Happy Thursday! Sorry for the longer time between the chapters again, but I really wanted to do a good job with this one. I debated skipping it entirely and moving on to the aftermath, but I think what happens below is important to understand what Joe ends up doing. In the end, this was probably one of the hardest chapters to write so far and I hope I paid proper due to what happened in both the series and in real life. Please review and let me know any feedback!
Guest - Thanks for the review :)
Maya - I appreciate the compliment! I know this story is dark and very AU, and I love that you are enjoying it!
Joe thought he could handle anything the war threw at him.
It had been ten months since he jumped into France. Merely ten months he had spent on this continent. Less than a third of his entire stint in the army. But that time loomed over anything else he had ever done – over Sobel, over his rough years as a youth, over the pain of his mother's death. Nothing else could compete with the terrible bloodshed these ten months so readily provided. But he was still here. Still functioning.
It damaged him. It made him into a killer he sometimes didn't recognize. Emptiness rose within him, absorbing the horrors he came across – and the horrors he dispensed himself – into black nothingness where they could do no harm. Where he wouldn't have to think about them.
And he stayed whole. Not everyone he fought with could say that.
He didn't worry about whether the barrenness in his heart was permanent or not. His concern wasn't that this reaction would someday bite him in the ass and leave him crippled inside. He'd convinced himself that surviving wasn't in the cards for him and that was all there was to it. So he went through the motions as his bullets killed Germans and German bullets killed his friends.
At least until Caroline.
So he thought.
With her he entertained the idea that he would survive, that he would be happy. That what happened here will eventually become a memory, fuzzy through the filter of the many favorable memories since. If the emptiness kept him from falling apart, then Caroline made him remember to be human.
He had been so goddamn gullible.
The secrets Caroline held. The depth of the Nazi's depravity. The risk of letting his guard down. So gullible about everything.
He couldn't get that smell out of his nose. It stuck to him, attaching itself to his skin to linger for what he feared was the rest of his fucking life.
The decay from the bodies, withered and festering in the sun. The smoke from those that were dispatched in flames. The unwashed, diseased air coming from the men who were still alive. Luckily or unluckily. He hadn't decided yet.
The bony, desperate face of the man who's horrific words he translated appeared in his mind again. For the millionth time this afternoon. The man that made him question everything.
His mouth still burned from the acid his stomach heaved up.
He had been so fucking cocky. So sure that he had this in the bag. Germany was falling apart, he had escaped, Caroline was by his side even if she was angry. That was all a fucking stupid misunderstanding anyway. The bruise branded on her chest had blindsided him, and for a moment he lost his handle on the deeply rooted hatred of the man who did that to her. Whatever he thought about that wretched excuse for a human emerged unknowingly on his face and she took it the wrong way.
Not that it mattered now.
When he joined Malarkey in that truck he considered himself to be on the downward slope of the misery this damn place had brought him. That the end of the tunnel was approaching and he was going to emerge in one piece. He figured they would go out into the woods, poke around, shoot the shit, then come back. Just like all the other wild goose chases such rumors caused. He had been fucking dumb.
His first clue was the shade of Perconte's face as he sat across from them, sucking on a cigarette as though his lungs needed the smoke more than air. Malarkey leaned forward, trying to garner out of him an idea of what they were heading into. The best he got was a shrug and the agitated muttering of "I don't know" over and over. Had it been anyone else Joe would have brushed it off with a derisive nervous in the service. But Perco was a Toccoa man. If something was fucking him up then whatever waited for them out in the woods made disquiet twist in his gut.
He wasn't wrong.
His second warning was the smell winding through the woods as they bounced along. Even though they hadn't reached their destination it surrounded them, foretelling of the horror they were about to discover. Malarkey shifted uncomfortably. Perco squeezed his eyes shut. It reminded him of the hospital. He had to wait for hours to get his neck stitched up, sitting on a cot amidst all the fucking wounded Germans his unit had annihilated at the crossroads. The smell then was harsh and unpleasant – full of blood, pain, and terror.
Yes, it reminded him of the hospital, but in a way a papercut reminded him of the chunk taken out of his neck. It was a weak association made because he couldn't think of any other way to describe it. The terribleness of it blew any other comparison out of the water.
Then the trees gave way and the bright sunlight burst upon them, illuminating the last thing he expected.
Barbed wire. Huts. Guard posts. It looked like some sort of prison.
For a moment he was confused. Why was there a prison out in the middle of nowhere? Who was inside? Why was this making Perconte look like he wanted to hurl?
Then he jumped out of the truck. Then he realized where that smell was coming from. Then he saw the prisoners, if they could be called that. If they could even be called human. They shuffled towards the locked gate, walking as if their knees bent their legs would simply give out underneath them. Tattered clothing draped over their gray forms, barely hiding the bones sticking out from under their thin, dirty skin. His feet planted in the dirt as he stared, his brain urgently trying to make some sort of sense of the scene confronting him.
He thought he had seen everything. He thought he knew misery. But it dawned on him as he stood there that he didn't know a damn thing and he didn't move as Winters ordered the gate opened.
It was almost a relief when he was told to post by the trucks and watch the rear. He didn't want to fucking go in there. He wasn't ashamed to admit it.
The stench was overpowering. More than one person was bent forward, either swallowing back the contents of their stomach or letting it splatter in the dust.
As he took up position his eyes were unsurprisingly drawn back to the prison. A body, skeletal and rotting, lay tangled in the barbed wire. One hand was stretched forward, still grasping at freedom even in death. He whipped his head back towards the woods.
Malarkey hung back with him and offered a cigarette, which he gratefully took. All of his were traded to Spina. That thought automatically led to Caroline and he remembered now how at the time he had distracted himself by thinking about her.
So fucking naïve.
In perspective it had taken him too long to put everything together. He had been so blinded by whatever spell she put on him. As he had stood there, smoking and listening to the wretched groans coming from behind him, a little shadow of doubt began worming through his brain. The prison was huge. The smell was overpowering. The village wasn't far away.
Had she known about this?
Maybe she did, he admitted to himself. So what? Who knows why these people were here? What obligation did she have to tell him? She probably didn't know how bad it was.
Ha. He wanted to slap himself now.
When he was ordered to report to Winters for translating he groaned internally because he didn't want to enter that mass of filthy, unfortunate men. If he had known what was really going to happen he would have appreciated that those poor souls were only part of the awfulness that was about to befall him. He would have savored the last moments when he thought the war hadn't thrown him off that psychological cliff like it had so many others.
He would have realized how wonderful obliviousness really was.
As he stepped through the threshold he couldn't avoid the atrociousness of everything before him. Low, squat huts hugged the ground, their doors flung open to allow more hollowed, emaciated men to crawl out. Some had been recently burned, leaving smoking, blackened ash across the dirt and gravel. Before he forced himself to look away and find Winters he recognized human forms among the charred remains.
Winters was surrounded by the other officers, focusing on one man wearing striped, dirty clothes that looked like pajamas. He was thin like the others and held his head with one hand as though it pained him, but he was speaking in rapid German.
Joe's boots crunched heavily as he crossed the gravel to them. If he could go back in time now he would stop himself. He would pause, giving himself a moment to brace against what was about to happen. How everything he believed in and his new, tender ideas about what love was were about to be mercilessly and meticulously crushed.
Winters was ready for him and he barely reached the group before the questioning started.
"Are there soldiers here?"
"The guards left this morning," the prisoner answered, speaking faster, seemingly unable to control the torrent of words and pain coming forth now that he saw someone understood. His eyes, tormented by things Joe could only assume, darted around the camp in a manner Joe knew was learned. The anxiety of waiting, of knowing the next round of violence was coming but not being able to do anything about it, made a man wary. Sympathy tugged at him.
"Slow down. Please, slow down."
There was a pause as the man gathered himself. Then he spoke, slowly and deliberately. Joe translated word for word, each new and terrible fact in short, painful sentences that he found harder and harder to spit out as the man revealed what had happened.
"They burned some of the huts first. With the prisoners still in them. Alive."
"Jesus Christ," he heard Nixon mutter.
"Some of the prisoners tried to stop them. Some of them were killed. They didn't have enough ammo for all of the prisoners so…" The man pointed to a row of bodies by the fence. "They killed as many as they could. Before they left the camp. They locked the gates behind them and headed south." Joe swallowed. What the fuck had happened here?
"Someone in town must have told them we were coming," Nixon said, disbelief still on his face as he looked to the south.
"Yeah, I think so," he found himself agreeing. He had heard about this town – Landsberg – but had only seen it as they passed through on the truck. He could only assume it was filled with fucking Nazis. Who else would let this happen in their own backyard?
He thought of Caroline. The shadow of worry loomed larger.
"Will you ask him… what kind of camp this is? What…why are they here?" Winter's voice was soft and strained.
The man was fighting tears now, his thin frame shaking.
"Why are you here?"
The skeletal face drew into a frown. "Why are we here? It's a work camp for unerwünschte."
Another term he hadn't heard before. Some sort of slang again. The unwanted?
He was right, in a way. In a fucking way.
"Criminals?" Nixon asked.
Joe watched the man's chin quiver. He had lowered his hand now, revealing some sort of patch under his lapel. A pit of coldness began growing in Joe's stomach.
"I don't think criminals, sir," he said before switching back to German.
"Are you criminals?"
The man's eyes grew wide. "Criminals? No. Artists, musicians, tailors and clerks, farmers…normal people."
Why would they –
"Juden…."
His attention snapped back to focus on the pained gaze leveled on him.
"…Juden…."
The man's voice began to break and for a moment Joe wasn't sure if he heard right. Didn't want to believe what he was being told. His nostrils flared, taking in another deep breath of the foul air that he no longer noticed. Winters' eyes were on him, patiently waiting for the English translation.
He could see the patch clearly now. The Star of David. His mouth went dry and he looked again at the skinny, suffering people around him.
Jews.
The Star charm on his chain rested against his chest as the crippled forms of the men seared into his struggling brain. He hadn't moved since the news fell on him. The German man sobbed from a short distance away, leaving him with one final blow: there were more camps like this one.
All for Jews. His people.
The knowledge hovered above him, not quite sinking in. Not penetrating the layer of denial that sprung up as soon as he saw what was happening. His mind desperately tried to protect itself from the destructive idea that these people were being tortured due to their religion. His religion.
But there was no other alternative. No excuse he could cling to in order to explain what he saw. So instead he felt himself shutting down, freezing in place to protect the last vestiges of his control.
He thought he could handle anything the war threw at him, but the war had other ideas. It unveiled to him the depths of cruelty, of how terrible humans can be to one another. He thought he knew what bad was like. But what confronted him now was so indefinably awful that bad was woefully inadequate. And as he stood there he knew the fucking denial was only temporary. The weight of these atrocities was eventually going to hit him. It was rising up, looming from above like a giant wave preparing to crash into him and shred him from the inside out. There was no ice, no shell to protect him. What he had been through before now was merely an inconvenience in retrospect. A minor ripple in the course of time that led him to the monstrosity now facing him.
He thought about Kristallnacht and the passing attention he gave it when he heard the news. Hate crimes were nothing novel. He knew from his own experience that being Jewish always meant being a target. However this was not just broken storefronts and burned synagogues. This was… this was…
Why didn't anyone fucking stop it? Why didn't anyone know?
Caroline.
His stomach heaved then, the first tendrils of comprehension reaching into his brain to fuck with his notion of what was good and what was evil. He swallowed the sourness back. His hands clenched, sweaty and shaking.
She knew.
He thought about the night in the cellar when they made peace. When they realized what was going on and actually talked to one another. When he mentioned what he heard about German Jews.
"You know?"
He thought about the night he found her.
"Jew. You're a Jew."
She fucking knew.
He didn't throw up again, but sickness swam through him. His breath came faster and the haunting forms around him blurred.
He needed to get the hell out of here. He needed to find her and get some goddamn answers before he fell apart.
"Liebgott!" The sound of his name jerked him out of his spiraling daze. Winters was standing with some medical officer, looking at him. A truck had pulled into the camp and soldiers inside were handing food to a growing mob of frantic, hungry men.
His people.
He robotically made his way over to his commanding officer. Winters' eyes rested on him for a moment and he realized that he had no idea what was showing on his face. His usual façade was gone and he suddenly felt naked and uncomfortable.
Not that he would have to worry about that for long. The next set of orders attacked his tenuous hold on himself and he used the last of his restraint to keep his voice level.
"I can't tell them that, sir," he heard himself say, working over what the medical officer commanded with a bitter taste on his tongue. Tell them they have to stay in here? Fuck that. His gut automatically rebelled against the notion of breaking that to these men. Some of them seemed to be only surviving on the faint hope that they would someday find freedom. To shut the gate back in their faces…
"You've got to, Joe." Winters nodded sympathetically and just like that he had no choice.
Blinking back the fresh dawning of chaos driving through him, he dragged himself back around to face the truck. The blood drained from his face as he watched them greedily consume chunks of cheese, nearly crushing each other to get to the outstretched hands doling it out. He swallowed, trying to give himself a reason to do this other than being court-martialed.
They would get the help they needed in here.
It was for their own good.
They were going to be alright.
They would understand.
One foot in front of the other. He slowly pushed himself forward, approaching them. His heart weighed a thousand pounds in his chest, telling him with every beat that this was wrong. That he had been wrong about everything.
Despite the frenzy the men parted for him as he entered the fray to get to the truck. He heard voices in German blessing and thanking him. Others, too, in Polish and Czech, in words he did not understand but a sentiment that was the same. His jaw throbbed as he ground his teeth together.
He nearly faltered as hands grabbed onto his sleeves and dry, cracked lips pressed into his cheeks with kisses of gratitude. Tears were in their eyes as they looked at him and even though he tried to keep his gaze straight ahead he felt the emotion welling in his throat.
His fucking people.
In that moment he would have given anything to have the ice back. But it was nowhere to be found and the effect of what he was seeing – what he was experiencing – continued to sink into him with the sting of a thousand knives. It was only a week ago that he considered himself cold and heartless. Where had that person gone? Where was the goddamn stoicism when he needed it? Why did he feel like he was being cut open and having his insides ripped out?
Why did the Nazis do this? What did Caroline not tell him?
His brain felt like it was swelling inside his skull. His limbs were deadened as he climbed up onto the truck. Webster looked at him curiously but he didn't acknowledge it and hung onto one of the metal ribs crossing over his head.
They watched him eagerly when he called for their attention. He forced the words out, quickly before he lost the final fragments of his nerve. He couldn't look at them as he told them they couldn't leave, that the food was being taken away, that they weren't being rescued from this place just yet. Instead he stared at the trees rising behind the camp or at his shoes, trying not to listen to the agonized wails that rose as the men heard what he was saying.
Then the wave crashed downwards, flooding him with a sickening tide of awareness he couldn't handle. He felt it hit him as his voice tapered away. He stomach dropped to his feet and his eyes darted upwards, drawn to the traumatized victims before him. He took in their gaunt, dirt-streaked faces, now stretched into terror and dismay at the prospect of staying here. The yellow stars on their uniforms glared at him. The reek of death stained every breath he took. Behind them lay the bodies. So many bodies. All Jews like him. Executed.
The Nazi's tried to wipe them off the face of the earth. If America lost the war he would have been next.
His legs lost their strength and he collapsed on the bench beside him. As the howls continued he buried his face in his hands. For a second he cursed his parents for being Austrian, for teaching him the language that let him understand almost every plea and tormented cry that came behind him.
As a little kid he promised himself that he would never cry again. But that kid only had a taste of how awful the world could really be.
Holding his head, he sobbed.
"Liebgott?"
Lipton's voice filtered past the fog rounding through Joe's mind. The metal bench bit into his backside. He was still in the truck. His head was in his hands, his fingers fisting his hair. His eyes, finally, were dry. They burned when he blinked.
At the edge of his vision a figure crouched. He didn't know how long he had been sitting there. He vaguely remembered Malarkey trying to talk to him, but whatever he said was lost in the haze that made it difficult to comprehend anything other than the fact that being Jewish meant being dead in this country.
And Caroline. The stranger he thought he was in love with.
What had she done?
Schuellers words. You'll find out soon enough. Find out what a fucking idiot you've been and how well she's played you. It all made sense now.
Was he merely a ticket to get on the winning side of the war? Was everything a pure calculation?
What had she done?
"Hey, Joe," Lipton tried again, touching Joe's knee. He blinked once more and slowly reared back, his head feeling so heavy his neck strained to hold it up. A pack of cigarettes rested beside him. Malarkey must have left them.
Lipton looked at him, concern marking his expression. Pity.
Joe scrubbed his face with his palm. "Yes, sir?" His voice cracked.
"We are doing a sweep of the camp to ensure all of the living prisoners are accounted for."
Joe couldn't control his expression, no matter how hard he tried. Fucking hell, he was going to have to see everything up close and personal. Then again, this was personal for him, wasn't it?
Juden.
Fucking right, it was.
"Major Winters, though, would like you to accompany Captain Nixon to the offices over there," Lipton pointed to a larger building behind the huts, "to assist him in translating whatever documents were left behind."
Joe wiped his face again, relief making him slump against the bench. Documents. He could handle documents.
"Yes, sir," he replied, his voice sounding stronger to his own ears. Lipton stood and squeezed his shoulder, giving a small nod of understanding before jumping off the tailgate.
It was another moment before he could move himself. He found his canteen and drank deeply, wishing it could wash away how dirty he felt. How disgusting this place made him feel. Swiping the cigarettes to stuff in his pocket, he finally rose.
There were a few inquisitive stares as he climbed off the truck but he ignored them, finally able to arrange his face into an unwelcoming expression to keep questions at bay. It worked and he wasn't pestered as he made his way over to the building.
Verwaltung, a sign branded over the doorway. Administration. He pushed open the wooden door, revealing a dark and quiet interior. In here the smell that permeated outside was only a slight nuisance under the odor of paper, ink, and wood varnish. A brilliantly red swastika banner hung over the entryway. He stared at it, imagining himself yanking it down and the feel of the fabric under his fingers as he ripped it to shreds.
There was a faint rustling coming from the top of the stairwell leading to the second floor and his hand automatically went to his rifle. He didn't know if Nixon was here yet or not and for a moment he wondered what would happen if he came across some Nazi clerk that got left behind.
There would be blood. A lot of blood. If he had a reputation for savagery before –
"Joe." Nixon appeared on the second floor landing, looking somewhat unsteady. "Come on up."
He disappeared down the hall as Joe climbed the stairs. When he reached the top the wooden floor vanished under a flurry of papers. They had been dumped, it seemed, all over. A sign that the place had been abandoned in a hurry.
Nixon was in a small office going through a filing cabinet. His canteen sat open on the desk. The room smelled faintly of Vat 69.
"That," Nixon pointed one long finger at a thick book on the desk without turning around, "is where I need you to start. It is some sort of ledger."
Resting his rifle inside the door, he slid the book over to him. Nixon was right – it was a ledger. He opened the pages and was confronted with a long list of names.
"It is some sort of personnel book," he said.
"For the guards?" Nixon flipped through a file before tossing it aside.
"No…" Joe ran a finger over the headers, reading them aloud. "Intake date, country of origin, physical condition…" He paused for a second, comprehending what he was looking at. "Dorm assignment, labor assignment..."
Then the last column, which was as filled as the others. "…Death date."
Nixon turned then, swiping the canteen from the desk and taking a long swig. "For the prisoners," he corrected himself.
"Yes sir," Joe softly agreed. His jaw smarted again.
"That's probably why there is so many of them. They are likely all the same." Nixon let out a bitter chuckle and took another drink, gesturing towards a bookcase on the far wall. The shelves were filled with identical ledgers.
He was nauseous again. Flipping to the inside cover, he tried to take a calming breath.
"This one is just for September 1942 to December 1942." There had to be a thousand of names. A thousand deaths. Three months.
He slammed the book shut and rested a tight fist on it. This might be worse than searching for pulses on corpses.
Nixon's dark eyes watched him carefully. "I wouldn't ask you to do this if I didn't have to. If the Nazis had been thoughtful enough to keep their records in French I would have been able to put that expensive boarding school education to use for once. Shows me for not picking German." He looked down at the papers he was holding, a sardonic smile playing on his haggard face. "Of course, I didn't think my Grand Tour would be on top of a Sherman."
Joe didn't know what the hell a Grand Tour was and didn't ask. He stared at the rows and rows of ledgers.
Nixon tilted the canteen towards him. "Want some? You look like you need it."
He wet his lips as he eyed the extended drink. "Thank you sir," he replied quietly as he accepted it. The warm taste of the whiskey was inviting, a comforting counterbalance to the violent tumult beating though him. He quickly handed it back to Nixon to stop himself from finishing it off, knowing he would get plastered given the opportunity. How he wanted to feel nothing right now in the way only alcohol could provide made him ripe for bad decisions.
"Listen," Nixon started, looking around the room. "I'm pretty sure they burned almost anything useful in here. Why don't you take a break? Snoop around and get some souvenirs before I let everyone else in here to strip the place."
Joe didn't want more pity. But he didn't want to be in here, reading in black and white what happened to his people, even more. So he nodded, grabbed his rifle, and walked out to the hall.
The building was utterly silent and completely shielded from the horrors outside. If he didn't know better he would think he was any other office building, even in New York. The whiskey sloshed in his stomach as he slowly walked over the documents covering the floor, making his way past the offices lining either side of him. They were all similar – desks, chairs, filing cabinets and bookcases. All in disarray from the sudden retreat. He rummaged through a few of them - making the motions of looking for anything interesting – but his mind was elsewhere.
Her, of course. He went through every moment of their time together, trying to pick out clues he missed before. Something to reassure him that he hadn't been completely deceived. That there was still some redeeming factor in their relationship to stop him from…
Doing what, exactly? Hating her? Forgiving her? Abandoning her?
Goddammit, what was she not telling him?
He wished he had taken that second drink. There was a loud crash from the first office and he jutted his head out into the hall to look. Nixon appeared, draining the last drops from his canteen before heading into the next office without a word.
Joe leaned against the doorframe, rubbing his aching forehead. He didn't know what the fuck he was going to do. If only he hadn't been such a fucking idiot…
Opening his eyes, he spied another office at the end of the hall. Unlike the solid wood of the other doors, this one had a window of frosted glass. Making his way over to it, he grasped the cold metal door knob and pushed it open.
It was larger than the others. An imposing desk centered the room, facing the door. The floor was covered by an expensive rug and a cold fireplace rose in one corner. It was considerably less messy than the others and he knew immediately whose office it was before he read the name plate under the window. Kommandant.
He felt a small measure of satisfaction as he strolled into the room. Whoever this son of a bitch was Joe was sure he never envisioned a Jewish American soldier one day making himself right at home in this sanctum.
And that is exactly what Joe did. Circling the desk, he pulled out the plush leather chair and sunk down into it, kicking his dirty boots onto the pristine ink blotter. Leaning his head back, he lit a cigarette and watched the gray cloud of smoke he exhaled disappear against the ceiling.
"Fuck you," he said out loud, not caring if Nixon heard. "Fuck your country, your fucking swastikas, your fucking sieg heils, and your fucking plan to kill everyone. Didn't work out so well, did it? You stupid motherfuckers. Here's one Jew you didn't get, sitting right in your fucking chair."
Yelling at nothing was almost as satisfying as the whiskey. It even made him forget about Caroline for two seconds. Grunting from behind the cigarette, he sat up and yanked open one of the drawers. It was mostly empty except for a bottle of ink and a silver plated letter opener, the handle monogrammed with a swastika. Pocketing it, he pulled open the next drawer below. Files. He piled them on the desk for Nixon to sort through. Then the final drawer. It was mostly empty also save for a large book. Propping it in his lap, he opened the front cover.
It was a photo album. The first few pages of pictures were normal – parties, vacations and such, just with everyone wearing fucking Nazi officer uniforms. The women with them were pretty and garbed in obviously expensive dresses. Wealth built on the backs being broken outside this office. His fingertips went white on the page.
One man was in almost every photograph, clearly the owner of the album. Joe brought the book closer to his face, sizing up the figure.
"Fat fuck," he spit at the portly officer he was staring at. Yes, the kommandant was well fed while everyone else here was slowly being starved to death.
He dropped the book back into lap, taking a deep drag, and flipped through the pages. More parties, more trips into the Alps. Jesus Christ, was this bastard ever even at the camp? He batted back another page and stilled, his question answered.
It was those front gates, closed. A group of men posed before it, all in SS uniforms. The kommandant stood in the middle, beaming proudly. Joe's jaw twitched. The photograph below it was taken in front of this building. This time the man was alone, his hands clasped behind his back to push his chest out and his feet splayed apart. A posture of power. Joe wanted to strangle him with his bare hands.
His cigarette was down to the filter. He pulled it from his lips and carefully – methodically – stubbed it out on the grinning face, leaving nothing but a burnt hole behind.
What followed were a series of pictures of the huts, the workshops, the bathrooms… all empty of prisoners. The photographer was clearly documenting the camp for some reason. Fucking bragging rights?
Maybe looking at this shit wasn't a good idea. He could feel himself losing it again, tumbling past the mediocre amount of restraint he managed to build while sitting in that truck. He lit another Lucky.
The next pages finally included some of the Jews. Scenes of them being unloaded off the trains, huddled together confused and frightened. The guards around them were severe, yelling and pointing. One had a German shepherd that looked like it was trying to bite at them. As he moved on they were pictured packed like sardines in the bunk houses, standing in ditches holding shovels, listlessly working on some sort of machinery in the shops. He didn't know how old the photographs were, but the men in them might as well have been the same as those who were outside. Their skin held the same sallowness, their skinny bodies also barely remained upright, and their expressions had the identical unsettling hopelessness.
Goddamnit. He stood, throwing the book on the desk. What sort of fucking people would do this? Why did it have to be the Jews?
He wanted revenge. An inky black darkness bled through him as he sucked on the smoke, stilling his mind to focus on one thought: he hated Nazis. He always did. But now… now this was something different. He didn't just want to kill them. He wanted every fucker who ever even looked at a swastika to pay. To suffer, slowly and painfully.
And he was going to fucking start with that fat asshole who held this office.
He went back to the book, wanting a photograph to take with him so he knew who to look for. Finishing the cigarette, he crushed the butt on the blotter. The best portrait now had no head, so he should take a –
His eyes stopped on the album. It had flipped to the back when he tossed it, to pictures he hadn't looked at yet.
Caroline.
She looked healthier, with a few more pounds on her frame and a blush on her cheeks, but it was undoubtedly her. Her blonde hair shimmered in the sun and she was wearing a suit that looked as pricey as the clothes the other women were wearing. A Party pin hung from the lapel.
She was standing next to a sign. A sign he had passed on the way here. Kaufering.
He snatched the book, his grip nearly tearing out the pages. Another picture was glued to the same page. Caroline and Henrich, standing at the gate.
Looking at the bunk houses.
Inspecting machinery at the shop.
Talking to the fucking prisoners.
He didn't realize he was rocking until he looked up and saw that the room was moving. His breath heaved out his chest, the sound like deafening in his ears. His mind screamed at him.
Caroline, Caroline, Car –
Another page. In front of this building. Henrich in the middle. The kommanant on one side. Caroline on the other. Henrich's arm around Caroline's waist.
Jesus Christ.
His eyes stung. His lungs burned. There was a loud rip and then the picture was in his hand, yanked clean off the page.
The blackness turned white. Angry, hot whiteness.
Schueller's bloody face. What a fucking idiot you've been and how well she's played you.
Caroline's beguiling one. You know?
The smoking Luger. Her angry, dark voice. He would be so proud.
What had he done? What had he fucking done?
.
.
He was going to have to kill her.
Oh no! Needless to say the next chapter is not going to be good for Caroline. But don't give up hope for her!
And a disclaimer - I don't know German. Shocking, I realize. I hope I haven't butchered things too much before now, but for this chapter I had to completely guess. Unerwünschtrom my own interpretation of what was said during the show and the German word for unwanted. I apologize to anyone who was totally confused and if someone knows the actual word said, let me know I will change it.
12/10 - algebrakraken's sweet German skills for the win! The word has been fixed! Thanks :)
12/11 - and thanks to maya for the grammar help!
I hope guys liked it. Please review!
