I don't know what it is wherever you guys are, but over here, it's Memorial Day! I felt like this chapter was oddly fitting, in a way, and I wanted to post something extra anyway. (I was excited!) :D I have been told that this chapter stretches reality... like, a lot. I would not take anything in this chapter to be historically accurate. Or anything in this fiction, actually. So... not historically accurate! ^^"


Brothers of War

Part III: Bones

"What is his mental state?" It was the word of the metallic God, the piper that commands the rats. It was the word of one who was accustomed to control. It was the word of power – the power of the Regisseur.

"Disturbed," the Doctor Lehrer reported with a wide grin. "He has a tendency towards violence when angry, although there are signs that he can restrain himself if necessary. This indicates that there was sentient thought present when he killed them."

"Officer?"

Ludwig frowned hard, his face sticking together like lead. "The Doctor is correct, Herr Commandant," he confirmed through plastic lips. "He is undoubtedly unstable, and I do not doubt that he killed them because he wanted to."

"Then there is no argument," the Regisseur concluded, speaking in the tone of one who had known the end result all along. He turned back to the papers before him. "Arrest him."

"Yes, sir."

Ludwig turned away, his face blank, bland, devoid of all emotion. The void where his opinions should have been opened, sucking away questions and protests, just as it always did. There was nothing left to dispute. Only immutable fact remained.

He dismissed the soldiers standing guard in front of the door. Soon, there would be no need for guards.

He pushed the door open with a single gloved hand, staring into the room with firm blue eyes. He found the bed vacant for the first time in months. An armed nurse was settling Gilbert into his wheelchair, intent on taking him out to see the first blue sky of the spring. The shattered soldier's eyes were tense, although it couldn't have been because the nurse was armed. The staff was armed to provide a false sense of security, not to offer any real protection from the dangerous patients.

Gilbert laughed when he spotted his brother, the sound snapping in the air like the whip the SS officer had tied to his belt. "So this is it, ja? Fine." The forced carefree expression dropped from his face when the nurse tried to touch his shoulder. "Get the hell off me," he snarled at the woman, shoving her into the bed he had just vacated. With a precise hand, he plucked the small pistol from her pocket and aimed it easily at his younger brother's head. Ludwig already had his gun out and ready.

For a moment, they merely stared at each other, searching for something in the shallow depths of the other's eyes.

"I'm to arrest you," Ludwig said flatly, the task of a soldier pulled over his tight throat.

Gilbert chuckled. "And I'm to make sure that doesn't happen."

They both shot and dove out of the way at the same time. The bullets ricocheted off metal, skimming the ceiling and walls, leaving skin and glass untouched. The crack of bullets prompted yelling and boots echoed in the halls, with sounds of dogs and people shouting "gehen" soon following. But the noise stopped at the door. It pushed away foreign noises and locked them out. Only the broken soldier and the proud SS officer had sway in the white-washed walls, where prison and sickness were the same.

The brothers' military training had not been for nothing. Even in disability, Gilbert had managed to escape unscathed and push over his cot, trapping the vulnerable nurse between the mattress and the wall. Ludwig needed no longer than for his finger to leave the trigger to find refuge behind a metal desk and have his next shot ready.

Ludwig chanced a look over his shield. He was met with the familiar gaze of a pistol barrel and insane crimson eyes, decorated with a wide grin. Ludwig nearly lost his head, a blind sheet of red and phantom blood pulled over his eyes. He hated that grin, the smile that did not belong on the wild face. He hated the pallid flesh that was stretched far too thin over a lazy skeleton. He hated the crimson madness most of all. He carefully leveled his own gun at the space between those eyes.

"Aren't you supposed to tell me why I'm being arrested?" Gilbert mocked, insanity pitching his voice higher.

Ludwig tightened his grip on his pistol. "Six months ago," he reported as calmly as he would to a superior, "you slaughtered the men on your team. Heinz Eichel. Ernst Jung. Herman Gerber. Volker Mahler. Detlev Pfeffer. Rupert Sankt. Karlheinz Weiss. Hugburt Amsel. Wilhelm Baum. Ages nineteen to twenty-six. Each found on a roof with a large amount of bullet holes in their bodies. No explanation given."

"Orders," Gilbert spat angrily. "All of them followed my goddamn orders. Even if I ordered them to gorge out their own eyes. Would it kill them to show some originality?"

"And you shot them." There was no emotion in Ludwig's voice, only the cold fact that lodged itself in his throat.

Gilbert laughed, his hand steady on the gun. "Ja. What reason was left for them to live? They had no will of their own. They were bodies without a mind – a waste of space." His smile suddenly turned calculating. "What about you? Shooting at your own brother without as much as a twitch."

"You are too," Ludwig pointed out. The grin that he hated so much only grew wider.

"Self defense, bruder mein."

"Orders are orders," Ludwig repeated blandly. "I obey them for the German cause. And I have been ordered to arrest you."

"And you mean it, too," Gilbert grinned, glee saturating his words. "I've seen enough killers to know the flüge, the look. My little bruder is growing up. How sweet." Milliseconds later, a bullet hole was smoking near Ludwig's ear.

Reflex flexed the younger brother's finger, jerking the gun backwards as he shot. The sound of a window shattering caught Gilbert off guard, giving Ludwig the opening he needed. In the half-second that it took for Gilbert to react, a second shot knocked the pistol from his hand, and suddenly, Ludwig was on top of him – bigger, stronger, and faster. His knee shoved into Gilbert's gut, his hand on the older's throat.

"Never quite envisioned going this way." Gilbert spoke quietly, as if to himself.

Ludwig pushed harder, forcing the older man to look up at him. Traces of the mad smile had not quite left his face, lighting it up with an eerie light that Ludwig had never seen before. Gilbert's eyes were the only familiar thing left. Ludwig studied them – one, and then the other. They were as they always had been: crimson, calm, and quiet. Ludwig silently recalled the first time he had seen those eyes. He remembered thinking that they were the only thing he could ever trust to be the same in the world. They had seemed so stony; it felt like they would never change – and they hadn't. In all his years of knowing Gilbert, of being his brother, they remained the same, and he continued to trust them when he had long since stopped trusting the man's mind. Those crimson eyes had remained the same.

Gilbert had always been sane to begin with.

"This is the end," Ludwig agreed, releasing his grip somewhat. "You will go meet the Regisseur and testify to your fate."

"No," Gilbert corrected, smiling softly. "I will not, bruder." Somewhere behind his back, a long, pale finger flipped a switch.

Ludwig's body reacted to the staccato click before he registered it. The kilograms of muscles sprung and hurled him out of the window just as the entire room burst into flames. Ludwig fell from two stories onto the cool, squishy mud, landing with a jarring impact. His body protested any movement as he tried to stand, and he was vaguely aware of his eye swelling shut.

With bones clacking in their sockets and muscles tearing apart, he turned his only good eye towards the third window from the left on the second story – the window that was consumed in fire.

"Mein bruder… so dramatic."


Yup. That's that - one more chapter left to go before this arc is finished and I present ya'll with a few extras. To clear up any confusion - since my numerous betas asked - Gilbert is dead. (I'm so sorry! I love him too!) He does blow up his hospital room with a crudely constructed bomb - suicide, since he'd rather die than face Germany as a traitor. I feel like an absolute JERK for killing him, but there was just no way I could keep him alive.

And, if anyone was wondering, the gun Gilbert uses to kill his team is an MG-42, I think - a friend told me all about this one :D. Although the pictures I found tell me that the gun was tri-pod-ed, I'm going to guess that it could also be carried, and Gilbert was too caught up in the moment to bother and set it down.

Review, and again, constructive criticism and German tips are always appreciated!

~Unseen