The young artist's eyes felt like a mirror. They caught the world and shone it back brighter and stripped of all pretense, leaving only the vulnerable truth. Tino saw himself there- he saw Berwald, in himself. He saw love torn apart and holding on.

This young man with the gold bright eyes had lost someone and something of himself to the East prison. Tino felt strange kinship to that. We are the same, he wanted to say. He wanted to know all about his love, and he wanted to stand in front of him and protect the vulnerability in his eyes.

He signed yes to some questions, and murmured to others. His brow was furrowed with pain. He kept his eyes on Yao, and when they flashed his way Tino caught the pain and love and the artist's longing Tino knew all too well.

'We need people on this side,' Yao said. His eyes were similar to the young artist's in colour alone, because Yao was a survivor. He knew how to run an impossible mission. Tino was like that too. He had to be. The difference was that he could sti hope, and Yao couldn't. 'People who know how to fix things. They'll be wounded.'

'Tell them that if- tell them that when they bring their men through, we have a place for the wounded,' the elegant man said, wordlessly acknowledging what nobody wanted to say. Hospitals are dangerous to those who love like us.

'Thank you. Do you have anyone who knows how to fix-'

'I can.'

Tino turned to the artist, surprised. His voice was melodic and shaking.

'Feliciano,' the older man said softly. Feliciano. Tino turned the name over in his mind as the two whispered, until the older man relented tensely. Feliciano smiled like sunrise.

'It's time to go,' Yao said. He placed a hand on Carlos' shoulder. 'You were called for the border guard?'

Carlos nodded sharply, eyes intense. 'I was.'

'Good. I will see you later tonight,' Yao said so firmly that they all believed it. They watched Carlos go, slipping into his uniform. 'Tino…'

Tino's heart stuck in his throat. The whispers of thoughts that had fluttered around his mind were coalescing into a single high-flying thought like a free bird. All the rage and hope converged into one ideal.

'I want to go to the East,' he said. It was so simple to say and so impossible to do.

Yao just nodded, like he had been waiting the whole time for Tino to say so.

'Go back and find the clothes I have under the counter. They're good for things like this.'

'Thank you,' Tino said, emotion swelling in his throat. He understood Yao enough, understood his bitter loss and fire, and that was good. That was enough. 'Thank you so much.'

'Thank me by surviving,' Yao said. Tino was delighted to see him smile, as fierce as the dragon winding gold by his jaw. 'When you go, tell the guards on duty you're with me.'

Tino ran, ran for freedom and northern lights seen from the frosted windows of a peaceful home. For Berwald. For the future of everyone who lived and loved in this breathless city, a city that let a dancer become a soldier become a lover again.

He could die, Tino realized under the morning star. He stopped below a streetlight, staring into the inky night and seeing nothing but his own future cut off by a bullet, all his promises left like wingless birds.

He sat with the sudden thought at home. He had gotten so used to life, so happy and comfortable even in a war city. The West could hide from that. The East couldn't.

He sank down against his bed where he'd once lain with Berwald whispering endearments, hands shaking. He could die. He could die with all the wild threads of hope he'd thrown to the wind still flying. All his ideas still half-finished. It was so unfair, so simple and impossible and terrifying that it wrenched a shameful sob out of him. The noise shocked him silent.

Berwald had risked all this and more for him. He had been in the East for months, holding onto the hope of returning. Tino had to be strong for him.

He slid the sturdy clothes on and rushed to the Wall, running knuckles along the rough dimpled concrete until he was there, stepping through with a word of I'm with Yao. And then he was blinking in the earliest grey sunlight, standing in the East like nothing had changed.

Wrapped in the clothes, there had been a gun. Tino loaded it and waited for the Stasi to try, God, they could try to take Berwald. Tino would fight for him. He would become a soldier for him, if that was what it took. He would take this war onto his own shoulders, so they could have a future free from it. So they could have that impossible dream of a house under the northern lights. Berlin was a city that made the impossible possible again.

I'm here, Berwald, my pole star. I'm here, and I will be everything and anything for you, any way you want me.

0o0o0o

Berwald put on his armour for the end, just like in the beginning. Red Army clothes, padded sleeves that were just kindling for the cannon fire. He wrapped himself tight and picked up his notched gun. He walked to the prison under the grey that wasn't morning or night. The colour of waiting. The colour of almost there.

When they waved him into his post in the prison, Berwald felt himself relax. He couldn't believe it, even though he was their model guard, silent and strong. Silenced and terrified and burning up inside.

He waited in the grey, aware and awake until he heard Mathias' people.

My gift to you, Ber, for being with me for so long.

The guard beside him turned at the clatter of a door, but Berwald was faster. Berwald was scared and hopeful and he could be strong, strong enough that the man crumpled beneath the pistol butt in his temple. Berwald left him there and rushed to help.

The artists shone like the most colourful birds in the grey prison. They broke open the cages, they bloodied their fingers on the keys, they saw him and whispered good man, good man. Bloody fingerprints were left on his shoulders and he wore them proudly. He was doing the right thing.

Berwald didn't think about the feeling of the first man who fell beneath his gun. Not fatal- he was strong enough not to kill someone when there were alternatives. He couldn't think of them, because they were just like him. He would have been one of them if Mathias never came to burn him up. He was them, the men crumpled in the hallways, and they were him. It was so goddamn selfish, it was so unfair, but he couldn't stop.

The blood on his clothes rubbed off onto his fingertips. Would Tino forgive him for this? What would Tino think of him now? Instead of ink, blood and violence stained his hands. He wanted to be a man Tino could be proud to love.

Beyond these walls, he heard a laugh that he recognized, the wild exuberant laughter of a man who burned from the inside out; Mathias Køhler, that was the name Berwald would pen in his books. Not Kalmar. He would find his salvation in typewritten letters that told the world of the real heroes.

Berwald held onto his gun, sickening at the blood smeared on the side. He'd be free of all of this soon. He had become a guard, a soldier, a fighter for this war. He had become everything he loathed to survive, but it would all be okay soon.

The door gave beneath his hands. The morning light gleamed in his eyes. Somewhere there were gunshots and screaming, screaming like the world was ending. The light looked like the blaze of Mathias' hair, the last stars felt like Tino's angel-soft words. I love you, I love you, it's true, I would change the world a thousand times to give you this.

Wait for me, he called, running as hard as he could to freedom, gun slipping from numb fingers. Numb, because so much emotion and love was swelling inside of him like the chick hatching from the eggshell. He couldn't feel anything, not his glass-bloodied arm or his pounding head. He was alive, he was free and he was going back to his dearest Tino. Just like he'd promised. A note swooped up into the air like the swan song. He felt himself smile in surprise and delight at the singing, the hopeful sound of his own voice.

Berwald rounded the corner to the Wall and saw him.

Oh, God, seeing Tino felt like seeing an angel. It felt like seeing the northern lights for the first time, all over again. It felt like a breath of peace. He was poised with a gun, guarding the streets, the hollows of his eyes purpled dark. His hair was messy and his clothes were ill-fitting and he looked like the most wonderful, perfect thing in the world.

The moment that Tino saw him too, it was like the entire earth slid seamlessly back into alignment, the pole star settling into place, the magnetic pull between them locking true. His eyes widened and his guarded, worried expression shattered as he stumbled up, the gun clattering to the ground. Tino's mouth formed his name. They were hurt and bloody and scared but there was nothing, nothing different from the moment they had first fallen for each other beneath the pearly lights of the stars. It was so, so perfect.

Berwald ran for him until the arm around his neck jerked him back. His vision blurred, blotted, weakly clawing at the uniform sleeve. Someone was snarling in his ear, tearing at his Red Army clothes, telling him he was a filthy traitor, coward, and he couldn't fight any more. His gun was somewhere in the streets and he was stunned. A dead blackbird dropping from the sky, hurtling to earth like a falling star. They imprisoned people who loved like him, but they shot the traitors dead. He always thought he'd die in prison for love, and he was so, so tired now. At least it would be quick. He had fought so hard, but now there was nothing he could change. The world would go on without him.

He wanted to see Tino before they killed him. He needed to, he needed to tell him the words his heart had kept all this time. Berwald raised his head, struggling in the chokehold for one last memory of angel-blond hair and gentleness, and shouted.

'Jag kommer alltid älska dig!'

They would kill him, but the streets of Berlin would keep his love in the eaves where the starlings nested. Tino wouldn't forget him. His life would not be defined by his death, but by his happiness.

The Wall and freedom disappeared behind a bomb-scarred barracks, and Berwald stopped fighting. The man was speaking in his ear, his cruel blue eyes wide and bloodshot. His free hand cuffed his brow hard. Blood dripped into his mouth.

'We're gonna catch them all, every single one of your goddamned resistance. We're hunting them down and they'll rot in prison for the rest of their worthless lives. But you-' He took a deep breath, nails digging into Berwald's neck. 'You die here, you fucking traitor, first you and then everyone else who ever believed your leader.'

Berwald looked into his maddened eyes and bared his teeth, spat blood and laughing derision right in his face, hoped that Mathias would be laughing in whatever glorious afterlife came after this. He hoped that they'd all forgive him. Tino and Mathias and Feliks, because he had tried his best to change the world like them.

'We fight f'r a better future,' he whispered defiantly, and his heart sang with the artists who taught him how to fly.

The man's eyes bulged, his lips peeling back. He dropped Berwald to the ground.

'You'll pay, all of you,' he snarled. The sun glinted off his gun for a moment, just a moment, and then pain split Berwald down the middle.

Someone was screaming. He thought it might be him, if sound made any sense in the pain that was devouring him whole, burning his hip to ashes. He'd flown too close to the fire. He was dying. It was okay, in the end, because he'd loved so much.

The blur of the man was writhing with pain. His own pain, not Berwald's pained vision. Berwald was beyond all comprehension, but he saw, he saw the man fall to his knees with red soaking the front of his guard's uniform. Blood dripped between his teeth. His terrified wide eyes locked on Berwald's right before they were gone, all of it was gone, all that was left behind was the dawning red of morning, and the softest dark. He could hear Tino singing.

Any way you want me...

0o0o0o

Tino sank to his knees in front of the two bodies. The guard was still, forever now, his head- his head was gone-

His scream echoed off the brick walls, a horrible horrifying animal noise of pain and terror as he threw the gun against the wall, the little scrap of metal that had killed a man. This was war. A dead body in a bullet-riddled back street of a broken city. There was so much blood. He didn't mean it. He was aiming for the chest. There was so much blood, red all over his hands. He didn't mean to kill like this.

Berwald's body moved slightly. Tino cupped his beautiful, beautiful face, sobbing as he traced the blood on his lips and his hollow cheeks. He had to keep moving.

'Berwald.' His voice was ruined, shattered. Tino was ruined. 'Berwald, I'm here, oh God, I'm here.'

His mouth moved faintly, into the shape of Tino's name. Tino bent down and lifted him with shaking arms, not looking at the bloody mess that was once his hip.

'I'm here,' he said to the quiet, where only Berwald's laboured breaths marked time passing as Tino carried him home. 'I promised I'd save you.'

Berlin was only quiet in the very early morning before it woke. This time, the silence was that of the feathers of the carrion crows and the mourners. The silence of sinking beneath suffocating water and being unable to hear the world. Tino cradled Berwald's head, shoulders shaking with effort and tears as he half-carried his unconscious body to the Wall. They had each other. That was all that mattered. They were ruined, but they could heal.

He collapsed to the ground in the West with Berwald in his arms, his legs giving out, head pounding, blood and bile rising to his mouth.

'Help!' he screamed, until his throat was raw and running with blood. People came. People picked up Berwald on a makeshift stretcher, careful of what used to be his hip. They picked up Tino, and he was too tired to do anything but let it happen as he was carried to a better place than the hell of the Berlin backstreets.

Tino remembered things like a record printed on X-rays that was worn too thin. Skipping and flickering, meaningless half-words, all white noise.

He remembered, clearly, the moment of touching Berwald's bloodied brow, tracing the lines of his face as he lay in the bed. He had changed so much. He was scarred and starved and there was a haggard set to him, but he looked so peaceful in sleep.

Sleeping, breathing ragged but steady. Stable. That was all Tino remembered before sleep claimed him too. Steady, Berwald was always steady beside him in his love. His love, the wonderfully gentle man he'd fought for, for so long. They were together again, even if they were changed. Tino didn't care what had changed. He loved Berwald, any way he was. They had the rest of their lives to heal.

0o0o0o

:: The swirl of pebbles in rivers, shaped by water and years