Re: Blood and Iron Chapter 843: A Lifetime of War, Well Lived

Heidi sat on a leather-bound sofa, wrapped around Bruno, her hand held within his own as her head rested on his shoulder.

The two of them sat before a fireplace in a secluded corner of the palace. Silence existed between the two of them for a very long ti.

Neither of them knew what to say, and yet they also knew that they didn’t need to say a word at all.

Because at the end of the day, they had been together their entire lives, and after so many years together communication between them had a way of existing in certainty even without the use of words.

In the end, Bruno finally sighed as he swirled the wine in his glass before tasting it.

"The war is almost over... The Latin Arican countries have already surrendered, as I’m sure you’re already aware. And what remains of the allies has already begun scurrying to join them. The only remaining strategic aim is to ensure that the new Arican Civil War is both contained within its own borders, and that it burns any semblance of a unified Arican nation to the ground with its fury."

Bruno knew what words were coming from his wife without her ever needing to express them aloud. And yet she felt the need to do so nonetheless.

"And then, after the United States has ensured its own destruction, then we can finally have peace?"

Bruno thought about the question long and hard, his mind almost absent, no that wasn’t entirely right. Present... but on an entirely different plane of existence.

After the thought had mulled through his head for so ti, he could only answer with a vague and unknowing response.

"Now that is the philosophical question of our lifetis, is it not?"

Heidi could only frown as she looked straight up into his eyes; there wasn’t any judgent within them. But her eyes commanded Bruno to laugh at his own comnts, nonetheless.

"Alright, I’m sorry. I guess I’m just thinking a bit too much, that’s all. Yes, I will retire from my position as Reichsmarschall the mont the last embers of Arica have been thoroughly snuffed out."

Heidi’s gaze only softened after hearing Bruno re-affirm to the promise he had once made her. She dragged the blanket over the two of them a bit further, so that they were both nice and comfortable beneath its warmth.,

And then she began to drift into sleep on his shoulder.

"I will hold you to that...."

Bruno did not fall asleep; he continued to gaze into the fire in silence for a long while.

Every explosion, every muzzle flash, every echo of gunfire and human suffering he had ever witnessed replaying itself in his mind’s eye like a movie of his life’s most grand and brutal accomplishnts unfolding before him, not as the man responsible for such deeds, but as a spectator.

From the day he was reborn in this world, he had spent every waking mont he could spare preparing for war, or waging it.

He witnessed firsthand as an active participant how the era of knights and chivalry finally ca crashing down; its final form did not go quietly into the night.

Instead, it was brutally and swiftly snuffed out in an industrial slaughter that sent millions of n to their deaths.

He had lived, endured, and survived a lifeti of war. And soon, that life would be coming to an end.

And that left a burning question seared into the back of his mind. Lying dormant, but ever present.

If he thought about it, truly thought about it, he began to feel his spine tingle with dread.

It was not mories of what he had done, of what he had ordered other n to do by his command that haunted him.

Rather, what truly caused a man like Bruno to feel fear was a simple question. What was life for a man who had done nothing but wield the sword and the bayonet for his entire existence?

Was there a life beyond it that he was capable of living? Did peace truly exist, or was it just the lull between machine-gun fire?

He no longer knew the answers to such questions. In fact, he wasn’t entirely sure if he ever had.

All he knew was that his story was quickly coming to a close. As a soldier, as an officer, as Reichsmarschall....

But there were still many years left for him to write a new tale, as the Chancellor. He had no doubt that when he chose to retire the Kaiser would dismiss Kurt von Schleicher. And appoint him to the position instead.

Bruno, however, did not know what the remainder of his life in such a position would entail. In fact, if he was being honest with himself, he feared it.

For as long as he could rember, there was always so battle to fight, or another to prepare for.

But now, his last campaign was coming to an end. And what terrified him wasn’t the idea of wars yet unwaged, but the peace that erged once the gunfire had faded, and the knowledge that he was no longer preparing for its roars again.

How would he live with himself then? How would he live with all that he had done when there was no enemy left to fight and dismantle? When all that was left was a world to build, and not destroy?

These were the last thoughts on his mind as he found himself lulled into sleep, lying next to his wife who had stuck by him through thick and thin and throughout it all.

---

Bruno dread, though the dream itself was fragnted and indistinct. It was not a single mory, nor even a coherent sequence of events, but rather impressions layered atop one another like smoke.

A parade ground bled into a muddy trench. The clatter of boots against stone dissolved into the rhythmic thrum of engines and artillery.

Faces passed him without nas, so familiar, others long since lost to ti, n who had followed him, trusted him, and died following him into battle.

In another life, the faces had been sharper, younger, and harder. And the enemies had been weaker.

Back then, death had been fast, impersonal, distant. A strike from above, a raid in the night. Violence delivered with such overwhelming superiority that it barely felt like war at all.

Here, it had been different.

Here, the dead had worn uniforms. They had written letters ho. They had marched under banners, saluted officers, sung songs about duty and fatherland.

They had died choking on gas, screaming in burning hulls, or frozen in the mud while shells tore the earth apart around them. There had been nothing surgical about it. Nothing clean.

Only scale.

Bruno stirred slightly, his grip tightening unconsciously around Heidi’s hand. Even in sleep, so part of him seed to recognize that she was there, that she had always been there.

She shifted faintly in response but did not wake, rely pressing closer to him as if by instinct alone.

For a brief, fleeting mont, the dreams eased.

He saw Berlin instead.

Not the Berlin of parades and uniforms, of salutes and banners, but the quiet countryside valleys of his youth just outside the city outskirts.

The sound of wind moving through stone and wood. A ho that slled of fire and bread. A world small enough to be held in the mind without charts or casualty figures.

It frightened him how distant it felt.

When he finally woke, it was not to alarms or ssengers or the hum of machines, but to silence. True silence.

The fire had burned low, reduced to embers that cast a dull orange glow across the room. The palace slept around them, vast and unmoving, like a monunt already half-abandoned by ti.

Bruno did not move at first. He simply lay there awake, staring into the dark.

For the first ti in decades, there was nothing demanding his imdiate attention. No fronts to reinforce. No decisions that would determine the lives of thousands by dawn. No maps waiting to be unrolled, no reports waiting to be signed.

The absence of it all felt... wrong.

This, he realized, was the mont he had been marching toward his entire life. Not victory, nor conquest. But after. The part no one ever taught you how to survive. And sohow he felt that it had co far too late.

Slowly, carefully, he adjusted himself so as not to wake Heidi, easing her head more comfortably against his chest and pulling the blanket up around her shoulders.

She murmured sothing unintelligible in her sleep and relaxed again. And in that mont, as Bruno gazed upon his wife’s peaceful sleeping face, he realized sothing.

Sothing so precious and obvious he thought himself a fool for never seeing it before. All this ti he had been dreading the idea of hanging up the sword and losing his reason for existence.... His reason to fight.

When, in reality she had been by his side all this ti. What he had utterly lacked in his first life, he had built early on in this one. A place to belong, and a place worth defending.