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hetalia2010-01-21 11:59 pm
sonofon.livejournal.com) wrote in hetalia2010-01-21 11:59 pm
[fanfic] Dispersed
Title: Dispersed
Author/Artist:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sonofon
Character(s) or Pairing(s): China/Japan
Rating: PG
Warnings: possibly some inaccurate history portrayal/over-dramatization. Concrit would be loved. :D Also (and this is turning into a note of some sort, excuse me), as this is my first post here, please let me know if I've done something wrong and I'll try to change it as soon as possible. n__n
Summary: China, Japan, and the lonesome span of one thousand years.
-2.
If he is the rising sun, then China is the setting sun. It is inevitable. It is what must happen, he thinks (restrained, quietly, being the good Japanese he is), like the soft sakura petals that arrive each spring and wither before their time. The sun has to set. Passion is, like other inflammables, extinguished. He meditates upon a rock in a tucked-away forest, surrounded by woodland creatures that peer at him, the foreigner, from the safely of the old white pines and maples that stand as stern as samurai, who yield the swords and morals of the old courts of Edo. (In many, many centuries, that forest will be gone, as well as most of the forest animals, but no one knows that. Not yet.)
"I didn't realize--" China once says, and stops, almost in a trance as he feels, hypnotically, the cut, that deep red gash, on his back and the stained sword in Japan's sturdy two hands. Outside, the wind blows and a storm is in the forecast: but the weather is unpredictable, and China does not know what to think anymore. He doesn't think of what they went through together, the good and bad memories of it all, the love that went unspoken beneath the shared rice and pickled vegetables from the harvests they planted together. Japan's eyes are very calm, as they always are, but this is the first time that China notices the way they almost seem inhuman, the way they blankly stare back into his, so cold, so unmoving it can't be real.
Japan sheathes his sword. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't need to, just sheathes his sword, stands up straight and turns. He walks away. He does not even give a slight nod of the head to his betrayed brethren (they are not brothers, not by blood, never by blood, and he severs their relation with a single slash of his sword, the one he made all by himself): the troubles and obstacles of forming his own country do not even cross his mind until after he has left.
-1.
Slowly, (painfully, like the child learning to take his first steps; trial-and-error, only he has no standard to go by, save China's), Japan grows. He suffers in his adolescence, stunting his growth by shutting himself away from everyone. In his world, solely Japan exists, and so he does not see China recovering and falling, recovering and falling over the span of centuries. He doesn't care about China anymore. Nor does he care for the European nations, who constantly fight and fall in love and fight once again.
Tokugawa unites his country, but Japan is strong only for Japan.
One day, an American arrives at Tokyo Harbor.
0.
"We will industrialize," says the Meiji Emperor, and Japans throws himself into the race of the world, breaking away from his self-imposed isolation, and breathes, for the first time, the air everyone else breathes. He learns of aggression and interchangeable parts. He learns to fight and conquer. He tries not to think of China, who is so close and yet so far away. He hears of China's fall from Heaven's good graces, that Cixi has led her country awry.
But he does not realize just how low China has sunk until he fights China for himself.
"You were once great," he says, standing tall (and proud), watching China trying to pick himself up, trying to tell himself that he can still fight. He bleeds; Japan says nothing. The question he wants to ask, the question that rests on the tip of his lips (what happened), it somehow entwines itself within him and refuses to be spoken. There is a silence, punctured by the sound of soft soles and the chirps of the cicadas. Their fights are never boisterous affairs: blow against blow, limbs hitting limbs; for the longest time, they hear nothing.
The sun always sets in the West, he thinks, just before the end; and China is no more.
From the First Sino-Japanese War, Japan obtains Korea, laughing, young Korea who tries to act older than he is. He spits in Japan's face, then steals his technology designs. He says he loves China more, and Japan chooses to ignore that declaration, because he doesn't like to think of China, that anemic skeleton of his former glory days. They are long gone. They have grown up, and Japan is not a child.
His teachers are war and pain and suffering. He falls and he ascends, the Rising God of the East. He fights Russia, who is slowly being consumed by radicals within, and wins. He becomes feared, revered, respected. He stands straight, and a yet a part of him always remembers China squatting on his knees, teaching him how to cultivate rice and write with kanji, and later, when China is on his knees again, but for an altogether different reason.
When the nights are calm, Japan sits outside on the porch of his newly Westernized house. He watches the stars and remembers China pointing them out, remembers China telling him stories about the lady on the moon, the small rabbit that sacrificed itself for the sake of its owner. He still remembers those stories. He doesn't cry.
1.
Years and years pass, but they pass unnoticed. War is war and it seems the world can't live without it, though all the nations say they strive for peace and humanity embracing each other: Japan knows it's all false. He invades China without remorse, killing left and right, and only when it is all over does he contemplate his actions, his motives. But he has no regrets" he never does. He doesn't think of the sprawling bodies he leaves behind in his path; nor does he think of the anger China throws, no, spits at him: "How could you;" it reeks of disappoint, repressed sorrow, perhaps even love, whatever that word means.
Instead, he thinks of a future with Japan at its helm; he thinks of a brave new world, and his eyes brighten at the prospect.
"I have no regrets," he says aloud, and impresses Germany with his resolution as they sign a treaty of alliance in 1940. Italy bumbles about in the background, playing with the miniature plane Japan recently designed. Soon enough, they will be very good friends.
Germany nods, Japan looks straight ahead, and Italy cries for pasta. The end of the world comes five years later.
2.
Japan remembers waking up, eating breakfast, going to the grocery store, buying some snacks for Italy when the bomb comes. It comes and goes quickly, vanquishing a city in the blink of an eye. It has America written all over it. America, who brought him out of his shell; America, who is now destroying all that he had inspired Japan to build.
He dares himself to look at America in the eye. America sighs and half-heartedly shrugs his shoulder and says something about it all being very necessary and how they never wanted any of this and why they did what they had to: he does not apologize. Japan doesn't expect him to. Three days later, another atomic bomb, another city eradicated. More than a week after the sky falls and the blood spills, Japan crumbles over and formally surrenders (gives himself up to the American barbarian), and he begins to think that this is perhaps what China felt when he betrayed him a long, long time ago.
3.
Once in a dream, Japan tells China: "I love you." And China replies, "I love you, too." Then they reach out and lock their hands together in a tight grip. They sit at a kotatsu with bodies warm and hearts open, and they eat lightly grilled sanma with sauteed eggplants, gently cultured rice from Fukui and sweet winter melons. They talk informally, not as they would at a world conference when their eyes carefully avoid each other and each phrase is delicately phrased, lest they inadvertently insult the other and spark off a war. Here, they talk as they please; China laughs, the edges of his eyes wrinkling in an upward motion, and Japan manages a smile.
Reminiscent of happier times when Japan is but a child, following China everywhere. When Japan grows into a young boy and becomes more of a person for himself. When China looks at his pale, smooth hands and says, "Ah, you are smart." Young Japan grins; China pats his head.
And when Japan wakes up, amidst an American occupation, he wonders if it was all worth it. He tells himself that it was. He reassures himself. But the tears fall of their own accord. They always do.
Author/Artist:
sonofon Character(s) or Pairing(s): China/Japan
Rating: PG
Warnings: possibly some inaccurate history portrayal/over-dramatization. Concrit would be loved. :D Also (and this is turning into a note of some sort, excuse me), as this is my first post here, please let me know if I've done something wrong and I'll try to change it as soon as possible. n__n
Summary: China, Japan, and the lonesome span of one thousand years.
-2.
If he is the rising sun, then China is the setting sun. It is inevitable. It is what must happen, he thinks (restrained, quietly, being the good Japanese he is), like the soft sakura petals that arrive each spring and wither before their time. The sun has to set. Passion is, like other inflammables, extinguished. He meditates upon a rock in a tucked-away forest, surrounded by woodland creatures that peer at him, the foreigner, from the safely of the old white pines and maples that stand as stern as samurai, who yield the swords and morals of the old courts of Edo. (In many, many centuries, that forest will be gone, as well as most of the forest animals, but no one knows that. Not yet.)
"I didn't realize--" China once says, and stops, almost in a trance as he feels, hypnotically, the cut, that deep red gash, on his back and the stained sword in Japan's sturdy two hands. Outside, the wind blows and a storm is in the forecast: but the weather is unpredictable, and China does not know what to think anymore. He doesn't think of what they went through together, the good and bad memories of it all, the love that went unspoken beneath the shared rice and pickled vegetables from the harvests they planted together. Japan's eyes are very calm, as they always are, but this is the first time that China notices the way they almost seem inhuman, the way they blankly stare back into his, so cold, so unmoving it can't be real.
Japan sheathes his sword. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't need to, just sheathes his sword, stands up straight and turns. He walks away. He does not even give a slight nod of the head to his betrayed brethren (they are not brothers, not by blood, never by blood, and he severs their relation with a single slash of his sword, the one he made all by himself): the troubles and obstacles of forming his own country do not even cross his mind until after he has left.
-1.
Slowly, (painfully, like the child learning to take his first steps; trial-and-error, only he has no standard to go by, save China's), Japan grows. He suffers in his adolescence, stunting his growth by shutting himself away from everyone. In his world, solely Japan exists, and so he does not see China recovering and falling, recovering and falling over the span of centuries. He doesn't care about China anymore. Nor does he care for the European nations, who constantly fight and fall in love and fight once again.
Tokugawa unites his country, but Japan is strong only for Japan.
One day, an American arrives at Tokyo Harbor.
0.
"We will industrialize," says the Meiji Emperor, and Japans throws himself into the race of the world, breaking away from his self-imposed isolation, and breathes, for the first time, the air everyone else breathes. He learns of aggression and interchangeable parts. He learns to fight and conquer. He tries not to think of China, who is so close and yet so far away. He hears of China's fall from Heaven's good graces, that Cixi has led her country awry.
But he does not realize just how low China has sunk until he fights China for himself.
"You were once great," he says, standing tall (and proud), watching China trying to pick himself up, trying to tell himself that he can still fight. He bleeds; Japan says nothing. The question he wants to ask, the question that rests on the tip of his lips (what happened), it somehow entwines itself within him and refuses to be spoken. There is a silence, punctured by the sound of soft soles and the chirps of the cicadas. Their fights are never boisterous affairs: blow against blow, limbs hitting limbs; for the longest time, they hear nothing.
The sun always sets in the West, he thinks, just before the end; and China is no more.
From the First Sino-Japanese War, Japan obtains Korea, laughing, young Korea who tries to act older than he is. He spits in Japan's face, then steals his technology designs. He says he loves China more, and Japan chooses to ignore that declaration, because he doesn't like to think of China, that anemic skeleton of his former glory days. They are long gone. They have grown up, and Japan is not a child.
His teachers are war and pain and suffering. He falls and he ascends, the Rising God of the East. He fights Russia, who is slowly being consumed by radicals within, and wins. He becomes feared, revered, respected. He stands straight, and a yet a part of him always remembers China squatting on his knees, teaching him how to cultivate rice and write with kanji, and later, when China is on his knees again, but for an altogether different reason.
When the nights are calm, Japan sits outside on the porch of his newly Westernized house. He watches the stars and remembers China pointing them out, remembers China telling him stories about the lady on the moon, the small rabbit that sacrificed itself for the sake of its owner. He still remembers those stories. He doesn't cry.
1.
Years and years pass, but they pass unnoticed. War is war and it seems the world can't live without it, though all the nations say they strive for peace and humanity embracing each other: Japan knows it's all false. He invades China without remorse, killing left and right, and only when it is all over does he contemplate his actions, his motives. But he has no regrets" he never does. He doesn't think of the sprawling bodies he leaves behind in his path; nor does he think of the anger China throws, no, spits at him: "How could you;" it reeks of disappoint, repressed sorrow, perhaps even love, whatever that word means.
Instead, he thinks of a future with Japan at its helm; he thinks of a brave new world, and his eyes brighten at the prospect.
"I have no regrets," he says aloud, and impresses Germany with his resolution as they sign a treaty of alliance in 1940. Italy bumbles about in the background, playing with the miniature plane Japan recently designed. Soon enough, they will be very good friends.
Germany nods, Japan looks straight ahead, and Italy cries for pasta. The end of the world comes five years later.
2.
Japan remembers waking up, eating breakfast, going to the grocery store, buying some snacks for Italy when the bomb comes. It comes and goes quickly, vanquishing a city in the blink of an eye. It has America written all over it. America, who brought him out of his shell; America, who is now destroying all that he had inspired Japan to build.
He dares himself to look at America in the eye. America sighs and half-heartedly shrugs his shoulder and says something about it all being very necessary and how they never wanted any of this and why they did what they had to: he does not apologize. Japan doesn't expect him to. Three days later, another atomic bomb, another city eradicated. More than a week after the sky falls and the blood spills, Japan crumbles over and formally surrenders (gives himself up to the American barbarian), and he begins to think that this is perhaps what China felt when he betrayed him a long, long time ago.
3.
Once in a dream, Japan tells China: "I love you." And China replies, "I love you, too." Then they reach out and lock their hands together in a tight grip. They sit at a kotatsu with bodies warm and hearts open, and they eat lightly grilled sanma with sauteed eggplants, gently cultured rice from Fukui and sweet winter melons. They talk informally, not as they would at a world conference when their eyes carefully avoid each other and each phrase is delicately phrased, lest they inadvertently insult the other and spark off a war. Here, they talk as they please; China laughs, the edges of his eyes wrinkling in an upward motion, and Japan manages a smile.
Reminiscent of happier times when Japan is but a child, following China everywhere. When Japan grows into a young boy and becomes more of a person for himself. When China looks at his pale, smooth hands and says, "Ah, you are smart." Young Japan grins; China pats his head.
And when Japan wakes up, amidst an American occupation, he wonders if it was all worth it. He tells himself that it was. He reassures himself. But the tears fall of their own accord. They always do.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
not too much, anyway. And Japan, I think, is one of the harder characters to understand, so I'd hoped that he wouldn't be seen as too strange. =Pno subject
I like the way you numbered it, and the characterization, and the events which tie everything together. Good job~ (;w;)b
PS - while sakura trees do bloom in spring, the blossoms only last about a week or so before they fall off. ^^;
no subject
And thank you. :D It means a lot, really.
Oh my Ford, really? Shows how much I know about Japanese culture. Thank you for pointing that out and I'll try and fix it~.
no subject
You fixed it great! :D