Chapter Text
Arthur looked between Finland’s weeping face and France trying to catch a fish in the river with his bare hands. This was the episode - no, this was his life now - the day before England was supposed to meet little baby America. Alfred F. Jones as the databook called him, the personification of the New World Colonies in this area which would later become the United States of America. The Land of the Free, the global superpower in the 21st century where he’d been born the first time around. Not that he’d really been born this time around. He’d more or less just sprung from the ground, poofed into existence as a fully cognizant immortal toddler, which had been a nightmare, but that’s a story for another time.
For now, he reached out to slap the fish out of France’s hands and then put a hand on Finland’s bowed head, feeling more than a little weary of all the nonsensical dramatics.
(“Hey, you brute! That was supposed to be my dinner!”)
(“We didn’t come here to catch dinner, Francis. Worry about that later.”)
(“...this is why no one likes you, stupid Englishman.”)
(“Shut the hell up.”)
Arthur patted the blond hair, trying to impose a little composure and comfort onto the Nation in front of him. He didn’t know Finland all that well but the centuries-old teen was bawling his eyes out like he’d just watched his dog get run over or something. “What happened Tino? Did someone say something to you?”
On the side, Francis has stopped wringing his wet clothes to give him an odd look as he often did when England interacted with any other Nation. Apparently, none of them considered their cover human names to be really theirs and just used it with humans. As a former human, Arthur had considered calling himself England for all of two seconds before deciding to embrace the canon Himaruya assigned name. The name England had grown on him after the first few centuries but he liked feeling more like a real person with a real name and not just a talking country. The whole personified country thing made his head hurt if he really thought about it for too long so he tried to handwave away any inconsistencies between the manga, anime, and fanon depictions of Hetalia Nations. Too many things were different and his memory was good but not a-thousand-years later good. Some things had obviously slipped through the cracks.
“It was the Netherlands!” Finland raised his head slowly with red creeping into his cheeks as he wiped his tears away. Relieved, Arthur removed his hand and stepped back. Right, he remembered this now. “He kicked Sweden and I out of our villa and he was so cruel and mean about it too!”
Arthur couldn’t remember exactly why Finland and Sweden had a villa in the future USA but he was sure it wasn’t that important to both canon and history. Too bad being a Hetalia fan hadn’t made him a history super genius. He didn’t remember enough about the exact dates of anything really relevant to his life. Maybe if he’d been British in his first life but alas. The most British he’d ever been was the phase of his childhood when he’d been obsessed with Doctor Who, Sherlock, and later on England from Hetalia, which was less of a phase and just who he was at some point. No wonder he’d been reincarnated as this guy. At least it beat being the Doctor, another immortal whose whole life was constant tragedy. Really, he should’ve been born as Sherlock Holmes in the TV show, he wasn’t immortal and had stuff like TV and the Internet.
What he did know was that America had come about as a result of horrific genocide and ethnic cleansing from the all the colonization. Obviously, Arthur had done his best to advocate for not doing all that but the manga canon had reined supreme with him being beholden to his Boss, which happened to be imperial-supporters, one after the other. He’d managed to get out of having to listen to anything they really told him to do, but it also meant that they had no reason to listen to what he told them. Arthur tried to console himself since clearly a Nation’s opinion didn’t change anything their Boss chose to do in the manga seeing as everything was more or less following canon - both Hetalia and normal world history - as much as he could tell, but he couldn’t help the constant sense of guilt. He’d spent weeks of his time in the New World dedicated to searching for any Nations for the various Indigenous peoples he had come across but he was still yet to find anyone. It made no sense to him that they wouldn’t exist in canon so he’d thought that maybe they were in hiding which was fair but he had no way of confirming anything without so he kept the search up. It was hard enough to do this on his own as the last thing he wanted to do was draw the attention of his Monarch to an Indigenous Nation if he found them so it was slow-going. Still, if baby colonial America could exist, why couldn’t other Nations also exist on this continent?
Arthur tuned out the information about the strange boy Finland heard about since he already knew that England had found chibi America in a bush. He reflexively reached out to smack the fish out of France’s hands again and wiped his hands off on his jacket.
“Angleterre!” France bemoaned as the fish slipped through his fingers again.
“To Hell with your fish!”
Finland strangely froze as Arthur turned back to him with a scowl. “Tell me where to find that child.”
The Scandinavian wouldn’t meet his eyes - why did he suddenly grow shy? - but he pointed off to one side and muttered a vague set of directions. Brushing his pants off, he set off in that direction. There were only so many bushes that a little boy could be hiding in near the establishment right? There was no way he was waiting to adhere to canon’s timeline. If he tried to pay attention to every time skip he remembered, he would’ve crashed out centuries ago.
“Hello, my name is Arthur. Others also address me as England, the land as a person. Do you know who you are?”
Bright blue eyes stared back at him from a chubby face with unabashed curiosity. It was most definitely America.
Objectively, Arthur knew that Nations in Hetalia aged in accordance to how much their Nation developed and how much they were recognized which was weird but at least there was some kind of logic to it. Personally, it sucked that he had been stuck as an older teenager for over a hundred years, especially since he remembered that the boy in front of him would grow from a toddler to a 16-year-old in the span of less than 200 years. It just wasn’t fair, Americans got everything, even in the weird Nation-people Hetalialand universe he’d been Isekai’d in.
He got a sudden flash of all the USUK fics he’d ever read and he rapidly backed up, throwing his hands into his face as he avoided looking at the pint-sized being in front of him. Talk about godawful timing. He vowed to purge his memory of any Hetalia ship fics he’d ever read, especially the USUK ones because it was one thing to handwave problematic implications in fanfictions. It was another thing to look at a baby and think about how you’d once shipped a grown-up version of it with another version of yourself like, just. Ew, no.
The brat toddled forward on his little legs and visibly hesitated before stopping halfway from reaching out to him. On one hand, it was good that chibi America had some sense of Stranger Danger even in the 1600s as a parentless Nation person thing. On the other hand, Arthur wanted to violently murder whatever made the child develop this kind of awareness, because what the hell? There was no way he came into existence like this, obviously he learned to be cautious from somewhere. He made a mental note to investigate that further in the future when he’d be more than a random strange man approaching him a bush.
His wandering thoughts were interrupted by a high-pitched, whiny voice. “Hiya there!”
Arthur responded with another awkward, “Hello.”
Tiny America blinked up at him and studied him for a second. Finally he said, “I’ve been figuring out a lot about who I am. I’m not like the other people here. I think I’m like you. You feel just like me!”
So even baby America could tell that he was a Nation too. What a relief! He wouldn’t have to run off with some unknowing kid after all. “That’s great. How would you like to live with me from now on? Even people like us need paren- uh I mean, someone to take care of us.”
Chibi America grinned up at him and whooped. “Okay!”
“Right, ah,” Arthur debated it for a minute in his head before realizing what he had to do. He had to fully commit, no backing out now. “Just call me Arthur or Father if you like.” Too bad the word ‘Dad’ would be too weird to use in sixteen-something.
Chibi America threw himself at Arthur’s legs and gleefully chanted, “Father, Father, Father!”
...He really hadn’t thought this through. Then again, he hadn’t really had the time considering he’d just realized what part of the story he was in when he saw Finland at the river.
Not that any of that really mattered. Screw canon! America was his kid now, no takebacks. Hetalia England was a coward, choosing to make his baby his little brother and abandoning him like a good country. Arthur would drink the bloody tears of his shitty Monarch before leaving this toddler to the wilderness or France’s negligent hands. First step, find a way to take chibi America home with him, probably by stealing Finland’s villa back from the Netherlands. Next, he’d interrogate the hell out of France because there was no way that there wasn’t already a chibi Canada out there and he wanted to earn the whole 5 stars in this parenting deal, damnit!