Haiti

Haiti ached. His body ached, his mind ached, his soul and heart ached. Pain ripped through him every time he moved, every time he breathed, and all he could do was sob and cling to the nearest person like a dying child.

Which, he mused, he was, in a way. A child in that he'd never really grown up enough that his mind fit his body, he felt so young and so ancient at the same time, excited to explore the world and yet filled with the desire to die so he didn't have to feel and smell and breathe and hear and think the agony of his people.

They'd taken him to America. America himself had come for him, a few days after the earthquake struck and the entirety of it all had the first strings of insanity and misery winding their way into his soul. He was at some secret military hospital in Florida, he'd been told. His people were being taken care of. All he had to do was lie back, inhale the reek of disinfectant and try to remember what being happy felt like.

Except Haiti wasn't sure if he'd ever been happy. He was sure he'd been, a long time ago, when things were simpler and it had been him and the Taíno. Back before Christopher Columbus and all the rest of those European explorers with their Europeans Nations. Nations that accused him of being uncivilized, unworthy, below them. Good only for being a slave, for being conquered, for being a prize.

He'd been happy before then. Happy before he'd belonged to Spain, before settlers moved their belongings into his lands and built their European homes. Back before the sudden spreading of a unstoppable disease that killed almost all of the Taíno.

And then the French had come after the Spanish. And with them came dark-skinned people like the Taíno but not, people who were forced to serve the French and who would take every chance they had to flee to Haiti's mountains and join what remained of his people. But then a period of fighting came, where his people rose up to fight those who oppressed them. It lasted thirty years, but he was there every step of the way.

But on January 1st, 1804, he'd won his freedom of all those who tried to own him and retook back his native name of Haiti. The Land of Mountains. Later, Haiti found out he was the world's oldest black republic, but titles like that mattered little in the face of freedom.

Years passed in a blur, time slipping him by as he and his people worked to build a nation they could be proud of. He received Catholic schooling from Vatican City, he owned Panama for a short while, his people grew and thrived and explored what they could do if they put their minds to it.

But it all changed in 1911 when debt and revolution broke out and Haiti had to wonder where those beautiful years of relative peace had gone. A dictator by the name of Vilbrun Sam took over in 1915, but was lynched only a few months later, to Haiti's quiet relief. Then America noticed him, and soon Haiti noticed modern roads and telephones spanning his beautiful lands, and then suddenly he was a democracy and his people were electing their leaders.

But then more cruel people took over, and his people were killed, and their rights were ignored, and there were uprisings and hatred and bloodshed in such abundance that it made him want to cry.

Haiti still looked back on those times, and then even farther, to the days with the Taíno before the Spanish invaders, and he always had to question which time he preferred more. The modern age is so confusing, twisting like a captured animal and changing it's color with a moment's notice, but it can also be terribly exciting and wonderful. However, there is still death and war and hatred and things that happen that make him question what direction humanity is heading in.

And now this. A 7.0 earthquake. Hundreds of thousands dead, and his cities destroyed and rubble laying on his lands like spare trash. His people are dropping off like flies, so quickly that Haiti cannot help but be reminded of the diseases the Spanish brought to the Taíno.

There is another shot of pain in his side, but Haiti ignores it and gazes unseeingly at the bleached white ceiling, listening to the steady beeping of his heart monitor. He's suffered from severe aftershocks since then, and his head is pounding. His people are still dying and his skin prickles like he's having thumbtacks shoved in every time yet another human slips away.

Haiti's eyes are burning with tears again, and the rhythm of his heart monitor is speeding up. A nurse rushes in and fusses over him, plumping his pillow and robotically asking if he needs anything. Haiti shuts his eyes so tightly that he can see sparks explode on the inside of his eyelids and prays that the nurse will go away and leave him in the refreshing quiet and endless misery.

Even though he's getting help and Nations all around the world are rushing in aid that consists of food and medicine, his people are still dying and his land is still running red with spilled blood and his Port-au-Prince is littered with what remains of houses and humans.

God, Haiti thinks, why can't life be fair to me just once?