Hey! So, this was a really random story spun by a quote that I read, which got me thinking. Really random, but I felt like writing this, so violá. Here it is. This is an AU where America lost the Revolutionary War with Nyo! America Nyo! Canada, and the rest of the Face family. Hope you like this! Enjoy!
The Losing Side
"And then all of a sudden, she changed. She came back a completely different person, with a new mindset, a new outlook, a new soul. The girl that once cared way too much about everyone and everything no longer cared at all."
- Anonymous
"I'm not the same person I once was. A lot had changed. A lot had to change. So you shouldn't expect out of me what I embodied in the past. For that part of me no longer exists."
- Anonymous
Tears trickled down Amelia's cheeks. How could she loose? She, her country, her people, her allies, they had all worked as a team and worked so hard together in attempt to win, and yet they lost. Blood and mud splattered her torn uniform and she was unwillingly kneeling on the ground in front of Arthur, who was glaring down at her, his arms crossed. She tried to pull himself upwards in one last rushed attempt to overpower Arthur, but a swift kick from his boot caused her to crumple to the ground.
Arthur stepped forward and grabbed Amelia by the hair as he made to the British ships.
"Come now." His words on their own were light, but in this context and tone they sounded dark and ominous. "You've caused me a lot of trouble."
Arthur shot a glare at Amelia.
"We are going to have a long, long, long talk when we get home."
Amelia coughed and spat up blood as she was thrown across her cell and crumpled to the ground. Arthur stood above her in an angry haze, yelling and waving his arms wildly. She had no idea what he was saying, the ringing in her bleeding ears was to loud and overpowering to hear anything else.
Arthur's yelling certainly wasn't easing helping her developing migraine.
Amelia curled up on herself, her nose touching her knees, clutching her head in her hands in the fetal position as she desperately tried to block that incessant noise out, to just make it stop. Tears dripped down her cheeks, and cuts reopened.
Seeming to notice her discomfort, Arthur quieted down and knelt next to her, putting his hand on her head. Once she might had accepted the gesture, when she was still his sister, but she didn't trust him anymore. She wasn't his calm, docile little sister anymore.
Shrieking at the touch, she threw herself further backwards, shrinking into herself. Sobbing harder as she felt more cuts open, she curled tighter into a ball.
"L-l-lea-leave m-m-me a-a-a-alone!" She shrieked. He ignored her and crept forward and placed his hand over her forehead again, surprise crossing his face. She tried to back up further, but she only met the wall, and she was cornered. Sobbing, she could feel her people dying. She heard the shriek of the nice elderly women who once told Amelia stories when she was little being shot by the British militia and she heard the pleas of the parents begging them to spare their children. Amelia could feel her children dying, one by one.
Hissing, she curled up further under Arthur's touch. "Y-y-you monster." Blinking in surprise, he was quiet. Seeing this as an opportunity to continue, Amelia took it. "How could you? You're killing them! You're killing innocents!" Her voice raised multiple decibels as she yelled at him in between choking sobs. He only stared at her quietly.
"You have a fever."
She spat at him.
"Do I look like I care? Don't you realize this! I just want to be independent! Leave. Me. Alone!" She screamed these last three words.
Arthur's eyes flared up, and he retracted his hand. Amelia collapsed against the wall in relief, clamping her hands over her ears, expecting him to yell, but he was silent. Stomping out, he muttered, "I'm sending medical help. Ungrateful brat." He spat those words out like they were poison.
Shrinking over in relief, Amelia let herself cry harder.
Except she wasn't crying because of the pain.
She was crying because she failed.
Amelia stared at the stone wall lifelessly. They all were dead. One by one, the so-called "traitors" had been publicly executed. One by rope, one by shotgun, one by knife, the list went on and on. Amelia had been forced to watch. With each and every death, she spat up more blood, her incessant migraine got worse, and she cried harder.
Arthur didn't care. He made her stand and watch.
While he watched her break.
Madeline stared pleadingly at her twin, trying to discern if she was trying to zone out again. She waved her hand in her face.
"Helloooo. Earth to Amelia here. Is anybody home?"
Amelia continued to stare at the wall. Madeline sighed and held out some candy in her palm, as a peace offering. Amelia ignored it.
"Amelia, why don't you talk to me anymore?"
Amelia's head snapped up and she glared at her twin, that identical face staring down at her unnervingly.
"You want to know why?" She snarled. "You abandoned me." She was distinctly aware of Arthur leaning on the glass window inside their house that was embedded into the wall of her cell. She didn't care.
"You left me."
Madeline blinked in confusion. "Amelia, what do you mean?"
"I mean what it sounds like. You left me." Tears trickled down her cheeks, and she turned away from her sister. "Why did you never stop him? He killed my people. He hurt me. If you had told him to stop it, he might have listened to you. But you did nothing, only quietly watched from afar."
"Amelia..."
"Don't call me that anymore. You don't have the right to. Call me America, or nothing else." Hurt bloomed across Madeline's face. "But..."
Amelia whirled to face her again, her face red with anger. "Go away Canada! Bloody hell, can you just leave me alone! Stop acting like you're my sister, because you're not my sister anymore! No sister would leave their sibling to suffer like this, and I hate you for it!"
Arthur rushed in the room and forced Amelia down. She continued to yell at Madeline. "Don't you understand? Just leave me alone!" She shoved her away, despite the tightening grip Arthur had on her wrist.
Madeline could feel tears start falling and she rushed out of the room. Amelia breathed a sigh of relief, then turned to face Arthur, who had a whip in his hands and a dangerous look on his face.
"Let's get this over with."
Amelia felt the tears drip down her face as she silently wept. The wounds on her back burnt, the result of that treacherous whip that Arthur had. He had promised to send medical help, but she didn't want it. Nevertheless, if she didn't want help, he would force it on her, something that she hated. She preferred to do things like that alone, but Arthur never listened.
He didn't trust her with medical supplies, needles, scalpels, antibiotics, painkillers, and other stuff of the sort unsupervised.
She pulled against her bonds, flexing them, chuckling faintly. Smart man.
The cell door creaked as someone hesitantly entered the room.
"Mon chéri? Are you all right, Amelia?" Françis. Amelia exhaled in a sigh of relief that she didn't know she was holding. She had no problem with Françis. He had tried to stop Arthur. He was once her ally. She had no qualms with him helping dress her wounds, unlike Madeline. She didn't want Madeline seeing them. Maybe it was that protective older-sister instinct, maybe it was just the fact that Madeline always seemed to unknowingly make you want to protect her. Regardless of what Amelia had said earlier, she didn't really hate her sister. She held a grudge, but she shouldn't hate her. She just didn't want her to see her suffering. She didn't want her pity.
Françis stepped inside the room, holing a box of medical supplies, and gasped when he saw her wounds. Lines of bloody slashes crisscrossed her back in a bloody pattern of Snakes and Ladders. Amelia clutched a black blanket to her chest, her shirt had already been reduced to rags. Françis rushed over and examined her wounds. She winced as he carefully applied some kind of salve to them and started stitching them up. Normally they would have healed by now, but Arthur had spells that he could enchant weapons with that would prohibit the kind of instant-healing that nation's possessed. Not that that spell would have mattered. Her country was too broken now to offer much help healing-wise.
"Mon chéri?" Françis quietly asked. "What did he do to you?"
"He whipped me."
Françis sucked in a breath. He already could tell what had happened before he had asked, he knew what injuries induced by whipping looked like, but he had been in denial before that Arthur would do that to Amelia. "Why?"
"I yelled at Maddie. I told her she wasn't my sister anymore. I said that she abandoned me, she left me, and I hated her for it. I screamed that she was a terrible sister and told her to stop calling me Amelia, to call me America or nothing else, and I shoved her. She ran away crying." Françis whistled a low whistle. "Did you mean it?"
"Of course I didn't, how could I? Unlike Arthur, Maddie had every right to retract from the fight. I hold a grudge that she didn't stop him, but I don't hate her. I just don't want her to see me like this. I don't want her to see the monster Arthur can be when you piss him off. Better that she learns that herself eventually, when he can actually control his temper. I know her. If she knew the kind of torture that Arthur regularly puts me through as punishment for a rebellion, a war twenty years past, she would probably rebel herself, and if she did that and lost, she'd be subjected to the same kind of torture I am. I'm protecting her by hurting myself. Ironic, isn't it?" While talking, she quietly pickpocketed a few extra bandages.
Françis was quiet. "Just... don't tell her, ok? I need her to stay away, to not know about this. If she did, well... I don't want to think about this. You used to be her guardian. You want to protect her too, don't you?" Amelia asked pleadingly. "Fine. Just... be careful, won't you, mon ami?" Amelia nodded. Françis finished stitching her wounds, gave her a new shirt, then left.
Wincing, Amelia dropped her blanket, and stared gratefully at it for not betraying her and showing evidence of the still-bleeding wound that crossed over her chest. If Françis had seen it, there was no way he would have agreed to keep her secret, and he probably would have killed Arthur.
Reaching up to touch it, she cried out, then clasped her hand to her mouth. Quietly taking the pickpocketed bandages, she silently wrapped the wound tightly so it would clot, tears trickling down her cheeks, silent other than the pit-pat of them hitting the cold stone floor. One of these days she'd have some form of revenge on Arthur for this, for stabbing her in the heart when she was already too weak to fight back, but it wouldn't be soon.
That was fine.
She could wait.
Tears dripped down Amelia's cheeks as she woke up and gasped for breath, panicking. Her arms and legs spasmed as she clutched them to her chest, trying to still them, and failed, releasing them with a cry. She lay on her stone pallet, panting and crying.
Another night terror.
Why?
In this one, Arthur had stood above her, laughing maniacally as he plunged a knife into her heart again and again. She pleaded for death, but it never came. She was forced to suffer through the endless torture, and then she woke up.
Gasping for breath, she glared at the window that stared down at her. In her dream, Françis and Madeline had been watching Arthur as he stabbed her over and over again through that window, giggling at her pain and laughing at the agonized expression on her face.
Trembling, Amelia gathered her strength and punched the window as hard as she could. She could hear their laughter fading as the glass shattered everywhere, and could hear Arthur, Madeline, and Françis scurrying downstairs to find out what had made that noise. It would take them awhile, she knew, they were on the 3rd floor and she was in the basement. She stared at her wrists. They had bleeding scores and sores peppering them, and little cuts danced up and down her arms. She stared at them meaninglessly and collapsed to the ground with a cry.
Scooping up an extra-long fragment of glass the length of her arm, she cradled it in her arms like it was a little baby, feeling it's jagged edges cut into her skin and open wounds, but she didn't care. She felt it penetrate the long-healed wound that Arthur had given her by stabbing her in the heart years ago, during that god-awful whipping, that had caused these night terrors. She screamed as loudly as she could, feeling the raging pain in her limbs and in her chest, but she ignored it, and only hugged the glass fragment tighter and rocked it back and forth, sobbing, trying to get her wounds to bleed more. Blood already soaked her body and the floor, but she didn't care, she just wanted to bleed mor-
"Oh my God. Bloody hell." Madeline stared down at Amelia's wounds with wide eyes and the blood and the scene around her as Arthur and Françis scurried behind her. When they approached the mess, they too stared down at Amelia with wide eyes and they uncomprehendingly tried to make sense of the ordeal. Amelia only ignored them, and rocked the glass shard like a little baby, letting it penetrate her long-healed wounds. She didn't care anymore. She didn't care if Madeline saw her wounds, if Françis saw what Arthur truly did to her, if Arthur realized just how much he broke her. She didn't care, and she screamed and sobbed as loud as she could, trying to make sure that everyone could hear her, that the angels in the heavens above and the demons in the hells below heard her.
She wanted them to realize how much they had broken her.
And how shattered and injured her heart really was.
"She wasn't always that way, her heart wasn't always cold. Her guard wasn't always up and that wall in front of her soul wasn't always there. Heartbreak changed the climate of her heart, made her less trusting of love."
- R.H. Sin
"She's changed. You can see it in her eyes, feel it in her touch, and hear it in her tone. She's not the same, and she's never coming back."
- K. Azizian
A/N: What did I just write. What. Did. I. Just. Write. Ok. Maybe that's enough angst for one day. What can I say? I wrote fluff yesterday, so I needed to write angst today to balance it out. My friends are probably screaming at me that that's not how it works. Oh well. *sighs* So, each line break signified a time skip. The first event took place immediately after the battle that caused America to loose, and the last took place probably 25-30 years after America lost. Also, I know that the characters are a little O.O.C., I decided to change their personalities up a little to fit the events that occurred. Because America lost, it was natural for her to feel so frustrated or defeated, and it was natural of her to want to protect Canada from England's wrath. Because in England's eyes, she betrayed him, it is natural for him to feel angry. (Does not excuse the things he did to her though.) In Canada's eyes, she's concerned for her sister and wants her back. In France's eyes, he is concerned for America but also wants to help her protect Canada. I think that's all I wanted to say. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading this and thanks for spending the time to read it! Ciao!
