Disclaimer: I don't own APH.

I don't really know what to call this. But, as fair warning, this is the first thing of mine that can be considered "romantic" in any sense of the word, even though it's angst to the brim. It is also full of headcanon, so America is almost definitely OOC to an extent. There is also past!onesided!US/UK in here, and some implied ?/UK. If you know geography, you can figure it out. If you don't know geography (and you're American), go learn before I [insert grotesque torture here] you. I hate geographyfail!Americans with a fury that rivals the eternal fires of hell.

This oneshot contains angst, mentions of pairings, question format, slight rambling and inconsistency, huge doses of headcanons, and a shitload of Alfredtastic Alfredian spelling of words.

Do You Know?

Do you know that they call you a bitter old man that lives in the past? Do you know that they call me a fool who never looks back?

Do you know that they are wrong?

(You live your life content, for the most part. We argue like brothers and the best of friends. You invite me over for tea and scones and I make faces and you complain and threaten to choke me. I laugh. You frown and eventually break down and smile. We travel together, visit places together, go to meetings together, laugh together, smile together. I love all the time I spend together with you. Except when we go to bars. I hate it when we go to bars.

Because then we separate ourselves from the realm governed by time, and you sob and plead with me to fix it, make it all better, why did you leave America why, tell me why, you idiot. I don't drink much, more often nothing at all, so I can drive you safely home and put you in bed without something bad happening to you.

I also don't drink because then I might go to when you are, and I might smile at you and you might see for once how the muscles in my face pain to twist upward when you go back to once upon a time. I wish you'd stop. It hurts me to see it hurt you. It hurts me so much.

It hurts me because I would love to tell you why I left, to fix it, to make it better. For you to hear and to know, and to realize and to reciprocate what I felt and thought. But your intoxicated mind would wipe away my words and tears before these nights are over, and that would hurt me more than you do already.)

Do you know that when I was your little brother I adored you? Do you know that you meant the world to me? Do you know that it pained me more to leave you than it pained you to be left?

Do you know that I loved you as a brother?

Do you know that I loved you more than as a brother?

Do you know that all those things the others whisper are false? Do you know that they think you are the one caught up in the past? Do you know that they think I was a restless teenager undergoing a bout of rebellion in my adolescence, that I whined about your taxes and your "tyranny" and hated the golden gilded cage they say you put me in? Do you know that a few people say I only did these things so that you would see me as an equal? Do you know that some of those few, and by some I mean Spain and France, say I loved you?

Do you know that only Spain and France are right?

Do you know that I loved you completely, unconditionally? Do you know how much I wanted to stay by your side forever? Do you know how much I feared, and hoped, and prayed, that you would see me looking at you with more reverence than a friend or brother, and that maybe, one day, you could return my feelings? Do you know how much I despaired because you were the British Empire and my older brother and never could, never would? Do you know how much I loved the golden cage you kept me in, how much I loved the safety of England's shining arms, keeping all others out and me safe within?

Do you know how much it hurt me when we had to go to war?

Do you know how much it hurt me during the Tea Party, during the Boston Massacre, as Patriot and Loyalist and Quaker all fought within me and you stared at me with disapproval and anger and everything I never hoped to see? Do you know how much it hurt me when you then slammed the Intolerable Acts on the table, printed on paper you taxed me so highly, shredding my heart on the corners of those pages? Do you know how much it hurt when the golden beams of the cage of your arms became the cold spikes of iron maidens and slowly started closing in? Do you know how much misery you heaped upon me in that one night, when I knew you could never feel as I felt, and would never love me the same way as you had before my colonists began rebelling?

Do you know that even as those spikes tried to scar me, I mourned to fly from my cage?

Do you know how much I wished that the side of my mind that screamed for revolution and independence and social contracts would disappear?

Do you know that I cried my inexperienced heart out as I ran to the storage shed one midnight and took the rifle you gave me to use it against your men? Do you know how, at the same time, how much I wanted to kill anyone who kept me pressed to your painful side with it? Do you know that I fought not to be your equal (and don't you dare ever assume that was the reason, because it wasn't), but to run away, because I could not bear reaching for dreams so close they fluttered immaterial just out of my grasp, never to be real?

Do you know that as much as I tried to run from my- our- past, it caught up to me, at Yorktown?

Do you know that even as my words destroyed you they finished demolishing me? Do you know that I spoke those words entirely with pain? Do you know that even then, if you would but just look into my eyes and see what I saw and felt what I felt and learned that I loved the cage you kept me in and showed some capacity and willingness to understand and to accept, I might have fallen into the mud with you, and cried with you, and pretended that my tears were rain like yours?

Do you know how much it hurt to have Patriot, Loyalist, and Quaker all fight for dominance, and how much it hurt and how much I rejoiced when Patriot won, and how much it hurt when I shook the vestiges of your cage-turned-iron-maiden off of me, and how much it hurt to embrace destiny? Do you know how much it hurt to keep warm rain locked within two cloudless twin blue skies and trade a past with you for an eternity free and alone? Do you understand, even now, how much it hurt me then to push you away to be the hero of myself?

Of course you don't. You were consumed by your own grief. And now you are only after you've had twelve drinks too many.

(I loved you, England. I could never bring myself to hate you. I could never bear to see you fall. I could never bear to see you hurt. But neither could I bear to get hurt. I could never bear to let you get so close to me again, to break my heart with sheets of paper. So I laugh with you, and smile with you, and take that old, broken-hearted, aged part of me that neither of us wishes to see and abandon it on a dusty shelf while we spend time with each other, and I refuse to take it off that shelf until you are long gone and I can forget the glances you direct at me that I can only wish in a million years are what I want them to be. But I don't have a million years; nations don't live that long. And I can't waste the time I have twisting a rusty knife in my broken heart, being the bitter old man lost in the past that everyone thinks you are, dreaming of might-have-beens and requited loves whose true, unrequited counterparts grow staler each passing year.

We were brothers. The worst of enemies. The best of allies. The closest of friends. That's all I want at this point, because it's all I can ever hope to have. We have an ocean standing between us that grows wider every year, and all he has is a thin sleeve, a minuscule English Channel, and I can't ever compete with that. So I won't.

So keep your sleeve; keep it close to you and treat it with love always. We will be the closest of friends, and I'll drift away across the briny blue of the Atlantic to the Asia Columbus sought so long ago. (Do I wish he had passed me by, looking back on our life? I cannot say.) Maybe one day, we'll both be fools forever and always look forward and never drink nor get drunk from the past, and maybe one day I'll put enough space between the past and my heart that I can heal. Maybe it won't hurt anymore.)

In explanation of my headcanon: Around 40 percent of colonists were patriots who wished to break away from Great Britain. Around 20 percent were Loyalists who actively supported Great Britain. The remaining 40 percent or so were neutral (most neutrals were Quakers, I believe) and wished to see the conflict resolved without independence. Headcanon states that this led to Torn/Indecisive!America as opposed to RebelliousTeenager!America until later in the war after the movement really picked up steam.

However, the whole I-like-the-cage-you-kept-me-in spiel was all spur-of-the-moment. Take it as you will.

Historical notes:

Columbus was, in fact, looking for another trade route to India when he found the island of Hispaniola (present-day Haiti/Dominican Republic). That's why he called Native Americans "Indians". Thanks a lot for the confusion, Columbus...

Boston Massacre (or Accident, in the UK, I think..): 5 March, 1770. The colonists were protesting in Boston and taunting British soldiers. The soldiers were given the order not to fire. They put up with rocks and snowballs, and someone, somewhere, heard the word "Fire!". So a soldier fired, and then more soldiers fired, and shit went down. 3 colonists died at the scene, 2 died later; 11 more were injured.

Boston Tea Party: 16 December 1773. American colonists protested the Tea Act and the monopoly/tax on tea by the British East India company by dressing up as Native Americans, sneaking onto a ship, and dumping 234 chests of tea overboard. Because that's how colonists made a stand back then...

Intolerable Acts (Coercive Acts in the UK, I think...): A series of acts that the colonists considered intolerable. Among more trade restrictions and taxes, the acts shut down Boston Harbor. The colonists didn't like that...

Battle of Yorktown: 28 September 1781-19 October 1781; Yorktown, Virginia. Final battle of the Revolution, ending with the surrender of British General Cornwallis.

(Did you know that, except for the exact dates of the Battle of Yorktown, I remembered all these notes using me, myself, and I, from U.S. History four years ago?)

If you couldn't figure out what I meant by "sleeve", you should have been able to figure out from the English equivalent that I meant the English Channel. If you do not know (and there is no reason why you shouldn't), the English Channel separates England from mainland Europe and France. In French, the Channel is called "La Manche" or "The Sleeve", because it looks like a shirt sleeve. So yes, I implied FrUK.

(I do prefer the pairing USUK. In fact, I prefer UKUS over USUK. However, I do see England-France interactions that can be taken as FrUK, and I don't mind FrUK on occasion. For the most part, I simply let it alone. Don't like, don't read, ya know? But I see where FrUKers come from. Even I have to admit that a relationship between America and England would take a lot of work and would be filled with history and awkward and all sorts of "it-just-wouldn't-work"s, but I like it anyway. I also apparently like screwing with characters I like. (HMYF syndrome much, Nayru?))

If you are a geographyfail!American, you have twenty seconds to figure out the majority of world geography before I hunt you down for being a heap of shame. You make the country look bad, and it doesn't have that wonderful a reputation to begin with. (I repeat my words from before: I. FUCKING. HATE. ALL. GEOGRAPHYFAIL!AMERICANS. I HATE THEM ALL. I HATE THEM ALL MORE THAN MY FORMER FRENCH TEACHER, WHICH IS A LOT OF HATE. GO AND BUY A WORLD ATLAS, DUMMIES.) (Ha-ha. That's sort of like a pun. Atlas: World Geography for Dummies. I crack myself up...)

Happy Thanksgiving to all Americans. Feel thankful about everything you have; lots of other people aren't as lucky.