The first moment of awareness that Reuenthal remembers is the day his mother dies. He's six, and he wakes up in the morning present in his own body, too tight, like there's some larger ghost inhabiting his skin, watching through his eyes. He isn't sure what that feeling portends, but it becomes clearer when, that afternoon, he hears his father and mother shouting at each other in her small study. There's the crash and tumble of a body hitting the wall, and Reuenthal has a vision of what will happen if he pries open the door right then and there, and pushes his scrawny frame between his fighting parents.

He knows what will happen if he hides around the corner and waits until his father leaves, then creeps into the dim room, with the painting on the wall crooked from the impact of his mother's head knocking it, and he lays his head on his mother's lap as she cries. And he knows, too, what will happen if he waits until his mother is silent as the grave in her study, then takes the sleeping pills she hasn't managed to swallow, crushes them up, and dumps the powder into the bottle of wine she drank. He knows what will happen if he takes the pills himself.

But Reuenthal does none of those things, and, after his father leaves the study with his red face and balled fists, Reuenthal staying well out of his way, he waits until he hears the sounds of his mother drinking. When he feels like the time is right, he opens the door and stands in the doorway, staring at her.

Even though he has a vision of what his life might be like if she lives, he feels no sympathy for her as he watches her eyes struggle to focus, her breathing become labored, and her hand not holding the wine glass reach out towards him in the doorway. He takes not a single step forward, but he looks her in her pathetic blue eyes until there's no recognition or life there. When she is dead, he closes the door of the study and walks back towards his own room.

The visions of those other lifetimes fade like bruises over time, but the knowledge remains: he understands already how to live with the choices he makes.

It's not everyday that these images strike him, but he learns how to force their arrival, picking at crossroads like scabs, finding choices where there are none. He sometimes ends up in uncharted waters, a place where time feels somehow realer around him, like he's entered a day he knows will live on in his memory, but where no lines of consequences come up to greet him. The ghost in his bones is paying attention.

He forces such a choice halfway through his tenure at the Imperial Officers' Academy. He's eighteen, tall and hard and the top of his class, ignoring most of his classmates as completely beneath his notice. He usually drinks alone in his room, but, feeling trapped in his own skin one day, he pushes against his instinct for aloofness and seeks out something that will scratch the itch. He walks off campus, trudging through the drifts of snow, towards the bar that all the other students go to when they have free time.

It's dark inside, and crowded with students since it's a Friday night and the worst thing they'll face in the morning are Saturday physicals, which anybody can stumble through hungover if they have to. He sits at the long bar and orders beer after beer, saying nothing to anyone but listening to the clink of glasses and clack of pool balls hitting each other over the din of student chatter.

He's bored and about to leave when something changes, a cold breeze sweeping in through the room when the door opens, and Reuenthal's gaze alights on the man who pushes in through the door, laughing and bumping arms with the anonymous other student who he came in with. He's blond, and snowflakes are melting in his shaggy hair, crusting on the sturdy shoulders of his black uniform.

The knowledge that Reuenthal suddenly realizes he's been waiting for slams into him with force, and he remembers how, once, when he was a different person, he waited far, far too long for this man to arrive. He knows everything about him, on some level that's deeper than words, and he thinks to himself, without really knowing where it's coming from, A whole year, wasted.

It's not the Reuenthal who went to the bar that stands up from his seat and walks over to the blonde near the pool table- it's the ghost who lives inside his skin, feeling alive and whole again for the first time.

The blonde looks up at him, and Reuenthal's mouth curls into a smile, somewhere on the border between cruel and delighted. He is delighted, but even his delights have edges to them. "Wolfgang Mittermeyer, isn't it?"

He doesn't know where the name comes from, deep in the future-memory, but it sits happily on the tongue anyway.

"Who's asking?"

"Oskar von Reuenthal," he says. "I'm one year above you. I hear you're good at pool."

At the compliment, and the lack of hostility in Reuenthal's tone, Mittermeyer smiles. "And who says?"

"I was hoping that you would say that you are, so I'd have an excuse to challenge you."

"I'm not too modest to refuse a challenge," Mittermeyer says. He shrugs his apologies to the other student who came in with him, and that man wanders off to the bar, not caring.

They set up the table and play, Mittermeyer sneaking glances at Reuenthal the whole time. Reuenthal keeps that tiny smile on his face, and meets Mittermeyer's eyes when he catches them. They don't speak much. Reuenthal loses, not even on purpose, only because he's been drinking all evening already, and he gets the pleasure of buying Mittermeyer a drink for his trouble.

Mittermeyer doesn't trust him yet. There's a certain kind of trust that comes only from having another man's back in a fight, and Reuenthal knows he's skipped some crucial step in this process. That will come later, but he finds he doesn't mind waiting. Of all his flaws, impatience has never been the one that truly damns him.

No matter how Reuenthal has to win Mittermeyer's trust, the pleasure of being around him settles him, calms the ghost in his skin so much that he feels less like he's being inhabited by some greater being, and more like himself, exactly where he wants to be.

A few years later, on a day when Mittermeyer and Reuenthal find themselves in a vicious bar fight that they did not start but most certainly will end, their eyes meet through the fracas, and Reuenthal smiles. There's a look of sudden recognition on Mittermeyer's face, and Reuenthal wonders for the first time if perhaps Mittermeyer has these glimpses of the future, too, but then the look is gone and Mittermeyer is dancing away through the bar, swinging punches as he goes.

After the MPs have come in and broken up the fight, Reuenthal and Mittermeyer stand together in the darkness of an alleyway, breathing heavily in the cool night air, their breath mingling with the fog that hazes through the distant streetlight. Mittermeyer keeps craning his neck all around to look for further trouble, unclear if he wants it or not, and he has a cut on his jaw from a stray swing with a broken beer bottle. It's not enough to leave a scar, hardly deeper than a shaving cut, but blood is running out of it anyway, clinging to his chin and dripping down his throat where it disappears into the black of his uniform.

They're silent, save for their breathing. There's nothing else that needs to be said.

It's not the ghost in Reuenthal's skin who reaches out and wipes the blood from Mittermeyer's cheek with his thumb- it's Reuenthal himself, or perhaps they've always been one and the same. Mittermeyer stills under his touch, then fists his hands on the sides of Reuenthal's uniform, pushing him further back into the alleyway. When Mittermeyer kisses him, it's somehow exactly like he remembers, but still better than ever before.

Reuenthal is acutely aware that this cannot last, but that doesn't stop him from clinging to it anyway. He sees the only way this ever could end, and it's hard to tell if the pang in his chest when he thinks about it at night, laying in bed with Mittermeyer's hair tickling his neck, is a sadness born of surety, or the memory of some painful old wound.

It's no different from the way he understood himself as a child. There may be many things he can do, many roads that he can walk, but there will be no way to escape the facts of who he is, or how other people see him. He was born a bastard, and in every future he sees, he knows he will die alone and reviled.

There is a perverse part of him that enjoys having a destiny, or takes pride in it, at least. And perhaps it makes these moments stolen with Mittermeyer all the sweeter, because he knows how few of them he has.

When Mittermeyer steps out of line and is sent to prison, even though other options briefly dance through Reuenthal's mind about who to ask for help, there is no weighty future-sense about any of them. There is only ever one choice that he would make, and he makes it gladly, seeking out Reinhard von Müsel and offering his services in exchange for Mittermeyer's life.

It is a strange and stormy evening when Reuenthal goes to Reinhard's house on Linbergstrasse, his coat hood pulled up around his head to protect himself from the driving rain. When he sits down at the table with Reinhard and Kircheis, he knows that this is the moment when his fate is sealed.

Reinhard isn't sure he can trust Reuenthal, and Reuenthal sits still under his scrutiny. Kircheis's gaze is softer, and though Reinhard's golden face captures Reuenthal's attention, he feels Kircheis's interest as well, and meets his eyes when Reinhard searches for Kircheis's approval.

He's another man with a bloody destiny, Reuenthal remembers. He wonders if Kircheis knows it.

Kircheis gives his assent, a silent nod, and they move another step into the future.

On the night before Kircheis is supposed to die, Reuenthal seeks him out. He might have spent the evening with Mittermeyer, but Mittermeyer is so relieved about the end of the civil war that he wants to spend the time calling his wife, to break all the happy news to her before she reads it in the paper. On another day, Reuenthal may have resented this more, but today he takes it as an opportunity.

He asks to be let on to Kircheis's flagship, the blood-red Barbarossa , sitting serenely in the Geiersburg Fortress docks next to the Brunhilde . It's almost as though Kircheis is waiting for him, because he's shown directly to his suite aboard the ship.

The Barbarossa is a newer and more beautiful flagship than Reuenthal's own (though he wouldn't want it), and Kircheis's suite has a wide observation window in the living room, one that looks out over the sloping aft of the ship and at the tiny pinpricks of stars, only the brightest and closest visible with Geiersburg's ambient light pollution. Kircheis is facing this window with his hands behind his back when Reuenthal steps into his quarters.

"I had wondered if you were going to come," Kircheis says without turning around. Reuenthal's reflection is clear in the window before him, but he stands several feet behind Kircheis.

"Why did you think I would?" Reuenthal asks.

Kircheis doesn't answer the question. "Care for a drink?" he asks. "To celebrate our victory?" Reuenthal has never heard Kircheis so bitter before, and he takes a half step back.

"Should we be hungover for the celebration tomorrow?"

Kircheis's reflections smiles. "That's what tank beds are for."

"What are we drinking, then?" Reuenthal asks.

"Anything but wine." Kircheis finally walks away from the window and to the cabinet on the opposite wall, pulling out whiskey and glasses, pouring some for both of them.

Reuenthal takes his. "To victory," he says, matching Kircheis's tone.

"To the future," Kircheis says. They knock their glasses, then drink.

The first glass goes down quickly, but Kircheis gestures for Reuenthal to sit on one of the heavy couches before he pours the next.

"I assume if you had made up with His Excellency, you wouldn't be alone here tonight," Reuenthal said.

"I don't think you know anything about it."

"I know enough," Reuenthal says.

"Maybe you do," Kircheis says. Sitting across from Reuenthal with his legs crossed, he's not relaxed, but his expression is distant. He looks out over the top of Reuenthal's head.

"It's Westerland that you fought about?"

"What else could it be?"

"I don't know," Reuenthal says. "I'm not privy to His Excellency's personal business."

"It was Westerland," Kircheis says. "I'm sure you can understand why I feel the way I do about it."

Reuenthal doesn't rise to that—it feels too much like bait, though Kircheis has never been that type to bait him before. "Do you forgive him?"

"No," Kircheis says. "Of course not. How could I?"

Reuenthal inclines his head and then drinks. "A pity, perhaps, that you are the only one of us who will hold him to such high standards."

"And what would you do, Reuenthal, if Lord Reinhard did something that you found unconscionable?"

"That's a dangerous question for someone to ask." He tilts his glass in his hand, watching the light catch in the golden-brown drink. "Luckily, I am not sure that there is such a thing." The only things that would cause Reuenthal to lose respect for Reinhard were things that would be impossible for him to do, being completely against his nature.

Kircheis nods.

"And what are you going to do, Kircheis?"

He shakes his head, silent.

"Maybe I shouldn't ask dangerous questions either."

"Be careful of Oberstein," Kircheis says suddenly. "He's the one who's going to hunt for signs of disloyalty."

"And find some where there aren't any, is what you mean."

"I don't want to know what Oberstein will find if he goes looking. But don't give him a reason."

"Why are you warning me about this?"

Kircheis looks away, but Reuenthal keeps his eyes trained on his face, not quite sure what he's hoping to find there. "He's driven a wedge between Lord Reinhard and myself," Kircheis says. "And I do not think it was difficult for him to do. That's all."

"If I may say—"

"Please."

"There would be no wedge if you decided to forgive His Excellency." It isn't quite advice, that Reuenthal is offering. He's not a man qualified to give advice. It's more like picking at an open wound.

Kircheis's half-laugh is dry. "I know," he says. "If I forgave him, or even if I just acted like I forgave him, all of this would go away. I could make him remove Oberstein." He shakes his head, his red curls bouncing with the motion.

"Why don't you?"

"It wouldn't make a difference. If I forgive him for this, it will give him permission to do it again. Or, not this, but something like it. Something even worse, if the circumstances call for it. Because he knows I'll come back to him."

"You don't think you could stop him?" Reuenthal raises his eyebrows.

"No," Kircheis says, plainly and firmly. He leaves no room for Reuenthal to doubt. "Not if I forgive him."

"So, what will you do?" Reuenthal asks.

"I don't know," Kircheis says, but Reuenthal can tell by the hitch of his breath that he's lying. He lets it go and reaches across the coffee table to pour himself another glass of whiskey.

He raises his glass. "To never forgiving anyone," he says.

"And never forgetting anything," Kircheis says. They both drink.

They're silent for a long time after that. Kircheis is resigned, Reuenthal decides, though it's hard to read anything from his flat expression. It's his knuckles that give him away, white on the tumbler in his hands with how hard he's gripping it. If it were thinner glass, it might have shattered with the force.

Maybe it's the alcohol, and maybe it's the strange feeling in the air between them, but Reuenthal abruptly says, "You're going to die tomorrow."

Kircheis, who had been looking out the window again, looks over at him, no surprise or rancor in his voice. "I know."

Reuenthal is startled. Of all the reactions Kircheis could have had, he hadn't expected that one. "How do you know?"

"You think you're the only one?" Kircheis asks, and this time he smiles, just a little. "We've done this many times."

It is Reuenthal's turn to be silent.

"Maybe not this exact scene," Kircheis says. "But tomorrow?" He takes a sip of his drink. Some of the tension has gone out of him now. Perhaps he likes the opportunity to speak honestly, now that Reuenthal, with his lessened inhibitions, has offered it. "We've played it again and again."

"I did think I was the only one," Reuenthal says after a second, still fighting the surprise to keep his voice even. "Does everyone—"

"No," Kircheis says. "You and I are the type who like to remember. Lord Reinhard, Mittermeyer—they like to forget. Most people do."

"And Oberstein?"

"I couldn't say."

Reuenthal finishes his drink and reaches for another. He should stop—this conversation will not get any easier if he gets truly drunk—but he doesn't, and Kircheis doesn't stop him. When he's downed half the glass, he says, "So why do you care about Westerland? Why does it matter?"

"Two million people," Kircheis says, and he's looking out the window again. "If they're doing it over and over with us, that's—it's worse—don't you see it?"

"No," Reuenthal says, flatly.

"How long did it take for you to find something to hold on to in this life?" Kircheis asks.

Reuenthal knows the answer—eighteen years, and he regrets how long it took—but he doesn't say anything. Kircheis just nods at his silence.

"I imagine someone living out all that time, over and over, before they can even have a chance at happiness, and having even the possibility taken from them. It's worse than death, isn't it?"

"Are we in hell, then?" he asks.

"Valhalla," Kircheis says. "For Lord Reinhard to conquer forever."

It has always been Reinhard's world, that the rest of them were all living in, hasn't it? Reuenthal finishes his drink.

"What did you think it was?" Kircheis asks, and his eyes crinkle in a genuine smile for the first time, pushing out some of the gloom, relaxing Reuenthal in the way that Kircheis was somehow capable of doing for people.

"I assumed the talk about my witch eyes was correct," Reuenthal says, though that's a half-truth at best. "I thought it was the future that I could see."

"What's the difference?" Kircheis asks.

"None, I suppose," Reuenthal says.

"I'm sure we remember in different ways," Kircheis says, a question in his tone.

"Insights," Reuenthal says. "Moments. Possibilities. Branching paths, mostly. It's gotten clearer the older I've gotten."

Kircheis nods. "It's much more linear for me." He fiddles with his cup. "Maybe that's better suited for me than it is for you."

Reuenthal is discomfited by the idea that there could be things he is better off not remembering. He wonders what they are, since he's seen his own hard end many times. He's jealous of Kircheis, but Kircheis is indifferent again, or distant, his face gone still and blank.

"If you know what's going to happen tomorrow, why don't you do something about it?"

"You, of all people, are asking me that?" Kircheis asks.

Reuenthal lifts his chin, and Kircheis sighs and puts his glass down.

"I love him, but I don't forgive him," Kircheis says. "So this is the way that it has to be."

"You'd take a blaster shot for him, but you wouldn't follow him any longer?"

Kircheis nods, his eyes far away. "And-"

"And?"

"I have selfish reasons."

"Oh? I didn't take you for the type."

"I can never stop him from doing something that I can't forgive," Kircheis says. "No matter what I try. But if we start again at the beginning, I can have- I can be happy before then."

"Have you tried the alternative?"

"Of course."

"What was it like?"

"Are you asking about yourself?" Kircheis asks. "You don't want my forgiveness for anything you might do."

Kircheis was right: he didn't. Reuenthal's smile is cold and cruel. "Never forgive anyone."

Kircheis laughs. "Some people are easier to forgive than others."

"You hold me in such low regard," Reuenthal says. "It's easy to forgive people in that category." This is bait, and Kircheis rises to it, tilting his head.

"No, I hold you in very high regard."

"Oh?"

"I don't want you to believe that I don't."

"Then why do you care so little for whatever sins I am destined to commit?"

"You don't ever act against your nature," Kircheis says. The words have a funny weight to them, like Kircheis is quoting something, and Reuenthal thinks that he probably is, something Reuenthal said long ago, but no longer remembers.

"So, you don't believe I'm capable of bettering myself?" Reuenthal is openly teasing, now, a cold smile on his lips.

"You're the one who doesn't believe that," Kircheis says. He's trying to be earnest, even now. Reuenthal doesn't deserve that from him, either.

"Perhaps." He puts his own glass down on the table between them, and doesn't reach to refill it. "I doubt that you believe if I were in His Excellency's position that I would have done something different."

This gives Kircheis pause. "I don't know," he says. "Do you think you would have?"

"I wouldn't have been swayed by Oberstein, whatever I chose," Reuenthal says. He thinks about it, and decides that if circumstances called for it, he might have done worse than simply allowed for someone else to commit a crime of that magnitude, but he doesn't say this to Kircheis; there would be no point.

"True." Kircheis falls silent once again, studying Reuenthal now. "I regret that we never seem to be closer friends."

"Perhaps it's not in our nature," Reuenthal says. "Or at least not in mine."

"Why not?"

"I want too many things I cannot have," Reuenthal says after a second. "I'm a jealous man."

"Next time, I'll try harder," Kircheis says. "Maybe that will…" And he trails off.

"It won't." There would be no saving any of them. That, Reuenthal knows, deep in his bones.

"No." Kircheis knows it, too.

Reuenthal fills both their glasses on the coffee table, emptying the bottle. He stands to pass the glass to Kircheis. "One last drink, then."

"One more," Kircheis agrees. He reaches for the glass, but Reuenthal doesn't let go of it for a second too long, stretching out the moment.

"Could we be friends, Siegfried?" Reuenthal asks. The words are warm, but his voice has the chill in it that he can never quite rid himself of. "Or am I still wanting things I can't have?"

Kircheis takes the glass from his grip and stands without speaking, walking over to the window. He drinks. Reuenthal stands back near the couches, just watching him. Kircheis is capable of telling him to leave, and Reuenthal is somewhat surprised that he hasn't yet.

"It's funny," Kircheis says after a while. "No matter how many times I live this night, I never like the feeling of being alone."

Reuenthal is struck with jealousy, remembering his own fate, and something cruel and bitter lifts itself to the surface of his mind. But he puts it away for now, focusing on Kircheis's invitation. "Shall I stay?" Reuenthal asks.

Kircheis's nod is almost imperceptible, but it's enough. Their eyes meet in the window reflection, stars twinkling past Kircheis's pupils. He's half somewhere else already, but Reuenthal comes over and puts his hand on Kircheis's arm. He's warm, even though his uniform.

When Kircheis turns towards him, he closes his eyes, and Reuenthal lifts his head to kiss him. He has to pull Kircheis forward by the back of his neck to make it work- he's too tall, and Reuenthal has never kissed someone taller than himself. It's almost funny. Kircheis's whole body is hot and loose and pliable, responding to the way that Reuenthal touches him.

When Reuenthal tugs on his hair, he tilts his head back, and Reuenthal kisses the tender flesh of his throat, the memory of a wound. He leaves his own mark.

They're all lined up together, in the cold reception hall of Geiersburg Fortress, with Reinhard on the false throne at the head of the room. Kircheis and Reuenthal are facing each other, and their eyes meet only briefly, when Fahrenheit joins the ranks of the admirals.

Reuenthal's heart is sounding in his ears as Duke Braunschweig's coffin is brought in, and it takes every ounce of strength he possesses not to follow it with his eyes, not until the right moment. He doesn't look at Ansbach. He looks at Mittermeyer, who is watching the procession in, satisfied and happy. He looks at Reinhard, whose gaze is firm and dispassionate. It has to be, with Oberstein right there at his side.

Ansbach opens the coffin.

Kircheis can't resist taking one glance at Reinhard, and this is his mistake. When Ansbach pulls his weapon out, Kircheis is fast, but Reuenthal is faster, even though he has a longer way to go. Perhaps it's because Kircheis is resigned to his fate, rather than being possessed by the cruel excitement that's seized Reuenthal, taking control of the ghost in his skin, for once, for once.

It's Reuenthal who knocks Ansbach's weapon sideways, enough that his first shot misses Reinhard, who watches the scene with dawning horror. And it's Reuenthal who wrestles with Ansbach, there on the cold floor of Geiersberg Fortress, taking a bolt from his tiny disguised blaster directly through his chest. It's a fatal wound. He knows that feeling well.

It's Mittermeyer who cries out in anguish, rushing to Reuenthal's side. Reinhard stands, horror writ clear across his face. Bittenfeld pries Reuenthal's hands from Ansbach's throat so that he can be dragged away.

Blood is pooling beneath him- this was a direct hit to something critical- and his vision is greying at the edges. Still he's satisfied by the way that Mittermeyer cradles his head in his lap, and the way that Reinhard comes over to clutch at his hand. His eyes find Kircheis', and he's further satisfied with the look of utter, shocked betrayal on his face.

Reuenthal smiles. Even when he dies a hero, there will always be someone who never forgives him for it.

Author's Note

ok, lots to talk about with this one lol

first: this work was inspired by reading drcalvin's Les Mis fic, Toil Until the Old Colours Fade, which was recommended to me several months ago by Nick (hailmaryfullofgrace55675 on tumblr). it's a fun fic, if you like les mis and are looking for something significantly more uplifting than this one lol. sue me for liking valvert i guess .

anyway after reading it, i got this like, unbearable itch in my brain about how I would write about this conceit. les mis is, ultimately, a story that believes in the capacity for human betterment (citizens, the 19th century is great, but the 20th century will be happy), while LOGH is obsessed w/ the cyclical nature of history and the fundamentally unchanging nature of humanity (in every age / in every place / the deeds of men remain the same)

there's even like... ok explicitly near the end of the OVA, mittermeyer talks about reinhard "conquering Valhalla" but like... what could that possibly feel like? augh it makes me lose it. i'm not sure what a 'satisfying' afterlife could look like for these people, several of whom have Problems Syndrome that makes them completely unable to be satisfied. idk. anyway reuenthal and kircheis aren't even trying to get out of the cycle, b/c they don't believe that there is a way out

so i wanted to talk about like, explicitly being trapped in this circle of destiny and being unable to break out. reuenthal is obsessed w/ playing that role, and kircheis. well. what can we even get out of kircheis' decisions in e26? it's hard to know what he's thinking.

tbh one of the strengths of logh as a story is in its concreteness- when a character is dead, they stay dead, and it's pretty clear that memories of them are not communiques from the afterlife, but are just memories and wishful thinking. it feels a little cheap to me to play with afterlife fic, but hey. i had something i wanted to pick at and this was the medium that gets it lol.

written in present tense b/c i think it conveys best the sort of "endless present" of history that they're trapped in

this is one of those conceits that's like, it ONLY works as a fanfic. you maybe could do this as original fiction if you worked really really hard, but i think it would not be worth it, and would also come off badly even under the best of circumstances. and be super fucking long. in fanfic you can get to the meat of the horror in 5k words or fewer! lmao.

i'd love to hear what you think of this story!

thank you very very much to em for the beta read. you can find me on tumblr javert , on twitter natsinator, the rest of my writing at gayspaceopera. carrd. co , and my discord server here discord. gg/ 2fu49B28nu