#i cant believe i predicted the a.rtemis program in a dang hetalia fanfic...

[atomic-insomnia]

scrapped fragments from a fanfic that i will probably never publish, ironically making these the only parts that will see the light of day.  I wrote most of this pre-pandemic & you can really tell.

Man in the Moon, NA Bros have a long discussion about space travel and mythology but C.anada thinks maybe A.merica isn’t talking about space anymore

Generally, A.merica would rather C.anada visit him than the other way around--or, really, he says, “Hey!  Come spend the weekend,” and if C.anada says no it becomes a whole thing.

When he does want to come up north, it’s usually not a social visit.  Oh, he’ll say it is, but then C.anada won’t see him except to pick him up and drop him off at the airport.  In the past few years A.merica’s bosses had really cracked down on the whole underage-drinking thing, and no amount of “I’m literally 400 years old, I’m not really 19,” has swayed them.

“Mattie, they took my fake ID,” he says by way of answering the phone.

“Yeah, bro, it’s nice to hear from you too.”  If C.anada seems bitter...well, he is, a little, but family was supposed to be annoying.

“They wanted to take my passport,” Alfred says, and that one’s new--with how often Nations had to travel internationally, with or without their diplomats, taking their passports or travel papers was practically putting them under house arrest.  “I hid it.  God.  Matt, I need a fuckin’ vacation out-of-state; you doin’ anything this weekend?”

“Uh,” and C.anada actually wasn’t planning on much this weekend, but when A.merica asks for something--and C.anada knows he’s asking for something--it pays to ask for something in return.  To discourage him, if nothing else.  “Well, I was actually planning on going to my cabin up in the Rockies, so if you want to go clubbing in T.oronto like usual I’m going to have to cancel my flight--”

“Cabin?  That sounds perfect.  You’ve got no WiFi there, right?”

“Uh…”  Something was very wrong with hearing Alfred excited about no internet.  “Right?”

“Or cell service?”

...Maybe he should shut this down before it went any further.  “Is somebody after you again?”

“Not this time, no,” A.merica says with a forced laugh.  “I just wanna get away.  Just a couple of days, Mattie; please?  I’ll help out with whatever you’re up to--”

“No.  Don’t help with anything.”  C.anada pinches the bridge of his nose, rubbing the marks left by his glasses.  He can already feel a migraine coming on.

“Alright, alright, jeez.  But let me come up, just for the weekend.  C’mon, you won’t even know I’m there.”

That was an impossibility, but a weekend couldn’t do much harm, right?

...He probably shouldn’t say that out loud, just in case.  But even if Matthew often can’t stand him, overall he doesn’t dislike his brother, and they haven’t spent much time together just to hang out...well, he wasn’t actually going to do anything besides play video games and smoke this weekend anyway; he can do at least the latter at the cabin and he did mean to clean it out one last time before winter made it inaccessible…

...Oh, damn, he’s actually thinking about it.

“...Okay,” C.anada says, migraine blooming.  “Just for the weekend.  Don’t cause any trouble, Al, I swear to god…”

“Who,” Alfred says, laughing again, “Me?”

...

As Kuma nudges their hands for more pets, Matt pulls into the clearing where his cabin--personal property of the Williams family, “handed down” for a few hundred years, not belonging to or recognized by the C.anadian government or any other government as state property--sits surrounded by mountains and pine forest.

There’s no snow yet this autumn but the air has a bite, and the clear skies and the smell of pine and the rustling trees and murmuring insects could almost make C.anada forget what century it is.

A.merica, too; he stretches until C.anada hears a crack, sighs deeply, and gives him the first sincere smile C.anada’s seen this trip.

“Okay, who’s ready to do nothing?” he says.

...

“Don’t lie to me like that, it’s too much.”

“Who says I’m lyin’?”  And he laughs, that same obnoxious laugh he always has, and throws his arms around Kuma to bear-hug the polar bear.

“No, uh-uh.  Non.  Absolument pas.”  Matt shakes his head, slowly, while Al just laughs harder.  “Don’t try to convince me.  That didn’t happen.”

“‘76,” Al says.  “Lucky year.  Too damn expensive to bother with another one, officially, but we worked up the extra cash over a couple years, messing with the budget.  We still had experiments to run and data to collect, and nobody gave a shit about broadcasting another boring ol’ moon landing.  They all knew me by then, and I fit all the same requirements as the other guys.  Wasn’t considered part of the Apollo program--called it Selene 1.  Just a one-off, just me and the two other guys.  Not a lot of public data about it--not that it’s much of a secret.  It’s just...no one cared anymore by then.”