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America swooped in, the hero, finally bigger and stronger than all the old powers because he dreamed bigger and reached higher and surpassed them.
Or, more honestly, they all stumbled and fell and now here he is left standing.
But either way, he swooped in, bright and heroic, and comparatively untouched by the war, and took charge and negotiated and now here he stands in front of Germany to teach him all about how not to be evil and the awesomeness of democracy and how much better it is than communism.
So he takes a deep breath, stands with his back military straight, just as a voice he does not acknowledge commands. He speaks loud and clear with grand gestures, habits ingrained after long hours practicing and practicing with stars in his eyes, because his father was England, and his people were in love with France, but personally, America had known exactly who he wanted to be when he grew up from the moment he met him. He smiles at Germany his best heroic smile, and suddenly Germany is crying.
America didn’t know that Germany could cry. His face has always been set in the same expression of grim seriousness. He looks so much younger, crying.
All of America’s carefully projected confidence and self-assuredness crumbles in the face of this wholly unexpected development, and he flutters a little helplessly.
“What was it? Was it something I said?”
“You looked like him,” Germany says, trying and failing to regain composure, “Why do you look like him?”
Once upon a time, when America was just a skinny, unsanitary, undisciplined kid getting the shit kicked out of him by his dad, Prussia had told him, “Always smile. Smile when your teeth are bloody, like predator, as though the blood were not your own.” America still remembers the look on England’s face the first time he grinned up at him fierce and feral and spitting blood.
America doesn’t smile like that anymore. He’s grown up and moved on and left his wildness behind. He smiles like a businessman now, or a movie star, or a hero. But a smile is a smile, and America’s has retained all its edges.
When America (along with most of the rest of Europe) condemned Prussia to death, Prussia, bruised and battered and thin, had smiled a predator’s smile.
“Oh,” America says.