No one is transferred to Major von dem Eberbach as some sort of reward. To become an Alphabet is really the opposite of being promoted. The Alphabets are the ones that no one else wants - or that no one else could handle. Strangely enough, these two groups fused together under the Major's iron tutelage. The strong protected the weak and the weak used their strong brethren as a protective net to lash out from within.
D had always known that he was different from the other boys on his block and at his school. Growing up, he had tried hard to meld in, but at some point during his teens he had come to the regrettable conclusion that he would never be like the others. For a long while he withdrew, not wanting to bother with trying to explain to the rest of the world how differently he saw things. To even try was utterly pointless. Besides, while he knew that the vast majority viewed things differently from him, he still thought that they were all, simply, wrong.
He was not, and had never been, violent. For many years he had wondered about that. He had read any number of books - most of the time, books were fairly easy for him to understand: books were written to make sense; to have an understandable flow of events and logic, without as many random factors to keep track of as real life required. Some books mentioned people that seemed to share certain of his difficulties. From reading those books - and seeing some movies - he had gotten the idea that most people that, like him, didn't view the world in the same way as the rest of humanity, sooner or later started to kill people.
D had wondered, on and off, when he had come to think of such things, if one day he would fall asleep with a brand new collection of cut off fingers and perhaps clutching someone's still damp heart (that movie had been rather strange, he thought, and he didn't think he would like to clutch a heart when he went to bed, that sounded a bit yucky. You would get blood all over your PJs and didn't sound very tempting at all in the first place).
On even rarer occasions someone did him wrong. Some people just did that, tried to tease him or even hurt him and he didn't understand why, really, when he had done nothing to them. Maybe they sensed that he wasn't like them, somehow? Whatever the reason, that sometimes made him idly consider matters. Wouldn't life be easier if this person was just, simply, dead? And, if so, ought he kill them?
There was even that one time when he reached the conclusion that, yes, life would be easier if that man was dead. And D liked the easy life. So he thought about killing and realised that killing someone would actually be quite a bother. You would have to find the person without being seen - and the man lived across the country, so D would have to get there in the first place. Go in disguise maybe? At that time he hadn't even had a driver's license, so that had added to his problem. And he hadn't known yet how to get fake identity papers to rent a car under a different name, which struck him as a smart thing to do. Not to mention that he would have to go to Dusseldorf not just once, but several times, to scout out the place, to learn the man's habits and find a way to kill him undetected. That was a big thing. D didn't want to go to prison. As previously stated, he liked his life easy and going to prison would definitely not be easy, so he would not risk going there. In the end he decided that while life would be easier if the man was dead, actually killing him would make his life harder instead, so he dropped the project.
When he did, eventually, kill for the first time, it meant nothing to him. Well, it did mean a mission accomplished. He had joined the army by then, finding that he could understand the orders and requirements of the military life most of the time. Accomplishing a mission meant that he had done well, that he would still be in employment, get paid and be able to buy things he wanted in order to live the easy life. Those were all good things. The killing itself gave him no thrill or sexual reaction. If anything, he had been mildly pleased to have his long standing suspicion confirmed - sure, he could kill. Not that this came as any sort of surprise, he had always been sure of that.
Still, before actually killing some small part of D had wondered - again, mildly, no big deal, just interesting to know - if at the last minute some part of him would object to take that supposedly so precious human life. But no. He killed without regret or remorse, because the person he killed had no value to him, being an unknown and not a part of the sphere of life that D called his. It never even occurred to him to draw things out, inflict pain or anything. He just accomplished his objective and that was that.
Oh, there were evaluations afterwards and they made him do tests and he knew enough about humanity to fake having some problems with what he had done, but the unadorned truth was - he felt no difference. Another thing he had wondered a bit idly about beforehand was if that first kill would set off something, maybe an ear collecting habit or some such nonsense, but everything just continued, business as usual.
Some people realise he's not right, though. He found himself passed from commander to commander, always with good words, but also with no regrets. Finally he is sent to Bonn. Where Major von dem Eberbach looks deeply into his eyes ... and smiles.
They're not the same type of animal. The Major is different from him. They have some areas where they overlap, though, like distant cousins or predators recognizing that the other not even remotely falls into the prey section. And D, who isn't a hunter, even if he can kill, lets the Major take the lead and finds himself a member of a team, for the first time in his life maybe even for real. He is one of the strong members and, slowly, his sphere of people expands until he holds them all in his heart.
They're his. He's not a serial killer, but for his weaker brethren he is prepared to kill armies.
