It was raining heavily, the chill in the air seeming to seep into your body and corrupt your bones. Lightning would occasionally light everything up in a brief, brilliant flash; but darkness always returned to further impede one's sight in the curtain of rain and fog.
Gilbert hurried from one slight source of dryness to another, not even caring that he felt like a waterlogged rat trying to escape a sinking ship. The thin coat he was wearing offered no solace in the freezing downpour, but it reminded him of who he had been not so long ago, so he kept it despite its dwindling value of use.
His snow white hair plastered to his skull from the rain, Gilbert finally made it to his destination: The Wall. It was an ugly scar of grey bricks and barbed wire that ran across the once beautiful city of Berlin, and it separated Gilbert from his brother, Ludwig.
But this Godforsaken wall couldn't keep everything out, and Gilbert knew exactly where to go along the shadowy behemoth of Soviet blocks to reach what he wanted most. The location was forced to change often, since the Reds patrolled and repaired any imperfections they found in their blasted wall. But Gilbert wasn't so easy to dissuade, and he would keep picking out the weaknesses of the great Red wall until the day came when it fell; battering it with stones until bricks gave way to his will.
Removing brick after solid, grey brick, Gilbert whispered hoarsely into the blackness of the hole he had made, "Luddy...you there?"
After a brief, heartbeat span of a moment passed in the dulled noise of pouring rain, Gilbert got his long awaited answer, "I'm here, brother..."
Gilbert knew he didn't have long on the wall. There was a Soviet soldier huddled against a broken street lamp only a few paces away, but Gilbert had to push the limit; these minute long meetings with the only family he had left was the only thing that kept him alive.
The water-veiled world lit up in a shocking release of blue-white lightning, and Gilbert couldn't keep himself from turning his head toward that broken street lamp and soldier. The soldier was much too young to look so haunted, his gloved hand clutching at the chain of a dog that looked like a monstrous creature of hell as compared to its baby-faced handler.
The moment was brief between them - almost to the point where Gilbert questioned if it had ever happened - but he wondered if the boy-soldier had family he couldn't see face-to-face, too. If he longed to be warm and loved in their embrace, instead of huddling under a broken street lamp in the freezing rain of war-battered Berlin.
It was Gilbert's only explanation for why the soldier walked away without sounding the alarm in the encroaching darkness.