A/N: So I'm writing a thing about the Vietnam War. Probably gonna be two-shot. Maybe a three-shot. Idk.

Disclaimer: I do not own Hetalia

Rochade
A Lily By Any Other Name

August 1964

"You do not know what you are dealing with, Alfred."

America looks up at the Frenchman sitting in front of him in surprise. France never used the human name he had chosen for himself ages ago. No, no, it was always either America or Amerique. Never Alfred because that meant he wanted him to listen.

(The last time he'd called him Alfred was during the war, right after they took back Normandy.)

"Where did that come from?" America raises an eyebrow. "What are you talking about?"

"Tonkin*."

Tonkin. Tonkin, Tonkin, Tonkin. The word- no, the place- that had been on everyone's mind since August 7th. Tonkin. A gulf. The Gulf of Tonkin.

"What about it?" America asks.

France fixes him with a frown. "Don't play dumb, Alfred, because I know you aren't."

"They attacked us." America shrugs. "They fired at our ships and we took defensive measures. That's it. I don't understand why you're so concerned."

(Because he is still butt-hurt over the defeat at Dien Bien Phu*.)

"You're stationing troops over there." France says flatly. "In her lands. You tell the world that you are not going to fight another war, but the world is not convinced."

(Her. Her. Her. Her. Who is the woman that puts a bitter taste in France's mouth?)

"There's not going to be a war, France." America rolls his eyes. "We're just following through with the resolution* to stop the commies. That's the real threat."

France simply shakes his head. America questions him with another raise of his eyebrow.

"What?" He prods. "Are you worried that there will be a repeat of Dien-"

"Don't." France cuts him off sharply as if slicing through the memory. "Don't. Don't bring that up. That alone should be reason enough as to leave the matter be. You really do not know what you're getting yourself into, Alfred."

"Vietnam is a third-world country." America chides. "And I mean, you were defeated, but when was the last time you won a war?"

France says nothing.

"Look, I appreciate the concern, France." America nods, hoping to be sincere. "But there's no need for it. Everything is under control. We're going to help the Vietnamese by getting rid of the communists. That's what the gulf incident proved to us."

France, still, remains silent. America frowns.

"Say something." He urges.

"You do not know what you're getting yourself into, Alfred." The Frenchman repeats before getting up from his seat and leaving the room. He locks the door of the study behind him.

America sighs and goes back over the reports sent in from Saigon.

March 1965

The ground troops arrived like the lightning after thunder in a storm; their boots shook the ground from the very second they set foot on Vietnamese soil. Vietnam swore she could feel the rumbling of the Earth from miles away because she knew- she knew- the way her country seemed to sag beneath the weight of a foreign army. The Americans were loud, boisterous, and absolutely amazed with what they found themselves surrounded with; they were Alices falling, plummeting, into a rabbit hole located on the other side of the world. She should have found them amusing.

(But she didn't. She really, really, really didn't because first it was the French and now it was the Americans.)

Saigon had never stank of such corruption since her time as a colony, as Indochine*.

(That name was arsenic on her lips.)

But there was something about the American that made her both want to point a gun at his head and buy into his every word. No, not the Americans, as in plural. The American. The tall, blonde one with glasses and eyes like the sky, the one that was trying to convince her she wasn't going crazy even with all the opposing voices screaming in her head.

"I had a civil war, too, y'know." He says over the table as he clumsily picked up a noodle with his chopsticks. "It was terrible. I thought I was going insane because I heard screams from both sides."

He proceeds to tell her the uninteresting history of his civil war over their lunch of pho and spring rolls. Her own meal remains untouched because she can't bring herself to eat with the stench of napalm still burning in her nose.

(It seared through her as if her body itself were the emerald jungles of her country.)

"...But everything will be okay." America reassures her as if she had been listening the whole time. "Because the good guys always win."

The good guys? Who was good anymore? Who was bad? Vietnam began wondering if this naïve boy was the same country whom had brought Japan to his knees a mere twenty years ago. She remembers how the world held its breath after that day in August when the first bomb was dropped in Hiroshima. How could he think that the matter was so simple, that the world was so black and white? Was he forgetting that he was the grey area no one liked to talk about?

(He's so young...)

"You'll be okay, Vietnam." He says after pushing his empty bowl away. "I'll be damned if I didn't keep that promise."

He reaches out over the table and offers her his hand. It's so much bigger than hers, but covered with the same amount of callouses and scars. She places her hand in his despite the protests ringing in her mind, despite the splitting headache spreading between her temples, but flinches when he gave it a soft squeeze.

His smile is as radiant as the glare from an explosion and his eyes are the blue of a sky without smoke.

Vietnam was not what he'd been expecting.

She wasn't exactly pretty. He didn't mean that in a derogatory way, but pretty, for him, connotes something delicate and dainty. A rosebud was pretty. A glass slipper was pretty.

But Vietnam was something else.

At first glance, her small, supple frame seemed lost in the military uniform she wore, but it really did suit her in a strange way. Maybe it was because America wasn't used to seeing women in service uniforms. Her skin was tan- not rice paste white- as if she spent her free time outdoors, and her eyes were small with flecks of gold buried in the rich brown. Her ink-colored hair was tied back in a no-nonsense pony tail that fell to the small of her back. She wasn't wearing lip stick or any sort of make-up for her lips were slightly chapped and her face bare. Her lips remained unsmiling and her eyes expresionless even as he shook her small, calloused hand.

No, she wasn't the China doll France had made her out to be long before Dien Bien Phu, or a geisha like the ones he'd seen in Japan. She wasn't pale like the moon, or radiant like the sun, or delicate like a rosebud. Hell, he couldn't even think of an object to compare her to. She was just... Vietnam.

(Just the third-world country whom humiliated the once-great France.)

The Frenchman's warning rang in the deepest part of his mind even as he sat down to eat lunch with her a couple of days after being introduced. She wasn't in uniform today. Rather, she was wearing a long green tunic that seemed to be made of silk. An ao dai, she'd called it. The garment hugged her lithe figure as if to remind him that she was, indeed, a woman, but America was sure that wasn't her intention.

She did not smile once throughout the course of their lunch. Her stoic air made America squirm in his seat. Why wasn't she happy that he was here?

(France must have really broken her for her to be like this.)

Maybe her attitude would have discouraged a normal human being, but America was neither normal or human. He wanted to see her happy, he wanted to see her smile because everyone had a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It said so in the Constitution written by the men that had fought for his freedom from Britain two hundred years ago. He was going to make sure she had that right, too, even if it was the last thing he did because it was his job to help people. That's what heroes do, and heroes always win.

(Better dead than red, as they say.)

January, 1968
Khe Sanh Combat Base*

The rifle in Vietnam's shaking hands threatens to fall to the ground as she aims it towards the NVA* soldiers advancing rapidly on the base. Cold sweat pours down her forehead, grime stains her face, and the grit in her eyes was making her vision go blurry. It is the third day of the seige at the base and the battle is mercilessly raging on. There hadn't been a lull in action yet and she doubted there would be one because the NVA knew they were slipping.

America is next to her. He lay on his stomach with a tight grip on the machine gun. One of his men steadily feeds more rounds into it. With each and every round fired, a soldier on the opposing front fell dead. She winces as she watches one hit the ground in a bloody heap.

(They were her people, too, and she's killing them.)

Night is approaching. The pink-purple-orange-yellow sky was tinged black, and the smoke coming from the ground rose to meet the dawning stars in the twilight sky. She wants to sleep. She wants the siege to end so she can sleep till the end of this damned war. Exhaustion both physical and mental seeps through every pore and fiber of her being, and she just wants to sleep.

War is not a new concept to her. She is much older than her western ally, and has bled more blood than he has throughout the centuries. The last war she fought in had been fairly easy to win... The French fled her lands with their tails between their legs after the final blow had been dealt. But this... This was different. That war had required no cooperation with foreigners, no thinly-veiled alliances, no loose handshakes and pursed lips. There had been no splitting headaches at Dien Bien Phu, no blurred vision, no shaking hands... Only the rush of adrenaline through her veins as she cocked her gun and aimed it towards that damned imperialist.

The M16 suddenly falls out of her hands as she lets out a pained cry. It was inaudible over the roar of an explosion triggered by a bomb. Her vision is going black, her body is drenched in cold sweat, and anguished screams that were not her own began tearing her mind apart. They were the same screams coming from the other side of the battlefield, but they're in her head, and she can't stop hearing them.

(Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop!)

She hardly felt being plucked off the ground before the world collapsed in on itself and her vision turned as black as the sky.

America ignores the looks he receives from his men as he rushes into the medical tent with Vietnam in his arms. She went limp as soon as he started running bent and stooped to avoid the heavy fire aimed at him from the other side. Surprised to find an empty cot, he set her down with as much tact as he could manage. The groans and screams of the wounded assault his ears and send a painful pang straight through his heart. He looks down. The Asian nation was pale. Her chest hardly rose and fell.

(Please be okay, please be okay, please be okay...)

"Medic!" He screams, though it's useless because it's so loud and so hot and so crazy in the medical tent that he doubts anyone heard him. "Medic!"

Nations couldn't die, right? They could get sick, they could get injured, but they couldn't die. Right? France has a scar on his neck from his revolution, Japan lived through Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

(Please be okay, please be okay, please be okay...)

Something like this happened to him nearly a century ago, during his civil war. The Union, the Confederacy... It was as if the warring sides each took one of his arms and decided to pull. The woman in the cot stirs. America lets go of the breath he'd been holding in, but notices the whimpers coming from her.

She is crying.

It's soft at first, but then crescendos into sobs that rack her small body. He takes a seat on the cot, and tries to soothe her by rubbing her back, but she jumps away from his touch.

"You're killing my people!" She manages between sobs. Her words are laced with despair and poison. "I'm killing my people!"

She screams hysterically, but still refuses to let herself be touched. America breathed deeply, racking his brain to figure out how to calm her down before people got the wrong idea. Soft words would have no effect on her, and soothing physical contact was out of the question.

(He just wants to hold her till she calms down.)

"Lien." He says sternly, grabbing her by the shoulders. Her human name feels heavy on his tongue. The look on her face is enough to tighten his grip. "You need to calm down. The people attacking us are not your citizens."

"Yes, they are!" She insists desperately as she tries to wrestle herself out of his tight grasp. "I am Vietnam! They are my people, and they're being slaughtered as if their lives don't matter!"

"You're the South." He shakes her a bit. "They're soldiers from the North. They are not your people. They're communists. They're the enemy. You trust me, don't you?

"No, they're not." She cries out, her voice cracking. "They're my citizens. And... And I was killing them-"

"Do you trust me?" He repeats.

She blinks and stops struggling against him. America doesn't know what more to say, but he finds there isn't a need for words when she slumps against him and cries brokenly into his shoulder. Her tears splatter wet against his torn and dirty uniform.

(Her hair is matted down with dust and debris from the siege, but running his fingers through the inky strands seems right.)

"I am the South." She mutters hollowly. He rubs circles into her back. "I am the South."

(Better dead than red.)

Historical Notes

Gulf of Tonkin incident (1964): The jump-off point of the Vietnam War. A U.S war ship clashed with a Vietnamese war ship in Vietnamese waters. Though the U.S had presence in Vietnam prior to the incident, this is escalation that led to increased military presence and fighting.

Dien Bien Phu (1954): Final battle of the First Indochina War fought between France and what is now Vietnam. This was the first time a European power had lost to an Asian nation that utilized guerrilla warfare techniques. Needless to say, it was an embarrassing defeat for the French, but Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia won their independence at the end of the war.

Tonkin Resolution (1964): Issued by American president Lyndon B. Johnson to authorize more military action in Vietnam as a measure to contain the communism in southeast Asia. Goes hand-in-hand with the Truman Doctrine issued at the start of the Cold War to prevent the spread of communism.

Indochina: What used to be Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia prior to 1954. Used to be ruled by France.

Siege of Khe Sanh (1968): A battle of the Vietnam war where North Vietnamese forces ambushed and surrounded an American and allied base near the border with Laos.

NVA: North Vietnamese Army.

A/N: I have the headcanon that when countries go through a civil war, there's pretty much two minds in one body. Not exactly like a dissociative identity because it's not a different person... But, yeah, basically two warring mindsets that both come out to play. Anyways, I hope I got most of this information correct. And also the characterization. Cold War! America for me is kinda like a deluded child- like, he genuinely believes that his government is right about everything, but also recognizes that he really just wants to get the best of Ivan and he'll do anything to win this morbid pissing contest they have going on. Also, I've seen fics where Vietnam, as the South, genuinely likes America, but I believe that any sort of positive sentiment towards him is thinly veiled because though the South is usually portrayed as being pro-American, the Vietnamese in general didn't exactly see the Americans as saviors (because they really weren't). But as mentioned before, I feel like America would do anything to feel superior to Ivan during this time period, and manipulating Vietnam- whom isn't exactly stable at the moment- to buy into everything he says is not above him. But that's just me. Plz review and favorite!