Why this fic: I wrote this fic for myself and anyone who watched the DC "Crisis" Crossover episodes and went "WHAT THE HECK" when our heroes just abandoned an entire world under the control of actual Nazis. I also wrote it to explain why General Schott is so angry and apparently uncooperative, because I think he deserves a little bit of credit for leading the last stronghold of defiance in a world ruled by hate.

Notes: [a] The first half is complete canon with a little embellishment for set-up and explanatory purposes. The second, longer half, is extra-canon for satisfaction. [b] I am aware that Kara and Alex are not from Earth One, but seeing as no one points this out to the Freedom Fighters in the episode, I don't bring it up either. [c] While I have no idea what Snart will be doing with his new time-traveling buddies, I imagine he'll end up back home at some point for some reason. [d] I started writing this before the release of the animated series about the Ray, so I hold zero accountability for any lack of continuity with that show, or any of the others for that matter. It worked when I wrote it. [e] Lastly, the headings are Fall Out Boy lyrics, because I'm basic.

Disclaimer: I really like General Schott.

Length / Further disclaimer: This ended up waaaay longer than I intended, at just under 20k words. Ha. But it's broken up into shorter bits within the three sections I've posted it in.

Warnings: mild swearing and violence associated with, well, anything that comes to mind when you have Nazis and then go around killing the Nazis. I don't like gore, all descriptive language is mild.

The Rest of the War, Pt 1:

Bring Home the Boys in Scraps, Scrap Metal the Tanks

Thirty-six hours since the Führer had seized the gateway. Twenty-four hours since Leo was sent to find Ray Terrill. Apparently, that was all the time it took for the hell they were all living in to drop to a new level of insane.

"General Schott." One of the rebel technicians, a lieutenant in the ranks, crossed the room from her station to where Schott stood staring at the table spread with scale buildings, outposts, and all the beginnings of strategies he'd already abandoned hours before.

"What is it?" He leveled the tech with a steady gaze, letting her know she had better not be wasting his time.

She held a communication module in her left hand, various readouts scrolling across its busy screen. "Snart has returned, and he has Terrill with him."

Schott dropped his head and exhaled deeply. He hadn't been worried, or he hadn't thought he was worried – Leo was an intelligent fighter, if also a complete, raving lunatic, and could hold his own. Still, Schott ordered him to rescue Ray only because he knew if he didn't, Leo would have gone anyway and done something incredibly stupid. It was a relief, in either case, to know that at least one small mission was a success. Small victories were a precious reward of late and he would take every one that came.

"Something more, sir," the lieutenant pressed. Schott focused on her again. "He brought back others too, claiming they're from another earth – that they came through the gateway – and I've never seen the like of them before. Like Ray, but…different."

Schott frowned. "What? Who?" What had Leo done? One mission, one simple get in and get out, and he'd gone and made it complicated, and who knew what consequences this could have. "Are they already in the tower?" he asked, moving away from the table.

"They're on their way up now," she said. "We don't know who they are, only that they were rescued with Terrill. Except, sir." She hesitated. He knew that tone, he'd heard it for years: she was about to tell him something he wouldn't like. "One of them… it's not him, but it looks like… he looks like the Führer, General. He could be his twin."

Schott clenched his hands into fists the moment the title 'Führer' had left her lips. It took a concentrated effort to relax them again. He cleared his throat and when he spoke again, his voice was dangerously low. "Looks like? Looks like, and you just let them pass through?"

The woman had the grace to look nervous now, her eyes touching everything in the room before meeting his own. "Snart vouched for him, says he's a double. From… from another earth, sir."

Schott blinked at her. "Another earth," he repeated.

She shifted her feet. "Yes, sir."

"Back to your station, lieutenant." The order sounded like a rebuke.

"Sir." She spun around and beat a hasty retreat, probably regretting the choice to be the one to tell him his men were returning with the twin of the one person he most wanted dead.

"Lieutenant!" he called after her, stopping her. She looked back and Schott swallowed, his jaw tight around the next words he spoke. "Is there any news of James?"

She shook her head slowly. "Nothing, sir. It is difficult to…" The woman gathered herself and her self-respect on the heels of his dismissal. "It is difficult to ascertain exactly how the Nazis took the gateway, and we have only recovered a few of the fighters who were with Guardian when they lost the compound. There has been no sign of him."

"No body, you mean." A fool's hope was still hope, and he had always been the fool.

"No, sir."

If he lost James, he lost his right hand. Their fight might never recover, not now that the enemy also held the gateway. As soon as the enemy understood the mechanism and how to control it… their reach would extend past any and every border, and he wouldn't be able to stop them.

"Sir, about Guardian… I'm–"

"Go." He cut her off before the word 'sorry' could betray the truth they all feared. She stammered something and he waved his arm at her. "Go."

He turned back to the table and its hopeless array of obstacles and reminders of death. It was time for a contingency plan: he was without his friend, his brother. It was time to make the Führer lose something too.

The temporal gateway had been the first true chance of ending the war they had seen in years. Not even the general whose shoes Schott now filled had been able to come so close. If they could truly make it work, then they could travel to another world, another universe. They could escape, closing the door behind them so that the Reich could never follow. They would live again, smile again. They would stand in the open and look to the sky with no fear of being seen, no fear of the enemy dropping from the clouds to slaughter them, no fear of capture and torture and death.

Freedom.

He had clung to that for what felt like a lifetime. Among their ranks were only a handful of scientists capable of understanding the theories of a hypothetical machine that would breach the cloth of their world and allow them to step into a new one. And by the time they got close, the Führer found out. It was hard to hide a machine that was capable of ripping through a piece of the universe. And now that the Reich had it, with their dozens of physicists and specialists… the Resistance had already done half the work, and now the Reich would finish it. Instead of being the source of freedom and escape, now the Nazi regime could spread.

Worse, they could take their terrible Weapon, the thing the Resistance only heard whispers of, and send it anywhere they pleased. Everything, and everyone would die, until only the Reich remained.

He wasn't going to let that happen, no matter how much it cost, and no matter if he was the last one standing against the Führer.

The Resistance had almost failed at the fall of the last general.

General Schott had no plans of falling now.

Forty hours since he had last spoken to James and approximately ten minutes after he made the decision they all knew he was going to make, Schott heard the voices of new conversation in the tower base. He didn't want to join them, didn't want to see the face that matched that of the Führer and hold himself back from shooting the man then and there, doppelganger or not, but he could see the eyes of his fighters flickering to him as the gang of newcomers made their way to the center of the room, and he felt their uncertainty. They were on the verge of breaking every day, they needed to know he wasn't giving up.

The appearance of these strangers did not change what he had to do, what he had known he would do the minute news reached him that the Führer, his wife, and Thawne had all gone through the portal. He'd held back, he couldn't stomach the idea of destroying what they had worked so hard to build, but the choice had been made for him. The strangers could choose to help, or he would have them safely tucked away until it was done.

Schott made his way from the edge of the tower room toward the center, where he could see the motley crew walking in, pausing to discuss something. Leo and Ray appeared uninjured, as did the rest. Another small mercy.

The group was animated, arguing. They were talking about the gateway.

Of course they were.

It wasn't hard to connect the dots. The facility was taken, the temporal gateway confiscated, and now strangers claiming to be from another world – like Ray, like the Führer's Thawne – showed up in the Führer's prison camp. They had come from somewhere else, maybe from Ray's Earth One, maybe from wherever it was that the Führer had gone. They had powers, if the lieutenant's impression was correct, and looking at their strange and colored uniforms, that was easy enough to believe.

They wanted the portal. They wanted to go home.

Too late for that, Schott thought, coming up behind them. Far too late.

They still saw the gateway as something good, something worth fighting to save, because they didn't know what the fighters did: that everything the Führer touched was already destroyed.

The argument was escalating, with the strangers rebelling against Ray and Leo, even though the latter was looking sympathetic. Schott had to kill their idea before it took any deeper root.

"Look," one man in red was saying to Leo. "It's our only way home. We're going through it." He stated it like a fact, like he thought he was in charge.

"Nobody's going through anything," Schott announced, interrupting the debate. All eyes in the group fell on him. "Because we're blowing it the hell up."

The woman in tactical gear looked shocked, a light of recognition in her wide eyes. "Winn?!"

Schott bristled at the familiarity, and at how she could possibly know his name when he had never seen her in his life. A very select group of people were allowed to call him by his first name, and this woman did not make the list.

Leo jumped to correct her, sliding over to stand by Schott. Ray joined them as well, and Schott felt a slight comfort in having the two men at his side again. "Please," Leo said in the deliberate, sliding tone he often employed to make his point to a particularly slow listener. "Freedom Fighter General Schott." There was altogether too much pride in the way he announced Schott's title, as if it somehow held honor.

The correction only made the woman's eyebrows leap higher up her forehead. "General Schott?"

He was not in the mood for these games. "Yeah, and who are you?" he demanded.

Leo answered for her, earning himself a glare, but that didn't stop him. "Friends, from Earth One."

"They're on our side," Ray added.

"Except for the part where you guys want to blow up our only way home," another of the strangers said.

Schott considered him. He was the youngest of the entire group, barely more than a kid, and beneath the bluster of indignation, he looked scared. Schott took them all in, except for one man in the back whose face Schott refused to acknowledge for the moment. He needed to focus. They couldn't have the gateway, and he was wasting time.

"We don't exactly want to," Leo pointed out thoughtfully. Schott cast him a look. This wasn't helping.

The man in red, a bright bolt of lightning emblazoned on his chest, had been the one to declare their intentions of going through and he wasn't ready to back down. He held himself like a leader, which Schott could respect, but this man had no authority here. "Everybody we care about is on the other side of that gateway," he explained. "Imprisoned by Nazis."

There was some comfort hearing that the promised escape they could have had was not a perfect one, if the Führer's men could take control of this other earth so easily. It made what he had to do easier.

"They're Nazis that want to cut open my sister," the first woman said. Her eyes were pleading with him. He returned her gaze with nothing showing in his own. "We have to get back."

The oldest of the group, a white-haired and bespectacled man who looked more like a scientist than a soldier, became agitated. "Eliminate that facility and you eliminate our only chance of saving our friends from your enemies!"

Schott stopped them, one hand out, placating. His rebuttal, however, was anything but gentle. "I'm sorry, but we have been waiting for an opportunity like this for years, we cannot wait any longer." This last part he directed at Leo, who seemed so very inclined to agree with the strangers. "This is our only chance to separate the Führer from his army," he continued forcefully. "We are trying to turn this war around!"

The one man in the room who Schott had done his best to ignore from the start, broke through the invisible barrier Schott had erected between them, stepping forward and aiming angry words in his direction, matching Schott's raised voice. "You are going to leave our earth at the mercy of the three psychopaths who have ravaged yours!"

The man's face was undeniably familiar, the same features, the same eyes. He even wore the apparel of an archer. Schott's stomach twisted in his gut. Hatred for that face rising like bile and leaving a hot and bitter taste in his mouth. Memories, images of faces – his parents, his general, and his Lyra – came unbidden and he was unprepared for the emptiness and rage they summoned. And the fear. He couldn't concentrate on the argument with the Führer's exact face mere feet from him. One bullet from the gun at his hip, and this man would be dead. Schott's fingers itched to pull the trigger. His hands trembled with all the violent things they wanted to do.

When he managed to speak, less than a second had passed, but it felt like he had been staring at the man in silence for an eternity, and he couldn't keep the cold hate from underscoring his words, even as he kept their volume low. "Ray, why does this man look exactly like the Führer I am trying to kill?"

Ray knew how the other universe worked. Schott didn't. Were there doubles of all of them? Or had this man been designed only to torment them with his presence like his counterpart did with his war?

"Look, Fingerless Gloves," the woman dressed in white said. Schott felt the jab take away the immediate wrath he felt towards the Führer's double, and only just stopped himself from pointing out the severe impracticality of her own rather revealing and now-filthy outfit. Some, like her, dressed to show off while others, like the Freedom Fighters, dressed to hide - his gloves could at least cover some of this war's scars. "All we are asking is for a little bit of time. Let us get into the facility and through that gateway."

"The gateway is guarded by 30 Panzer XIIs, 50 Sturmtigers, and 100 Schutzstaffel officers," Leo rattled off. He wasn't taking sides again yet, but it was a good point to make. "Not the best odds, maybe."

Not for this strange crew, Schott thought.

"I'll take them." The woman who wanted to save her sister had hardly looked away from Schott since he walked up and he focused back on her now. She looked fragile enough to break, and sharp enough to pierce. They all had the appearance of fighters, but she was the one who looked the most like a soldier.

She was also, clearly, insane.

"No!" he insisted, shaking his head. "You will not." How did she not understand that what was at stake was so much bigger than one person? Or a dozen or even a hundred? He was tired of this argument, and they were wasting precious time. Who knew when the Führer might return, whether he would bring the weapon back to destroy them once and for all, or surprise them with some new unspeakable evil.

He turned to Leo and Ray. It didn't matter what these strangers wanted, or how sympathetic Leo was to them; his men had to follow his command.

"We are blowing up that gateway, right now. Final order."

He left them before another argument could be raised.

Forty-one hours since his last communication with James, thirty minutes after he had given his command to Leo and Ray, and twenty minutes after the technicians had begun preparing his best bet at destroying the gateway, the woman who was both soldier and sister found him once again standing over the table of his strategy board. Alex, they had told him her name was.

It didn't take a genius to surmise why she wanted to talk to him. He didn't want to argue; didn't want to tell them he couldn't afford them their own hopes. His world mattered more than the life of one person, and it always would.

"You don't seem to know how to take an order." There was a weariness in him he could feel weighing on his shoulders, seeping into his bones.

"That's because I'm used to giving them," she explained. "You can't do this, Winn."

There it was again. Winn. He rounded on her angrily, correcting her. "General. Schott!" Winn did not exist here, not anymore.

Alex looked taken aback, but she didn't back down.

He didn't know her. She didn't know him, and he was not about to let her pretend like she did. "Look I don't know who the hell you think you are, but this planet has been at war for generations. We are tired," he spat the last word like a curse. "There are men dying for the same causes their grandfathers did." His right arm gestured behind him at the empty room, as if he could conjure the ghosts of all the people who had fought and died before him. Still, her expression remained unchanged, she couldn't understand, and he gave a disgusted sigh before moving away.

The Red Tornado would be ready soon. He had been saving the drone for a while, using it to help in reconnaissance or air support, but always with protection. It was a powerful weapon, and one that, before now, he didn't think they could afford to lose. As soon as the techs gave him the word, the Tornado would be launched at the portal and the Führer would be trapped a long, long distance away.

Alex hadn't left. She followed him around the table. "We're not asking you to surrender," she pleaded. "Just let us get back home before you destroy that thing!"

He didn't answer. She wouldn't listen.

Alex persisted. "I'm just asking for a little time."

That was enough. He was done arguing. "Time is what I can't give you!"

She still somehow looked surprised. Almost sad, even. Whoever this Winn was on her earth, he must be a very different person. Maybe generations of war hadn't eaten away at the man from her side, leaving only a uniform and a bullet-laced heart that continued to bleed.

For the sake of the Winn she knew, and the man he might have been if he had been given any other path, Schott gave her one last chance to see what he saw, to know why he had to destroy what had once been their greatest hope. "They have a weapon," he said. "A doomsday weapon. Powerful enough to affect other worlds." Yours, he thought. And mine. "It has to be eliminated."

"Winn." Alex said, and she grabbed his arm. His whole body stiffened instantly and he forced out a long exhale, restraining himself from jerking away from her. No one touched him, no one dared. No one had been so comfortable, or comforting, around him – not since Lyra.

"Please," she said. "The Führer on your earth, the people that you hate, they are going to kill my sister if you don't let me get back to save her."

There would be no reasoning with her. He would have her locked up until this was over if necessary. While her sister, her family, was in jeopardy, nothing else would seem to matter; and while he didn't blame her, it made her a risk.

"On my earth," she continued, "my sister is your closest friend. She's saved you countless times. You would do anything to help her."

He had done anything, and everything, to help the people he loved. So far, none of it had mattered. Their faces were always in front of his eyes, the weight of their presence filling every room he walked into. He couldn't listen to Alex as she stood next to him, begging for someone else's life, another life he could not save, when the echoes of all he used to know were still a deafening ring in his ears.

"You would do anything to help each other," Alex insisted. "No matter the risk, and without question." Her desperation thundered in every word, both alien and all too familiar. "So. All I'm asking for is a chance."

Alex reached for his arm again and this time he did pull away from her, but it was more of a withdraw than a recoil. "Please," she whispered.

"I am sorry about your sister," Schott told her softly, earnestly, hoping she could see he meant that. "And about your earth. I truly am. But today I have the chance to protect my people, my earth." He checked her eyes for any sign of comprehension, of knowing the magnitude of the choices he made every day. All he saw was her pain. "My decision stands."

"Winn," she called after him as he walked away.

But he was not her Winn, and he did not break his stride.

The Red Tornado would be ready or nearly so. He left her at his table of failed strategy and discarded hopes. He had a war to finish.

He stepped into the elevator and felt himself deflate as the doors closed him off from the room at the top of the tower. Rubbing a hand over his face, he closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Alex needed to get out of his head. There was no way in this or any universe that he would stop a war to save someone's lost sister – except, apparently, the universe this sister belonged to – but that didn't stop her pleas from affecting him. It wasn't that he was apathetic to her cause, just that he felt too strongly about his own.

His earth, he had said. His people. Even if no one else claimed them, he would.

When he stepped out of the elevator into the weaponry, he saw one of the communication officers standing at the edge of the room and waved them to him.

"General."

"Do we have any word yet from Guardian?" he asked.

The officer didn't even have to check the logs before he was already shaking his head. "The recovery troops are working slowly. They are bringing bodies back as they can, but most are inside the facility compound. The soldiers of the Reich have either gotten rid of them, or…" The officer shook his head. The man had large dark circles under his eyes, and the whites around his pupils were bloodshot. It was, again, somehow comforting to know that Schott wasn't the only one not sleeping. "Or, they might be keeping them as trophies."

Schott swallowed against the acrid taste that had been lingering in his mouth and nodded once. They should have heard something from James by now, but the lack of a body, and the lack of the Reich sending missives to lord over their triumph, still gave him reason to believe his friend could have survived. If anyone could, it was James.

"Let the fighters outside know we are preparing to launch."

"Sir." The officer nodded back and turned, already talking and typing through the command modules and communications.

Schott moved his attention to the metal figure standing in the center of the room, surrounded by technicians and fighters.

The Red Tornado they called it, and despite its age and how it was a little worse for wear, the gleam of its eyes still held fire. Schott had been told he liked collecting dangerous things from a young age. His father believed it was because he had been a small and frankly sickly child, terrified of the chaos around him, and had drawn upon other things as protection from the offensive world he had been born into. From slingshots and stones and firecrackers, a young Schott had graduated to guns, knives, and armor. His father worked in a factory that made weapons, before he fell out of standing with the Reich, and he occasionally brought home some new device to show a wide-eyed, fierce little boy.

That boy had grown into a soldier, and the weapons had grown with him. The drone before him now was the third best weapon in his arsenal, and he counted Leo Snart and Ray Terrill as the first two. James was also a weapon, the difference being that Schott valued his friendship and head for strategy over his skills in a fight.

But the picture here was wrong.

"Why has it not been moved outside yet?" he demanded of the room, quickly covering the distance between the elevator and the drone in quick strides. Schott was not an intimidating figure by size, he was smaller than most of his men. But he had been told more than once that his presence made most uncomfortable. Unwavering, a fixated stare, head up and brow low – there was never a question of who was in charge.

"General," Leo Snart's voice came from behind the Tornado. Ray stepped out from behind Leo, looking, for lack of a better word, sheepish.

Schott stopped in front of the drone and set his weight back on his heels, folding his arms over his chest. This would be good.

"We have a war to win," Leo said, starting off well. "But… so do they."

"They have one girl to save," Schott retorted. "A girl who matters absolutely nothing to any person on this planet, or at least not any who belong here."

"Oh, that's harsh," Leo winced. He cast a significant look at Ray.

Schott waved at the fighters around him to stop being an audience to the dispute and get back to their work. They could finish sending the Tornado outside to be launched while he argued his own men back into place. "Ray, you know that you are welcome here. You're a part of this world for however long you stay on it and after. But if Leo hadn't come for you, if I hadn't sent him, you would understand why."

Ray nodded. "Of course, but we–"

"I don't remember this being a question up for debate." His words were pointed. Ray looked chagrined, but Leo was the obstinate of the two. He was the only person Schott knew who matched his own stubbornness. "I am not sacrificing the one solid move we have left, for one stranger who got herself caught in the crossfire!"

"You don't even know who the girl is," Leo said.

Schott's eyebrows rose. Among all their ranks, it was Leo Snart's complete incorrigible audacity that was also the only thing capable of making Schott laugh, but those qualities were giving him a headache now. He put on a thin smile that did not even begin to reach his eyes. "Enlighten me."

"She's not just a random person, she's a hero on her earth. She is as powerful as the Führer's wife. If they lose her, they lose a great protector. If we help save her, we may gain a formidable ally. She protects her earth the same way we fight for ours."

"There was someone as powerful as her here, remember," Schott spat. "And I do not recall that timid journalist doing anything to help when we went asking." On the contrary, the distant cousin of the enemy general had taken his payout from the Führer and disappeared. Hiding, or taken out by his cousin as collateral, Schott neither knew or particularly cared.

"General, they just need a little time," Leo said, changing tact. "We've held out this long, we can hold out a little longer. Allow them the chance to save the people they love, save their own world. Do you think the Führer won't hurt them if we strand him on their side, and leave the only ones who know why stranded on ours?

Schott gritted his teeth. "You should not have delayed the Tornado's launch. The Führer could return at any second." Pent-up energy led him to pace a few short steps, a small circle bringing him back to face them. One hand remained at his side, always near his gun, while the other gestured in Leo's direction. "He could activate his weapon whenever he wants, Leo. And the only reason we're still alive to have this conversation is because he's distracted on some other planet." He shook his head, bowing it, voice lowered. Did they think he liked the choice he made? "We destroy the portal to their earth, we save ours."

"Can you live with that?" Leo asked.

Schott looked up at him sharply. "Excuse me?"

Ray even put a hand up to stop him, but the expression in Leo's icy eyes was fierce, and he ignored them both. "We've done a lot here," Leo continued. "We have fought, and we have killed, and we have lost. Some of us have been lucky enough to find some light still in this world. And some of us… some of us have lived long enough to see those lights snuffed out."

Ray wouldn't hold Schott's gaze, though Leo never broke contact.

They knew. Of all the men who stood with the Freedom Fighters, these two knew. They had been told about his parents: a German father, a Jewish mother, gone when his father ceased being useful to the Reich and their marriage was discovered. Leo had been there when the previous general, the man who had in large part raised Schott, had been taken by the Sturmbannführer, Lance. Ray and Leo both had stood in the tower as the face of the Führer filled the communication screen, transmitting a feed from the Nazi camp a few miles away: Lyra held before him like some prize, the terror in her eyes matched only by the venom she still fought against him with... even as he brought the gun to her head.

Schott turned his back to his men, stepped away, and placed his palms on the edge of a control console, supporting a weight that was suddenly far heavier than his own. It didn't matter to him that they knew about the crack Leo's words had just opened, but he would rather they didn't see it openly displayed on his face. By the time Leo and Ray joined him, one on either side, his expression was carefully composed. Hard obstinance covered the crack.

"We have lost so much," Ray said, far more softly than Leo. He had always been able to tell when the ghosts were at their closest. "This entire world that we are protecting? I don't know how much of it is left to be saved. But their world? They are free on their world. General, they won the war that we are fighting."

"You won the war," Schott cut in. "On your world."

Ray acknowledged this with a nod. "This isn't about that. Earth One isn't my home any more than here. If we help them, if they succeed… isn't that important too, isn't protecting what is still there to be saved just as important as avenging what is lost?"

Schott knew what he would give to have back the people he had lost – anything. Would he give the victory, the entire war, for just a moment longer with his parents, with his mentor, with his love? He didn't know, he couldn't see that, he could only see the void they left and the war that filled it.

"You know what the fighters are saying," Leo said. "What the mothers whisper to their children when they think no one is listening." He set his shoulders, forcing a stoic, carefree front, the way he always did when he was actually experiencing emotion. "They say we died a long time ago, and that this is just what comes after. You keep trying to give them hope, we do too, but then these strangers – these people who have hope – arrive, and you're just going to ignore them? They are hope, General. It's possible that their salvation can be ours."

Alex's words, begging him to allow her to rescue her sister, telling him he was connected to them in some other reality, met all of Leo's arguments now. Whoever it was he had turned into, he didn't like the damaged goods he saw. Because the truth remained that they could not take the risk. However, he also couldn't afford to continue standing here arguing with Leo until he won or the cold man went off and did something incredibly stupid with that ice gun of his. He wished, not for the first time, that he could ask the advice of the general who had gone before him.

Schott sighed. "I cannot give up this chance for the possibility that saving them could help us, or believe that somehow it could redeem what we've done to get us this far," he told his two men quietly, shooting stern glares at both of them. "I won't."

Leo's face tightened into sharpness, and Ray's shoulders slumped.

"But." Schott waved at the same communication officer he had spoken to before, who had assisted in finally removing the Red Tornado from the room, and the fighter joined them with a questioning look. "I can give you an hour."

Leo's thin lips spread into a smile.

"That's all," Schott added tersely. He was making a mistake. But somewhere, on some other earth, was someone else who still had family and friends, and nights of laughter, and relaxation, and sleep without nightmares. And maybe, he supposed, maybe that was worth protecting too. "That is all I can give."

He turned to the communication officer. "Get me the Commander on the launch pad, now. And inform the armory sergeant that our guests are welcome to the armory. Whatever they need, they can take." He nodded to Leo. "I'll leave that to your discretion."

Leo immediately fell back into his cocksure, charismatic self, now that he had won. "Yes, sir!" he said, singing the last consonant.

As the officer handed a dialed radio to Schott and then rushed off to talk to the armory sergeant, Leo trailing behind like the chaotic snow drift he was, Ray paused. He opened his mouth to speak, but something about Schott's face must have changed his mind. So he merely said "thank you" and followed Leo out into the hall.

Schott watched them leave, the radio held in his hand.

This was wrong.

This was a mistake.

But maybe, for once, it was the right mistake.

He pressed the button pad on the radio and closed his eyes. "Commander," he said.

The radio squawked once. "Yes, General Schott."

"Commander, you are to postpone the Red Tornado's launch until further instructed, and only if those instructions come from me. Understood?"

"Yes, sir."

Schott tossed the radio onto the console, cast one look at the place in the center of the room where the Red Tornado had stood for months, waiting this opportunity, and shook his head.

Leo poked his head around the door frame. "Oh, General? We shall require the use of your strategy board."

The group of strangers gathered round Schott's board on Leo's invitation, the man who was the doppelganger to the Führer taking lead. Schott did not join them, but remained on the edge of the room, arms folded across his chest, his brow deeply knotted into a familiar frown.

The archer's name was Oliver, and though Schott's attention flickered to the rest of the motley group in turn as they plotted, it was Oliver's presence that compelled him to stay. He couldn't bring himself to stand at the table and help them plan their own demise, but neither could he be elsewhere and convince himself that the Führer's look alike was not murdering his men in their own base while he wasn't in the room.

There was still no word of James, and whispers about the decision to delay the Red Tornado were passing through the ranks.

The plan they came up with was a poor one, but he'd heard worse. Oliver would pretend to be the Führer whose face he shared, and Leo would talk their way in. That much at least made sense. From the inside, Oliver could access the control panel. All he had to do was shut down the device that dampened their powers, and the rest could join him, holding off the enemy long enough to get through the portal back home. Schott would hold off for one hour before he sent the Red Tornado to destroy the gateway, cutting off the connection to Earth One, and at that point the other world's heroes would be on their own. If Oliver could play the Führer successfully for a few minutes, the plan had a low percentage of actually working.

Oliver looked across the room to Schott as everyone dispersed to prepare themselves, and Schott's teeth gritted together as he faced the doppelganger. "Your men want to help," Oliver said. "But we'll make sure they can come back."

"Your friend may be important to you and your earth," Schott said, "but my men are just as important here. They are needed here." He cocked his head. "So yeah, you had better."

"We have the ability to open breaches from Earth One," the man in red, Barry, explained. "Just not here."

"Your plan is ludicrous," Schott told them.

Barry nodded with a sort of sideways shrug. "We know. We've had better ones."

Schott gestured at the far side of the room. "Time is wasting. Get to it."

Barry flashed a smile. "Good luck to you, too."

"We won't forget this," Oliver added. He nodded at the room. "The Earth where the Nazis never fell. I promise you, we'll come back, and we'll help you save your earth."

Schott looked at him, tried to really look, to see past the murderer he knew. He wasn't sure what he saw looking back at him. A hero? A villain? Or someone a little more like himself: part noble, part killer, always losing and always lost. He also wondered if the man was in the habit of making promises he had no ability to keep. "I won't hold my breath."

Barry put a hand up as if he were a child asking a question, the same perplexed question mark on his face as the one he had when Schott first met him and his friends in the tower. Rather than ask a question however, all he said was, "You're… different."

Schott blinked at him. He must know the other one, Alex's Winn. "Welcome to Earth X."

Leaving them to their preparations, Schott fell into step with Ray and Alex as they crossed the room to gear up themselves.

"I am allowing this mission," he reminded them curtly, "against my better judgement. He stopped, forcing them to stop with him, and faced them deliberately. "You have one hour."

Alex almost reached for his arm, then reconsidered. "I appreciate it. We all do." Her eyes searched his one more time for any sign of the friend she knew from her world. Finding nothing, she continued across the room to rejoin her team as Leo outfitted them from the armory.

Letting her go, Schott turned to Ray who stopped him before he could speak. "I know. I know what you're thinking."

Schott didn't think he did. Leo and Ray were two of his greatest assets and most trusted allies, but they had disobeyed and interfered with his orders, and right then they should expect no welcome or encouragement from him after their insubordination. He spoke slowly, as though to a child, except that his words were laced with all the warning of a wolf's growl. "If you don't make it through the gateway, I am not giving you more time. I will blow that place to kingdom come."

If Ray was looking for reassurance, or some sort of farewell, he had stumbled into the wrong war zone.

Schott went to the radio that was set up next to the main console from his control room in the tour. He matched the dial to the frequency used earlier. "Commander."

A beat, and then the radio clicked on from the other side. "General."

"We will be launching the Tornado. One hour – set your watch."

Approximately eighty hours since the last time Schott remembered lying down to sleep, and half an hour into the Earth One group's mission, one of the camps of the Reich hailed their communications, and General Schott ordered all their defenses online before answering the call.

The last time the Reich had lowered themselves to communicate with the Freedom Fighters like this, the video had turned on to show the Führer with his prized prisoner: the woman his enemy loved, executed without ceremony, while the Resistance General watched. The Reich expected such a personal attack to strike a heavy blow to the Fighters, and they had been right. Schott was in no way prepared for what they were going to show him now. Had they captured the mission team before they even infiltrated the facility?

When the projection materialized onscreen, his shoulders dropped in immediate relief. This was not the face of a Nazi, and it wasn't an attack.

"Catherine," he said as the image came into focus. A woman with sharp blue eyes and perfectly coiffed blonde hair, she was the epitome of what the Führer wanted the world to look like, but she was the opposite of everything they stood for.

"Hello, Winslow." Her voice was distorted by distance and by the various methods they were both using to scramble and hide the transmission, and the room behind her was dark and indistinct, but it was Catherine Jane Grant, and the only person allowed to use his full first name – "allowed" being a generous term. "I'm afraid I have news." Her tone was curt, businesslike, but he had known her for years, and he recognized the notes of unease even through the video.

Activity around the room still went on, but it was subdued, as the fighters' eyes kept drifting to the screen. They knew of Catherine, the woman who had infiltrated the Nazi ranks and worked from within the Reich to bring it down, and their curiosity and admiration was getting the better of them.

Catherine, from miles away, met his eye. "I know you've been seeking out the status of your friend Guardian since the gateway was taken."

Schott held up a hand to stop her, looking away, all the relief he had felt a minute ago now flooding out of his body. "No."

"Winslow," she said, not unkindly, but firmly. "James Olsen is dead."

Schott pounded his hands on the console as a wordless roar leaped from his throat. His hands retracted into fists as he leaned forward into them, head dropped between his shoulders, eyes closed, teeth bared. In the sudden silence that followed, he could hear the heaviness of his own breaths.

No one else in the room dared move.

The crack that had been splitting open for years was open again, and all the rage and terror and pain of his short life was a darkness inside, yawning like an open grave. It waited for him every day. Today one more ghost would go to rest before him, one more memory he couldn't touch. His parents. His love. His general. His friend. And he was exhausted – he was tired of covering it over while it was pulling him apart.

So he wouldn't. He wouldn't hide it anymore, he would let it stay open. A constant wound, and he would fill it with war until either the war was gone or it finally pulled him in after it.

Straightening, Schott blinked and fought to regain control. Fierce and hard, that was what the war had made him, and that was what he would be. He would be fierce and hard, but all he felt now was cold. "How?" he asked.

"My source tells me he was the last one standing when the Dark Archer took your facility," Catherine said. Her piercing eyes must have never left him. "He faced the Führer alone, and he lost."

He faced the Führer alone. James should never have been alone in that fight. While he stood at the front and fought, while he bled out on the battlefield, Schott had been standing in this very room, only a few miles away. He was giving orders and making plans and staying put while he let his friends die on the ground.

But it had been James who told him to stay. Every time, for years, ever since he had become the Freedom Fighters' General. "An army is just a bunch of angry men without a leader," James had said with a smile. James believed that had been the fault of their own commander: he had gone into battle with his men, and he had been lost. "They need you," James told him every time. And he would give a mock salute. They were brothers, there was no rank between them, and in all this time, Schott had never disobeyed that order. He commanded from the rear, where the view was sharp, distancing himself to keep in control, and to keep them all going.

"James was a good man," Catherine continued now. "I know he was invaluable to you, but you have other soldiers who can fill your ranks. It's time to gather your forces and strike back, Winslow."

"General!"

One of the technicians broke their collective silence, interrupting Catherine.

"What is it?" Schott snapped.

"Sir, a ship has just materialized over the gateway," the technician said, pointing at his readout of information from the facility.

"A ship," Schott repeated, feeling cold.

An image feed from nearby the facility halved the screen where Catherine had materialized. There was indeed a ship, a massive vessel, hovering over the facility, thousands of feet in the air, a battleship unlike anything Schott had ever seen.

Catherine had switched to monitoring the facility as well, and now she gasped. It was a sound of recognition and horror.

Schott couldn't take his eyes off the screen.

"The doomsday weapon," he whispered.

So it was true, and this was how the Resistance died. There was no time for him to send the Red Tornado now, no time to shoot the weapon out of the sky.

"Sir, the gateway also has an increase in energy output," another fighter announced.

Schott nodded. That was their plan, then. The Führer wasn't attacking his own world, not yet. Schott thought of Lyra, a refugee from a dead planet. And his former commander, escaping a world ruled by similar powers as the ones that were breaking theirs. The Führer was sending out his destroyer to any world he chose. Why waste it on one he considered already vanquished?

The red beam of the gateway broke free from the prison of the facility walls, and lit up the sky, temporarily blinding the camera feed. Schott's eyes went to the smaller readout, the one measuring the energy from the distant gateway. He watched the power of it surge and then release. The ship was gone: vanished to somewhere else, far away.

He felt the cracks in him shift, and the darkness settled.

He started barking commands.

"You," Schott ordered, pointing at the communication officer who had first told him Leo and Ray were returning. "Get me Leo on the comms. Now!" The woman, white-faced, did as she was told. "And you," he said to another technician. "Give me your radio."

"Winslow, what are you doing?" Catherine asked. She was clearly shaken, but somehow still poised.

He motioned at someone to end the call. "Striking back," he said as the call was cut off.

On the radio, Schott called up the commander at the launch. "Launch it," he commanded.

The fighters in the room with him looked stunned. "But the mission, Snart and Terrill…" one man interjected.

"Quiet!" Schott yelled at him. He spun to the computer where the female technician was working, and saw her connect to Leo's communicator line, opening it so that Schott could command from where he stood.

"Leo!" he said as soon as she gave him a signal. "Pull out. Pull everyone out and get out of there. The Red Tornado is in route to you."

"What do you mean?!" Leo protested. "Call it back!"

"Too late," Schott retorted. He could see the drone's launch as it blasted away from the base. His most prized possession, and it was racing toward the last of his friends. He couldn't stop it, and he knew right then that even if he could, he wouldn't. "It's been programmed. There's no changing course now."

"You said we'd have an hour!"

James is dead, he wanted to say. We're all that's left. I'm going to kill the Führer. I've seen the weapon. I'm afraid that we've already lost. He couldn't say any of those things. He had a roomful of fighters watching him. He still had a people to lead.

"Yeah, well, I changed my mind," he said in place of those things, quietly enough he wondered if Leo even heard him.

Leo was yelling, spluttering. "The team hasn't made it through the breach yet!"

That was it, that broke his calm. Leo had completely lost sight of what it was they had at stake. Schott never could. He whirled around, his feet carrying him in a circle at the center of the room as if the movement was all that was keeping him from exploding.

"That team has nothing to do with us!" he shouted back. "Or saving our planet! And everyone who can threaten it is on the other side of that breach!" With every word, his intensity heightened, until he was shaking his fist at a room full of fighters and ghosts, spitting out each word like a bullet. "They are not coming back through!"

"General!" Leo shouted back

"Leo, enough!" he ground out, coming to the communicator's base, grabbing the microphone in his hand like he could make Leo finally hear him if he just got close enough. "I am not risking any more time," he spat. "We are blowing it up."

He punched off the communication before Leo had a chance to reply.

When he turned around, the soldiers in the room were all watching him. He threw his arms wide. "What the hell are you all standing around for?!" he shouted at them. "Mobilize the Fourth Troops, send a guard platoon to meet the mission team on the way back and make sure they get in safely. Where is the Tornado?"

As he barked demands, the fighters flew into their jobs, acting and reacting with all the training he and his officers had been able to give them. A grief-stricken General they didn't understand, but an enraged General was something he had not hidden from them before.

"The Tornado is halfway to the gateway, sir," someone told him.

This was it. This was truly it. The Tornado would strike the gateway, it would destroy the transportation beam and trap the Führer, his wife, Thawne, and their weapon, on a world no one had a way to access otherwise. Their army would be in chaos, and the Freedom Fighters might finally have a chance.

"Sir, there's a problem," a technician announced, concerned. "The Tornado, it's altered course."

Schott's gut twisted.

"Something is interfering with it. Not the controls, the drone is combating some sort of resistance."

"Find out what," he ordered.

"Yes sir, I—" the man stopped.

An alert light was flashing at his station.

"General, the Tornado…it's…"

"It's what, exactly?"

The man was shaking his head in disbelief. "It's gone, sir. Offline. It didn't detonate."

Schott checked the readout for himself, lips pulled tightly back over his teeth, eyes flickering quickly from screen to screen. "That's not possible," he said, quietly at first. "That is not possible!" he shouted at the room, bringing his arms up behind his head to scrape both hands back over his scalp. "Find out what happened! What went wrong!"

But he remembered standing by the table as Ray and Leo and the group of strangers made plans, and Barry had blurred out of the room for a split second before returning. Like Thawne. He could easily have run fast enough to stop the Tornado, though he would have needed more than speed to take the drone off course.

The Red Tornado was down, the only thing he had in his possession that was powerful enough to affect the gateway.

The Führer could return, there was nothing to stop him now from reappearing along with his wife and Thawne and the weapon they would use to conquer every world their gateway could touch.

He had watched as the Führer took everything from him. Took Lyra from him. He had watched while James geared up and left to check in with the troops at the facility. And he had watched as the strangers from another universe and his own men had disobeyed his orders. His General, his Lyra, and his friend were gone, he didn't have to listen to them anymore.

"Lieutenant!" Schott called. He didn't wait for the woman to reach him before he was already giving her orders.

"The commander at the launch site is in charge of the base, I need the families and children all moved inside, and a hundred men to guard them. You will stay with the families. Everyone else is with me. Everyone, is that clear?"

The woman stared. "Sir, are you leaving us?"

Winn placed his hand on the familiar gun strapped to his thigh. "I have sat back in safety and let everyone else fight this war for too long. We're going to take the gateway."

"Sir!" she protested, alarmed.

He glared her into silence, leaning close, eye level. "I am through sitting on the sidelines and watching my men die, knowing I will always be the one still standing in the end," he bit out. "There is no point anymore if the Führer comes back through." He straightened, setting his shoulders back. "I've sent all my weapons out. Now," He inhaled deeply and gave her a thin smile that held no humor. Only resolution. "It is high time for your general to be a soldier again."