Innocence
(A/N: Fixed the speech pattern of Major Hochstetter to not mimic an accent.)
Hochstetter bent over his desk doing paperwork, answering phones. They were off the hook. Yet another sabotage near Stalag 13, of course. Who else but Klink? Almost every Gestapo unit was out now, scouring for evidence that probably wasn't there to be found. He was getting a headache just remembering his last interaction with the Kommandant. His ride back with Burkhalter had been no more pleasant. He slammed his pencil viciously down and picked up a length of rope, twisting it violently, trying to lower his stress levels. One day he would see that Kommandant shot! With luck, maybe Burkhalter could follow. Of course with the way things were going it would probably be him accompanying Klink, and Burkhalter laughing; or vice versa.
"Major Hochstetter, the S.S. demands to know what went wrong," a Gestapo General demanded, marching in without knocking. "That operation was under your command, Hochstetter. Your head is on the line. Pray you have a good excuse."
Hochstetter glowered at the General. Oh he had an excuse all right. It was called Klink. When all else failed, pass the buck. Klink had a knack for getting out of sticky situations anyway. If he didn't make it this time, he really didn't care. "I will make a report immediately, Herr General," Hochstetter growled lowly.
"See that you do," the General icily warned, leaning intimidatingly over his desk. With that the man marched out.
HH
Oh Hochstetter felt ready to kill someone. Words could not describe how desperate he was to go out and shoot something. Any powers that be, protect the next person who walked through his door. He would not be responsible for his actions. The phone rang. He snatched it. "Hochstetter here, Heil," he greeted. Forget the Fuhrer. He really didn't give a… well, language aside, he wasn't in the mood to say the name. He cringed, holding the phone from his ear, and went white. Himmler! Hochstetter looked ill at ease as the man let him have it. Finally Himmler slammed down the receiver. Hochstetter tore the phone from his desk and hurled it across the room. "Bah!" he bellowed viciously. Da… Curse Himmler too! Curse all four of the big shots!
Somebody needed to suffer, and very, very, badly. There were always prisoners. Hah! Not worth the effort, none of them. Let the others have their fun. He would just as soon keep his hands clean of the whole mess. Not that he'd never done anything with them, he just… preferred to steer clear of it. Especially now, as allied forces drew nearer and nearer each day. "Bah!" he yelled again. He sat in his desk and began furiously scribbling his report. It tore and he ripped the thing to shreds, throwing the pieces into the air.
Just then there was a knock at the door. "What?!" he screamed furiously.
There was silence. Good. Maybe the offender had disappeared. "Major Hochstetter, Private Strauss requesting permission to enter, sir!" a young man's voice called. Oh good, perfect. A scapegoat. A lesser he could tear apart piece by piece until he felt better; which would be never.
"Permission granted, Strauss," Hochstetter tightly called out to his regular driver.
HH
"Major Hochstetter, sir?" the boy asked, saluting. Hochstetter dutifully saluted back. The next time he saw a salute, though, oh the perpetrator would rue the day they were born.
"What is it?" Hochstetter icily asked in as calm a tone as he could muster at present.
Strauss shifted nervously then replied, "I-I have a question, Herr Major."
"Speak!" Hochstetter bellowed so loudly officers across the building could hear. Strauss almost shrivelled under the fiery gaze. Oh this was a bad, bad idea.
"I-I will come back another time, Major, if you are busy," Strauss quickly said, trying to back out.
"You will stay, Strauss, or suffer the consequences," Hochstetter growled. "Ask your question, boy." He took a sort of disturbing amusement in the way the young man was trembling. Hardly eighteen, Hochstetter knew, penniless, desperate, scared out of his mind, innocent… Oh how he hated innocence, detested innocence. How dare anyone be innocent in these dark times? You needed an officer's permission to be innocent, to be anything! By what miracle had the boy even been accepted into the Gestapo? By what right was this child allowed to be so completely naïve and foolish and stupid and good when all around him people were becoming monsters? Monsters…! And of these, he was foremost… How dare he become a monster when this child stayed… stayed nothing! He was aware his eyes were glittering, his fingers tapping, and that was never a good sign, ever.
HH
"Herr Major," the boy began, suddenly stopping his trembling. How dare the child put on a sudden display of courage! He had no right to be courageous! He had not been given permission to be bold! "I have come to request a three day pass, sir; and I have not yet been paid my dues," Strauss declared solidly, almost as if he'd rehearsed this and prepared for anything. How dare the boy think he was prepared? Hochstetter would show him how unprepared he actually was! "I also… have something to give you, sir."
"Oh you've come for a pass, have you? And your pay? A raise too, perhaps," Hochstetter sneered, sarcasm lacing every word as he ignored the last sentence. There was nothing Strauss could possibly give him that would save the boy now. He had him in his clutches.
"No sir," Strauss answered, looking uncertain again.
"Request denied, denied, and a thousand times denied you weak and pathetic excuse for a soldier!" Hochstetter screamed, shooting up. Ironically the very words Himmler had used on him. And that wasn't all Himmler had said either. The boy had paled, looking terrified and withering.
"B-but sir…!" Strauss began.
"I said denied!" Hochstetter repeated, coming around the desk and looking ready to kill. "What could you possibly do with money. Your life is here, you live, breath, eat, and sleep this war, this job. You are a slave boy, a worthless slave! The bottom of the barrel! You do not need money, you do not need freedom, you are nothing, nothing, nothing! You will die here, boy, live and die here. You will be broken like a china platter! You are not worth the dirt scraped off of the Fuhrer's boots! Get out! Out, before I lose myself completely! Wait for me in the car, schnell, schnell, before I become physically ill!"
HH
Hochstetter finally stopped to breathe, panting and gasping. What had he just said again? He inwardly cringed on remembering. Or had he inwardly laughed? He was never sure anymore. He relished the miserable expression on the boy, or did he pity it? The young man's eyes threatened tears. Yes, tears, tears. He'd broken him, hah! You are broken, child, broken! No more innocence, no more goodness, now, perhaps, you will become what you must be to make it in this war! But no… no…
Hochstetter moved back behind his desk and sat, silent. Strauss finally moved towards him and placed something on his desk. The Major looked curiously, suspiciously, at it. His eyes widened slightly. A pocket watch overlaid with gold, his initials engraved in silver on the intricately designed back. The face had to be crystal, the hands ebony, the numbers onyx. The chain was solid gold.
"I bought this for you, Major. It took almost my whole savings, but as you said, what use do I have for money?" he asked, weakly trying to flash a smile. It fell before it had even appeared. "There is no family to send my paychecks back to, the closest thing is the orphanage I grew up in. This watch reminded me…" the boy's voice cracked slightly. Hochstetter could only stare at the boy in shock so great it had made him go pale, eyes wide in disbelief. "It reminded me of you, sir. You have always said you wanted one, that your father had something like it that you used to love to play with as a boy… Congratulations, sir, on your last decorations. I never got a chance to congratulate you earlier." With that the boy swiftly left and hurried out of the office…
Hochstetter looked down at the pocket watch and picked it up gently, gazing at it, not quite able to comprehend what had just happened here. He looked back up at the door then down again, fingering the object. Goodness be da… cursed! Mercy and pity and love be wiped out of existence! Oh god! Innocence be driven into the darkest depths of the Earth! He screamed furiously, punching his desk viciously. How dare this child give back to him a piece of the innocence he had lost so long ago!? All at once he shot up and stormed towards the door, tucking the watch into his breast pocket.
HH
The boy was near tears now, felt like bursting into sobs. He shook his head trying to ignore the pain and hurt racing through him, the feelings of worthlessness. He hated feeling worthless. He hated cruelty, hated evil, hated what this war was doing to everyone he knew and… and cared about. He hated hatred! Why couldn't hatred just end, people treat each other like just that, people? He slammed the car door and sobbed, resting his head on the steering wheel. What had he gotten into?
Strauss heard the passenger side door open and quickly sat up straight, hoping the Major hadn't seen. Hochstetter shut the door and Strauss started the car. There was silence as he waited for direction and glanced over at his Major. Hochstetter was gazing at the pocket watch quietly. Strauss looked away. "What drove you to join the Gestapo, Strauss?" he questioned suddenly.
Struass looked over at him curiously. "Sir?" he asked.
Too tired and drained to bother yelling, Hochstetter repeated, "What made you join this branch of the Secret Military Police?"
Strauss looked down then ahead, answering, "The pay, mostly. I… I have nothing to return to after the war. I wanted enough to at least be able to afford a place to stay. The Gestapo… it was better pay than most. And…"
"And…" Hochstetter pushed when the boy was silent, knowing that the pay was only part of the reason the young man had joined.
Strauss looked over at him and answered in a hollow tone, "You go where you are most likely to survive, sir. I was no different."
"Hmm," Hochstetter remarked, cringing inwardly. That sounded familiar. All too familiar… Much like him. He'd forgotten what it was like. To be afraid, to be innocent and uncertain and… and again afraid. He'd forgotten what it was to be anything but a monster, and even now with this… secret he held… even then he could not feel like anything but a monster. He wondered if he would ever feel human again. This boy… this child had given him a glimpse, sent him back to a time he had long ago forgotten, and he had reacted, he had been frightened. He hadn't known what to do.
HH
Looking over at the boy he watched as the young man forced back tears. The child thought he was fooling him, hah! Nothing fooled him anymore. Well, almost nothing; and for a moment Hochstetter felt such a surge of protection shoot through him that it hurt, pulled at a part of him he'd long ago believed lost… His heart. Heart? He still had one? That was new.
Hochstetter reached into his pocket and drew out a wallet. Opening it he pulled out money, counting as he went. Around one-thousand first. He handed it over wordlessly to the boy, saying, "Your paycheck." He reached back in and continued rifling through the many bills he'd never gotten around to depositing from his last paycheck. Two-thousand… "A bonus," he muttered. He pulled out the rest. Three-thousand in all. "A gift," he declared.
"Major Hochstetter…" Strauss began, about to protest. Hochstetter didn't want to hear it and put up his hand and looking out the window. "Dankeshan, Major," Strauss said in a tone so deeply grateful that Hochstetter nearly burst into tears. Everything he'd forgotten, everything, and this one young man was ripping it out from the darkest depths of his soul, and he wanted the feeling to stay and never leave, but he knew… He knew it would never be. Not anymore.
"Drive," he simply ordered in a quiet tone, voice cracking.
"Where to, Herr Major?" Strauss asked.
"Wherever you want to go," Hochstetter replied. "You have your leave, a week, in fact."
Sensing his superiors distress, the boy sympathetically said, "Somewhere as far from Germany and this war as possible. New Zealand, perhaps, or have we occupied it?" Pity… the boy was pitying him, Hochstetter realized; the boy had sensed sadness. When was the last time anyone had pitied him? He couldn't remember. Mercy, goodness, angel; unforgiving, evil, devil… two such opposites… In response to the boy's question, Hochstetter shrugged. He'd lost track of what was theirs and what wasn't.
"The airport is not far," Hochstetter replied.
Strauss' smile fell to a look of shock. "You are serious…" he realized in disbelief.
"The war will still be here when we come back, child. Klink can deal with his own problems for a while, Burkhalter can pick on another Gestapo Major, and this place can function with or without us," Hochstetter answered, chuckling weakly.
"Ya wohl, Herr Major," Strauss agreed, grinning excitedly. The car pulled from Gestapo headquarters and vanished down the road.
A/N: Next to Schneider, young but still too old for the role I was going for in the young man, Strauss seemed to be the German mentioned most often with Major Hochstetter, and appeared to be his regular driver in the series, though after a while they all started to look alike. Strauss wore glasses, though, which slightly distinguished him from the others usually around Hochstetter.