DISCLAIMER: I don't own Hetalia or Gundam Wing.

This is just a little something I couldn't get out of my head. I doubt I will ever expand on it, though anyone wishing to use the idea is free to do so. I'd just appreciate it if they told me so I could read whatever they come up with. *smile*

Enjoy!

It was Japan who sent the first of the colonies into space. As cold and lifeless as it was, he thought nothing of it when there was no sign in his heart that the cluster of metal shells was his. There was no one to find the small, lonely child who appeared on the central colony one day. No one to teach him what he was. Cold and alone, he wandered from colony to colony, until a man met his eyes, saw the pain of hundred of years in the silent gaze of a boy, and took the child under his blood-stained wing.

America was the second, beating the others in the harsh race to claim the unknown by a small margin. His eagerness to win leaving behind a mess of haphazard systems, barely functional and quick to fail. The quiet warning from his brother forgotten as he crowed over the completion of his cluster. It was all Canada could do to ensure that the colonies did not collapse entirely, hoping to spare his brother the pain of losing them. Once again, a child passed unnoticed, thin and sickly, bruised and broken long after his time should have come. Left behind, time after time, until it was all he could do to keep smiling.

To Russia, space was merely a pastime, something to amuse himself when he grew bored. When the thrill was gone, the colonies were left forgotten. A home to thieves and rogues, the green-eyed child watches as men live and die. He watches, unseen and silent in the darkness. He watches, and he learns, with cold eyes, empty and dark. A child who had never been young.

The fourth was France, meticulous in his desire to surpass the others in quality. His colonies were elegant in design and smooth in operation. His blue-eyed child danced and sang, healthy and happy. But time passes, and loneliness hurts. Taken in by a young mother, the child learns of love, only to have to watch as she grows old. He stays with her daughter, and then with her granddaughter, a continuing cycle through generations. It tears at his soul, watching those touched by time, but to a lonely child, the feeling of being loved is worth the pain.

Out of all of the nations, China had not intended to expand into space. Old enough to know the dangers of the unknown, he could do nothing as his people followed the rest into space. He alone felt the absence of feeling from the colonies, and he alone knew what it meant. His dark-eyed child was not alone, even as he risked the emptiness of space to teach the boy. Until war, a war forged in the fires of oppression and hate as the people of Earth realized that the colonies were not under their control and the colonies rebelled against the harsher laws meant to restrain them. And the colony child refused to cry as he joined with his brothers. He would fight for them, for their pain, for their sorrow, for their freedom.

Thoughts?

Just to clarify, each of the countries has a cluster of individual colonies - all of which are represented together by a single being. No idea if this is true, but it's how my mind sees the colonies.

Additional note: Quatre may be Arabian, but he's blond and blue-eyed. So, in this story, he's France's kid/brother/colony. :) And, just out of curiosity, does it ever actually *say* he's Arabian in canon, or do we just assume that because of the Maguanacs?