His footsteps echo on the stairwell. His boots click steadily, rhythmically, in time with his heart. He reaches the top, pushes the door open. The sound of the city is muted to his ears. He hears the sound of his own breathing. The small stones littering the concrete beneath his feet crackle as he walks. The wind is cold and biting, but he hardly feels it.
He stops for a moment, gazes down upon the city that had at some point become his. Life goes on, people work, traffic builds up, couples have arguments and children play. He takes a second to just breathe it all in, the sound of life. People are always rushing in this city, they always have places to go, people to see. With the world moving so fast, people have to keep up, have to run. But when you run, you miss the small things, the details. The occasional birthday. Maybe one or two parents evenings. Even a few Christmases.
He'll never get that time back.
His jaw clenches, but his tears have long since stopped. The grief is still fresh, raw and burning. It hurts him, but he can't mourn. He can't, because he'd apparently shown mercy. It had been a kindness. The pain in his heart feels like no kindness. It feels like murder.
He can remember him falling down the stairs, remember how he'd almost broke then and there, in front of his oblivious wife, his goading daughters. He alone bares this burden. It was he who had slipped the syringe into his own sleeping son's hand, he who had cried and begged for forgiveness from a God he wasn't allowed to believe in.
His son had fallen asleep, and had never woken, and that is supposed to be a mercy?
To top it all off though, to add to his ever growing list of sins, he'd pocketed the syringe, shouted for his wife, lied about how he'd found him struggling for breath, how he couldn't do anything; because he is such a coward, who can't admit to his own wife that he's murdered their son. How he'd planned it, drugged him with sleeping pills so there wouldn't be any pain.
Clean, efficient. There was no struggle, no choking, or crying out. Just his own guilt and the stillness of his son's heart.
The doctor had been helpful, had filled in the death certificate with blue ink and a sympathetic smile.
"You did what had to be done." The doctor had said.
He exhales, mind jarring back to the present. He regards the ledge for a moment, steps up onto it. His knee aches, and it clicks when he straightens it. His boots are black where the concrete is grey, the glaring red of the flag beneath him reminding him of why he'd done what he did.
One, lone tears slides down his cheek. He looks down again, feet just touching the sharp drop downwards. He's balanced on the edge, and one tiny moment in any direction could have an everlasting effect.
He's done so much in his life, in the name of the Fatherland, in the name of the Reich. He's killed and maimed. Ruined such good, such purity. There had been so much life in his son, and now there was none. And Joe, who's eyes had been bright, full of adventure and and eagerness to prove himself. Joe is somewhere, far away from him and his pollution.
"Obergruppenführer!" Someone shouts. He startles, leans just that bit too much forwards. The balance is tipped, the equilibrium broken. He hears a scream, it might even be his own. But he's accepted his fate, closes his eyes and prays that his heart would give out before he hits the floor.
It doesn't.
Obergruppenführer John Smith falls almost 200 stories. Joe Blake, skin golden and marked with dust, stands on the roof, reaching over the edge, the scream still echoing on his lips.