Archive of Our Own ^beta

The moon grinned the night Ludwig left. Clouds rolled their grey fingers back and let the cold half-moon glow, and the moon had strange affections for misery. Remnants of his separate pasts bled and clouded as the sky unclouded and cleared; it hadn't been more than a week since Ludwig left. The sky kept a solid blue haze.

For several days Gilbert sank through Berlin under the sky, nothing else— maybe the weather was a blessing. His roof was gone and sometimes he wondered if his human flatmates noticed. Most of the time he wondered when his last luck would die like the rest... using most of his time to stray quietly too close to military conversations, digging for information meant to be forbidden from rat's ears, wasn't the kindest way to secure the future. Everything in him stood on edge because his instincts knew this as well as his retrained soviet brain did— he was living in a hound house— if he was going to get shot, this time, if he was going to get shot, the last of his healing would finally snuff out. He believed it.

None of his wounds healed correctly since the Control Council. None of the experiments inflicted on him since twenty years ago pushed past the limits they, too, discovered he now had.

Gilbert : dead on arrival, four days after finding the one thing worth living for again.

It was the funniest joke he'd heard in months.

Several days of tramp trod and tumble. Several days getting called 'cat' under the bridge and washing in a river that men had drowned in. Several days of feeling like dirt but looking better than he'd lived in decades. Several days until Gilbert bit a bullet because he'd only found intel worth shit, but yet he'd decided to stand stupid at the edge of Grunewald anyway.

Grunewald might've killed him. Just as much as anything else, but the name got mentioned in tangent with the military enough for Gilbert to stop caring. 'It was a forest.' The largest forest in West Berlin... the one with a chapel of nature, mirror lakes and thick, bending black trees hiding the all consuming womb of the German earth. Both peace and a practice ground for violence; as, somewhere between the trees, the Berlin Brigade had guns trained to aim for anyone as trenched into the GDR as him. It wasn't Wildflecken. Grunewald was the closest a soldier could get to tasting the wall and the Brigade kept three times as many muzzles there since Gilbert had gotten past it.

Gilbert had watched their drills from a careless hidden shadow until he memorised where each of their scuffed toy green uniforms played in the woods, where each hid carefully between the spiderwebs and dew drops. He watched until their rehearsals ended with whistles, he listened as they slapped one another on the backs and laughed over the relief of a game's victory.

"Headed back," they'd said, "we'll take the communists if they try anything." Their young, stupid voices bragged in want for war they'd never seen.

One generation ago men had grown up with a horse-drawn cart and died under an endlessly vast, hostile wailing sky of machines. When their children talked excitedly of war, Gilbert suspected they were liars.

They were all voiceless animals, nodding along with one other, scoffing, and living under beehive masks so they could belong.

There was a bandwagon for everyone to die on.

Gilbert lifted himself from hiding to follow the soldiers, lagging close, but balancing his delicate stupid game with a good distance.

The men filed from the woods at a different point than Gilbert had entered... as soon as they broke the shadows of the forest, he saw they were all off to the S-Bahn.

He breathed deep, then broke his last protection and trekked quietly between the the sparse few citizens casually reading papers, talking  near the soldier boys. He wiped his palms on his shirt. No uniform. So close to the unsuspecting people... one word and they'd know. They'd know where he came from, East Berliners didn't sound like West Berliners, his accent didn't quite match theirs anymore.

Gilbert engaged the leader.

"Herr..."

The man turned. All his attention fell to Gilbert, altert, but not hostile. Not yet.

That was good.

On the edge of misstepping into prison was the closest he'd been to Ludwig since... the bar, which should only be called the bar, or a dream of an event Gilbert refused to accept. In the military's dim box Ludwig existed. Gilbert had to smash it or crawl in to join.

"Do you know Brigadegeneral Beilschmidt?" Gilbert asked.

The man's eyebrows rose.

He rubbed his face, then looked around as if Gilbert weren't there.

He would find Ludwig. He wouldn't waste a week—Ludwig might leave Berlin— might've already left. His hands clenched and his teeth gritted into a pained grin.

He'd find him.

"Hey, I know you've got your crew and you're taking that very seriously but I don't have all day." The man brought his attention back. Gilbert settled. "I didn't even have yesterday. So do you or do you know a formally ranked Beilschmidt?"

Say yes.

The man leaned closer.

He looked to the side again. He looked back, slowly. In a low voice he said, "are you the one they call... Prussia?"

His old name rattled like wind over his dry bones. Gilbert shivered at the reminder of familiar syllables soothing him with vengeance. He couldn't hold the name in his hands. He didn't know where else to put it. He couldn't like his name anymore because he couldn't love or cherish the name but he didn't have a new one, not really.

"That name is gone," he glared.

The secrecy didn't vanish, but the human turned curious. "This conversation should continue elsewhere," he said.

"It should," Gilbert agreed sharply.

The S-Bahn heaved a lurch, groaned, and hissed when it arrived. It trudged at five, finally scraping to a stop to let air and people into the sealed container.

Each boy stepped through the rattling doors grinning as Gilbert's heart sunk.

"I can walk," he said.

"This is fastest," the human said. They crossed the thin train gap with the soldiers.

Immediately the lid cracked, the spike of anxiety shot. Gilbert's muscles tensed. He breathed deep, holding his hands firm behind his back. This was going to test him, he didn't like that.

Gilbert eased himself down into a solitary corner, frowning, tapping his fingers on his thighs. He was the furthest possible point away from the people who could treat him like a wet slap on the concrete, a trigger-touch bullet-wasted heap, but... he pressed his back into the seat, because the human from earlier was keeping close to him.

Trailing a brigade of (technically) enemy men who were curious to catch a glimpse of combat was one of Prussia's brighter moments from the past century. Trailing them into closed confinement vaguely familiar to his years of sub-human-hood? Even more genius, considering how stupid he'd been before the allies and axis forced his bed down his throat.

He'd not been on a train since... a long time.

Gilbert cringed and faced away from the soldiers' shouts, laughs, and yells. They were heckling pleased to have Gilbert distract their lead.

"So what's your name, anyway?" Gilbert murmured.

"Roland."

"Have your hands ever felt like balloons, Roland?"

"You don't like the railway?"

"I don't like losing control."

The man fell quiet.

A bubble red-yellow train car from one of Gilbert's past lifetimes wasn't unkind. Gilbert focused on laughter. He remembered when, before the world crumbled and the year was nineteen thirty and a papiermark did more good in a fireplace than at a grocery store, the network of train tracks had been methodically charted and burrowed into the ground to create the S-Bhan and he'd thought less of it than a car.

He remembered when their silver tracks had been flooded and slashed into halves. The city transportation between East and West had to be choked. The tracks weren't so bad, weren't so unkind, Gilbert had been on more suffocating tracks than the S-Bhan. He shouldn't feel a methodical wave prickling over his skin.

Two hours or less... and then...

Only two hours or less.

The end of it all.

This man would get him there, eventually.

Gilbert had to believe in endings to survive it.

He mentally noted where each human hunkered in their pre-planned box, and where they filed off to leave the rails behind. No familiar bonds. He counted their heads and memorised their clothes by colour. He subtracted and added until the rail scraped a final time, doors opening, soldiers spilling out

Gilbert couldn't move faster.

Soft adrenaline nauseated him, but living thrill scraped the pain off his back. He grinned a crooked half grimace, three parts proud, one part vacant— the empty space he'd put everything else that survived the war felt a little more full. Gilbert clasped his hands firmly together.

"I should take the line more often."

"I thought you didn't like it?"

"Yeah, I can't stand the thing."

The Berlin Brigade nested in Clay HQ, once a Luftwaffe post that had been raided out and cleaned since it survived the firebombing. The compound swarmed with Americans now.

Gilbert eyed the stone walls, barbed wire fences, gates, and gunned men that had been keeping him out for days.

Now he had a way inside.

To Ludwig. Eventually.

There was an end in sight.

Roland took him past the gates and into a closet sized office of lacking quality.

Gilbert asked, "You know what countries are?"

"My father knew more."

He kept his back to the door, staying an arm's length from the knob. Not because he doubted his ability to win a scuffle with this human, but because he'd rather take his chances running than getting shot by the nearest American excited by the noise of a fight. With Americans, you never fought just one of them.

"Your father worked with a man named Alfred," Gilbert guessed.

"I don't know." Gilbert narrowed his pink-red eyes. "Maybe he did. Many soldiers knew about immortal men, the rest of the world called it a conspiracy. He told me his job during the War was to find one going by the name 'Prussia.' Said he never succeeded, but someone dug you up, because you got to prison. They only wanted men who already knew about you keeping watch."

"Are you going to throw me in prison again?"

"Why are you here?" Roland sighed, ignoring the likely outcome.

"I want to see Brigadegeneral Beilschmidt."

"I know. I know about Beilschmidt, I already knew. I know you're Beilschmidt, too." He fumbled with his pockets, then pulled a white paper stick out. He offered it to Gilbert. "Cigarette?"

Gilbert hadn't had a good one in years. Gilbert hadn't had much good anything in years... one drawl of wasting away was that he'd also long driveled out any craving he once had for swallowing smoke. He felt nothing about the offer.

"I'm going to meet the Brigadegeneral before I share a smoke with anyone."

"Is it true that general Beilschmidt once stood at the right hand of Hitler?"

"No, that was me."

Roland side eyed him. "Ah, well, I'm surprised they kept him over you, seen as you've escaped publicly so well. Probably Patrick Dean's fault. I'm surprised they couldn't find a way to kill you, as that was what they were supposed to do with all of you SS officers."

"I was never SS, that was never true," Gilbert hissed, "You think they'd let someone who looked like me join their ranks? My eyesight's poor, my genes are messed up, you really think that's what they wanted?"

"If they'd given you the chance to join and prove yourself... would you have done it?"

"I don't ask myself that question."

"Ask it now."

Gilbert looked away.

In a forest, a German had ancestors.

Rich, dark soil sponging over their ancient bones and rhythmically under his immortal feet, connecting him to the very earth as his lungs took in the fresh cool air. The forest light curled inward, speckling vivid moss green-grey at the barest edges of the black bark. Orange and red mushrooms dotted the black trees, clotted and swollen in patches like small huddled men clinging to peeling logs and rotting soil.

They would be the audience of violence today. They were the audience of violence yesterday, and would be the audience tomorrow, suckling the earth's decay.

Nature, he thought with an ugly grimace, favoured him. Only human society ever protested natural cruelty.

Nature was unequal. Nature fed her weakest children to her strongest.

Society was part of nature, and Prussia was a part of nature. He only did accordingly as nature inclined him to do.

Prussia clicked his gun, readying the metal maw to spit sparks and peirce flesh.

Several humans were lined, waiting, alone in their blindfolds and bindings, prisoners. They were deplorables. They deserved punishment for what they had done to society.

Several humans were lined, strong in their numbers, armed and unified under their proud flag. They were decreed the chosen, the rightful dealers of justice, righteous in their crusade.

Gilbert levelled his gun to the blinded eyes in front of him.

This human was once one of his, one of his own, he's disgusted, he can feel society's disgust burning his blood.

He's never felt this sick with rage before. The whole world focused on one, squelching point. Gilbert carved into himself to stop his heart from beat, beat, beating into his skull and brains. He woke with screaming in his ears.

He can't do it, he can, he'd hate himself if he did, he'd hate himself if he didn't.

When he sees his reflection he feels fire rush down through his eyes, ears, nose, he knows what will happen. He hates what won't happen. He hates the people who ruined his cities. They're coming for him next, one day, they're coming for him. The more perfect it becomes the more unbelievably unbearable each remaining blemish is. Gilbert isn't perfect, he's not perfect, he's genetically defective, a drag on society. When the grossest imperfections are gone they'll come to clean until it shines. Gilbert's heart will stop.

He feels their disgust when he sees his own reflection... when he sees their blinded eyes.

Gilbert will hate himself if he does, he'll hate himself if he doesn't. He's never been this sick before.

His breath catches, his hand shakes, but it doesn't matter, because his target is an inch away, and Gilbert would nail them with or without an aim.

The other guns are levelled, the rightful dealers of justice prepared to sentence their fellow men into death.

Maybe... maybe it would be better to defy nature. Maybe that might be even a little more beautiful than utopia. Maybe, even, Gilbert could hear himself think.

Gilbert let the gun lower.

'Run,' he thought, 'run so I can live one more day.'

The bullets flew no matter if he pulled the trigger or not.

He didn't try to dwell on each choice that led him to dissolution... Gilbert wondered if it would hurt worse than last time.

Gilbert wondered if it would ever heal.

He shook his head slowly. He wondered if the war had been real... he wondered how it had come to an end... then he remembered that he knew how it had come to an end.

"If I didn't look like this..." he muttered.

Roland placed a cigarette between his lips, lightning the end with several huffs.

"Before the war, and at the start, I didn't want to listen to criticism from anyone," Gilbert continued, "before things got too bad, whenever anyone said the country was going foul I didn't want to hear it. I had them quietly removed from my life because I was so sure I was in the right. I didn't want to listen to my friends when they warned me, I thought they were all selfish, trying to keep me down, becoming my enemies. These new policies were fixing the country—it was broken and things were finally getting the appearance of turning around. How could they want me to walk away from that? The only people I left around me were the ones who would pat me on the back while I was on my way to Hell."

"You stood at Hitler's side."

Gilbert laughed, "Yeah, you're one of them until you're not. One day you wake up and the rules of the game have changed against you. I had trouble going Übermensch, I've never believed in the progress of mankind. They didn't like that."

Russia had successfully damaged his teutonic roots... if the Nazis had tried any harder, he didn't think about how he might've died, actually, who he might've been to himself, he wouldn't have been himself anymore at all.

The human hummed.

"I know where Brigadegeneral Beilschmidt lives, it's not far from here," he said.

"He lives in Berlin?" Gilbert didn't like that. West Berlin was an isolated island in a sea of red, harshly starved for their enemies, harshly rewarded for their allies. It was dangerous, the most dangerous place Ludwig could've been placed.

"He lives here sometimes. Most of the time. He isn't allowed to live too many other places."

Gilbert really didn't like that. He couldn't change that, though. He wasn't responsible for Ludwig anymore... England and America were. He flexed his fist, soured. What would Alfred or Arthur do if the USSR chose demonic fury once again, rehashing their vengeance against Berlin as they'd once done, tearing his brother's heart to shreds, violating every painful pact forged to keep men alive? Gilbert forced his fist to settle, pushing the pain where his own personal shadows festered.

Ludwig might be close.

"Tell me where he is."

Roland chuckled. "I should lose my position, this is a security breach. But frankly, I think there's something you two deserve. I hope it hurts." The man hastily scribbled a few lines on a piece of paper, then tucked it into Gilbert's chest pocket. "If you're still trying to live after this, don't come back to my compound."

"I won't," Gilbert said.

He didn't plan to ever come back to Clay.

It was one of the easiest places he ever left. Back on the streets, Gilbert tracked Ludwig down to a moderately nice side of Berlin using the address... it could've been a trap and Gilbert would've still checked. Ludwig, according to the paper, lived at one of the good Western halves of Berlin, part of the city which Gilbert himself wasn't fortunate enough to do anything other than lurk around. It was strange to him how the Western half of the city glowed cold and the fresh concrete was smoother. Most of this side of Berlin was new... the allied Americans and British had kept enough funds to rebuild what they'd destroyed, unlike the Russians.

Gilbert broke into Ludwig's house.

There was one locked main door straight off the busy street... two flights of communal stairs up and another locked door into Ludwig's space.

Gilbert had too easy a time picking his way in. Getting into business that wasn't his own was his specialty.

The door creaked open and Gilbert treated himself as if he already belonged. He did belong.

He didn't belong anywhere else.

Every other place repelled him, he fit nowhere, everywhere he went he didn't want to be but Here. Part of nothing tomorrow, his story moribund.

Gilbert smiled when he closed the door behind him.

Nothing, and so much, changed. He sighed, a sense of stress melted off his shoulders— he'd not realised the weight, or tension, until it left.

Home?

He brushed his fingers against alphabetical shelves, perfect placed frames, leather folders of papers and documents.

The only light came from the window, grey on each inlaid title. Silver names of philosophers, architects, mathematicians fell under his trailing finger... Ludwig's interests were unchanging. They fascinated Gilbert anew even though he'd heard each one of them explained a million times. He missed hearing, he wanted to hear each explanation again— nothing to do with anything— Gilbert only wanted to care about what Ludwig cared about.

He left the books, unwilling to learn them until Ludwig could be here.

Ludwig's kitchen was closest to the door. Gilbert inspected the two loafs of fresh bread, the single block of cheese, and the three rohwursts stacked neatly in three separate cabinets.

He wondered where on earth the beer was.

It was very very important that his little brother stock up on beer.

Gilbert took the second best thing available and cut himself a chunk of cheese to eat.

Ludwig wouldn't mind.

Gilbert would get him more when he had finances.

Next he looked for a place to sleep. There were four rooms... ish. A kitchen attached to a living space, and two off-shoots. Gilbert turned right first and found only one, small, neatly military-style folded bed tucked away in the room. Ludwig kept a minimalist style.

Gilbert crossed his arms and stood in the centre of the room. The only object of interest was a red electric guitar, propped up into the corner against the wall. A nightstand next to that, and a small wardrobe in the opposite corner. Like the living room, it was small, clean, and very Ludwig-like.

Except for the guitar.

He picked it up to check it out, interested in this new thing— he didn't have enough motive to mess with it yet.

Then he turned it over.

A small, familiarly handwritten letter was taped onto the back.

England's handwriting. Gilbert stared at the note.

The paper rolled under his fingertips.

Gilbert put the guitar down, gently, left, and took a wavering breath.

He shrugged stiffly. He could... sleep on the couch... probably. That would do for now; Gilbert could sleep anywhere; the past fifty years made a couch look like kingship— certainly an upgrade from sleeping in a bathtub or a biting prison floor.

Gingerly, he picked a place to stand by the window, watching people walking unaware below.

He stared— he thought— he rubbed his forehead— and then turned away in a vacant trance of uncertainty.

He made his way to the final room. He curved the last handle down, pushed the only closed door in, and fell away as he explored an unfamiliar home.

Shadows blanketed the room, unlike the rooms before, thick curtains blocking all but a small sliver of window which ushered in a white hue of sunlight colouring the desk. Pale books and papers lay in the beam, quiet as the dead recorded on the pages.

The black Nazi SS insignia lay pressed into a book full of hand written number strings... many different people's handwriting composed each.

Names... reports of names... thick, heavy files of numbers all correlated to names.

Being the only creature left breathing disturbed him, just the thought that other persons were supposed to be breathing alongside him, across from him, but he could only hear silence sent a soft tremor through his nerves.

Gilbert's heart chilled.

A silver pen sat next to the open inkwell leaving black circles stained into the pages.

Gilbert picked the pen up with mechanical impulse.

The nib was uncleaned, with ink dried along the breather. He could almost imagine the tired calloused fingers wiping the ink away without a cloth, numb from the task before him.

Paranoia. It would entrap his mind forever, driving his fight or flight into action. Somehow the energy to do either failed him. His mind stayed blank, waiting for something else to follow.

He began to wonder why he left the GDR. He'd gotten himself dragged along with them, part of him remained with them, the dead were part of him.

A sting of nervous energy heightened his senses, finally triggering something in him desperately to move, making his every breath sound unbearably sharp. Keeping his hand outstretched, he made his way back from the room with small hesitant steps.

Gilbert sat on the couch the rest of the hour.

Until a metal clicking sound came from the entryway.

Gilbert slowly looked.

He heard the key slide into the lock. The shifting lock gave way. He heard a shuffling behind the crack in the door.

A figure entered, blond, familiar.

Gilbert had nothing to say, he wanted to watch, he didn't want to participate himself. He should've been a photograph on the wall, not a man of flesh. He should have been preserved in chemical ink and pinned on a mantle. He should've been made immortal through his vanishing, remembered always as he was, not how the accusations wanted him to be remembered. Preserved in a photo, continuing onward like a fly in amber; unchanging, the quality of a fondly remembered but dead thing. He would then become standard, few would think of his living-ness after a year, or two, or three; a photograph was hopeless to put fully together again without experiencing the unrepeatable minute; anyone who looked could recreate Prussia in their imagination if they'd been there. How he used to be... only how he should have been.

Ludwig snapped to a halt, stumbling in what appeared was shock. His familiar blue eyes locked on him under a fraction of a second and he stared.

He swallowed.

He'd been spotted.

"Hey," Gilbert said, lamely.

There was another long pause.

Then Ludwig said, "I have to report you now."

Gilbert stared back.

Those... were his first words?

'I have to report you?'

He was thinking about his threat of reporting him?

Gilbert couldn't stop a chuckle from escaping, though he tried his best not to chuckle at Ludwig. Getting reported was important to Ludwig. Reports were a big deal to him, they could get someone in serious trouble. Gilbert had been subject to so much worse than reports, trouble was silly now.

"Sorry," he said, "go ahead. Report me. Tell England first."

Ludwig straightened, still miffed.

"How did you find this place?"

"I followed the pull of brotherly love and affection."

"Prus- Gilbert. Gilbert, this is a security breach-"

"Second time I've heard that today, neither time stopped me."

"Where else have you been-?! No, no. I can't do this... I... you were dead, you- you were not who I thought-"

"Who did you think I was?"

"The things you did-"

"England lied-"

"And you're back as a communist-"

"I'm sorry."

Ludwig paused. There was too much there... for him, for everyone else, lies screwed everything up— truth got shrouded in a cloak of unknowns during war— Gilbert couldn't fix it. In a lack of illumination, other methods had to do: guesswork ruled the world he occupied. Guesswork, and trust. Gilbert forfeited trust to England, and then absence was banished. Absence couldn't sustain itself on presence. Ludwig trusted Arthur, not Gilbert.

He began to think in nameless senses. He discovered the absence of complex thinking had comforted him. He found that he missed not thinking deeper than a surface emotion.

A single string of words fettered together in his mind.

Did it matter?

"Can you forgive me?" Gilbert asked.

It was a morbid question, he thought he didn't want the answer.

"Don't ask me to forgive you. Don't ask that, don't say it-"

"Why?"

"Because you know I will!" Ludwig snapped, "no matter what you've done. And what does it say about me, forgiving that?"

Gilbert looked away—he shouldn't have asked, his heart churned. It meant Gilbert never had to gain his trust, that Arthur could keep it, though Gilbert didn't want that. Ludwig might never believe him, no matter what he said to contradict England. They could live together, side by side, Ludwig thinking him a liar, Ludwig would suffer that.

"I'm going to live with this stain on me for the rest of my life..." he murmured under his breath.

"So why'd you do it?! If you knew that, why?”

Gilbert didn't have to think twice before answering.

"I did it so you wouldn't have to."

"No, I would have never done what you did, I wouldn't have done it. I wouldn't do it." His head shook.

Some people never got the chance to know if they would, or wouldn't commit atrocities when asked. One could spend their whole life devising what they'd do when and where... only to conclude the sole way to test the merit of their actions was to live through it. It took so much willpower to stare your leader in eyes, feel his breath on your face, to stare across your entire cheering population, and to say no when every smiling, thrilled, fanatic voice said yes. It took so much willpower to chose to be outcast, dejected, after people joked, laughed along with you, saying all was well, when the whole of society had softened the pill, soothing, 'this, this isn't so bad. Put your feet in. This, this is morally correct, this is okay, this isn't twisted. Put your whole head in. You who resist are the one who is twisted, you who hold out are holding onto dangerous ideas. You who resist are a danger to society; for years and years and years. Give yourself to us. It took too much willpower not to slip an inch, to continually watch society fall further, and further, down a safe and steady decline, and by remaining the same, estrange yourself.

Most humans couldn't do it. How could a country stand a chance?

"I know you would've never done it," Gilbert said, hollowly.

"So why did you do it instead of me? If I wouldn't-"

"Maybe I had no choice. Maybe I wanted to give up... maybe, secretly, there was part of me okay with death."

"Get out of my house, please... I'm not ready for this... please get out."

"No."

"Gilbert."

"I didn't do what I've been accused of doing, but I can take the blame, always. I have to live and take the blame. Someone has to."

"Gilbert, get out."

"No. I'm not leaving. I'm sorry. It's never been only about my wanting to be home. It's been about my responsibility to be here for you, even when you don't want it. That's my job."

He could never be so lucky again.

The fingers, feet, form, clumping together in spite of his strings of a dead and dying culture, people, language, they all might melt off the face of the earth, and it wouldn't matter. Gilbert wasn't a shadow. Gilbert had a purpose.

"Don't make me forgive you..."

"I'm sorry. You're more important, I won't leave."