This was written for a contest in which the prompt was "Tears of an Angel" by RyanDan, so that would be appropriate listening music, if you go in for that sort of thing.
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"Don't cry in front of me," his brother had said, and so he didn't. And later, those drops of water on the flowers he cleaned up, they could have been rain. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, but no one looked at the sky anymore. Death came from the sky, Death whose loud angry messengers tore apart the air, but Death herself came with just a whistle and by the time you hear the bang she's taken you into her arms.
Except this Death hadn't been so kind to come so quickly with such grandeur; this Death had come oozing in slowly with the stink of medicine and rotten things. This Death tried to take his brother with a whistle and a bang, but his brother refused to go and so Death punished him, punished them. He could still smell it in the flowers, the fresh blue flowers - he knew they were fresh this morning, but when he pressed them to his face all he could smell was a hospital room.
At first his brother had pounded the bed with his fists and demanded, "Tell me. Tell me what's happening! Being stuck in here – !" and he had managed to laugh a little. He put a fresh vase of flowers by his brother's bed and said, "At least in here you don't have to clear rubble."
(That was the only job anyone could get, clearing rubble for the Americans, and sometimes there were pieces of people in the rubble. Death's leftovers. But he wouldn't tell his brother that, not here in this room with Death hovering.)
So instead he told his brother about using cigarettes as money, and how you couldn't get anywhere because the roads were gone, and how he had to answer questions and questions to the Americans to prove he didn't want to be a Nazi anymore.
His brother laughed, even though he was jealous, had been jealous. They didn't let skinny boys with white hair into the German army – Hitler wanted strapping young men.
(Not that it mattered now, and his brother was the one in the bed and he was the one bringing flowers. Life wasn't fair, and neither was Death.)
Later, though, his brother didn't ask as much.
At first they said, "Minor injuries – shrapnel, that's all. We're keeping him here just to make sure. Not life threatening." But they kept him there and kept him there, while the other men with minor injuries got to escape the room full of hovering Death. And the flowers got rotten and the stench of Death started to sneak in.
(His brother had always been so pale, and now his brother was as white as the skeletons he was still pulling out of the rubble.)
Not that they'd ever been so very close, but he was out doing something, something at least, and all his brother could do was lie in the room with only Death for company. He knew Death quite well already, had gotten to know her during the war. Just a little idea - maybe she would prefer his company to his brother's. But no matter how many times he visited, Death loved his brother more.
They stopped saying minor injuries and started saying things like, "Infection. Weak immune system. His type often don't live long – "
His brother became hot to touch, Death burning up his insides. She left two kisses on his cheeks, feverish spots of pink. Nobody wants Death's love. Now his brother asked things like, "What happened to that kid? The one who liked you? Italian, right?"
And his stomach tightened inside and he had to say, "Captured by the Americans back in '43. I haven't seen him since. Don't you remember?"
And his brother said, "Oh…" and looked over at the flowers, the blue blue flowers. They were already starting to wilt.
Someone cried out from another bed, someone Death would probably take more quickly, more greedily. Death was taking his brother selfishly, a piece at a time instead of all at once.
They told him, "Surprised he's hung on this long, actually."
"Then maybe he won't –" Death was too close to risk calling her name. "He'll get better?"
They gave him kind looks and shook their heads.
His brother knew, of course. He knew how close Death was holding him, so close to in her fatal embrace. But he wouldn't take the last step himself. Death would have to do that if she wanted him!
"Anyway," his brother said, "In Germany, you can't afford to die. Especially not now. Are you going to try and pay for my casket with cigarettes or something?"
"You're not going to need a casket," he said, alarmed, then flushed when his brother threw him a dirty look. Don't lie. He went to go sniff the flowers. They just smelled the same as the rest of the room. Death everywhere.
"Build the casket yourself, then," his brother grumbled. "And cover it with those cornflowers you like so much."
He didn't point out that it was his brother who loved the blue cornflowers. After all, they both knew.
It occurred to him that for all their show of color, the flowers in a vase are already dead. He stopped bringing them. Better not to invite Death.
"Back during the war –" he had said.
"I don't want to talk about the war." His brother was staring at the ceiling. "You're the one with the thing about Death, for chrissakes. Why would you bring up the war? That's like Death's field day. Death probably had a party back during the war."
He swallowed hard and stared down at the floor. Without looking away from the ceiling, his brother made a disgusted noise. "Don't cry in front of me. Honestly."
Then things went wrong with the medicine and the antibiotics and they said, "We're sorry for your loss. If we only had more resources – "
He said, "I understand. Thank you for all your time." (To Death he said nothing. Does the loser speak to the winner in such a game? And then again, Death always won in the end.) He went to go build a coffin. You could find a lot of scrap wood in the rubble.
With the cornflowers around him, his brother's skin seemed clean instead of sickly. He looked too pure for Death's taste, but Death is, of course, only interested in the living.
And he didn't cry in front of him, and he gathered up the wet cornflowers and threw them in the grave while the sun beat down.
They were already wilting, but you couldn't tell from up here.
Cornflowers are usually called Bachelor's Buttons in America. In Germany, they're associated with Prussia. Also, "Cornflower Blue" is the color of the Prussian military uniforms.
I dunno if it's really important, but for this I went with the fanon idea that Prussia is an albino, since it gave me an excuse to have him not in the army as well as get sick more easily.