Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He stares at me with a type of pity. I am not so sure how to explain his looks. There doesn't seem to be much happening behind his eyes, so I cannot be so sure that he even means to be looking at me. I continue to watch as his eyes widen. They flinch lightly whenever a speck of snow or dirt falls atop them. Kat and I, two soldiers sitting in mud mixed with blood more than water while wearing shabby coats and saying nothing to each other. I wonder what it is he is thinking about. I know it is not me, and I know I should not think of him. We haven't a single thought in common. It is more of a chance of him thinking of his wife rather than me. I cannot blame him. If there were one person, apart from my mother or my sister, at home with a heart full of worry for me, I would spend all my time with them as my only thought, not a minute spark of life. 

His cheeks and ears grow red, the weather has not been kind to anyone here. He shudders, bringing his hands up, cupping his mouth and breathing heavily into them. His head falls, his cap nearly coming down with it. He sighs. It almost looks like he is about to cry. I now begin to slightly understand the pity in his eyes before: he is pitying himself rather than me and everyone around us. 

"Kat?" I ask.

He flinches at my words. "I am alright, Paul. As much as I can be." He seemed to have already known what I was about to ask. I don't entirely believe him. A man does not blank out for minutes in what is nearly a catatonic seizure while looking as though he has just witnessed the murder of his family when he is alright. There is something in his mind bothering him and knowing that hurts me.

"Are you entirely sure?"

"Yes, are you?" I still do not believe him, but I don't want to pester him any longer. If he is not okay, then so be it. He does not owe me an explanation as to why, and I am in no position to even try to soothe him. I do have to admit, I am worried. Even if I have spent the last weeks by his side watching as men become nothing more than mounds of flesh or hearing them scream in agony as they suffer what can only be described as a sensation worse than death before their death, and I have not once seen him like this. 

He looks at me confused, wondering why I haven't responded. "I'm cold, Kat."

"Well Paul," he laughs with a fatherly charm he has familiarized me with. "We are rather lucky it is not raining. That is the one thing we are lucky for. Shall I offer you my coat?" I shake my head, everything has dragged on this long, so I might as well work on getting used to the weather. 

I look down at my nails. Dirt has filled the crevices underneath them. Tjaden has told me it does no good to use our knives to try and clean them. I only risk harming myself when I do it, so I'd rather just not. I've watched him use his knife a few times. He is much more experienced than I am though, so I'll continue to follow the advice he has given me.

We are sitting alone, I often follow him off when we are out of the trenches and he has never seemed to mind. We often vanish together into the barracks in the night and sit just like we are now. The silence between us grows. I can no longer hear him as he breathes. The woods are growing quieter as the sun sets. Some animals, some foxes run past us to try and make it back to their burrows. I feel like I envy them. I miss my home dearly. There are so many things I miss, so many people. I can hardly think of the reason I originally came here. I wanted to, but I can't remember why. Part of it was Ludwig and the others convincing me I should come. We all know how that turned out. 

"Kat?" He looks towards me as I wonder whether I should really tell him. "I miss Ludwig."

"I know Paul. You can't blame yourself for what happened to him. You had no control over it. Normally, this is where I would advise you to try and not make many friends here since they will not last as long as you'd hoped, but with our sitting here, it seems you have already failed at that task."

"I never said I thought I was at fault."

"That is something you do not need to say for me to know."

I pause, waiting for him to look back at me, but he never does.

Stanislaus Katczinsky, a man who nearly towers over me despite our small difference in height. I never once asked his age, nor for anything more about him apart from the name marked on his dog tag. He is the more experienced veteran, being here since the beginning of the war with Tjaden. If I ever had to guess, I'd assume he is many years younger than he truly is. Within the long month, I've been here, my hair has already started to grey, and bags have grown underneath my eyes. I no longer look like the teenager I came here as. I cannot begin to imagine what would happen to me if I had been here for nearly three years. Kat and TJaden are no longer the young men they came here as. We are frail, we are sick, we are cold. Most of all, we are pawns at best. No longer men, no longer boys. I don't know if I could continue this, but if I desert, I'll be killed. I cannot leave Kat. 

"Will I be alright, Kat?" The juvenile nature of my question hurts me. Kat, a veteran, a grown man who has seen more misery than I ever will, does not deserve to be asked questions like this. 

"No," he sounds defeated. And I can't help but regret my question. "No, I cannot promise that you will be, but I can promise that you won't be. I don't think anyone here is ever completely okay. But that's just how things are, and we can't do a single thing about it. I also cannot promise that you will survive. I can't promise you that I'll always be here or that Tjaden will, or Kropp or Muller. We are all just trying not to be killed. Sometimes we are. That's all." He looks toward me, pitying me. I don't want him to. I want to embrace him. I want him to hold me. I know there will be nothing to ever bring me back to the peace and innocence I had before I came to this wretched place, but I know being in his arms will at least partially make me feel like that for a few moments. My head will be rested on his chest while he tells me that, while everything may not always be alright, and we may not always be together, we are right now, and so, that is all that matters. "Paul," he tells me again. "It-its a bit too quiet I'm afraid." He stands and reaches a hand out towards me, "we should get going. It's too quiet. I'm afraid it might be bad in the morning."I don't reach for his hand. The idea of holding his hand does excite me, but knowing where he is about to lead me scares me. He steps toward me, raising my chin to face him with his index finger and his thumb, and looks at me with no real emotion. "Paul, please, I'll be with you through the night and everything after for as long as I can. Okay?"

I thought for a moment about his words. He has nothing to promise. And I'm not sure if there is anything to promise. I took hold of his hand. It felt rough with bruises and blisters covering the surface and one or two open cuts he hasn't seemed to notice yet. The feeling of it runs a certain feeling through me. I stand, and he lets go of my hand, and I unwillingly groan from the disappointment. We smile at each other.

"I'm here, Paul."

Chapter Text

Kat sits telling a joke and smoking a cigarette. Tjaden and Kropp are listening to him a bit too closely, obviously distracted from the potatoes they are meant to be peeling, leaving bits of skin on them all while taking too much off of the potatoes. Franz, only partially listening in, brushes his coat while completely lost in his own mind. It's one of the few occasions why they aren't holed up in the middle of a rat-infested trench, and Kat, being the partially unwilling leader of the group, is almost always the one to tell them stories or lengthy jokes so they can forget about their current conditions for even a short amount of time. Even if he isn't the oldest of them, he definitely has the most to tell.

"Next morning, Tjaden springs into school and says to everybody," he says. "'Please forgive me. My father wasn't the leader of Nazareth. My father was last seen with Nadja Roth.'" The group falls into hysterics. "Brilliant." 

The group laughs until Paul hears, and sees, something off, some hundred metres away. "Look," he says, pointing the men's attention towards three French women walking next to a horse-driven wagon. 

"Mhm?"

Franz and Kropp are the ones who pay the most attention to them. Franz reacts by putting his brush down, taking short steps and searching his pockets for his comb, then working to make his nearly ginger blond hair look a bit more in order. The women can be heard laughing and speaking amongst themselves but they are too far away for any real words to be made out. Kropp blindly walks onto the field and yells out to them in French while waving his heavily bandaged hand toward them, "Hé! Bonjour!" He laughs. 

Paul joins in yelling out, quieter than Kropp, "Come here!" He doesn't expect a reaction, but after being kept separate from the world for so long and this being his first interaction with strange new people, he needed to say something to them, even if it was only two words. Neither Tjaden nor Kat says anything to the women. Unlike his young friends, Kat has someone waiting for him to come home. Tjaden just doesn't bother with the seemingly pointless catcalls. 

Kropp and Franz decide to go in an entirely different direction. "Baguette fraîche! Pour Vous! L'amour de la saucisse de foie! Gros bisous!" They all laugh, Kat not as much as the others but it's quite obvious he is enjoying watching the younger men act like fools. The three women yell something back. In response, Franz puts on his cap, places his coat over his folded arm, and begins to walk toward them, looking back at Kropp before running toward the three women. "Franz, what are you doing?" Kropp asks him. The other three men stare at him into the field, each with a different expression. Tjaden, along with Kropp, looks at him with a type of envy. Paul is more confused, and Kat looked slightly disappointed. He continues softly, hardly even audible, "Take me with you."

"Come on!" Franz laughs at him. 

"I'd go over," Kropp says directly to Tjaden, who crossed his arms and still laughing at the nearly ginger boy. "But he's making a fool of himself. "Oh, la la! Tu es très belle mon amour!" They all laugh, including some soldiers who joined in on the watch party. Franz is no longer looking towards them. He is trying to speak to the women with his mediocre French skills, managing to make them laugh with how he twirled his coat. "Franz! The dark-haired beauty is for me!" Kropp continued to laugh and looked back to see the amusement of the men standing and sitting behind him. They all watched as Franz picked up a back-sack one of the women was carrying and slung it over his shoulder. He then grabbed a leading stick from another and began to walk, leading the three women forward. Kropp looked back confused, the others continued with their work. "Franz?"

"Au revoir! Au revoir mes amis!" He yelled as he walked with the women back to their cottage, listening to them speak about things he cannot understand. From the little he could make out, he learned the women were three sisters living on a farm some kilometres away from the German soldier's camps. 

They were each certainly interested in him- for the majority of the war, they have been living entirely alone, and they haven't exactly been around men as much as they had been before. They spoke to him, speaking in a combination of broken English and small snippets of German to try and get him to give a response. He would smile at them, taking in their beauty, and paying extra attention to one of them specifically. The eldest of the women, dressed in dark shades of blue, offered him food: small pieces of bread and sausage. Franz was hesitant to take it. He'd learned from older soldiers after they'd come back from leave that almost every country involved in the war had been struggling financially and struggling to feed their citizens just as much as they were the troops. So even if he was practically starving, there was a part of him saying it was wrong to take their food knowing they themselves aren't living in the best conditions. Eventually, he did. The four of them sat at a dining table staring at each other whilst saying nothing. The conditions of their farmhouse were definitely much different and better than the soldier's brothels. One of the women smiled at Franz continuously. He took slight notice of her.

She was the one he had taken the leading stick from. She looked to be younger than the others, around the same age as Franz so twenty-one at most. She was dressed in a light beige sweater that was just a bit too tight for her. The sweater put a perfect emphasis on her curves and her chest specifically. The combination of it with a greying skirt cinched at the waist showed off a slight buxom body type. She had curly dark hair she kept in a tight bun. There were some strands of hair loose and frames her round and pale face. Franz tried to not pay too much attention to her features, primarily her chest and how her sweater makes them ever-increasingly obvious. She took notice and blushed.

The sun began to set and the two older women left Franz and the voluptuous women in the dining room. They giggled slightly as they walked off to their bedroom. Franz and she continued to sit in silence, looking out the window to see the wind-blowing tree branches in the distance and the sun disappearing from their view, allowing the reflected moonlight to light the fields and sunlight that surrounded the farm.

"Voulez-vous venir avec moi?" She asked. Franz nods without knowing entirely what he was agreeing to, but she smiled and took his hand, stood up and began to walk him to a bedroom. There was a single candle lit as the farmhouse, much like several others in the area hadn't yet been equipped with electricity, and as Franz stayed standing by the door, she used it to light various others in the room. She then sat on her bed and looked at Franz, expecting him to sit next to her. And he did. "Bonjour," she said as he sat down.

"Bonjour," he responded.  "Quoi," he paused, trying to remember the right translations of what he wanted to say. "Votre nom?"

She smiled, "Eloise."

"Eloise," he repeated, reaching for her hand and holding it to his cheek. "Je suis Franz."

"Franz," she laughed. "Franz! Franz!" She smiled brightly at him and moved closer to him, caressing his cheek. She grabbed his cap and put it on.

She leaned in closer to him, softly kissed him, and then began to hug him. Franz wasn't entirely sure how to react. He removed his hand from hers but it didn't matter because she kept it resting on his face, and he cupped hers and moving the other down her side. They were both unsure of how they were supposed to do this. Franz lightly pulled her face close to his, hesitantly closing his eyes as his lips slowly moved close to hers. They kissed. It was soft and it didn't last very long. Right after Eloise pulled away, she looked into Franz's eyes, moving her hand from his cheek down to his chest and down to his hips. Franz stopped her. Instead, he took hold of her waist and leaned into her, gently pushing her down onto her back as he rested on top of her. Eloise reacted with a small, almost silent, but still entirely excited, squeak which made Franz chuckle. He kissed her again. This time it lasted much longer. One of his hands was resting on her hip, the other moving down her leg, raising and wrapping it around his hips. Her hands remained on his face, holding him close to make sure neither of them could pull away from their kiss. 

Franz felt a certain feeling he wasn't entirely unfamiliar with and, just like before, was unsure of what to do. Eloise, however, noticed this and once again moved one of her hands back down to his lower waist and worked to undo his trousers. This is where Franz realized and became aware of what was about to happen. He gasped when he felt the palm of her hand hardly even touch him through the fabric. He sat up, slowly undoing the buttons on his trousers while nervously looking at her. He didn't pull them down, he just left them undid with himself only slightly exposed to her. He hiked up her skirt and moved his hands up her thighs and began to pull down a couple of layers of undergarments she was wearing. He only moved them down enough of a distance so that when he moved back to rest on top of her, they were both fully exposed to each other. They did just that. When he pressed into her, they both gasped. His hands remained on her hips, and her hands remained on his face, keeping him close. They both moved partially in sync, as well as making noise partially in sync. They hadn't done much previous to this, so some of the quiet noises coming from Eloise were partial winces of pain combined with pleasure. The noises Franz was making were entirely pleasure. 

They both knew they couldn't make much noise- even if the other inhabitants of the house could have guessed what they were about to do when they were left alone, it would still be weird if they were loud enough for others to hear them. Eloise closed her eyes and covered her mouth with one of her hands. As much as Franz wanted to hear her, completely hear her, he knew he shouldn't stop her and for various reasons, he couldn't. He continued to push himself into her, trying not to go too hard so the already creaking bed wouldn't make any more noise. He leaned into her, placing soft and small kisses along her jawline, paying close attention to the sound of gasps and giggling and soft moans to make sure he won't forget about them. One of his hands moved away from her skit, going up her side and finally landing near her chest. He kept it there for a few short seconds before moving to cup her breast. She moaned as he did this, pulling his head closer to hers and kissing his neck. Franz groaned and was beginning to struggle to keep his composure, still gently thrusting into her but much less steady than before. 

After a few minutes, both of their faces were buried in the other's shoulder. Franz then grunted and gasped as he felt something he wasn't at all familiar with. He kept moving until he heard and felt Eloise go through a similar feeling and hearing her moans soften and quiet. He pulled out of her, redoing his trousers before lowering her skirt and moving back to allow her space to redress. She sat up and moved to rest on the bed's headboard. Franz stood up and moved to kneel in front of her.

"I know you can't exactly understand anything I've been saying," he reached out to wrap his arm around her neck. "But I think this is the safest I've felt in the longest time, and I know I won't forget about you. I'm not sure of what you know about what happens there, but. I don't know. I don't know what to say to you. You're absolutely beautiful. And I never want to forget you, or this. I don't understand anything your eyes are saying. I don't think I want to know what they are saying. Because if I do, then I might not be happy about this anymore. I hope you do not forget me, because I will not forget you. " His free hand grabbed one of hers. He softly kissed it. "I'll come back when this is over you know. Do you know what I'm saying?" Eloise looked at him with an unknowing smile. "I- god how do I say it?" He stood and grabbed his cap from the space on the bed next to her and put it on. "Je reviendrai vers vous. I will." She smiled at him and nodded. "Yes?"

She paused for a moment, thinking about what it is Franz is telling her. "Oui!"

"I have to leave, I'll be back when I can." He began to walk away from her when she called to him.

"Franz." He turned back to see her rummaging through the drawer of a bedside table and taking out a small scarf with floral patterns embroidered on it. She handed it to Franz and smiled. He smiled back. "Je te verrai prochainement" She touches his hair, "Doux et gingembre et blond."

"Au Revoir, Eloise." He tied the scarf around his neck. 

He left the house in a hurry,  running through fields to make it back to basecamp before it gets too late, or too early. What he did could be considered desertion and the penalty for that, as he has learned, is, well, death. He snuck back into the building where the others were already asleep and walked slowly to his bunk next to Paul. He took off his coat and had just sat down when he noticed Paul, nearly completely awake, looking at him. 

"Franz?"

"Yes?"

"Tomorrow, we're up at six o'clock. To look for some children."

"What happened?"

Paul sighed, "They should have arrived today. A whole company." He smiled. "How was it?" It wasn't that he was envious, even when watching the women pass, he didn't exactly want to go off with them. 

"Good."

"Yeah?"

"Yes," Franz smirked. "Here." He took off the scarf and smelled it before handing it to Paul. "Have a smell."

Paul slowly moved it closer to his nose. The scent of it made him smile and laugh. He and Franz smiled widely. "What's her name?"

"Eloise." He spoke proudly. 

"Eloise," Paul whispered. 

"She had skin as white as milk," he looked down. "Breasts," he laughed. 

"Hey," Kropp chimed in. "I want to smell it too." Paul handed the scarf to him. Tjaden woke up and watched as Kropp smelled it.

"Kropp," Franz said. "Let me have it."

"Here," Kropp said while giving it to Tjaden.

"Oh my," Tjaden practically moaned. 

Franz insisted, "Give it to me."

But Tjaden continued, "A girl like that never has dirt under her nails."

"No," Kropp whispered while looking at Franz.

"At worst, some sand from the seashore."

"TJade, come pass it here."

"I bet she bathes twice a day."

Paul and Kropp laughed while Franz tried to quietly run over to Tjaden to get the scarf back. 

"Tjaden, give it back to me!" There was a soft fight for it before Franz laid back in his bed and fell asleep. He slept with it tied to his neck.

Chapter Text

The war had been passing for just over a year. All the people who said it would end in a few short months and all the proud soldiers would be home by Christmas had all gone silent. On occasion, you found yourself asking why they would ever say things like that. They were dooming the brave men out fighting the war by talking of such things. Though, you have found yourself listening now much more than before. Your husband, a man you have always adored- a tall man with a horrid smoking habit and blonde hair that often succeeds in hiding the grey and white hair that has plagued him all too early- is set to be shipped off not too long from now. You were both uneasy about it. Then people in the town have spoken all about the tragedies of it. The men, many of whom were only boys when they first went off, on leave tell anyone who is willing to hear about the rats they have to beat off themselves each night, or how they can hardly even sleep during the night because of the noise of the French slowly creeping forward and the shells hitting every time they turn to avoid another. Though, there are still many who have refused to accept those truths. Typically the older men, the ones who are not of age to fight, argue that the ones coming back- often without a limb or seriously hurt in another way- are overreacting and are forgetting what war is truly about; making the Fatherland and God as a whole proud. Kat was not one of those men. He dreaded the day he would be called just as much as the neighbourhood boys looked forward to it. 

And while that day came long after it was expected, the pain from it was much less the same. 

You and Kat were sitting quietly at a dinner table. Neither of you was eating. There was food sitting in front of you both, and while you both think of it as a sin to not each in such a time, neither of you could even stomach the idea of even drinking something at a time like this. For the past few minutes, or more accurately hours, you had been trying to hide the tears that haven't seemed to stop falling- or have any intention to. Kat looked at you, trying to find any kind of words to comfort you, but whenever he opened his mouth, nothing could come out. So he stayed quiet. You knew you were supposed to say something. You knew there were millions of things you could say, but your heart struggled to say even the simplest of things. So you said perhaps the simplest thing you could, knowing you dreaded the answer.

"When are you set to leave?" you ask.

"Just past 9 a.m. tomorrow. What time is it now?"

"Around 7 p.m."

"Well, that gives us plenty of hours to ourselves," he paused to look at you. "What would you like to do with that time."

"You are the dead man walking," you chuckle sadly. Kat doesn't give much of a reaction. "I feel like I should be asking you that."

"Why don't you ask me then?"

"What would you like to do?"

"You."

"I'm sorry?" You stumble over those two words. You were sure of what Kat intended, but you didn't expect it, so you weren't sure how to react.

He looks at you sadly and speaks slowly, "We are both completely aware that I may not even," he paused and swallowed his breath, "come back from the war,"

"Please do not speak like that," you interjected, rushing your words.

Kat continued slowly. "We both have to accept that as fact. We also have to accept that, even if I do make it back, neither of us knows how long the war could last. It could be a few weeks, but we both know very well that it is likely to last for years. And I do not want to leave, possibly to my almost certain death, without laying with my wife one more time. The thought of lying with another is not exactly my concern here- the trouble comes from not being able to do so with my wife. That is what concerns me."

You looked down at your hands and picked at the dirt underneath your fingernails. "You know," you are almost whispering. "I never once thought I would be thrown into a situation like this."

Kat stood while wiping his ears. He had begun to cry softly too. He walked toward you and kneeled in front of you. He grabbed your hands and kissed them softly. You reached for his face, softly taking hold it him and pulling him closer to you. He gladly moved closer. Your thumbs rubbed along his cheeks, feeling the roughness of the stubble along his jawline. The softest sound escaped from behind his lips. Your hands stayed holding his face, keeping his lips a few centimetres away from yours. One of his hands let go of yours and began to move down your side, resting at your hip. You pulled him closer but still didn't let him kiss you. You could feel his breath against your neck. Your grasp on his face loosened, but he kept his place. Both of your breathing hardened as each of you waited for the other to do something- anything. Kat softly kissed you, and before you could do the same, he used his thumb and index finger to raise your chin as he moved his face closer to your neck, placing small and gentle kisses down and along your collarbones. 

You thought for a while that if things were to escalate any further, it would make the most sense to leave for your bedroom to continue. Though, you were loving him so much in this one moment that you didn't want to even risk stopping for a moment to do so.

He kissed your lips. You felt the softness of his lips and your heart began to rush. His lips were soft and warm and so many other things you could not even begin to explain. You kissed him back, unsure of what you were supposed to do next. On one hand, he is your husband, and it's not like you've never done this before, but for some reason, it feels different, and you are loving the feeling of it. On the other hand, you know that after you both fall asleep, he'll have to leave. So, while you don't want him to stop, you don't want him to continue. 

He pulled away from you, and you said nothing. You just waited to see what he was going to do. Once again, he grabbed your hands and stood. This time, however, he began to lead you to your bedroom. You followed, trying not to seem as desperate for his touch as you are. He said nothing as he led you to the bed, softly laying you down. He moved on top of you but didn't place the entirety of his waist on you. You kissed his neck and moved your legs so they were gently wrapping around his waist. He smiled sadly. You made no expression. His hands moved to grasp at the cinched waist of your skirt, pulling the loose fabric before working to take off your blouse. Your hands moved up his back from the inside of his shirt. Kat noticed your soft struggles to rid him of his clothes, so he laughed, to your slight protest, and got off you. He stood by the bed, staring as you calmly sat up and tried to cover your revealed breasts.

"There is no real need for you to do that," he said while unbuttoning his shirt and taking it off. He then worked his way out of his trousers, leaving the two of you wearing nothing but partially shameful undergarments. 

"That still does not mean I cannot attempt at modesty."

"I do not mean it like that." Kat kneeled in front of you. His hands moved up your thigh. You gasped at his touch. "I mean it in an 'I want to see you, the entirety of you before I have to leave,' kind of way."

He kissed the inner parts of your thighs, and you didn't know how to react. You breathed heavily and leaned back on the palms of your hands. Kat stood and sat next to you. You moved in closer to him to grab his face and kiss him while moving onto his lap. You were now facing him. He moved his hands down to your lower and slightly hinted to you to get up. So you did. You were resting on your knees instead of on top of him. Kat kept one of his hands gripped tightly on your hip and used the other to move both of your remaining clothes out of the way. He didn't take them off. He just moved them. You smiled when you heard small moans leaving his lips, and you quickly realized he had begun to touch himself. You moved back down. God, you loved the way he sounded. His moans were soft, but they were somehow still aggressive. His breathing sounded nearly laboured and like he was even struggling to breathe. You began to touch him. He gasped and smiled when he felt you. His eyes looked down at your hand moving slowly up and down. Your eyes remained looking at his slightly parted lips. Your smile grew (as did the pace of your hand) when he pulled you in closer to kiss your neck. 

He only pulled away to moan, "Oh~ god..."  He came onto your hand. You giggled as you moved your hand to your mouth to lick and suck his cum off of it. His eyes were fixated on your mouth. "I don't know if you're trying to torture or pleasure me."

"Is there really a big difference between the two?"

"Lord," he whispered. "Please just let me fuck you."

"Then tell me what to do."

"Lay on your back.

You did as you were told. However, this time he wasn't laying on top of you. Your legs were spread and cradled on his sides, but he was sitting on his knees while holding your legs in place. He pulled you closer to him. He positioned himself right in front of your opening and began to touch you. You squealed, partially because you weren't fully expecting him to touch you almost automatically. You gasped and covered your face with your hands when he inserted two fingers into you and began to slowly move them. He removed his fingers and leaned in closer to you. He inserted himself into you and you moaned. He quickly began to thrust into you and you could hardly control your moans when Kat began to rub his thumb against a certain part of you. His grip on your thighs grew tighter on your thighs. So tight in fact that he began to leave bruises against you. They hurt, though you didn't say anything about them. You knew you would be able to run your fingers against the red marks from his nails and remember the feeling of his dick quickly moving inside of you. Your moans and his groans began to sync together and they grew louder. You bit your hand to try and quiet the noises you were making, but Kat told you to move it so he can hear you. You began to sit up and bit and moved back onto Kats's lap. You moved up and down. Kat kissed your neck. 

You slowed down right as Kat came inside of you and right as you came on him. You didn't move. Kat continued to kiss your neck and left many, many marks on you. Just as a few more forget-me-nots. Kat leaned back and you stayed on top of him. You kissed his chin.

He began to stroke your hair.

"You better not die."

"I don't plan to."

"If you die," you looked into his eyes. "I'll kill you."

He kissed you again. "Please don't think like that. Please don't think of me as a dead man."

"I won't. But you know I love you, right? And you won't forget that."

"You know you'll be one of the only things on my mind. My only goal out there will be to stay alive so I can come back home for you. You know that."

Chapter Text

I used to think this war would mean something. I thought this would be something noble; a place where men could prove their bravery and devotion to their country- the fatherland. Now I cannot even come close to remembering why I ever thought that. I instead see it as it truly is: a senseless slaughter of innocent men. No, not even men. No one around me is men. They are boys. At least, they were. Before it all ruined us. All of this is just a crushing weight, and no matter how many men there are here, we will never be able to lift that weight. It will only crush us deeper.

I have seen things no person should ever have to witness. The gas attacks, the machine guns, the constant fear of not knowing if you'll wake up at night and the constant uncertainty of whether it is worth it to even stay alive. We have no other choice. It seems the mental toll has taken more effect than the physical toll. Everything around us has eaten its way through us. There is nothing left to any of us. Nothing left to me.

Maybe I am one of the lucky ones. As juvenile as it seems to sound. I cannot help but feel like I have some hope, and almost like I have even the slightest glimpse of light within all this darkness. For many of my comrades, they do not have any. Not even a flicker. 

However, I cannot lie to myself and say I could go back to the way my life was before. How could anyone? How could anyone just forget everything they have seen here? Everything they have heard? The sounds of grown men weeping and crying as they cough up their lungs and have their heads blown off while retaining even the smallest amount of conscience is not something easily forgotten. How could I go back to pretending everything is okay after seeing something like that? How can I just go about my life and forget their faces?

I wonder sometimes if this is just a nightmare. It seems like nothing I have lived through is real. But then I hear the sound of a grenade hitting the floor somewhere and the sound of soldiers screaming in response to it, and I realize that it is real. I won't ever wake up from this and realize it was all just a bad dream. I can't ever go home and stare at the picture frames full of butterflies my sister and I have caught in the past. They mean nothing now. 

I don't know what the future holds for me, or the world. I do know that nothing will ever be the same again. The war has changed everything around me, and everything about me. I just hope that one day this will end. It seems so juvenile to say. Maybe it's all just wishful thinking. Maybe this war was meant to happen. It was all just human nature. The never-ending cycles of destruction and violence were all meant to happen for reasons I cannot comprehend. I can't help but think that every time we seem to be making any progress, we are thrown back into an abyss. Some conflict is made up, and we are suddenly hundreds of years back from where we once were. I still have some hope, however. That is all I have now. And only because if I gave up on everything and all my ideas of peace, then what would be the point of everything? Why would I even bother with living if I know there is no true point in it? If it is all death and suffering, then why do I continue to live? I know all the others around me have had these exact thoughts. I know there are people who have seen the exact horrors as I have and have still managed to keep holding onto any kind of hope and peace. 

Maybe, when this is all over, there will be peace. And we will all be able to say we fought this war for a good reason. Everything that has happened to us may then have some meaning. I know it will never be easy. I know there are times when I feel like I might as well just die. I feel like I need to keep trying. Like I need to live for all my comrades who can't. I owe it to all my comrades who died trying to protect some unknown idea of nobility and duty. 

I hope we may be able to hold on to some true idea of peace. I hope that someday we will be able to live in a world where we look back on the death and violence the fatherland has been put through and think it led up to something good. I may not be able to live to see that future, but that does not mean that I will not fight for it. I need a reason to have hope and to continue living, so this will be it. I'll hold on to the small flicker of hope and pray it will do something. Part of me doubts God will listen, but there is always a chance. 

Because even after all this is over, it may mean something. The scars that have made a permanent home on me, my comrades, the fatherland, and the entire world will all have meant something. They will never leave us. And while the memories of trenches, the sounds of shells exploding, and the sight of bodies and dog tags piled up higher than I could have ever imagined will never stop haunting me, I have to keep moving. I feel like that is my only duty here. I may not know what I am fighting for, but I have an idea. And that idea is of a world where this won't ever happen again. Because if I give up now, then everyone who has died before me will have died in vain. And sometimes I wonder if I will ever be happy again and if I can ever forget the horrors of war and just enjoy the simple things in life, like looking at picture-framed butterflies and admiring their beauty, but then I think of all the people who never had the chance to be. I feel guilty for even thinking this. 

I think one day I will be able to live with this. I will never be able to forgive myself for taking the lives of people who could have easily been my friend, but maybe I may find a way to turn this into some sort of positive so it may have done something for the world. I have to keep fighting for the sake of everyone who will fight after me.

And now, I just sit and wait for my next order. The boys around me, I feel like they may have similar thoughts. I hope they do. There needs to be some reason for our fighting, and I hope they see that there is. 

Even now, I can see at least some symbols of hope. A butterfly. A white butterfly. It's not too far from me, and it is the only thing that has made me smile for the longest time. This is the hope I have dreamt of. This is the sign that all the deaths around me have not happened in vain and that something, something I cannot name, will come out of this. 

I will continue to walk with hope because I know it means something, to me at le-

Chapter Text

The letter was folded neatly and with precision-- he'd spent the past few days writing it. For some time, he wondered what the purpose of writing it was. Kat could read no better than a schoolboy. He would surely need someone to read it to him, and Paul was not so sure if he would have the strength to do that. He thought he might as well; the only thing promised here is death, and that, along with the contents of the letter, were things Paul could not convince himself of. 

It took him time to write the letter. He began it when first went off to leave. He found it filled his time and mind and replaced all the questions his father just seemingly had to ask him. The same could be said about his mother and sister; however, their questions were not about the war and were instead about him. Still, Paul could hardly even recite his name and feel it to be the truth. There was nothing for him to say to them. All he had was a group of dead friends and a man who was more of a father than he ever was. So he wrote the letter. He took his time, picking each word to make sure it was correct, not even caring if Kat could understand it. All that mattered to Paul is he managed to get his thoughts out of his head. Maybe it is a sin for him to think like this, but he does not care. Let it be a sin. To whom does it matter? Paul knows the only man fit to judge him is God, and he also knows his sins do not compare to God's. He has faced death a million times before. He has faced wrath a thousand times greater than whatever God can do to him, what does a measly sin matter? God is far too busy with the decayed, mangled, rat-feasted bodies of teenage boys to deal with a man proclaiming his love for another. Whatever may happen to him after death is nothing compared to what he had lived through within the past week alone. 

There was not much going on when Paul returned to the front. He walked into the trenches and found he could not recognize even a single face. He had only been gone for just less than two weeks and it seems the average age of the me-boys here has dropped by about five years. Upon seeing their faces, ones that looked back empty, without even a look of despair, Paul looked down and went to search for Kat. He almost found himself running and screaming to see if there were any superiors left. All the people around him hadn't even a clue who Kat was, so Paul continued to run. Some had attempted to ask him where he was off to, saying it looked as though he was running to avoid his death while knowing there is no way to as such here. 

Through the camps, in addition to trying to find Kat, Paul had tried to find anyone he could put a face to. On occasion, one would stop him physically and ask if he needed some rest or perhaps some water. Each time, without fail, Paul could not speak. The words were in his mind but they could not come out of him. They failed to reach him even as they were in complete grasp. Without even a single word, Paul was back to running. He must have run two or three kilometres before he found himself by the edge of some woods. He stopped and stared, knowing the only thing behind them were the farms of Frenchman who would gladly shoot down a German if they had the chance. Paul fumbled to reach for his breast pocket, taking the letter he had written and reading it over.

"Paul?" He heard a voice say.

He folded the paper back and turned toward the voice, "Kat!" He exclaimed as he saw the older man with greying blond hair and a moustache that fit perfectly on his top lip standing just some meters away from him. Paul could not contain his excitement from seeing him, so he ran to him only stopping himself just before he wrapped his arms around Kat. "Kat," he said once more.

"Now my friend, why did you stop yourself?" Kat pulled in Paul's arm, pulling him into a deep hug. Paul buried his face his Kat's shoulder and breathed deeply just to smell him. Kat placed one of his hands on the back of Paul's head in the same way a father would. Kat held Paul like a son, and Paul held Kat like a lover. "Oh, Paul. Fourteen days is much too long. Even a day would be," Kat loosened bis grip, and so did Paul.

"I don't know how long I was running, Kat. I was so afraid that no matter how much I did, I would never see you again."

"Oh, Paul. You know you don't have to worry about that."

"Well, what were you doing out here anyway?" The two began to walk back to the camps and the trenches.

"The younger recruits haven't gotten used to hunger yet, so I thought I might as well find them something to eat. I would have caught a fox if I could, but they looked so calm, and I couldn't bring myself to do it."

"The recruits," Paul whispered. "None of them look familiar. I don't know why."

"They aren't familiar Paul."

"What about Behm? I'm sure he may be somewhere at camp. I have many things to tell him you know." He was beginning to convince himself of something he knew wasn't true. 

"You know Behm isn't here anymore Paul. No one is."

"Kat," he reached into his breast pocket once more and held the letter tightly between his fingers. He grabbed Kat's hand and placed the folded piece of paper in it. 

"Paul?"

"When I was on leave, I was so afraid I wouldn't ever see you again."

"Paul."

"So I wrote this letter, you see? It says everything I would want to say to you "

"Stop it, Paul."

"I know you cannot read it, but it brought me calmness knowing you would even have it." He began to laugh to try and cover the tears forming underneath his eyes. "But then I thought to myself, 'what if I die before I can even deliver it?' and that is why I was so panicked when I was running. I was becoming afraid that that thought would become true. But now it hasn't, and yet, I still don't know what to think."

"Paul, you need to stop."

"Do you ever think about what life would be after this?"

"After the war?" Kat tried to divert the conversation. "I try not to. It only makes it harder to bear the present."

"I can't help but wonder if things will ever go back to how they were, but I can't manage to imagine life without all of this. I don't even know what to call it. I never had to worry about being shot right when I wake up and being gassed when I try to sleep before I came out here. I never had to worry about anything, really." Paul wiped his tears.

"What does any of that matter? I am here with you right now, aren't I? That is what you need to think about. Not my death, of your death, or anyone else's death. I am here right now, and that is all that needs to occupy your mind. Do you understand? We cannot go back to whatever it is you were thinking about. No one can. All we need to do is survive. And just because we don't have Franz or Albert or anyone else doesn't mean we can't survive and make the best of what we have here. Do you understand?"

"Everything seems so helpless."

"I know, Paul. I know. We can't give up now, however. What good would that do anyone?"

"I wish we could bring back some normalcy."

"You know we cannot control what is happening to us. All we can do is control whether or not we try to live."

"But I feel so powerless."

"And there's not much you can do to help that. Paul, I need you to listen to me very clearly: we have to focus on what we can do, not what we can't. We can keep each other alive, we can fight for what's right, and we can hold on to our humanity in the face of all this brutality."

Paul nodded. "And what now?"

"We will live through this. I will introduce you to your wife, and you will introduce me to your father. I'm sure you can find yourself a girl rather easily when this is all over. I'm sure many have already had an interest in you."

"Problems never arrive from whether or not they have interest in me, it is if I have interest in them."

"Still," Kat paused. "If there is a future you want to think of, think of that one." Paul looked down. "If it gives you peace of mind, I will hold onto the letter until we both have the time for you to read it to me, okay? For now, we just need to walk back to camp and see what our assignments are. Okay?" Paul nodded.

"May I say one last thing?"

"I can't seem to think of a reason why you can't."

"My first day on leave, I spoke to my father, and I spoke all of this. Do you want to know what he told me? He told me I am stronger than I think. I know what response you could come up with, Kat, and I want you to know I do not want a response. My father told me he loved me. I wish that was enough. I wish love could fix everything, but it can't, Kat. It won't bring back anyone. It can't undo anything. And I couldn't even bring myself to respond to my father. I just looked at him, and I wished he could only see what I have to face. He thinks it's sweet and honourable to die for your country, but it's painful. It really is Kat. All of this is. Even just living."

Kat didn't respond. He looked at Paul, and then he continued walking. After just a few minutes, Paul began to speak again. The topics changed, instead, he moved to talk about anything else. He told Kat of his sister and how they would collect butterflies in their youth. He strayed away from speaking about how he wished he could feel that kind of excitement and happiness again. Paul's excitement seemed almost fake, but Kat didn't say anything about it. He was only glad Paul had left his previous thoughts behind. For some time, he thoughts to ask what the letter contained but feared it may bring back the inner ideas Kat did not want to hear and did not want Paul to feel. The pair walked with Paul doing most of the speaking. He mostly criticized his father and all the questions he had asked, and he tried not to be too deprecating, knowing not even Kat could come up with a response for it. Kat simply listened. He knew all the words Paul had been told by his father meant nothing. There was nothing noble about death, and there is nothing prideful about it either. Kat knew Paul did not need someone to validate his feelings or held in continuing to bash the words of another. Instead, he knew the only thing Paul needed in this one moment was someone who listen to him and say nothing more. 

At one point, a shell was dropped not too far from them. A small piece of it hit Kat in his shin. Now unable to walk, Paul began to carry him and continued to speak. Some minutes later, another shell. Paul felt nothing. Assuming neither did Kat, he continued, thinking Kat only decided against speaking to save his energy.  At some point, he noticed the failure to respond and questioned it, but he summed it up to Kat being unconscious. He thought not much of it. People in this area become unconscious for many reasons and wake up for many more.

They reached the camp and the trenches and walked some more meters to the field hospital where Paul gently laid Kat onto s bed and called for a doctor. The doctor came and sat by Kat, hardly felt his pulse, and then checked his pupils.

"You could have saved yourself the trip," the doctor said. "He is already dead." The doctor stood and began to walk away.

"No," Paul chuckled. "He is unconscious. I was just speaking to him."

The doctor looked at Paul and then back at Kat. "I know what I am doing. That man is dead. Is he a father of yours?"

"No, but-"

"Well, his identification tag will give us what we need." The doctor walked away.

"I was just speaking to him," Paul repeated the statement three times before he kneeled by Kat. He moved his hands gently to feel his face, finding it still retained some amount of warmness. He looked at Kat's body and saw his right fist was still clenched around something. He hesitated to wonder if it was worth the pain of having to read the letter. He knew it was the letter. Paul was speaking to him not too many minutes ago, it was the last thing they ever spoke about. That and the possibility of life after everything. And now he was dead. What else was there for Paul to do? He told Kat he would read the letter. He might as well do that. He knows he will never be able to respond to it, but at least it would mean something to Paul. He took the letter and with trembling hands, he gently unfolded it. 

He began to read, 

"Kat,

It has been many months since we first met and it is nearly hard to believe. So much has happened, and now I cannot begin to imagine having to live through this war without you. I can't imagine anything without you. I hope you do not manage to twist my words. Even if you did, however, I would have no problem with it. You could interpret anything I say to you differently than what I had intended, and all that will matter to me is that you are even listening. I cannot imagine myself living this long if it weren't for you. 

There is a constant fear when living through all of this. A constant uncertainty, and yet we manage to keep going. It feels so selfish to say we in this situation because I know it is only you. You are the one who speaks wise words when it feels like death is the one thing I can look forward to. I think back on all the conversations we have had and how you have always managed to change the perspective of it somehow. I don't know how you do that, but I hold you with great pride because of it. I want you to know that. I want you to know you are essentially the only reason I am alive. And I do not mean all the times when you have physically saved me from death, but the times when you saved me from it mentally. I would have not been able to keep sane this long if I hadn't ever befriended you. I also remember the times we laughed together, even in the midst of all the horror around us. Those moments of camaraderie and friendship have been a lifeline for me, and I know for you too.

And it is here when I am home, a place where I am supposed to feel safe, where I feel I miss you the most. All I want is to be able to see your face and hear the sound of your voice again. I take great comfort in knowing you are out there. I hope you miss me too. I have barely been here two days, and I doubt this letter will be sent out before I am back, but I hope you are safe. I don't know what I would do if I ever heard the news of your death. I don't know if I could live after that. 

All I want is to hear your voice, Kat. That is all I need to survive. I only need you. I am struck by how much you mean to me. I am grateful to have you. You never judged me, never looked down on me, and never wavered in your support for me, even when things were at their worst. That kind of loyalty is rare, and I treasure it more than you can know. Your passion and your conviction. I know you had no belief in what we were fighting for. Still, sometimes it felt like you did. I don't know what you believe in, but please know, whatever it is, I am here.

I fear that we may never see each other again. There are no other words to describe that. It is fear and nothing more. Please know you will always have a place in my heart. That you are the one thing my thoughts turn to. When I think of you, well I doubt there are many words that can express what I feel. You are the one thing that has kept me alive. I know I have repeated that one sentiment perhaps a million times, but it is the truest thing I could say. I am thinking of you every moment I can. 

With eternal gratitude and love, 

Paul"

Paul looked at the still-warm man laying next to him. He couldn't think of anything more to say, so, while taking one final look at the dog tag still gently tucked into his coat jacket and putting the letter back with Kat, Paul stood and began to walk away. Death is everywhere here, and you cannot linger on it for too long. Paul knew that very well. 

Chapter Text

For once, the air was quiet. There was still the sound of hungover soldiers repeating the same mantra of "The war is finally over," while knowing very well it isn't. In a mostly abandoned and destroyed restaurant, Kat stood facing out a window. It was as much of a window as it could be. The glass panelling was either non-existent or completely broken. As Kat looked at it, the glass shards did nothing more than remind him of what happened to Tjaden. It's so hard to believe all that happened just last night. If he would have listened just a bit longer, he would have been making his way home in something that isn't a casket. It's so hard to believe everything that has happened has only happened within the span of a few days. Kat looks back. Paul, who is hardly even awake, is laying on a mattress and clutching the scarf Tjaden had handed him, that Franz had given Tjaden. 

"Kat," he says. "What time is it? Why aren't you sleeping?"

"Shh...." Kat shushes him. "Listen. It's so quiet, I almost think I'm dead." He smiles. They hear just that- silence. Apart from their breathing, they hear some birds and some leaves. The village around them is quiet, and so are the still-hungover soldiers. "They signed. The war's over." Paul looks at him confused and doesn't say anything. "We lost. It's finally over." Paul says nothing, so Kat beings to pat the dirt off his trousers and begins to walk off. "I'm hungry. Are you hungry?"

"Where are you going?"

"Come on, before the son of a bitch wakes up. I hear a KP volunteer!"

Kat walks out of the destroyed restaurant and Paul hurries after him, running to make sure he can catch up. They walk in silence, making sure to absorb the silent beauty around them. It's been such a long time since they were able to hear their breath, their footsteps, everything. Both of them think to say something to the other, but they don't because it would ruin what they've all been waiting for. They reach a meadow and cross into a valley. None of them know how long it took them. Kat stops. 

Without turning to look at Paul, Kat speaks. "What will you do for Christmas, Paul?"

"I don't know."

"I'm gonna fry a goose. With red cabbage and kraut. Then I'll light all the candles and kiss my wife." Kat continues to walk and smiles even wider. He could see his breath. 'God, Paul, she's so beautiful."

"Yeah," Paul laughs. "What does she look like?"

"Dark, curly hair. She's plump and strong."

"Christmas. It seems so far away."

"It isn't, though! It's very close." This is the happiest Kat has been in months, in years actually. He feels bad for ruining the near-perfect silence, but then again, Paul is part of the reason he is happy. He can't deny that. The only happiness he has managed to have in all the time he's been at the front has been because of Paul. Even with all the others dead, the only positive emotions he has are thanks to Paul. Kat can't help but think of Paul as only a child, mostly because he is only a child. "We want to have kids again, Paul." He tries to say it with excitement, but it comes off as much more sorrowful. "What's Christmas without kids? Maybe we'll have a white Christmas."

"Once we come home, Kat, we'll do something big together. The two of us together." He laughs with excitement. Both of them grin at each other. They are still standing just a metre or maybe half away from each other. Kat thinks of the possibility of spending time together and laughs. "What?"

"I'm a shoemaker, Paul. I make shoes. You know how to read. And write," Kat looks deeply into Paul's eyes. "You graduated from high school."

"And what good did it do me?" Paul chuckled, looking down at his shoes.

Kat thought for a moment. Paul had a point. One was educated and the other was not, but they were both in the same situation. "And what are we going to do with each other?" Kat sounded upset. Not angry, more slightly annoyed at what Paul is suggesting. He isn't sure what Paul is suggesting, but he knows he doesn't like it all that well. "Nail shoe soles on? Are you trying to insult me?" He stepped closer to Paul. "I can't even read a letter from my wife...You go to college Paul, or I'm gonna shoot you on the stop," he paused. He looks down at his pants. "Damn, my pants are loose." He begins to laugh and Paul joins him. Shortly after, they begin to walk again, this time, a bit closer to each other. 

"You just gotta eat more."

"Hm, we'll be home soon," Kat says. "Then we can eat whatever we want. Whatever we want."

There was a slight sadness in those sentences alone. He'd spent the past four years trying to even survive, looking for bread crumbs in mud just to have something else to eat. Just like all the people around him, he'd forgotten what it's like to have a choice as to what you're going to have for dinner, or even knowing if you'd be alive to have dinner. He shakes his head to get those thoughts out and continues walking with Paul. When they were close enough to the Frenchman's house to hear geese honking, Paul began to run, and Kat followed suit. Kat reached the farm before Paul and looked into the gate. He turned to see Paul already preparing to help life Kat into the yard. 

Kat shook his head, "It's your go. If the farmer catches me again, he's bound to shoot me where I stand." He whistled to tell Paul to move. Kat kneeled down, cradled his hands, and hoists Paul above the wall "Just be careful of the damn dog, too."

"Yeah," Paul says. 

Kat could hear when Paul landed on some pavement, but that was it. He moved to the gate to see Paul as he ran quietly toward where the geese are kept before turning away and looking at the sky. It was snowing. Thankfully not too much. The ground, fence and the trees around him were covered in snow, but that was mostly from the days before. It wasn't hot enough out for the snow to melt. However, there was hardly even snow by the trenches. It was ungodly hot there. The minute snow began to fall, it would practically be melted by the time it hit the floor. The soldiers were unsure if the heat was coming from the fires they built to keep themselves warm or the constant shells hitting around them. All they knew they needed to remove the water right as it puddled on the floor so they wouldn't get sicker. Kat breathed heavily and thought about his previous statements. Maybe he was a bit too hard on Paul, but he still had a point. Paul was still young, and again, he might as well still be a child. He has had a past education, and he has a future education. He can't let everything he's seen here dissuade him. Sure, they could still be together. They could spend the days after Christmas together. Kat would never let Paul leave his family like that. Kat would introduce Paul to his wife, and they would continue to be friends. The only thing Kat needs from Paul is for him to go to university. He sounds too much like a dad. Though, part of him does feel that sort of patriarchal responsibility for Paul. These years, late adolescence are the years when a teenage boy truly starts to become a man, and because Paul didn't have his father to guide him, Kat took up the role of his father. If he was too harsh, then it is only because it is what a father would do. In Paul, he sees nothing more than just a child- his child. In his mind, Paul is nothing more than his son. Being it self-torture, that is all Kat can allow himself to think of right now. He is hardly thinking of all the things they would do when they return home. He is only thinking of how he has been a father more than a friend. He does understand that Paul needed a father throughout the past year or two, but should Kat have been more of a friend? He doesn't know and he needs to stop thinking about that. He needs to take the advice he has given Paul; he can't keep thinking about the past. 

Still looking forward, Kat tries to think of anything he can to occupy his mind. There isn't anything. He begins to question whether or not he wants to go home. He knows he desperately needs to see his wife, but what would he say to her? There isn't anything he can tell her that she would even come closer to understanding. Is it worth it? He can't come to convince himself it is.

He heard barking and the sound of Paul desperately trying to shush it. He turned to the gate to look between the cracks and saw Paul running from an angry dog and an even angrier Frenchman cursing while walking into his house, eventually walking out wielding a rifle as Paul ran out of the goose shed.

"Voleur!" The Frenchman yelled. By this time, his son had also come out to stand next to his father and watched as Paul was nearly shot. 

Kat could hardly see Paul by that point. He looked through the gate and over the walls trying to see Paul. All he heard was the dog barking, gunshots, and yelling. Eventually, he could see Paul running out and he began to run toward him. Kat was running in front of Paul, trying to not stay too close to each other to lessen the chance of either of them being shot

"Connard!" They heard the Frenchman yell. 

They kept running for multiple kilometres until they were on the edge of a small forest. Paul suddenly slows and stops and then laughs, "Damn. Look at this."

Kat looked back, "What?"

Paul shows off his uniform coat, making a small bullet hole leaking egg. The gunshot hardly missed him. He laughs. "That was lucky."

"Damn waste of good eggs," Kat walked closer to Paul and held the bullethole-ridden pocket to stop the egg from dripping anymore.

"Give me my mess kit."

Kat took the mess kit off of Paul's belt and held it underneath his pocket. "Get it all in the dish. We'll eat them right here."

"We'll have to fry them."

"Nonsense, they taste fine raw."

Paul smiled and looked up at Kat. He reached into his pocket to get the rest of the eggs and crack them into the dish. Kat grabbed his knife and the mess tin from Paul and began to mix the eggs. Kat drank some of the raw eggs before smiling and handing the tin to Paul. 

"Better than ever."

Paul laughed and handed the almost completely empty dish back to Kat. "I won't be long."

"What?"

"I won't be long," he started to walk off

"Well, where are you going?"

Paul turned back. "I need to take a piss, so I'm gonna go by the woods." 

"I'll come with you."

"No, Kat," Paul said. "I think I just want a few short moments when I can be alone. Enjoy the quietness for a little bit."

Kat said nothing and watched as Paul walked off, passing a madonna and a hoard of trees until he was no longer in sight. He sat in the meadow looking down at the mess tin resting in his hands. There was still some egg left over in it, but he thought it would be best if he left the rest for Paul when he came back. He set it to rest next to him and continued to look down. He pulled out his knife again and used it to draw stray shapes in the snow. 

There was a stark contrast between him and everything around him. Despite having heard them dozens of times today, Kat couldn't see a single animal around him, but he could still hear them. Part of him wanted all the sounds to disappear, and the other part of him knew they wouldn't, so it wasn't worth the bother of thinking of. He looked back to the forest. He couldn't even a single blot to show Paul standing. How far could he have gone? Paul should know he should stay close if anything were to happen.

If anything were to happen, Kat thought to himself. What would he do if something did happen? What is that something he is even thinking about? French soldiers would never come around this area. The French villages the soldiers would often spare time in were all officially German-occupied, and for a French soldier to come here, well why would they risk it? The war might as well be over. Kat was sure no one wanted to fight anymore. No one wanted to fight from the beginning. So why would a soldier come here? If any did, they were bound to be taken by a German, if they cared. If not, the French might attack, but what would be the motivation behind that? There is always a risk of something, maybe an animal. All the animals in the area are quite small. If one of them came to attack Paul, Kat thought, he would be able to get rid of it. Whatever that would suggest. Kat didn't know what he was thinking. There was no need for him to think. The war was over, so why was he out here worrying? He and Paul have lived this long. That's all he needs to know. Soon enough, he and Paul will be back home.

A noise is heard from behind him. The thinks nothing of it, but Kat quickly becomes paranoid about it. It was only one sound, so realistically, it should mean nothing. In situations like this, the silence that came afterwards is what Kat is worried about the most.

"Paul?" He asks. He stands and begins to slowly walk past the trees and the madonna. "Paul," he repeats. He begins to run. He isn't sure what he is expecting to find, all he wants to find is Paul. Finally, he does. Paul is sitting up against a tree stump with his hand covering his lower stomach. "Paul, what happened?" Kat runs toward him, coming to his knees in front of him, trying to remove Paul's hands from his stomach. Paul gives no response. He only looks down. "It's okay, Paul. It'll be okay." His voice is panicked. "Please, move your hands, please." Paul does as he is told but still gives no verbal response to Kat's words or even his presence. "It's alright."

He isn't sure who he is reassuring. He pulls Paul's shirt from his trousers and sees a small bullet wound. He uses his hands to measure and finds it is no bigger than his small fingernail. He can't tell what it hit, but dark blood keeps oozing out. He then reaches for small pieces of gauze from his coat pocket. He slowly presses them against Paul's wound and Paul gasps. He is crying Kat doesn't blame him. "It's alright, Paul." Kat takes off his coat and hands it to Paul, telling him to put it on. It's cold out, but between the two of them, Paul needs it much more. He looks down at his blood-covered hands and back at Paul. Paul has closed his eyes and trying not to cry. "You're alright, Paul. I just need to go get the medics. That's all."

"No."

"Paul, what do you mean no?"

"Please," Paul opened his eyes and looked at Kat. He looked more like a child now than at any other time," don't leave me."

The look in Paul's eyes looked incredibly familiar. It has the same look Kat's wife and son had when he first left for the war. It reminded him of Ludwig on his first night out in the front. That was the day he first met Paul. When he first looked at Paul and all the others, the only thing he could come to think was, "These are just children." Paul is more of a child now than ever. They've all faced death within the past months, but never like this. They've all had to watch people die, and yes, they would be injured, but it was never to this level. Every injury Paul had had in the past was minimal. They were not life-threatening. 

"You know I would never mean to do that, Paul," he paused. "Can you stand?"

Paul nodded.

"Good, good." He moved to sit next to Paul and wrapped his arm around his shoulder. Paul did the same. When they tried to stand, Paul stumbled and gasped. He began to cry even more. "Just a child, Kat thinks. "War spares no one."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't apologise, Paul. You did nothing wrong." He thought for a moment. "I'll carry you."

"What?"

"You are in no shape to stand. Or walk. And we need to get you to the medics. So I'll carry you."

"Kat-"

"It's okay, Paul." Kat smiled at him. "You'll be okay." Kat and Paul kept their arms wrapped around each other, and they stood again, this time with Paul leaning all his weight on Kat. Kat tucks his free hand beneath Paul's legs and picks him up, just like he would a child. Slowly, he begins to walk. Upon walking through a path, Kat can hear men cheering- just like he did earlier in the day. The men are packed into a truck, and they are all visibly drunk. Kat calls for them and puts Paul partially on the floor so his back is resting against his legs. He pleads for them to stop and pull over, to let them in. They all drive past without ever looking back to Kat or Paul. Paul is picked back up. Unconscious, he only groans.

"Come on now, we're almost there, Paul."

"Mhm," even Paul's grunts are weak. 

"I'll shoot myself in the foot so we can be together, okay Paul?" He is given no response. "You'll be alright, Paul."

It takes Kat an hour or so to make it back to the camps. Everyone around him ignored Kat. Recruits are excited and everything is noisy, not at all like how it was in the meadow. There is too much sound. There is too much light. There are too many people. But there simply isn't enough time. Why didn't the men in the trucks stop for them? They are all soldiers for the same fake cause, so why didn't they stop? If they did, Kat would have made it back even quicker than if he was alone. It takes another ten minutes to reach the medic's tent. The trip would have normally been less than half that, but with Paul as an added weight, even if it wasn't much, Kat could hardly breathe while walking, and the cold weather definitely did not work in his favour. 

He walks into the infirmary and immediately begins to call for a medic. He looks around for an empty bed, hardly even finding one. He goes to his knees, slowly bringing Paul's face closer to his and places a soft, fatherly kiss on his forehead. He gently lays Paul down in it, making sure his head is comfortably resting on a stiff pillow. His hands graze Paul's cheek and he only pulls away so the oncoming medic can check him. Kat stays by Paul's side as the medic checks his eyes and his pulse. Kat is depressingly thirsty. He can hardly breathe and his mouth is drier than anything. 

"You could have saved yourself the trip. He wasn't worth the effort."

Kat eyes him, not entirely understanding what the medic has said. 

"He's dead."

"It was a flesh wound."

"Black blood. Right in the liver. His organs are poisoned."

Kat can't seem to tell if the wetness on his face is sweat or tears. "Unconscious."

The medic shakes his head, "I know what I'm doing." 

"I was just speaking to him." Kat moves closer to Paul and holds his face. Despite his young age, Paul looks to be Kat's age. His face is still warm, as warm as it could be, so Kat moved his hands to check the wound he had tried to care for not too long ago. It has stopped bleeding. He reaches for his face, and his hands, but then he stops. 

"You see, he's dead. And right at the end." The medic leaves. 

Kat says nothing, only staring at Paul's dead expression and body. His face is still wet from his tears prior. He moves his hands towards Paul's neck to retrieve his dog tag. He breaks off the bottom part and holds it in his hands. Kat doesn't cry, not as much as he should, but there aren't any amount of tears that can fully express the sadness he is feeling. All he can do is sit and stare at Paul. He was just a child. And the war ruined it. The war has ruined everything. Kat has officially lost two sons to two very different kinds of sickness. So he just stands and leaves. He can't handle looking at Paul anymore. He knows it will take months for his family to be notified of his death, and yet he was the first one to hear. He was the one to see it. He walks back to the destroyed restaurant and sits on the mattress Paul was on earlier. He still has his dog tag in his hands. His fingers rub away the dirt and grime so he could look closely at Paul's name. Paul Bäumer was born on November 18, 1899. He would have turned 19 in just eight days. Paul was only ten or so years older than Kat's son. From the outside, Kat can hear soldiers singing. He turns and looks out and sees soldiers lined up still singing. One of the soldiers is smiling proudly and singing along with the others. The soldier looks into the infirmary and his eyes meet Kat's.

The soldier looks no older than sixteen. A child. 

Chapter Text

They've always expected the end to be white. That's what the church taught them. In the end, they would see a bright white light that would blind every one of their senses. Then they will walk forward, each step causing a burning sensation beneath their feet. That part was unexpected. They had earned their place in Paradise. All they had lived through within those months is a greater form of punishment than anything they could have received here. It is in part their ages that granted them an automatic spot. It works for almost all the people who went out in a similar fashion. God had made a certain decision to leave his creations to live without any intervention, and what they caused is not something even God could have come up with. So they are all here. They all walk the fire. They all get their sins burnt off of them before they enter the perfect kingdom so they can live with some sense of peace. No amount of fire could burn the memories from their brains. No amount of divine intervention could undo what they saw, what they lived through, and what they had to die through.

As per their deaths as a whole, they were all expected. However, only one expected it at the time. For him, the fourth, in those final moments, he had already accepted it. For the second and the third, we'll they can say their death was only because of a stupid mistake. There is not much to say for the first. Between them, he is the quietest. That is all they can be labeled as. Paul Bäumer one, two, three, and four. It may do them some good to give them some sense of individuality, but they lost their personalities and identities the minute they stepped into their uniforms. So they are numbered.

Standing in a circle, each looking at the other, they say nothing. For the most part, they are all surprised over why they are. 

"Ich hätte nie erwartet, dass dies real ist." The first one said. 

The fourth, looking over at the only one who could be considered a counterpart and said, "Ich dachte, das Weiß sei dramatisiert. Ich habe es schon einmal gesehen, dachte aber, es wäre nur mein Gehirn, das einen Streich spielt." 

The other two said nothing, only staring at how they all looked. The first, second, and third all look like each other. The only differences would be their faces. The first had no distinct facial features- he could have been mistaken for any other person. The second had softer facial features. He looked older than his again, but then again, so did all the others. The third looked the youngest out of them. Most distinctly he had a mark on the center of his left cheek. It was no bigger than a small coin, but the discoloration of the rest of his skin and his clothing made it so the others could not tell if it was a possible wound or if it was simply a birthmark. Their uniforms look clean and like they would have all expected. From the looks of it, they could not tell what wound proved fatal. For first, there was nothing. There were some marks that were discolored, but they were as colorless as the rest of him. The same went for the second. He, along with the third, had bullet holes in their helmets and there were other marks and scratches around their faces and necks. However, there was nothing distinct about the wounds. But the fourth, his uniform was covered in dirt and ash. On his left breast pocket, there looked to be a bullet hole. The pocket was stained red. On his back, there was another stain about in the same position. 

The second looked at the third and said nothing until the third finally muttered, "Do you have a clue of what they said?"

"No," the second said. 

"Junge," the first said, stepping closer to the fourth and stopping himself from reaching out to his face, "wie alt bist du?"

"Achtzehn."

"Du siehst so viel jünger aus." 

"Und wie heißt du?"

"Paul."

"Paul," the fourth repeats. This gets the other's attention. Paul, they all think. Was this just a coincidence? "Dein zweiter?"

"Bäumer."

Bäumer, they all repeated.

All four of them, all no older than twenty, no younger than seventeen, are Paul Bäumer. Each of a different kind, a different person, and a different story, but they are all Paul Bäumer—the second and third look at each other. 

"Have we all the same name?" the third asked.

"It seems so," the second said sadly. 

"And what is this place?" the third asked.

"I would think this would be heaven."

"Heaven?" the third seemed unable to control the sadness his voice held. It was not him who was sad, why would one be sad when they are in heaven? Perhaps it is the circumstance, but he, along with the other three men around him, could all agree that this is surely the better fate than where they once were. 

"Himmel," the first and fourth said at the same time. 

For the next few minutes, they each said nothing. What was there to say? Half could not understand the others. Maybe the first and the fourth could say something to the other, just as the second and third could. However, to them, there is no reason to speak to each other. What little they could understand each other would not do them any good. There is no point in anything. Just as there was no point in the war they had all died in- none of them said anything about it, they all understood within the few words spoken who and what they all are. They are all the same person. Could they speak?

Only the first feels like he should say something. They are all the same age, but realistically, he is the most mature. If they were all able to speak, if they were all able to compare all they have endured, they would all be able to agree that the first has suffered the most. Everything he has felt was everything the other three have felt combined. They have all suffered, and it is wrong to try and compare suffering, but what would it matter now? Nothing matters now.

What do they have in common? Other than the obvious. They all loved a man. Albeit, the definition of love they would have all used is different. Maybe the first and fourth could relate to each other in this one sense alone. It is doubtful the second and third could say that about themselves. What else? They all watched that man die in a way they shouldn't have. They all watched their friends die in ways they shouldn't have. They all died in ways they shouldn't have. One and two strived to be a poet and a writer. Three strived to be an artist. Four strived for nothing. Arguably, he strived to live with the version of the same he loved differently compared to all the others. They all wanted to live- all of them. That's the most any of them have in common. 

"Ich frage mich, ich frage mich, ob Kat oder Franz hier ist," the forth said. 

This made the other three turn their attention to him.

"Kat?" the first said.

"Ja."

"Kennst du Kat?"

"Katczinsky," the second said.

"Stanislaus Katczinsky," the third said softly. 'He said Franz, too. Franz," he said directly to the first and fourth.

"Kemmerich," said the first. He looked to the fourth and spoke, "Ich habe mir nie verziehen, dass ich seine Mutter oder ihn angelogen habe."

"Kemmerich? Nein, Müller."

"But, Müller was Frederich, wasn't he?"

"He's the one who gave us these boots, not Kemmerich. Kemmerich gave them to Frederich, and then he gave them to us."

"Und Kropp?"

"Ich kann seine Schreie und Schreie täglich hören Ich kann nicht einmal sagen, dass sein Tod der schwerste war."

"Tod?" the first paused and sounded confused. It still hadn't fully processed that they weren't exactly the same person. "Kropp ist nicht gestorben. Das weiß ich nicht. Sein Bein – es wurde nur amputiert. Dann durfte er gehen. Jetzt, wo ich ein bisschen mehr nachdenke, habe ich nie gesehen, was danach mit ihm passiert ist."

"Nein. Tut mir leid, so kenne ich das nicht."

"Nun, wie ist er gestorben?"

"Es nützt keinem von uns, darüber zu sprechen."

The first look to the second and third who each meet his eyes with sadness and confusion. "Ihr alle, Kropp?"

"Kropp, he went off to leave after his leg was amputated. I wrote him a letter, but I don't think I ever got to send it," the third said. 

"The last I ever saw of him was in the hospital."

"Hôpital,"  the fourth said in unsteady French. 

"Yes," the first said, "the hospital."

With those words, no one responded. They didn't bother attempting to have another conversation where they hardly understood what the others said. They did nothing but stand just where they were and looked straight forward. They did not look into each other's eyes nor did any of them recognize or even accept that there were people standing right in front of them.

Chapter Text

Why would people be celebrating right now? There is nothing for them to celebrate. They are all screaming "The war is over!" but it hardly is. Even if they signed, what is the point of going home if they can't leave with their friends? Ludwig is dead. Franz is dead. Albert is dead. And now, so is Tjaden. Everything they have said to each other, the promises of being with each other if the war ends- when the war ends- those are all broken.

Paul and Kat sat alone in a destroyed restaurant, taking turns sipping from a broken wine bottle. The wine isn't strong enough for Kat. Paul, someone who had never once drunk before, thought the same. After drinking the equivalent of what must have been just under two glasses, Paul handed the bottle to Kat and refused to drink anymore. They sat on an old mattress next to each other. He can't remember when, but Paul eventually moved in closer and closer to Kat, laying in his arms. Kat didn't react. He just continued to drink. Paul moved in closer. His head was resting on Kat's lap, facing up. He was staring at him. He didn't know if it was the small amount of alcohol he drank or something else within him, but all he wanted was to be held by Kat. He stared at him. Looking at his softly rounded shoulders, and his facial hair that has lacked proper maintenance for years. There were small bits of snow in it and in his hair. He had a deadpan stare. Both of them had seen death many times, many more times than any person should, but Tjaden was something different. Kat was the one who brought the utensils with them. Why would he do that? Why would you need a fork to eat soup? It was a stupid mistake. The entire war was a stupid mistake. Not doing what Tjaden just did long ago was a mistake. 

Drunk, Paul reached his hand up and softly caressed Kat's cheek. He sat up, sitting next to Kat with his thighs resting on his legs. Kat grabbed his hand and held it. Paul moved in closer to Kat, moving his chest closer to his, and wrapping his arms around his neck. He rested his head on his shoulder. Kat held him as well. The previous fatherly love Kat had held for Paul had somehow left. He was holding Paul in the same way he held his wife when their boy died. It was a different kind of loving. There were new feelings with it.

Paul had had the feelings for some time. Now that he was drunk, in pain, and willing to do anything to get some kind of comfort, they were ready to come out. For Kat, well, he didn't know what he was supposed to feel. He was on leave over two years ago, and it had only lasted two weeks. It had been over two years since he felt the touch of his wife. The touch of anyone really. In the trenches, there was hardly any privacy, so he couldn't take it to himself to try and relieve some of the achings he felt for some kind of pleasure or the feeling of touch. He longed for the feeling of another person touching him just as much as he longed for the feeling of touching someone else. In a way, it was the complete opposite of what Paul felt. He'd never felt the feeling Kat was secretly longing for. He always wanted Kat. He wasn't sure of how he wanted Kat, he just did. He wanted to love Kat and be loved by him. Both of them wanted love. By anyone. They didn't really care who it was by, but they would have preferred it if it was by each other. Through the past 18 months, they have grown closer. So much so that they might as well be lovers. 

Kat moved his face closer to Paul's, closing his eyes and bringing his lips to Paul's. He softly kissed the young and frail 17-year-old, who remained stiff and unsure of what he was supposed to do. About five seconds passed before Kat pulled away. They both said nothing for a few short seconds before Paul repositioned himself so he was sitting on top of Kat's lap. Kat kissed him again. It still felt stiff and awkward. Paul had no idea what he was supposed to do. If Kat was being honest with himself, neither did he. They both allowed whatever this was to happen. There was no door in the destroyed restaurant, so anyone could have been able to walk in and see them, but everyone within a three-kilometer distance was drunk. If anyone did see something, they would be too intoxicated to do anything about it or remember it the following day. Paul had put his hands on Kat's shoulder to support himself. Kat reacted by placing one of his hands on Paul's hip and caressing his cheek with the other. They could taste each other. They both tasted like wine: they had the flavor of tart and zest, sweet and sour fruits, love and passion. Kat kissed deeper. He moved his tongue into Paul's mouth and ran his hands down the young soldier's sides.

"Kat?" he pulled away.

"Are you okay?" he asked. "Do you want me to stop?"

"No, no. I don't know what I'm supposed to do."

"That's okay. You don't have to know. You can follow what I do, and do what I say."

"Like out on the field?"

"Don't worry about the field anymore, Paul.  We aren't there anymore. We're here." He kissed Paul again. 

Oh, how their kiss feels incredible. Paul moaned when he felt Kat's hand move down the front of his chest and down to his groin. He felt something new, something amazing, something words cannot describe. This would explain why he hadn't spent much of his teenage years thinking about girls. For some time, he would sum it all up to being out in war, thinking there was no possible time to waste thinking about girls and women. But it wasn't women that brought him interest. It was Kat. Surely, they were going to hell for this. They were going to hell for so many reasons. For this and for everything they had done out in no man's land, they were going to hell together. Paul's hands moved down and began to untuck Kat's shirt. Kat moved to unbutton both his and Paul's trousers. They took their shirts off and pressed their bare torsos against each other. The wind was cold, and they shivered. Sitting right with each other, there was a warmth between them. Whether it be from their body heat or their hot breaths hitting each other, this was the warmest they had both felt in such a long time. 

They fell onto the mattress together. They kissed. Kat's hand drifted down to below Paul's waist and fumbled with the buttons on his trousers before turning him onto his back and positioning himself in between his legs. Paul lifted his hips so Kat could take off his trousers and the rest of his clothes, apart from his tunic. His hands ran up and down Paul's thighs. Paul moaned softly. Tired of the apparent teasing, Paul unbuttoned Kat's trousers and slid them down his thighs. They kissed again, this time with hardly a single layer of fabric separating them. Paul didn't know what he was feeling, but Kat did, both for Paul and himself. Kat moved his hand to grasp Paul's cock and began to slowly stroke it. From the first touch, Paul gasped. He'd never been touched in this way. He'd never been touched or felt anything similar to this. While breathing heavily, Paul slowly slipped his hands down into Kat's underwear. Their combined movements made it hard for them to stay in the same position and continue to kiss each other, so they moved to lay on their sides. Paul rested his head on Kat's shoulder and moved his hand up and down Kat's cock a lot slower than Kat would have wanted. Kat continued to kiss and suck on Paul's neck. He left small red and purplish bruises along his collarbones and upper chest. Kat realized how much he absolutely loved seeing, hearing, and feeling Paul act like this. He realized how much he loved making Paul into nothing more than a jumbled mess. He moved his hand away from Paul and pushed him onto his back. Paul was shocked and confused but quickly began to smile once he felt Kat place small kisses down his chest and stomach. 

Kat's mouth reached Paul's cock and he kissed the tip of it. He grabbed it again and moved his hand up and down. Kat began to suck Paul, bobbing his head up and down. Despite having never done this before, he quickly learned what made Paul breathe heavier and moan louder. It took all of his willpower not to thrust up, straight into Kat's mouth, so he settled for running his fingers through and tangling Kat's blond hair. Paul would have never thought he could love someone as much as he does Kat at this moment. Paul was so close to something. He didn't know what that feeling was. Everything he felt was something new. The noises escaping from Paul's mouth grew louder, and they were the most beautiful thing Kat had ever heard. Moaning so loudly that he feared everyone in the destroyed villages around them could hear, he came into Kat's mouth. Kat couldn't say much about the taste of it. It was salty, but the taste of wine and various other alcohols was still in his mouth, so he could hardly taste anything. He swallowed it and continued to suck and bob his head until Paul's moaned quieted and his hands loosened their grips on Kat's hair. Kat leaned into Paul and began to kiss him again. They kissed for about five minutes before Kat began to feel an erection growing and felt like he needed to do something about it. 

Kat began to touch himself as he continued to kiss Paul. They both moaned softly with Kat silently groaning when he felt himself come on Paul's stomach. They lay with each other for a few minutes. They didn't say anything, choosing to rest in silence and listen to the chaos going on around them. 

Around them, the world has broken. There are men setting fire without realizing it, and there are men drinking away the lives they have just gotten back. And only God knows what is happening on the homefront. In any other situation, Paul would be thinking about his mother, father, and his sister. Kat would be thinking about his wife. But right now, they are only thinking about each other. This is the most comfort they have ever gotten in years. This is the calmest they have been. In each other's arms, even if it can only be for a few hours, they know they are safe. They know nothing can hurt them. 

Holding his face in his hands, Kat leaned closer to Paul and whispered to him, "You should get dressed. It's too cold out for you to stay dressed like that."

Paul nodded and sat up while dressing himself. Kat did the same. They lay back with each other. Paul's back was pressed against Kat's chest. Kat's arms wrapped tightly around Paul. It almost felt like they were both suffocating, but they didn't mind it. They were with each other, and that was all that mattered to them. If they were with each other, then it meant they were safe. They were comfortable. Those two words were as foreign to them now as the idea of war was just four years before. For a few moments, they could forget about all of that. They fell asleep in each other's full embrace. The only things in their minds were each other. 

Chapter Text

Holding each other tight, there are about twenty soldiers hidden under a bunker. The French have attacked- or they're getting ready to attack, as the younger recruits will soon find out. The veterans and the younger boys are separate from each other. The veterans sit calmly, just waiting to see how long it will take. The younger ones are huddled with each other, calming each other, trying to keep themselves from crying out, although, it doesn't do much of them good. Paul is sitting between Kropp and Behm. Müller is a bit further than them, but he is next to Behm, as well Kropp is trying to keep himself calm, breathing slowly and quietly. He breathes in once, holds it for four seconds, then spends five seconds to exhale. It doesn't do much to calm him. He, like the elders, is just waiting for the end of the barrage while trying not to think much. Müller can't think much. He only looks ahead of him.

None of those things can be said about Paul or Behm. Maybe Paul, but just for a small moment or two. Behm, the boy only a few months older than Paul, thin, almost sickly looking, and frail, sits breathing heavily. He holds his ears shut, trying to shut out the sounds of everyone's breathing, including his own, and the sound of the French creeping closer above them. The heat of the trench is unbearable, but Behm can't tell if he's sweating because of it or because of his nervousness.

"Be careful what you eat," he says. "That's what my mother said." He chuckles to cover the sound of his cries. He moves his hands and grabs Paul, gently pulling them closer to each other. "We'll always be together, won't we?."

"Yeah," Paul says quietly. 

"We'll stick together. We'll always be."

A shell strikes not too far from them, causing dirt and pieces of wood to fall onto the floor of the trench. The soldiers, the young boys, scream. Albert, the oldest of them, only 19, closes his eyes and continues to breathe heavily. 

Behm tries to stand and leave the trench. He isn't thinking correctly, so he thinks it'll be better if he leaves. Paul holds him back, "Don't, Ludwig. Everything will be fine." Müller reaches over to hold Behm's arm back

"I can't do this, Paul, Paul," Behm says. "I can't do this. I need to go home," he cries. Paul shushes him. It doesn't do much. "I need to go home."

For just about two minutes, it sounds like the French have stopped their borderline attack. Everyone was quiet- even Behm. He did nothing to wipe the mess from his face. A combination of mucus, sweat, dirt, and tears made it look like he himself had been attacked. He had quieted his sobs enough, so now there was much more for the others to hear apart from him. Slowly, he began to gain some control over his breathing. Just slightly, however. He leaned his head against the wall of the trench and looked deeply into Paul. Paul had not attempted to make eye contact. He couldn't bring himself to do it. There was no real reason for him to be here. If he had not forged a few papers, he wouldn't be here. And now he was dealt the task of keeping both himself and Behm safe. Not to mention the others. 

"Creeping barrage," one of the older soldiers says. The boys look at him.

"What?"

"Every couple of minutes," the veteran continues. "the artillery barrage makes an advance forward. And directly after that, the infantry moves forward."

Kropp speaks, "What are you saying, exactly?"

Another soldier, the one sitting next to the one who first spoke, speaks to them without bothering to look at them. "That's how they come," he said. The first puts his helmet back on. 

Another shell hits and more dirt falls onto the men and boys. None of them scream, instead, they all breathe heavily. One steps up and tries to go outside before being stopped by the second veteran. He asks him where he is going. The young soldier says he'll be right back. All he needs is some fresh air, but he'll be right back. The veteran tells him in the opposite of a comforting voice that it'll be over soon, so he might as well just sit back down. The younger one tries to push back him but gets pushed onto a beam. He begs to be let out but is pushed again, harder, and slides to the floor. He crawls to the trench entrance, and the veteran yells at him to stop. The boy continues. He is hit by a shell. He explodes, and small bits of him fly around the trench. The first veteran is now stained with his blood, as are the walls and nearly everything around him. He doesn't mind the blood. He hardly flinched when the boy died. It was a quick death, and it surely wasn't the worst he had seen. The second veteran looks back at the young, new recruits. They all scream and panic, holding onto each other as if that will make any difference for them. He screams at them to get out, and they very eagerly follow his instructions.

All except Behm and Paul.

They are still holding onto each other. Mounds of dirt had fallen in front of them and into their eyes, so they can't see much of anything in front of them. Paul tries to stand up, but Behm's grasp on his arm doesn't let him. Behm begins to hit his head against the trench wall. He doesn't know what he is trying to do. He doesn't know if he is trying to make himself pass out or trying to kill himself. 

More dirt and more shells fall into the trench.

~~~

The air smelt like death. It was dry and rough. With each breath anyone took, they felt their lungs dry up. They knew it wasn't anything real. It was mostly psychosomatic. Many of the people in the trench were new recruits or had only been there for a few months. Most people don't last much longer than that. For the two veterans, they would like to say they had gotten used to the feeling, but you can't exactly get used to death- no matter how much of it you experience. Apart from that, the ground was horrifically wet. When people took a step, their boots sunk into the dirt, which was either wet with the previous night's rain or blood. It was likely a combination of the two, but most of the soldiers preferred to think it was rain alone. Paul had awakened somewhere. He wasn't entirely unconscious, and Kropp and Müller had found him quickly after he woke up. Paul was soon after ordered to collect dog tags, a task he hadn't exactly been trained or prepared for, but had expected to do. While walking, he stepped on something and heard a faint crack beneath him. He had thought the worst. The sound was of broken glass, and when he looked down, the glass seemed to have been Behm's glasses. They were stained with blood and mud, but Paul couldn't see Behm anywhere. While collecting dog tags, he made sure to check all around for the sight of the frail boy. He asked Müller and Kropp if they had seen Behm. They both responded by looking down. 

"No," they both said, sounding like little children rather than soldiers.

Some minutes passed, and Paul couldn't tell how long it had been. He must have collected the tags of three dozen men. In this one night alone, he had witnessed more death than an average man would in a lifetime during peace.

~~~

Behm doesn't know how long it has been. He knows that he is no longer next to Paul, and there is a sharp pain in his leg. He can't tell which leg, or where the pain is exactly, but it feels worse than anything he could have expected. He is buried underneath something. That's all he knows. He can hardly hear his own breathing. He can only see light shades of grey. The grey was mixed with red, too. 

The earth around him is still shaking. Behm can feel the vibrations of the people walking around him. None of them have noticed him, so he realizes he was right to think he was beneath something. He moves his hands up, trying to feel what is above him. It is both wood and dirt. He tries desperately to push himself out front of him, but he hardly has any energy to do so. He had been on the front for no more than 24 hours, and he has already found himself injured and practically dead. 

He thinks to himself, "Why did I come here?" He never wanted to be here. He had let his friends convince him this is what they all needed to do. He doesn't hate them for that. part of him feels like he should. If it weren't for them, he wouldn't be in this situation. The same could be said for so many things. he and his friends are not at fault for this. The men he was taught about in his classes were the ones at fault. "If I die," he thinks, "what difference could it make? This one death will not mean more than the millions before me." He stops. 

The air suddenly got a bit louder. He could hear voices now. They were right above him. He thought to scream for someone, but his mouth is much too dry to make any noise. He moves his hands to his face, and he realizes why he hasn't been able to see: he hasn't got his glasses. While he isn't completely sure how he got to where he is, he must have run or something. That would also explain the sharp pain he feels in his leg. He rubs his eyes and discovers a new pain. Behm can't tell which feels worse: his leg or his eye. He was already blind when he came here. He can't be even more blind now. "I need to go home," he thinks. "If I'm this injured, I will be going home." He doesn't smile, he doesn't grin, while thinking that. He still doesn't know where Paul is. Or Müller. Or Kropp. They might as well be dead. What would be good in going home if he has to go alone? What is the good in going home if his friends come with him in wooden boxes?

The death smelt different to Behm. He had been to a funeral once or twice in his youth. He can't remember who it was for. Possibly it was for some distant relative he had never even known existed. At that funeral, it smelt warm. The grass, grass which he could tell had been cut not long before, kept its familiar smell and made the event much calmer than it should have been. People around him had mourned, of course, and they wept, as anyone would. There is the faint memory of seeing the body. Behm did not sob. He did not cry. He did not shed a single tear. While he cannot remember who it was he saw in that casket, he knew it had to happen. The deaths here, Behm that, they didn't need to happen. All the men here should have lived for decades more. Lived their life and then died when it was their time to. "This is not my time."  he thought. It is no one's." His breathing heavied, and it became the only thing he could hear. 

just then, as though it had been on cue, he heard Paul and some stray voices he struggled to identify. They were above him. Behm still could not make any noise, but he could move, so that is what he did. He moved as much as he could, making sure to make some noise with the wood and dirt and anything else around him so the people above him maybe be able to sense there is someone alive beneath them.

"Ludwig?" He hears one of them say. It is Paul. "Kat! Could you help me?"

Planks of wood and rocks were lifted off of Behm. He could hear Paul's voice, but he could hardly see any of them. "Paul?" he asked.

"Yes, Ludwig. I'm here it's alright." Paul helped Behm sit up, and he sat next to him. He reached into his tunic pocket and pulled out Behm's glasses. They were broken, but they were much better than nothing, Paul had decided. He placed them on Behm, looping the straps behind his ears and making sure they sat correctly on the bridge of his nose. 

"Paul."

"It's okay, Ludwig."

"No, Paul."

"How injured are you?" the unfamiliar voice asked him.

"I can feel something by my leg- my left one, I think. I can't exactly see which one it is."

"You can't see?" he said again, kneeling down. 

"I can't," Behm sighed. "What is your name?"

"Katczinsky, Kat," Kat said.

"Where are the others?" Behm asked.

"I'll fetch them," Paul said.

"No," Kat stood. "You stay with your friend, Paul. I'll get the others."

Kat left and walked urgently to find Müller and Kropp. He was sure they were worried about Behm, and they may just be a bit happy to find him alive. 

"How long has it been?"

"Maybe five or six hours."

"That is much too long, Paul."

"I know, Ludwig. But it's okay. We're together now. And you'll be able to go home now, to your mother. You'll have to say hello to her for me."

"I'm not sure how I feel about that. I was here for less than a day. Weeks, months, of training, have gone to nothing, Paul. I can't go home like this. What have I done for the Fatherland?"

"You have done what you can. You can go home now."

"Why are you so sure of that?"

"We can't keep a blind man out here, can we?"

Behm laughed.

Kat came back with Kropp, Müller, two medics, and the other veteran, who Behm learned was Tjaden. They all spoke to each other while the medics examined Behm's leg. There was a piece of shrapnel a few centimeters above his knee, and, from the look of it, they would have to amputate it. As for his eyes, there was not much they could do. They were open, but they were bloodshot. Any damage done was not practically irreversible. There was hardly anything they could do for them. His right eye was the most damaged, and, maybe they thought, they may be able to do something about the left, but it was only a stray idea. They tried to patch him up as much as they could, offering him gauze to use as make-shift eyepatches until they can get him proper ones. Behm refused them, saying he would much rather keep his glasses so he can pretend things are even slightly normal. He was brought onto the stretcher, and then taken to the field hospital. When he was carried off, he heard officers tell the others to continue collecting dog tags and try to fix the trench as best as they can. 

~~~

He spent a week in the field hospital. It was a lonely time. All of his friends were fresh out in the front, so they weren't allowed to even think about going off to visit him. Behm received a few letters from them. All detailing how the trenches have been, but they never mentioned the rats and permanent stench of the macabre that constantly surrounded them. Behm was already guilty enough about leaving them so early; he didn't need anything else to wish his friends would get injured so they could be with him, or wish he could somehow go back with them. As for his leg, it was amputated just above the knee a few short hours after he arrived at the hospital. The amputation was painful. They hadn't chloroformed him when they began to saw it off. For fifteen minutes, he lay on a table with fellow soldiers holding him down while a doctor took a handsaw to his leg. Behm could feel the rusted metal cut through his flesh and his bone as he screamed out for someone and heard the doctor yelling for someone to chloroform him. After a day or two of healing, he was moved to a different hospital, this time to one run by a church. His left eye had gotten somewhat better by this time. He could see out of it, but only slightly. He received a new pair of glasses that helped his eyesight and see much better. His vision is blurry and smeared, so it takes him a long while to focus on something to see it properly. When he would try to read letters or write them, nuns would always stop him. If he needed to read something, they would read it to him. If he needed to write something, they would write it for him. As a result, Behm never sent a letter back to the front. Having the nuns write them made the idea of it impersonal. He let them read to him, however. It was either have them read letters or the bible. Behm wasn't fond of the bible- not anymore, at least. If they did, all he could do is question everything said. He couldn't believe in god anymore. 

Two more weeks passed and Behm was finally released. Riding on a train decorated with red crosses, he sat alone and read the letters his friends had written him during the past month over and over again. Sometimes they would include the details of the war, but they were never anything too violent. He learned of Kat and Tjaden and received letters from them both, but the ones from Kat seemed to have handwriting very similar to Paul's, so he wasn't sure how genuine they were. 

The train was full of other soldiers, many of which were much older than he but had much less serious injuries. Behm spoke to no one during the train ride. It would make stops to pick up and drop off passengers. Behm could tell the new passengers spent a few seconds staring at him. He didn't pay attention to them, instead choosing to keep his eyes on the papers that never seemed to leave his hands. Some, the younger ones, would ask questions about his injuries. Behm never gave them many details, especially when they asked how long he had been at the front. He would always avoid the question. And everyone seemed to partially understand why. 

His mother was the first to greet him, breaking into sobs the second she saw him. Behm wore a uniform, one that was not entirely destroyed or covered in blood, and even kept his glasses, ones very similar to what the military had given him. The right pant leg was folded and pinned up. He walked unsteadily with a cane. When he saw his mother, he smiled and slowly began toward her. She ran to him and held him in her arms, kissing every bit of his face she could and whispering prayers. His father only greeted him with a handshake. His father had tried to ask him questions, but Ludwig's mother shot him down and scolded him for it.

"Don't, Mother," Ludwig said. "People have questioned me everywhere I go."

"You don't need to be pestered with questions, not now. You need to rest."

"I spent a month in hospitals. And days on a train. I've done all my resting."

He walked with his parents home, where they would quietly eat dinner. His father read the paper, reading updates on the war. Behm's father had a visible desire to ask his son everything he can. Behm's mother did not want to remind him of the short time he had spent at the front. After, his mother helped him to his room and let him be. He looked at his desk, as much as he could, and at the school books sitting on it. There wasn't much need for them anymore. He never had much of a dream for university. He considered linguistics for some time, but he enlisted before he graduated, so there wasn't much he could do. Now, it seems the same. It seems unlikely for any university to take him in. He could still speak. The shells didn't do much to damage that aspect of him, but with the burden of his sight and his leg, why would he even bother with an application?

~~~

For a few months, Behm spent his time teaching himself various things. He would read about history and philosophers in his spare time. His father did eventually tell him it was in his best interest to get some kind of job, something small so he could support himself and help support his parents. He became a teacher's assistant at the high school he attended, but he never spent his time doing something other than reading over essays and grading papers. Because of his amputation and his prosthetic leg, he felt uncomfortable having to move around a classroom or a school for a long time, so he was a grader more than he was an assistant. By the end of the school year, the school's oldest male students were all much too excited to enlist. Their professor, the same one that had encouraged Behm and his friends to enlist, began to speak the same speeches he had said months prior. There were fewer students ready to enlist, so the speeches happened in the classroom rather than in the main staircase of the gymnasium. 

Behm always had an uneasy feeling the professor would speak, and it was heightened much more today. He was sitting at a side desk, reading Stirner when the professor walked up to him and asked for him to stand. Behm was hesitant, naturally, and asked why. He was not given an answer, but instead told to stand proudly in front of the class. Grabbing the wooden cane next to him, Behm stood and slowly began to walk to the front of the class. The professor stood next to him, placing his arm over Behm's shoulder, and spoke to the class again. He introduced Behm as a soldier and began to speak of him, portraying him as a hero and someone who surely made his father proud.

"I wasn't at the front for any more than a day, sir," Behm said. 

The professor stopped and looked down, "Your friends are still there, are they not?"

"Yes, sir. Paul, Franz, and Albert."

"Do you exchange letters with them?"

"Of course I do."

"And what do they say in them?"

"What?"

"Your friends, what do they tell you about the front?"

"Nothing pleasant, sir. They write of the sleepless nights and the permanent smell of despair constantly around them. Not too long ago, Albert wrote me, writing about how they typically lose over a hundred men a week. Paul writes about how he regrets enlisting, and Albert, too. Whatever it is you're trying to say to these boys, it isn't true. And you can believe me. I wasn't there for more than a day, and I came home half-blind and without a leg. No use in the war. I don't feel like a hero. I assure you that Paul, Franz, and Albert don't either. No one there does." Without any other words, Behm sits back down and lets the professor stand alone to think about what he'll say after. 

Many people have tried to tell Behm he must feel proud of what he did out in the front. There is no pride in it. Behm never told anyone who asked about the first, and only, day he was there. He was not a hero. He was a coward, at least Behm thinks he was. He was sitting, clutching onto his friend and crying out to his mother. There is absolutely nothing about that night that could be described as heroic or patriotic. He feels guilty about it. He left his friends and their last memory of him is of him sobbing. That doesn't make him a hero. And his friends don't think of themselves as heroes either. In the letters, specifically from Paul's letters, Behm knows that no one there feels that way. For the rest of that class, Behm could only stare at the professor with hatred, trying to get more young boys to go out to their almost certain death for no reason. He said nothing about it. It would do no one any good to try and call him out on it. He stared, listening to the lectures, knowing exactly what he would write in his next letters.

~~~

It was mid-November, and the armistice has officially been signed. Behm could not feel any happier. The rumors about the signing have been going around for weeks, and it is all anyone could think about. Behmm would speak to his parents about how he could not wait until he could see his friends again, and he knew exactly what they would do when they see each other. It has been 18 months since they've all seen each other. 18 months since they've sat down and spoken about their plans for the future. While he knows their plans will be drastically different from what they were months ago. His father told him he shouldn't speak too happy about the situation. Germany has surrendered, and that is nothing to be happy about. Behm has not thought about Germany. All he is thinking about is his friends. 

~~~

The war is officially over, and it has been for over a month now, and yet, Behm still hasn't heard from anyone. Not his friends or their families. For the first two weeks since the end, all he thought was it would take a while for them to get back home. Behm was sure there was a lot they had to go through before being sent off, but he's seen his neighbors and his neighbor's friends and sons, brothers, and husbands come home, but not his friends.

So today he decided he would speak to their families.

He walked to Paul's house, thinking that since they were the closest friends, speaking to him would make the most sense. Dressed in normal civilian clothing, he made his way to the two-story building he would often wait outside of. He knocked on the door.

The person who opened the door was Paul's mother, a sickly woman who didn't seem to be in any better condition now than she was years ago.

"Oh, Ludwig," she said. She stepped aside from the door to let Behm in. "You look well. Do you need something?" She sounded sad and her eyes looked to be permanently sunken into their sockets.

"I came to ask if you had heard from Paul. And the others. It's been a while since I have."

Paul's mother said nothing. She only looked at him. Horrified. Behm didn't say anything. He stood at the door quietly, looking into Mrs. Baümer's dead eyes. Thinking he should say something to get her to speak, Behm smiled kindly and opened his mouth, preparing to say something. Just then, he heard something a few meters to his left. He turned and saw a young girl, one that couldn't have been more than fourteen walking down the steps. The girl, Paul's younger sister, walked to her mother and asked if she was alright.

"Could you please leave?" The older woman said. "Please, before you say anything else."

"I'm sorry?"

"Leave, please," she repeated. 

Behm could not entirely understand why he was asked to leave, but he very quickly put some pieces together. Without saying anything, he turned and walked out of the house, hearing the door quickly close behind him. He paused for a moment outside the house, thinking to himself about the conclusion he came to. 

Next, he would go to Müller's, but the interaction was pretty much the same. It was just a tad bit different. Müller's parents had welcomed him in. They spent some time asking Behm what he has spent his time doing since he returned to the front. They spoke while drinking tea. Behm could not figure out how to bring up Müller, so he simply asked where he was and when he would return home. Müller's mother looked down and reached for her husband's hand. Very calmly, Behm was informed that Müller hadn't come home. About a week after the armistice was signed, they received a letter saying they could not locate him. The likely hood of him being found, and him being found alive, was incredibly low. The letter had said Müller was simply 'Missing In Action,' but his parents knew that was just the government's way of admitting they could not take care of or protect their son. After sharing his sorrows and his regrets, Behm asked if they knew about Paul. He explained he went to his parents but could hardly get more than a few sentences from them. Behm was told just the same. He was likely dead, but the military wasn't sure. Going to find Kropp, Behm couldn't feel anything. He walked through the village's streets on one leg and one crutch. He kept his eyes low, already expecting to hear very similar words. 

And he did. It was a bit better. Kropp was dead, that was something his family knew for sure, so at least they could live knowing their son is at some peace. Unlike the Müllers and the Baümers, who went to bed each night without knowing if their sons were alive or out somewhere in France completely unknown and alone. 

Behm went home and went to his room right away. He didn't leave the room when his mother called him for dinner, he pretended to be asleep when she went to check on him. All Behm had left from his friends was about 18 months' worth of letters, so only about 18 pages for each of them. He hardly has a picture of them to look at. He knows he can't go back to their families. What would he say to them? "I'm sorry your sons are dead. I would have still been with them if I weren't a coward. Maybe things would be different then. Maybe I would be dead with them."

Staring into the pitch black of his room, Behm sat up, thinking of what he could do. What was left for him in the world? He was of no use to his family, and he is of no use to the school that employed him. He is of no use to his country. He never was. All he is now is alone. He hasn't any friends, and he definitely has no one to speak to. What person would be able to understand anything he has to say? What person here would be able to comfort him? Behm could hardly comfort himself. There was no comfort in anything now. 

Chapter Text

Paul gasps and sits up. His hands move to his chest, right where his heart would be. Right where he felt a French bayonet strike him. There was nothing for him to feel. No pain or stinging. Not even the feeling of blood-soaked fabric. Looking around, he found he was no longer in a trench. Nor was he on the battlefield. He wasn't soldiers housing communes. There weren't sounds of French and German soldiers screaming in agony, and there wasn't silence. Paul heard everything the war hadn't let him hear. While it was slightly overwhelming, he could hear the sounds of bugs buzzing and the wind's slow breeze, and animals he can't recognize. Laughter, too. That struck him as the oddest. 

He stood, expecting to feel shaky and tired, but he felt well. Nothing about this situation was expected. Nothing about it seemed to have an explanation. The only thing he could begin to think was this was either heaven, which he found unlikely, or everything he had faced, everything he felt, and everything he saw was simply not reality. Then he realized he knew where he was. He'd been here maybe only twice before, but both times were memories he constantly thought of. It was a hill only lightly covered in snow. He could see a few meters ahead of him, and everything other than tall pines was covered in fog. Walking down, he almost tripped a few times, and that made him realize walking was a waste of time. There was somewhere he needed to. Where that was, he didn't know yet, but he wouldn't find it if he only walked. He followed the sound of people talking and laughing like he would do when he was younger. God, it has been such a long time since he's felt safe. It's been such a long time since he's felt comfortable. He was running somewhere without fearing what could possibly be behind him. He was looking forward to something. More than that, he was looking forward to finding out what that something is. 

He ran until he saw what he should have expected: he saw rows of rundown, wooden plank buildings and groups of soldiers sitting outside of them. As he walked past, looking into each building, he heard the same types of conversations he would hear before. The men and boys were writing letters, in their diaries, and were gambling. He finally made it to one building. His mind couldn't figure out why he found it so familiar or why he felt the need to enter it. Paul stayed standing just outside the door, unwilling to see who would be inside. That was, of course, until he felt himself pushing the door open. It wasn't a decision he was making for himself.

When he walked in, he saw the only thing he could have ever wanted to see. Sitting with a book in hand was Ludwig Behm. Right next to him, holding on tightly to a French theatre flyer was Albert Kropp. Doing nothing else but sitting and staring into the ceiling, Tjaden didn't seem to be any bit aware of anything around him. Brushing gingerish-blond hair was Franz Muller, who was also the first to notice. 

Franz smiled and stood, "Paul. I don't think any of us were expecting you to be here."

"Where exactly is 'here'?" Paul asked, still confused about the situation.

"Well, you're dead. Aren't you?"

"I think so."

"Where do you think this is?"

"I wasn't expecting an afterlife."

"None of us were," Ludwig said. His glasses were no longer the kind held by straps around his ears. They all looked just as they did before the war, apart from their clothing, of course. The five, Paul, Franz, Ludwig, Albert, and Tjaden seemed to be as healthy as ever, without the permanent looks of horror on their faces. They all seemed to be at peace.

Paul looked down. He was completely aware that this was something he was supposed to be happy about, but he couldn't find a way to be. Looking at the looks on his friend's faces, he couldn't think of anything to say. Any thought he had was not about any of his friends, they weren't even about Tjaden. Not even Kat. He could only think about his family. His father and mother were surely at home waiting for a letter from him detailing when he would be home. His sister is likely waiting in his bedroom, imagining the first thing they would do together when he gets home. But Paul isn't gonna be going home. And he won't be able to comfort his mother or sister when they find out. He won't be able to do anything now. 

"Paul?" Albert said. 

"Why are we here? Why would be here?"

"You wanted to be here," Ludwig said.

"What?" Paul felt frantic now. Nothing anyone was saying seemed to make sense, and his friends hardly said anything to him.

"You wanted to be here, Paul. You wanted to be at the front. With all of us here. During peace. Think of all the problems and worries you would have if you were home. But you're here. And during peacetime. This is what you wanted, isn't it?"

"Are," Paul coughed. "Are you all real? I mean, as real as I am?" The four others shook his head. "Where is Kat?"

"He went out for a walk," Tjaden said, still not looking toward Paul. "Somewhere by the woods."

Paul didn't say anything else before leaving. He practically ran out of the tattered shed and ran back to the open field he was in. He thought Kat might be in that area. That might as well be the last place they really spoke to each other. The last place Kat was alive. A few people, soldiers he never learned the name of, tried to speak to him, or at least tell them where he was off to, but he kept ignoring them. By the time he had reached the field, he was completely out of breath and fell to the floor. He stayed on the floor for a few minutes, feeling the wetness of the grass on his face. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't stop himself from beginning to cry. The only reason he didn't stand up was so he wouldn't have to accept that he is crying. He curled up, bringing his knees up to his chest and burying his face into them- just like he would do as a child.

All he wanted was to be in his bed. To hear his mother's footsteps as she slowly walks into his room and sits on his bed. To feel her hands gently rub his back while she tells him it's all okay because she's there with him. And as long as she was there, everything will be okay.

But it won't be. Because he isn't in his bed, and his mother isn't just about to sit with him. His sister won't be ready to make him a cup of tea. He won't be able to walk the streets of his home village with his friends. He isn't with his friends. They are with him, but they aren't real. They don't speak with the same voice or the same feeling as they would normally. If he is in heaven and some kind of god or other beings made this for him, they didn't make it right. If this is what Paul wanted, then what Paul wants is wrong. He's always known that. Almost everything he has ever wanted is wrong. Now, he can't tell if what he wants is his mother's maternal embrace, or Kat's. He hasn't felt one of them in nearly two years. Feeling the other might as well have been an everyday occurrence. So he was crying. Whether it was for his mother or his sister or his friends or Kat, he didn't know. He wasn't crying for his life. There was hardly any reason or point in his life, without or without the war. There was almost no worth in mourning it. 

He sat up and wiped his face with his sleeves. He stood up again and continued walking. He walked into the woods, trying to figure out where Kat could possibly be. There was the faintest sound of footsteps and leaves somewhere in the distance, so he decided to follow it. Every couple of steps, he would need to stop to wipe the newly formed tears from his face. Paul knew crying wouldn't do anything. It would bring him back to life or bring anyone he loved any amount of closure, but it still felt like something he needed to do. Every tree around him looked exactly the same, so he picked one at random and sat under it with his head resting in his hands. Maybe an hour passed without him moving. Snow was covering his clean, almost brand-new-looking uniform, coating it lightly. 

"You'll catch a cold if you stay out here, Paul." Paul jumped at the voice. His initial reaction would have been to stand and look for where it could have come from, but he instead stayed sitting with his eyes kept on the grass. The sound of rustling glass, heavy breathing, and a person sitting next to him wasn't enough to make him look up either. "Alright. If you insist on staying here, then you might well take my coat. I don't need it. I'm used to the weather."

Lifting his head slowly once he smelled the faintest bit of smoke, he turned his head to the side with his eyes a burning red from before. Through them, though his vision was still almost entirely blurred, he was able to see Kat calmly sitting by him while smoking a cigarette. 

"Kat?" Paul said in a shaky voice. 

"It took you long enough to react."

"Kat!" Paul moved swiftly into Kat's arms and began to cry harder than before. Kat wrapped his arms around the crying boy, just like he would with his own son. "Oh, Kat. I don't know anything anymore."

"It's not your job to know anything. It was the world's job to teach you, but they failed at that. It's not your fault. Maybe the fault of a few handfuls of people., But definitely not yours."

"I don't want to be dead, Kat."

"No one ever does. Not really. They act like it, but they never want themselves to be dead. They want a part of themselves and a part of everything around them to be dead; not themselves. Think of it in another way, Paul. We are all at peace now. Two different kinds of peace. The war is over, and our home must be getting better. We are at peace because we are no longer in it."

"But did we do anything to ensure some of that peace, Kat?" He looked up and wiped his tears with his sleeve. Kat held out his coat and offered it to him. Paul took it slowly and gently put it over his shoulders before leading back onto Kat's shoulder. Their breaths synched with each other. Kat held Paul like a child, wrapping one arm around his back and shoulders and the other to brush Paul's hair. He only began with his hair to put Paul at ease, even just slightly. Anything to calm his tears.

"You think too much, Paul. This isn't the place to have those thoughts. They never did anything for you in the past. And they sure as hell won't do anything for you now. Have you spoken to the others?"

"No. There seems to be no point in it. They aren't real. And I know you aren't either. Just some kind of figment of my imagination. I wish we were all still real. Alive. In peace that is finally happening. That you and I and all the others could spend Christmas together. Like you said, Kat. At peace together. We never got to know peace together, Kat."

"Who is to say we are not at peace now? We will no longer know any worry about pain and despair here. We are all here together."

"Must I go with the others? They all seem so artificial."

"It will be the only thing to get you used to this place. Speak to them."

"Will you come with me to do so?"

"There is no longer a need for us to be apart." Kat stood, slightly shivering from the weather. His pale skin would have almost near completely blended right into the snow-covered landscape he was standing on. When Paul took off his jacket to hand back to him, Kat smiled, shook his head, and reached out his hand to help Paul up. 

The two of them walked together, embracing each other, back to the soldier's housing. There, the two of them entered the little room their friends were sitting in previously. They did just as they knew best: they drank, ate, gambled, and taught Ludwig the songs he was never able to learn. They stayed up at night, not having to worry about waking up at dawn. They ate without having to worry if that would be their last. Paul sat on the floor in front of Kat, and he rested his head on the inner side of Kat's left knee. Kat, realizing that he had never gotten the chance to ever speak with Ludwig, decided to tell him the joke he had told the others the joke he had said just some days prior. They all reacted as if it was the first time they had heard it. They all spoke to each other as if this was the first time were really speaking to each other. As the hours passed, Paul's muscles loosened up, and he could feel himself getting used to having to live like this. Still, the thought of it terrified him. The one good part of it was that he no longer had to fear being alone. Part of him also realized he no longer had to fear death. Though thinking that did partially set his conscience back a few steps, being able to see his closest friends finally look happy but him back. Faint smiles came across his face every time he would hear Kat even slightly laugh. Kat was still gently petting Paul, and it quickly became what the friend group began to mock and make fun of though, however, Paul didn't at all think much of it. The only thing he could focus on was how Kat had not taken his hands off of him- even if it was only his head. 

It has been about 18 months since he had last seen Ludig. He wishes the circumstances could have been better, and he wished he were sitting in the same room as the real Ludwig and not a figment of whatever pieces he hasn't managed to forget.

Once Albert brought up the night Franz had spent with a group of French women, the room erupted with laughter, slightly embarrassed laughter on Franz's part, but laughter nonetheless. Franz began to detail the story and choked up when he realized it had happened at most two nights before. It was all stopped was Paul very gently brought up the flyer Albert was still holding. The four younger soldiers, boys, kept going back and forth, finding and remembering whatever they can to try and insult the other. Kat and Tjaden watched and laughed along, watching them finally behave in the way they were meant to. Laughing without having to worry about anything at all. From the little Paul could see of his friends' eyes, Paul could tell they had regained some sense of light. He leaned his face into Kat's hand and smiled. No longer were they forlorn like children, but they all remained as experienced as men. No longer were they crude or sorrowful or superficial- Paul believed they weren't lost anymore. Not alone, not without hope, without fear. Through death and entering a world they could have never known in life, the four younger ones had become the boys a few small men refused to let them be. There was so much for them to say, and they will finally say it. 

Chapter Text

No man's land looked to be as dead and empty as ever. The drab greys and muddied land did nothing to give lightened ideas of peace. Sure, they signed, but what was the point of signing if we were going to be sent off anyway? Fifteen last minutes. One last battle. I've survived four years. What're fifteen minutes? None of the men and boys around me have any emotion on their faces and least of all Paul. Almost none of them have gotten a chance to wipe the blood and dirt from nights before. We all walk calmly, myself walking directly next to Paul. We are walking a lot slower than everyone else. He holds his rifle down and to the side, partially pointed toward his feet, while all the others hold them up, ready for battle. Once we get closer to where the French have retreated, the men leading the group begin to run. We all do the same. Hundreds of men running toward their almost definite death. 

Above the sounds of heavy breathing and shouting, I can hear the sounds of Frenchmen speaking and laughing. About three dozen men are hit with French bullets before we come close to them. I don't bother to look as they fall. Paul doesn't either. From the corner of my eye, I see someone get struck in the eye. It looks to have exploded. I continue running. Such a waste. And right by the end. I get separated from Paul, and I try to call for him, but the smoke around us that makes it hard to breathe makes it even harder to speak. I, along with multiple other men, continue our run. I pause three meters or so from where I last saw Paul shoot the Frenchmen that were running toward him. During a physical altercation, I had to hit a man's head with a jagged rock we had fallen by. I stand and look at him. I use the end of the rifle to hit him again. Just to make sure there's no chance for him to stand again. I'd show mercy to him, or to anyone else here, but I know they won't show any to Paul, so I do what they could have done to him. More men are shot in front of me. I take cover behind them while reloading my rifle. 

We fall into the trench. Many men fight the way they did when they first arrived here: with honor. We surrendered, and they still think there is something to feel honored in. I attack just the same. Might as well. I can see Paul now. He is fighting physically with a French soldier, who is holding his head underneath the mud, mud that is more solid than liquid. I ignore everyone around me and run toward him. Paul reaches for a rock and hits the soldier in the head. As he falls, I shoot the French bastard. Paul rolls over and is breathing heavily, looking up, seemingly unaware that I am standing above him.

"You'll get shot if you stay there, Paul."

"Kat,"

"Come on, Paul." I reach my hand out to him to help him up. "It shouldn't be long now." I wipe some mud off his face before stepping back. Paul looks at me before running off somewhere. A small bombardment comes toward me, so I can't go follow him. I shoot them while stepping back while wondering how much longer this is going to take. Once a whistle blows and an alarm rings, I drop my rifle and run to find Paul. Tripping over piles of dead bodies, all I can bring myself to think of is Paul. I yell for him, waiting to hear something from him. Anything, really. I find Paul, and he is standing in front of a younger boy, someone who doesn't look any older than fifteen. I don't know what Paul is doing.

~~~~~~

When Paul and I are placed on a train to go back home, we discuss what's left of us. Almost every town and village we pass seems to be completely destroyed. It brings almost no hope for us. The other men on the train around us don't speak a word. When we stop at one town to let passengers off and get coffee, they do nothing more than nod and attempt a kind smile. Paul and I say our thanks, but we say nothing else. 

I am the first to leave the two of us. When I stand, Paul stands with me. He reaches into the trouser pockets and pulls out a piece of paper.

"My address, Kat. Send me a letter. We can spend Christmas together like we said we would."

"Where are you from, Paul?"

"Vechta."

"I'll write to you, Paul. In two weeks or three, we'll be together."

Paul smiled. "Goodbye, Kat."

"I'll see you."

On my walk home, I see exactly how much of my home has been ruined. Buildings halve boarded-up windows, and there are women and children sitting out in the streets. I see one child playing with a soldier's kit. I keep my eyes down to avoid having to see any other piece of ruin.

My wife is sitting at our dining room table when I walk in. I didn't think of sending a letter to her when we were being sent home. Anything could have gone wrong, so I didn't want to get her hopes up for my return. I drop my bags to the floor, and she looks at me. Her eyes widen, but she says nothing. 

"St-" she stuttered. "Stanislaus?

"Kristine. I'm sorry for not telling you I was going to be arriving home. I thought it'd be a surprise." 

She runs to me and jumps into my arms. I struggle to but I hug her back. She sobs into me, clutching onto my clothes, and she sounds like she is struggling to breathe. I gently push her off me. I wipe her tears and my thumbs and hold her face.

"Don't cry. There's no need to. I'm not going anywhere anymore. You don't have anything to worry about it anymore," I tell her. 

"Are you hungry?" she says. I smile and nod. She pulls away from me, wipes her face and her dress, and moves away to the kitchen to prepare something. I slowly follow her. I stand a meter from her just to look at her. She asks me if something is wrong, and I tell her no. It's been so long since I have seen her. It's been so long since I have smelt her or felt her skin pressed against mine. 

I walk up behind her and wrap my arms around her waist. She asks me what I am doing, but I don't say anything. There is nothing for me to say. I rest my chin on her shoulder. I kiss her softly, making sure to smell every bit of her I can. She tells me it may be best that we move to our bedroom so we can do this properly. I tell her no. It's been so long since we have been together, so no matter where or how we do this, it will be the proper way. Because we will be together. We will have finally been together. She laughs at my words and pulls my arms away from her. She turns to look at me and touches my face. The only thing that comes to mind is the desire for her hands to be touching something else. My hands move to take a firm grasp on her waist, and I pull her closer to me. My face moves down to her neck, and I can hear her breath quicken as I kiss and bite at her skin. She quietly moans as I pull our lower halves closer. Her hands run through my hair. One of her legs moves up and rests on my hip to give me easier access. I hold onto her leg and hold myself closer to her. We are in sync with everything 

The feeling of her, the sound, and taste of her might as well be the closest I will ever be to heaven. And yet, it is not the only thing on my mind. While there is not a single place I would rather be, I cannot help but think that I cannot speak to her. There is no need for speaking now, and there won't be for a few days, weeks at best. I could only wish for my mind to only focus on my wife, my love, my wife. My Kristine.

Later that night, when we are in bed together, resting in each other's arms, she says nothing to me. I say nothing to her. It is so quiet that I almost begin to think I must be dead. A living man would speak to his wife. I don't know what about, but he would speak. I think there are about a million words I could tell my wife, and I feel like I need to tell her them, but there is no way for me to do so. There is no way for her to understand anything I have to say. Really, there is no way for anyone to understand. The only ones who do might as well be in the exact situation I am in. I am laying next to my wife, and yet it feels like I am back in the trenches, with the only living being close to me is a rat.  A rat feasting on the body of a fallen comrade. Alone.

The morning feels the same. We wake, and she kisses me before going to fix up something to eat. I sit at the table and wait until she sits with me. I say I have something to ask, and she tells me to ask. I pause for a bit, wondering where I am supposed to start. I start with Paul. I tell her everything I could think to tell her and pause when I come to our last conversation. I ask my wife to bring me my coat, the one I was wearing the night prior.  When she hands it to me, I reach into the interior pocket and pull out a small, folded piece of paper.

"We spoke about how we'd spend Christmas together. Is that alright? I shouldn't have promised it."

"Oh, Stan. Why wouldn't it be? He is your friend after all."

"I fear that is not the problem. I fear that" I swallow my breath. "I fear that when I see him, I will not see him. I will not see Paul, the young boy excited to spend the holiday with his family and his friend. I will instead see Paul, the damaged war veteran who wishes he has more friends to waste the days with. Friends who are his age. Not one that might as well be a father." 

She says nothing, as I expected her to, but she reaches out and takes hold of my hand. Hers are a bit rough, and I feel the blisters of a working woman rub against mine, and it brings me an indescribable amount of calmness. We go about our day without speaking much. It almost feels right.

~~~~~~

A few weeks pass and I am back at my job. There is no real joy in it, but it is what keeps my wife and me alive, so I go along with it. Christmas is coming a lot sooner than I had anticipated, and so is Paul's visit. My wife sent him a letter just the other day; we are expecting a response fairly soon. We are both hoping he may be able to join us for small celebrations. I understand if he may not be able to. His parents must have been slowly dying at the thought of them never meeting again. Maybe this Christmas may be just me and Kristine again like it has been for the past few years. Sometime during my shift, an older gentleman stops by for a rather simple shoe cleaning and speaks to me. We end up speaking about the war. How he had wanted to go fight so his sons won't be entirely alone and afraid, but he was denied the right due to his age and health. One of his sons died, and the other had been severely crippled and can no longer walk. He took one look at me before asking me about my service. He asked how long I fought, how many times I was injured, and how my family felt about it. I told him all I could: I fought all four years, all my injuries were never severe enough to put me in hospital for any longer than two weeks, and I was on leave once. In response to his question about my family, I only told him about my wife, and how she has multiple friends in the village and had her support groups. Any money I made while fighting would be automatically sent to her. I had no use for it in the trenches after all. 

"Any children?"

"No, sir."

"Such a shame. Such a healthy-looking man. Germany would expect a man of yours to have children."

"Well, sir. I had a son, but he passed when he was young."

"I'm sorry to hear."

"No need to apologize for occurrences we cannot control. It'd be like you trying to apologize for the war as a whole."

"Hmmm," the man said. "Christmas with no children. That's an even bigger shame," he stopped, "I don't mean to depress you."

"Nothing you can say could ever do that, sir." I finished cleaning his shoes and looked up at him. "My wife and I won't be completely alone. If all goes well, we will have a boy with us. Well, not a boy. No, he hasn't been a boy for years. What we saw together has aged us both. He, perhaps, far more than me. He and I are the last alive from our small group. In our minds, we may be alone, but we won't be physically together. That's all I can hope for now."

The man stands and reaches into his coat pocket. "Sounds like God has given you a son. One you have raised in hell and have brought back to Earth." He hands me much more marks than he needed to. When I was about to correct his mistake he holds his hand up and stops me, "If you have any respect for me, you will take it. I have no real need for it. It seems that you do. Get something. For your wife, the boy. Yourself even. It'll be a white Christmas. You might as well make everything around you seem like it."

I dreadfully take the marks, "Thank you, sir. I'm not sure how I could repay you."

"Don't."

He left. I continued my day's work. 

~~~~~~

Paul doesn't arrive until Christmas Eve. The first thing he does is apologize for not being able to come earlier. It took everything in his, very limited, power to get his family to let him come here. He says he will be here for the day and the night, but he is to leave for the train station before noon the following day. Kristine and I tell him it is alright. He is with us, and that is all we could ask for. 

We spend the entire day speaking. We sit in the dining room, drinking teas and coffees, while discussing what Paul has planned. He tells us he is heavily considering going to university, but he does not know what he should study.

"I think literature or something similar. I spoke to my father about it once, but he told me I should look into something more respected. More useful. Something a soldier would be expected to learn. When I said history, he asked if I meant military history. I nodded," he took a small sip of his coffee. "I didn't. I was thinking about Africa. I've always wanted to go. And I've gotten around to reading some of the books Ludwig had always said I should read. The world is so much more interesting when we are at peace."

"Why don't you tell your father what you tell us?" Kristine said.

Paul shrugged.

"There are many jobs for a historian. And respected jobs, for that matter." Kristine reaches for Paul's hand. She is a born mother. "You have done your job as a son and a soldier, now it is time for you to live."

Paul smiled at her.

After some time, Kristine went off to the kitchen to start preparing dinner. That left me and Paul sitting at the table. He leaned closer to me and spoke, "Kat? I know you told me she is beautiful, but why did you not tell me she is this beautiful?"

I laughed. It is such a juvenile thing to ask, and such a small thing to have remembered. "Well, Paul," I say. "I don't know the words needed to properly describe her."

Paul laughed. "I missed you, Kat."

"And I missed you too."

He reached into his coat and pulls out a box of cigarettes, a bag of nuts, and what looked to be a pocket knife. He pushes the items toward me. "I'm sorry I could not get you anything more. My mother does not want me to work. I brought you what I could, and what I thought was sensible.

I do not look down at the items. Instead, I make sure to only look at Paul. "Oh, Paul. You know your being alive is the one thing I could ever come to need or want."

"You always say stuff like that, and sometimes I wonder if you mean the things you say."

"Well, why wouldn't I?"

"You say things like that so often. Maybe, I think to myself, you have just learned that people want to hear it, but you don't mean it. Something you know to say. Not something you want to say."

"I say it because I know it is all true. I repeat my sentiments as much as I can to make sure you know it. That you know how much I mean it all. There is no reason for me to lie to you, Paul."

"Kat?"

"Yes?"

"I'm glad that French bastard didn't shoot you."

We both laugh. 

"Is this the right time to bring it up, Paul?"

"I thought at some point I would have to tell it to you."

I smile, stand, and motion to him to stay at the table. When I come back, I am holding a handkerchief. It is white cloth, embroidered with flowers and the letters "P. B." I also give him a journal and a dip pen. After our previous conversation, the journal and pen seem even more appropriate. I hand them to him. He looks at the handkerchief, and the handkerchief alone, sadly. It looks like the handkerchief Paul had had during the last battle, the one that had belonged to Franz and then Tjaden. It looked similar but just different enough. "I saw it while I was out. It reminded me of you and them" 'Them' refers to our old friends. 

"You know the young boy I was with last? Walter is his name. I handed him Franz's handkerchief because he had a small cut on his hand. I wrote to him a few times. He hasn't responded. He had just turned sixteen when he was sent out."

"He may not respond for a while, but I am sure he eventually will. Even though he spent a short time there, it's a hard thing to heal from."

Paul looked at me with wet eyes. "Thank you, Kat. For everything you have ever done and said."

"You don't need to thank me."

"But I do, Kat. No matter how many times you say I don't, I will continue to.  In maybe every way the phrase could mean, you have kept me alive. In so many ways, Kat. I always have to thank you. And for everything. In every possible way, you are everything."

I say nothing, There is nothing to respond with. We continue speaking, removing the emotional sentiments from our words. When Kristine walks to the table holding a tray, there is one notable item resting on it: potatoes. Unpeeled.

Chapter Text

Franz sat on the trench floor, his thoughts wandering in the same direction as the raindrops falling on the muddy floor. He thought back on everything he could have done. Sure, it wasn't entirely his choice to enlist or to come here, but he hadn't had much choice. If he hadn't enlisted, then conscription officers would have come after him. And there was no way to avoid that.  He- still clinging to the hope it would only be weeks until they reached Paris- had attempted at starting a conversation about post-war ideas, asking his old friends and new comrades what they thought life would be after the war. It was all shot down by Kat who said thinking these types of things would only worsen their minds. Franz didn't want that to be true. 

The only thing that had kept him sane for the past few days was thinking about life after this. He had always been the practical one of the group, so it all came naturally to him. The dreams he had prior to his clung to him. If it had been possible, he would have taken every book he could carry with him. He knows now that they would have turned wound-patching materials and weapons against vermin if he had brought them. He should have known that. There is no place for his old self here. No place for much of anything.

After being corrected by an officer, Franz was instructed to help the others fill sandbags. When he failed to meet the expectations of how it was to be done, he was told to dig.  Trenches were never finished, and it always does well to have them a few inches deeper. He tripped nearly every time he attempted to push the shovel into the ground, and the rain and mud only made getting up harder. He was called words he had never heard before and was scolded so much, he had to bite down in his tongue to stop himself from crying. Seeing the interaction play out, Kat walked up and placed himself in between Franz and the officer. He told the officer that Franz was still fresh meat. He'd get used to and better at all the work eventually, but yelling wouldn't speed anything up. Then he walked to Franz, straightened his uniform, and told him to go find Tjaden and help with whatever he was doing. Kat thought Tjaden would definitely appreciate the help.

He went to help fix duckboards; it was an easy task and didn't take much time, so they were sitting, watching the rain slowly poor, waiting until it would be time to scoop all the water out. Just like Franz had done his first night here.

"I've always admired how you manage to keep things in perspective," Tjaden said.

"Franz turned to him, his face showing a bemused expression, "What are you talking about?"

Tjaden shrugged. "You keep trying to talk about the future like you are fully convinced that one day we will all be out of here. I've been here for a while, and those types of ideas normally leave a man after his first night."

"And what's so good about that?" Franz felt a combination of annoyance and sorrow.

"It means you're good at surviving." The sky began to thunder and rain fell even harder. Tjaden leaned close to Franz and grabbed his helmet and put it on him so he wouldn't get as wet before they began to work. "You're good at keeping sane throughout this. There aren't many people here who can say the same. I know I can't."

"Surviving? What type of talent is surviving? Everyone does it. What does it matter that I am, too? It's no talent worth bragging about."

"It's a talent, Franz." He looked at him with a sincere and warm gaze. "Not in the way that most people would measure talent, but it's one. There's a quiet strength in being able to adapt and make the best of any situation. 

Franz sighed and looked down at his hands. They were caked with mud and blood. He couldn't tell if it was his blood. 

"The best thing you can do in a place like this is survive," Tjaden continued. "That's all you have to do. All any of us have to do. And you've already proved that you're much better at it than most here."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"Maybe not. But you need to be told something. You know, you're not as bad as the officers here want you to believe," he teased. Franz scoffed. "I'm serious."

"All I do is get by. All I do is survive but not live."

"Maybe that's why you're so good. You focus on the time when you will live."

"Do you? Focus on what you'll be like when this ends?"

"Sometimes. Kat is a little right, though. At some point, it did begin to kill me. Getting out of here seems like such an impossible task sometimes."

"Is surviving enough?"

"I don't know. Maybe. It is for now. When you survive, you'll do all those things you think you will. That you want to do. What is it? Kat didn't let you continue when you first tried."

"A physicist," Franz murmured

"Physicist?" Tjaden asked.

"I loved science and mathematics in school. And physics seems like such a beautiful field. I'd love to work in it someday. Be like Ohm or Clausius."

Tjaden chuckled, completely unaware of who the names he mentioned were or why they could ever possibly be important.

"I'm sure you'll make a great physicist. And an important one, too. Survive a bit longer here, and you'll be able to become one."

A faint smile tugged at the corners of Franz's lips, his eyes lighting up as if a weight had been momentarily lifted from his shoulders. It was such a rare sight to see anyone smile here. This could possibly be the first time anyone has. Smiles typically had no use in a place like this. Franz thought that maybe they eventually will.

As the rain fell harder and harder, the two heard the sounds of footsteps stomping on mud and coming closer. They stood and removed their helmets, ready to bend down and scoop up the couple of inches of water that had begun to form at the trench. Tjaden was never as philosophical or comforting as Kat, but he always seemed to know what to tell people. The lack of knowing matched perfectly with how all the others felt. His words seemed juvenile enough for Franz or Paul or Albert to be able to relate to, but they held enough advice that made Tjaden feel much like an older brother or cousin while Kat always acted like their adoptive father. Maybe Franz wasn't good at completing the tasks required to live here, but he was good at surviving. Maybe, once he survives enough, he'll begin to live here. Like Tjaden and Kat seem to do.

Chapter Text

Kat wasn't buried immediately after he fell. Bodies had been piling in the field hospital for weeks before Paul carried Kat in, so he was still lying on the rough bed, stained with blood that wasn't his. Thankfully he wasn't able to notice it. Most doctors in the hospital, if the decaying and abandoned building could be called that, hadn't noticed him either. All they knew was that Kat might as well be some drunk soldier, either passed out or asleep. The war had ended, as far as they were concerned, and they let him be, thinking he'd eventually wake up in an hour or two. Every bed around his body was full. They either held a soldier with a fresh amputation, groaning their way in and out of consciousness, or shot, gassed, or trampled. Either way, most of them will likely join Kat soon. 

The doctor who first saw Kat was sitting back a few beds from him, drinking watered-down whiskey from a flask he found in a patient's coat pocket. He had been told of General Friedrich's plan and was mentally preparing for what he knew was about to come. The thought of having to treat soldiers, soldiers he would have never seen, right as it was all supposed to be hurt him more than any shell could. The air smelled different to him. Dirt and blood were the usual smells surrounding the hospital, but something about it seemed different. It was much calmer, and he was thankful for that, but it felt wrong. The bodies wouldn't be buried yet. They would remain lying in their beds until eleven o'clock. Three hours. He had to wait three hours to see just how many graves they needed to dig. He had to wait three hours to see how many dog tags he'd need to collect. Three hours to see if the French had the same idea as Friedrichs. Half the soldiers in the hospital were only there for no more than two weeks. If they had held on for just a moment longer, they would not be here. If the smallest of details had been different, no one would be here. The run-down building would have never been attacked, and it would have never been turned into the house of death it is now. No Germans would be here. The French would have everything they already had.  The doctor threw his head and swallowed the rest of the whiskey in one go. He had three hours to prepare for something. What was he preparing for? He doesn't know.

When he stood, he stumbled and reached for the wall next to him for balance. It was not out of drunkenness, but rather out of tiredness. He had been awake for nearly two whole days at this point. Sure, he probably should have been used to it by now- not sleeping had been part of his routine for four grueling years. Sound overpowered him. Men from all over the room coughed, sometimes coughing pieces of their lungs out, or cried while thinking back on times of peace and realizing that, even though the war might be over and they may have missed a few shells, they would never be the same. They would leave the war behind, but it would never leave them. 

A few orderlies- nurses and nuns- sat by patients, patting their foreheads with damp clothes and shushing their cries, telling them God would protect them. The Doctor would much rather be in the dead room. It was always quiet in there. Sometimes it felt like the soldiers everywhere else knew exactly what the dead room was. Once or twice, he would hear a patient tell another about it, telling them they have never seen a patient ever come out of it. When the soldiers would ask, the nurses always told them they had nothing to worry about before giving them a cloth soaked in chloroform. If they asked a nun, they would be told everything was in God's hands in this building. Then they would give the patient the chloroform. That always told them everything they needed to know. The Doctor wished they would get rid of the nuns. All their talk of God did was make the soldiers even more unstable, which meant they would need to be in the hospital for even longer. There were limited beds, and there was always a surplus of bodies in the fields. It did no one any good to keep the unstable men in beds where the sick could be. It would make everything run smoother if they put the mentally sick back to fight. If they die, so be it. They would always express the desire to die anyway. Better have them die with some honor than in a flea-infested hospital. The Doctor knew no one ever died with a sense of honor out there. That was only a lie fathers would tell their sons and teachers would tell their students. He always heard the older soldiers telling the younger ones to calm them down after they recounted watching their best friend, often a boy no older than twenty-one, be struck down. The Doctor saw how the men and boys died: writhing in pain, crying out for their mothers, and begging to simply be shot. The better deaths came from the ones who simply never woke up.

Maybe it was like that for Kat. Maybe Kat fell unconscious before he died. That seems to be the best-case scenario for him. Or maybe it would have been better if he died in the field because he would have already been buried. A few soldiers, maybe Paul, would have gotten his body when both sides retreated back to their trenches and carried him back. They'd find a coffin close to his size, cover him and his coffin in white powder, and bury him with dozens of his comrades. His grave would be unmarked no matter when or where he gets buried, so maybe it won't matter. Kat's wife and Paul would never be able to see his grave without traveling hundreds of miles from their homes, and without exactly where he was located. 

The Doctor reached into his pockets and pulled out his pocket watch. It read 11 a.m. Three hours had passed by a lot faster than he had expected. He sighed and stood up, walking to the hospital's entryway to wait for the arrival of soldiers, both alive and wounded. He wasn't expecting the dead ones. If the soldiers did fight the French, he thought it would be just a bit unlikely they fought with any strength. At the end of the war, what would be the point of it? Why would any of them want to risk death if they knew they got to go home? Looking at the men, he noticed a few of them had a few scratches. Some had faces covered in blood and the smallest amounts of blood, but none of them seemed to be all that injured. However, there didn't seem to be many of them. Just earlier in the day, cars full of fresh recruits arrived at the front, confused as to why they were there. None of them seemed to be any older than sixteen. The war started with men in their twenties, many with wives and children. The war ended with children who wouldn't ever graduate high school. If those young boys were coming to the village, the Doctor wasn't able to point them out in a crowd. They all looked the same-- men who had survived four years and boys who survived five minutes. They all wore the same look of death on their faces. Their clothes all had the same pungent scent: the smell of rotting meat, bathed in fruits no one could put a name to, the blood of a Frenchman they never learned the name of. He turned to look into the hospital. He looked at Kat. All the Doctor could remember was a young man carrying the body- a body the Doctor did not know the name of- insisting he was only unconscious. But the liver bleeds black blood.

"Black blood. Straight into the liver," he remembered telling the boy. The Doctor started to walk away from the body. "Such a shame," he thought. "Right by the end."

At least all the others would get to go home.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Paul stared at the soldier in front of him. Neither of them wanted to be here. They signed, so it was all over, and yet here they were: standing face to face after having wrestled guns and knives out of each other's hands. Paul didn't want to kill anyone else, and the Frenchman didn't either. He counted, trying to figure out how much longer he had to stand here until it was finally 11 a.m. He breathed slowly, and he struggled to. Standing a meter or two apart, they stared at each other with wide eyes. The soldier in front of Paul almost looked like Albert. Almost like they could have been cousins or related to each other in some way. He couldn't bother to think of Albert right now. He was at peace. That type of peace would be infinitely better than anything that happens once it's 11 a.m.

It didn't matter how it ended for Paul. When he went home, he would always feel like he had died at the front. It won't ever change anything. What type of life could he possibly live after this? What life does a soldier have in peace? A soldier who was meant to be a boy. A writer, a professor, something. Even if no one shot him, even if no one punctured his heart with a bayonet's end, stabbed him dozens of times right in the center of his chest, or bashed his head with a dead soldier's helmet, he would still be dead. 

The Frenchman tried to walk toward Paul, but Paul pushed out of the way, running out of the dugout and climbing out of the trench. He ran past the confused-looking at each other, unaware of what they were supposed to do. Minutes ago, they were trying to kill each other. Now they are standing meters away from each other with absolutely no ill will. A younger soldier, one Paul had tried to protect in the last seconds, saw him and decided to follow him despite not knowing where Paul was running to. Paul took no notice. He was simply trying to not trip over the corpse of the dead horse he had hidden behind earlier. The run took no time. Not a single person had tried to stop him, and there was no one ahead of him. The run was mostly a straight line. Apart from avoiding the residue of rifles, entrenching tools, the foxholes that came from grenades and shells, and the bodies from previous fights that had not yet been collected, the run was easy. He was not running from a bullet, and he was not running from gas. All he ran from was the lingering idea that he may never see Kat. He needs to. Even if it is only his head body, he will see him, and that is all that could possibly matter to Paul.

He arrived back in the village and saw a sight no different than what he saw when they first signed: soldiers were drunk and celebrating the end. The official end. It took him a quarter of an hour to make his way through the crowd and back into the field hospital. The scene looked the same. Kat was lying in the same position as Paul had left him. On his back, his arms spread out next to him, and his face devoid of all expression. He lay on the bed stained with blood that was not his as though he were sleeping. His face showed that he could not have suffered long; it read as though he was glad the end had finally come. A soldier with big boots, a stomach full of raw eggs, and a liver full of metallic poisonings. A soldier in the midday- laying by Paul's side, stooping and angular. Kat, his comrade. He stood over him, wishing for him to open his eyes. Wishing for just another sight of his eyes. Eyes bluer than the skies they fought and killed under. Eyes colder than the front. Paul fell to his knees and reached to cup Kat's face. He was cold. The snow that had fallen into the hairs of his eyebrows and mustache had long melted, making his face feel wet like he had cried. No tears came to Paul's face. He could not bring himself to cry.

"You are not related, are you?" said the boy, standing by the foot of Kat's bed.

"No, not related," Paul said. He stood and faced the boy, whom he recognized from the French trenches. "But he might as well have been."

Paul. The last of the four fellows from his class. While by every definition, is alive, he will live considering himself to be of the final casualties. Just behind Kat. Paul, who is no older than seventeen and who knows nothing of life but despair, fear, and death.

"But he might as well have been," he repeated.

Chapter Text

We had just captured a French trench when Kat told me to look around. He said the dead don't eat, and the injured might as well be dead, so it's okay if we take their supplies. They won't be needing it anyway. I could hear him speaking to Tjaden in the back, speaking about how they were sick of turnip bread, and maybe the French would have some wine stocked away. It'd been such a long time since he'd felt the sweet-tasting liquid of one, and Tjaden agreed- saying he never really enjoyed wine, but anything would be better than the muddy water that filled our canteens. As I walked further, trying to ignore the smell of blood and gunpowder around me, I began to wonder what wine tasted like. I had never come across it here. Any bottle I found was always shattered and spilling into the ground, so there was no good use in taking those. I reach one dugout and look inside, fearing there might be some Frenchy who hid out during the battle or someone we just missed. I poked my head in, almost fully convinced someone would come at me with a bayonet, but no one did. I walked down the nearly completely broken stairs and tried to act surprised at what I saw: there were shelves, but most of the jars sitting on them were destroyed. A few rats, too, but they ran once they heard me walking close.

Some of the jars seemed salvageable. They contained things like jams. On a table in the center of the room, there were pieces of bread and meat. They all looked dirty like the French had found them buried in the mud, but that was no problem. It still looked much better than half of the grub we get. I ripped off a small piece from one of the loaves, making sure the part I got was fairly coated in grime, and ate it as I continued about the dugout. There were ammunitions, some that wouldn't work with my rifle, and some that would. I took them both. Bullets can always be melted down into something else. I put them in a different pocket than the bread. Maybe we would get a ration of meat today. At least, I hope we do. The last time I had a proper meal was just before I came here, so about seven months. I think it's been seven. Every day seems to be an exact repetition of the last, even when I'm not at the front, and there isn't time nor a safe place to try and make a calendar or mark the days down.

Kat told me it's not worth it. It only harms a man more to think about all the time passing. When I asked how he deals with it, he simply told me he doesn't. When I asked Tjaden, he avoided the question. Franz and Albert told me the same; it's better not to think. That's how your mind begins to go. Except that is not what they believe. I can tell. The words they told me held a type of wisdom they did not have. The type of wisdom that Kat must have told them. I ought to start believing it, too. It doesn't seem like any of this will be ending soon.

There are a few coats thrown across the floor. Maybe, when we first attacked, soldiers were about to put them on but weren't able to. I searched them, seeing if maybe I could find a cigarette or two. I'll give them to Kat. I found none. They must have all been smoked before.

I do find something, however. I found a journal. I looked at it, wondering why someone wouldn't want them on them. Poor lad, I thought. Out dead somewhere. There is no form of identification in the journal. No soldier here would have ever known who it belonged to, and the dead man's family would never know it either. It'd do no one good to keep it here, and it wouldn't do me any good to keep it, but part of me feels like I need to. This man likely never intended for anyone to read through this, his private thoughts. Although, I do suppose he never intended to die either. I looked through it and found it is French. One of my supposed enemies wrote this. He likely carried it with him to prevent his comrades from looking through it. Here I stand, someone whom he would have likely killed, holding the only form of privacy he had. Or maybe he left it somewhere, fully expecting to come back to it. A Frenchman nonetheless. I can't tell whether that makes this worse or better. 

Kat yells to me from outside, and I slip the journal into my coat and walk toward him.

"I think it's best if we start heading back," he said to me.

I nod and follow him and Tjaden to find Franz and Albert. We meet up a couple hundred meters west and speak about everything we've taken. It's not much: some bread and jams and sausages. Franz found some paper and pens, and he said he felt he needed to Ludwig's family. They never responded to any of our letters, but Franz seems so insistent on writing them whenever he can. I don't mention the journal. I think Kat or TJaden would tell me I shouldn't have taken it. There was nobody next to it, and a Frenchman wouldn't write in German- not in a place like this. The dead don't need anything, just like Kat said, so I didn't steal it. It was out there, lying in the open, waiting to be eaten by rats who just finished gorging on our comrade's corpse. I didn't steal it. 

We move back to our company and run back to the village we had occupied earlier. Our week at the front is over. Now we are instructed to only peel potatoes and clean our rifles and uniforms, and that's it. 

Once we arrive, the others gather and sit around each other while speaking casually. I don't join them. They don't notice me.

It's nearing Christmas. I can remember the way my mother looked at me when I said I was going out to fight. She asked me if I was trying to kill her, and she pulled me by my collar to my sister, forcing my face close to her as she tried to quiet her sobs, and asked if I was trying to kill her, too. Once my father came home, well, I don't know how he reacted. He scolded me for lying on official papers and adding a year to my age, but once he heard the reason why, his eyes lit up, and he smiled. Mother tried to ask why he would encourage such behavior, but Father silenced her fairly quickly after. He took me by my arms and paraded me into town, telling his friends and coworkers that his son would become a new iron youth. He took me to the bar and handed me a drink. The bartender ignored my visible youth and called me his comrade. I should have listened to my mother. And we all should have listened to Ludwig. 

I wander into the woods and find a tree I can sit under. A mixture of rain and ice falls on me, but it doesn't bother me. I use my coat to cover myself and the journal. I start on the first page and begin to read: 

13 June 1917

I arrived here a few days ago.

The rain has been relentless, and the trenches have turned into a muddy nightmare. My coat and my uniform are soaked, and I don't doubt I'll come down with a sickness soon. 

I skip forward a few pages:

28 August 1917

May God have mercy on them all. It feels horrible to have killed another person. That is all he really was- just a person. I didn't mean to. if I had not killed him, then he would have killed me. I killed a man. It was not with malicious intent. It was not because I wanted to kill him. I had to. Everyone around me would agree, "Better him than you," they all told me. But the others around me have congratulated me on it. I hear them daily speaking about the second or third man they killed with their hands and not a rifle or a grenade, but their hands. They never speak about the first. They never talk about the look of horror that never leaves them. It drowns them. I am afraid one day I will become like them. I am afraid that I will eventually turn to speak about the men I killed without any more emotion than if I were speaking about a simple stroll down Nice or like if it were some type of macabre badge of honor. I will never be able to understand anything they say. I cannot relate to their words. Nearly two months here, and they are all as foreign to me as they were when I first entered the camps. 

How I miss that town! How I miss my father and my mother most of all. Perhaps, I feel, I miss Laurent the most. Last we wrote, he was sent off to the Eastern front. I can only pray that he is kept safe, and I feel that he is doing the same for me.

I only want to go home. I only want to rest my head in a bed and not worry about rats infested with fleas infested with the plague. I should not have to worry about being woken up by death. No one should. I wish I could write more, but I can hear people shouting for me. The Germans have started an ambush

I wipe the sweat and rain from my face and flip through all the pages of the journal, searching for the very last entry. When I found it, I saw that it was dated just two days ago.

29 November 1917

I received a letter from my mother today. She wrote that Laurent had passed. I never had a reason to fight here, but now I have even less of a reason to. If I cannot fight only to go home and see him, then I have no reason to fight at all. I shall write to his mother in the following days. Our bond reached far past typical friendship, and I owe it to his family to leave them with just a little honor.

I sit here, writing away from my comrades, but I am surrounded by constant reminders that there is no true escape from this. Part of me hopes a bullet finds me soon, only so I can see Laurent once more. He finally knows peace. 

I close the journal and throw it to the earth in front of me. It all feels too real. I don't know this man's name, and it will be forgotten just like everyone else's, but now I know his thoughts- everything he must have felt so ashamed of thinking. To think that just two days ago, he was alive and writing and convinced this would all come to an end soon aches me. Two days ago, I had lost Franz during an ambush. Why, I may have gone through years of pain and torment in the two hours we were separated. The men I am supposed to think of as my comrades- thousands of kilometers away in a village I will never know the name of- were the ones who had killed this man's friend: Laurent. The men who are always surrounding me, and the ones who I sleep and eat sitting next to, were the ones who killed this nameless man. If only I were to know anything more about him. His thoughts are not enough. 

Knowing he thought the same way of war when this started. He probably thought he would be paraded around his hometown as a hero and celebrated with a woman on his arm and an endless glass of champagne dripping against his hands. Maybe he thought this would be over by Christmas. Well, Christmas is slowly coming, and his family will spend the holiday without their son. Thousands of men on every front will celebrate it- not with a day of feasts or soft, gentle kisses or presents, but with dirt underneath their fingernails and fleas nesting on their heads, and a rifle sitting by their sides instead of a friend or a lover. 

They are at peace now. Millions of people whom we will never know the names of and millions of others who leave all of this alive but with a dead mind and a stare that stretched further past the thousands of miles they lived an entire life in. 

I can hear someone walking close to me and calling out my name. I pay no attention. My eyes remain only looking at the bound pages. I do not blink. I don't know how much time has passed since I first came here. I should have never left the group, and I should have left the journal to be forgotten and to decay right along with the man who owned it. 

"Paul?" It is Franz. "Paul, you scared us for a moment. Just running off like that. Kat said we should leave you, and let you be. But Albert and I began to worry when we saw the sun setting and you hadn't begun walking over yet."

I had not noticed the setting sun.

"Paul?" he asked again. "Are you alright?"

I shrugged. "How often do you think of Ludwig?"

Franz sighed and sat on the damp grass in front of me, just centimeters from the journal. "I do just as often as I breathe, I think," he picked at the weeds growing around. "One of us was bound to die, Paul. It just so happened to have been him. You can't blame yourself for all of that."

"I don't," I said. "We aren't responsible for this. Nor are the French or the British or the Russians or the Belgians."

"Is something on your mind, Paul? I could call Kat over, and you can speak to him. I know you would much prefer that."

"No, Franz. I don't think I would be able to tell him this. The way he thinks, he almost avoids all of it. You know I cannot do that. I think he'd just tell me to do just that."

"What about Albert?"

"He is delusioned by the fantasy of this ending, Franz. That does not seem likely anymore."

"Are you alright?" He asked. I motioned toward the journal, and Franz looked up at me confused. He grabbed it and felt the fine leather covers. "Is this yours?" I give no response. "Well, it's beautiful. I've known you've always been a writer, but I never imagined," he began to run his fingers against the pages, "you writing about whatever happens here. I always thought you'd be more of a romantic, Paul," he laughed. The smile he wore felt so foreign. It left his face when he turned to a page by the center. He read, "Tout ici meurt si vite, et je ne doute pas que mon sort, trop similaire, ait été écrit bien avant mon arrivée ici." He closed it and handed it to me. "Paul,"

"I didn't write it, Franz."

"Why do you have it?"

"My curiosity took hold of me. When we were clearing the trenches earlier, I saw it buried in the mud. I don't know what I was thinking when I picked it up. I think I knew it was a mistake, but I still did. And then I came here to read it. My god, what was I thinking? We always knew the men on the other side were people, Franz. We always knew that they had family out waiting for them to come home. But it never seemed to me that they were real people. People with emotions and thoughts and dreams and everything else you and I have. I suppose it was just about time that I came to realize."

"I think you should speak to Kat."

"No, I can't."

"Why do you say that, Paul? He knows more than any of us do, and he is the only one of us who can provide any real guidance for this. He's been here the longest. He definitely realized the exact same things when he first came here."

"Seven months. We have been here for seven months, and it has taken me that long to realize that people exist outside of how we interpret them. It has taken me seven months to learn."

"Some people don't begin to realize this even after decades of life. We all had to realize it at some point. We haven't killed, Paul?"

"What do you mean we haven't killed?" I try not to shout at him, but my words come out much louder than I wanted them to. "Have we not shot bullets? Have we not shot men? What have we been doing other than sending innocent men to their graves without reason? The gas and the bullets, that all came from us, Franz! We have killed. We have killed more men than most people even see in their lives."

"We do it only to survive, Paul. If we had not killed them, they would have killed us. I think you should speak to Kat."

"No. I can't."

"Very well. At least come with me back to the village. I cannot stand to even think of you sitting here alone in your pity."

"I can't do that either."

"Do you promise to come back before it gets too dark?"

"Of course, Franz. But leave me alone for just a while."

"Alright. I'll see you, Paul."

"And you, Franz."

He walks away and turns to look at me. I don't look at him. 

I can hear the sounds of small animals running back to their burrows. They run past me. I don't acknowledge them. I will never understand why we are here. The air is getting colder. I count my breaths while trying to figure out how long I can sit here before Franz comes back with Kat and forces me into an impromptu therapy session. Small flakes of snow are still falling. They never fall fast or heavy enough to ever really be noticed. I wish they would. Maybe they could be some kind of distraction, or something that means I don't have to go back. I am not sure if I know what 'back' refers to. Do I mean my life before? Back when Ludwig was alive and all our worries were literature and mathematics exams? Whether or not the girl working at the shop down the street knows we exist? Or do I mean back where Kat and Franz are? I don't think I could go back to either of the two. The first no longer exists, and even if all of this does come to an end, it will never be the way it used to be. And the second should not exist. We should have never known the sounds of a man or a boy coughing up his lungs, and we should have never known that Kat and Tjaden existed. I should have never learned Laurent's name, nor should I have ever laid my eyes on the writings of his friend.

When I returned back, I found Kat standing and smoking by the edge of the village. I stand next to him and wait until he tells me something, but he doesn't.

"Kat?" I ask.

"Yes, Paul?"

"Have you spoken to Franz?"

"Yes, Paul. You do much to worry us all."

"I'm sorry, Kat."

"No need to be. Where is it?"

"What?"

"The journal."

"I dug a hole in the ground, placed it, and prayed over it. The man who wrote it never intended anyone to read it, and I violated that. I hope no one finds it."

"Someone will. Maybe in a week, or maybe in a decade or two. Those things are not objects that can simply be buried and forgotten. Someone will find it. If not your generation, then the next. Or the one after that. Those things are not meant to be forgotten."

"No one will remember the man's name. He did not write it, and how many soldiers are out on that side? How many men are named Laurent in the East?"

"So what if we don't know his name? You know his words, do you not? Does it matter if he is remembered for his name or what he thought? Once this is over, because don't try to say it won't ever end, Paul, someone will have read it. For now, it is you. In ten or fifty years, it will be everyone else. That is a legacy in itself, Paul." He takes a long draw from his cigarette before throwing it to the ground. The wetness of the earth puts it out nearly right as it hits the ground. 

"Should I have kept it?"

"I don't know. You did what you thought you should have done. Now let's go, Paul. It is too late to think of all of this."

"Yes, Kat."

Chapter Text

When he was a much younger child, Paul would continuously beg his father for stories from the Great War- stories of pride and glory in hearing the sounds of the French and British screaming. Once the stories were over, he'd run into the street to relay them to all the other boys in the streets. He got older, and the stories from his father would become more graphic, and they no longer appreciated the idea of being a soldier. Instead, they all dismissed the idea, calling it such a foolish idea fit for only the foolish of men. Paul dismissed the words as his father's mind getting wearier as he got older. Nothing more than that. Everything he'd heard from his teachers in school said, and seeing officers marching up and down the streets of Freiburg im Breisgau would undo the weak and cowardly words from his father. 

Right as he turned fourteen, he'd beg his parents to allow him to become a member of the Hitler Youth. They were both resistant, his father and mother, but they gave in. Paul's hair and eyes were always much darker than the boys around him, but the curvature of his face, the way he spoke, and all the ways he held himself showed every man above him he was a perfect Aryan, even if he didn't fit the description all that well. He wore the uniform just as proudly as any officer and soldier would. At any given time, he could be seen walking the streets with the boys his age and his stature, all wearing the red cloth with the ancient Aryan symbol wrapped tightly around their arms.

There have been rumors spreading around the town for some time now. Rumors of war and of occupation. As any prideful German and patriot of his age would, he has been smiling brightly at the idea of fighting for the fatherland and becoming the hero he has always seen his father as. He brought up the idea of enlisting to his father over dinner not too long ago, and he was surprised by every reaction. His mother and sister simply stayed quiet, keeping their eyes on the plates. His father dropped his utensils and walked out of the dining room. When Paul tried to stand and follow his father, his mother told him to stay seated.

"Don't go and bother him," she said.

Paul sat back down, and no one said anything else. 

His father brought it up a day later, asking why he would say such a thing. Before Paul was able to explain, he was met with the feeling of his father's palm on his cheek. They managed to come up with an okay-enough solution. Moreso, Paul's father had, and Paul did not want to upset his father anymore, so he agreed. Paul would go to university for the full four years, and he'll be twenty-one when he graduates, giving him a two-year period for him to join the SS, something he desperately wanted to do.

Paul began studying history at university when he was seventeen. Now, nearing twenty-one, he is eagerly waiting until he can go off. His main professor, Katczinsky, much like his father, was a veteran of the previous war, however, he was not one to speak much of it. On occasion, the class would turn topics to the war and the shame it is having to wear the badges of cowards because of what happened in Versailles. Professor Katczinsky never engaged in the conversations, no matter how many questions his students asked.

There have been a few occasions when Katczinsky would give in, but those times would only happen whenever he was ambushed out in the courtyard and during his office hours. Sometimes Paul and his friends, mostly Franz or Albert- Ludwig would never want to join in with them- would enter his office without so much as a knock or a hellow and begin their typical questioning. Some students had taken notice of this and attempted to recreate the behavior, but Katczinsky always scolded them for their attempts. He seemed to have a weird type of favor for Paul and his friends, Something about them reminded him of himself. It might be how prideful they all seem to be. The way they speak about the government and the country's military reminds him of his youth, back when he would say similar things about the Kaiser. Except now, they say it for the Führer; the pride they mention practically advocates for yet another war. The boys are not yet eighteen, and yet they are already full of hate for people they likely would have never noticed before.

It worried him - to an extent, but he tried not to pay much attention to it. He thought it wouldn't go any further than youthful ignorance, much like many other people. He kept complete control over his classroom, pretty much banning all speaking of certain growing political parties, their ideas and symbols, and the idea of war unless they were prompted by him and himself only. This made many of his students upset. Except, strangely, Paul and his friends. They perhaps understood him more than anyone else, and it is almost entirely because of how familiar they are with each other. It is like they are all his sons. The advice they all come to him for is something a son would typically ask their father. Whatever Katczinsky told him, it felt like he should be telling this to a son of his own. However, this is the closest he will get for some time now. 

"Professor," Paul said. He was standing in the very front of the classroom, holding his briefcase close to his chest. 

"Hello there, Paul. What can I do for you?"

"Well," he stammered. "I just came from the halls. I am sure you know, but there are many rumors spreading around."

"Now, Paul-"

"It's an honor to serve, isn't it? Professor?"

Professor Katczinsky lowered his eyes and rubbed his fingertips along the rough wood of his desk. "I try to think about everything about what you youth think. You hear the stories from your fathers and your brothers, but none of those stories come close to the truth, Paul. Those men, they purposefully forget things and tell you everything they want to remember- the stories of greatness and pride- They aren't what war is."

"The students out there- they all speak of enlisting and conscription, comparing the Luftwaffe and the Heer. The SS, too, if they think of themselves highly enough."

"Are you with those students, Paul?"

"A bit. I think." He tried hard to hide his smile. 

Katczinsky stood from his desk and moved to the front row of his classroom. Desks were lined up all along toward the back wall, sitting equally apart. They all reminded him of the way he and all the other men and boys stood, waiting to walk into the front. He motioned toward Paul to sit in the seat next to him, and Paul readily complied, sitting facing forward with his briefcase placed calmly on the wood in front of him. 

"Don't be so serious, Paul." Katczinsky inhaled and exhaled deeply. "Patriotism is a silly thing. A noble sentiment, however. Your father, I am sure he is a great man, and I am sure he is proud of the service he gave his country, but have you spoken to him about this country?"

"Not really, sir."

"We fought for peace back then, and any sane man from that time will tell you no peace ever came from it." 

Paul turned to look at his professor, and he stood. His back was straight, and his eyes were forward. He was mimicking the look of paraded soldiers marching through a city's streets. "Is it not a man's duty to serve?"

"The most important thing a man can do is survive, and that is the hardest thing for a man to do while at war."

Katczinsky's words lingered in the air as Paul absorbed their weight. The professor's gaze held a depth of experience that transcended the pages of history books and echoed the haunting realities of war. Paul felt a knot tighten in his stomach, a mixture of uncertainty and the unsettling feeling that his and his friends' idealized vision of war was nothing more than a falsehood.

"War does shape a man, Paul," he said, his eyes fixed on an imaginary point on the wall in front of him. "But it shapes him in a way he cannot fathom when he first signs up for duty. All those tales of glory and heroism and pride, they are veils over the harsh truths of blood and loss and scars that will never fade.

Paul pictures what war could be like, comparing it to the tales his father told him when was younger. His eyes dropped to his hands, fingers tracing the edges of his closed briefcase.

"Have you spoken to your father about your plans?"

"When I did," Paul paused, "I don't really think he said anything. He was angry, I remember that much. And he told me it'd be better to have at least some education before I go out and enlist. He told me once I graduate, I am free. That's less than one school year. For some reason, I thought he would be proud of me."

"Your father fought, and he has his reasons for not wanting you to follow the same path. It's not weakness; it's wisdom earned through experience. War changes you, Paul, and not always for the better."

He looked up at Katczinsky, gratitude mingling with uncertainty in his eyes."Thank you, Professor," Paul said, standing, his voice quieter than usual. "I need to think about this. I think we all need to think," he thought about Franz and Ludwig. 

Katczinsky nodded, his expression one of understanding. "Take your time, Paul. Consider not just what you might gain but what you stand to lose. Because you can stand to lose everything, including yourself. My office is always open for you all."

Paul walked out of the classroom with his eyes stuck to the floor. Not once has he ever stopped to consider everything his professor has told him. Later in the day, when he meets with his friends, he relays everything their professor told him. Ludwig was the one who listened to him the most while Franz was hesitant, and Albert acted like he didn't want to believe anything coming from Paul's mouth. 

Neither of them knows what they are supposed to do, and least of all think. They spend the night eating dinner and studying together, all trying to ignore what Paul had told them earlier. The dreams of the Luftwaffe and the Heer, while they still exist, are full of hesitance. And when Paul bikes home and enters his room, he sees the red armband with the ancient symbol sprawled across it, he tucks it into the drawers of the desk and tries to forget it for the night. 

Chapter Text

The only sight of the outside world I have anymore comes from a small slot by the ceiling; it's maybe 8 centimeters across and 5 high. Most of the time, I can only see the pale blue of the sky or the clouds condensing when it's about to rain. Although, on some days, if I crane my head just right, I can see lines of trees and green all across the horizon. I am not sure if this was done on purpose. Give a prisoner just enough space to look out, but not enough to make out any sight. It's almost a torture method of its own, separate from the overall treatment of prisoners here. I suppose this is what we all deserve, but duty is vastly different than callous actions done because of hatred. Everything was done out of duty. Every single thing. The only thing I find myself doing these days is practically rotting- rotting in the horror of what is claimed to be a bed and rotting with the thoughts of my orders. Why I ever followed along with them. 

~~~~~~~~~~

I remember the day I first saw Paul. It was in late June 1943. He walked onto the camp with one of the brightest smiles I had ever seen, and a few of the older, more experienced soldiers stared and laughed at him for his naivety. I quickly hushed them, and without any order, told them to go off and find something productive to do. They complied as we all did. Paul was put under my command. He was hardly 17 when he came to me, and he told me about everything he wanted to do as a soldier. He wanted to lead an infantry out into battle and bathe in the infamy that comes from it. He wanted his name to be remembered and solidified in history, wanted to be someone they taught lessons about in schoolrooms. Those soldiers I scolded not five minutes earlier sensed this in him, I was sure. They saw his youth and his beauty and immediately jumped him.

One of the biggest surprises from him was his age. Most soldiers and guards come here when they are at least twenty, and they were never as excited as he was. No other guard seemed to be like him. Despite his youth, he practically towered over most of them. I never learned if it was because of his height or if he straightened his back so much to look respectable that he just looked taller. His eyes were bluer, his hair blonder, and his skin a few shades darker than what would typically be accepted. Despite the doubts that came from guard's mouths, he was as German as a man could be. There was something about him that almost commanded respect, more respect than many officers will ever get in their lives. He was a guard, but only in the sense of surveillance. He would stand off by the fences or right by a workshop's door and stare into a prisoner's face. If they ever thought about escape, they would be met with a uniform without a wrinkle, without stain, and without any thought other than preserving the sacred pureness of the Reich. 

There is a vagueness when it comes to my first conversation with Paul. Of course, I had spoken to him multiple times, telling him to corral inmates for examination or testing or ordering him to fix a fence post, but I had never spoken to him in a casual sense. I wasn't sure what I expected when I first did. He'd never respond when I gave him an order. Right as I called his name, he would straighten up and look right into my eyes, even if he was five meters away. I'd give him his order, he'd salute, and then walk off. He had the most respect for everyone around. This concerned me a little bit. I would never tell him to be in direct contact with any prisoners because I felt like he would not treat them how we were supposed to. He was too calm about everything. Yes, physically, everything about him was a torment to prisoners, but there was nothing in the way he spoke or behaved that demanded fear. 

Our first conversation was practically nothing. The camp had just been given guard dogs from the Schutzstaffel, and Paul, already known for being one of the calmer guards, had become a caretaker to some dark brown labrador he quickly named Eiche. I never learned if the name came from the tree and the dog's color or if he was named for Eichmann. Paul didn't train the dog, and he could hardly be described as a handler, but he fed it, groomed it, and was practically the only one to give it positive attention. This is why I spoke to him in the first place. It was late in the night, sometime in the autumn. A few inmates had gotten together and planned something, an escape or an attack, and the dogs were released. They attacked. The sounds of barking were only drowned out by the sounds of rifles firing and men shouting. The dogs did their job, and they did it well. After, as Paul and other guards dragged away the whining and bloodied bodies of the dead and any prisoner who dared to look on into the chambers, some officers and I took the dogs away and praised them. It wasn't a loud praise. We didn't exclaim our joys and shower them with the attention one may give a dog in any other situation. Instead, we calmly pet their heads and patted their sides while telling them their jobs were done, and they were done well. The fur around Eiche's muzzle was a little darker from the blood. All the dogs had a similar coloring as a result, so I called over Paul and three other guards to clean them up and follow their normal routines. Paul was the happiest of them to do this job. That boy loved Eiche. I left to work on official death certificates before working to officially to rid of the bodies. No one, not even myself, paid much attention to the dogs after that. The sun had set, and I went to check the dogs by their kennels. All were accounted for, all except one: Eiche. Guards and handlers were watching the hounds, and I asked if any of them knew where Paul was. They all said that last they checked, he was still washing the blood from Eiche's face and pointed in a vague direction. I dismissed them without any more questions.

I quietly walked over to where I was pointed. Around a corner, right behind a shack that should have been burned with prisoners long before, Paul was sitting on a pile of brick with Eiche right in front of him, eating pieces of stale bread and raw potatoes right from his loyal "handlers" hands. 

"Paul," I said in as stern of a voice as I could pull. Paul reacted by jumping up immediately, with his right hand elevated into a salute, and a look of unsurprising fear in his eyes. "Have you washed her?"

"Yes, sir."

"Take her to her kennel. I'd say the others must've eaten her share by now, but dinner doesn't seem to be much of a problem for her." I motioned to the bread still in his hands. 

"Sir, I-"

I interrupted him, "Go and come back here."

"Yes, sir."

I watched him as he grabbed the dog by the collar and led her to the kennels. I could very faintly see them from where I stood, and he took her right where her food was, kneeled, and petted her for a minute or so before walking back to me. He stood a meter ahead of me, raised his right arm, and saluted. His eyes stayed looking directly into mine, hardly blinking so as not to be mistaken for disrespect. 

"Where did you get that food?"

"The dead, sir. It was supposed to be their rations for tonight. I thought there wasn't any need for the inmates here to have it, and I thought Eiche might enjoy it."

"You didn't think to mention this decision to anyone?" I began to walk around him, looking at every bit of his uniform. His coat hung on him loosely, like another man's uniform was given to him right as he walked through the camp's gates. Paul only responded by shaking his head. "Your order was to follow your usual routine after you wash Eiche, was it not? Why didn't you follow the only orders given?"

"Sir, I-"

"You don't need to answer that. Do you know how lucky you are that I am the one who caught you? The one who noticed you? Any other officer would have shot you right here." I distinctly remember how he looked at me when I took my pistol from my hip. I grabbed it, pointed it toward his stomach, and held it as if I was about to shoot him. He flinched as I put it back in its holster. "You're a good guard, Paul. Don't let a dog ruin that."

~~~~~~~~~~

I always kept an eye on him after. He did every part of his job perfectly well but only because there was no aggression in his job. Due to his age and how well the dogs seemed to like him, he was kept away from actual policing. He'd stand by gates and a building's door, rifle in hand and hound by his side, but he was never ordered to shoot. It was almost as if he never had a reason to shoot. If the prisoners tried to be aggressive or did anything out of line, he'd release Eiche and aim his rifle. His fingers never left the grip. Paul never knew a trigger. Even after a year of duty, he never knew death. He saw it. Hell, we all did. But I don't think he ever killed anyone. Everyone else had. I cannot count the number of people I've killed, whether it was ordering them into a chamber because they worked too slow, to test out a method being used in the East, or just because we were ordered to. I think Paul may have wanted to keep some sense of humanity. 

It's practically impossible to do that. I would have thought that Paul knew that right when he entered the gate, but he always seemed to think he could keep himself as he was before. He'd follow his orders just as well as everyone else, but there was always a little bit of hesitance when he did. If he was told to release Eiche, he would. If he was told to shoot, he would but always after a second or two of consideration. He never shot anyone. That's what I have to say. He'd shoot by people. Sometimes, other guards would comment on it, but it was accepted quickly after that he wasn't a good shot. That wasn't all his job was defined by, it's a big part of it, but his job is to guard, not shoot. I never understood. A person dies quicker with multiple gunshot wounds, and a dog attack is brutal and messy. 

~~~~~~~~~~

Paul began speaking to me a lot in the winter. I guess there was something about me that calmed him, and I think I can say the same about him. 

Unless you were being worshiped by the Reich, no one had much time for families or any kind of life, so many people made a family within the camps. Many men would see each other as their brothers. Early on, maybe a bit after the incident with Eiche, I began to see him as almost a son, although it feels wrong to say this. I cannot say he was a surrogate for one because doing so would make me feel disgusting considering everything that happened between us. 

There were always people who imagined the guards here as something more than soldiers, and for the most part, the men here were just soldiers. They are guards with a job to do, but Röhm seemingly ruined that idea for everyone. People have always seen large groups of young men and older superiors and thought the worst. Especially after the incident with Röhm. I remember shortly after it happened. I joined the SS just months before the scandal happened as number 106,826. There were always small comments about Röhm and the Sturmabteilung, comments that were all just shameful at best. The men would always speak about the young enlistees and members like they were the worst men on earth, but never about the officers. They'd see a young brown shirt walking down the street and then joke about the faggots they'd surely become within a month of being under Röhm. And soon enough, they eventually will be under Röhm. They were all lewd statements. Statements I feel wrong repeating. When Röhm was found out, they were all quiet for a day or two after. We all had to mourn great men who were ruined by such dangerous ideas. Almost a week after, I'd hear people murmur to themselves, talking about what a true German would be like: "Blond like Hitler, tall like Goebbels, slim like Göring, and chaste like Röhm." I thought it to be worse than stupid. People have been killed for saying the slightest thing about the Führer. 

Paul. There was always something about Paul. I'd walk around the camp, making sure guards were doing their jobs correctly, and every time I'd walk past him, I'd walk a little slower. It was never intentional. Something in me wanted to always look at him. He was a bit older than half my age, eighteen by the new year. During the brief moments in time when we could, we'd speak casually about what our lives were like before we came here. He always asked me what I imagined myself doing when I was younger, and I was never able to answer. I told him I always thought of myself as a soldier, and there wasn't any war to fight in when I turned eighteen, so I went with the next best thing. He'd smile. He'd say he cannot remember what his thoughts were before the Reich. As far as he is concerned, all of his life has only been about the Reich. I'd always praise him for those words. Maybe he only said it so much because he wanted to hear me say how much of a good soldier and guard he was. I enjoyed saying it more than anything. 

In the spring, I had been awarded leave. I am not sure if it can be described as leave because I was not a traditional soldier. Nonetheless, I was away from the camp for a few short days. I asked if any other officer or guard would be out too. A few of them were, though they were all my superiors. This disappointed me, I have to be honest. I have never made a friendship with anyone in the camp other than Paul, and if I had time away from him, there would be no one I could have a conversation with. My family was in Germany, and I had to stay in the area. When I was asked if I thought there was anyone I thought should be allowed off on leave, I immediately said Paul. And they listened to me. He was still a much newer guard, inexperienced. However, the leave was not a reward. So Paul wouldn't have been rewarded. He would just be allowed out for a short while. By my request, he was off on leave as well. If someone questioned me, accused me of attempting faggotry, then they knew nothing. But no one questioned me. 

We strolled the streets around Lublin for the majority of the three days. We dressed each day in our uniforms with our right arm wrapped in red fabric. Sometimes, we'd walk across a square and see a huddled group of men and women hurrying to move away from us. We always made it a point to say our "Hellos" to them. We were out of the camp, but that did not mean we stopped being an officer and a guard. The response to our presence was always different. There'd be people who looked at us with faces full of disgust who'd curse at us under their breaths. And then, typically during the later hours of the day, we'd be saluted with an enthusiastic "Heil Hitler". The majority of those were younger than the ones who hated us. Young boys who looked closer to Paul's age than my own with their brown shirts of the Hitler Youth. Paul told me of his days in the Hitler Youth. He'd march in parades in Munich right by the Reichsführer. Those three days, there was never anything he spoke about more enthusiastically than that. He told me he was practically trained to be a soldier at the front but some invisible hand picked him up and dropped him in the centre of the camp. 

"Shouldn't you be happy about that, Paul?" I asked him. "If you were sent to the front, you'd be dead."

"But I'd be dead for the Reich. Dead with glory."

I only remember smiling at him. 

~~~~~~~~~~

On our very last night, we sat outside a cafe and slowly sipped on cold coffee. I looked at him as he looked out into the city. It rained a small bit early in the day, and I could still feel the wetness of the air and smell the soaking grass and trees no matter how hard I tried to focus only on what was ahead of me. Paul was beautiful, and I think he expected women to surround him because of it. Women never had the opportunity to. I don't know if he wanted them to, but I know I surrounded him. And I know he wanted that. There was something in the way we looked at each other, like the way lovers looked in each other's eyes. There was something. I don't know what to call it. He told me that day that there was something about the way we spoke to each other, something that he would have never admitted to anyone else. He told me about Röhm in a way that made me realize he didn't know I knew everything about it. 

There was fear in his voice as he spoke as if he expected me to march into the camp, grab my pistol, and shoot him where he stood. I told him I could never imagine doing such a thing to him. It felt so juvenile. The entire conversation felt juvenile. There I was, a grown man whispering promises to a young 18-year-old about how everything he told me was between us and us only. I'd rather be dead in a mass grave than let anything from our conversation be revealed because he and I were far too alike, and I knew I could trust him too. 

His skin was the softest thing I had ever felt. No wool from Australia nor silk from China could have compared to it. I expected some kind of bruise or blister, but there was nothing. All of it was the definition of perfection. He lay beneath me, confused over what he was meant to do. I hardly had a clue of what I was meant to do, so we fell into each other with this shared secret that could have easily become the death of us both. He was perfect with his youth and naivety. His head rested on my shoulder and his arms wrapped around my body. I could have sworn I heard a soft sob or maybe a cry. Any sound he could have made had all the right to come out. He, my Paul, was perfect. Sometimes at night, I can still feel his hair brush against my skin. I'm lying on a hard concrete slab, living in the same conditions the prisoners I took charge of lived in, and my only thoughts are about Paul. I've never thought to beg some god that may not even exist for forgiveness, but I wish every night that I could tell Paul how sorry I am. I only want to feel his skin and lips against mine one more time. 

Paul was strangely quiet during our trip back to the camp. He said nothing, not even a small comment about the weather. He only looked ahead in a deep, paralyzing thought. He still saluted every man and woman we saw, but the enthusiasm he typically had was nowhere to be seen. I know I should have questioned him at the time, and a few things may have turned out differently if I had. At the time, I simply thought he was coming to terms with what he had done, and I should not interrupt him. 

~~~~~~~~~~

When we arrived back at the camp, I could tell there was something different about Paul. He was a little slower when following orders as if he was hesitating to raise a rifle or an arm. He treated Eiche the exact same. Except now he used her as a last-minute resource. He avoided my eyes, avoided me in general. He ate alone while looking at the ground, his back to the open doors of the prisoner's quarters, and he spoke to no one. Not even himself. If I tried to walk up and speak to him, he'd salute and tell me he was needed elsewhere. Paul always looked back when he walked away. He wanted to check if I was watching him. I always was. 

I knew he wanted to think of the people we handled as people. I think at some point he convinced himself it was pointless to even try, but he figured out how to do it at some point. Paul was trapped within himself. Each day, it seemed to wear him down a little more. One evening, as I made my rounds through the camp, I saw him standing with Eiche as she lay asleep, his shoulders slumped, and his eyes fixed on some distant point far beyond my comprehension. 

"Paul?" I asked. He didn't salute. "Is everything alright?"

He looked up at me then, his eyes filled with a mixture of sadness and resignation. "I don't know anymore," he confessed, his voice barely above a whisper. I stood in front of him and waited until he said something further. It took a moment or two, but he finally said, "I'm not okay with what we're doing here anymore."

I took a step toward him. "Paul-"

"Are you really okay with it?" he asked. "Are you? Because," he paused. His voice trembled with a combination of guilt and nothingness. "Honestly, what have these people done to deserve this? Katczinsky, do you actually believe all they've told us?"

I looked at him in complete shock. It was the first time he had ever referred to me as anything other than "sir". He continued, mumbling complete consense. Everything he said was treason. Everything he said showed he was a coward. Cowardice was not something the Reich handled easily. I ordered him to go to the guard's barracks and sleep because the only reason he would say anything like this would be if he were growing sick from the lack of rest. As he walked off, I felt myself thinking about his words a bit too much. For the first time in years, I was questioning whether duty made something right. It is what I have told myself and every other young guard who has ever walked into the camp, and I didn't know if I believed myself anymore. I sought him out the next morning, and I once again found him standing alone by the camp's perimeter.

"Paul, we need to speak about this."

He turned to me, his face lacking all expression. "I know what you're going to say, Katczinsky," he said quietly. "But I can't keep pretending that everything we do here is justified. There's something fundamentally wrong with this place, with what we're forced to do."

"We," my voice began to falter, "we have a duty to do here, Paul. It is not up to us to determine whether it is the right thing to do. It is what we have to do. We cannot afford to question orders."

Paul shook his head, and his mouth turned to a small, bitter grin. "Do you believe that?"

"What I believe does not matter."

The sounds of yelling came from the center of the camp, and Paul looked off. He took a singular step back before looking back at me, saluting, and saying in a stern tone, "Duty calls."

My relationship with him was finally put into question after this. This conversation was overheard, and it worried other guards and officers. Examples would be made of prisoners every day. It was a matter of time until one needed to be made of a guard. Paul could either be taken to Munich or Berlin to be tried for treason and hanged and left for the public to see, or he could be taken to the center of the camps and killed in front of any guard and officer who thinks of questioning the Reich. The decision was something I had nothing to do with. If I had a choice, I would have wanted him to go to Munich. He was still young then, so they may have pitied him. A young 18-year-old confused by the world and all the guidance he could ever need would be found in the Reich, in an officer who looked at him, looked into him, and saw something more than a body to be given up to the Führer and his army. Maybe, if they saw him the way I did, he'd be off to a training camp and shipped somewhere off in the East. In Crimea and Novgorod, he'd surely die in the middle of Red ice, but there would be at least some glory in it. A glorious death, just as Paul spoke of so fondly before.

~~~~~~~~~~

It was June. This is the only date I have managed to remember. 21 June 1944. Paul was released from duty about a week prior, and he was being kept in the barracks and was watched by the people he had just worked with. A few people would walk up to him and try to speak to him, but he never said anything. Some tried to get him to apologize to the Reich, see if he was willing to live knowing he was a coward and forever hated by the country. They once tried to get me to go with him. I knew Paul was never going to say anything. He had spent his life dedicating every thought to this country, and now he was questioning it. They tried to get him to say who he was, and he didn't know who he was anymore. I don't think he ever knew. I don't know what it was about our leave that made him think. I tried to tell everyone he was never going to speak no matter what they told or did to him, and they always pushed me to get any word out of him. They never listened to me. I would go to where he was held, sit down next to him, and just sit there. Sometimes he'd look at me. Sometimes he'd greet me and make a small comment about the day. I tried to ask him what happened if it was something I may have done or something he saw. He never said anything. 

Then that morning in June. Heaven knows what happened the night prior when they signed his death certificate. The sky was dark from an early drizzle, and the wind seemed too still for the event of the day. Paul was dressed in his uniform without the red armband. He wore no decoration and no badge. It was only black. The twin lightning strips on his collar had been ripped out with extreme violence. Loose threads hung from his collar, sleeves, and his chest. His shoes weren't polished. It was clear he hadn't slept, but he had cried. I was standing right in front of him as he hesitated to raise his right arm and salute. The skin underneath his eyes was the exact same shade as his disgraced uniform and had a very faint red color. His cheeks were stained with tears. I asked him one last time if he wanted to take back his questions and words. Paul softly shook his head. When I took two steps back, he began to mumble a prayer under his breath and slowly sank to his knees, like he was about to pet and brush Eiche one last time. Another guard walked next to me and handed me his pistol. It was loaded with a singular bullet. 

Paul looked at me through his eyelashes in the exact same way he looked at me when we were on leave. His eyes were the faintest blue color like the sky was on any other summer day. He looked up and shed no tears because there was nothing left behind his eyes. I whispered to him, just low enough so no one would hear, that I was sorry. This is how our world works, and I have a job to do. He did, too, but now we are here. He faintly smiled at me before looking down. He prayed. I didn't want to do this, and I knew Paul didn't want to die. He was only eighteen, after all. But what I wanted and what I thought did not matter in that moment. All that mattered was that Paul had spoken against the Reich, and he needed to be punished for it. With trembling hands, I raised my pistol and held it to his forehead. Paul pressed his head against the barrel. The young boy who once cheerfully followed my orders, in and outside of the camp, and the boy who dreamt of a glorious death protecting his country had come to terms with his death. He would die a traitor and a coward and almost completely forgotten. 

My finger was gently wrapped around the trigger. I asked him if there was anything else he wanted to say. He said nothing. I looked at his face and the skin that was softer than any divinely made material, and I squeezed the trigger. Paul fell to the slide with a flinch. There was a clean bloodied hole probably no bigger than a centimeter right in the center of his head, and pools of blood and brain were seeping out of the open gash on the back of his head. He, my Paul, still looked perfect. My Paul. He was perfect. 

Chapter Text

Okay, so, I know it's been a long while since I've written something worth reading. I'm going to try and start writing more since it's the summer and I haven't much else to do. If anyone even bothers to read this, comment some chapter ideas. I have no problem with writing smut since I've already done it before. But I prefer to not write that.

I've written about Zero Day, too, so if you're also into that and have fic ideas, you can also comment ideas for that.

Okay, that's all <3333
Please comment if y'all want specific stories with certain characters. I hope I'll meet your expectations with everything I write :3

Chapter Text

The snow around them was practically melting from their body heat. They breathed heavily and moved as swiftly as their tired and poorly fed bodies would allow. Kat was a meter or two ahead of Paul. Even after a year at the front, Paul's body still wasn't used to the work and tiredness that consumed those like Kat. He could deal with sleeping an hour a night and going deaf from shells hitting the ground right next to him - or at least he claimed to - but his body was still the teenager he came here as. Though, his mind might as well be the same age as Kat's. 

He stopped suddenly when his hand grazed his coat pocket. There was a sticky wetness he could immediately identify as the eggs. The Frenchman must have gotten lucky with his rifle. 

"Oh, crap," he cursed to himself. "Look at this!" he called to Kat. 

"What is it?"

"A lucky shot," Paul laughed. 

"He hit the eggs!" Kat came running toward Paul. "Stop the flow," they laughed together. He took Paul's mess tin and held it underneath the leaking mess. "Come on, get it in there. There you go." 

Paul took an egg from his pocket and cracked it into the tin. "We can have an omelet," he said in an almost childish voice. It had been a long time since he's had a proper breakfast - an omelet cooked with fresh rosemary from his sister's garden. Cooked perfectly by his mother. How he couldn't wait to go back to that life. 

"No, we'll eat them now. They're just as good," he grabbed his knife and scrambled the eggs before taking a quick swig of the raw eggs. He paused and smiled brightly before handing the tin to Paul. He let him take swig after swig, watching as he drank nearly all of what they nearly died for. He often let Paul and all the others take bits of his meals. Even before the war, he'd been used to hunger and weariness. It all came naturally with the way with the way he lived. He'd give the children, who Paul often reminded him of, any piece of food he and his wife could spare. He nodded and began to step back, "I won't be long." Paul smiled and said nothing before continuing to sip on the raw eggs.

He gently dropped to the snow-covered ground and clipped the mess tin back to his belt. He was tired from both running and having to exist in a world like this, so he let his body fall back and felt the wetness and snow and dew seep into his uniform. It was peaceful out with the only sounds coming from the few birds flying around and leaves being made to dance in the wind. Paul could have almost fallen asleep, and he would have properly slept for the first time in months. This field felt comfier than any bed he laid on. Despite the wintery conditions, it felt warmer too. like the days past when he'd slip into his mother's bed and crawl into her embrace. Safe and familiar, somewhere he knew he'd be okay in. If only the reasons why he was here were different. 

There was a loud, echoey sound that woke him up. He had hardly even noticed he fell asleep. He sluggishly stood and looked around for where the sound could have come from. All the birds stopped and so did the wind and trees. 

"Kat?" he called out. Paul looked toward the woods. Despite the thin trees being spaces far apart, he couldn't look past five meters ahead of him. A fog had begun to settle around the trees, a fog that wasn't surrounding him where he stood. "Kat!" he yelled again. A minute or less passed before he started to speedwalk past the trees, trying to follow the silence and find the only friend the war had taken from him. 

Through the fog, Paul saw a vague shape leaning against a tree. Based on the dirt-colored clothing the shape wore, he assumed it was Kat and called out and ran toward it.

"Kat! What happened?"

Kat shook his head and quickly moved away from Paul. "We should leave," he muttered.

"Who fired the shot?" Paul tried to keep up with the older soldier who, despite sounding like he was in pain, kept a meter-long distance

"That little shit from the farm," he kept his head low to pay attention to every step." "The farmer's son," he groaned. Suddenly, he fell to the floor and rolled onto his back. Paul called to him once more. "What a mess," he laughed, trying to ignore the pain slowly shooting up his side. He lifted his tunic and lightly lowered his trousers to reveal a coin-sized wound that was leaking nearly pitch-black blood. His undershirt and entire side were stained, and just seconds after revealing the sound, his and Paul's hands were, too. "How big is it," he asked through gritted teeth.

"Little finger- I'll getthe bullet out."

"No, give me a cigarette. Let the medic do that," almost all emotion had left Kat's voice. It almost sounded like he hardly had any trust in what Paul or a medic could do.

Paul dreadfully complied, handed him a cigarette, and lit it, staining the cigarette and his box of matches with the sick, copper-smelling liquid. He already felt as though no matter how many times he drowned his hands in water and rubbed his flesh to the point of tearing his skin, the stains on them would never leave. He tried to find something in Kat's face that told him things would be alright, but there was nothing. The only life left in Kat was his beating heart. All hope of returning home Kat would remind him of, Paul realized, was just a way to keep the young boy a little bit sane. That's all Paul is really, a young boy. And a young boy is never meant to bury his friends. He is never meant to stare at their bloodied bodies and wish he could bury them. He tried to think of Ludwig, but of course, he had to. He lost a friend so soon after arriving here, and it seems he'll lose another so soon before he is meant to leave.

"They stuck me in a class with seven year olds," Kat started. He laughed, "I'd begun shaving already. Find me a word that trifle can rhyme with. Mhm?" he smiled. "Nothing rhymes with trifle. Nothing." He took a long draw from his cigarette and looked down," Fucking shit. Why the hell did this have to happen now?" Despite the emotion that was meant to come with these words, he still sounded empty, like he was already dead. 

"Come on, we need to go," Paul stood.

"No," Kat hesitated. He shook his head again and threw his cigarette to his side. He sniffled like he was trying to hide tears. 

"No? Kat, what do you mean?"

"It's handfulls of kilometers away. I can't walk that, Paul."

"Well, then I'll help you. I'll carry you if I have to," he tried to lift Kat up but found the older soldier to be too much for him. 

"No, Paul. You know those medics won't care. I bet they're getting drunk just like everyone else was," he paused and smiled, "just like we did."

"I couldn't stand leaving you here, Kat. Not after everything that has happened."

"Then stay with me, Paul. Sit by me, and we'll talk like we did before. When I stop replying and when my body goes cold, leave me. You can have a life outside of all of this. We both know I never even had one."

"And your wife?" Paul sounded hysteric. He couldn't believe what Kat was saying. This was practically suicide, but Paul didn't say that. He didn't want either of them to think of Tjaden. That wound was still far too fresh. Kat didn't reply. He simply closed his eyes and steadied his breathing. "You have to get up Kat- your wife deserves to see you. You deserve to see the end of this." He kept trying to get Kat to stand, but he stiffened his body and refused. He finally gave up once he could no longer hear Kat's breath. He sank to the floor. He thought to pray, but he doubted any god would exist and allow this to happen, so there was hardly a point.

~~~~~

"Kat!" Paul exclaimed as his body shot up. He was breathing heavily and looking around him.

"I was hardly gone five minutes, Paul. Is everything alright?" Kat walked up from behind him.

"Oh, Kat!" Paul jumped to his feet and ran into Kat, wrapping his arms around his neck and embracing him in a way he never had before.

"Yes, I'm alright?" he said confusingly. 

"Kat, I-" he let go and stepped back. "I'm sorry. I just- I don't know."

"It's alright Paul. Everything is. I would have woken you up much earlier, but you looked so peaceful." 

Paul nodded and patted his pockets looking for something. "And the eggs?"

Kat laughed, "Maybe I should have woken you up earlier! The farmer shot and missed, but he caught the eggs. They broke and leaked," he handed Paul a piece of turnip bread lightly soaked with egg residue. There was dirt on it, too, so Paul knew the broken eggs had been in Kat's pocket. "But I'll find us something when we're back at camp. Now, you were out for hours. Why don't we head back? I'd think it's nearing noon by now." Ever a father, he softly took Paul's arm and began to lead him back west. He tried to ask what caused him to awake in such a panic, but Paul assured him it was nothing they should worry about, and he thought it'd better to try and forget.

They walked for about thirty minutes before Paul suddenly stopped. "Kat? Can you find me a word that rhymes with trifle?"

"Such a writer this one is," Kat laughed. "Rifle. Rifle rhymes with trifle."

Chapter Text

So.....
Is anyone still here?

It's been a while.

Many things have happened. I'm in my second year of uni (I started this when I was a high school junior, for reference).

I have been getting re-obsessed, and so I naturally came back here. I need to write again.

If you see this, please send me some chapter requests. Until then, I'll do my best to stay creative and give you all something soon.