Life in Berlin had changed forever the night that Matthew Williams walked into his life, on that moonlit street. Francis loved his tentative humour, and the flashes of his clever tongue, and the deep love in his beautiful eyes. Without him, the streets shone different, the moon not quite as deep blue, the whole glitter and glimmer of West Berlin not as rainwater-soft. Francis stood in the doorway of the art studio and lit a cigarette that didn't taste right when Matthew wasn't beside him. The city felt like it was growing around the weight of the Wall, slowly, slowly, a fern uncurling after the rain. And still, the shade of the trial in the dark twisted claws of the army hung over him.
He ashed out the tasteless cigarette, aching for the touch of calloused hands and pale soft hair, and went back inside, waving down a young woman nearby.
'Where's Feliciano?' he asked. She flinched for a moment, and something heavy as dread sank into his stomach.
'Nobody knows,' she said, lips pressed together. Her voice shook slightly as she met his eyes. 'People say he was taken by the...the East has him.'
Francis stood there in cold shock, feeling sick. She dipped her head slightly and left him there, clutching the doorframe, as the first raindrops hissed down on the streets.
He found Feliciano's flat abandoned, hollow and left with his last touches on it. The portrait of his soldier, or Ludwig as kind and alight as Francis had ever seen, still stood on the stand, crooked from where he could see it through the window.
'Francis?'
He spun, hand jumping to his hip and the pistol he'd long ago thrown in the river. Soldiers died before their habits did. He didn't recognize Alfred for a moment, this boy who'd lost everything. His bravado and brash pride and sunshine smile were all gone, leaving him with wide eyes and shoulders that hunched in his bomber jacket. He looked like Matthew after that horrible night in the East, and Francis felt worse.
'Alfred,' he said slowly, swallowing back his own pain. Alfred had been through hell. 'What's wrong?'
'Nothin',' he said, tipping his head a little, face too raw with pain. His expression suddenly contorted. 'No. No, everything is wrong, I feel like I've done everything wrong. First Arthur, now Ludwig- people keep dying and it's always my fault.'
'Alfred!' Francis crossed to him, helpless to know what to say, or how to fix the croon of fear and loathing in his voice. He looked so much like Matthew. 'This wasn't your fault.'
'Was it?' He had startling eyes, summer sky blue, drink-blurred. 'If I wasn't here, in this hell of a job, two people wouldn't be in prison or five hundred miles away.'
'Ludwig?' Francis asked. 'He's in prison?'
Alfred laughed, a little wild. 'Yeah. He is. Come on,' he added, nodding to the gaudy streets downtown. 'I need another drink. I'll tell you there.'
Alfred led him to a bar called the Cuckoo's Egg. He ordered a beer and stared at the art on the can for a long time, brows furrowed, before he drank.
'What do you know about prisoner exchanges?' he said, raising his blurry eyes from the drink, voice echoing something else, someone else.
'Who did you-' Francis stopped dead, the sudden choking truth building in his throat, all the pieces falling together. He knew what Ludwig had done, Gilbert's brother, that soldier born of devotion and not much more. 'Feliciano. Oh, God, it was Feliciano.'
Alfred nodded, finger tracking dewdrops across the sides of the can. 'I wish- I wish I'd never helped with that plan of his. But I couldn't not help, Francis. You get it, don't you?' His voice lifted, heartbreakingly hopeful and lonely, longing for connection. 'He's like me. He's like us. If it was Arthur there, God, I'd be lined up outside Checkpoint Charlie with handcuffs on the second I knew. I can't blame him.'
'I get it,' Francis agreed softly. Alfred stared into his empty can and turned to order another, and he touched his hand, shaking his head. Alfred looked at him in shock for a moment, before he smiled, something more real.
'You get it,' he agreed, and put down his hand. Francis stood up and led him out, back into the moonlight. Beside him, Alfred drank in the cold night sky before pointing up with a wavering finger, sketching the shapes.
'That's Orion up there. You know, I wanted to send Artie a book on constellations,' he said. His smile was a little more honest now, brighter in the starlight. 'Can you believe he's never been to the countryside?'
Alfred insisted on writing some letter to mail to Arthur, and Francis sat with him in the garden as he did. Alfred told him that Feliciano was in the West again, but apparently staying with someone else. Ludwig was in some prison in the East, which made Francis taste blood. Gilbert had sworn to him that everything was to keep his baby brother from the East. Betraying the resistance, becoming a filthy turncoat, abandoning them, all for nothing. Francis would have found it funny if it wasn't other people paying for Gilbert's mistakes, over and over and over again. Alfred's hands shook when he mailed the letter, open with heartbreak and love.
Francis walked him back to his base, keeping him on track as Alfred gazed up at the constellations, weaving along the roads.
'If you need something to do, come to my art studio,' Francis offered. Alfred looked more lucid after their walk, but he wasn't right. Still, he looked more peaceful, and his grin shone through for a moment.
'The place with the Thunderbird? Yeah, I know it.' He straightened his uniform and looked up at the looming apartment of barracks. 'Hey, Francis. Thanks a lot. I'm glad Mattie has someone like you.'
Francis swallowed. 'I tried my best for him. He deserves it. He deserves everything.'
Alfred's smile widened. 'Yeah, you get it.'
Francis watched him walk into the jaws of the army again and then turned to go back to the studio, the only place where anything felt right. He fell asleep in a pool of moonlight and dreamed of Matthew and freedom, dreaming that he would be free from this not-yet-war. He couldn't leave, not yet, not while Gilbert still walked free, even though he ached for his gentle Canadian. Everything, everything seemed to centre on the East and that pale and oversaturated ghost of wartime, his hands dripping as red as his eyes.
0o0o0o
Gilbert had called him a coward for refusing to fight, years ago when the resistance was just blooming in the postwar city, the rubble still smoking. It was when Gilbert was broken and angry, more so than he was now, and full of so much raw loss and pain that Francis could barely touch him without bleeding on bared teeth and broken edges. He understood, he did, this hurt and fearful boy trying to raise his brother all alone in a city built for war. Gilbert Beilschmidt was less an eagle than a wild comet, heedless of danger, focused entirely on hurting those that had hurt him.
I am not going to kill myself for your mistakes, Francis had spat when Gilbert tried to sweet-talk him into helping with a fight with the last remnants of the brownshirts, Francis I just got into a little bit of trouble!
He hated the old regime as much as Gilbert, but he knew how to live and fight another day. To his friend, there was no such thing as tomorrow, no such thing as living past the breath you were taking right then.
He remembered that as he stared at the Wall, bright with graffiti, bristling with guns. He traced his fingertips across the lines of a flower painted across the grey, brushing away a dusting of snow, and saw the dark-bright barrel of a gun in the guard tower twist towards him. He met the impenetrable gaze, Gilbert's reckless, heedless fury building in his chest for Feliciano and Ludwig and Alfred, for Matthew.
The gun spun back towards the East, trained on the innocents, like shooting fish in a barrel. Francis had looked death in the eye and wished they were still staring each other down. His mouth tasted like bile no matter what he drank.
He wandered the length of the Wall, tracing the bright swirls of graffiti, feet crunching through the top layer of snow. The art dulled the pain of losing Matthew and the constant hurt of being helpless, of being unable to help. He felt like a coward for surviving that bloody night of the Wall. His safety was painted with the blood of the rest of the resistance.
The Berlin Wall stretched up, impenetrable and solid, twelve feet high and studded with the guard towers. He wondered if Gilbert was there, watching him walk the border, and what he thought about surviving and saving and cowardice after all of this.
He ended up by the checkpoint, watching the few cars that were allowed to pass. He didn't know why he did, or why he walked there the next day, wrapped in the same heavy coat, watching the slow motion of the gate and the sign that proclaimed You are now leaving the American sector. He felt hollow. Everything was grey and he was helpless to do anything about it.
'Hey!' someone shouted at him from the checkpoint, and he stepped back, tongue heavy, void of excuses.
The guard stormed closer, holding his baton awkwardly. Francis looked up and caught the man's eyes, dark olive. He looked slightly too young to be a border guard.
'You should get out of here,' he said, jutting his jaw. Francis was distracted for a moment by the thoroughly odd manner the guard held himself, full of posturing. It didn't seem to be in a cruel way, just a habit.
When he finally realized the instruction, the man was frowning at him. Francis stepped back, pulling down his scarf.
'I'll be going,' he said, moving back. The young man's eyes widened for a second.
'I have a message for Jean.' he said abruptly. The mention of his old life, his resistance name, hit him like a cold shock, making him start and his hands curl into fists. Francis hesitated. This boy didn't seem dangerous, but he usually knew better than to give his codename at the slightest suggestion. Names meant infamy.
'Do you have a message for him?' he returned. The man nodded.
'Someone in the East wants to talk to him.' He looked him up and down. 'Kalmar has a message.'
He didn't know why Mathias was looking for him again, months later, but God, what was left now after everything?
'Tell him...tell him that Jean is listening,' he said tiredly, closing his eyes and surrendering himself to the life he'd promised he'd left. He'd been peaceful with Matthew, but now that he was gone, Francis had to take up the fight again for hope of seeing that peace once more.
The young man pressed a crumpled envelope into his hands, nodding once, and then stepped back. His eyes gleamed with hope.
'You should go,' he said, adjusting his ill-fitting jacket. 'I should, too. Good luck.'
Francis watched him hurry back to the post and then turned and trudged back home. His head hurt and his hands were clumsy with cold, but he finally closed the door and slumped down on the table to hold Mathias' letter, thoughts whirling.
Why had he gone to the effort of sending a letter to the East, with a guard messenger? Why did he want to recruit Francis again? He was a coward. Gilbert had been right about that, at least. He was safe in the West, and he would be worse than useless in the fight against the Stasi. He should throw the letter away right now, and forget all over again the life of being Jean to the resistance.
He slid his thumb under the tape seal and slowly ripped it open. A piece of paper fell into his hands, clumsily folded. He unfolded it. It was short, only a few words down the middle of the paper in Mathias' scribble, and a crudely drawn map of Berlin, with a star marking a location in the backstreets of the West, near the Wall.
Our eagle is back with us, Jean.
9 PM Saturday. We'll forget about the past for now- we already have for Eagle.
He dropped the paper and buried his face in his hands, shoulders shaking with laughter or terror or tears or all three. Gilbert was back with the resistance, and that meant for better or worse that everything impossible was possible again, and hat they were all under his broken pale eagle's talons even now. Things didn't change for them, in Berlin.
What was stopping him from falling back into his old life now? His dearest Matthew was gone, his old drinking partner Arthur was gone, and he was desperate to make something in this broken city better, even if it was just himself. He was sure the resistance would forgive that small selfishness. They'd already forgiven Gilbert.
0o0o0o
:: Mineral crystals that look like they've been carved