Hans Regenwalde had once wondered whether Klaus knew how much of the commander's thoughts went to him. How frequently and how deeply.
I do. And always will.
And never once stopped.
He had seen it all on the day he told Taki of his power. The day that Taki had let Hans in and everything had poured from him like floodwaters in a deluge. His regrets, his guilt, his fears. It was almost all Klaus, Hans had realised quickly.
He alone knew the weight of Taki's true feelings and secrets. Secrets that died with him on a cold mountainside in No Man's Land.
Even though Hans would be the first and last to know the true depth of Taki's feelings, Klaus began to notice. He began to notice very gradually.
So gradually, in fact, that it would take him years to see it properly. And, on a whim of intuition, he was careful to make sure Taki wasn't aware that he was slowly becoming aware.
It began during the spring he spent with Taki in the cottage with the rose garden.
It began when Taki took his hand and kissed it in a clearing that Beatrice von Wolfstadt had discovered years ago. The clearing Beatrice had only ever showed her husband and in which, though they had never told anyone else, their third child had been conceived.
Ever since the moment he felt Taki's lips on his hand, Klaus began to notice other things. Like tiny shards of gold shining at the bottom of a river, glinting occasionally, blurred by the current. Easy to miss if he wasn't paying attention.
So he started to pay attention.
A month and a half into their stay at the cottage, spring was well underway with all of its fickleness. A day of thunderstorms would follow a day of blinding, adamant sunshine. And yet the atmosphere at the Strauss cottage managed to capture the sunny moments within their walls, even when shutters were hurriedly drawn closed and sandbags propped against the doors as a precaution against flooding.
The sunniness that lasted regardless of weather owed to the abundant humour of the two Wolfstadt siblings. Klaus' laughter would ring throughout the house and Claudia in turn would be gasping for breath between bouts of scolding and laughing. The mood was infectious and Taki would, on occasion, be swept up in it enough to chuckle quietly, which, though he didn't know, was a huge part of why they kept it up in the first place.
And Claudia steadily improved. The doctor had mostly good things to say, she reported, which she interpreted as a free licence to do more things around the house. She used the wheelchair a lot less and she had put on weight. Her cheeks were full again, rosy like Klaus remembered, and most days she had no trouble doing things like bringing in the washing, though Klaus still kept an eye out whenever she tried anything strenuous. There were days on end when she would walk about and sing to herself and even swing Heinrich up into the air.
It was on one of those days that Klaus came through the front door and saw, scattered like green snow in the doorway to the kitchen, little mounds of chopped parsley. He hurried into the kitchen to see Claudia on the floor, one hand on the counter and struggling to get to her feet.
'I was being stupid,' she assured Klaus when he helped her up, his face pale. 'I tried to reach for something on the top shelf and my back sort of… buckled. Brought the chopping board down with me. Silly, really.'
When her pain steadily worsened over the next hour, Klaus put her in Verner's truck and drove them to the doctor. She worried about the grim-faced, seething Klaus who barely spoke to her on the way. After the appointment, Klaus had willingly taken the brunt of the doctor's admonitions. The words 'degenerative' and 'fragile' had resonated with him even more than the doctor's cautious optimism about her recovery. The lecture had ended with the doctor reminding Klaus that she was still sick and needed rest above all else. And then he also suggested that Klaus keep doing whatever he was doing, because, for the most part, it seemed to be working.
Taki almost always awoke before Klaus did. He had inadvertently made a ritual out of glancing at Klaus' sprawled, sleeping form on the couch before he opened windows to let in the smell of the wheat field and started making breakfast before the family awoke.
But one morning Klaus happened to sit up on the couch earlier than anyone else. After two days of storms, he was pleased to see the sun making its first appearance. He walked through the small, silent kitchen, feeling the pleasant smoothness of the flagstones against the soles of his feet and opened the back door.
Scrubbed clean, still bearing the memory of the downpour, the yard and rose garden and the hint of golden fields to the east and north filled his senses. He breathed in the scent of grass and hay and soil. He tried to pick up the scent of roses.
Two ways of doing that, he thought with an impish grin that no one saw. His mind wandered into the room that had, until recently, housed an ancient boiler. Instead, he went barefoot down the steps onto the damp earth.
A few minutes later, Taki, who had started on breakfast in the kitchen, was surprised to see Klaus step into the kitchen through the back door holding several fresh young stems in his hand. The blossoms were all white, all bearing trembling little beads of water on their petals, beads so perfectly round and so deviously positioned that they could have been drops of candle wax.
'Morning,' Klaus said with a crooked smile that still managed, after years, to make Taki's pulse surge for a brief moment.
As Taki stirred the batter for poffertjes, Klaus drew out a pair of kitchen scissors and expertly trimmed the thorns off the stems.
'Here,' he said as he held them out to Taki.
There was a pause before Taki set the bowl down on the countertop. He then took the flowers and glanced at Klaus, feeling only poignant embarrassment.
Klaus drew out the seconds to better absorb the sight of Taki standing in Klaus' kitchen mutely holding roses, before he chuckled.
'For the table,' he explained. 'My hands are muddy.'
Taki blinked and looked away, adding foolishness to the list of strange emotions conjured by that moment. He found an empty vase and filled it with water.
Klaus wiped his hands on a dishtowel as he left the kitchen.
Pay attention, said a small voice in his head. It was a voice that had cropped up since the afternoon they had spent in the clearing.
And so, just before Klaus went out of sight, he spared a glance over his shoulder.
Taki had set the vase, a clear, round one similar to a goldfish bowl, in the middle of the table and had propped up the four or five stems against the rim. He was facing away from Klaus as he straightened.
Unaware that Klaus was watching, Taki then took a moment to stare at the flowers, his face angled just slightly, just enough for Klaus to see his small smile. He reached out and lightly touched one of the roses, rubbing the soft petal between his fingers. The moment hung in the air, as though suspended in its own dewdrop, before Taki turned back to the counter and lit the stove.
Klaus forced himself to keep walking. To preserve the moment as it was. A moment, small thought it was, which he would normally have missed.
He berated himself for other moments he may have missed in the past. Times when he waited for the word or for the declaration and shut his eyes and ears to anything short of that. Times when he waited for something that would trigger a waterfall of words, a real one, one like their moment on his bike in No Man's Land. The frustration of never hearing it. The anger at himself. The weight of his inadequacy.
While he was busy with all of that self-indulgent, self-pitying nonsense, he would have missed so much.
He remembered again how Taki had held him all night after Hasebe nearly killed him. How Taki had so easily forgotten the unforgivable thing Klaus had done only hours before that. How Taki had brought him to life as he lay dying on a riverbank. He had been trying to show his love the entire time and Klaus had been too thick and impatient to see it.
Sometimes it's more important to feel it rather than to hear it.
And so now he forced himself to be patient. To stop searching. To stretch his arms out and fall backwards into the white, coursing river and let it take him wherever he wanted.
We have time now, he had once told Taki on the train, his naivety sounding sharply across the intervening year. We can take it slow.
He had been wrong back then. On many counts. But now, they really did have time. And he had time to watch and wait.
And he noticed all sorts of little things.
Like how Taki would watch him out of the corner of his eye. Smile at something Klaus had said when he thought Klaus couldn't see. The way that Taki and Claudia would sometimes fall silent when Klaus came into the room, which gave him the odd, vaguely uncomfortable feeling they had been talking about him, but the flush on Taki's cheeks hinting that, hopefully, it hadn't been all bad.
On the day he handed Taki a small bouquet of roses, the temperature outside steadily rose until the heat was once again near oppressive, as though to make up for the storms of the previous week. Not only that, their chores had doubled during the rain-filled pause, topped off by overgrown lawns and gardens.
Taki, hunched over and weeding, found himself throwing guilty glances at Klaus who had paused mowing the lawn to peel his sweat-drenched shirt off and mop the back of his neck with it.
Despite Klaus' new mantra, he managed to miss these surreptitious looks. It was too hot to focus on anything but the mower and grass. He tossed the shirt aside and kept mowing.
Wiping his forehead with the back of his gardening glove, Taki tried to block out images of the sweat-sheen on Klaus' back and the gleaming, taut muscles of his abdomen. Thoughts that had made him sick with guilt and shame only a year ago now only made him flush self-consciously.
He was both glad and remorseful when he finished weeding and had no further reason to be outside by the time Klaus, still sans shirt, dragged piles of lumber to the chopping block and picked up an axe.
Eva ran inside an hour later, excited enough that a hair had escaped her carefully done pigtails.
'Ori's back!' she told Taki, taking his hand again and pulling him towards the door. 'And she's sleeping with Klaus!'
Taki wondered if he had misheard.
Eva pulled him into the rose garden where he spied Klaus lying on the bench, one knee bent in the air. On his bare chest, curled into a geometrically perfect circle, was a white cat with small black markings on its back. Both were fast asleep.
They approached silently so they wouldn't wake the pair. Klaus' mouth was slightly open and he snored faintly. Eva gently tickled the cat's ears in a way that didn't rouse her and then she turned and grinned at Taki.
The peace was shattered when Heinrich appeared out of nowhere wearing a tablecloth for a cape and making a series of noises quite uncannily like a Beaufighter taking off.
Klaus awoke abruptly and was startled to find he had an audience. He was even more startled to find that there was a furry weight on his chest.
'What the –?'
'Heinrich!' Eva complained loudly. She bunched her hands into fists and stormed after her brother, who was veering off towards the washing line, consumed in his own world.
'Hey, Ori,' Klaus said hoarsely as the cat stretched its front legs hyperbolically far, claws extended. 'I was wondering where you'd gone.' He then squinted up at Taki who was partially silhouetted by the sun. 'Last time I saw her was over a year ago when I came to tell Claudia I was running off with you.'
The cat pushed her lean face into Klaus' hand as he scratched it.
'Does she belong to the family?' Taki asked.
'Barely. Wanders for weeks before coming back. We could never tell if she loves us or not.'
As if she had understood him, Ori fixed Klaus with a withering look before tucking her paws back under her body. Klaus grunted in pain when her claws, under the guise of kindly massage, gently dug into his bare skin.
'Ah! Mother of –!'
Taki gently lifted her up. She hung over his hands like a wet cloth for a few moments before folding against Taki. The purring took up in no time.
'Guess she's got a new favourite.'
Strangely comforted by the warmth of her small body, Taki sat on the bench by Klaus' feet. Ori made a show of curling up on his lap. He felt her claws dig into the fabric of his trousers and he winced slightly.
Klaus watched them for a few moments before closing his eyes again, feeling the heavy rays of sunlight cooling the sweat on his chest and face. His arms ached pleasantly from mowing. Breathing in the smell of roses, he nearly drifted off again.
Pay attention.
He opened his eyes to see Taki look away. With a faint blush on his cheeks. Klaus' heart soared.
He took a second in the mid-morning peace, in the garden that had been his refuge growing up, to really look at Taki again.
He was somewhat surprised to discover that he still couldn't be sure of the precise shade of Taki's eyes. They were almost black at times but took on a shade of blue in the sun that was almost like sapphire. What had always struck him more than their colour was their depth. A well of insight. Gravity that pulled him in every time without fail. Sincerity that cut through to the core of its audience, saw everything without trying, and made Klaus feel small and blustering by comparison.
Klaus took in everything else. Cheeks and jaw so refined they could have made under the loving hand of a sculptor. Casual elegance in his civilian clothes, though still with the hint of the admiration he inspired in his uniform; in that jade coat Klaus hadn't seen for nearly two months. A body that was lithe and agile. Ferocious when called on. Teeming with silent strength.
He was designed. It was the only way Klaus could put it to himself. His beauty was something beyond the world Klaus knew.
I never stood a chance, he thought with a small grin.
'I was looking at you the other day,' he said, his voice as gentle as the breeze. 'In Verner's orchard. You remember? He was up on his ladder and he handed down an apple and you stared at it for a while before looking at me.'
Taki remembered it. He'd felt oddly guilty about the apple that had been freshly plucked from its source of life. He had looked at the plump red skin, yellow in patches, rosy and ripe, and felt a strange happiness that, like so much else over the past few weeks, was new to him.
'I was a few trees over and I saw you,' Klaus said. 'It was like I was seeing you for the first time. I don't know why.'
Taki felt a little heat rise up his neck. Even when it was just him and Klaus, he felt the spotlight swing on him in a way that made him ill at ease. Like he was on display.
'You're so beautiful. Really.'
Taki looked away, suddenly grateful he was out of Klaus' reach. He fought the urge to make an excuse and leave the bench. Each and every time he had heard Klaus make similar remarks, a part of him couldn't help but feel like he was being made fun of.
'No one's ever told you that before me, have they?' Klaus said, the thought occurring to him for the first time. He thought about the mother that had died when Taki was very young. The minders and teachers who would have felt it wasn't their place to tell their young master such a thing. 'I doubt Suguri ever took that rake out of his ass long enough to tell you.'
Ori purred in Taki's lap. The soft pink of her upturned paws contrasted with her white fur and, for some reason, reminded Taki of the wolf with the golden eyes.
'I mean it, you know,' Klaus said. 'It's been two years, but there are still times I look at you and feel like I dreamt you up.'
It was clear how uncomfortable Taki was. Klaus suspected he was still on the bench only by dint of whatever they had found together over the past few weeks. It made Klaus feel strangely stubborn. It seemed unfair for the entire world to be aware of something that eluded Taki alone.
At that point, Klaus would normally have sat up and pulled Taki towards him for a kiss. He imagined how Ori might watch them through judgmental eyes or else just spring indignantly off Taki's lap.
Instead, he repeated his mantra.
Like Hans would have done, he told himself. Pay attention like Hans would have. What would Hans have seen?
He ignored the tightness of Taki's lips and mouth, the stiffness of his posture. He saw the hand gently stroking Ori's fur; the only point on his body that had escaped his sudden tension.
No, not the only point, Klaus realised. Taki's eyes, still focused on Ori, seemed to be slowly softening. As though Klaus' words had fallen on him like hail but were now melting peacefully.
Taki then cast a fleeting look at Klaus. A look that was ephemeral but loaded with meaning. It was so quick Klaus couldn't be sure if he had seen or read it clearly.
But he felt that emotion for his own. He felt how it must overwhelm Taki, how he must overwhelm Taki, and he felt both guilty and winded. He wondered how often it had happened; how many things Klaus had said in passing had thrown Taki like that.
The tip of Ori's tail flicked in her sleep.
They have a secret language, Heinrich had once told Claudia with a bright smile.
You're weren't far off the mark, buddy, Klaus thought, amused by the five-year-old's acuity. I'm learning a new one now. It's taken me two years, but I'm learning.
He realised how much it would take. How much uncertainty and doubt he would face. How much frustration. How many moments of self-loathing. But if it meant that he would occasionally come up against moments like this, like little specks of gold on the river bed, then he would withstand all the cold currents the world had to offer. He would never go as deep as Hans had gone. But he was going to try.
They were bound until death, and he was willing to spend all of that time trying.
Ori's unexpected arrival wasn't the only one of its kind that day. Unlike hers, however, the next arrival managed to break the peace of the Strauss cottage cleanly in two.
Afternoon was sliding lazily towards evening. Despite the season's fickleness during the day, spring nights in the countryside were reliably chilly. Klaus' axe still thudded in the distance, making fresh kindling for that night's fire.
Claudia had been resting in bed after taking her medication when Heinrich clambered under the covers with a picture book. After admonishing her brother for disturbing their mother's rest, Eva had quietly slipped into bed on Claudia's other side and listened about the wolf and the hare.
All three were now snoozing peacefully, before dinner had even been started. Taki walked in on them and decided to move the children to their own beds and leave Claudia to her early bedtime.
After he lowered Heinrich to his bed, Taki noticed with a twinge how the child turned onto his back in his sleep and curled his left hand beneath the pillow, in perfect imitation of his uncle.
Back in Claudia's bedroom, Eva's eyes flickered open for a moment when Taki picked her up. She smiled and rested her head on his shoulder.
When he heard loud footsteps in the hallway, he assumed it was Klaus and didn't turn around.
Then he felt Eva lift her head.
'Papa!'
Taki felt a wave of dread even before he turned, and one that amplified when he found himself face to face with Wilhelm Strauss for the first time. There was a type of cold, quivering shock in his eyes that Taki had seen before in enemy soldiers.
He was tall and angular with a short mane of shaggy brown hair, a thin moustache and line beard that ran up his sideburns. Heavy boots and drab, slightly stained work clothes. Thin lips hanging slightly open. And bright blue eyes, the exact shade of Eva's, staring at the stranger in his wife's bedroom.
Taki was too taken aback to say anything. For a charged few moments, Wilhelm was too.
Then he found his voice.
'I want you out of my house.'
The command was deep and quiet and managed to fill the whole room. Without giving him a chance to come up with a reply, Wilhelm walked heavily to Taki, who was still frozen, and took Eva out of his arms.
'Did you hear me?' he demanded, his voice still level and still containing the simmering, icy threat.
Claudia stirred awake. Her eyes rounded in shock at the sight of her husband.
'Wilhelm! What –?'
'What is he doing here?'
Claudia heard his tone and alarm bells went off. She sat up gingerly, her mind racing.
'What are you -? I thought you weren't coming back for weeks!'
'Don't change the subject. I asked you what he was doing here.'
'He – Wilhelm, let me explain –'
Wilhelm turned back to Taki, who braced himself. He saw how Eva clung ashen-faced to her father.
'Get out of this house right now,' repeated Wilhelm, his words delivered slowly and carefully, his anger rolling from him in waves. From up close, Taki saw the creases in the corners of his eyes and places where goggles would have left a mark. 'Or I'll throw you out myself.'
'Try it and see what happens.'
Wilhelm turned and experienced a flare of anxiety somewhere in the pit of his anger. He had forgotten how large his brother-in-law was. Even standing in the doorway, Klaus seemed like a threat.
Taki recognised the look in Klaus' eye, one he hadn't seen since he and Hans had been in the same room. His stomach churned.
Wilhelm recovered quickly. He stared Klaus down, having made the connection soon after seeing the foreigner in his home.
'Who do you think you are?' Again the words were slow and cold, with the brunt of his anger trembling behind each syllable. He slid Eva to the ground. 'Threatening me? Bringing enemy soldiers under my roof without my permission?'
Claudia got to her feet, trying to ignore the little rivets of pain that shot up her spine from her lower back.
'Wilhelm please, Taki isn't an –'
'Do you think I'm stupid?' he said to her. The pauses between his words were somehow worse than the words themselves. Claudia felt like shrinking. 'Do you think I don't know who he is? Has he told you how many of our people's deaths he's responsible for?'
'He's only been here to help me! He's done nothing but –'
'So you just let him come in here like nothing that happened in the war mattered. Did you not hear about Adalard's brother? Or Lotte's husband? All the men who aren't coming back because of people like him? You should be ashamed.'
Eva started crying quietly and tugged on her father's hand.
'Papa, don't –'
'I'm not going to tell you again, Wilhelm,' Klaus said, taking a few steps into the room and trying to steady his voice. 'You need to settle down.'
'No one who has western blood on their hands is welcome here,' Wilhelm said, pointing straight at Klaus' chest, eyebrows raised, chin down. 'And that includes you, Klaus. I don't care what you've told yourself. You're nothing but a traitor and a disgrace.'
It was a combination of things – the attack on Klaus, Eva's tears and the look on Claudia's face – that finally moved Taki to speak.
'Master Strauss, I never intended –'
Wilhelm rounded on him again.
'I wasn't talking to you, Schlitzaugen.'
No one could be sure if it was the half-step Wilhelm had taken in Taki's direction or the phrase 'slit eyes' itself, an insult that seemed to have been hurtled straight from Taki's year at Luckenwalde, but suddenly Klaus had Wilhelm by his shirt front and backed up against the window.
Eva screamed and Claudia's hands flew to her face.
'Klaus, stop!' Taki called in alarm.
He was reminded of the day he and Uemura and Hasebe had all combined forces to keep Klaus away from Hans. Now it was him alone, trying to step between Klaus and Wilhelm, hands pushing his chest and arm, trying to ignore the unyielding glint in his eyes.
Despite his words and the seething anger he still carried in his eyes even when Klaus seized him, Wilhelm was by no means a fighter. He was always the type to stand back in barroom brawls, sip his beer with a straight, wry smile and wait for his freshly gap-toothed friend to emerge and ask for an arm to lean on.
And so, even when the much larger man had him pinned against the windowsill, it wasn't in Wilhelm's nature to throw punches. And he had a strong feeling he didn't stand a chance even if he tried.
Klaus had always known that. And the knowledge managed to leak through the surge of loathing that his insult had inspired. He finally heard Taki's voice telling him to let go. He released Wilhelm's shirt and stepped away.
Then he heard Eva sobbing. He saw, out of the corner of her eye, how her face was buried in Claudia's dress. The guilt leaked in slowly as well.
'That's just typical,' Wilhelm said, trying to straighten his collar, keeping his eyes on Klaus. 'When you don't like something you resort to your fists. Like an overgrown child –'
'Please stop,' Claudia begged, sounding like she was on the verge of tears. It wasn't clear whom she was addressing.
Taki kept a hand on Klaus' shoulder until he was sure he had calmed down. He glanced between him and Wilhelm and hoped the worst was over. He then turned to Eva and realised it would be best for everyone's sake if the two of them left the room.
Eva lifted her tear-stained face from the folds of Claudia's dress when Taki came to stand beside her.
'How about we go outside?' he said gently and offered his hand.
Still taking in great gulping breaths between tears, Eva quietly went with him. Everyone was relieved when Wilhelm made no move to stop them.
A month and a half ago, in one of her letters to Wilhelm, Claudia mentioned almost in passing that Klaus might be staying for a few days to help out around the house. Wilhelm had made no mention of him in his reply and so she breathed easy. When Klaus then arrived with Taki in tow, and when a few days was extended to several weeks, Claudia only sparingly reflected this in her letters. Assuming that their visits wouldn't overlap, Claudia only spoke of her brother a few times and didn't once mention Taki.
So for Wilhelm, who was hit hard by the extended separation from his family and the specific bitterness that all of his efforts had been in vain at the close of the war, it was a shock that had taken on the quality of a bad joke. He had come home early, hoping to surprise his wife and children, and instead found himself face-to-face with Taki Reizen; someone who, in that moment, quite easily embodied the reason for pay cuts and long hours and time away from their family, and someone who was standing in his home holding his child as though he belonged there.
Wilhelm Strauss had no control over the war. No control over his wife's condition. But he sure as hell could control who stayed in his house.
His reaction swiftly discredited Klaus and Taki's vain hopes regarding the war's aftermath. Having Eurote as a common enemy hadn't done much. It seemed old wounds ran deeper than last-minute changes of alliance.
Taki watched as Eva carefully picked up a rose from the ground where the soil had smudged its white petals. The tall hedges of the garden shielded them from the wind that whipped the clouds into strange shapes.
'Why does Papa hate you?' she asked, her voice quiet and her eyes on the rose.
Taki felt his throat close up with an unfamiliar emotion. He wondered at how the simplest questions were often the most difficult to answer.
'For a long time,' he said, 'we were on different sides of a big fight.'
'You mean the war?' she deduced easily.
'Yes.'
'Are you still on different sides now?'
Taki hesitated.
'I'm not sure,' he answered honestly. 'But things are better now. And I think they'll keep getting better. What do you think?'
She turned to him then, her eyes huge. And she nodded.
By the time Klaus found them, they had wandered over to the furthest hedge and Eva seemed to have recovered almost completely. Her smile faltered, however, when she saw Klaus. He crouched in front of her, apologised for what he had done and assured her that her uncle and her father were friends again. Eva offered him a reproachful smile and returned his hug before picking her way delicately through the garden.
'That last part couldn't have been a bigger lie,' Klaus said as he watched her leave, blowing air out of his cheeks.
'What happened?'
In a nutshell, the master of the house wanted them both out by morning. He had been close to turning them out that night itself and only Claudia managed to sway him.
They stood in silence for some time.
'It's my fault,' Taki said softly. 'You should stay. I'll go.'
'Not a chance,' Klaus retorted without missing a beat. 'And Wilhelm made it clear there's no difference between you and me anyway. He doesn't want me around either.'
He toed the ground with his boot and felt the cold wind on his bare forearms, wishing he'd brought a jacket.
'Things will be easier for Claudia now, anyway,' he said. 'With him around to take care of the kids.'
Taki heard the doubt in his voice. He thought about Claudia's tinkling laughter and generous smiles. And then the cold, dangerous gaze of her husband.
'Why did she marry him?'
His concern for Claudia outweighed the thought that it wasn't his place to ask about such matters. He wondered if he had started seeing Claudia and the children as his own family.
'You won't believe me after what you just saw,' said Klaus with a gruff sigh. 'But the guy turns into a pussycat around her. It's nauseating, really.'
The fact that Klaus was prepared to admit it meant it was probably true. Regardless, Taki found it difficult to see past the man's antipathy.
Klaus continued to try, in an undertone, to rationalise their leaving. Taki remained silent. As Klaus spoke, Taki felt something lodge in his chest; a small, hard diamond of resolve.
That feeling was enough to remind him that Wilhelm was no different to the kinds of people he had faced in the past. And, unlike Klaus, he knew how to deal with them without getting carried away. Though Taki's pride did still, on occasion, get the better of him, he knew when it was more important to shelve it.
When Klaus was in the bathroom and Claudia was tucking Eva in bed, Taki approached Wilhelm in the kitchen where he stood at the sink, running hot water over dirty dishes. Taki waited for him to turn.
The look Wilhelm gave him was somewhat more subdued than before, but it still conveyed a coldness that ran deep.
He turned back to the sink.
'I have nothing to say to you.'
Taki waited and weighed his words before speaking.
'I understand why you don't want me here,' he began, his voice soft but firm. 'And I respect it.'
There was only silence and the sound of running water.
'But your wife is the only reason Klaus and I came.'
Wilhelm felt a muscle twitch in his jaw. Despite everything, he still felt a sliver of guilt over the insult he had hurled at Reizen; a word he normally abjured when he heard others use it.
Now, Reizen's pacifying tone was laced with something else he didn't quite identify. And the mention of Claudia had struck a nerve.
'She's better. You can probably see it too,' Taki continued. 'It's because of Klaus and how much he's been helping.'
'So you're a doctor, are you?'
But the scathing tone contained traces of doubt.
'If I could, I would leave and have Klaus stay. But he would follow me.'
The strange words and tone made Wilhelm turn again and fix him with a look.
Good riddance to you both, he thought but suddenly couldn't say. He was flooded with memories of Claudia before he left. The brave smile and the cheekbones that stood out far more than they ought to. On the morning that he left, as he stood by the short front gate, he had nearly yielded again. He had nearly forsaken the law and his duty in order to stay with her. But her assurances and Verner's promise to keep an eye on her when he could and his nation's call had made him turn from the gate.
The guilt, however, he carried with him every step of the way.
Taki saw it in him, the shame of having let down the one person he cared about above all else, and he recognised it instantly. He suddenly felt a reluctant kinship with Wilhelm. The guilt. The pride. The love.
'She doesn't need him anymore,' said Wilhelm suddenly, in a voice that was no longer edged with frost, one that Taki didn't expect from him. 'I can… I can take care of things.'
'Klaus has been good for her,' Taki insisted gently. 'And it would be in her best interest if he were to stay until she's better. And if we can forget... everything else in the meantime. For her sake.'
Wilhelm's eyes flicked up at him suspiciously, at the young commander who had been responsible for so much of what had happened during the war. Why he should suddenly take such an interest in Wilhelm's wife made no sense to him, no matter how much Claudia had tried to explain it over the past few minutes.
The heightened emotions and awful words from not long ago still hung around them like a vapour. Feeling responsible for it, Taki hoped he had at least done something to dispel it.
'I appreciate your hearing me out,' he said finally, with a touch of awkwardness.
When he was alone in the kitchen, Wilhelm stood there for a long time. His mind was a tangle of love and duty and old wounds and new alliances and the first time he had ever heard Claudia laugh.
The following morning, when Wilhelm was busy with a few repairs on his truck, Claudia rolled to Taki's door in her wheelchair and knocked, looking mortified.
'I don't know how I can –' she stuttered. 'Last night, what Wilhelm said – I'm so sorry, Taki.'
'It's alright,' he said.
'He's just - not very good at expressing his emotions,' she said, and cringed at her own words. 'I know that sounds like a terrible excuse. But it's not about you. Not really. It's everything, it's the war and him having to leave me when he knew I wasn't well and he's just directing it all at you because, well –'
'Because he has reason to.'
'No, he doesn't,' she said, her voice suddenly hard. 'He absolutely does not. You helped your country win the war but you certainly didn't start it. And I'm sure he knows that, Taki. He –'
She sighed and paused.
'He's always so silent and hard to read and then occasionally it all just bursts out of him like this. It's unforgivable, I know.'
Taki felt another strange squirm of empathy.
'Claudia –'
'I will make him apologise to you. I promise.'
But Wilhelm never did.
Although Klaus always saw this as evidence of Wilhelm's ill will and narrow-mindedness,Taki, who read him a lot better, knew that it was only due to his pride.
Taki never told Klaus of his brief conversation with Wilhelm, and so Klaus couldn't be sure why Wilhelm had changed his mind about letting them stay. But he had begrudgingly accepted his half-hearted apology the following morning and offered one that was just as insincere. And since then they had tried, as best as they could, to move on.
In the first few days after the master of the house returned, it became clear that things were undoubtedly easier with him around. They had his truck whenever they needed it and no longer had to rely on Verner's. There were now enough eyes and hands at the cottage to simultaneously take care of Claudia, the children and the chores. And Klaus slept easier at night knowing Wilhelm was beside her.
Taki observed that Klaus was right about him. The man was devoted to his wife. His every sense was tuned to her needs. With every cough, every breath that seemed laboured, every wince, he would get up from wherever he was and ask her what she needed. More often than not, she would put a gentle hand on his face and tell him to stop fussing.
The children were also glad to have him back. Heinrich would ride on Wilhelm's shoulders and he would inundate his father for the first time with stories of his aeronautical adventures around the property as Wolverine. He seemed to sense that his father's long-held resentment of his uncle had relaxed, if only a little, and he wanted to milk it for all it was worth.
Wilhelm felt an anxious sort of relief over Claudia's demonstrable, if somewhat unsteady, improvement. He remembered how frail she had been six months ago when he was called away. He felt, again, a begrudging respect for Klaus.
And for Reizen, whom he noticed got along with his wife rather well. It irked him in a strange way when he saw them speaking softly to one another at the table or by the fireplace.
Amazingly, they didn't run into any more landmines since their first encounter. Even the topics that threatened to turn into something more were defused before impact.
'Why are you making two casseroles?' Wilhelm asked Claudia one day.
'Taki's a vegetarian,' she replied.
Wilhelm made a face.
Klaus glared at him as though daring him to have a problem with it. This was despite the fact that Klaus had thought it the strangest thing in the world when Taki told him in Luckenwalde that he'd never once eaten meat.
The only time politics was ever brought up was when they watched the Kaiser making a nationwide address regarding the state of their economy since the close of the war.
'I suppose you're one of the nutters who thinks the Kaiser made a deal with the emperor?' Klaus said, his incendiary words masked by a careless tone.
'The Kaiser doesn't have the power to do something like that,' Wilhelm said with a frown. 'He's just a figurehead. Whoever you heard that from is an imbecile.'
Taki turned to look at him in surprise.
Later that evening, Wilhelm watched disapprovingly through the window at Klaus and Taki returning from the southern edge of the property where they had been mending the rabbit-proof fence. Even from that distance, it was clear they were lost in conversation. He couldn't imagine what they could possibly have to say to one another when, in fact, they seemed to be polar opposites in almost every conceivable way.
'I don't understand,' he said quietly to Claudia, who was beside him, watering the hydrangeas lining the sill. 'It's like he doesn't even care. Like he has no shame about any of it. Abandoning his country. Following Reizen around like a lackey.'
Claudia sighed.
'He's not Taki's lackey. He's his knight.'
Wilhelm had heard Claudia use that word before and had always assumed she had romanticised the truth. Now he frowned.
'In this day and age? That's ridiculous.'
Claudia brushed her hair back from her eyes. She tried to remember if that had been her reaction too, when Klaus first came to her and told her he was leaving for the east. She had been too caught up in his smile – his barely contained happiness – to have really thought in such terms.
'Don't you remember how I tried to explain all this to you a year ago?'
'Vaguely,' Wilhelm muttered. He usually turned a deaf ear to anything concerning his rogue brother-in-law.
'The customs in Taki's country might seem a bit old-fashioned to us,' she said. 'But that doesn't make them any less important. Or real.'
She looked at the two of them approach the cottage with a faint smile.
'What does it even mean? That Klaus is, what, his bodyguard? His second in command?'
'He's more like… Taki's property.'
Wilhelm stared.
'His property?'
'From what I understand,' said Claudia, aware of how it sounded but suddenly unwilling to put up a defence. She had defended Klaus to Wilhelm and vice versa for years and had grown weary of it. She decided instead to state the facts and have Wilhelm take it however he saw fit. 'He gave up his rights and citizenship. Everything, really. His entire life belongs to Taki. They're bound until death.'
She couldn't help the mischievous smirk.
'Not unlike us, my dear.'
Wilhelm bristled.
'You're not my property.'
'The law sees it that way,' she pointed out.
He fell silent at that.
'And anyway, I meant it the other way around; you're my property. I keep you around to lift heavy furniture.'
She was glad to see his jaw twitch and a rare smile cross his face. It occurred to her, like it had occurred to Taki, that he and Taki were similar in a few ways.
Wilhelm, meanwhile, was still trying to make sense of a situation that was strange no matter how he looked at it.
'So Klaus is at Reizen's beck and call. He has to obey all his commands. No rights or nationality. Or family,' he extrapolated, confirmed with a curt nod from Claudia. 'So why did Reizen let him come all the way out here? And then come with him, on top of that?'
Claudia beamed at him.
'Exactly. I think you're finally getting it.'
She picked up the basket of laundry on the table and left the kitchen before her husband could process properly. He spared another glance out the kitchen window. They had drawn close enough for Wilhelm to see Reizen say something that made Klaus grin widely.
A small cloud of suspicion formed in the corner of his mind. One that he woefully misinterpreted.
He followed Claudia into the bedroom where she was sorting the clothes into piles on their bed. He hovered in the doorway, aware that he was about to sound like a fool but feeling the need to say it just to have Claudia make fun of him and lay his irrational thought to rest.
'You seem to like him a lot.'
'Who, Klaus?' Claudia didn't even turn around. 'That's hardly my fault. I was forced to share a childhood with him.'
'I mean Reizen.'
She rolled her eyes.
'Of course I like Taki. He left behind so much just to help Klaus take care of me. Plus he's a sweetheart. I wish you'd get to know him.'
She sensed the strange quality of his silence. Over the years, she had gotten used to them and had learned to pick up on their variations. This one was new. She turned.
'What's wrong?'
'You – he –'
Claudia was shocked to see him red-faced.
'You… seem to like him a lot,' he repeated lamely.
Then it dawned on her.
'You're jealous?'
'I – I'm not… I just meant –'
'Of Taki Reizen?'
And to Wilhelm's consternation, Claudia burst out laughing. She laughed for so long that she had to sit down.
'What's so funny?'
She was slightly doubled over, shoulders shaking, and Wilhelm was suddenly concerned for her spine. Still, the sound of her laugh was something he always secretly treasured. Even when he was down in the mines covered in grime and soot and the taste of copper was always on his tongue, the memory of her laugh would somehow bring to mind the golden fields outside their cottage.
'What's so funny?' he repeated.
'Oh, my dear,' said Claudia, finally calming down enough to reply. 'I wish I could tell you.'
There were little things. Things that Klaus had to be paying close attention to notice.
And other things that jumped out at him without his having to pay any attention at all.
The next morning, Taki headed into the kitchen to see that Klaus had awoken before him again. He was by the chopping block, gathering the last few logs of kindling to bring inside before it rained. Clouds had gathered overnight and a rumble sounded in the distance.
Taki watched him for a few moments.
And then, with a resounding crack, thunder belted across the sky directly overhead. A few raindrops fell like emissaries. The silence hung suspended in the air for a moment before the heavens suddenly opened on them.
Klaus abandoned the few logs remaining by the chopping block and headed for the cottage, his hair and shirt already soaking. Taki went to the door and held it open for him as he ran up the back steps, arms laden with kindling that would need a little drying but was otherwise usable.
He glanced up when he saw that Taki was holding the door open for him. His smile flashed from beneath dripping bangs. Taki stepped aside to let him pass.
In only a matter of seconds, the rain outside became a torrential downpour.
And then, as Klaus slid past, Taki put a hand on his arm. Klaus stopped and looked down inquisitively.
With as little warning as the rainstorm, Taki then curled his hand gently on the front of Klaus' shirt, stood on tiptoe and kissed him.
For Klaus, the shock was a physical sensation. It started at the pit of his stomach and surged up into his throat before finally filling his head.
Taki's lips were soft and dry. But they had met Klaus' with deliberation, with real if gentle pressure, so Klaus knew it was really happening.
He threw the entire pile of firewood to the floor where the logs tumbled about noisily, rolling away into corners and even back down the steps into the rain. He pulled Taki to him in embrace so forceful that his feet left the ground and their mouths pressed together, hard, for long moments that seemed to meld into one another, one after the other, until the wetness of Klaus' clothes became Taki's own.
The rain drummed louder on the roof. On the freshly mown lawn. On the golden fields turned grey under the clouds and the garden with its roses now dipping heavily. And still Klaus held Taki against him, pushed his lips open wider, felt the grip on his drenched shirt, hoped the welling in his chest wouldn't translate to tears.
When they finally broke apart, Klaus noticed that he was bearing most of Taki's weight. He lowered him, almost bemusedly, to the ground. They breathed heavily, foreheads still pressed together.
Unnoticed by either of them, Ori sprang lightly over the spilled kindling, shook herself and stalked out of sight into the house.