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Chapter Text

Jewish District, Berlin: 1939

“Whence shall we expect the approach of danger? . . . All the armies of Europe and Asia . . . could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.”

― Abraham Lincoln

“Whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.”

— Watership Down

“When…fascism comes to America it will not be labeled ‘Made in Germany’; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, ‘Americanism’.”

― Halford E. Luccock

“There will be killing till the score is paid. ”

― Homer

There was a very fine line between the truth and a lie. Which was which was left up to the government to decide. Although in the minds of many people, the time for allowing the tyrants in control of the government to rule unchecked was long gone. The year was 1939, and inside the heart of Berlin, leaning back in his chair in the place the government most wanted to know the location of, was the most wanted man in the country, no, the world. His name was Mr. Brightside. It was an alias, although that was fairly obvious to most competent observers. Mr. Brightside, better known as simply Brightside, was a resistance agent. But not just any resistance agent, he was in charge of telling the truth that the government didn’t want the people to know, and he was good at it.

At the moment our story begins, Brightside was leaning back in his chair in the office he had at the resistance base, lazily smoking a cigarette. He blew the smoke in such a way that it came out of his mouth in thin, delicate ribbons that hung around the room like snakes about ready to strike. He was young. Youth was, and always is, the origin of rebellion. Like many young people, Brightside believed himself to be invincible, and why wouldn’t he? For the past seven years, the government had failed to catch a teenager who had eventually morphed into a young man whose passionate hatred of them grew ever greater by the day. They had underestimated him in the beginning, and that was a mistake that would never be repeated.

As Brightside sat there, smoking, a notebook was left open on his desk. The notebook was rather unremarkable; it was all black with a ribbon as red as blood to act as a bookmark, but the words that originated from it were powerful enough to topple an invincible regime…if only they had listened to him. But that was not now, now he was young and full of ruthless ambition. Exhaling the last of the smoke, he put out the cigarette, now reduced to nothing but a sad butt, and retrieved the notebook. Still leaning back in his chair, he put pen to paper and began to craft one of the political pamphlets that had made him famous. Within fifteen minutes, nine pages of the notebook were filled with practically illegible scrawl. Upon finishing his furious writing, Brightside closed the notebook and got up and out of his chair, striding across the small office and leaving it to venture out into the resistance base.

Making his way down the hallway, Brightside attempted to inspect his work. It wasn’t his best, that was obvious, but it was going to be pretty controversial, that was for sure. He couldn’t help but chuckle to himself as he made his way to the resistance base’s basement, which held the printing press, arguably the most important tool of the new revolution. Those Nazi bastards were going to love this one. He’d taken special care to make sure that he’d insulted as many party members as physically possible in the several dozen paragraphs. Maybe this time, they would actually try and put up a fight and do a bit more than simply put up wanted posters with a mystery man on them.

 It had been all of seven years, and he was rather offended that his mortal enemies still had no idea what he looked like. Maybe it was about time to send a picture to Hitler’s doorstep that consisted solely of Brightside flipping the angry, mustachioed tyrant off. But he was also aware that the district command would be out for blood if he ever figured out that Brightside did something that stupid and reckless. Good old Magnus Redeem, the district commander, took a special pleasure in being chronically disappointed in his district heads. One of these days, Brightside would get the post, and that would just be the beginning. 

Now, before our story continues any further, it is in everyone’s best interest to explain the resistance and how the entire, extremely complex, operation was organized. The Resistance was organized in a rather odd way; it was considered to be odd by practically everyone who risked their lives to be an agent. In command of the entire resistance district, which typically spanned a country, was the district commander, who was the highest authority over every single resistance agent in the district. The German District’s district commander was Magnus Redeem, a lawyer who had been stripped of his law license when the Nazis rose to power, who seemed to be perpetually annoyed with the fact that the only people who were willing to openly resist the government were a bunch of twenty somethings with drinking problems.

In every district, the agents were split into bases. These bases were located in major cities, and Berlin was the district base, meaning that it was where the district commander wielded his power from. Each of these bases were further divided into five departments, each run by a department head, typically just referred to as a head, and at the district base were the district heads, who not only got to work as a department head, but also had the pleasure of over seeing all of their department across all district bases. The five departments were: Missions, Logistics, Technology, Medical, and Propaganda.

Missions organized missions for resistance agents to go on. These missions typically entailed either stealing from wealthy Aryan families, furthering the effort to overthrow the government, harassing Nazis, or all three. Any agent could be assigned to execute a mission, even district heads still had to complete them, but Missions was responsible for deciding what mission needed to occur when, what it was to include, and which agents were to complete it. The district head of Missions was Jacqueline Hirsch, who went solely by Jackie. She was in her early twenties and quite fiery, and possessed a concerning library of knowledge about both firearms and how to seduce women. It was often said that Jackie could organize anything, any mission, no matter how large or how small, yet she was incapable of organizing her own sex life.

Logistics coordinated resistance efforts between bases and was also responsible for all resistance gear, including all weapons and ammunition. They were also responsible for enlisting new agents, a rather complicated process that involved a physical examination, three fighting demonstrations, and being forced to give up one life-shattering secret of yours to the resistance so that a new agent would never betray them. The district head of Logistics was a woman named Jane Kalderash. She was in her thirties and quite nice, although she did tend to be far more trusting than many considered an agent ought to be, and also tended to be the only District Head to bother to follow the rules. In addition, she was also the oldest district head, which was rather concerning when you thought about it.

Technology was quite possibly the department that confused the most people, mainly because very few of the departments had any clue what a bunch of smart people with an affinity for setting things on fire tended to do when locked in a wing of the base, only that they tended to emerge with some sort of great mechanical contraption that solved some sort of problem…or a pipe bomb. More often than not, they tended to emerge with a pipe bomb. The district head of Technology was Alan Turing. How he’d gotten the position can best be summarized as a series of coincidences, mainly because that was what it was. No one really knew much about the man, except that he was born in England, was a genius in everything related to mathematics, spoke absolutely no German, and believed that he could find the secret to time travel. Somehow, he was not the strangest district head.

The general consensus among agents was that Medical was one of the worst departments to work in. Medical essentially functioned like a miniature hospital in the base, since it would be incredibly awkward to bring someone who had been shot and was wanted by the police for a string of murders to an actual hospital. Due to the fact that very few people were qualified to work there, all Medical agents tended to be overworked and absolutely dead inside. They also tended to snatch up any new agent with any sort of Medical experience in an attempt to get more than six hours of sleep. The district head of Medical was Dr. Ludwig Braum, who was not actually a doctor. In reality, he was a medical student studying to be a surgeon and was simultaneously somehow also the most qualified person for the position. As wrong as it seems, Dr. Braum was a good surgeon; however, his perfect image was slightly marred by the fact that a slightly evil and severely possessive grey cat followed him around constantly, who hated every single person in the world whose name wasn’t Ludwig Braum.

Propaganda was the fifth and final department. Much like Medical and Technology, its name gave away most of its purpose. As one would expect, Propaganda produced as much of their own propaganda to counter the Nazi propaganda machine. One of the main counter-propaganda devices that they produced on the basement printing press was a series of pamphlets written by one Mr. Brightside. While he certainly wasn’t the only person speaking out against the Nazi Party through writing, he was certainly the most famous, and loudest. Which perfectly explains why he was the district head of Propaganda. Brightside was the only district head to use an alias, which some considered rather pointless since Jackie was his sister and thus the two of them shared the same last name.

Said district head of Propaganda was at that moment walking back up the stairs in order to reach the party that was currently happening on the other side of the base. Even from there, just exiting the basement, which hung heavy with the smell of ink and paper, he could hear the faint sound of music and laughter, occasionally pierced by a string of curses that would have made someone’s head turn if it were anywhere but at a resistance base. It was pretty well known in Berlin that the resistance was a magnet for everything unholy in the city, and Brightside wouldn’t have had it any other way. Like everyone else there, he indulged in his vices as he saw fit, and didn’t give a damn who told him that it was slowly killing him. You only live once after all, and at least in Brightside's mind, the idea that he would die from alcohol poisoning seemed far less likely than other options for his death, like getting shot.

Brightside finally reached the party, immediately looking forward to getting as drunk as physically possible as quickly as physically possible. The smell of whiskey and cigarette smoke filled the air of the barely used room, which the agents had turned into a makeshift bar. Someone had started up the jukebox they had stolen a couple of years back and put on. It was similar to the parties that they threw every weekend, except for one key difference.

This wasn’t a celebration; it was a funeral. Two agents were dead. Julia Meyer and Christan Alder. They’d both been young, a year behind Brightside when he’d still been in school. In fact, he still remembered training Alder at one point; he couldn’t remember what for, but the two of them had been stuck together in a room for several hours and gone out and gotten drunk together afterwards. He hadn’t known Meyer that well; only that she should have been in nursing school and worked in Medical sometimes. The two agents had gone out on a mission, a pretty routine one according to Kalderash’s logs, and had run into a gang of Brown-shirts while heading back to base. Since the mission had been an undercover one, the only gun the two of them had was hidden in Meyer’s purse, and that had been snatched away before the fighting had even begun. Based on the amount of blood at the scene, it was clear that Alder and Meyer had put up a good fight, but it hadn’t been enough. They had found their crumpled bodies in an alley, stripped of anything of value, the next morning. Thus, they were given the same honors as every single other fallen resistance agent. There would be revenge killings and the same sort of violence shown to the brownshirts, but for now, the only real way to honor Meyer and Alder was to live.

The entire government wanted them dead, so the agents would live while they had the chance. It was the only decent fucking form of revenge after all. Their lives were all that they really had left, and by god would they live. Of course, they led the sort of lives that would harden them young, take out the light behind their eyes and make them cynical long before their time should have come, but it was still a life, and it was the only chance at one that each of them would get. Thus, Brightside was determined to enjoy his life before the Nazis decided that it was one more thing that they were owed.

He grabbed a bottle of beer from the stack that they’d swiped from a delivery van a few months back. Redeem had originally been furious at Jackie for approving the mission, apparently forgetting that the entire base ran on alcohol, but had come around when he realized that a significant portion of the meager budget wouldn’t have to go to buying drinks for the next few months. Scanning the room, Brightside finally locked eyes with the person he was looking for. Standing in the opposite corner of the room, a drink in one hand and a concerningly thick textbook in the other, was Dr. Ludwig Braum.

“Sic semper tyrannis, darling.” Brightside said once he reached the head of Medical, placing a quick kiss on his boyfriend's cheek.

“Sic semper tyrannis,” Ludwig replied, a small smile forming on his lips.

 Sic semper tyrannis was the resistance motto, and it was Latin for “Thus always to tyrants.” No one was quite sure where it had come from, especially given that it was the only Latin that the majority of the base knew, but every agent knew it by heart, even to the point where it was used as a greeting, or in some cases, as a threat. Currently, there was a betting pool running on how long it would take for Redeem to admit that he had come up with the motto by himself instead of being inspired by classical history. At the moment, the highest bet was twenty marks on three years by the deputy head of Technology, a woman who was exceptionally well versed in classical history.

The song switched over to an older foxtrot, which the majority of the agents knew, and they made their way to the middle of the room, hazy from the smoke of so many cigarettes, to dance. Brightside and Dr. Braum stayed put, the head of Propaganda leaning against the wall, twirling his cigarette between his fingers as he spoke about his plans for his next seven pamphlets, and Ludwig listened, sipping on his drink. At some point, the subject of how the papers were handling the influx of resistance activity, otherwise known as the fact that they were finally getting approval to retaliate in full force, came up.

“How many serial murderers are they claiming are running around now?” Brightside asked, blowing a ribbon of smoke into the already full air.

“At least seven less than there actually are.” Ludwig shrugged, taking another swig of his drink, “Sending the corpses to be used as cadavers at the medical school was a great idea. In fact, I’m fairly certain I got to dissect some poor brownshirt’s liver that the two of us worked on.”

“Which one?”

“The one with the morphine overdose. It was clear in his vital chart. The poor instructor thought that he must have overdosed on the streets.”

“Aww darling, you really are improving.” Laughed Brightside, “I doubt that any of those fuckers realized that it isn’t exactly natural to find so many severed limbs on the banks of the Spree. Not like it has a great reputation anyway.”

“There’s a reason you can’t swim in it, and surprisingly, it isn’t the flesh-eating bacteria.”

As Brightside grew slightly concerned over what on earth was going on in the river that ran through Berlin, a familiar figure made her way across the room. Jacqueline Hirsch was simultaneously attempting not to lose whatever woman she had spent the entirety of the night flirting with, and to reach her brother and said brother’s boyfriend. Unfortunately for Brightside’s pseudonym, it was a widely known fact across the base that they were siblings, mainly because both of them looked fucking identical. Dark hair, skin pale enough to pass as vampires, and piercing grey eyes that seemed able to judge the contents of your soul marked both of them, along with their younger sibling, who occasionally acted as the base photographer. Since the older two siblings were also known to be incredibly prone to threatening others, no one pointed out to Brightside the fact that if they looked his sister up in literally any records, they could figure out his name and possibly inform the Nazis. The main reason that no one had done this was that if any agent betrayed another, they were sentenced to die incredibly slowly and painfully, to the point where the German Government would seem merciful.

“Sic semper tyrannis asshole!” Jackie called out to her brother, still trying to force her way through the horde of agents. There was a rumor going around that agents were allowed to bring their significant others to parties, and since that was clearly being done, all five district heads were already mentally preparing to yell at their departments on Redeem’s behalf.

“Jack.” Brightside nodded, lazily wrapping an arm around Ludwig’s shoulders. This produced no reaction from Ludwig, who was searching the medical textbook he for some reason had with him for a diagram of a human heart he’d been meaning to show Jackie for ages.

“You know Nancy, right?” Jackie had one arm around the other woman’s waist. Nancy looked nothing like the typical resistance agent, starting with the fact that she had neither an alcoholic beverage nor a cigarette on her person, and was also wearing a rather nice, but still well-worn, party dress.

Brightside shot his sister a “this your bitch of the night?” look before actually answering the question, “Don’t think I do. Nice to meet you, Nancy. I’m Brightside, and this is Dr. Braum.”

“Wonderful to meet both of you!” Nancey was obviously far more cheery and less bitter than the types of women that his sister typically tended to fuck, so she was either an unwitting hostage or attractive enough to Jackie that the head of missions was willing to ignore several things…or Jackie was simply too drunk to care.

The four of them spoke for several minutes, a conversation which mainly consisted of the three actual members of the resistance thinking up increasingly more creative and insulting names for their boss, and Nancey wondered who on earth Magnus Redeem was and what he had done to warrant being treated in this way. All around them, the other agents swirled, dancing, drinking, and doing other things that were generally condemned by the Catholic church as mortal sins. Right about when Jackie was trying to end her conversation to get her and Nancy alone, preferably in a room where no one could see or hear them, the room steadily got noisier and noisier until it suddenly fell deathly silent.

A single figure wearing what appeared to be a brownshirt uniform had appeared in the doorway. Almost instantaneously, over a hundred guns were trained on said figure. Every single agent in the room was mentally prepared for a brawl with the brownshirts, and to fight until all of the Nazi intruders were dead. Brightside slowly put down his now essentially empty beer bottle and slowly advanced through the crowd of agents, keeping his handgun trained on the intruder the entire time. The rest of the base did the same.

“Its fucking Morgenstern.” He groaned, glaring at the perceived intruder with disgust.

A round of muttering and grumbles quickly filled the room, both addressing the lack of a brawl, some people were looking forward to fighting, and the fact that Jan Morgenstern had once again been allowed to return to being an agent, even after having essentially disappeared for the last five weeks, a habit which he indulged in regularly. For some reason unbeknownst to every single other agent, who would’ve been punished if they ever dared pull that kind of stunt, Redeem always seemed to forgive Morgenstern for disappearing, even though he seemed to spend these long absences mingling with different branches of the Nazi party. Somehow, no sensitive resistance information had ever been leaked, although it had become a running joke at the base that Morgenstern had no idea what side he was supposed to be on. Lines had been drawn years ago between the two sides, and the rest of the agents were getting tired of the man constantly flipping. Joining the resistance meant loyalty for life, and they thought it hypocritical that Morgenstern was never held to this fairly basic ideal.

Brightside resumed his spot next to Ludwig, who was still reading his book. Since Jackie and Nancy had long floated away, presumably to go fuck in a closet, and he couldn’t find a place to get another drink, he turned his attention to Ludwig. Unfortunately for Brightside, his boyfriend was currently nose deep into the textbook, probably because he had some paper that was due the next morning, and Brightside would most certainly get roped into translating the almost doctor’s scattered thoughts into a semi coherent paper. For someone who was currently banned from attending every single university in Germany, he was certainly getting to do a lot of university work. He stole a look over at Ludwig, trying to gauge how far along he was in the textbook. One blue and one green eye moved back and forth incredibly quickly behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. Ludwig wouldn’t be done anytime soon. For reasons known only to the two of them, Brightside’s boyfriend was obsessed with actually graduating from university with the highest grades he could get. Luckily for Ludwig, he was dating the head of propaganda, who was perfectly willing to rewrite an entire paper if he made eyes at him. Gazing over Ludwig’s shoulder, Brightside was able to glimpse a complicated diagram of a human kidney that he was most assuredly not smart enough to understand, and immediately decided to look for another drink.

He had to pick his way around the outer edge of the dance floor, almost being pushed into the mass of dancing agents by various people he didn’t recognize. One of these people asked him to dance with her, batting her eyelashes and flashing her green eyes at him, but Brightside quickly declined, explaining that he didn’t dance. That was a lot easier than telling her he had a boyfriend. At long last, he finally reached the other side of the dance floor, leaning against the makeshift bar that Logistics had set up and attempting to get the bartender to notice him so he could acquire a whiskey. Unfortunately for Brightside’s functional alcoholism, the bartender had her back turned to him and seemed more interested in flirting with one of the agents from Missions than actually giving people drinks. A small crowd had gathered, and all around him, Brightside could hear his coworkers muttering about their lack of drinks. Like most things, the situation would’ve been improved by a cigarette, but when Brightside checked his pocket, his fingers found nothing but a few scraps of paper, a mound of lint, and an empty cigarette container. Well, it seemed like this celebration was going to be about as mediocre as possible. So much for celebrating the two dead agents. However, Jane and Jackie were planning to orchestrate the revenge killings would be ten times more interesting.

After waiting among the other slightly drunk but clearly not drunk enough agents, Brightside gave up. He’d stashed a bottle of whiskey in his office, and it would be ten times easier to just take shots of that. He was going to grab Ludwig so that the two of them could get increasingly drunk together, but as he scanned the room, he didn’t see his boyfriend. Fuck, he must’ve left for Medical to be alone, or becuase someone from Tech had manged to light themselves on fire, a phenomenon that really shouldn’t had been as common as it was. However, before he could go and attempt to annoy Ludwig into drinking with him, the music suddenly cut off, and a woman climbed to the top of an empty beer crate in the front of the room.

“Listen up!” The woman on the crate shouted. Everyone in the room instantly recognized her. It was Jane Kalderash, the head of Missions. Brightside mentally cursed as she shouted since he owed her money from an earlier poker game and had been planning on weaseling his way out of paying as usual. As Jane continued, silence fell. “Redeem’s called an emergency return to stations. Everyone, get to your departments and make sure you’re armed. Someone doesn’t want alcohol involved, so chug your drinks before you leave! Brownshirts have entered the Jewish District, so be prepared to fight!”

The room erupted into chaos as agents attempted to consume as much alcohol as possible before rushing to their departments. Slipping out of the room, Brightside raced into the rest of the base before the rest of the agents rushed the hallways. He’d made the mistake of letting Jane assign him the job of alerting the other district heads when there was a call to battle stations, although calling them battle stations was generous since it was pretty much just a way to get the base organized when they were gonna brawl with the brownshirts. The soles of his combat boots thumped against the worn floorboards of the base as he ran towards Medical and Tech. Turing and Ludwig were both probably in their respective departments, Ludwig hastily writing a paper in Medical, and Turing probably setting something on fire in Tech.

From the room where the resistance tended to throw their parties, Technology was the closest department, only a floor up, meaning that Brightside got the wonderful experience of hurrying up a whole flight of stairs when he really should’ve been getting as drunk as physically possible to warn the most intelligent yet scatterbrained English scientist he knew, not that that was an especially large demographic in this corner of Berlin, that all of Tech was going to be rushing into the department approximately two minutes after him. Probably the only lucky break he managed to catch all night was the fact that for once, Tech wasn’t on fire, so when he pounded on the door, Turing was actually able to answer it.

“Redeem rief die Stationen an, da die Braunhemden gerade das jüdische Viertel betreten hatten.” Brightside blurted, speaking as quickly as he always did, the words running into each other.

Turing just stared at him blankly, a look of confusion on the slightly older man’s face. “And by chance, what would that mean in English?”

“Shit, sorry. Redeem called stations, Brownshirts entered the Jewish district. Your department should be up in a few, I'm pretty sure at least one of them can translate.”

With a nod from Turing, who Brightside would’ve bet money was already mentally figuring out how he could use as many explosives as possible in the potential fight, the head of Propaganda retreated back down the stairs, attempting to move as quickly as possible, but also having to go slow enough that he wouldn’t fall and re-break his ankle. Medical was definitely farther away from where the funeral and drinking had been happening; however, it was on the way to Propaganda. As he made his way over to Medical, Brightside silently cursed both himself for agreeing to warn the other department heads in case of a call to stations and Redeem for two reasons: calling stations in the first place, and also for assigning the task he was currently completing to a head and not another agent. When he rounded the corner to Medical and stuck his head into the open door of the department, his eyes thankfully landed on Ludwig, who was trying to write that paper as quickly as humanly possible. 

“Redeem called stations, Brownshirts are supposed to be entering the Jewish district.” Much like he had with Turing, Brightside’s warning consisted of words sliding into each other as he spoke.

“I’ll get ready for someone to be shot.” Ludwig groaned, slamming the textbook he was using shut and planting a quick kiss on Brightside’s cheek before the head of Propaganda left for his actual destination, Propaganda.

Joining the stream of agents in the hallway, a group that stayed as quiet as possible despite the fact that they were all certainly drunk, Brightside did what they were all trained to do in a call to stations, listening for approaching Brownshirts. This was obviously supposed to be done when not inside the literal fucking base, but as he pushed through some of the other agents in order to reach his department as quickly as possible, since it was kind of locked, he picked up the unmistakable, yet still faint, sound of the Brownshirts approaching. Their shouts, drunken recitals of Nazi songs, and the shattering of broken glass all mixed into one. The night was going to be a bloody one, that was for sure.

Chapter Text

“Brownshirts incoming!”

“They’ve gotten past the base!”

“So let us fucking fight you coward!”

“Jesus fucking christ! The old Meyer’s place is on fire !”

“That wasn’t me you assholes!”

“Agents! Leave stations.”

“About goddamn time!”

The sun rose the next morning on a dark scene. All over the Jewish District, windows were shattered, buildings were covered in painted slurs and threats, and the empty roads were filled with shattered glass and, in too many places, blood. Smoke from the charred remains of what was once several houses wafted upwards, into the pristine morning sky. A swastika had been painted on the front of one of the synagogues, and even more of those hate-filled symbols littered the entire neighborhood. Everyone in the Jewish district stayed in their homes, the majority of those who weren’t involved with the resistance having barricaded themselves in their basements as soon as the brownshirts had come. But that hadn’t fully protected them from the drunken mobs. During the night, doors had been broken down, occupants dragged out by their hair, and the screams of people who never should’ve been involved echoed throughout Berlin. An invasion was far more common than it should’ve been, and every man, woman, and child knew that the Nazis would stop at nothing to take what little they had left from them. 

The fact that the resistance had holed up in the Jewish district was a double-edged sword for its inhabitants. On one side, the resistance was dedicated to beating back the Brownshirts every time the drunken bastards invaded after being rallied up by Hilter at one of those damned rallies. On the other hand, the only reason that the Brownshirts seemed to invade in the first place was because of the resistance. When that happened, the district’s gutters ran red with blood. Red. That was the color of this fight. Everything was red, from the flag hung all over Berlin, draped over the Reichstag building, and hundreds of other important buildings, to the color of the blood that was seeping into the floorboards of Medical. Everything was red.

Dr. Ludwig Braum's hands were dripping with dark, congealed blood. It had seeped into the white doctor’s coat he wore, creating dark streaks on the otherwise pristine cloth. He’d been operating almost nonstop since the brownshirts had arrived. This was worse than last time, so much worse. Somehow the Nazi goons had managed to create even more destruction and bloodshed than they previously had. He hurried across Medical, trying to stop the blood from his hands from dripping onto the floor. It was really a pointless struggle; the floor was already stained all over. Ludwig ducked into one of the storage closets, the one that had the sink, and used an elbow to turn on the stream of water. The cool water ran from the faucet into the rusty sink, and he desperately scrubbed at his hands. As the water ran red with blood, Ludwig hung his head and let a silent sob wrack through his body. The patient who he’d just been operating on, the one who’d he and Stocker had been fighting to keep alive for the last three hours, had died on the table. Dead. Now and forever dead.

Goddamnit. He’d seen enough death and destruction that he could’ve sworn that it wouldn’t impact him anymore, but here he was, holding back sobs over the death of someone he hadn’t even known. Ludwig knew that Garcia would tell him that the fact he still felt something meant that he was human, but right now, he didn’t want to be human; he just wanted to be numb. Some of the other prospective surgeons he knew, and even some of their instructors, swore that they saw the faces of the people that they’d lost in every single person that died under their care. He didn’t see that; all he saw were dead bodies. But there was something about seeing the life seep out of someone, even after he had struggled so hard to save them, that still rocked him to his core. Some of the other agents, old hands that had worked with the dying and the dead and the futile struggle to keep them alive before Ludwig was even born, could make dark jokes just moments after their patients had died. He should’ve been scared of that fate, but it somehow seemed appealing, in a dark and twisted way. He was in the resistance after all, and everyone eventually became bitter and distrustful.

Even after a good five minutes of scrubbing, Ludwig’s hands were still stained red from the blood. He didn’t have time to keep on scrubbing. Elijah Manisfeld and Marica Bolten had been assigned to deal with the corpse, and they’d both come back past the supply closet he was sort of definitely hiding in a good two minutes ago. Even though he was exhausted, and the only reason his hands weren’t shaking too badly was the flask of whiskey in his pocket, he still dried his hands, tried to look less exhausted than he was, and headed back towards the makeshift operating room to work on the next person.

By the time that Ludwig had put his scalpel down for the last time and could collapse into his desk chair, he was certain of the fact that this night had been just as, if not more bloody than, Kristallnacht. That night was still fresh in the minds of everyone in the resistance. There’d been over thirty dead and even more dying when the sun had risen that November morning; he’d been at the operating table for over twenty-four hours, and that was after a day of classes and drinking. Today, well, he had to have done at least that, maybe not a whole twenty-four hours, but at least a good twelve. According to the clock in his office, which was about the size of a broom closet, it was three in the afternoon. The stream of wounded, dying, and dead had started around eleven the previous night, so he must have been cutting people open for sixteen hours, minus the five minutes he’d taken to scrub the blood off of his hands. The only reason it hadn’t been longer was because a few agents had found “retired” Jewish surgeons who were more than willing to operate again after having their licenses suspended when the Nazis came into power. Three rooms had been turned into makeshifting operating rooms, and the basement had been turned into a fucking morge. 

The worst part was that no one really cared. The papers might give it a quick mention, Brightside would write a pamphlet or seventeen in outrage, but no one would give much thought to the fact that at least thirty-five people were dead, and there were most assuredly more to come. He’d seen the dead, friends, associates, agents, people who should’ve gotten a future, nothing but lifeless bodies. He’d seen the wounded- agents who’d gone out looking for trouble and those who’d been unfortunate enough to get caught up in the trouble alike. But even worse was who he hadn’t seen. Jackie, Turing, Alex Hirsch, the bumbling old surgeon everyone called Cabbage Man…Brightside. Any one of them could’ve been bleeding out on the streets at that very moment. Ludwig’s shoulders began to shake. Alone in his closet of an office, after spending sixteen hours trying and failing to save the lives of people who no one else cared about, he finally put his head down on his desk and cried.

Maybe it was the exhaustion, or maybe it was the fact that his desk was piled full of papers, but somehow Ludwig ended up waking up to someone shaking him, even though he had no memory of falling asleep.

“What the fuck do you want.” He muttered, scrubbing his face with a hand and peeling off the paper that had managed to get stuck to it in the process.

“Hey, darling.” It was Brightside, he was alright. He cupped one side of Ludwig’s face in his hand and pressed a kiss to Ludwig’s forehead. 

But that wasn’t what Ludwig was concerned about. He pulled apart from Brightside and scrutinized his boyfriend’s appearance, trying to see if he’d been injured in last night’s fighting. No obvious wounds, no bandages, no obvious blood loss, no slings or casts, no signs of a concussion, no burns, no nothing other than a few scrapes on Brightside’s hands and face and what looked like a few split knuckles. He was actually in one piece for once. With the number of times Ludwig had pulled a bullet out of him, it was nothing short of a fucking miracle that Brightside wasn’t dead. The two of them somehow ended up sitting side by side on the floor of the office, backs against the chipping wall and legs stretched out on the scuffed floor. Ludwig rested his head on Brightside’s shoulder and closed his eyes as his lover rambled on in a low voice about what had happened during the fighting.

“I’m pretty sure that one of the places they tried to light on fire- that wasn’t actually Tech, even though I’d bet money Turing tried to commit arson- was the old camera shop Alex used to drag me and Jackie to. Once that place closed up, they got the owner to give them some old equipment ‘for the resistance’, even though they just use it to blackmail people with really annoying photos. So after the brownshirts got past the old synagogue, I ended up getting roped into manning a gun on top of the townhouse three blocks down, that one with the ugly siding, but Logistics fucked up and gave me the wrong ammunition so I had to sprint back to the base and grab the right type of bullets-”

“Brightside?”

“Yeah?”

“Can we go home?”

The two of them walked hand in hand through the now completely empty streets of the Jewish district. Ludwig wasn’t paying attention to what buildings they were passing, or even which roads they were on, instead he was thinking about how much he was going to have to do in order to make sure that everyone still in Medical recovered properly, and that he’d missed the deadline for an important essay, and an anatomy quiz that he’d been told about for weeks. His grades could probably take it, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t panic when those tiny numbers on page nineteen of the list of students’ grades in the admissions building ticked down. Those numbers dictated his future, whether after the Nazis were gone he’d even be able to work as a surgeon, that was, of course, if the Nazis were ever gone.

He couldn’t think about that right now, right now he was so tired that he could barely focus on putting one foot in front of the other. Eventually, he ended up glancing over at Brightside. Brightside almost could’ve passed for some sort of angel, at least to Ludwig; however, he was most certainly biased. The addictiveness of his charm and that lopsided smile that stood out against the blood red and ash grey of the Jewish district kept the prospective surgeon tied to reality as the two of them stumbled home through the cramped confines of the place to the Hirsch family’s apartment. Blood red and ash grey. They were the colors of the revolution that never seemed to come.

At some point, the two of them reached the old building that once must’ve been impressive, but now just seemed exhausted and decrepit, where the Hirsch family lived. All six members of the family, plus Ludwig, who essentially lived with them, shared a top-floor apartment that at one point had to have been servant quarters. By some miracle, Brightside and Ludwig managed to get up the three flights of stairs that led to said apartment, passing a few other residents of the building who were all too happy to let the two men, one of whom was covered in blood, go by them.

When they entered, the question of whether or not Jackie was alright was solved, at least for Ludwig. Although the head of Missions had a bandage over her right eyebrow, it appeared as though she was for the most part alright; however the furious grey cat that she was holding at arm’s distance appeared to be plotting to change that fact. The second that the door closed behind him, Jackie practically ran over to Ludwig and thrust the cat at him.

“Here’s your fucking cat.” She said, clearly glad to be depositing the grey demon with the one person that the cat actually liked.

“Thanks,” Ludwig muttered, too tired to tell Jackie just how grateful he was that she’d grabbed his cat. The moment that the cat was in his arms, the furious feline calmed down and began to purr, happy to be with the singular person she tolerated. Brightside inched slowly away from his boyfriend, mainly because said cat was trying to attack him with her razor-sharp talons.

Far too tired and frankly not interested enough to give a fuck, Ludwig just carried his cat into the cramped bedroom that technically Brightside’s, but he spent enough time in that it was really theirs. He dumped the cat on a chair that really shouldn't have had that many papers on it and grabbed a clean pair of pajamas before stumbling over to the bathroom to shower. Somehow, the Hirschs’ apartment had two bathrooms, both with showers; however Alex was currently using one, there was enough steam coming out of the crack under the door that it couldn't have been anyone but them.

After trying, and only partially succeeding, to clean the blood off of his forearms and the rest of his body, Ludwig pulled on the old pair of pajamas, both pieces were originally Brightside’s but he’d stolen them years ago, and collapsed into his boyfriend’s unmade bed, pulling the blanket around him and kicking the sheets away. The cat delicately stepped through the valleys and ridges that the messy blanket created until she was next to Ludwig, plopping her little form down right next to his head and purring loudly. Pulling off his glasses, the exhausted surgeon barely noticed when Brightside slipped into bed next to him, wrapping his body around his. As the sun set in the Berlin sky, both young men had fallen completely asleep, unaware of the fact that the world around them was plotting their demise.

The world hates lovers, it always has and always will, but it’s also always had a soft spot for the couples who can endure everything that it throws at them. Maybe that was why it conveniently forgot the face of Mr. Brightside, who had been seen all throughout the Jewish district by dozens of people, and silently erased the name of the not-yet-surgeon who’d spent the last day trying to save lives as the same people who’d they’d fought against only a day earlier were looking for them, planning on destroying every inch of their lives. Of course, this convenient forgetting would only go on so long as the two of them weren’t foolish enough to forget that society was willing to throw everything it had into destroying them.

Chapter Text

Waking up the next day, well, it felt like any other day. Brightside didn’t know why; it probably shouldn't have, with all the violence that had haunted the impoverished and downright oppressed Jewish Quarter of Berlin, but it did. He’d never really understood that. When he was a kid, he’d woken up on his birthday, on the first day of break, on the first day of Hanukkah, and always felt disappointed that he didn’t feel different. The only thing that was different this morning was that he’d woken up sore as fuck from the several elbows he’d taken in the ribs and that Ludwig had yet again managed to end up both contorting the two of them in such a weird way that he had approximately three inches of space and was one more push from falling off the fucking bed and simultaneously making sure that his boyfriend was sleeping almost directly on top of him. So yeah, great feeling. At least he could just bury his face in his boyfriend’s pillow and fall back asleep. It was Saturday after all. But that was when there was a concerningly violent knock on the door.

“Alfred Josiah Hirsch!” The force of nature known as Alice Hirsch, otherwise known as his lovely and slightly terrifying mother hollered though the wooden panel, fully startling Brightside, who was actually known as Fredy to anyone close enough to him to be aware of his real name, and even managing to wake Ludwig, who upon realizing that whatever was about to happen had nothing to do with him, shoved a pillow over his face and promptly fell back asleep.

Yeah, he fucked up. Fredy wasn’t exactly sure what the hell he’d done, but if his dear mother was banging on his door on a Saturday and screaming his name, it’d been bad.

“Yeah?” He called back, not even bothering to disguise the exhaustion in his voice.

“Jane Kalderash is really, really trying to reach you! I think she’s called four times now, so get your ass out of bed and deal with her.” Mrs. Hirsch responded. Why the fuck would Jane be calling him at, well judging by the watch Ludwig had left on his nightstand a month ago and had never taken back, five in the morning? It was Redeem. Of course it was Redeem. 

Prying himself out of Ludwig’s iron grip, the adorable bastard was still somehow asleep, Fredy threw on an old sweater over his pajamas and picked his way through the mess of books and other shit that had somehow managed to take over his entire bedroom floor. Slipping out the door, he shut it, or at least attempted to, as quietly as possible.

“Sorry, Mom.” Fredy sheepishly apologized to Mrs. Hirsch as he made his way towards the still ringing phone.

“It's fine, honey. Just tell Ms. Kalderash that next time she calls to try and not wake the whole house up.” Mrs. Hirsch dismissed her son’s apology with a wave of her hand as a tired smile crept onto her face. It wasn’t like William wouldn’t have woken her up earlier for whatever he desired in the moment.

Between the fact that he was wearing socks and his training as a resistance agent, Fredy was fairly confident that he didn’t wake anyone else up in his journey to the phone, which, for some reason, was located on the wall almost directly next to Alex’s bedroom. The phone was somehow still active, and Jane was for some reason still on the line when he picked it up.

“The fuck you want?” He half whispered, into the phone.

“Oh, you are awake!” Jane exclaimed through the phone, clearly a combination of being high and full of a slightly concerning amount of caffeine.

“Well I am now.” Fredy shot back, leaning against the wall and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Something told him that he probably wasn’t going to go back to sleep.

“Two things:” Jane began, pausing for a moment to say something to someone at wherever she was, that Fredy didn’t catch. “First, Turing and I are the only two people left at the base and I have no goddamn clue what the fuck he’s trying to tell me-”

“So you decided to call me at five in the morning?” He interrupted, cutting off whatever explanation Jane was about to give.

“Yes, it's almost like the only three reliable English translators all essentially live at the same place, and you’re the only one who isn’t gonna kill me for making you do this. There’s no way in hell I’m waking up Ludwig.”

“Fine. Put Turing on.” On the other side of the phone, Fredy could distinctly hear Jane attempting to pass the receiver off to Turing, who was probably about to get him to translate some incredibly complicated instructions regarding something Tech had built.

“Brightside?” Turing’s distinct voice crackled through the phone; well, it kinda had to be him unless another agent had spontaneously gained an English accent.

“It’s me. What do you want me to tell Jane?”

“Could you please tell her that I don’t know where any of the cleaning supplies go and that I’m going home as soon as we put the cleaning supplies away? Sorry.”

“It’s fine. Just maybe don’t do this at five in the morning next time?”

“It’s already five?” Turing seemed visibly shaken by this revelation, at least through the phone and Fredy mentally rolled his eyes at how forgetful the fucker could be.

“Yeah, now pass the phone back to Jane.”

A second later, Jane was back on the phone. “Hey. What’d he need to tell me?”

“Turing wants to tell you that he has no goddamn clue where the cleaning supplies go and that once you show him where the cleaning supplies go and puts them away, he’s going home. Not sure how you guys didn’t get that across, but you’re welcome.”

“Thanks, Brightside, you’re a lifesaver.” Jane said, “Any longer, we would’ve had to resort to charades.”

“You owe me.”

“Fine, I’ll get you a pack of whatever you want tomorrow. My second thing, Redeem wants a head’s meeting at eleven to decide what the fuckily fuck we’re gonna do to retaliate against whatever you can call what happened two days ago. Its gotta be orginal.” Jane’s eyeroll was almost audible in the last few syllables of her statement.

“Sounds like it's gonna be as torturous as possible. Maybe see if you can get Turing to start a fire. I don’t think he’s used a washing machine to do it yet.” Fredy only half joked, putting the phone receiver back and hearing the audible click signaling that the call had ended. Within a minute he’d collapsed back into bed next to Ludwig, who’d seized the opportunity and buried his face back into his boyfriend’s shoulder. The two of them ended up sleeping, or at least trying to for another five hours, eventually dragging themselves out of bed around ten in the morning. In that time, the cat had decided that Fredy didn’t deserve to have reclaimed part of his bed and had tried to wedge her fluffy little body directly between him and Ludwig. Thus, Fredy ended up once again, almost falling off his bed. Yeah, this was great.

He ended up having to physically drag Ludwig out of bed, who was so tired that he didn’t even notice the fact that Fredy had very much locked the cat out of their room the second that he’d woken up. They both threw on clothes pretty quickly, grabbing shirts and pants that had somehow managed to get thrown behind Fredy’s overflowing bookshelf, Ludwig pulling on his favorite black cardigan that no one dared question the origin of, while his boyfriend attempted to make his hair look semi-decent in a cracked mirror. Once neither of them looked like they’d slept in their clothes, although Fredy had very much slept in the pants he was wearing, they headed towards the kitchen in order to try and acquire the true lifeblood of the resistance: coffee.

As they approached, it became abundantly clear that the two of them weren’t the only ones in desperate need of caffeine that morning. Jackie was slumped over the table with her cheek resting on a three-day-old section of the newspaper and staring at the side of her coffee mug as she attempted to muster the energy to actually drink it. Alex appeared to be in a similar state; they were peering into cabinets in a desperate effort to find their coffee mug, which had just been stolen by Jackie.

Ludwig immediately flopped down in one of the mismatched kitchen chairs while Fredy made a beeline for the stove, where a pot of coffee was sitting. Going through the motions he did every morning, he grabbed his mug out of the cabinet that housed a good dozen mismatched cups, cursed the sun out under his breath for existing, dumped as much of the coffee into it as he could without overflowing, took a sip, then grabbed the bottle of cheap whiskey that was always around the kitchen, and dumped as much of the liquor into the coffee mug as physically possible. Much better. Then, he had to repeat the whole process over again to make a cup for Ludwig, this time dumping in slightly more whiskey before sitting down at the table.

Ludwig mumbled a thanks as Fredy slid the mug across the table to him. Neither of them said anything as they drank their totally not laced coffee. This was the perfect time for Fredy to begin mentally drafting his response to whatever the hell had just happened. The death toll was high, too high. Last time he'd been able to check the number of dead, it had been thirty-eight, and that number was only rising.

Was this part of some grand Nazi plan? He couldn't help but wonder. Through the carnage, a gruesome and blood-soaked pattern had begun to emerge. Every few months, the drunken brownshirt invasion of the Jewish Quarter would be at least ten times more destructive than the previous few months. Just look at the last three times: January had only had twelve dead from Nazi brutality, February was even better with only nine losing their lives due to racial violence, but March, March was already thirty eight- forty when he counted the two dead agents whose funeral they had just been at when all hell had broken loose. Fredy couldn't even remember the names of the dead agents at the moment, only that there were two more casualties in the full-on war against the resistance. 

All he had to do now was to attempt to convey all of that in ten pages of paper and ink that the Nazis would be trying to destroy the second that the first pamphlet rolled off of the printing presses that they’d hidden all over Berlin. If he hadn’t currently had a mouthful of coffee, Fredy would’ve laughed at the irony. The government had a propaganda empire that spanned beyond what the resistance could ever dream of, an empire that proved powerful enough to hide the true brutality of the invasions of the Jewish Quarter, but they still scrambled to burn every word he wrote because his pamphlets showed the truth. Fredy, or Mr. Brightside at least, was the most dangerous man in Berlin, not because of any amount of power he wielded, but because he was the only one screaming the truth into the abyss of lies. 

Speaking of the truth, no better time than the present to write it down. Someone, probably Fredy himself now that he thought about it, had left an old notebook and pencil on the kitchen table, so being the completely rational person that he was, after waking up from the first chance he’d had to sleep in the last two days, he immediately put pen to paper and began to outline what had really happened. Within half an hour, his pamphlet was complete and titled: A War of Massacres. This ought to get him back to the top of the SS's most wanted list.

“Heard the phone ring,” Jackie noted, as the two of them, along with Alex waited for Ludwig to finish gathering up whatever the fuck he needed before they all headed over to the base.

“It was Jane. Someone made the mistake of leaving her and Turing alone at base so she needed some shit translated, and she also told me that Redeem had made the great decision to make us have a meeting on the revenge killings for Meyer and Alder at eleven.” Fredy flipped through the rough draft he was holding, already planning out a few edits as he spoke.

“Thought that was what you were saying,” Alex remarked, shifting their camera bag to the other shoulder. Redeem wanted pictures of the destruction, and as Propaganda’s part-time photographer, the teenager was the most qualified person to get them.

“Damn, you really are getting good at eavesdropping.” Remarked Jackie, already lighting up her first cigarette of the day.

“Fuck off,” Alex muttered. 

Fredy elected to just ignore both his siblings and took out a pencil to mark up his pamphlet draft. Drop a “possibly” there, add in a “this is the sort of violence preformed-” here, try and fix some of his shitty spellings…just enough to make what he was saying make some fucking sense. Well, as much sense as spending a whole page insulting Nazi leaders for even allowing this to happen in the first place could make. Once again it was time to light the spark of rebellion in the German population and pray that this time the spark would catch.

Ludwig materialized after about ten minutes. Even though the entirety of his arms were covered, it was obvious he had been scrubbing at them since his palms were pink from said scrubbing and the cuffs of his cardigan were wet. With the arrival of the surgeon, the group that made up a concerning percentage of the resistance leadership began their walk to the base. Jackie and Alex ended up walking ahead, bickering over Jackie’s coffee mug thievery, leaving Fredy and Ludwig to walk hand in hand by themselves. Neither of them said anything over the course of the trip, neither of them had to. Ludwig just stared at the ground as Fredy let his thoughts run wild.

With the way that revenge killings were supposed to be carried out, that being three dead per agent killed, every target of a revenge killing being someone involved with the Nazis, and the killings having to be done in a way that inflicted severe pain, the red flag was going to be waving in the lobby of the base for a long while. As far as he could remember, the most recent time the red flag hadn’t been waving was in 1934, which needless to say was kinda a long time, a long enough time that the idea of even flying a red flag was rendered kind of pointless. Redeem was obsessed with his flag system: red when revenge killings were happening, grey when Nazis were being aggressive towards the resistance and vigilance was required, white when vigilance was not required, and black when full out war between the resistance and the Nazis was finally launched. Needless to say that the lonely flagpole in the lobby of the base had only ever flown red and grey flags. But still, everyone held their breaths when they entered the base, silently hoping that a black flag would be flying, or at least Fredy did.

He had long considered it past the point when the resistance needed to pick up arms and take back control of Germany from the ruling Nazi government, and to reinstate a democratic government, a government where all people were equal under the rule of the law, no matter their race, sex, or sexuality. Sure the revolution would be bloody, but the more blood spilt, the sweeter the peace would be. Of course it helped that the resistance would obviously be the ones running this renewed German democracy. Fredy himself envisioned a position as a member of the legislative, or even executive branch, for himself when the last bullet had been fired and Nazi killed. However, that was all just a far away fantasy. Right now he was trudging through the empty streets of the Jewish Quarter, clutching his boyfriend’s hand and his next pamphlet, a pamphlet that might incite the revolution he dreamed of, or might not just like all the others. People would listen, they would read his writings and praise them, but they never acted. No one ever bothered to unless their lives were the ones on the line, and the people who had long reached that point were a certain breed, known far more commonly as resistance agents.

Chapter Text

The head’s meeting took place in the head’s planning room, or as it was more commonly referred to as: the head’s plotting and poker room. Ludwig slipped into the seat that he always took, the old leather loveseat that was tucked under the bay window which provided such a lovely view of the ramshackle alley that divided the base in two. The base wasn’t actually one building, it was an old warehouse and townhouse that were directly next to each other. Housed in the old townhouse were the majority of the offices, along with the head’s plotting room that Ludwig found himself in. He was the first to arrive, Fredy had been pulled away in order to get an updated list of all the books that the Nazis were banning, Jackie had immediately left in order to go flirt with one of the new Logistics recruits, and Alex wasn’t a district head and thus was not allowed in. In lieu of anything else to do, he simply grabbed the old biography of President Hale that he’d left in there a week prior. Out of all the things that he should’ve been reading, a book on the life and times of the second American president probably wasn’t the most productive thing, but if he had to look at one more medical textbook, he’d jump off the roof of the base.

Turing came in second, muttering to himself in English as he frantically jotted down some sort of equation in the old notebook it seemed like he always had on him. Taking his customary place in the same upholstered armchair he consistently claimed, Turing didn’t even seem to notice his fellow agent.

“Sic semper tyrannis.” Ludwig said, not looking up from his book. For once the pages weren’t covered in scribbled notes. That's what you got when you didn’t steal almost every single book you read from your writing-in-books obsessed boyfriend.

“Sic semper tyrannis.” Turning replied, stretching his legs out so that he could rest his feet on the terminally abused coffee table. A light drizzle began to beat against the window panes, a soft hum against the near silence of the room.

Jane entered next, turned on the ramshackle radio in the corner of the room that Tech had to fix every other week, and once she had confirmed that orchestral music was in fact crackling through the radio, settled down on the couch opposite of Turing’s armchair and began to rifle through the folder of notes for the meeting she’d compiled, notes that were surely to ignored when the meeting actually happened.

“Sic semper tyrannis.”

“Sic semper tyrannis.” Both of her coworkers answered, neither moving their eyes from their books.

Ludwig had just about gotten to the start of the American Revolution when the door to the room burst open. He didn’t have to look up from his book to realise that Fredy and Jackie had finally both arrived. The two of them were talking to each other in rapidfire Czech, something that he could technically understand, but also couldn’t be arsed to. Jackie took the armchair next to Turing, taking a swig of gin from the pocket flask she always carried on her as she did so. It didn’t take a genius to figure out where Fredy would end up, tucked next to Ludwig on the window seat, an arm wrapped about his shoulders and person to cuddle up to, while all five of them plotted on how exactly they were to carry out the next resistance mission.

The rain had strengthened from a drizzle to a storm by the time that Ludwig stood in front of the mirror in his childhood bedroom, attempting for the third time to tie his bowtie, and once again failing. He could already hear the people arriving downstairs, giving their regards to the hosts and all the other people who had far too much power in this new Germany. It made the bile rise in his throat as he heard all the Heil Hitlers exchanged. This was the reason he didn’t come home.

His tuxedo coat was far too narrow, just like he’d predicted. No one cared enough to have remembered that they’d got it for him the year before he’d graduated high school. But it fit well enough to wear, not as well as the majority of his clothes, most of which were back at the Hirschs’ apartment, and was enough to convince the rich socialites he was supposed to pretend like he didn’t despise that he wasn’t being neglected by the family fortune. A fortune that he was sure to never see a fucking penny of.

The sound of classical music, Bach and Straus no doubt, began to filter out some of the sound of falling rain as he approached the ballroom, already beginning to fill up with the sorts of people who only liked each other, and literally everyone else in the world thought they deserved to die slowly and painfully. Most of these people had deluded themselves into thinking that Ludwig actually liked them, none more so than his cousin, Dietrich Pherson. And unfortunately for Ludwig, said deluded cousin was very much approaching him.

“Heil Hitler, dear cousin!” Dietrich greeted him, wearing the sort of smile that only people who were oblivious to everything around them could wear. After being forced to deal with Morgenstern on a semi weekly basis, Ludwig knew that smile all too well, and it produced exactly one reaction from him: fuck.

“Hello, Dietrich.” He replied, keeping all expressions on his face as calm as possible. Anyone with two braincells to rub together was capable of telling that Dietrich was drunk, and if they were alone, he could have not so subtly hinted at his cousin to fuck off. However, they weren’t, which immediately complicated the manner.

“How are your studies going? Found any nice nurses to shag?” Good old Dietrich Pherson. Too drunk to know that talking about the sorts of events that were usually confined to the bedroom, or a certain closet at the district base, wasn’t the sort of thing that you did at these parties.

As tempting as saying “I’m sleeping with Mr. Brightside who is actually a semi decent person unlike literally everyone else in this room and also you’re an asshole,” would’ve been, that was also the sort of thing that years of being forced to attend these types of gathering, had taught Ludwig not to say. Instead he just replied: “My studies are going quite well.”

Instead of continuing such an intellectually stimulating conversation with Dietrich, Ludwig managed to escape by way of the arrival of the two people important enough to be acknowledged by the entire ballroom: his parents.

The first time that anyone, who wasn’t acquainted with them, looked at the Braum family, they would see a happy family: a socialite mother, a father with a high ranking government job, and a son currently in medical school. That was what the Braums wanted you to believe, or at least the two of them who weren’t running around with the resistance. Wilhelma Braum was the daughter of wealthy industrialists, and on good terms with every wealthy woman in Berlin. Petite and in possession of a good figure, not a soul would have guessed that she flew into fits of rage at the slightest imperfection, throwing anything she could get her hands on at the offender. Robert Braum was the son of the most powerful banking family in Germany, and the second in command of the German Reich, although some speculated that he might have been the true power behind Hitler’s throne after all, and by some I mean Mr. Brightside, it was mainly Mr. Brightside. In stark contrast to his wife, he was tall, well built and severe looking, with cold eyes, one blue one green, that could send icy looks in the direction of anyone who drew his ire. Even in his anger, which came quickly and swiftly down upon all those who angered him, he was cold, so cold that at times he barely seemed human. 

Somehow this terrible union had produced Ludwig, quiet and melancholy, who nevertheless managed to get mistaken for cold and calculating, a child who had fled the nest the second he’d been able to, but was tied to them by blood and a surname. And in the Braum family, familial loyalty and appearances mattered far more than personal happiness. So Ludwig played the part of the dutiful son. It was survival, nothing more, nothing less. Simply putting on a mask of a detached yet responsible child of the Reich, hiding any semblance of self he ever dared have. The worst part was that he knew it was convincing.

“Mother, Father.” He said, nodding at both of the people who had failed so poorly at being his parents, to the point where it seemed blasphemy to even give them the title.

“Ludwig.” Mrs. Braum acknowledged her son, snapping her fingers at a nearby waiter for a refill of champagne. “So wonderful of you to finally grace one of these celebrations with your presence.”

“I’ve been busy with school.” He muttered, not daring to meet her eyes, for that was sure to only end in one way: with the champagne glass thrown at his face.

“That is no excuse. And stop slouching. It makes me look like I raised an even more pathetic son than I did.” She practically spat out her last insult, her mask slipping for a moment and revealing the true cruelty hidden underneath. Not daring to respond, Ludwig merely drug his nails into his palm, biting the inside of his cheek to stop the fear automatically rising in his chest. But as soon as the mask had slipped, it was pushed back into place. “Mrs. Gobbels! How lovely to finally see you again. It really has been too long.”

He didn’t even bother to say anything to his father, knowing all too well the disapproving glare that he’d be met with. The two of them didn’t see eye to eye on anything, although that should have been obvious, and it was clear that even though he had not challenged it, Robert Braum would have much preferred his only son go into any other field than medicine.

In a room full of hostile people, Ludwig retreated to the thing that always succeeded in calming his nerves: poker. A game had started among a group of people who he hated on principle: members of the great political families he’d been forced to grow up around, SS and SA cadets, even some younger members of the party who’d risen through the ranks quickly, and Dietrich, because of course Dietrich was there. They dealt him in pretty quickly, and Ludwig used the same strategy that he always did when playing with the enemy: he lost the first few hands intentionally, betting more that he should’ve as the game went on, then, when the time was right, he made sure to win five hands in a row, getting back all he’d lost and enough to buy Medical new bandages for three months, assuming that Tech didn’t catch on fire again.

But the game was just a way to kill time, and Ludwig slipped out of it the second that the two people he’d been waiting for arrived. It was time to execute the mission. Fredy and Jackie were disguised as an army captain and said army captain’s female partner of ambiguous relation, both wearing clothes that they’d stolen from decent department stores a few years back, when the agents could still kinda get away with petty thefts.

“Dr. Braum.” Fredy gave him a small bow, the same sly and roguish grin he always wore on his lips.

“Captain Hale.” Ludwig replied, having to keep himself from smiling at the ridiculous situation. Making forced small talk with someone you spent the majority of your time with was unintentionally hilarious, especially when you were both a few drinks in.

“Enjoying the night?”

“As much as I can.” He shrugged, watching Jackie try and flirt with a man out of the corner of his eye. It seemed very wrong to witness such an event.

“Is the security about as shitty as always?” Fredy dropped his voice to a whisper and switched over to Czech as he flagged down a waiter with a tray of drinks.

“They didn’t even brother to cover the back half of the house.” Ludwig replied in the same manner, happily accepting a drink and laughing at a joke that no one had told. “Turing and Jane should be able to get in no problem.”

“Good. Doesn’t seem like anyone's gonna be there to ask questions.”

“All the staff’s either here or in the kitchen. The back door’s been completely abandoned.”

“Perfect.”

Just as the two of them had finished their totally not resistance plan focused conversation, the one person who Ludwig had really really really been hoping to avoid for the remainder of the night approached them: Dietrich Pherson. However, this time he wasn’t alone, he had a blonde woman in a sleek blood red dress on his arm, who looked at Ludwig’s incompetent cousin like the man was the most interesting person in the world. She was evidently quite the good actress.

“We meet again, cousin.” Dietrich smiled at him, an action that he clearly didn’t realize read as predatory.

“We certainly do.” Taking a decent sip of his whiskey in an attempt to not be forced to talk to Dietrich directly, Ludwig attempted to figure out where on earth he’d seen the woman on his insufferable cousin’s arm before. He could’ve sworn that they’d met.

“And who might this be?” Dietrich followed up, turning towards Fredy, who had clearly been hoping to fade into the background and not be forced to join the discussion. 

“Captain Friedrich Hale of the Wersmarcht.” Fredy introduced himself, giving a small bow to the lady present. Once again, Ludwig had to physically stop himself from cringing at how stupid of an alias his boyfriend had chosen. The name that you usually got the nickname “Fredy” from and his third great grandma’s maiden name didn’t exactly make for an exemplary alias.

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Captain Hale.” The woman on Dietrich’s arm giggled, charmed.

“This is my fiancée, Veronica Addams. Her father is the head of the conservative party in England, to which I am sure you are both aware we boast significant ties.” 

It took an insurmountable amount of willpower for Ludwig to not shoot his boyfriend of seven years a see-this-asshole-with-the-intellect-of-a-concussed-root-vegetable-can-get-married-to-a-woman-but-we-can’t-exist look. However, after so many years of knowing Fredy, he could already tell that he was mentally writing the introduction to a pamphlet that said pretty much the exact same thing, just with more stabs at Robert Braum. That was gonna be a fun read.

“Well hello there.” Jackie had chosen the perfect moment to slide into the conversation, flashing a stolen diamond bracelet at the two other agents as she began to chat energetically with Veronica about how much the second displaced English citizen they’d both interacted with today was going to love Berlin. With how his cousin’s face was, Ludwig would’ve bet money that Dietrich didn’t realize how close Jackie was getting to his fiancée, having already placed an arm around her waist. Looked like he and Fredy were going to have to meet up with Jane and Turing to execute the night’s mission alone.

Just as he was about to slip away to his bedroom, where they’d stashed the detonator to Tech’s latest bomb prototype, one of his mother’s friends, one Mrs. Karin Richter, appeared at his side. Fuck. Fredy was already heading through the manor’s hidden servant passages to get to the backdoor where Jane and Turing were masquerading as confused package delivery men, and Jackie was supposed to be stealing jewelry so that they could buy more ammunition.

“Ludwig, dear. Your mother’s been looking for you.” Mrs. Richter placed her hand on his arm as she spoke, not noticing how he flinched when she put weight on one particularly tender spot. Ghosts of pain flared through his veins.

“Thank you ma’am.”

Mrs. Braum was holding court on the opposite side of the ballroom, surrounded by the wives of people she considered to be her inferiors and young women she was attempting to mold into the ideal German wives. Dietrich’s fiancee was among them, clearly having lost Jackie's attention at some point, sipping from a glass of champagne at his mother’s right hand. In fact, the crowd of admirers seemed younger than usual, closer to Ludwig’s age than either of his parents. His mother didn’t even acknowledge him for a good three minutes, instead making him wait for her attention as she carried on a conversation about how the Jews were ruining the fashion industry with a lady who was rumored to be Hitler’s affair partner and Ludwig was ninety percent sure was also his distant cousin.

“Ms. Norden, this is my son Ludwig. Ludwig, this is Ms. Ingrid Norden.” Mrs. Braum introduced the two, waving forward a different girl with dark brown hair and eyes the color of the North sea, wearing an evening dress that looked suspiciously like something Jane had failed at stealing a few months prior.

“Lovely to meet you, Mr. Braum.” Ingrid smiled, offering her hand out to Ludwig, presumably for him to kiss the back. After an awkward pause he shook it.

“Good evening.” He replied, desperately searching for an escape.

“My son here,” Said escape was immediately foiled when Mrs. Braum grabbed the sleeve of his tuxedo coat and pulled him closer to Ingrid, an experience that was extremely awkward for both of them. “Is studying Medicine at the University of Berlin. Isn’t that right, Ludwig?”

“General Surgery. I’m studying general surgery.” He mumbled. The clock in the corner of the ballroom was ticking down the minutes until the bomb was set to go off. Seven, six…

“So you shall be a surgeon?” Inquired Ingrid, obviously spurred on by the looming presence of Mrs. Braum directly behind the two of them.

“At the end of the term.” He clarified. “Are, uh, you studying anything?”

“Proper ladies don’t pursue careers.” Mrs. Braum butted in, glaring at her son, apparently forgetting that she’d never bothered to instruct him on what “proper ladies” were supposed to do. The women he spent the most time with were probably Jane and Jackie, and both of them were working, even if their work was treason and Jackie had a part time job of attempting to sleep with every queer woman in Berlin, actually her goal might’ve been all of Germany.

“I keep my father’s house.” The younger of the two women clarified, smiling sweetly at Ludwig, who wasn’t really paying attention. “It is quite the job! Him being the undersecretary of foreign affairs and all.”

“I knew your surname seemed familiar.” Ludwig noted, not entirely noticing that he was speaking aloud. The latest fifteen of Fredy’s pamphlets had all insulted a Norden along with the typical list of Nazi bastards: Hitler, Goebbels who somehow was actively losing a propaganda battle to an over-caffeinated should’ve been lawyer, and Robert Braum.

“Father is posed to become the next secretary of foreign affairs.” Ingrid boasted. “He simply requires a tie to a powerful family to be appointed.”

That was when it clicked in Ludwig’s mind just exactly who Ingrid Norden was. This whole party, Dietrich, Veronica Addams, the fact that his parents were actually acknowledging him for once, the lack of protest at adding “Captain Hale” to the guest list: they were plotting his engagement. Ever since he’d graduated high school, both of his parents, more particularly his mother, were already plotting which financially secure and politically adventitious single Aryan woman to marry him off to, because, apparently, the Braum family wasn’t wealthy enough. Ingrid Norden was their latest choice. He’d managed to object to the last three ladies, mainly on the rather flimsy argument that he couldn’t be distracted from his studies, but that was an excuse with a time limit and now…now it was all happening at once, and no he couldn’t do it, couldn’t force himself into a prison of a marriage that would be hell, couldn’t do the same thing of his parents, couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t! He needed to run, had to flee, somewhere, anywhere. Fredy. He needed Fredy. Fredy would be able to fix this, he had to be able to fix this.

“I-I, I’m going to go get a drink.” Ludwig ended up declaring, before essentially bolting out of the ballroom.

The collar of his shirt was too tight, the band of starched fabric felt like it was choking him. Everything in that damned house made him feel like he was drowning, like every single choice he’d ever be able to make was being ripped from him. He wanted to crawl out of his skin, to shove two fingers down his throat until everything was purged from his stomach, to fall into bed and cry in someone else’s arms until his throat was raw. Everything and everyone in the life he was supposed to be leading was trying to suffocate him…and it felt like they were succeeding. Ludwig just tried to get lost enough in the maze of the house so that he’d be able to hide away from any of the party goers and maybe even be able to cry in peace. That was when he nearly collided with the rest of his fellow district heads, who for some reason had a large canvas bag with them and were clearly running from the soon to occur explosion. Seemed like the mission was going to be a success after all.

Chapter Text

So it turns out that if you want to hide among a crowd of stuck up racists, half of whom are your boyfriend’s second cousins, wearing a uniform that you stole from an army officer’s luggage without knowing anything about the functions of army hierarchy is a terrible idea. Fredy learned this the hard way. The uniform he’d donned was at least a size too large, hanging too loosely on his lanky frame to be convincing for more than one night. Even with how tight the boots were, they had to be at least a size too small, it didn’t distract him from the omnipresent feeling of wanting to scratch his eyes out every time he donned something with the insignia of the empire that wanted him dead, no, that wanted them all dead. Maybe that was why, as he broke into a light run attempting to not leave Turing and Jane waiting at the back entrance for any longer than he needed to, he scratched at the swastika and eagle that adorned one corner of the uniform, trying to pry it away from the rough fabric. It was a useless effort, besides, even if he had managed to remove it, they’d just have to steal another one to make up for the ruined one.

He stopped jogging only a few meters away from the back entrance, attempting to compose himself as he walked the last few steps, drawing himself up to his full height, adjusting his cuffs, and all in all attempting to adopt an air of the exact sort of asshole who devoted his life to the service of the German Army. All in all, Fredy considered it one of his best performances. However, that sentiment was quickly shattered the second that he felt his lungs seize up. Leaning on the wall for support, he tried to suppress his coughing fit as it came on. It wasn’t a good idea, holding a hand over his mouth only made it harder to draw in air. The seconds in between painful breaths stretched farther and farther until he felt like keeping himself upright was going to be a futile effort. Then, as quickly as the fit had come onto him, it vanished, leaving Fredy bracing himself with one hand on the wall and another pressed over his mouth. Wiping whatever phlegm he was sure to have coughed up on his pants leg, he headed for Braum’s back door, quickly glancing around to make sure he was alone. He was.

“Package for a Mr…Brown?” Jane asked when the door opened, wearing a stolen delivery boy’s coat over her normal clothes, long hair piled up under a newsboy cap. Turing stood slightly behind her, holding a large box that totally didn’t contain the components of one pipe bomb, minus detonator.

“Sorry, wrong house.” Fredy grinned at her, waving the two of them in, repeating the same horrible joke to Turing, something that got the ghost of a smile on the head of Tech’s lips. The three of them half walked, half ran to the place where they’d stashed the detonator the day prior, Ludwig’s bedroom. 

It only took about ten minutes for Turing to reattach the detonator and prime it, ten minutes that Fredy spent scouring his boyfriend’s room for the sweater he’d lent him three months ago and still hadn’t gotten back. Jackie reappeared about halfway through his hunt, her clutch bag full of stolen jewelry, bragging to Jane about how easy it was to pinch jewels off of the distracted socialites when they weren’t looking. The diamonds dripped from in between her fingers as she waved a hand full of them in front of Fredy’s face.

“Whatcha think? Good enough to fund another printing press?”

“Good enough that they’re gonna be a pain in the ass to sell.” He rolled his eyes. Cash was easier to use in dealing, people always had too many annoying questions when stolen necklaces were involved. 

“Nocák will take them. He owes me.” His sister shrugged.

“Didn’t you hear?” Jane butted in. “Nocák and his family got rounded up three days ago. Gestapo broke down their door and just took all six of them. No one’s heard a word from them since. Apartment’s just how they left it.”

“Damn.” Jackie let out a low whistle.

“Sounds like I got my next pamphlet topic.” Fredy shook his head. “Only cost us the best black market dealer in Berlin.”

“You say that like the bastard wasn’t toeing the line for the last five years. Bound to have been caught eventually, just didn’t think they’d take the whole family.” Noted Jane as she took one of the bracelets from Jackie to inspect. “We got others, but Nocák was easily the best at getting it out of the country to be sold. You think these’re real emeralds?”

By the time that Jane and Jackie had finished looking over the stolen loot, Fredy had lit a cigarette and completely given up on getting his sweater back, and Turing had finished whatever the fuck he’d been doing, Ludwig was nowhere in sight. Last Fredy could remember, he’d left his boyfriend with some cousin thinking that Ludwig would be following him. According to the totally not put together in twenty minutes plan that they’d formulated earlier in the day, both he and Ludwig were supposed to have met up with everyone else. Something was wrong, and he had a sinking feeling that it probably involved the sort of promises that someone of Ludwig’s station and age was supposed to have already made. Fuck.

They’d laid the bomb in the hallway only a few meters away from the part of Braum Manor that was being transformed into a wing of soldiers’ barracks. The general idea was that it would delay the soldiers from moving into their new home, hopefully keeping a few more Nazis out of Berlin for as long as possible. As soon as the fuse had been set, all four present heads ran for their fucking lives. In the silent house, the slow hiss of the fuse burning out echoed in Fredy’s ears. While he bolted away from what was sure to be one of the more major explosions of the month, he kept glancing around, peeking into each of the rooms they passed to see if there was something-anything that the resistance needed. Once they rounded the first corner, heading back in the direction of the party, he spotted it.

Now, after years of sneaking around the manor, Fredy had a semi-decent idea of how all the rooms connected, and what was in each of them. That was why he darted into the second room on the left of the hallway, the dark wood door flanked by two potted ferns that desperately needed some watering. This was the place he definitely didn’t belong: Robert Braum’s office. No time to look around for the bastard’s safe, all he had time to do was go straight for the object that had caught his eye. Directly on top of the intricate carved mahogany desk smack dab in the middle of the room, there was a mail bag, about the size of an overstuffed pillow case, but it seemed to be stuffed to the brim with papers and bore the mark of Nazi high command. Bingo. The thing ended up being way heavier than he’d bargained for, at least fifteen pounds, however he could still hold it well enough to not drop it while he sprinted as fast as he could to catch up with everyone else. Just as he did, they rounded another corner, the last one that gave them a direct view of the side door they’d been aiming for the whole time, and almost ran directly into Ludwig. 

“What the fuck is that?” Ludwig asked Fredy as he fell into stride next to him, eyeing the bag with vague concern.

Before he could answer, Fredy got the wonderful experience of nearly falling face first down the short flight of stairs that led from the hallway to the exterior of the manor. It took Ludwig grabbing his upper arm and pulling him up to prevent him from faceplanting. They’d burst out into the area where a good six cars that cost more than a small house were parked. Jane was already sliding into the driver’s seat of one when he answered, yelling over the sound of the starting engine: “I have no goddamn clue!”

He’d barely pulled the car door closed when Jane tore off, sending all three of them in the backseat, Fredy, Ludwig, and Turing, flying into each other, with the insanely heavy bag of mail joining in. Honestly, it was a miracle that no one’d gotten hit in the head. Of course, Jackie was perfectly fine, sitting in the passenger seat and digging through the glove compartment to see if the person the car actually belonged to had left anything interesting in there. No one said anything, instead listening for the sound of some furious Nazis chasing after them. Unfortunately, they hadn’t gotten out of there unnoticed.

“Fuck.” Fredy hissed between his teeth as a bullet flew by the car, only a few inches from the window he was pressed up against. Turned out that a BMW wasn’t designed to fit three grown adults and a stolen bag of Robert Braum’s mail in the backseat. He didn’t have a gun on him, Turing didn’t carry anything on the case of Redeem not trusting him to not dismantle the firearm, Ludwig couldn’t have anything on him since his pistol was currently on F redy’s desk back in Propaganda, Jackie had a singular knife, and Jane was driving. They couldn’t shoot back, they could only rely on Jane’s driving skills. In other words, they were kinda fucked.

The only lucky break they’d caught was the fact that it was late enough at night that the Berlin streets were essentially abandoned, no one daring to go out in the darkness, where danger lurked around every corner. Jane hung a sharp left, throwing Fredy into the mail bag, the mail bag into Ludwig, and Ludwig into Turing. He could’ve sworn that he saw his sister laughing in the rearview mirror. The second they got home, Fredy was gonna bribe Alex to use some of their mountains of blackmail evidence against Jackie, that was what younger siblings with snooping skills were good for after all. Yet another wave of bullets rained down upon the speeding car as the Nazis behind them caught up.

Splintering glass rained down upon all three men in the backseat. One bullet had met its mark. A small shower of glass daggers covered them, worming themselves in Fredy’s uniform and the mail bag. He’d ducked down as far as he could, which was pretty far given how quickly he, Ludwig, and Turing had piled into the backseat. Jane floored it, going as fast as the car could take it, swinging around tight corners and going the wrong way down one way streets, all in an attempt to lose their pursuers. Now, if there was anything worse than being flung around in the backseat of a stolen car, it was being flung around in the backseat of a stolen car in the dark while covered in broken windshield fragments. Fredy learned this the hard way.

Some point halfway between Berlin and Potsdam, Jane finally slowed the car, driving it onto a secluded road that was almost impossible to spot from the way the Nazis were sure to be coming, cutting the engine and headlights. Not a word was spoken for a good three minutes, the silence only broken by Ludwig’s rather hoarse voice asking: “Anyone dead?”

“I’m fine.” Fredy mumbled, having ended up with Robert Braum’s mail shoved directly in his face when Jane had taken the last turn. All he had to show for their car chase was a new appreciation for how much mail bags weighed and a few bruises from having the combined forces of Ludwig and Turing’s bodies shoved into him numerous times.

“Barely.” Answered Turing, untangling himself from Ludwig. At some point during the “ride” they’d gotten the grand idea to hold onto each other, something that hadn’t actually reduced any injuries and probably just ended up with them both getting knocked into each other about a dozen extra times.

“Still alive, though not for lack of Jane’s trying.” Jackie snapped, massaging her knuckles from where she’d gripped the side of her door so hard her knuckles had turned white.

“You’re welcome for keeping all you assholes alive.” Jane rolled her eyes, getting out of the driver's seat and stretching. No one said thank you.

The area they’d ended up in was one that all four of the people who spoke German knew vaguely and Turing had never set foot in in his life. Seeing that whatever branch of the German government that had chased them would be watching for the stolen BMW, someone had to go and call for a ride back to Berlin. Logically, this was done by a rock paper scissors tournament. Fredy ended up being the one who got to trudge the kilometer to the nearest town, heading to the phone in said town’s train station and calling Redeem, who, to put it simply, wasn’t pleased to have to drive forty five minutes out of Berlin in order to pick up all five of his district heads, plus their greatest enemy’s mail. Redeem was one of the few remaining people in the Jewish district with a car, the majority of them having been confiscated, and when he eventually pulled up to the town where Fredy was waiting, the scowl on his face made it seem like he was regretting this fact.

After picking Fredy up, Redeem stopped to pick up the remaining four heads and mail bag, before heading back into Berlin, all the while muttering under his breath about the ticket he was gonna get for breaking curfew. Leaning his head against the window of the car, Fredy watched as the condensation formed from his breath, fogging over while the street lights flickered by. Ludwig was curled in next to him, head on Fredy’s shoulder, who’d slung an arm around him, and knees pulled into his chest. He was vaguely aware of Turing faint snoring from the other side of the backseat, but other than that, the only other sound was that of the tires against the pavement. The last thing that Fredy recalled before shutting his eyes was the outline of Berlin on the horizon.

However, sleep wasn’t for long, since he was rudely awakened when Redeem abruptly stopped in front of the building that housed the Hirsch family’s apartment, booting out Fredy, Jackie, and Ludwig. The three of them trudged up the stairs, feet heavy and the fact that Jackie had to have had a good four pounds of stolen items on her not helping. Needless to say, by the time they’d entered the apartment, all of the lights were off and the remaining members of the Hirsch family were all asleep in their beds. Jackie made a beeline for the bathroom, no doubt to shower, leaving Ludwig and Fredy to change and collapse into bed. Or at least, that was what Ludwig got to do, Fredy had to dispose of one full military dress uniform before anyone he lived with asked any questions. In lieu of having the energy to hide it well, he just balled it up and dumped it in one of the apartment building’s trashcans, to be dealt with tomorrow.

When he finally reached his bedroom once again, Fredy headed over to his dresser, which was only covered with a quarter of the books his desk back at the base was, dumping the contents of his pockets in an old and insanely dusty ash tray. Spying Ludwig sitting on his bed, he asked without really thinking: “You good, darling?”

“They wanna marry me off.” Ludwig said, voice so quiet that he could barely understand him.

“What?”

“My parents found the woman they’re gonna force me to marry.” He repeated.

“No. No, they can’t.” Fredy suddenly had an overwhelming urge to punch something, preferably Robert Braum’s stupid face. However, he restrained himself and instead took a seat next to his boyfriend, pulling Ludwig into a half embrace and pressing a kiss to the top of his head, auburn hair messy, like he’d been running his fingers through it in panic.

“I can’t say no.” Something between a laugh and a sob escaped from

“Everything’s gonna be alright. I promise. We’ll fix this-I’ll fix this.” This was one promise that he couldn’t afford to break-god he had to deliver on this one, Fredy realized as they lay in bed, Ludwig’s shoulders still shaking from silent tears as he rubbed circles between his shoulder blades. Once Ludwig had finally fallen still, absolutely exhausted but mind too busy to sleep, only one thought was ricocheting in Fredy’s mind: he wasn’t going to let the same assholes who’d managed to torture Ludwig for his entire childhood assign him a woman to take the same position that Fredy had held for the last seven years. If they both hadn’t been men, if the simple act of being queer wasn’t illegal, he would’ve proposed to Ludwig ages ago, but no. They apparently didn’t deserve the same basic rights as people lucky enough to be born the “right” way, he’d change that one day, he had to.

Chapter Text

Ludwig’s eyes were still red from bawling his eyes out for the second night in a row when he once again pulled on a formal suit that didn’t fit him, preparing to venture out into a world that he didn’t have any place in, yet was still expected to pretend that he did. However, this time he wasn’t in his childhood bedroom, still full of painful reminders of what exactly those youthful years had been filled with, no, this time he was standing in the bathroom of the University of Berlin that was just off the corridor that his last class, Physiology, was located on. The bathroom was pretty much deserted, meaning that getting changed was just a matter of dumping his messenger bag with all his materials under the sinks before slipping into a stall and grabbing the only slightly rumpled suit that he’d stashed in a different bag. In the end, he ended up attempting to straighten the lapels on his rather itchy tweed suit jacket, silently cursing the fact that this suit actually fit, and readjusting his dark green tie, one that had little ducks hidden in the endlessly repeating pattern. Considering all factors, he looked pretty decent in the suit, the brown tweed complementing his rather pale complexion, and the tie almost matching the color of one of his eyes. Pulling on his dark grey wool overcoat, a vital piece during the frigid early months of the year, Ludwig shoved both bags under the sink, he’d retrieve them later-no one ever came in this bathroom anyway, and forced himself to begin the half kilometer walk to the park where he was to meet his fiancée . Even thinking of the word made him want to throw up.

He found the small group consisting of Ingrid and their two chaperones, a few meters from the park’s wrought iron gates, clustered around a lamp post and laughing among themselves. It had been decided, for reasons unknown to Ludwig and by people who had clearly never met him, that he and the woman he was being forced to wed were not to be trusted alone together, for fear of them engaging in “immoral acts”. Thus, it had been agreed that both parties were to produce a friend to accompany them, supposedly to make sure that romantic advances weren’t happening unless they were of preapproved levels. When he’d been informed of the plans, exactly one day ago, which also happened to be exactly one day after learning of his engagement and twenty minutes after being given the formal announcement from his parents that he was engaged, Ludwig had been told that Ingrid was bringing an Eva, a name that he half recognized from somewhere. He’d chosen quite possibly the one person who belonged there the least, and he also needed the most in that moment: his boyfriend.

“Gentlemen don’t smoke in the presence of ladies!” Ingrid's friend teased.

“Well, Ms. Altergrott, I see one easy solution to this dilemma: you simply shall not consider me a gentleman.” Fredy quipped back, taking out his lighter and flicking it numerous times before failing to produce a flame and staring at it in annoyance. Thank god he was here. Ludwig half wanted to hug him and beg him to fake kidnap him again, and half wanted to kiss him and tell Ingrid that he very much already had a partner-thank you very much. However, both of those plots were exceptionally illegal.

“Mr. Braum- or do you prefer doctor? How lovely to see you once again!” Ingrid greeted Ludwig, her cheeks blushing lightly when she did, matching the pale pink of her scarf. March was still quite the brutal month in Germany, a fact that had led Ludwig to question why exactly they were going for a walk in the park, but in the end it had served him well. It was far easier to convince your assigned fiancée that your boyfriend was from a well to do family when you only had to deal with finding him a semi decent coat instead of a full suit.

“Its-its, well I’m glad to be here.” Only a partial lie. He was glad to be here because he wasn’t in class or changing the bandages of the agents who’d been injured in the last bout of Brownshirt violence and were still suffering in Medical.

“I’m so glad that we can enjoy a stroll on such a…well I dare say this might not be the finest afternoon to ever grace Berlin.” Ingrid laughed, latching herself onto Ludwig by taking his arm, an action that he evidently had not offered her. Only Fredy seemed to notice when he involuntarily flinched, and even then all he could offer him in means of comfort was a sympathetic glance that could’ve meant anything.

“It gets far colder.” He awkwardly shrugged as they began to stroll down one of the gravel paths, Ingrid and him taking the lead while Fredy and Eva walked behind them, both being lucky enough to keep their hands in their pockets and away from anyone else. “Last year we got snow before my birthday.”

“I always loved the snow when I was a little girl.” The lady on his arm said whistfully. “My sisters and I would always make snowangles on the front lawn. Dear Lord, I haven’t done that in at least ten years. Winter simply always has been my favorite time of year. Do you enjoy it?”

He refrained from telling her about the time two months ago when the entire resistance base had gotten into a snowball fight that ended with half of the agents in Medical since they’d gotten the bright idea to put rocks in the snowballs. Logistics had won, mainly because Jane and Mitchell had coordinated a massive attack, but Tech had put up a good fight. “I guess it's not as bad as any other season. Summer here’s hell.”

Ingrid continued to tell stories of her life and of her travels with her father, all the while Ludwig attempted to catch Fredy’s eye. His traitor of a boyfriend was having an in-depth discussion about an American writer by the name of Steinback’s recent works. At some point the subject of conversation shifted from Parisian architecture to their close friends, a switch that was made via wedding venue occupancy levels, and his fiancée , god the word still felt miserably wrong, was speaking at length about the connections she had made with the daughters of her late mothers friends. “How about you?” She pried, “You and Mr-oh bother when exactly is his last name? Oh never mind. What I was saying is that you and your friend here seem quite close.”

“Hirsch. Fredy’s surname's Hirsch.” Ludwig clarified as he rubbed the cuff of his winter coat between his thumb and forefinger, a nervous habit that he’d seemingly developed on the walk in an attempt to cope with being around people who represented such horrible things in his life. He didn’t think that it would hurt for Ingrid to know Fredy’s real last name, it would make it easier on him and she seemed nice enough, if a little ditzy. “He’s probably my closest friend."

“How did you two meet?” pressed Ingrid. The great game of seeing how much he could revel about Fredy without accidentally sharing that they were in a romantic relationship had begun.

They’d met in high school, gotten paired up on a research assignment on the American founding fathers in History Class and had been joined at the hip since. Was Fredy single? Well, he wasn’t courting any woman. What was he studying? Fredy wasn’t in university, he worked at a grocery store in “logistical distribution”, aka stocking shelves for extra cash, but Ingrid didn’t need to know that. What did his family do? Before the great war they’d been prominent in the law community. Was he enjoyable to be around? Of course, he was one of the people Ludwig enjoyed being with the most.

“Well, Mr. Hirsch seems like quite the nice man.” She finally concluded after what felt like an interrogation. “I see that dear Eva’s taking to him quite well. Should the two of them spend more time together following today, I have no doubt that he would treat her well.”

“Spending time-you mean Fredy courting Eva?” Everything clicked into place in Ludwig’s mind. Based on his descriptions and the fact that Fredy and Eva hadn't murdered each other yet, Ingird must’ve thought that the two of them fancied each other. He could only hope that that wasn’t the case, on Fredy’s part at least. “No, he’d dat-no enganged. He’s engaged to a, um, nursing student from Potsdam. You’ll never see her but he writes letters to her all the time, quite devoted.”

“Oh. I should not have made assumptions.” Ingrid’s face fell a bit upon hearing the entirely fabricated version of his boyfriend's love life that Ludwig had made up, quite convincingly too if he said so himself. “I merely wished to find Eva a man just as lovely as you are to me.”

At that compliment, Ludwig’s face immediately flushed. Shit, fuck, shit. He wasn’t going to be able to slide out of this fiancee, the last three proposed girls had been just as reluctant to marry him as he’d been-one had hooked up with Jackie after the whole affair had ended, both of his parents seemed to approve of Ingrid, so soon he’d be waiting at the altar, and unlike the disinterested lesbian, Ludwig wouldn’t be able to keep seeing Fredy without feeling immensely guilty since Ingrid seemed to actually care about him- that was only if Fredy didn’t despise him for essentially betraying him. In his opinion, Ludwig probably looked like he was spiraling on a path of how terrible the future was going to be based on one comment, however, Ingrid interpreted his expression as being flustered from receiving such a compliment, and proceeded to spend the remainder of their walk speaking about where she wished to live once she started a family, the implication being that Ludwig was to play the role of husband in this elaborate fantasy.

They finally parted ways after what felt like an eternity of potential housing solutions, Eva and Ingrid being picked up by a driver, and Fredy and Ludwig heading towards the base, making a quick stop at the University of Berlin to pick up his bag. As they walked side by side, he couldn’t help as the jealousy began to bubble up inside of him at the thought of Ingrid’s comment about Fredy courting Eva. However, this jealousy was mixed with resignation and realism when he thought more about it. Fredy was handsome, exceedingly so in Ludwig’s mind, with a wide smile and grey eyes that could cycle through every emotion known to man faster than Ludwig could comprehend them. He was also loyal, ambitious, and intelligent, the sort of man that could’ve married up if it wasn’t for a Jewish birth, being prevented from doing so by the religion of his parents, a religion that Fredy didn’t practice and never truly had. Still, countless scenarios still played out in Ludwig’s mind, mainly consisting of Fredy choosing his political ambitions over him, marrying some daughter of a congressman and moving to America, ending with a brood of the next generation of Hirschs, and Ludwig left behind in Germany. It was scary how much he knew Fredy valued his future, scary knowing that it only took him valuing his future over Ludwig for their relationship to end. Now, Fredy had been nothing but loyal and loving to him for as long as they’d dated, always holding Ludwig when he cried, playing cards late into the night as they drank and laughed over inside jokes, trading kisses freely and dotingly, never caring about all of his odd little habits or melancholy periods when he could barely drag himself out of bed. There was no logical reason to think that he would ever lose Fredy, but nevertheless, Ludwig was absolutely terrified of it

“So, Ms. Altergrott, what do you think of her?” He finally asked, grasping Fredy’s hand when they turned onto an empty street, completely devoid of the normal hustle and bustle of life in Berlin.

“She’s decent to speak to. Reads Steinback and Neicthcez-not the Nazified version god fucking forbid, even a few of Doyle’s detective stories. More interesting that I'd pegged her for.”

“So you’d spend time with her again?”

“Not unless I got dragged along on another one of these things. Why? Oh god, are you jealous?" Fredy teased, his eyes glimmering with mischief as he switched over to English. “Darling, I’ll happily show you why that’s anything but the case.”

In short, that explained how Ludwig found himself pressed up against the wall of an abandoned warehouse half way to the Jewish District, being kissed over and over again by Fredy as the two of them existed in their own little world. Fredy’s kisses were reassuring and wonderful and made him feel as though everything in the world would actually be alright in the end. They calmed his nerves and suppressed all the spiraling thoughts of what the future might hold. By the time they pulled apart, Ludwig rather rumpled, he had just been pressed up against a wall, and Fredy looked rather satisfied with himself.

The walk to the base was one that took annoyingly long, mainly because they both stuck to the alleys and places the Brownshirts never dared go, still holding hands. When they did arrive, the base was about as chaotic as it always was. Smoke was billowing out of Tech, Missions and Logistics were fighting over who had to train agents, Propaganda had for some reason moved a printing press into the main corridor and Medical was trying to make sure no one killed each other. All in all, a pretty normal day. Ludwig headed for his department, once again changed in a bathroom stall back into clothes that he didn’t care if he got blood on, and then went to go figure out what the fuck was going on with the small line of agents gathering at the entrance to the exam rooms.

It turned out that about ten people had gotten into a fight over someone sleeping with someone else’s ex, that then somehow devolved into inflating killcounts and stealing designated weapons from the arsenal and how Logistics would never let that happen. In other news, Ludwig had to set three broken arms, which probably had to be some sort of record for inner resistance brawls. He could already hear Jane yelling at the four Logistics agents involved as he put away the cast making supplies in their proper places, something that only he and three other people actually bothered to do. Right before Ludwig was about to go ahead and make rounds checking that all the patients in Medical weren’t dead yet, a familiar figure appeared at the entrance, desperately waving at him in an attempt to gain his attention.

Alex Hirsch was the youngest of the Hirsch siblings, only fifteen and probably the youngest agent in the entire base, but already as tall as Fredy. They were somehow the only decent photographer in the entire resistance, however a photographer was evidently not needed at all times and thus Redeem often used them as a messenger between departments.

“Redeem’s called an emergency heads meeting.” They informed him. “Meeting room not head’s plotting room."

“When?”

“Soon as you can get there.”

“Great.” Ludwig groaned, a heads meeting was the last thing he wanted to deal with right now, listening to Redeem complain about how miserably their getaway after planting the last bomb at Braum manor had gone. It wasn’t like it was their fault that they weren’t allowed to carry firearms.

Everyone else besides Jackie was already in the meeting room when he arrived, slipping into a seat between Fredy and Turing, both of whom looked bored out of their minds. Redeem had taken his place at the head of the table, and the former lawyer appeared just as perpetually annoyed with his district heads as he always was. Ludwig normally escaped the worst of his ire, since most of it was directed at the two people with the surname Hirsch, however it seemed as though all of them were in hot water following the less than ideal execution of the recent mission. He’d heard that the bomb hadn’t even exploded properly, only causing minor delays in the construction of the army barracks instead of creating the major structural damage that had been envisioned. When Jackie finally arrived, Redeem began to speak.

“Are you all present? Good. Brightside, translate for Turing. Now, as much as I wish I had called this mission in order to chastise you five over your handling of your latest mission, unfortunately our subject is something far more pressing. To be concise, the Nazis are transferring all persons of Jewish descent from Potsdam into Berlin’s Jewish quarter. Needless to say, this includes the base in the area. According to information from the mail recovered from Braum manor -Brightside don’t give me that look you aren’t getting the mailbag back- they are to be relocated in two days, a shorter window than I would have preferred to adjust our base for an influx of agents but it should be enough to put temporary safeguards in place. Now, before we create an exact plan for how this is to be handled, are there any questions regarding this transfer?”

“How many agents?” Jackie immediately asked.

“Are they bringing records or am I gonna need to refile?” Added Jane, already calculating how long it was gonna take to redo the records for an entire base.

“Does anyone in their Tech department speak any English?” Turing inquired via Fredy, or maybe Fredy was just asking to see if he’d been stuck as translator for the rest of eternity.

“Is there a surgeon, and if so am I gonna be demoted?” Ludwig beseeched him. He was going to graduate in May. Redeem wouldn’t demote him after four years of work just because someone else showed up, right?

“Will we get another printing press?” Fredy pressed. God knew they needed at least four more, but he’d take one.

“Dear Lord.” Redeem shook his head. “There should be about fifty or sixty agents, they have far less than us. I’m not sure about the records, but the base commander did say that he had his departments bringing their vital papers, so I would be assuming you wouldn’t have to completely refile. I didn’t ask, but god I hope so. No, Dr. Braum, there is no surgeon, they have a general doctor, and even if there was I would keep you as district head for the sake of keeping some semblance of order. Potsdam has at least one printing press, but I highly doubt they will be bringing it. Anything else?”

For the better part of the next hour, Ludwig sat by as everyone else, mainly Jane and Redeem, outlined how exactly they were going to merge the two bases, from how Medical’s hierarchy would be affected, all the way down to where exactly the base commander would rank in comparison to the district heads. It was eventually decided that the day the Potsdam agents came in, they’d hold a basewide meeting to try and tell the agents how they were gonna combine the bases. While his fellow district heads only paid attention to the changes affecting their department, Ludwig attempted to listen to the whole plan as best he could. Anything to take his mind off of the terrible date, was that even what it was, that had occupied his afternoon. Fredy took his hand under the table, caressing his hand in some sort of attempt to calm him. It worked well enough. His world was devolving into chaos, but in that moment Ludwig was at least partially anchored to reality, he only hoped that he would stay that way.

Chapter Text

Fredy twirled the lit cigarette between his fingers as he leaned against part of the brick wall that had been hastily erected around the closest train station in Berlin to the Jewish district the previous fall. Today was the day the entire Potsdam base, plus the rest of the city’s Jewish community was arriving in Berlin. However, he wasn’t here for resistance business, no he was here to retrieve the four members of his family who lived in Potsdam and who were gonna be crammed into their already cramped apartment: Uncle Geroge, Aunt Millicent, Uncle Leon, and his asshole of an older brother- Paul. The family didn’t exactly prioritize staying in contact, and he hadn’t seen any of them for the better part of eight years, Uncle Leon was the only one that anyone even talked to, with his mom occasionally writing her younger brother a letter. At least spotting them would be easy, all Hirsch looked pretty similar, dark hair, pale skin, and grey eyes. They’d just better not expect him to carry any bags, it was way too early and he was way too tired for that. Did he mention that it was insanely early and he was wishing for death? He and the rest of the heads had spent the majority of the last two days hastily scrambling to prepare for a shit ton of agents to be joining the base, and last night he’d worked an overnight shift stocking shelves for one of the only remaining grocers anywhere remotely close to the Jewish district. To put it simply: he was exhausted. If it wasn’t for the fact that the sun had seemingly decided to shine directly in his eyes, or that he was surrounded by dozens of other people also tasked with retrieving family members.

The first train arrived at the station amidst a squealing of brakes and shouts of Nazis. The SS was escorting the arrival, and they seemed pissed that they were doing something so beneath them. Unfortunately for Fredy’s overwhelming desire to get out of the cesspit of a station, the trains had been packed with people in alphabetical order of last name, and to put it very simply, a concerning number of Jewish and German last names started with the letter A. He’d already begun to regret not bringing the book he was reading, Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia , by the time that the H train finally arrived. It wasn’t a very far journey to Berlin from Potsdam by rail, so the SS had clearly taken advantage of this by simply sending one train back and forth, an idea that would seem decent to anyone who didn’t have to wait for four family members that they barely remembered.

Through the crowd of disembarking displaced people, Fredy spotted a small group ambling towards the mob roughly towards time. He vaguely recognized them, this had to be his family. As they got closer he could discern the features a bit better: the man about his mom’s age with a well worn fedora and quickly greying beard was his Uncle George, who’d run a rather profitable grocery store before the Nazi takeover; the rather petite woman next to him who had her hair covered with a red handkerchief and was struggling with a large suitcase was his Aunt Mildred, married to Uncle George for as long as he could remember; the shorter man a good few meters in front of them, still at least a decade younger than both of his siblings and sporting a full head of curly hair, also the only one of them with enough foresight to also bring a rucksack, was his Uncle Leon, the youngest of his mom’s siblings and a former lawyer; lagging a bit behind them, looking as annoying as ever, was quite possibly the one person Fredy hated most in the world after Robert Braum and Adolf Hitler, his older brother by two years Paul. Now, Paul was the only one of the younger set of Hirsch siblings who didn’t reside in Berlin, having been raised by Uncle Geroge and Aunt Millicent for as long as anyone could remember. This showed as he was an imbecile with a superiority complex and belief that he was better than any of his siblings who’d been raised in Berlin. There was a reason that Fredy and Jackie had long ago made a pack to hate Paul until the end of time.

“There you are!” Uncle Leon exclaimed when he finally reached Fredy, looking rather flustered and like he’d been running around without sleep for the last two days. Maybe some things were a family trait. “Uh…who are you again?”

“Fredy.” Fredy reminded him. “Glad you aren’t dead yet.”

“Good to see you again too, kid.” His uncle laughed, shifting his suitcase from one hand to the other as he glanced over his shoulder to see how the rest of their family was progressing through the crowd. “You have no idea how glad I am to be off that godforsaken train.”

“Leon! Wait for us next time, my goddess.” Aunt Mildred muttered as she joined them, Uncle George only a few steps behind her. “How wonderful to see you again dear, George, say hello to your nephew.”

“Hi.” From what Fredy could see of the taller of his two uncles, the man was struggling with some sort of newspaper wrapped bundle that occupied the majority of his attention. Probably best not to ask about that. Right as he was about to ask about, the final Potsdam member of the family appeared: Paul.

“Alfred.” Paul looked down his nose at him, an act that wasn’t actually possible given that Fredy had a good six inches on Paul. The bastard had the same look of superiority on his face that he’d remembered from the last time they’d met, eight years ago, when Fredy was sixteen and Paul was eighteen. Not coincidentally, that was when he and Jackie had renewed their pack of nothing but violence and hatred towards their older brother.

“It's Fredy.” He rolled his eyes. He didn’t have time for this bullshit, especially on so little sleep and having to go to Redeem’s welcome to Berlin basewide meeting that was supposed to introduce the Potsdam agents to the Berlin agents and was sure to be nothing short of a chaotic mess. Plus, his mom had been stress cleaning their apartment since they’d gotten the news of the imminent arrival of their extended family, something that he’d gotten roped into doing every second he wasn’t either at the base, stocking shelves, or sleeping. Right before he’d left, he could’ve sworn that she’d told Ludwig to clean all the mirrors.

“So sorry Alfred.”

The five of them walked back to the family apartment in silence. Fredy, having gotten stuck with carrying one of Paul’s suitcases since the asshole was apparently too pampered to hold two, spent the majority of the time thinking up different ways to inflict bodily damage on his dick brother. To put it simply, there was a reason that he didn’t live with them, mainly because if he did, Paul would be dead in a ditch somewhere. As they reached the edge of the Jewish district, Fredy could’ve sworn that he heard the bundle under Uncle George’s arm quack. That definitely wasn’t something to worry about. What he should be worrying about was how the fuck he was going to introduce Ludwig to his extended family. The two of them had been dating for a good seven years, a fact that pretty much everyone in the Berlin branch of the Hirsch family knew, except for Mr. Hirsch, who was far too obsessed with his job at the sole remaining importation firm that still hired Jews to be concerned with any of his three children’s dating lives. Honestly, it was probably for the best seeing as Mr. Hirsch was convinced that Fredy, Jackie, and Alex were all screwups and Paul was the actually impressive child. Apparently, in the eyes of his less perceptive parental figure, bullying Robert Braum through the medium of political pamphlets wasn’t as impressive as working as a clerk at the family grocery store.

It took about twice as long to get home as it normally took, mainly because Paul was walking insanely slow and marveling at every single goddamn building and repeatedly asking if the same people lived there as when he’d last visited Berlin eight years ago. Needless to say, the likelihood of Fredy stabbing him with a fork was now in the majority. Aunt Mildred was also a pretty slow walker, however she was actually carrying a suitcase and a carpet bag older than time itself, both of which looked pretty heavy. Dragging all the luggage up the stairs was also exceptionally fun, mainly since Fredy and his two uncles were going all of the work, even with Uncle Leon having to stop halfway through in order to cough his lungs out. By the time all of the suitcases were at the top of the stairs, no thanks to Paul, Fredy could feel the familiar pressure of a headache building behind his eyes and the same sort of flaring pain that always seemed to accompany them building in him. Jesus fucking christ he hoped Ludwig had stocked the good painkillers in Medical.

Speaking of Ludwig, he opened the door when Fredy knocked, round glasses slightly ajar and looking like he’d just spent twenty minutes cleaning the kitchen table, mainly because he’d just spent twenty minutes cleaning the kitchen table, all the while having to keep his cat from knocking over the bucket of cleaning solution. They kind of both just stared at each other for a good moment, Ludwig looking vaguely concerned when he laid eyes on Paul, which to be fair was the right reaction to have to meeting Paul. If most of his extended family hadn’t been standing directly behind him, Fredy would’ve given his boyfriend a quick kiss on the check, however they were, so he unfortunately didn’t. After piling all of the suitcases in one corner of the kitchen and saying a lot of awkward hellos, along with introducing Ludwig as Fredy’s "Friend", the whole family gathered in the incredibly cramped parlor.

Fredy and Ludwig managed to claim the loveseat wedged in between the bookcase and nonfunctional fireplace that definitely wasn’t meant for two people to sit on, the cat deciding to perch on the back rest over Ludwig’s shoulder as the one of them who was actually related to all the people in the house attempted to get as far away from the cat as physically possible since she had decided to glare at him with violence in her soul. Across the room, Jackie and Alex had both decided that leaning against the wall was a good idea so that they could intervene when the cat evidently attempted to once again maul the brother that they didn’t hate having around. For about a solid minute, everything was vaguely normal, that was until Uncle George sat down.

“What the fuck is that George?” Mrs. Hirsch exclaimed the second that she laid eyes on what was on Uncle George’s lap, a reaction mirrored by everyone else in the room, which was to say nine people.

“Her name is Matilda and she’s my duck.” Answered, Uncle Geroge petting said duck who for some reason appeared to have a somewhat rumpled but clearly intentionally tied pink ribbon around her neck.

“I will not have a duck in the house I pay for!” Mr. Hirsch roared

“You don’t pay for it and this isn’t a house dipshit!” Countered Uncle Leon, yelling in the way you’d yell an objection in a courtroom, probably because he used to be a lawyer and had yelled objections in courtrooms.

Aunt Mildred lamented to no one in particular: “I told you that bringing the duck was a terrible idea, but did you listen to me, no !”

“I refuse to live in the same house as a farm animal!" For some reason, Paul decided that his input was required— his input was never required.

“Do any of you realize that this isn’t a fucking house?” Uncle Leon shouted, exasperated.

No matter how invested he was in watching the actual adults in his family plus Paul scream at each other over a duck, Fredy didn’t stay. As soon as voices had been raised, he’d noticed Ludwig simultaneously stiffen and curl into himself right next to him, the exact signs that something was wrong. No one seemed to notice when Fredy wrapped his arm around Ludwig’s shoulders and silently led him out of the parlor, the two of them spending the next quarter of an hour just sitting in silence on the edge of his bed, Ludwig wincing every time someone shouted exceptionally loud. The worst part of all of it was the fact that he looked absolutely miserable and Fredy knew that there was nothing he could do to help, only silently fume.

From what snippets he’d heard from Ludwig, it seemed like Robert and Wilhelma Braum were a match made in hell, both more obsessed with being right and screaming at each other while they threw various things back and forth than actually attempting to be parents. Through tears, he’d learned that Ludwig had gotten stuck in the middle of these fights, leading to getting hit with different table ornaments, a wayward ashtray having left the scar right over his collar bone, and many others leaving the sorts of scars that faded but never truly left. This, mixed with a forced engagement, led Fredy to wanting to stab both of them to death with a rusty bread knife, or even to have them die in a resistance induced fire. Either option would be fine, although one would be about a dozen times more satisfying than the other.

After about half an hour, Alex knocked on the door, saying that the argument had ended and their mother wanted Fredy to come to the parlor for when she read out the bunking situation. He ended up half whispering: “You care…”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Alright.”

“As I’m sure you should all be able to tell, this apartment isn’t very big.” Mrs. Hirsch began once they’d all reassembled, sending a pointed glare at her husband, probably because of some point he’d made in the argument that Fredy hadn’t caught. “So, I’ve taken the liberty of organizing the sleeping situation. Wilhelm and I will be in our room. Jackie, you and Alex will be sharing their room, someone’s going to sleep on the floor and I promise you it could be worse. Mildred and George, I’m putting you both in Jackie’s room—we’ll find somewhere for Matilda to be that doesn’t disturb anyone later. Fredy, you and Ludwig are in your room, Paul will be on your floor, and Leon, you get the couch. Sounds good?”

As roughly eight vague affirmations were given in response, Fredy was looking at the mantle clock and oh shit the basewide meeting was in thirty minutes! He caught Jackie and Alex both looking at the clock with the same amount of vague concern. If there was one thing every agent knew, it was that you weren’t late to a basewide meeting if you wanted to be spared Redeem’s fury. The base was only a five minute walk away, so he could coax Ludwig to something resembling vaguely ok, then all four of the agents in the house could run over to the base and slide into their seats in the basewide meeting at the last second, getting only a few concerned glances before Redeem started rambling. However, that wasn’t gonna happen for exactly one reason: Paul. Fredy had to get his dick brother situated in his bedroom. It was “temporary.” Temporary his ass. They’d only be leaving that apartment when the Nazis forced them out. The only remaining question was when that was to occur. Maybe a pamphlet would help answer that question.

“So I suppose we shall be roommates, Alfred.” Paul said. Jesus fucking christ his voice was already annoying. Every time his older brother talked, it felt like someone was stabbing knives into his head. Painkillers for his headache. What Fredy wouldn’t do for painkillers for his headache. As they walked, in a desperate attempt to not have to look at Paul’s face for any longer than he needed to, he glanced back at the front door; Jackie and Alex had already escaped, Jackie mouthing “Good fucking luck,” right before she slipped out the door. Hell, even Uncle Leon had managed to leave, suddenly having a super urgent errand to run regarding his old building manager from Potsdam and a key to an apartment neither of them could access.

“Stop calling me Alfred.” Fredy told him. This was already getting old and they’d been in the same city for all of an hour and a half.

“Whatever Alfred. Your little friend Ludwig, he’ll be with us?”

“Yeah. Me and him will be on the bed and you get the floor.”

“Why do I get the floor? I’m your guest!” Outraged, Paul’s face flushed with a shade of red that reminded Fredy of the swastika banner he’d lit on fire last week with the lighter Redeem had confiscated from Turing after Tech had gone up in flames for the third time that month. Ah, memories.

“Its my goddamn bedroom, and Ludwig’s lived here longer than you’ve ever bothered to.” Paul’s body would look nice drawn and quartered, maybe even disemboweled if he could get his hands on dull enough of a knife to make it painful.

“We shall see what mother says about it.” Paul huffed, obviously not aware of the fact that their mother didn’t give a fuck what her adult sons and one son’s boyfreind’s sleeping arrangement was.

Thankfully they’d just reached the door of Fredy’s bedroom, it didn’t have an outside lock so locking Paul in wasn’t an option. Fuck. Now, Fredy’s room wasn’t that big, his double bed took up the majority of it, and most of the remaining floor space was taken up by the rest of his furniture: a dresser older than his parent’s marriage and sure to last much longer than it, a bookshelf overflowing with well loved tomes, and a desk that he wrote pamphlets and Ludwig did homework at. With the way everything was situated, there was about enough room for Paul to sleep in an old sleeping bag from when their father still had delusions of taking his children camping; after Jackie had gotten stung by bees for the fifth time, he’d given up.

Setting his suitcase down, Paul once again put on that smile that he was ninety nine percent sure the bastard didn’t realize read as predatory, and directed it towards the only other person unfortunate enough to be in the room. “Ah, you must be Ludwig.”

“Hi.” Still sitting on the edge of the bed, Ludwig scrubbed at his eyes before putting his glasses back on. Had he been crying? It looked like he’d been crying. Fredy wanted to hold him and kiss him and comfort him for the rest of eternity. If there was anything Ludwig didn’t deserve, well to be related to the Braums topped the list, but right beneath it was dealing with Paul right now.

“I see we are going to be roomates.” Someone clearly didn’t get the hint that Ludwig didn’t want to talk and continued the entirely one-sided conversation. God, Fredy knew he was known to never shut the fuck up at times, but Paul was a billion times worse.

“Yup.”

“Is he slow?” Not even bothering to lower his voice so Ludwig wouldn’t hear, Paul asked his brother with concern practically dripping from his words. He wondered if Ludwig knew what the more painful way for a human to die was, because that was currently what he wanted to inflict upon Paul. Just locking him in a room with the cat would be enough.

“Go fuck yourself.” Before Fredy could sucker punch his brother in the gut, Ludwig mumbled from the other side of the room clearly having been paying attention and already pulling on his discarded coat and putting the mittens that Jane had knitted for him for the last Hanukkah on. Clearly not only Fredy wanted to get as far away as physically possible from a certain asshole.

“Don’t talk to me like that if you don’t want a fight.” Sneered said asshole. “Back in Potsdam I had quite the reputation as a fighter.”

“And I know how to kill you in the most painful ways known to man.” Ludwig shot back, scooping up the cat to take her to the base with them. Despite how much he hated the feline, even Fredy thought that she didn’t deserve to suffer in Paul’s compony. “Fuck off.”

“Ready to go Darling?” Fredy called to him from where he’d ended up leaning against the doorframe. If they left fast enough, he could snag a handful of painkillers and a swig of medical whiskey before they had to listen to Redeem’s ramblings. With Ludwig out in the hallway a good few feet closer to the exit from hell, he turned back to his older brother in the room and hissed: “Give him shit and you’ll learn what I can do with a knife.”

Only after they’d walked about halfway to the base, did he pose the question that he’d probably needed to ask since they’d left for the base. “So Paul?”

“I never thought I’d meet someone who was Deitrich’s equal in intellect, obliviousness, and willingness to resort to physical violence against people who could easily kill him.”

“Jane could deck his ass in twenty seconds and she lost to that one armed typist—Micheals, yeah that fucker in the first round of base sparing.” He laughed, grinning at Ludwig who let a small smile form on his extremely kissable lips.

“I’m gonna harvest his kidneys while he sleeps.” Ludwig declared, letting Fredy slip his arm in his, the cat clearly displeased by this development but loving her owner enough not to bolt- for now.

Neither of them said anything for a while. Any energy he had that might’ve gone into talking, he was currently using to try and cope with the searing pain that goddamn headache was causing. Sitting through one of Redeem’s lectures was just the thing to fix it. Right before they were about to go in the main base entrance, an entrance that had been propped open and a trickle of agents were entering, Ludwig tugged on his arm, leading him to the backdoor entrance to Medical. Before he fully realized it, they were in one of the supply closets, and Fredy was given a handful of pills, which he took without question and were already starting to dull the pain by the time he and Ludwig finally made it to the basewide meeting.

Now, much like how it was organized, the base was constructed in a weird way: a townhouse and an old warehouse connected by a covered section that the main entrance led into. The warehouse had essentially been divided into thirds length wise, with one department running on each exterior wall with a large open space in the middle, which was generally where fights broke out. There were two levels, both having connections back into the townhouse. Medical and Missions were on the ground floor, with Tech directly above Medical and Propaganda above Missions. Logistics had taken the bottom floor of the townhouse, which obviously also held Redeem’s office, the head’s plotting room, and in what had once been the backyard, a still not finished extension that’s sole purpose was to be the designated party space.

The basewide meeting was being held in the open strip between the groundfloor departments, a small podium having been placed against the exterior wall that didn’t boast a department for Redeem to speak from, and seating having also been set up using chairs that spent the majority of their lives being stored up against Propaganda’s printing press in the townhouse’s basement. The whole place was far more packed than Fredy had ever seen it, with some of the Potsdam agents not even being able to sit and instead relinquished hanging out on Propaganda’s and Tech’s balcony’s, both of which overlooked the common area. Based on where Jackie, Jane, and Turing were, it seemed like the district heads were sitting on one side of the podium, chairs facing the mass of their fellow agents, with the Potsdam heads on the other side and in the same situation. Fredy slumped into his chair between Jane and Jackie while Ludwig sat next to Turing with the cat on his lap, already to completely ignore Redeem’s entire speech and instead plot Paul’s murder, however he was unable to do that due to Jackie pinching him incredibly hand and painfully.

“What the hell was that for!” He yelped, trying to keep his voice as low as possible, but not really caring that much since the basewide meeting was still getting settled and the air was thick with different conversations and sounds of violence; at least three fights had broken out, it was only a matter of time before someone was thrown off a balcony.

“Look!” Jackie hissed, pointing him towards the group of Potsdam heads and their district commander on the other side of the podium. Craning his neck to look at them, Fredy tried to figure out what on earth his sister was pointing at; there was a tall woman who looked suspiciously like Jackie’s type, someone he vaguely recognized as Jane having tried to punch a few years back, a person who looked like they shared a passion for fire with Turing, an actual doctor with a white coat who appeared to have graduated medical school, someone with a really ugly plaid coat, Uncle Leon, and oh shit that’s definitely Uncle Leon. Fuck. Oh god they were screwed.

“That’s our uncle.”

“Of course it is dumbass.” His sister’s eyeroll was nearly audible.

“Well what the hell do you want me to do about it? Hope he’s in Propaganda so I get to deal with all that shit for the foreseeable future?” He retorted, already panicking. If Uncle Leon told Mrs. Hirsch that her three youngest children, plus the boyfriend of her youngest son that she’d practically adopted, were running around risking their lives on a daily basis, much less were full fledged district heads, then they’d be dead.

Jackie wasn’t able to answer that, because at that very moment, Redeem decided to finally show up. He mounted the podium, shouting for order, being ignored, and shouting again. At long last, the two bases settled, everyone taking their respective places and only giving each other minimal death glares. Uncle Leon disappeared to the other side of the podium with the rest of the Potsdam people. Someone who was dangling off the balcony was pulled up by their friends. It took about five minutes for everyone to finally shut up, which for once Fredy didn’t mind, since that meant this would be over as soon as possible. From the second row of seats facing him, he caught Alex’s eye; they looked just as startled by the sudden appearance of Uncle Leon as him and Jackie were.

“Good afternoon agents,” Redeem began, gazing out upon the crowd of assembled people. With the way half of the Potsdam agents were glaring at a crowd of Berlin Missions, Fredy would’ve happily bet money that Medical was gonna have their hands full all night. “I am Magnus Redeem, the district commander and Berlin base commander. We are gathered here at a rather unprecedented time, the merging of the Berlin and Potsdam bases. Nothing on this scale had ever occurred in the German Resistance District, and I expect all of those here in attendance to represent the best of their bases. Despite the minimal distance between our bases, Berlin and Potsdam have never collaborated on a mission, meaning that many of you are meeting each other for the first time. I understand that this is a difficult time, many of you either having been uprooted from your homes or having to deal with unwanted guests, however that is no excuse for interbase violence. It is imperative that we remember our mutual enemy: the Nazis. There’s a reason that the resistance motto is Sic Semper Tyrannis, as, together as a while, the resistance stands against tyrants, and you are all the last line of defence against tyranny in Berlin. Don’t let me down.

“Now, turning to the more practical aspects of my announcement. Tomorrow morning, department wide meetings will be held by the respective district heads in order to deal with the exact specifics of department integration. The current district heads, Jane Kalderash, Jacqueline Hirsch, Dr. Alan Turing, Mr. Brightside, and Dr. Ludwig Braum, will all retain their current positions for the foreseeable future, regardless of whether or not Potsdam agents may be more qualified, especially in Medical and Technology. I am not switching up this integral aspect of the resistance right now. A refiling effort in Logistics will also be occurring over the next week, so please have your enlistment papers ready, or if unable to bring them to Berlin, see Logistics for new ones.

“Becuase of the nature of this relocation, and how abrupt it has been, if any agents are unable to find temporary housing, the base will be available for overnight shelter, however we are unable to provide bedding. Medical has asked me to inform you that any open beds in the infirmary will be able to be used, with the recipients picked at random, or simply by who Dr. Braum finds the least annoying. In a similar vein, there is a kitchen near Logistics, which all agents are allowed to use, but food is not provided, so you must bring your own. Alcohol is occasionally provided at parties, although the stash cannot be accessed without permission from either myself or Kalderash.

“Some final messages before I turn it over to the Potsdam commander: arson is not allowed without prior approval from Missions and either myself or Potsdam’s commander, not even if its your hobby and you wish to hone your skills; alcohol is not to the tolerated in excess, meaning that drunkenness on duty will result in punishment; Alex Hirsch stop taking photographs of people without their permission, I have about a dozen complaints from the last week alone regarding you, Potsdam has no affection towards you, your siblings will only be able to do so much to protect you; and finally, please disregard all orders involving the University of Berlin, more specifically the medical campus for the time being, we need all agents enrolled there to graduate. With that, I shall turn it over to the Potsdam base commander.” Finally shutting up, Redeem stepped away from the podium and took a seat a few feet away from the district heads.

“Hi.” Uncle Leon said. Oh shit Uncle Leon’s the Potsdam base commander. They were now double fucked. “I’m Leon Hirsch, and up until about eighteen hours ago, I was the Potsdam base commander, not anymore since that obviously no longer exists. For now, I‘m going to be the deputy district base commander, which means I’ll be Redeem’s second in command. This is totally a real thing and not something we created half an hour ago. As the deputy district base commander, damn that’s a mouthful, I’ll have authority over all agents at this base—not in the district, just at this base. If you’re from Potsdam: you gotta adapt to change, I know it's not great, but you’ll all live. If you’re from Berlin: understand that we’ve done things differently for as long as both of our bases have been around. In summary, don’t kill each other, please. I don’t want to have to lie to anyone’s parents about why their child is dead. The Nazis are the enemy, not each other."

“Thank you Leon Hirsch. As my second in command, he will have authority over all agents at this base, as previously stated. This includes district heads. Speaking of district heads, I’ll give my district heads a moment to give all you new agents from Potsdam a few announcements before we depart:”

“File your fucking paperwork!”

“I give a flying fuck what you all were doing before this happened, but I’m the only one allowed to write the series of pamphlets dedicated to bashing Robert fucking Braum!”

“Any lesbians from Potsdam, come see me when this is all over if you’d like to have a really good time. And by good time I mean sex. Come see me if you wanna fuck.”

“I don’t speak German. Please don’t expect me to understand you. I don’t. Send help.”

“If I have to deal with another person lighting themselves and or others on fire, I’m jumping off the roof of the base— so don’t.”

The second that Redeem ended the meeting, the assembled crowd of agents devolved back into complete and utter chaos. They ended up cornering Uncle Leon when everyone else was dealing with the three fights that had resumed the moment Redeem shut up, and Ludwig was yelling at people to not push their friends off the balcony with Turing there for emotional support. The second that they all escaped the quickly escalating fights in the common area, Jackie opened a door and all four Hirschs quickly ducked into what appeared to be someone’s officer.

“Listen, I promise I won’t tell Alice that any of you…how many of you are agents?” Uncle Leon quickly promised, having taken a seat at whoever’s office this was’s desk chair.

“The three of us and Ludwig.” Alex informed him, leaning against the edge of the desk. Was this the backup interrogation room? Fredy could’ve sworn that this used to be the backup interrogation room, mainly because he’d had sex in it once and been yelled at by Redeem for having sex in the backup interrogation room.

“I promsie I won’t tell Alice, or any other of my siblings, or any of their spouses, or your braindead brother, that you three and Ludwig are in the resistance, and I especially won’t tell any of the aforementioned people that by some cosmic level fuck up, all three non high schoolers are somehow district heads.” Pledged their Uncle, holding a hand over his heart in mock sincerity.

“You’ve got leverage over us, we’ve got none over you. This isn’t legally binding, both of us know it, and without leverage on both sides, you’ve got no reason to keep your word.” Fredy pointed out, already digging through his jacket pocket for another cigarette. Damn it. He really needed a smoke, especially after an hour of Paul, and the carton he could’ve sworn he’d placed there was gone. Fuck. However, the issue at hand wasn’t his lack of a cigarette, it was the fact that Uncle Leon could easily double cross them and betray them to their mother. Now, Fredy was pretty sure that Mrs. Hirsch wouldn’t kill them for being in the resistance, ok maybe she’d kill Alex since they were fifteen, but what she would kill him and Jackie for was being district heads, not to mention her reaction to his moniker.

“Correct. Damn you’d be a good lawyer without all this Nazi shit. How about I tell one of you something that Georg and Wilhelm and Mildred would all kill me for and we’ll be even? Combined they’re about as scary as Alice.” Uncle Leon offered.

“Fine. Tell whoever you want and we’ll go on our merry ways. I’ve got a long line of eager lesbians already lining up for me.” Jackie smiled, probably thinking about the sex she was about to have, which immediately made Fredy think about literally anything other than his sister fucking. Oh dear god he never wanted to think about that again in his life.

“There’s two people waiting.” Alex corrected her, clearly eager to get to their camera and capture a whole new roll of blackmail on film.

“Great. Fredy, you got a pretty decent track record of not being shot and also the least chance of dying from Syphilis or getting stabbed for tresspassing, come here.” Exchanging looks with his siblings, both of whom gave him the nod to go ahead, he went over to Uncle Leon, leaning down so that the sitting man could whisper in his ear.

“You fucked who!”

Chapter Text

If any future historians wished to summarize the merging of the Berlin and Potsdam bases in one word, well Ludwig’s choice would be chaotic. Medical was nothing short of a fucking mess. Of course it was just his luck to be in charge of the only department with a skill based hierarchy. The way his department, and really every Medical department, was organized was that the most qualified person in the field of medicine was the base or district head, ideally they would be a surgeon, but evidently this was rarely ever the case; after them came the next most qualified person as the deputy head or deputy district head, and so on and so forth. Thus, with the arrival of another two dozen people, the whole department hierarchy had been shaken up. No, shaken was too gentle of a verb. It was more like someone had placed the department hierarchy in a jar, thrown it as far and hard as they could, spun it around at high speeds, and then chucked it at a brick wall. That was far more accurate. All of this chaos totally wasn’t the reason that Ludwig was kidding in the supply closet taking inventory for the fifth time this month. Totally.

“Dr. Braum?” Someone knocked on the door. Fuck. They’d found him.

“Yes?” Ludwig called back, already silently cursing himself for not choosing a harder to find supply closest. Potsdam’s former head of Medical had been following him around for the last two days straight, peppering him with questions about his knowledge of various surgeries. Its was like taking a neve ending quiz that he only got a break from when he managed to lose the fucker. His cat was better at keeping a trail. Speaking of his cat, she was having the time of her life terrorizing Paul. Normally, waking up to screaming meant that Fredy had fallen off the bed and the cat was attempting to scratch his face off, however now it meant that she had decided to bite Paul as hard as her little mouth could at three in the morning. She now got an additional serving of food every time she inflicted pain upon Paul. Was this evil? Probably, he didn’t care.

“There’s been a shooting. At least three injured—one agent, bullet wound in unspecified location.” 

Within two minutes he had pulled on a fresh pair of gloves and had reached the operating theatre where the injured agent had been laid out on the operating table. Well, operating theater was a bit generous, but the exact specifications of what constituted an operating theater was something that he could think about later. Both of the nurses in the room were Potsdam transfers, one significantly older than him, and another barely a year older than Alex. Neither of them recognized the agent sprawled out before them, simply had begun prepping tools for surgery and scrambling for anesthetic. It was Jana Cerney, one of Jackie’s more recurring on and off girlfriends, and one of Propaganda’s better pamphlet distributors, who spoke with a thick eastern accent that made all the threats she was currently doling out sound even more terrible.

“Ludwig I swear to fucking god— this fucking hurts god-DAMN it—I’m gonna tear their slimly fucking faces off their their—” Jana’s last remark was cut off by another scream of agony before she could finish her threat. Luwdig didn’t say anything in response, only nodded at the older nurse whose name he didn’t recall to administer the morphine, and began to inspect the bullet wound on Jana’s thigh, trying to see if there was an exit wound.

“Those sick sons of—touch there again and I’ll shoot your head off—bitches are gonna get their dicks shot off one at a time, then I’ll—” This time she was not cut off by a scream of agony, but interrupted by the sudden arrival of the Potsdam head of Medical, who burst into the operating theatre, he was just gonna call it that, looking like a great white bird with the way his coat fluttered around him.

“Paitent, injury, surgery, rate of success." Dr. Potsdam demanded, glowering down at Ludwig with that icy look that conjured up thoughts of shouted insults and thrown plates—and suddenly his hands were shaking slightly and that familiar pit of utter dread had opened up in his stomach. Focus on the work in front of him, if he focused on the work in front of him he wouldn’t start crying in front of three strangers.

“Go away.” He wiped away as much of the blood as he could in an attempt to get a better view of the entry wound. It was quite beneficial to actually have more agents, this was the first time in ages he hadn’t had to go rummaging for a clean rag.

“I am merely trying to help!” Dr. Potsdam protested, all huffy.

“Go. Away.” He repeated, silently praying that his voice didn’t shake

“Fuck off!” Added Jana, still writhing in agony on the table but still managing to glare daggers at Dr. Potsdam. Over the last two days, the two of them had gotten more than their fair share of fighting with the Potsdam transfers, and god he had never known that two bases only twenty seven kilometers apart from each other could have developed so differently. Thankfully, before he’d have to get rid of Dr. Potsdam himself, someone that Ludwig vaguely recognized as Fredy’s Potsdam counterpart, barged in and manhandled Dr. Potsdam out of the operating theatre amid a barrage of apologies. Something told him that that had happened a lot before the bases had merged.

It turned out that Jana’s injury hadn’t been all that severe, obviously she’d still just been shot, however, the wound was less of a hole and more of an incredibly deep graze that after being stitched up and bandaged, wouldn’t severely impede her life, she’d walk with a limp for a while, but there wasn’t much permanent damage, just a scar that wouldn’t be fading any time soon. Well, that was better than having to take off a whole leg. Following a mixture of curses and thanks from Jana, Ludwig slipped into his office to write up the attending physician report for their archives. This was mainly so that if someone else ended up having to operate on Jana at the base, they’d know about her various injuries and how those injuries had been treated. It was also really fun to read through while drunk to laugh at all the stupid ways agents had hurt themselves; although that probably wasn’t the intended use. Since these reports never tended to be more than half a page unless something bad was about to happen, it only took him a few minutes to write it, standing up and stretching before heading over to Logistics to file it away. There wasn’t any room in Medical for an archive, and since Logistics had space, they were technically in charge of the medical archive. Did it make sense? Not really, but it was one less thing for Ludwig to be responsible for, and that was pretty nice.

On the way back from Logistics, Ludwig ended up almost running directly into Turing going around that one blind spot corner. The head of tech, like usual, was carrying a small mountain of rolled up papers, that were either ineligible to his department’s function, or were blueprints for inventions that defied the laws of physics. Who knows which one.

“Sic semper tyrannis.” Turing greeted him, adjusting one of the papers that had come loose and was threatening to fall.

“Sic semper.” Ludwig replied, grabbing one of the rolled up blueprints, yes these had to be blueprints, that had been pinned in between his fellow head’s chin and shoulder and placed it back on top of the stack, where it hopefully wouldn’t fulfill its evident desire to interact with the floor. “These for Jane?”

“No, Redeem.” Pausing to grab yet another tumbling tube, Turing continued. “He wants a presentation on how exactly we’re planning to break the German encryption and how much effort is going into that as opposed to say explosives or my time machine. Rather annoying. Everything would be far simpler if he would simply leave us alone.”

“Speaking of your time machine, how’s that coming along?” If there was one thing that was going to prevent Ludwig from having to go back to Medical and deal with Dr. Potsdam, it would be asking Turing about his time machine. Perfect, since with the look Dr. Potsdam had shot him, something told him that he might want to avoid returning to his department for as long as possible.

Turing rambled on about how his model of a time machine was progressing nicely, and how he expected to be able to execute a proper test by the end of the month, for a good six minutes, eventually ending his spiel with: “Oh, and Brightside’s looking for you. Something about needing help on a mission.”

“Thanks. Good luck on the presentation.” He responded, already heading for Propaganda. What sort of mission would Fredy need help on? The whole mail bag fiasco had only been a few days ago, and after that, he’d been fairly sure that his boyfriend would’ve had enough relevant material to dissect in his pamphlets for at least another week. The walk to Propaganda was a fairly quick one, although he did have to avoid the screaming match between three people that he was ninety percent sure were cousins about which department was superior. Fredy’s office was fairly small, all of the district head’s offices were, it barely had enough room for a desk they’d dragged out of the back alley behind a government office five years ago, and a chair. Plastered on the walls were a mixture of propaganda posters and wanted posters for Mr. Brightside that, said fugitive, had written notes critiquing their depictions of him on. Fredy was leaning in the doorway of his office, smoking a cigarette and scrutinizing a single sheet of paper. When he saw Ludwig approaching, his head snapped up and what could only be described as pure, unbridled affection flooded his grey eyes.

“Hey, darling.”

After planting a quick kiss on Fredy’s cheek, and promptly stealing his cigarette, an action that only garnered him a playful glare, Ludwig stepped into the office and took a seat on the edge of the desk, Fredy closing the door and leaning on it across from him. “Turing said you wanted my help for a mission?”

“Yeah. You know that mailbag we stole about a week back? Well, this was in there.” Handing him the sheet of paper he’d been looking at earlier, Fredy added. “Look at the ninth objective for the meeting on Tuesday.”

Since the paper included one of the most complicated charts for organizing meeting topics that had probably ever existed, it took Ludwig a minute to do so, but eventually after rotating the paper twice, he did. “Finalize report on progression of ‘final solution’ for Hitler. What the fuck is the final solution? Sounds ominous.”

“I have no idea.” Fredy said confidently, far too confidently. “ But, what I do know is that I’m gonna break into your dad’s office and try to find something relating to it.”

“You need my help, why?” He asked, setting down the paper.

“This is probably going to take a while, so I was thinking that you could be my lookout and stall if for some reason anyone comes across us? I wouldn’t ask, but there aren’t any secret passages that lead into your dad’s office, and it would be a hell of a lot easier if someone who’s actually allowed to be there is on lookout duty.”

As much as he really didn’t want to go home, even for the brief amount of time it would take Fredy to raid Robert Braum’s office, Ludwig did begrudgingly have to admit that whatever this “Final Solution" was, there was something that told him it was going to very much be a problem if they didn’t deal with it now. “Alright, but try to be quick?”

“Of course.” This promise was accompanied by another kiss, and as they started out on the relatively short walk to Braum manor, Ludwig was fairly certain that he was still blushing slightly, or at least for the duration that they were in the Jewish Quarter.

Getting into his family home was as easy as ever. Using the spare key he’d forgotten he’d left in this jacket, he unlocked the side door, and after looking around to make sure that no one was nearby, beckoned Fredy in. Within a moment, Fredy had disappeared into his father’s office, and even though the door was only cracked open, Ludwig could already hear his boyfriend rummaging around. He simply retrieved the well worn and rather beat up, paperback copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray that he’d stolen from Fredy a few years back, and leaned against the wall, burying his nose in the pages as he waited for Fredy to find whatever he had come looking for. Both of the elder Braums were out, neither of their jackets were by the door and the house was somehow even more silent than usual, a fact that made Ludwig feel like he could breath slightly more freely in the house compared to usual, when tendrils of panic wrapped themselves around his lungs and his heart beat so loudly in his chest that he could’ve sworn it was audible. With the knowledge of his parents absence, combined with the fact that his partner was only on the other side of the door, he wasn’t exactly comfortable, the days of being able to feel anything other than panic in this house were long over, but he was slightly less on edge than normal, and that most certainly was something. In fact, he was almost able to forget that he was in his ancestral home when he got to the part in the story where Sybil Vane committed suicide and Dorian didn’t care. That was, until he heard the footsteps approaching from down the hall.

“Oh! Ludwig—may I call you Ludwig— I was not expecting to see you here.” Ingrid Norden laughed. No, she couldn’t be here. She couldn’t be intruding on a day that had otherwise been fine, maybe even nice by his standards. Sure there’d been the whole thing with Dr. Potsdam, but he was spending time with Fredy that wasn’t just snuggling together under the covers and whispering to each other, and there was supposed to be a family dinner at the Hirsch family’s apartment and he was gonna spend the night reading and petting the cat, maybe curled up next to Fredy if they kicked Paul out—that was what was supposed to be happening! Not this, not this. Those tendrils of panic that had loosened their grip on his chest, well they suddenly surged forward and clutched his chest so tightly he thought his ribs were gonna break. No, no no!

“H–h…hel-llo.” He somehow managed to sputter out, the words garbled and jumbled before they even escaped his mouth. Digging his fingernails into the wood of the doorframe behind him, all his mind could do was go blank. He couldn’t think of any way to run, couldn’t think of any way to call out to Fredy without it being odd, couldn’t even anyway to get Ingrid to go away. Oh god could she just go away? Please?

“So nice to see you though,” Ingrid prattled on, completely ignoring how those tendrils of panic were creeping up to his throat. He couldn’t breathe, they were strangling him, wrapping themselves around his windpipe and slowly squeezing it so he could no longer bring in breath. “You know, I was really hoping our paths would cross again, and for it to be this soon as well! Oh bother, what did I need to tell you? Oh, right! Are you aware of the expected visit from the British and American ambassadors?"

All he could do was vehemently shake his head as he shoved his hand that had previously been clenching the doorframe, into the small opening. If he could only signal to Fredy, then maybe he could do something, anything to make Ingrid just go away! Now, Ludwig didn’t expect anything to happen, but someone grabbed his hand, an action that made him momentarily freeze up before he heard the accompanying voice. Whispering as quietly as possible so that Ingrid wouldn’t hear, Fredy did what could only be classified as an attempt to calm him. “Hush darling. I promise it's gonna be alright, everything’s gonna be alright.”

Thank god Ingrid didn’t notice. She just kept talking. “Well, I doubt you know, it's all rather hush-hush, but the Führer wants territory that those pesky allies say he can’t have, like they have a say in the expansion of the German Reich, but I’m getting ahead of myself. The ambassadors are coming here, here, in two days! Your father himself asked me to show around the American ambassador's daughter! Can you believe it?”

“Nn-no.” Once again, he could barely stutter out the simple word. He knew Ingrid was looking at him with that same look he’d gotten so many times in his childhood, that dreaded one filled with both shame and pity, but all his energy was currently focused on gripping Fredy’s hand as hard as physically possible.

“I know, right! Now, since I’m going to be showing her around Berlin, you are going to be by my side, you're my fiancée so of course you shall be! She’ll have to see the shops, and oh the opera is just so lovely this time of year…” Fiance, there that damned word was again. That sick feeling that emerged every time the word was mentioned.

“Oh dear, if I stay any longer I’m going to be late for my dress fitting! The ambassadors are coming in three days, and shall be staying for a week, so you ought to prepare. I don’t care how important those university classes of yours are, you are spending time with me in high society. Look at me! We’ve only been engaged for ten days and I’m already helping you plan out future.” Letting out a laugh that grated on his ears like sandpaper, Ingrid stood on her tiptoes and pressed a kiss to his cheek before strutting back down the hallway without a care in the world. Ludwig’s face burned in the place where she’d kissed him, and not in the pleasant way it did when Fredy did the same action. 

He couldn’t do this. Any time he even saw Ingrid he felt like someone was repeatedly stabbing him in the back. The second she had kissed him, he realized that this wasn’t even a game he could play for the ten days that they’d known each other. Ten days. What would he do? Take a scalpel to his wrists and half hope it would fix everything and half hope it would fix him. The kit of surgical instruments he kept in his desk was only a few rooms away, it was right on top of his high school report cards, in that one draw that always stuck and was impossible to get open on the first try, all he would have to do was force his feet to move down the hallway, open the door, and grab it, then roll up his sleeve—

Someone was pulling him through the door and forcing him close to them and—it was Fredy, he was wrapped up in Fredy’s arms, clutching him as tightly as humanly possible as they crumpled to the ground. He didn’t know when he started crying, only that the only sound other than the slight rustling of fabric from Fredy pulling him closer was the embarrassing, halting sound of sobs as tears streamed down his face. He was a disappointment, he was a failure. He couldn’t even be normal. Couldn’t even do that one simple task of finding women attractive. It was so simple, so easy, so basic—biological even. Yet he failed. He was broken, unlovable. What whole man yearned with every part of his soul for the same sex? What whole man had scars crisscrossing the inside of his arms from the dozens of times that he’d felt the impulse to put a knife to his skin and punish himself for not being all the things he ought to have been? What whole man was overwhelmed with panic at the mere mention of his parents? He stopped clinging onto the back of Fredy’s coat long enough to take off his glasses, before promptly burying his face in his shoulder. He didn’t care about Ingrid, he didn’t care about the impending visit, he didn’t care about keeping up appearances, all he cared about was this nightmare ending. But it felt like the nightmare had only begun.

Chapter Text

After depositing a still sniffling Ludwig in their bedroom and kissing his forehead and promising that he would be back real soon, he just had to put the documents he’d found on his desk at the base, Fredy made his way over to the base. Before Ingrid Norden had shown up, he’d actually managed to find a small folder of papers titled: The Final Solution. However, there was one slight problem, they were all in what he could only assume was code. Thankfully, Tech was supposed to be working on decrypting the latest Nazi codes, supposed to being key. From what he’d seen, those fuckers spent the majority of their time making things that exploded, lighting themselves on fire, and helping Turing finetune his time machine. Ignoring the fact that the whole department smelled heavily of smoke, he handed off the file to Macey Goldberg, the agent in charge of breaking the Nazi code, or maybe she wasn’t, only Turing knew what the hell was going on in his department—ok Turing had no goddamn clue what was going on in his department. Fredy just hoped that he might eventually figure out what those papers actually said. That’d be nice.

His mind had drifted to the fact that one of Robert Braum’s former secretaries, a loudmouthed asshole who claimed that his constant spewing of bullshit was just him trying to bring people back from a state of sin, i.e. homosexuals, had gotten killed. The Nazis were fucking furious, and he was just sad that he had never managed to get into a proper propaganda duel with him. Well, whoever’d taken the lucky shot was probably gonna get boosted up a rank in their department. He was just wondering how Missions had accomplished that when he noticed Uncle Leon.

“Hey Uncle Lee.” He greeted his uncle.

“Hello, kid.” Uncle Leon nodded at him. “How’d the mission go?”

“Not bad, found a file about the ‘final solution’, but it's all encoded. Dropped it off at Tech so hopefully they can stop commiting arson for long enough to figure out what the fuck they say.” Fredy said. They both knew perfectly well that it would take Tech at least a week to get the decryption done, that was if they ever remembered to do it in the first place.

“Good luck with that. I don’t know how bad Berlin is, but in Potsdam that pretty much fucking impossible.” Uncle Leon shook his head. “Speaking of my agents, heard that Dr. Rothman’s being an asshole to Dr. Braum.”

“Can’t say I’ve heard anything.” He shrugged. Honestly, he wasn’t exactly surprised that Rothman was trying to undermine Ludwig, and probably become district head himself. A few well placed threats should get rid of that issue.

“Well Jana complained to me for the last fifteen minutes about how much of a, and I quote: ‘condescending dickless and spineless pathetic excuse for a human’ Rothman is.” The fact that Jana hadn’t said anything worse was fairly impressive.

“That’s definitely Jana. But no, Ludwig hasn’t said anything to me about Rothman. Hell, I didn’t even know that was his name.” He stopped himself from mentioning that the last complaints he’d heard from Ludwig were pretty much all variations on how much he hated his parents and society and wanted to die.

“At least it's not getting to him. Jana also mentioned something about heightened security around the Wilhelmstraße. Have you noticed anything like that? Braum doesn’t exactly live near there, but still?” Uncle Leon asked. Right, that was how Jana’d gotten herself shot. Had she taken out Braum’s aide? Eh, it wasn't worth pondering. If she had, the whole base would know within the next hour.

Refraining from asking how his Uncle, who’d lived in Potsdam for as long as he could remember, knew where Braum Manor was so well, Fredy just said: “Didn’t exactly see any security, honestly you’d think they like getting broken into, but I did hear some mentions of a visit from the British and Americans that’s apparently supposed to be a secret, so that might have something to do with it.”

“Who’d you hear that from?” Getting the sort of weird look from his Uncle that Fredy knew meant he sure as hell wasn’t worming his way out of this one, he opted to divert for as long as possible, because, to be quite frank, telling the ultimate 

“It's complicated.” It was really, really complicated.

“As someone who technically ranks above you, who did you hear it from?” Sighed Uncle Leon, pinching the bridge of his nose in the exact same manner that Redeem did every time that Jackie tried to recruit another one of her girlfriends who she'd known for all of three days.

“My boyfriend’s prearranged fiancee.” Fredy said, both completely abandoning his earlier strategy in favor of not getting another Redeem lecture, and fully aware that that was a fairly odd way to know a person. He’d mentally referred to Jana as “Jackie’s writer hookup” for two months after they’d met, it’d be fine. However he did add the valuable context of: “ I was hiding in Robert Braum’s office when she showed up and just started talking at him—my boyfriend, not Robert Braum.”

“Damn.” The older of the two let out a low whistle, probably processing what the hell he’d just been told.

“Yeah. Also, on a totally unrelated note, can you get me out of the weekly head’s meeting? Ludwig’s kind of not ok and I promised I wouldn’t completely abandon him.”

“Go comfort your boyfriend. Redeem’ll probably reschedule anyway if both of you are missing.”

“Thanks Uncle Lee!” He yelled over his shoulder, already making a beeline for home.

Since he’d gotten stopped twice by Potsdam agents who were completely and utterly lost, it took Fredy about twenty minutes to get home, and when he did, he walked in on what had to be one of the weirdest scenes to ever take place in the Hirsch family’s living room. Jackie was sitting on the couch across from Uncle Gerog and their father, both of whom sported serious looks. Next to her was Turing, who, every few seconds, was throwing small morsels of bread over his shoulder in an attempt to keep Matilda the duck from attacking his ankles any further. It wasn’t working. The four of them were having an incredibly in-depth conversation regarding the fact that Jackie was claiming that she and Turing were dating? What the fuck? Also why was Paul hovering in the hallway like he was trying to eavesdrop? Alex was hiding in the kitchen and they were doing a way better job. Fredy made eye contact with Mrs. Hirsch. She gave him the sort of look that said: don’t you dare do a single thing to try and ruin this. He didn’t, just walked as quickly as he could past all the chaos and to his bedroom, where Ludwig was.

Ludwig was sitting at the desk, anatomical sketches and books scattered over the surface, and the cat curled up in one corner like a little dragon, her green eyes cutting through the room in order to glare at Fredy. Fredy didn’t say anything, just watched as his partner’s pen scratched against the paper, no doubt trying to write a paper that was due in all of forty-five minutes. He looked better than when he’d run to the base, or at least, someone who hadn’t spent the last seven years completing the impossible task that was keeping Ludwig Braum alive would think so. Years of experience had taught Fredy to look for the signs, and they were all there. Caked blood under his nails that hadn’t quite dried yet, shirt sleeves clutched firmly to his palms, faint outlines of bloody lines obvious under a rumpled dress shirt, the metallic smell that never really washed out of anything.

“Hey, what are you working on?” He draped his arms around Ludwig’s shoulders, pressing a kiss to the top of his rumpled hair in the process. Don’t say anything yet, wait to make sure it wasn’t just a response to whatever ignorant shit Ingrid had said and not a “real” attempt, then try and bring it up and avoid another full blown fight.

“Anatomy drawing.” Fuck. One or two words answers were bad.

“Sounds riveting.” Fredy eyed the rough sketch. It definitely didn’t look like something Ludwig had been doing for the last half hour or so. Thus, after a comfortable lull, he asked: “You good? I know there was all that shit with Ingrid.”

“I-I’ll be fine.” Ludwig covered his hand with his own, it was a lie, they both knew it was a lie, but it was a lie that was easier to believe. In this hell, pretending that everything was alright was about a hundred times easier than confronting the truth: Ludwig cut himself to cope with it, and Fredy was dying. They would never say it aloud, but they both knew. All Fredy did was hold onto him a bit tighter and press another kiss to his hair. It was better than sitting in silence.

“Alfred!” All of a sudden, Paul burst in through the door, not even bothering to knock. Fredy jumped about a foot and nearly fell backwards onto his bed. What the hell was Paul doing in here? He thought that he was still doing a shitty job eavesdropping on Jackie attempting to convince Mr. Hirsch and Uncle Georg that she was dating Turing. “Oh, you’re here too.”

“Go away Paul.” Fredy wanted to punch him, however last time he’d done that when Paul visited, he’d been grounded for the whole summer because Paul screamed louder than Alex did when someone chased them for snapping an embarrassing photo.

At the same time, Ludwig muttered under his breath: “Please fuck off.”

“I’m in love.” Completely ignoring the other two people who actually belonged in that room, Paul took a seat on the bed and began to ramble, a lot. Shooting a look to his boyfriend, the younger Hirsch brother immediately began to think of some sort of excuse to get them both out of there. As he did, Paul kept talking. “She is the most beautiful girl in the world, and the most wonderful, and polite, and oh so graceful! I was going to purchase new socks and we ran into each other, not literally of course. The poor thing had injured her leg, just that morning she said too, and we spoke for a good quarter of an hour. Oh I have never seen such a beautiful woman! Her name’s Ms. Cerny, do you know her?”

In response to this, Ludwig shot Fredy a look that said: “Jana? He’s talking about Jana?” 

Since Jana had cursed him out just for not being his sister, Fredy had to agree with that statement. For one, Jana Cerny was about as far from graceful as you could get, she’d literally got shot in the leg only a few hours ago and would be on crutches for the next month or so. Polite? Redeem had lectured Fredy for an hour after he’d approved one of Jana’s pamphlets that the old district commander considered far too mean spirited, which was fairly ironic given that the Brightside pamphlets had a substantial chunk of them dedicated solely to describing how terrible and useless of a person Robert Braum was. The only believable part of Paul’s whole description was that he’d met Jana at the only vaguely legal corner store that sold unregulated versions of everything. Why was his brother trying to buy new socks? Fredy didn’t really give a fuck, but he did know that they sold the good pen ink there, and since Redeem was too cheap to let Propaganda buy it, he and Jana and about a dozen other people would run down there to buy their own. Probably the most glaring discrepancy in the whole tale was the fact that everyone in Berlin knew that Jana was infatuated with Jackie, and they’d been dating on and off for as long as Fredy could remember, otherwise known as the last eight years or so.

“Sounds great Paul.” He offhandedly remarked, already bored to death and confused as to how on earth anyone could call Jana polite. She didn’t have any sisters, right?”

“It seems dear brother–”

“Don’t call me that.” Fredy interrupted him. Maybe fleeing for undisclosed reasons would be the best idea. It was Paul, he wasn’t exactly smart enough to require a good excuse. Besides, poor Ludwig was looking more unformatable by the moment, probably because that was everyone’s reaction to Paul. The oblivious fucker.

“As I was saying, it seems that I might marry before you. I mean, you don’t even have a girlfriend at all.”

No matter how much he wanted to stand up, point to Ludwig, and say “Of course I don’t! That’s my boyfriend, dumbass!” Fredy also didn’t really want to get arrested…again.  So instead, after exchanging another look with said boyfriend that confirmed that Ludwig was just as done with all this bullshit as he was, he just replied: “Good for you.”

“Yes it is.” Paul agreed, completely oblivious to the fact that neither of the other two people in the room actually gave a fuck about his romantic prospects.

“Hey, Fredy.” Ludwig suddenly said, obvious enough that it was clearly meant for Paul to hear. Thank god he’d been plotting an escape route while Fredy had been trying to figure out how the hell Paul had gotten a good impression of Jana. It turned out that the mere sensation of being anywhere near Paul was more than enough for anyone to gain their composure so that they could flee as quickly as possible.  “Didn’t you say you’d walk with me to the library?”

“Oh right.” He quickly agreed. “I did say that.”

“You both cannot be abandoning me in my hour of need!” Paul objected, however by the time that he finished speaking, both of the people he was trying to get to stay were already halfway out of the apartment, and both very much glad that they had escaped another rant centered around the fact that Jana was the most beautiful woman in the world. Well, at least Paul didn’t really have a chance on that one, especially given that Jana was very much not interested in him.

Without saying a word to each other, Fredy and Ludwig immediately started walking towards the library. Technically, only pure blooded Germans were allowed in, however no one bothered to check papers in order to get into the shitter of the three Berlin libraries, so Fredy didn’t really care. He wouldn’t mind looking at an atlas to try and figure out just how far away he would have to get from Berlin to be on the other side of the world from Paul, oh, and grab a law book Uncle Lee had recommended to see just how many fake charges he could theoretically bring against Robert Braum. About halfway there, when they’d just crossed out of the Jewish District, he heard it, the shouts and roar of engines. Something was wrong, they both looked at each other and immediately began to run towards the disturbance.

The street was filled with SS soldiers and large, black trucks, each flying that fucking swastika. People were being torn away from their families, and thrown in the back of the trucks, their desperate screams filling the air. The smell of exhaust and gasoline mixed with the unmistakable metallic scent of blood as the brutes basked the butts of their rifles into the heads of anyone who dared run. Slurs filled the air, for everyone from the Jews to the people unlucky enough to have been caught on the street. They both froze. People begged to know what was happening, where they were being taken. No answer was given. As the hellish scene flooded his senses, Fredy realized what this was. This was the final solution, he didn’t need a decrypted document to tell him that.

Chapter Text

Before he could fully comprehend what exactly they were seeing, Ludwig had grabbed Fredy by the back of his coat and was pulling him into an alley and behind a clumsy stack of old crates and cardboard boxes. In the darkness of the alley, the shadows morphed into Nazis, capable of stealing them both away to send them God knows where. Well, Ludwig would probably be safe, so long as he told them who he actually was, the deputy Führer's son who spent his time fighting against everything his father believed in, the sort of quiet rebellion that would go unnoticed until it was too late. But Fredy wouldn’t be. He couldn’t lose him. He couldn’t lose him! The roar of the truck engines grew louder; they were coming closer. He wasn’t sure he was breathing. Holding onto the back of his boyfriend’s jacket as tightly as physically possible, he felt his heart race in his chest. Somewhere in the depths of his mind, Ludwig could only grasp onto one singular thought: this could not be how he ended up alone again. His childhood had been filled with loneliness; two warring parents and an empty house, learning to take care of himself from the age of seven because they were both too invested in their respective affairs to bother to do anything other than yell at him. Sophomore year of high school, he’d been drowning in grades and expectations and pressure; that year he’d met Fredy, the only person who didn’t seem to care that he was always on the brink of falling apart.

The footsteps grew louder, a cacophony echoing off the grimy alley walls. They both prepared to fight, to run, or to do both. He locked eyes with Fredy, who’d produced a knife from god knows where and was holding it in the exact same position that they'd both been taught was the best way to spring up and slit an attacker’s throat. They were going to need to fight. As silently as possible, he opened his messenger bag, slowly pulled out the Psychology textbook he’d been planning to return to the library, and gripped it as tightly as possible, ignoring the way that the fresh cuts on his inner arms burned from the effort. A few weeks back, Feldman had hit one of the Hilter Youth brats over the head with an atlas, and he’d seen the damage she’d done to the brat’s skull. Hopefully annoying seventeen year olds weren’t the only people who could get their skulls bashed in with heavy books.

Just when the footsteps sounded as if they were about to reach the alley, he spotted it: a partially open metal door, probably the backdoor of some sort of business, only a few meters away. They looked at each other. Whatever the hell was though that door was going to be a lot better than the approaching SS. The footfalls were entering the alley when they both bolted. Shouts rang out after them in the narrow space, and only a few seconds later, the crack of a gunshot filled Ludwig’s ears. He didn't look back, merely mentally checked over himself to ensure he hadn’t been hit. He hadn’t. Fredy was right on his heels when the two of them burst through the partially open door, immediately throwing their combined bodyweight against it in hopes that the Nazis wouldn’t be able to follow them in. Within a few seconds, Ludwig heard the beautiful grind of metal on metal that only a deadbolt being locked could produce. Only a moment after that, the impact of the first shot shook the door. They both dove for cover.

Despite the chaos on the other side of the locked door, Ludwig was somehow able to get his surroundings. From what he could tell, it seemed like he and Fredy had ended up in a dust storeroom that only actually stored miscellaneous pieces of furniture, some old tables, and armchairs that were more dust than chairs. Speaking of dust, it was absolutely everywhere, coating all the surfaces in a centimeter thick layer, and dancing freely in the air. From the other side of the room, through the Nazi discord outside, he could hear Fredy in the midst of a coughing fit, no doubt caused by the ridiculous amount of dust. Goddamnit, he’d told him that this would keep happening if he kept smoking so much. Glancing over at the deadbolt to make sure it was still holding—it was, but they only had so long before the Nazis finally got the brilliant idea of going around the building, he put down the Psychology textbook, sending up a plume of dust as he did so, and made his way over to his boyfriend.

“Are you okay?” He whispered, trying to gauge just how bad this one was going to be.

“‘M fine.” Choked out Fredy in between hacks. It was one of his least convincing lies to date, and that was counting the time he’d told Alex that they weren’t annoying at times.

If they hadn’t been in a seemingly abandoned storeroom, with a rust deadbolt being the only thing protecting them from people who wanted to kil them and torture them, Ludwig would’ve point out the obvious fallacy. But they very much were, so he didn’t say anything, just silently prayed that Fredy would be able to breath right before their pursuers figured out what a front door was. The seconds crawled by like hours as he listened to the shouts outside turn from anger over the fact they’d slipped away to strategies for breaking the door down. They needed to leave, as soon as possible. There was a door directly opposite the one that they had deadbolted, which probably led into the interior whatever building they were in. Well, whatever was in there was probably better than the Nazis outside.

“This is Uncle Lee’s and Redeem’s old law office.” Fredy said out of nowhere as they headed through the other door, completely blindsiding Ludwig. Well, it was probably a good thing he could still speak, but such random remarks were a minor downside of it.

“What do you mean?” He asked.

“Look over there.” He pointed to an old sign resting against a hallway wall, half covered with a greying sheet. Through the dusty air, Ludwig could just see the gilded letters of two names: Hirsch and Redeem. There was a third name on the sign, but it was still covered. Ludwig had forgotten that both Leon Hirsch and Magnus Redeem had been lawyers, neither of them were now, but they’d once been. Honestly, it explained how Redeem was the only person who could get Fredy to shut up when he felt like debating one of the district commander’s stupid rules.

He didn’t say anything about that, just kept following Fredy through the former law firm’s tight hallways. If Leon Hisch had worked there, then that meant that both of the older Hirschs that he actually liked talking to probably had been there at least once or twice, and knowing his boyfriend and Jackie, they had taken the opportunity to run around and learn how the building was laid out. Hopefully Fredy had some vague idea of how to get out of there without the soldiers outside noticing. They needed to get back to the base and tell Redeem what was happening, because whatever the hell they’d just witnessed, well something told him it was probably a human rights violation. Just as they were about halfway up the staircase, he heard it: the unmistakable sound of a minor explosion, and it sounded like it was coming from the backdoor.

“Did they just?” Ludwig couldn’t exactly explain what their pursuers had just done.

“Yeah. Come on.” Somehow, Fredy got them up onto the other side of the street from the swarming Nazis, which probably hadn’t been the best idea since one SS Captain had chosen that exact moment to take a stroll down that side of the old law office.

“They’re over here!” The bastard immediately called to his idiot underlings, who were still trying to get in through the alley. Oh fuck, this was bad, this was really bad. Fredy and Ludwig started running as fast as they could in the opposite direction, the rows of matching townhouses seeming endless as the SS Captain for some reason decided to run after them on foot. It was after about two blocks of this incredibly odd chase that they both spotted it: the entrance to the Jewish District. Now if there was one thing that the people who lived there knew, it was that you didn’t betray the location of resistance agents, no matter what the government threatened you with. 

Following half an hour spent hiding in Mrs. Goldstein’s Potato cellar while the old widow held her ground against the SS, they finally returned to base, covered in dirt from the potatoes and breathing hard from having run the majority of the way back. Neither of them bothered to stop by their offices first, instead they made a beeline for Redeem. It didn’t matter what the man was doing, what they had just seen was far more important than that. Redeem’s office was located on the top floor of the townhouse portion of the base, a fact that Ludwig ruefully noted as he and Fredy mounted the final few steps. Of course their boss thought this was the greatest place ever to have his office. Of course.

“They’re taking people.” Fredy blurted out the second that the two of them burst into Redeem’s office, both still out of breath from the combination having run the whole way back and climbing three dozen stairs in about fifteen seconds.

“Brightside, Dr. Braum what on—” Redeem began, standing up from his desk

“They’re loading them into trucks.” Ludwig quickly added. “I don’t know where they’re taking them, just that they wouldn’t say.”

“Loading them into trucks?” The district commander paled. He looked like he was about to be sick. Quite frankly, Ludwig felt the same way, he felt like he was going to throw up. “Where were they taking them?”

“I didn’t see.” Admitted his boyfriend. “If you sent out enough riders now, you might be able to trail them…but they might take the riders too.”

“How many people? How many people did they steal?”

They looked at each other, Ludwig quickly trying to mentally calculate that figure. There’d been about twenty five or so trucks, thirty was probably accurate, and probably about thirty or so people shoved into each one, but then again, that’d only been the street they’d seen. It didn’t mean that there hadn’t been more. Oh god there’d been more. Through his racing thoughts regarding what new hell they had just entered, he somehow managed to sputter out: “We saw about nine hundred or so…I think.” 

“Nine hundred?” Reported Redeem.

“Think so. That was only the street we saw though, probably others too.” Fredy interjected.

Redeem simply stared down at his desk for a moment, an unusually unreadable expression on his face. All three of them knew that this was something very, very wrong. Evil had once again gained another acre in the great battle that was their war against the Nazis. The resistance had long agreed that there wasn’t really anything they could put past Hilter’s personal terrorists to do, but stealing people off the streets at the height of the day? That was unprecedented, even for them. And then there was the question of where the hell they were taking all of the people? From what Ludwig could remember, the street the mass kidnapping had taken place on was where the majority of Berlin’s population of non jewish “undesirables” lived. Did it have something to do with the ambassador's visit that Ingrid had mentioned to him what felt like a lifetime ago? Uhg, he didn’t want to think about her right now.

“Brightside, Dr. Braum,” The district commander addressed the two of them. “One of you send out the call for riders to go after the trucks, get as many as you can. The other gather the rest of the base and tell them to all go home; tell them to stay inside their homes and not to let any of their family members leave under any circumstances. Actually, have them warn the whole Jewish District.”

“I’ll get the riders, you wanna tell the base?” Fredy was already halfway down the stairs when he called over his shoulder to his boyfriend, who had just gotten to the top of the banister.

“Sure!” He called back. It would be a hell of a lot easier than trying to find enough sober people to chase after the trucks they’d seen at this hour.

Now the real question was how the hell he was supposed to go about telling the entire base that they needed to leave, warn their neighbors that the Nazis were taking people off the streets, and then go hole up in their houses until the whole nightmare had passed. Well, the townhouse portion of the base was closest, so he could start there. Besides, it was a Friday, so the majority of the agents were probably in the makeshift party space, already getting drunk. That was in the former backyard of the townhouse and should’ve been filled with enough people that he could enlist a few in informing the remainder of the base. Besides, if he told all of them, and they spread the word throughout the Jewish district and base, then that was all the sooner he, Fredy, Jackie, and maybe Alex if they were here, could head home and hope that the horror show would pass. It was only a few more seconds until he reached the former back door, and because he hadn’t realized he’d been running, Ludwig slowed down as quickly as possible without slamming into the door, before turning the knob and immediately stepping inside, ignoring the way his heart was pounding in his chest. He’d never really liked how Redeem used the heads as messengers to spread his decrees around the base, especially when it involved speaking in front of way too many people.

Oh shit, they were all looking at him, or at least all the people who weren’t engaged in fights or dancing to the least shitty radio in the whole base were. What was he supposed to say again? “Um, Redeem has a message.”

“Shut up all of you and pay attention to someone who outranks you!” One of the Potsdam agents, someone who had a much louder yelling voice than he did, shouted from somewhere on his right. Ludwig made a mental note to thank them later, as within a few seconds, the whole room was deathly quiet, all eyes on him, something that totally wasn’t slightly terrifying.

“The Nazis are taking people off of the streets.” He said, ignoring the mummers rippling through the room as he continued. “Becuase he doesn’t want to lose any agents to these kidnappings, Redeem told me to instruct you to spread the word to the rest of the Jewish distict, and to tell them to stay inside no matter what, then to do the same yourselves. If they raid the base, none of us should be here to be caught. Spread the word to the rest of the base.”

In about ten minutes, the whole base was practically deserted, the roar of motorcycle engines as the riders left to pursue the trucks some of the only noise in the whole place. Some of the only stranglers were from Tech, making sure that they were taking some of the more important blueprints and inventions home for safe keeping. Even Ludwig had decided to grab both his book from the Head’s plotting room and Fredy’s notebook before he ended up leaning against a pillar in the empty strip between Medical and Missions, waiting for his boyfriend and mentally reviewing the locations of all of the people he didn’t exactly want dead. Turing and Jana had already left, the latter all but dragging the former out of his office; for two people who couldn't even understand a word the other was saying, they were weirdly good friends. Alex would be in their final class of the day, and since they always stopped back at their family’s home before heading to the base, that meant that they’d be fine. His cat would be alright too, she was engaged in an all out war against Matilda the duck, and hadn’t left the apartment for the last three days in order to not lose her territory.

“Got the riders sent out. God knows if they’ll actually manage to find any trace of those goddamn trucks.” Fredy noted as he sauntered in, cigarette already alight and smoke creating a hazy halo around his dark hair.

“Took them long enough.” It was impossible for Ludwig to not silently curse at him. He had literally doubled over coughing in a storage room an hour and a half ago, there was no reason that Fredy needed to be smoking right now. Oh whatever, it wasn’t like it couldn’t kill him any faster than he was already dying.

Getting back to the Hirsch’s apartment was easy enough, the streets were all as deserted as always, and the windows were all covered with curtains and shutters, most likely in hopes that, should the Nazis come, they wouldn’t think anyone was home. On the way back, they mainly stuck to the back alleys, the sorts of places where normally only people involved in black market deals lingered. Now, Ludwig would be the first to admit that the whole neighborhood felt off, so much so that when a gaggle of rats scurried across the alley, he jumped a bit more than he was supposed to. Although, to be fair, he did usually feel more on edge after taking a blade to his inner arms, not that that was something he at all wished to think about at the moment. Even only a few inches away on his side, Fredy looked wrong. Was he sick again?

Thankfully, they both made it home without any further incidents, and when they did get back, Paul wasn’t there, thank god, and Mrs. Hirsch, Fredy’s assorted uncles and singular aunt, and Mr. Hirsch, were having a hushed conversation in Mr. and Mrs. Hirsch’s room. They wouldn’t say anything about the fact that Ludwig was very much sure he hadn’t bandaged his arms tight enough and small droplets of blood were very much now appearing on the sleeves of his shirt. Fuck, that’d be a fun one to explain. But that was a later problem. Right now, he was going to go find his wonderful little angel of a cat, grab a book, and sit in a wonderfully Paul free room and read, all the while trying to forget all the shit occurring outside.

It was just as he was attempting to pry his cat away from Matilda while balancing a cup of coffee, that Ludwig heard it: a rather loud thud. Now to untrained ears, it probably just sounded like someone tripped over a chair; however he knew better, not only because if someone tripped over a chair the thud would be followed with a lot more curse words, but because of the very particular curse that ran through the veins of the Hirsch family. He had first learned about it when he was sixteen and had come across Fredy splayed out on the bathroom floor, unconscious and bleeding slightly from where his head had hit the tile floor. Now, it had become an omnipresent cloud, ominously looming over everything he ever seemed to do. 

From what Ludwig could gather on the subject, otherwise known as observing Fredy, the family “curse” proceeded as such: the illness first emerged in all male members of the family somewhere around the age of fifteen or so, and it presented itself though many symptoms that ranged from headaches, to decreased lung function, to fainting fits that were always followed by high fevers, and general pain; these symptoms would get worse and worse until the affected patient died, a death that would occur at or below the age of forty five. In other words, following at least two decades of pain and suffering, Fredy was going to die young, and once again, he would be left alone. It was the sort of thing that he dreaded ever thinking about, but also loomed large in the future. How couldn’t it? He’d once heard that the family’s motto had once been Natus de Morte, which roughly translated to born of death, however he’d always thought that Sub Nube Mortis Viventes, which meant living under the cloud of death, would be far more accurate.

It only took him about thirty seconds to find Fredy, who before fainting must’ve been trying to write another pamphlet, as he was slumped over on his desk, having faceplanted directly into the remnants of Ludwig’s last essay. Against what the majority of his professors probably wou;d’ve seen as reason, Ludwig was rather relieved; in that moment, his boyfriend was probably alright, or at least alright in comparison to the time that he’d managed to fall down half a flight of stairs at the base. He really shouldn’t have been as used to this as he was, he supposed as he attempted to manhandle Fredy onto their bed. His patient and idiot of a partner was definitely still breathing, that was as good of a sign as any, and meant that he should wake up in half an hour or so. Shoving his unconscious partner over, Ludwig slipped in next to him, opening his book and ruefully noting that his bookmark had fallen out. Today just couldn't have gotten any worse, could it?

Chapter Text

Maria Edmund knew the city of Berlin all too well. She’d grown up here you see, back before the Nazis had gained power, her father had been the German Ambassador from the United States of America until 1933, when that Hitler hooligan had gained power. She hadn’t set foot back in Germany since. However, with her mother bedbound at home, her father, ambassador Emmet Edmund, required an official hostess, a title that didn’t really mean anything, but for some reason the foreign secretary still requested. According to the debriefing she had received from the foreign secretary himself, she was to "fraternize with the enemy,” or in other words, keep company with the Deputy Führer's son and future daughter in law and hope that one or both of them was brain dead enough to drop top secret information into the conversation. It was all rather like one of those espionage novels she so greatly enjoyed. But Maria wasn’t stupid, she knew perfectly well the danger that accompanied the existence of the German Reich.

The wheels of the train both she and her father, along with several members of his staff, and the English ambassador and his entourage were aboard, ground to a halt at the train station. They were here, Maria was finally back in Berlin, and to be perfectly honest, she wasn’t quite sure how she felt about it. Her father had been the last American ambassador stationed in the capital city, and all of his successors hadn’t exactly been invested in keeping a close eye on the Germans. That was why, when Hitler and Bruam had called a meeting with the British and Americans, President Roosevelt hadn’t sent the current ambassador, but instead called upon Maria’s father to represent the country. They were fully in the station now, so the young lady placed her thin novel in her purse, pulled on her gloves and coat, and stepped out onto the train platform, along with seemingly every other person on the train.

“Oh Aiken,” Ambassador Hudson of England called over to one of the numerous soldiers who had been tasked with escorting him. Personally Maria thought that the man ought to have arranged his own protection, not taken up valuable resources, although no one ever bothered to ask her. “What exactly was the resistance’s motto again?”

“Sic Semper Tyrannis, sir, that’s their motto.” The soldier answered, just as obviously baffled as Maria, that Hudson would ever ask such a question out in the open on a train platform. However, she did not bother to pay any attention to the Englishmen’s conversation, instead turning to her father.

“Papa?”

“Yes my dear girl?" Ambassador Edmund said as he scanned the platform, no doubt looking for the escort that was supposed to have been provided to them all. In Maria’s opinion, the Nazis had probably decided to leave them out to dry, and instead of helping them, simply allow them to flounder around the city.

“We are to meet Robert Braum and his family tonight, correct?” She asked innocently enough, voice as sugar sweet as possible.

“Yes, that is the case.” He agreed. “Is there something that shall cause you to miss that engagement?”

“Well,” Maria began, already knowing perfectly well whatever excuse she was about to give her father would be a dreadful fib. “My evening stockings have a tear in them, and I do not wish to appear before our hosts underdressed.” Now, even if her evening stockings were actually torn, she could have worn them just fine, as no one would have seen them, however, that was not the whole point of this exercise.

“Once we settle into the hotel, I shall send a bellhop out to get you another pair.’ Her father pledged, already walking to the corner of the station where a man in Nazi uniform had just arrived, looking dower as ever and appearing very much as though he had been sent to retrieve two ambassadors and their families. Drat, she had been hoping to slip away for an hour or so in order to complete the assignment that only she, President Roosevelt, and the foreign secretary were aware of. Maria Edmund was to try and contract the resistance. It was a fairly complicated task, after all they had a whole governing system and political divisions that were accessible to no one outside of the organization, but with the average age of those speaking out against Hilter being fairly young, it had been decided that Maria ought to take upon the task as opposed to her father. After all, young people tended to enjoy speaking to young people far more than they did to officials in the American government.

Within a few minutes, they were all sitting in the back of a sleek black car, Maria, Ambassador Edmund, and Ambassador Hudson that was, along with the dower looking man who had been brought to escort them. He informed them that their hotel had received threats from the resistance, mainly in relation to bombing and a singular one involving cyanine, and in an effort to preserve the lives of their foreign dignitaries, it had been decided that instead of staying at a hotel or one of the former embassies, the two ambassadors and Maria would instead stay at Braum Maor, as there was plenty of security there. As neither Ambassador Edmund, nor Ambassador Hudson at all seem to disagree with that, Maria decided to ignore the instincts that told her two things: one, Braum Manor was broken into by the resistance far too many times for it to be considered safe; and two, the Nazis were trying to butter her father up by keeping him at arm’s length the whole visit. And of course neither of the “professionals” could see it.

Honestly, Maria wasn’t exactly surprised. Her father hadn’t acted as a foreign embassy in ages, probably part of why his guard was down, and he had always been a little too trusting to be cut out for this sort of hostile setting. That was where her mother had always tended to take the reins, but she was back home in California stuck in bed, and only Maria was around to keep her father from accidentally allying the United States of America with Nazi Germany. Ambassador Hudson wasn’t much better either. The man had been swimming in scandal for as long as she had known of him, which was to say since she was a little girl. To be fair, not all of it was Hudson’s fault, his son had had an affair with another male student while at Cambridge and that had essentially stopped the ambassador's career in its tracks for the better part of the thirties. But the whole inheritance affair, along with how right wing he was leaning was very much his own fault. Personally, Maria was of the opinion that if Ambassador Hudson was ever to interact with the resistance, they would probably hate him just as much as they did Robert Braum.

Speaking of Robert Braum, their car had just pulled up in front of his house, and dear god was that a house! It definitely deserved the moniker of manor, in all of its Victorian glory, a perfectly symmetrical brick building, with a dark slate roof, at least four floors tall, with chimneys dotting the roof line. The whole place was shrouded in a grove of elm trees, making it every part the country manor, despite the fact that they were all very much still in the capital city. If it were not for the glaring swastika banner hanging off the front porch, Maria supposed that she probably would’ve found the place charming. But that darn banner, well that shattered any illusion of what this visit might be like in her mind, pulling her back to cold, hard reality. As the car’s wheels stopped on the driveway, a feeling of foreboding could not help but overtake her. This was not a place of joy and happiness, that she was sure of.

A butler opened Maria’s car door, an action to which she gave a mumbled “Danke.” Her father and Ambassador Hudson were continuing their conversation as all three of them were led into the entrance hall by the same butler, who took Maria’s navy blue coat, and also her hat. The hall was nearly as imposing as the manor that housed it, with high ceilings, dark wood floors and paneling, a large crystal chandelier, along with portraits of members of the Braum family that seemed to glare down upon her, and a large staircase that one’s attention could not help but be directed to. Standing at the foot of said staircase, which looked as though it was far older than the house itself, were four people, who she could only assume were the members of the Braum family themselves. Now, from what Maria had read in the file that had been provided to her regarding the Braums, they were one of the richest families in Germany, having made their wealth through banking, along with being essentially German royalty. Not that this was at all slightly intimidating.

As the two actual ambassadors introduced themselves to all four members of the Braum family, one by one, Maria took the time to study each person, beginning with Mrs. Wilhelmina Braum. She had to be about forty or so, with slightly dull blonde hair and green eyes that reminded Maria of the color of arsenic green dye. The wife of the second most important man in Berlin was fairly short, far shorter than her husband, and still had a perfect figure; on that perfect figure she was wearing the latest Parisian fashion, and was practically dripping with the sort of jewelry that looked inconspicuous, but could probably buy a small house with each piece. However, beneath the diamonds and thin, lipstick covered lips, she could not help but sense a sort of cruelty bubbling in the older woman, just under the surface; perhaps it was something in the way her smile looked just a little too predatory, or perhaps it had something to do with how tightly her fists seemed to be clenched. 

Next to Mrs. Braum, was Mr. Braum. The man was far taller than his wife, with the sort of almost waxen skin that the Nazis seemed to adore so, blonde hair so pale that it was hard to tell if he was going grey or not, and eyes that Maria could faintly see where two different shades of blue, one as pale as the morning sky, the other as vibrant as the noon one. He was dressed in a dark double breasted suit, an armband making his allegiance to the government he helped run. Everything about Mr. Braum made him seem cold and detracted, from the artificialness of his movements, to the way his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes, and even by how automatic all of his words seemed, like they had been rehearsed. It was unsettling in a way that she could not quite place her finger on, although that might have simply been the aura of power and intimidation that seemed to swirl around him like a cloud of cigarette smoke.

Standing a little ways off from the elder two Braums were another couple, a man and a woman about Maria’s age, who she could only assume were Ludwig Braum and his future wife, both of whom she had read about in the file on the Braum family she’d been provided. Ludwig Braum didn’t particularly look like either of his parents, although she supposes that he couldn’t have been anyone else. Instead of blonde hair, his hair was auburn, and his eyes were covered with a round pair of wire-rimmed glasses; said eyes were mismatched, much like his father’s, but this time, one was green while the other was blue. Quite curious, for it was not an exceptionally common trait. Much unlike all of the other people in the room, the first son of the reich was not dressed in the most up to date fashion, instead sporting the bottoms from a rather ill-fitting old brown tweed suit, and a tie that had definitely seen better days, along with a dress shirt that looked like it had been slept in, and a black cardigan that matched absolutely nothing but appeared to have been to hell and back. He looked like he’d rather be anywhere else.

On Ludwig’s arm was a woman that Maria didn’t remember the name of, only that they were promised to marry. The unnamed lady had dark brown hair that had been done up in the latest style, and eyes the color of the untamed waters of the North Atlantic that they’d flown over in order to reach Germany. Wearing all dark blue, she was once again sporting the latest parisian styles, and unlike the other three people in the room, she seemed genuinely excited to make new people. All curious, very curious. Based on the way she held herself, Maria could only assume that she had been sent to the sort of boarding school that prepared a young woman for marriage, the exact sort of boarding school that Maria herself had attended. With both of the official representatives of their respective countries still speaking to Mr. and Mrs. Braum, Maria decided that she had nothing better to do than to go introduce herself to the other people in the room who didn’t vividly remember life before the Great War. The heels of her shoes clicked faintly against the glossy marble floors as she made her way over. “Good evening.”

“Good evening.” The fiancee replied, a smile that Maria could only describe as sickeningly sweet on her lips. “Are you Maria Edmund?”

“Yes I am.” Maria Edmund introduced herself, putting on that fake smile she had perfected after so many charity galas and forced appearances.

“Ingrid Norden.” The woman introduced herself. Ingrid was quite a fitting name for her, Maria could not quite put her finger on why she thought that, only that it was true. “And this is my fiancee, Dr. Ludwig Braum.”

When Ingrid placed her hand on her future husband’s arm, he flinched ever so slightly. It was the sort of thing that you wouldn’t have noticed if you weren’t looking directly at him, but it had definitely occurred. That Maria was sure of. Why on earth would a man flinch when his fiancee touched him? Something was off with the only two people in the whole place who were the same age as her, that she knew for sure; she would have to keep an eye on the two of them. 

“Hello.” Dr. Braum greeted her with a small nod. He had a rather soft voice, not what she had expected, especially given how loud and personable Ingrid appeared to be. In all honesty, it was quite the odd match, and she was rather confused as to how it had even been made in the first place.

“So you are here with the ambassadors?” Ingrid asked, no doubt in an attempt to make small talk. It was the sort of fairly obvious question that could have been nothing else.

“Yes, I am.” Maria nodded. “My father is the American ambassador.”

“Well you speak very good German for an American, almost no accent at all!” The woman opposite from her let out a high pitched laugh that Maria wouldn’t exactly call pleasant. Now, while she seemed very nice, at least from the twenty seconds they had been interacting, no one would exactly call Ingrid’s laugh easy on the ears. There was something about it that just felt a little too forced.

“Danke.” She replied, flashing a rehearsed grin. “I grew up partially in Berlin, but I wasn’t sure that I still retained the accent.”

“Oh, Ludwig,” Ingird tapped her fiancee’s arm once again; once again he appeared as though he would rather be anywhere else in the world than participating in this conversation. The American almost felt bad for him. “Didn’t you take English in highschool?”

“Yes.” Ludwig replied, now studying the exact scuff patterns on his shoes with the sort of intensity that made Maria determine he could be doing nothing other than silently wishing he was somewhere else at that moment. For a man who must have had quite the same upbringing as her, she was rather surprised that he didn't seem used to this sort of social requirement, why she could remember being forced to attend them before she even knew what the United States of America or a president was.

“Oh, I was of the impression that people in your station tended to take Latin in school. It shall be quite nice to converse with you.” Maria said to him in English, simply curious to see if he was fluent, for her German was rather rusty, so it would be pleasant to have someone to speak to in her native tongue.

“I wasn’t raised in accordance with my station.” The bespectacled man across from her replied, saying the last word as if it caused him physical pain to do so. Said reply was given in fluent English, which she quite appreciated, however the odd part was that Ludwig Braum did not speak with the German accent she had expected, no if anything he sounded almost American.

Following her father spending twelve whole minutes speaking to Robert Braum, a servant finally appeared to lead them all to their rooms for the duration of their stay. Maria supposed that she was rather glad to get away from the two rather strange people she had been speaking to, something just felt off about both of them. So naturally, those were the people she was going to have to spend time with for the majority of her visit to Berlin. Hopefully she would be able to slip away and complete her secret assignment, but right now, that wasn’t looking so likely. The interior of Braum Manor was like a maze, hallways leading every which way, rooms arranged in no particular order to the point where it was hard to tell if even the servant leading Maria knew where they were heading. These hallways had to have been decorated around the same time the house was built, which was to say about 1875 or so, and clearly had not been updated since. Perhaps the family simply did not frequent them enough to warrant any sort of update, or perhaps they simply did not care. Whatever the reason, by the time that the servant led Maria to her room, assured her that she would be on call to do whatever she wished, and departed, Maria was exceptionally glad to not be wandering the hallways anymore. She supposed that if she wished to leave she would have to call for someone to lead her out, which would severely impede her sneaking out to contact the resistance.

All of her luggage was neatly stacked in one corner of the room, starkly modern against the rest of the place, which looked like it hadn't been touched since about 1902. The wallpaper was a painfully busy and bright floral print done in the Arts and craft style, and all of the furniture in the place was at least a decade older than Maria. This did not strike her as the type of room that ought to have been located in the house of a family as rich and influential as the Braums. As she crossed the room, not only did the floors creak like crazy, but the carpet was beginning to peel up from the floorboards, forming ripples. It was one of these ripples that the toe of Maria’s shoe caught on, sending her flying into a chair that looked like it still remembered the American Civil War.

“Shoot.” She hissed through her teeth, trying to right the chair. Its cushion let out a plume of dust when she righted it, and she tried not to think about how old it probably was.

Thankfully for Maria’s sanity, there was no banquet or other type of grand dinner that evening, instead she ate in her room, while a portrait of who she could only assume was a former Braum matriarch glared down at her. For the majority of the night, she read back over the file on the resistance that she had smuggled into the country in her underwear box, burning it in the fireplace once she had become sure that she’d committed the whole thing to memory. It was vital that the Nazis did not learn what the Americans knew of the resistance, and since she was in a house full of them, it was far too much of a risk to have the papers on her. Around midnight, Maria found herself lying awake in bed, mentally reviewing the contents of that file over and over. Darn it, there was no way she was going to be able to fall asleep at this rate. Maybe she could call the servant over for sleeping pills?  Glancing around her room, she saw absolutely no way to call for a servant; no phone, no call bell, no nothing. Screw it, she would just have to find someone herself.

All of the halls were as deserted as they’d been when she had first entered, but now, in the darkness, they all managed to look eerier. The sound of her slippers was faint against the sheer emptiness of the place. As she rounded her third corner, Maria could’ve sworn that she heard something in the walls. All she could do was wrap her robe tighter around her and pray that ghosts weren't real. Back home in California, she’d had a nanny who’d told her all sorts of different ghost stories in order to keep her in her bed as a child, and right now, practically all of them were running through her mind. There was that sound again, it almost sounded like footsteps, but it was coming from in the walls. At that moment, everything felt off. That was when she spotted it: a dark figure coming down the hallway right towards her.

“What the—” Maria screamed at the top of her lungs.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” The mysterious figure shouted back, in a voice that she swore she recognized. 

Groping around for a lightswitch, her fingers found it and finally illuminated the previously dark passage. The figure’s identity was revealed to be that of…Ludwig Braim? He was dressed in even odder clothes than he’d been the last time they’d indicated, and he was for some reason also holding his shoe. She couldn’t help but to exclaim: “What on earth are you doing here!”

“I live here, what are you doing here?” He shot back, looking way too much like he’d been ready to punch her if she’d been someone else.

“Looking for a servant. Why are you holding your shoes?” Maria demanded.

“No reason.” The son of the second most powerful man in Germany answered far too quickly to be believed.

The two of them looked at each other for a moment, before Ludwig finally spoke, proposing: “I won’t say anything about this if you don’t say anything about this.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Maria replied. With that, he continued on his way, shoes still in hand, walking down the hallway with the confidence of a man who’d lived there all his life, probably because he had. It was curious though, just as Ludwig was rounding a corner that would’ve taken him out of her life of sight, Maria could’ve sworn that she saw a printed pamphlet bearing the mark of Mr. Brightside on it. Something was off about this whole thing, and she was going to get to the bottom of it.