A/N: The writing in this chapter is a bit odd and disjointed, as Gilbert is dying and his mental state is *not awesome* to put it mildly. Future chapters will be more comprehensible and should be forthcoming soon.
Reviews are love! Please, please let me know how you feel :)
3 3 BookSlut1994
Warnings:Hints at body horror, violence, gore, suicidal ideation, allusions to Nazi human experimentation, Nazi-ism in general, period/ideology-typical racism, references to genocide, references to drug and alcohol abuse as a coping mechanism, justifiable guilt, major character death, mercy killing, dark, incomprehensible nonsense, general mindfuckery.
-Prologue-
Some Indeterminate Date in 1945
"Nothing ever ends poetically. It ends and we turn it into poetry. All that blood was never beautiful. It was just red."
-Kait Rokowski
Pain- it's all Gilbert knows. He's floating; he's falling. He hears a scream that might or might not be his. His face is wet; with blood, with tears? Who knows?
I'm going to die.
It's not so much a thought as a feeling, a creeping sense of horror that's beginning to seem more and more like relief as the dayshoursweeksmonths (Not years- no one lives that long here) tick by, stretching, condensing, spiraling on and onandonandon in an endless succession of light- sterile, too-bright white, dark-black, endless, the depths of hell, slamming doors, and agonizing pain. Gilbert's learned to fear the sound of jackboots on concrete, to cringe at the scritch, scratch of a pen.
There's a loud scraping sound, an industrial door sliding across concrete. Gilbert flutters his eyelids open, but it's dark.
It's always dark now.
The doctor's voice is smug,
"Such pretty, red eyes…"
Then, PAIN.
There's the sound of boots- soldiers.
They used to be my friends
-they were nevermyfriends.
Maybe they've come to kill him. His breath rattles in his chest; shouldn't sound like that, isn't good-isn't right. Gilbert should run, fight, escape, do somethinganything. The door is open, he can feel it- unstale, hallway air, if he can reach it… He can't. He can't and this is a nightmare. He lays his cheek against the ground and waits.
Voices, not German, Russian- kommunisten. Gilbert's heard what they do to people like him- good German citizens, no- not like him, he's bad, awful, the worst. He's killed so many people.
"How many times do I have to tell you, Gil they're not people, not really."
Glass rains from the sky like falling stars
I wish you were my parents
He kneels in the street, throws up.
Blood splatters his face, the grass is red, the flag is red, his hands are red
Gilbert hates the color red
Austria has joined the Reich- Sieg Heil Viktoria
No, no, no this is a nightmare, it has to be a nightmare
"Guess what we learned is school today, bruder!"
"I hear Paris in the springtime is lovely."
He smokes, he drinks, he fucks, he pops pill after pill after pill
In his dreams, Roderich is alive, in his dreams, Roderich is somewhere nice
He gasps. A boot? Feels like a boot collides with his side, rearranges the broken mess that used to be his ribs. The sound that he makes is strangled, and something less than human- the irony is not lost on Gilbert. Someone tugs at his jacket, bending his limp arm the wrong way with it. He's too weak to protest, too weak to cry. Somewhere, someone vomits- it's not him.
A cold voice, deep, heavily accented German, like they think he can hear them. A finger strokes his face, cuts a trail through the congealed blood and grime.
"An officer…" the voice croons, sounds darkly delighted, "fascist pigs- to do this to one of their own?" He cups Gilbert's chin in his hand, "what did you do, little fascist- to be so bad even your own couldn't stand it? Or are you a traitor?"
A traitor- they could say that.
Roderich's face, tear-streaked, cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass
"You goddamned traitor, they loved you like a son."
Molten liquid drips from the spot where his eyes -used- to be, burns his face like acid. He's sorry- so fucking sorry, and he deserves this, deserves all of it- more, for all the things he's done. He takes another rasping breath and he's dying- just not fast.
"Toris, come." There's a nervous shifting of feet, fingers scrabble at Gilbert's neck, smaller, slimmer than the other man's searching desperately for a pulse. "Ivan, he's alive."
"Tch. Barely. Disgusting, and they call us inhumane."
Gilbert's pulse is sluggish, his breaths like knives. He clings to this life stubbornly by a thread, his body betraying his soul's cries for oblivion. He can't move, can barely breathe. All he can do is lie here and wait for death.
"Poor bastard."
There's the telltale click of a gun loading. Bang. Pain, sharp, distracting. Then, blackness. Gilbert closes his eyes, falls into the void, and remembers…