Years had passed.
The dogs had long since stopped whining hopefully at the window every time someone passed; had given up their vigil at the door in assurance Gilbert would return home any day. They still perked up their ears anytime they heard someone knock, still sat in his room and on his bed as they always had, but they no longer looked for him actively; they were no longer waiting with any kind of anticipation.
Initially, Ludwig had closed the door to his brother's room, hoping to preserve it just as Gilbert had left it. For months he went in almost daily, sitting at Gilbert's desk and simply looking around, as if by reading and rereading the titles of the books and CDs on the shelf and scanning every detail of the few pieces of furniture and memorizing every word on the posters on the walls he could somehow conjure up his brother in the midst of these little bits and pieces of himself. But the illusion wore off quickly. Gilbert switched up his room constantly to keep up with his constantly changing interests, and this static, unchanging room was nothing like an accurate representation of the older brother Ludwig had known. Who knew what Gilbert liked now; what he was doing; how he would want his room decorated. Certainly not Ludwig.
After this realization he had opened the room's door up again to allow the dogs inside, and they had gone right back to sleeping on Gilbert's bed as they had when he was still there. It was, he thought, what Gilbert would have wanted him to do.
In addition, he took over feeding the little yellow chick Gilbert had loved so much; the one he had, when he was younger and thought it was exceptionally clever, named Gilbird. It was a feisty little bird and initially tried to bite him when he put seed in its bowl, though it warmed up to him eventually when he continued to care for it. Then it got sick. Many of its feathers fell out and it grew quiet and listless. Ludwig was not sure what to do; he bought a manual on birds and discovered that the chick was most likely stressed by its master's absence. But the bird, like the dogs, seemed to cheer up eventually and settled into a new life without Gilbert without further problems.
The house was so quiet, so empty. He had never truly realized before how much space East had seemed to fill, with a confidence and an ego hat could have taken up a much larger house than theirs, until he was gone and suddenly the house, hardly more than average size, seemed vast and overwhelming in its blank, faceless emptiness. Every time he noticed the silence he was forcibly reminded of all the times he had told East to be quiet, told him only half in jest that the house would be so much more peaceful without him. He would have given anything now to have that kind of noise, that kind of presence, in the house again just one more time.
He had thrown himself into reconstruction, working around the clock to try and distract himself from missing his brother while at the same time writing to him almost obsessively: telling him abut reconstruction, about home, about anything he could think of, and begging for news; checking the mail frantically, sometimes several times in one day, hoping beyond hope for a reply that never came. For a while he told himself that Prussia was simply settling into his new—he could not and refused to think of the Soviet Union as Prussia's home—his new location, temporary though it had to be. Gilbert had never been one for communication; he ignored phone calls regularly and did not write many letters, preferring to keep to himself unless it was necessary to associate with others. But he also knew, in the back of his mind, as much as he tried to deny it, that Gilbert would have written to him as soon as possible if he were able, if he though that it would make his little brother feel better.
He had found his brother's Iron Cross in the snow outside Berlin, still with a frayed piece of cloth attached to it; clearly, it had been ripped from his collar, whether by accident or on purpose he did not know. Blood had dried on one of the edges. In one of his letters, he told his brother he had found it, and asked Gilbert if he wanted him to mail it to him. When he never got a response, he put the cross on a chain around his neck with his own Iron Cross medal and wore both of them, tucked into his shirt against his heart, cold on his skin, as a constant reminder.
He had initially taken the construction of the Berlin Wall as a personal insult to himself and to East, and an affront to the German people; it was reopening the wound slashed across his and Gilbert's beloved country and ensuring it would never heal properly. Ludwig had never given up the idea of reunification; though he was certain that the Wall was meant to affect German morale, to remind him and Gilbert both that the Soviet Union intended for the divide to be permanent, he refused to ever allow himself to believe this.
Then his anger turned to fear. He heard that the culture of his brother's people was drifting away from his own; that many of them were proud of the divide and wanted to be two nations entirely, a clean break: not, as the West Germans had maintained firmly, "two German states in one German nation." He had no idea whether to believe this; he did not know whether these sentiments, if they really were , echoed his own brother's sentiments. Gilbert continued to not respond to letters, and Ludwig began to fight back real dread that his brother was being prevented from receiving his communications. And if Gilbert could not write to him, what was it he was not allowed to say? Was he hurt? Was he being treated well?
He even tried a few times to write to Russia, but received no replies there either. He saw Russia sometimes at World Meetings, but the Soviet nation refused to speak to him, simply smiling at him in a way that confirmed his worst fears. More than once America had tried to intervene, even attempted to order Russia to give Germany news of his brother, but with no success; Russia simply told him cheerfully that he was under no obligation to report to the other Allies what he was doing with his own prisoners. America had , and had offered Ludwig weak words of comfort when he had seen the German close to breaking down entirely, but even this gave him only the faintest ray of hope as the years dragged on with seemingly no hope of change.
He began to trail off his letter-writing, disconsolate at the lack of replies and his own inability to do anything. He knew only that his brother was still alive, though if the reports he had gotten were true, his people's protests were being brutally quashed and this likely meant that Prussia was suffering as well.
He could do nothing about this fact either, and pushed this too to the back of his mind despite the pain it caused him. He had to worry about things he could control, areas he could help, otherwise he would drive himself mad. His own country was doing better; they had gotten a new currency to replace the near-worthless Reichsmark, and the economy was gradually beginning to recover. Unemployment was finally beginning to inch back down, and food production had increased at last. His citizens were doing better. The country and its people were healing.
And then, one day, a World Meeting came and went and Germany was home afterwards before the realization dawned on him that he had not so much as spoken to Russia to ask after East's welfare.
Then, with a thrill of horror, he realized that he had not written a letter to Gilbert for more than a month, or tried to make any kind of contact with him; he had not so much as thought of it.
It was then that he began to truly fear he was forgetting his brother.
Author's note:
I cannot write sad dogs without making myself sad too. Sad people I can cope with, but I seriously got choked up writing the dogs.
Anyway. Officially, this story is a companion piece to Behind the Berlin Wall, my longer story about Prussia's time with Russia, but it can stand on its own, obviously, and you don't need to have read/be reading the other story for this to make sense (though it might be more meaningful if you had).
Thank you to tapion580 for the suggestion for this story! I thoroughly enjoyed writing it.
Please review, if you read it! Reviews are one of my favorite things ever. And please favorite if you liked it. If you're also following Behind the Berlin Wall, this might be worth a follow as well, since I do think I might update it with another chapter or two as the story progresses; there's more potential here that I might decide to take advantage of.
Also, about the title: Lass mich nicht Allein = don't leave me alone.