloak comes up to me and swings a scythe at my head-” And America stops talking, tents his fingers in his hair and holds himself rigid and locks his jaw so he won’t scream; England recognizes the behavior from centuries ago, when he had to set America’s arm after the boy (so young then, and small enough that his eyes seemed to encompass most of his head) fractured it.
“Death’s nothing like that,” he says quietly, rests his hand on America’s forehead and waits for the tremors to subside.
“What’s-is this another one of your, your weird fairy things?” America gasps when he’s able, and perhaps England’s changed more than he’s realised if the jibe makes him smile now.
“Oh no, she’s older than that. Older than all of us, save perhaps Destiny, and she’ll outlast him in the end. She’ll unchain his book from his hands, clasp it to her breast, and before she takes his hand, she’ll smile.”
The worst of the pangs seem to be fading now, but when they drain away they drain something of America’s energy with them, so when he replies, “Creepy,” the word’s half-mumbled.
“Not at all. She’s very kind, the kindest of her siblings. And she’s there for us all, whether we cry or whether we embrace her, whether thousands throng the streets to mourn our passing or whether we die alone, whether we lived full lives or no lives at all.” He palms some of the sweat from America’s brow. “And she knows our stories, and listens to them, and accepts them.”
“Where does she take you?” America asks. “After…”
“That,” England says, “depends on the story.”
There’s a silence as America digests this. “Where do you want to go?”
England closes his eyes, summons forth clouds of mist in his mind, mists and the thick scent of ripening apples and Arthur’s red hair, uncut and spilling over the sides of the marble where he rests. “It produces all things of itself;” he recites, “the fields there have no need of the ploughs of the farmers and all cultivation is lacking except what nature provides. Of its own accord it produces grain and grapes, and apple trees grow in its woods from the close-clipped grass. The ground of its own accord produces everything instead of merely grass, and people live there a hundred years or more. There nine sisters rule by a pleasing set of laws those who come to them from our country.” He opens his eyes. “Avalon,” he says. “The words are Monmouth’s, not mine, but they suit.”
“Oh.” America pillows his cheek against the wadded-up sheets. “That’s not so bad.”
“No,” England says. “It isn’t bad at all. But I shan’t go there just yet.”
Wait for us, elder sister, he thinks. Wait for us as you wait for us all.
***
The Great Depression sucked. A lot. Canon doesn’t give us an exact date for when Russia took Lithuania back home, so in my head I’m placing it somewhere in 1932, after Hoover’s tax increase prompted further economic compression, and when America was wavering about whether or not it would stay on the gold standard. The Hooverville in Central Park sprang up sometime in 1931 in the place where the Great Lawn and Turtle Pond are today. Ripley’s Believe It or Not! is still around; it came to radio for the first time in April of 1930. America likes shows about the weird shit people do. This is still true today. (And here’s the transcript of the Hoover press release in question.)
Also, on December 11, 1931, the UK offered complete legislative independence to Ireland, New Zealand, Newfoundland, Canada, Australia, and South Africa. They didn’t even have to fight for it! (…you know, maybe you should’ve picked up the phone, America. They developed the technology for long-distance calls back in 1927, it’s not like the distance is as insurmountable as it used to be…)
Woodstock was a music festival held from August 15-18, 1969, that pretty much exemplified the counterculture during the ‘60s and ‘70s; about half a million people attended, twenty-three of the most storied bands of the era played, and despite bad weather and worse sanitation, the event was surprisingly peaceful. Oh, and there was sex. And drugs. Lots of sex and drugs. Outside of the countercultural mini-nation created during those four days-well, there was Vietnam. And escalating tension between so-called mainstream America and pretty much every minority group you can think of. And plenty of other stuff America didn’t really want to deal with.
Dark Star, by the way. Trippy stuff, but then again, it is the Grateful Dead.
Yes, the last section does owe a lot to mithrigil. Description of Avalon taken from The Vita Merlini by Geoffrey of Monmouth. As for why it’s set in 2010, that’s supposed to be when our economy bottoms out. The year I graduate! Ohgod.
The title, “sub specie aeternitatis,” roughly means “from the perspective of eternity” and is shamelessly stolen from Spinoza, though I rather doubt America’s ever read Spinoza.
...and now for Yuletide!
Which I totally have not been neglecting!
Really!
ahahaha I'm fucked, aren't I.
...and this ended up getting longer than I thought it would?
...a lot longer?
Hopefully it doesn't suck. I don't know. In some ways I think this is kind of my love letter to intertextuality. Though in less SRS BIZNESS, it also features America getting stoned with Delirium during Woodstock. So.
Title: Sub Specie Aeternitatis, part two
Author: puella_nerdii, though credit/blame is, as always, due to mithrigil.
Fandom: Axis Powers Hetalia, crossed with the Sandman (though knowledge of either canon should suffice. Or neither canon; anthropomorphic personifications have a way of making themselves understood.)
Characters: America and, in this half, Despair and Delirium, with guest appearances by Lithuania and England and mentions of Death.
Rating: PG-13 for language, a few macabre images, and drug use. (Did I mention that one of the sections takes place during Woodstock?)
Words: 4480 without footnotes.
Summary: Even countries are bound by the forces that embody this world.
Back to Part Two
December 11, 1931
The heater broke. America sighs, shivers, shrugs on another sweater. He should call someone, get it fixed, but he’s not sure he can afford it. He runs through his bills in his head: food, electricity, gas, telephone, the loans, all those loans on his car and his house and even his refrigerator. It boils down to debt, a looming massive mess of bad credit and defaulted payments and I-owe-yous and scraps of paper with numbers written on them that only mean something because he says they do.
Mist kisses his window, chills the glass; America’s breath leaves white clouds frosted over it. New York still shines at night, the shape of the skyline’s stayed the same, but now he looks out his window and sees money leaking out of the lights, can’t help but wonder how much it costs to keep the Chrysler Building sparkling. Below him, men hurry home from work, skirt the shopfronts gathering dust and bump the people huddled in the bread lines-more of them every day, America sees the people, his people, gather half a block away, gather and gather and group together until the line stretches around the street corner. He can’t tell if people stop to talk or not. He wonders what they’ve got to talk about. Central Park’s in the distance, off to the left side of his window. He can’t see the cardboard and tar-paper carpeting where the grass would be if this were summer and if they’d finished the landscaping project by now, which they haven’t. And he gets it-why put up a pretty park when it’s just going to get swarmed by people who don’t and can’t care about that, when people will strip the wood from the benches and trees for fires, when the grass will get crushed by all the people tramping over it-but it hurts. New York’s never been ugly to him before.
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses. Well, he’s got them now.
His sigh condenses on the glass, and the gray doesn’t contract but expands, creeps out until it blankets the lowest pane. It’s like looking at the world without his glasses, everything blends together in this weird haze, the people and the taxis and the lights and the lines, and his reflection shimmers over them-and another reflection overlaps his, an even flatter gray than the one outside, dull and dark and dank. That reflection raises her hand to her lip and drags it back down and there’s a hooked ring on her finger, he sees it because the metal’s glistening with blood, her blood trickling down all black and sluggish and it’s the same color as the sky, the same color as the sewage dribbling through the pipes under the city.
“Stop,” he says. Thinks he says. His mouth twists, yeah, but he, well, he thinks what comes out are words. “Stop, don’t…” Don’t hurt yourself, he should finish, or I don’t want to see that, or maybe it’s both.
The hook drags deeper, splits her chin-
“America?”
Lithuania stands framed in the doorway, clutching a cup of coffee. Is that what he’s doing to keep his hands warm? There are worse ways, America guesses. He’s seen some of them through the window: trashcan fires burning through the night, people bundled in every coat and scarf and sweater they own, camping over sewer and subway grates for the warmth. He shivers. He’s wearing two sweaters and a scarf and long johns under his jeans and he’s shivering.
He can’t afford to keep Lithuania here for much longer.
“Yeah?”
“I thought you might want some coffee,” Lithuania says, pushes the cup into America’s hands. The gray face from earlier swims to the surface as he stares into the coffee, and he squeezes his eyes shut but the image still sears itself in his mind, and Lithuania asks “What’s wrong?” and he just shakes his head, waits for the feeling to prickle back into his fingers.
“If there’s anything more I can do…” Lithuania trails off.
“No,” he says, “no, that’s okay. Get some rest, all right?”
“It’s only seven-twenty-five,” Lithuania says, and America has to check his watch because he doesn’t believe him at first, “and Believe It or Not’s coming on soon, isn’t it?”
He checks his watch again, even though his watch doesn’t tell him what day of the week it is. Friday already. He could’ve sworn yesterday was Wednesday, but he wonders how much it really matters, why he bothers to call the days by different names when they blur together, even day and night blur into this kind of flat gray that doesn’t ever end.
Lithuania clicks the radio on, and President Hoover’s voice crackles over it. His voice sounds so shaky now, shaky and frayed. Maybe it’s the static. They must be replaying a press conference from earlier, because America catches him in the middle of what sounds like a grand old speech or would be a grand old speech if he wasn’t wearing at the same points over and over again until they sound just as tired as everything else does now, just as threadbare and thin. “The maintenance,” he intones, “of the American system of individual initiative and individual and community responsibility-”
“Turn it off,” America says.
“You don’t want to hear-”
“It’s probably nothing you or I haven’t seen, right?” Probably a man who eats cockroaches for fun or a woman with a foot-long beard or a kid with a birthmark shaped like Texas. Sideshow freaks, stuff like that, and he’s-he’s got enough experience with those now, with misshapen people stumbling around. “I mean, you’ve seen a lot,” he adds, and he means it; Lithuania’s older than he is, isn’t he? It’s funny to remember that.
“I,” and America doesn’t see Lithuania turn away but he hears it in his voice, “I don’t want you to see everything I’ve seen.”
Police cars prowl down the street and a pair of officers nudges a sleeping kid awake with their boots, haul him to his feet and dump him in the paddy-wagon. America can’t make out how old he is, exactly, not through the glass and the layer of grime over it, but he catches the kid’s eye for a moment, just a moment, and that’s something he used to love to do, look at kids and smile at them and make them laugh, but all he sees now is the hook reflected back at him, the hook extending from those faded gray eyes and sinking sharp into him, into his skin, into his heart. The hook drags but doesn’t pull, doesn’t propel him out of his chair, and he sags in his seat, half-pinned in place.
Why isn’t his home beautiful?
The phone jangles, Lithuania says, “I’ll get it,” and America nods once or twice, stares through the woman in the window.
Individual responsibility.
He’s not stupid. People treat him like he is, but he’s not. He knows what individual responsibility means. Fine. Fine. He fucked up, and he’s the only one who can make things right again, who can fix himself-
“Where would you begin, America?” the woman in the mirror asks him.
He opens his mouth, closes it, sinks back into the leather until it starts to swallow him. He doesn’t know.
“America? It’s, ah. England’s on the line.” Lithuania covers the receiver. “Would you like to talk to him?”
“Tell him I’m fine,” he says. “Tell him I headed to bed early. Tell him I just needed to get some sleep, that’s all. That’s all that’s wrong.”
The woman’s hook rips through her cheek.
***
August 16, 1969
Maybe it’s the drugs kicking in-America doesn’t quite remember who gave him the acid, just remembers the way the guy’s hipbones protruded and remembers how he swapped his shirt for a few tablets, but he should track him down and thank him or something once he remembers where his legs are-but Janis Joplin is one hell of a woman.
…nah, he doesn’t think it’s the drugs. Or not just the drugs. She strikes up Summertime and fuck, he remembers that one so he hums along and the melody pours out of his mouth in a wash of blue notes, this low quivering whisper. Janis sounds more…more purple, he decides; she shakes her hair and purple trails stream behind each strand so it looks like she’s got this halo except it’s purple and haloes are usually-not. Do any of the kids here remember Summertime? That was-that was the thirties, that was Gershwin, that was back when the world spiraled and sank down down down and everything moved so slow, people shuffled through the streets because they didn’t want to go where they were going. It’s slow now here, too, not everywhere here but here at Woodstock it’s slow even though the world outside Bethel keeps rushing around, time slides and slips and drips and America catches the drops on his tongue and savors them, savors this. Linger. Stay. Feel, don’t think.
He’s himself and he’s not; it’s weird and he’s not exactly sure what himself means either right now but he’s in his body and he’s outside of it, it’s not like he can see himself stretched out on the grass with a joint in one hand and a can of beer in the other and green rubbing off on his jeans but his brain’s unhooked from his body a little so when the girl with multicolored dreads sidles up next to him and runs her hands down his chest he feels it, feels her skin whispering against his, but at the same time there’s a part of him that goes oh, that’s what it is.
“Hey,” he says, and he thinks he sees a school of silver-scaled fish swimming in her left eye, which is blue, even bluer than his eyes are. Her other eye’s green, like England’s, but England’s eyes never, well, never sparkled like hers or if they did it was in a different way, the facets and depths were or would have been different, and even if his eyes did sparkle it was such a long time ago. None of the kids here would remember it, even the kids who aren’t kids but who’ve tricked themselves into thinking they are for this weekend because they want to be new again, they want to remember what it’s like to be born.
Does he even remember that?
“Well, I mean,” the girl says, shrugging and tugging on the tattered strap holding her bra in place, “it’s a little different for you. The being born thing. You don’t incubate the way they do or maybe I mean gestate, what’s the difference again?”
“Not sure.” He holds out the joint to her. She inhales, savors the taste for a second, hands it back.
“It’d be better if it wasn’t all dried up and dead. All you’re doing’s inhaling shadows.” She twirls a pink lock of hair around her finger, and America watches a wave of blue ripple down it, watches the dread stretch and lengthen and thin into a plait. “Just the memory of what it used to be when it was new.”
“I can get some greener stuff, if you want-”
But the girl rattles on like she hasn’t heard him. “But then you wonder if you’re just making it up or if you really remember what you remember or if everything’s better because it was then and then isn’t now and you know what happens after then but you don’t know what happens after now-or did I already say that-my thoughts are fish today and they’re really slippery, oh I guess you’re wondering what my name is, that’s the kind of stuff I always forget about until I remember it again.”
He got maybe twenty percent of what she just said? But that’s okay, because she blinks up at him with those mismatched eyes and chews on her lip for a second and says, “Do you want to call me Lucy?”
“In the sky with diamonds, right?” He grins back at her and feels his teeth break up into triangles, his lips turn into trapezoids. It’s like he’s seeing how simple everything really is, you know? The shapes underneath it all.
“I wanted to hear John Lennon, but he’s not here.” Lucy wriggles out of her sandals, splays her toes on the grass. Her nails glow, soak up the sound of Janis’s guitar-she’s on Ball and Chain now-and pulse in time with the notes. “You want his passport.”
“No, no, not me,” he says, “my boss.” Then: “Wait, you-”
“They’re themselves and you’re all of them bundled together and yourself,” Lucy says. She flops back on the grass and so does he, it’s soft and fluffy and-thatched, like hair, like England’s hair. He buries his nose in it as applause rumbles up through the ground and tickles his skin the way the blades of grass do. Lucy laces her fingers together and stretches them over her head and the parts of the sky that her hands frame turn marmalade. He wonders how much of it’s the drugs and how much of it’s, well, her.
“And then everything gets jumbled up inside you,” she continues, plucking off pieces of her fingernails, “and you can’t pick out where things start and where they end or if there’s a start and a finish at all or if everything just loops around and you don’t see the loops because you’re looking at them from the side because people don’t have wings and they can’t fly overhead and look at the world that way. I think wings would be nice. But then I’d fall if they stopped working and that wouldn’t be nice. Do you want to fly?”
His flight jacket. He left it thrown over the bedpost at home because it looks too military for here, but he remembers how it felt when it settled over his shoulders and kept out the cold, which is what the-it’s what the thing the jacket represents is supposed to do; well, not keep out the cold, but protect, insulate, ward away the bad weather. He shivers. Sweat rolls down his back, his bare back, and he still shivers. The tint on his glasses keeps the worst of the sun’s glare from his eyes, but there’s nothing to protect the rest of him. He doesn’t know how much good a shirt would do, really.
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I liked flying a lot.”
“But that was in another country, and sickles slice across the sky now,” Lucy says, “so you get shredded wherever you go. I got shredded once. And then I put myself back together, only I didn’t remember where everything was supposed to go so I didn’t come out the way I should have and nothing matches up and when I try to push it in place it hurts and stretches and. And. And I wish John Lennon was here.”
America’s arm extends across the grass until his hand wraps around her waist, and he tugs her in closer, it’s not right that there’s all this space between them, between everyone. “Me too,” he says. “I wish he was here, too.”
Janis Joplin became Jerry Garcia at some point when he wasn’t looking, and Jerry stands up there, lets his fingers fly over the frets, sucks on the joint clamped between his teeth. Dark Star, he recognizes this one, or doesn’t, because-
“-it changes every time,” Lucy mumbles.
“Isn’t that the way things are, though?”
Onstage, the dark star crashes, pours its light into ashes.
***
March 27, 2010
Some days, America carries on much as he used to. He’s thinner, yes, though one can hardly say the same for his people, and England suspects the flush in his cheeks is from fever and not excitement, but he strides into summit meetings with hamburger crumbs on his jacket, props his feet up on the table while discussing policy, cracks jokes at inopportune moments. He still draws up plans to save the world, though narrowed in scope, stretched out over decades instead of years, and if his current boss has managed to steer him away from asteroid-destroying robots and towards electric cars, so much the better for everyone. (By tacit agreement, none of them mention the bruises under America’s eyes, the way he occasionally appears ash under his tan. None of them but England, and he does so only in private, or what passes for private with America.)
And then there are days such as this.
America leans against the side of his bed, his fingers knotted in the sheets, his spectacles knocked askew when his head collides with the mattress. Sweat smears his lenses, beads and curls on his forehead, neck, hands. He curls his knees to his chest, or attempts to, but they slump to the floor, stiffen and seize as he throws his head back and bares his teeth-
England’s hold on the water glass weakens; he nearly dashes the damned thing against the floor when he rushes to America’s side, kneels-how can America bear to be brought to his knees like this-calls to him and hopes the sound of his name is enough to draw him back from wherever he’s gone. That name-it’s served such a function in the past, a talisman, a landmark, a beacon of light cast over stormy waters. Here is your hope, here is your refuge.
“America,” he says, and again, “America.” He’d cradle America’s face in his hands, if he dared.
His eyes, at least, are the same blue they always have been, so blue and so bright, nothing’s robbed him of that. “Hey,” he says. His smile cracks with his voice. “Didn’t miss a summit or anything, did I?”
“No. You haven’t.” England presses the glass to his lips. “Drink.”
America sniffs, blinks blearily. “What is this, water?”
“Yes. Just water.”
He lurches towards the glass, and ripples spread over the water’s trembling surface. Droplets of it fleck his lips, the tip of his nose, his specs. “I can take care of-” he begins, but another series of tremors wracks him then, and it’s all he can do to set the glass aside without spilling any of it. England watches his knuckles whiten, his lips draw back from his teeth, his fists tremble. He watches and might normally remark about the irony of his declaration but America can barely keep himself on his knees now and England can’t do it, can’t do much of anything other than dab his forehead with the sheets and hope his hands are cool enough to comfort.
He could have cured or at least eased this, once, and the once-shouldn’t sting him to the quick as readily as it does.
America smiles, or imitates one well enough. “Feels like old times, doesn’t it?”
That-England recoils before he realises what he’s done but not before America notices the space opened between them and raises his eyes to the ceiling. “Sorry,” he apologises to the rafters. “Just trying to lighten the mood a little. It feels like a funeral in here-hey, would you mind opening up the blinds?”
“It’s horrid out,” England says.
“Doesn’t matter, even yucky light’s better than nothing, right?” He pushes himself to sitting or something approximating the position, and England stares through the slats in the blinds at the flat gray beyond so he isn’t forced to witness it. America-America of all nations, America who introduced himself by grabbing a buffalo by the horns and flinging it into the distance-America cannot manoeuvre himself into bed.
England cannot refuse him. No; he cannot conceive of refusing him in this, now. He pulls the blinds open, and a few scattered sunbeams break through the clouds and filter through the window.
“No, seriously, you look like somebody died.” America frowns. “The queen’s still alive, isn’t she?”
“Yes, America. The queen is still alive.”
“Then what’s up?”
England sighs. There’s an ache building behind his brows, but it’s nothing to what America must be feeling now, so he doesn’t and won’t spare it much thought. “You’re-not well,” and the words are utterly inadequate to convey what he means by them, but that tends to be the case with words, he’s found. Perhaps that’s why he appropriated so many of them when he was younger, collected and displayed them with pride, searched for ones that would mean what he meant them to, for all the good it’s doing him now.
“Just economic stuff.” America lets his head loll against the mattress. “I mean, I kind of knew this was coming like a year and a half ago, and this is supposed to be the worst part of it, so I’ll bounce back after this.”
“Will you,” England says, suppresses the urge to whip America’s glasses from his face, as they clearly aren’t functioning as they ought. And why must his vision be corrected at all, a voice within him chides, who blinded him in the first place,, and at that his hand falls slack to his side. If America could have seen, foreseen, would he still-
Would he still be America?
“Well, maybe not-okay, maybe not bounce, but you know what I mean.” America gulps down the last of the water. His skin no longer glistens; has his fever broken? Today, perhaps today it has, but tomorrow the stocks might plummet or the unemployment rate might soar or another corporation might file for bankruptcy or another bank might close and he’ll be too wrenched with pain to walk. And if (when, England corrects himself, when) he recovers, what will this have robbed him of? England rests his hand on America’s ribs, counts them. Recover from this, yes, only to face the next sickness, and the next, until he becomes a shade of what he was. Slowly, nations have always-he steels his mind against the next thought, but it comes unbidden: nations have always died slowly. And that will never satisfy America.
“Hey,” America says. “Hey. England-England, look at me, okay? Just look at me.”
England never has been able to refuse him, save once, and in the end he capitulated anyway.
“So maybe-” America grimaces, grips England’s shoulder, and the gesture shouldn’t please England as much as it does. “Maybe I’m changing. Maybe I’ll have to work some stuff out. But it’s gonna be okay. I’ll do what I have to do and I’ll make it my way of doing things. I mean, I’ve always done that before.”
“And what if you’ve become too-too entrenched? In this?”
“You mean what if I’ve become too much of myself?”
“If you like.”
“You do know that makes no sense, right?”
“What if you can’t change?” England presses. “What if there are things you simply aren’t willing to relinquish?”
“Then I won’t give them up.” America shudders, coughs, but doesn’t let his eyes close through it all. “Look, England, I’m not gonna die.”
“Everyone dies.”
“You haven’t.”
England holds his gaze level. “Haven’t I?”
“Just because you aren’t what you were,” America says, “doesn’t mean you’re dead. Damn, you’re morbid.”
“Death signifies change,” England explains. The pale rider trampling man and woman, adult and child, pope and peasant under his hooves, for none escape what he brings, none pass untouched under his auspices. “Transformation.”
“That’s fucked up,” and England’s almost glad of the indignation even if it’s channeled towards him, because it restores some of the colour to America’s voice and cheeks.
“Is it so untrue?” he asks, chides America further.
“Are you pulling all of this from that black magic stuff you used to do? ‘Cause we disproved all of that.”
Oh have you now, England thinks.
“All I’m saying is that if some dude in a cloak comes up to me and swings a scythe at my head-” And America stops talking, tents his fingers in his hair and holds himself rigid and locks his jaw so he won’t scream; England recognizes the behavior from centuries ago, when he had to set America’s arm after the boy (so young then, and small enough that his eyes seemed to encompass most of his head) fractured it.
“Death’s nothing like that,” he says quietly, rests his hand on America’s forehead and waits for the tremors to subside.
“What’s-is this another one of your, your weird fairy things?” America gasps when he’s able, and perhaps England’s changed more than he’s realised if the jibe makes him smile now.
“Oh no, she’s older than that. Older than all of us, save perhaps Destiny, and she’ll outlast him in the end. She’ll unchain his book from his hands, clasp it to her breast, and before she takes his hand, she’ll smile.”
The worst of the pangs seem to be fading now, but when they drain away they drain something of America’s energy with them, so when he replies, “Creepy,” the word’s half-mumbled.
“Not at all. She’s very kind, the kindest of her siblings. And she’s there for us all, whether we cry or whether we embrace her, whether thousands throng the streets to mourn our passing or whether we die alone, whether we lived full lives or no lives at all.” He palms some of the sweat from America’s brow. “And she knows our stories, and listens to them, and accepts them.”
“Where does she take you?” America asks. “After…”
“That,” England says, “depends on the story.”
There’s a silence as America digests this. “Where do you want to go?”
England closes his eyes, summons forth clouds of mist in his mind, mists and the thick scent of ripening apples and Arthur’s red hair, uncut and spilling over the sides of the marble where he rests. “It produces all things of itself;” he recites, “the fields there have no need of the ploughs of the farmers and all cultivation is lacking except what nature provides. Of its own accord it produces grain and grapes, and apple trees grow in its woods from the close-clipped grass. The ground of its own accord produces everything instead of merely grass, and people live there a hundred years or more. There nine sisters rule by a pleasing set of laws those who come to them from our country.” He opens his eyes. “Avalon,” he says. “The words are Monmouth’s, not mine, but they suit.”
“Oh.” America pillows his cheek against the wadded-up sheets. “That’s not so bad.”
“No,” England says. “It isn’t bad at all. But I shan’t go there just yet.”
Wait for us, elder sister, he thinks. Wait for us as you wait for us all.
***
The Great Depression sucked. A lot. Canon doesn’t give us an exact date for when Russia took Lithuania back home, so in my head I’m placing it somewhere in 1932, after Hoover’s tax increase prompted further economic compression, and when America was wavering about whether or not it would stay on the gold standard. The Hooverville in Central Park sprang up sometime in 1931 in the place where the Great Lawn and Turtle Pond are today. Ripley’s Believe It or Not! is still around; it came to radio for the first time in April of 1930. America likes shows about the weird shit people do. This is still true today. (And here’s the transcript of the Hoover press release in question.)
Also, on December 11, 1931, the UK offered complete legislative independence to Ireland, New Zealand, Newfoundland, Canada, Australia, and South Africa. They didn’t even have to fight for it! (…you know, maybe you should’ve picked up the phone, America. They developed the technology for long-distance calls back in 1927, it’s not like the distance is as insurmountable as it used to be…)
Woodstock was a music festival held from August 15-18, 1969, that pretty much exemplified the counterculture during the ‘60s and ‘70s; about half a million people attended, twenty-three of the most storied bands of the era played, and despite bad weather and worse sanitation, the event was surprisingly peaceful. Oh, and there was sex. And drugs. Lots of sex and drugs. Outside of the countercultural mini-nation created during those four days-well, there was Vietnam. And escalating tension between so-called mainstream America and pretty much every minority group you can think of. And plenty of other stuff America didn’t really want to deal with.
Dark Star, by the way. Trippy stuff, but then again, it is the Grateful Dead.
Yes, the last section does owe a lot to mithrigil. Description of Avalon taken from The Vita Merlini by Geoffrey of Monmouth. As for why it’s set in 2010, that’s supposed to be when our economy bottoms out. The year I graduate! Ohgod.
The title, “sub specie aeternitatis,” roughly means “from the perspective of eternity” and is shamelessly stolen from Spinoza, though I rather doubt America’s ever read Spinoza.
...and now for Yuletide!
Which I totally have not been neglecting!
Really!
ahahaha I'm fucked, aren't I.