Mornings were always the hardest for Feliciano Veneziano Vargas. He would wake to the cruel calling of one of the upper prisoners, stomach shrinking on itself. He would wake to the cramped space of a single bunk: a bunk shared by fifteen men. His brother, Romano, would wake just after him, grumbling curses in their native tongue. This morning was no different from the rest.

"Cazzo questo," rolled off of Romano's tongue. Straightening up, Feli noticed one of the other prisoner's accidentally collapse onto Romano's back. "Merda," Romano cursed again and scrambled out from underneath the man's light weight.

Feli and Romano stood side-by-side in the rows, not daring to share a glance. Feli's fingers itched to hold Romano's hand. He was afraid. He was always terrified. The soldier entered the small, cramped, disease-filled room and began ordering men up one by one, name ringing out in the horrified air.

Some names were German, some were distinctly Jewish, and then some were the names that rolled fluidly off the tongue: Romano's and Feli's. Feli was called up first like he was every morning. Standing in front of the doctor, he forced himself to meet the man's eyes. He straightened his back and tensed his shoulders. The pen flicked to the other side of the room.

Feli's heart thudded painfully with the knowledge that he would make it through another day. Romano's name was next. The doctor examined Romano with contempt. Romano was known for starting fights over food in the barracks. He would die before Feli, surely. Romano kept this from Feli.

The pen flicked to the side of the room where Feli stood. Romano joined his brother wordlessly, and Feli finally managed a sweet feeling of relief. His brother, too, was allowed another day. Standing so close together that it couldn't be seen, Feli clutched in terror onto Romano's hand behind their backs.

One of the other men, the one after Romano, was called by his name. "Hemkst, Wilhelm." The man, contrary to his German name, had dark hair and dark eyes.

His shoulders were frail, like a bird's, and he shook from exhaustion even more than Feli had shaken from fear when his brother had stood under that decisive stare. The pen flicked outside. The man opened his mouth in wordless protest. The soldiers standing beside the doctor dragged him out, ignoring his feverish pleas in German for mercy.

It continued like this for a good hour, maybe two. When the men were dismissed for their hard labor, Feli and Romano were separated to their different jobs. Feli went to the so-called "graveyard". A shovel in his blistered hands, he began to dig routinely with the other prisoners.

Meanwhile, Romano was sent to the crematoriums, where he fed the fires the bodies with sickening disgust. He considered himself lucky, nonetheless. He didn't belong to the crematorium next door, where the children were fed to the licking flames alive and very much aware of the agony of it all. Even so, he could still hear the screams and groans of those poor victims. The bodies he shoveled into the ovens let him think of how, every morning, it could be Feli or himself in those ashes.

… … …

Feli loved looking at the sky while he worked. Sometimes, though it wasn't often, a bird would fly overhead. Feli would think of how free the bird was, how light its feathers must be to its unburdened body. He wanted to fly himself and Romano away from this place, back to beautiful Italy where the music filled the streets and the weather wasn't so bitterly cold.

"Keep digging," a sore voice whispered from beside him.

Feli stared in shock at his digging partner, who was in no better shape than Wilhelm Hemkst had been that morning when his fate had been decided with a mere flick of a pen. Feli hadn't realized that he had stopped digging. Hurriedly, he continued on with his job.

Romano had always complained at how distracted Feli was: thinking when he shouldn't be and refraining from work when he should be working hard. Feli knew that Romano doubted how long Feli would hold on to life under these harsh conditions. He wanted not only to prove to his brother that he could do it, but he didn't want to die.

Before this, Feli thought that everyone loved children. Seeing when the bullets had sprayed into the crowd, and children had fallen to sleep in crimson lakes, Feli now realized that he had entered a world where there was no exclusive love for children. When people cried out from the pain of a beating, a woman crying as she was brutally raped, Feli knew that he had entered a heartless world.

As much as Romano had tried to protect his brother before now, he knew it was hopeless to shield his younger brother from evil in such a place. Feli had taken it oddly well, with a horrified numbness that shocked away the tears and the wails of loss. Feli had only whimpered in blind terror as he cowered with Romano.

"I want to fly like the birds," Feli whispered, stealing another glance at the winter clouds stacked high above, just like the foul-smelling smoke from the chimneys. The man didn't reply.

Feli turned, confused. Usually, the other man muttered something in response. To his horror, the man wasn't standing anymore. He was slumped against the ground, eyes closed and wheezing. Feli bent down to his knees, abandoning his shovel.

"Get up," Feli tried urging the man. "Come on; don't get the soldiers' attention on us! We'll get in so much trouble! Wake up, please. Per favore?"

"Sie! Halten sie graben!" the harsh voice of a German cut through the air.

Feli, who didn't know a single word in German other than 'links' for sinsitra and 'recht' for destra, knew that those angry words were directed at him and his partner. He shook his partner even more, not minding that he was now screaming for his partner to move in a mix of Italian and slanged English.

The click of a gun sent him to his knees, facing the armed man, begging and pleading for his life. The soldier's steely gaze was trained on Feli's panic-stricken features. "Halten sie graben," the man repeated in a growling shout.

Guessing wildly, Feli dove for his shovel and continued digging through his measured sobs. The man walked away, Feli could hear from the footsteps, and Feli let his sobs ring out. The man beside Feli rustled and went to move closer to the terrified Italian. A loud bang rang through the air, and the man crippled.

Feli wondered what had happened, searching the man's wide eyes, before he saw the dark stain of black creeping through the ragged fabric of the striped clothing. It was blood, and the ugliest blood Feli had ever seen. It was nothing like the blood he saw when he scraped his knee running through the streets of Palermo with Romano. It was dark, ugly, and evil.

Feli gasped and quickly resumed digging, trying to close his eyes to the poor man dead beside him. He flinched when the body was torn away from the hole, and Feli risked a glance upwards. It was the German soldier, holding Feli at point blank.

"Halten sie graben," the man shouted one last time before stomping off.

Feli didn't hesitate to continue digging. Now, without a partner, he wasn't working as fast. When the soldiers stopped by, they would yell and shoot off blanks into the air. At least, that's what Feli told himself resolutely. They were just blanks, they were just blanks. They weren't firing real bullets into the beautiful, blue sky. They couldn't be shattering the clouds to let that blue sky show through. They wanted his day to be grey, like the cold.

When the day ended, Feli was given only half of his usual rations. It wasn't nearly enough to last him through the night for inspection tomorrow. He shook on the bunk, squished by all fourteen other men. He shook with terror from the gun that had been pointed at him, grief for the man he never knew, and for fear of what the next day would bring.

Romano had noticed his brother's unusual silence. Most nights, Feli would try to keep the other men's spirits high by telling tales of Italy in as much English as he could muster. Feli met his brother's green gaze and fell into the arms of family with shaking sobs.

"What happened?" Romano whispered into Feli's hair.

Feli only sobbed harder, and Romano knew without asking that it had been just too rough of a day. Hiding an exhausted sigh, he split his food rations in half and gave some of his bread slice to Feli.

"Here, Feliciano," Romano urged, "mangiare."

Feli shakingly took the piece of bread that could only satisfy two bites. Tears streaming down his once-pretty cheeks, he ate the moldy bread through chokes and weeps.

"You have to be stronger," Romano chided him, trying to pretend to be angry like he always had done back home. "We've lived through the Mafia, haven't we? What's a concentration camp compared to the black market streets of Palermo?"

Feli didn't answer. The Mafia had never been this brutal. All they had done was give the brothers a few cuts from knives to remember them by. Feli's had already healed completely.

"Romano," Feli whispered. "I'm scared."

Romano didn't reply at first. He reached out to lightly touch Feli's shoulder. "I know," he replied. "This won't last forever, Feli. It can't last more than a year, can it? The Allies are working to overthrow Hitler and that damn Mussolini. They will win. The Allies have America, don't they? America will help win this war."

Feli shivered. "Mussolini is our prime minister, Romano," he murmured. "How can we go against him?"

Romano glared at his naïve brother. "Mussolini sold us and our country to Hitler. He betrayed all of Italy, Feliciano. There were reasons why we joined the Resistenza Italia. We did it for our country. We are here out of loyalty to our country. We'll get out of here because we were loyal to our country when no one else was."

Feli's bottom lip trembled. "But they've taken over France," he sobbed, hiding his face in his arms. "They've taken over Poland, and Austria, and Hungary. They've taken over Italy, and most of Denmark. How can America help us now? They're an ocean away!"

Romano did not break. "England still stands," he insisted. "And Russia, the bastardos, is giving these damn Nazis enough trouble at their Eastern front. America has bases in England, remember? Canada is there, too. This won't last long, Feli. It won't last long at all. We'll be free like your stupid birds in a year, I guarantee."

… … …

Feli learned two years later, in 1942, that this was going to take a long time. It was when he was torn apart from his brother. It was when Romano was deported to Auschwitz. He remembered the terror in Romano's green eyes when Feli's name was skipped, but Romano's name was called.

Feli sat in his bunk, crying loudly throughout the whole night since his brother was not there anymore to reassure him or hold him through the nights after a bad day. He sat in his bunk, crying loudly at how he would probably never see his brother again. He sat in his bunk, crying loudly, that he couldn't remember Italy before the war anymore with someone he loved.

A month later, when the grief wore off and settled to a dull ache in his chest at constant times and tightness in his throat that never let him speak, Feli decided that it wasn't all too bad. Another member of the Resistenza, a Spaniard, had been deported to Auschwitz along with his brother. As much as Romano hated Spaniards, he preferred Antonio over the mass of Germans. He would have a friend there.

Feli, otherwise, had no one except himself, memories of his beautiful Italia, and memories of the rare times when Romano would crack a smile or laugh.

He got through the days by pretending that he was just back in Italy, running around to do whatever Romano told him to do. He tried to not cower before the Germans, and to do his work as hard as he could.

Feli sought to help the elder prisoners, who got a bit more food and more privileges, so that they would share food with him. When he would eat an extra mouthful or two of crumbled, soggy bread and an extra scoop of soup, Feli would try to resist sharing with the others who were skinnier than him.

But he didn't. He had to be strong for his country, for Romano, and for the Resistenza. He held Romano's words to heart; he would live through this because of his undying loyalty for his country.

Life ran as smoothly as it could in Dachau. He was alive, and he wasn't as skinny as most. The doctor didn't hesitate to spare his life every morning now. When he worked at digging, he felt stronger than the man next to him. It saved his life, not being the weakest one.

And yet, well as he was doing, he could not save himself from the random victims the guards chose. He could not save himself if he accidentally strolled a bit too close to the fence, like some prisoners made the fatal mistake of doing. He could not save himself from the camp's commandant; a brutal man who liked to watch the blood pour out of the victims he selected at random to die at firing squad.

Feli shivered through the cold night, hearing many of the other prisoners coughing and wheezing. He couldn't save himself from typhoid either.