Berwald had seen dead men before, enough to last him ten lifetimes. Sometimes they were dead and gone, lying in the streets with blank eyes and blood in their chests. Sometimes they strode around a glowing amber bar with a smile and a laugh the way Mathias did, bright and bold and uncaring.

Do you remember the days we met? Easy and carefree, soaked in clear sunlight. Mathias Køhler had grown up to roar with fire and bright paint, and Berwald had grown up to sing a quieter song, across concrete and guns, the promise that things would get better. So much had changed but here they were, at the end, with one of Berwald's oldest friends ready to die.

Mathias turned towards their table. Berwald wrapped his hands around his empty glass, knowing but not really believing that Mathias hadn't heard his thoughts.

'Liet?' He stopped and his eyes flashed to Toris, confused but suddenly hopeful. Mathias was a good enough tactician to know that Toris was strong, but not enough to stop hoping it would be enough.

'I came for Feliks. I had to. I have to save him.' Toris' gaze burned with desperation and hope. Berwald couldn't blame either of them. Hope was all they had left. Hope was all that separated the dead men in the streets from the ones holding guns and paintbrushes.

'I know. I understand,' he said, hands spreading out, so open with his fatal compassion. He turned to Berwald. 'Listen to me. I want you two to run to the border after the prison is broken open.'

After all this time, Berwald would still never be used to having the full blazing force of Mathias' attention on him. He would never be ready to carry the Atlas weight of his wild plans.

Run to the border. The words circled slowly in his head like basking sharks in cold water, and a shrieking, sudden, hopeful realization. Tino.

'Ber, I want to- I need to do this for you. I've taken too much. This is the best opportunity I can give you. If anyone can make it West, it'll be you.' To his best, his most broken soldiers for love. To Toris: 'Save Feliks.' To Berwald: 'Save yourself. For both of us.'

Thank you, Berwald wanted to say, thank you for giving me the world, thank you for leading us to freedom. Thank you for being firebrand Mathias, and setting me alight to burn a way back to the West. But the words stuck in his throat, and he nodded instead, gripping his friend's hands tight, tight, holding onto life before the end. Mathias smiled, nearly the same crooked grin that Berwald had seen so many years ago when they were young.

'Consider it my last gift to you, Ber, for being with me for so long.'

The world, that's what Mathias wanted to give him, and Berwald would take it and honour him.

'Once this whole damn thing is done-' Toris gasped on his tears, face turned up to the lightbulbs guttering in the ceiling. 'I'm taking Feliks to the sea. Somewhere far away from here. Maybe we'll go to America, where it's safe, where there's no more war, and we'll be happy.'

''S good,' Berwald murmured. Toris looked better now. Lighter, dreaming of the lovely day of tomorrow where everything was brighter and possible.

'What about you? What will you do once you're free?'

Tino had whispered about a house alone in the north once, something warm and safe. With a little dog. Everything, everything was worth it if it meant he was here, hopeful, watching a group of brave artists sing, ready to give him and Tino both that.

''Ll go up north. Build a l'fe there. Be happy w'th- with Tino.'

Toris smiled, something surprisingly warm and gentle. 'Is that who you're fighting for?'

'Always.' Berwald gripped his long-empty glass tighter, imagining Tino in all his strength and kindness. ''M going back to h'm after this. Tomorrow. I've always been fighting t'get back to him. Any way I could.'

Maybe Toris heard the need in his voice. He touched Berwald's hand and whispered, 'Tell me about him?'

Berwald did. He told about technicolour lights on soft skin and the thrill of being close to him, close to his breathing and his delighted energy and his warmth, close enough to break rules and love as freely and as openly as the North Star up above, as beautiful as the northern lights.

He stayed close to Toris, sharing love and stories until their voices were hoarse with song and tears and love, until Berwald was given his assignment for the raid.

He'd met Tino in a uniform much like this, when the world was grey and dull and nothing ever changed except the counter for deaths at the hands of the guards and Stasi. Now, he was happy; bruised and sleepless and hunted and so, so happy. I'm coming back! he sang to the north wind, I am still yours, any way you want me!

Before leaving, he touched Toris on the shoulder.

'Take care,' he whispered. 'Of Feliks. 'F Raivis.'

'I always will,' Toris promised. 'Live for Tino.'

'Always.'

Berwald took a last look at the resistance he'd grown to love. The resistance is only for madmen and artists- and he was one of them, proud to wear their splattered spray paint colours, proud to raise a gun against the Stasi for them. How he'd changed.

Maybe once the Wall had fallen, he'd take Tino here, and tell him the story of bravery and art. He'd write a book about this place. He would not let history forget them like it had burned away the evidence of so much love before.

0o0o0o

Carlos' eyes were deep-sunken in his face when he returned from his guard shift, and there was a bleeding scrape on his shoulder. Yao moved silently to clean it, winding the bandage tight.

'Did you talk to the East guards?' he asked bluntly. Carlos shook his head, a pained smile flashing onto his face.

'Not really. I laughed.'

Tino winced. 'Why did you laugh at them?'

Carlos smiled, testing his arm in the bandage. 'Not at them, at the Stasi. Because I heard that they're scrambling to find that madman guard. The colonel is furious.' He chuckled. 'It's one guard with a mad dream. It's nothing important.'

Yao raised his eyes. 'Ivan is involved directly?'

Carlos' humour fell away. 'He is.'

Yao nodded, grimly satisfied. 'He must suspect the same thing I do. The guard they're looking for is the Eagle.'

Carlos whistled. 'Fancy name for a guard.'

'It's his resistance name.'

Quiet for a moment, in their comfortable bar, before it crashed in.

'The resistance is involved?' Carlos asked sharply, at the same time as Tino realized, 'You're in-'

'I'm not anymore.' Yao restlessly ran his fingers through his hair, twisting it into dark dragon tails around his hands.

'How did you hide it from Ivan?' Tino asked in wonder.

'Ivan knew,' Yao said shortly.

They sat in stunned silence. Carlos leaned back, running a hand through his own hair.

'So who's the guard?' he asked.

'I don't know his real name, in the resistance we hid them- but he was very distinctive. Albino. Scarred.'

'I've seen him. He used to be at the Wall. Hasn't been around for a while.' Carlos shook his head, chuckling darkly. 'Distinctive as hell. Like an angel.'

Yao spread his tense hands on the table, the fingertips pressing into the wood. 'We need to help him.'

'How?' Tino asked. Part of him ached to run to the Wall right now, to jump and run and find Berwald now, but he wouldn't.

'I'll figure it out.' Yao waved at them both. 'It's late! Go home and sleep, and come back early tomorrow. This can wait.'

Carlos was grinning. 'You're like our resistance leader now.'

Yao's lips twitched; almost a smile. 'Perhaps.'

Doing things that reminded him of Berwald ripped the half-healed wound wide open and plunged him into the frigid shock of realizing all over again that Berwald was gone and there was no more dancing and waking up in his arms. This hurt, but it soothed the wound at the same time. Tino laid in his bed and dreamed of Berwald laughing, amazed and wondering. This helped the urge to fix things, to tear at the Wall with his teeth and bare hands.

Yao was speaking to two women early the next morning, and hurried Carlos and Tino into the back of the kitchen to speak with them.

'We're finding people who can help,' he said. His eyes were bright, unguardedly alive, and it stoked the fire in them all. There was something hopeful, hopeful and alive in being able to tear a piece from the foundation of the Stasi, to fight a war for people they'd never been able to help before. 'They were part of the East resistance as well.'

The women were dressed well in the Western fashion, but they both held themselves with a kind of knowledge and readiness that showed their fire.

'I know another person we might be able to bring,' one said. She moved like a warrior, like a knight. 'He's a friend. He's been across the Wall.'

Yao glanced over. 'How?'

'He was trapped there and...saved.' Her hand tightened in the other woman's, and her eyes flashed steely. 'He will want to help with whatever is happening in the East.'

When she brought the man later, Tino could barely believe that he had survived the East. He was polished and elegant, unsuited to the eagle's nest across the concrete. Tino couldn't look away while he talked to the women. He guiltily, guiltily wished that Berwald had been saved instead.

When he got closer, Tino saw the depths of pain in his dark violet eyes. That convinced him.

What would Berwald be like when he returned? Tino ached for him. He wanted to find him now, he wanted to kiss every scar and bruise that the East had given him, he wanted to make somewhere safe for them both.

There was another survivor of the East, the man told them, wary hunted eyes searching each of them in turn. Not like him- he was a West Berliner who had been taken for a short time, and then been traded back, so he said, so he spat it with such pain.

'Did you see someone called Berwald in the East?' Tino asked, the need to know boiling over. The man's vitriol fell away, and he looked vulnerable and shattered open. 'I need to make sure he's alive, please. It's important. He's important. He's an editor, and he's brave and kind, and I need him back, please.' His voice broke, his words pathetically soft.

He shook his head, and in that tiny movement a little more hope slipped away. 'I-I didn't. I'm sorry.'

Yao led him back inside and pushed a bowl of soup into his chilled hands. Tino ate without tasting any of it.

0o0o0o

If the elegant aristocrat who had survived the East surprised him, the young man he brought, the other survivor, shocked Tino even more. He looked barely twenty, hands streaked with oil paints, a wide, faraway, panicked look in his eyes. The soldiers and survivors of the war of Berlin were artists and lovers.

It wasn't so strange to have the survivors, the only ones who could be called victors at all, to be people like this. What was Berlin if not something avant-garde and full of the teeth of biting irony? The gods and angels of this gasoline city must be laughing at the dancer who fell in love with a writer under the starlight, under the colourful dark lights, and lost him a thousand ways.

They stood there, a group of ragtag survivors and artists watching each other with wary respect, and Tino hoped, hoped that they wouldn't lose this battle. This would be a fight for the mysterious battle across the Wall. This would be a fight for the future. This was for Berwald. If anything in the world was worth fighting for, it was in standing here with bruises on like war paint, a crooning song winding like moonlight through his head.

0o0o0o

:: The velvet texture of driftwood