Standing there on the street corner and waiting to be led to his death, Francis wondered if Matthew would know how he died. Would he know that Francis was dead because he could never stop loving when he should, because he chased impossible causes like the storms they were? Because he was a softhearted fool all tangled up in promises and blood debts and soft purple eyes, and he never knew how to keep his heart from breaking. All he could do was try to fall in love with the right people, and now he was an ocean away.

He did this for Feliciano, with his pained eyes and shaking hands and voice half-trapped. For Ludwig, because he deserved better than this, better than his turncoat brother who'd been dragging them all into his thunderstorm for years. For Antonio, who he missed like oxygen. And all of it for Gilbert, because this was his city, his brother, his plan, his. Francis had never stopped being his, no matter how hard he tried.

He could barely think through the pain in his head. At least his dearest Matthew would get his letter. Gentle, kind, deserved better than the coward of a hopeless resistance Matthew, who loved his home and poetry and who had loved Francis when the world was cold. This fight would be for him too.

When the man came to guide them through, it was silent. Alfred's eyes were half-closed, blue shining through fluttering eyelashes until they suddenly snapped open and focused on the sign near Checkpoint Charlie. You are now leaving the American sector.

'Francis,' he whispered, voice cracking with youth. 'Checkpoint Charlie. I can't- I won't go that way. Not again.'

Francis' heart was suddenly seized by horror and hate and terror that this boy held the power of the nuclear wars, that this boy marched forward to so much death. But they were both sworn to this now.

'You won't need to go through it,' he breathed, trying to keep his voice low and steady. Alfred jerked his head, eyes wide and blank with memory.

'I won't,' he repeated. His hands tightened into fists and then slackened. 'I'm supposed to be saving people.'

'You are,' Francis said. It wasn't a lie. It couldn't be. If he considered the possibility that they would all die without saving anyone, he would break right now.

They pulled up the coverings over their faces and slipped through one of the guard doors. He'd heard they'd been built to grab those who escaped to the West side, right when they thought they were safe. The men inside nodded at him, and stared at Alfred. Francis didn't respond. He was paralyzed. He was dead already, wasn't he? These men dressed in stolen uniforms, the guide leading them into the half of the city Gilbert had wanted so desperately to save them all from. They were all dead.

He didn't dare look at Alfred. His blood was on his hands as well. It was only fitting, in the end, and Gilbert should have taught him enough about living knee-deep in the blood of others. He would live or die with it.

Francis remembered nothing else until they were at the door of the resistance he'd once sworn himself to. The guide motioned Alfred back.

'I need to speak with Kalmar before he goes,' he explained. 'Give him his name.' Francis didn't want to leave him alone, but the door drew him. Inside was the fight he'd ran from. Inside was Antonio, and Mathias, and Gilbert.

He felt his lips peel back from his teeth and his lunge to shove the door open with a rattle that shook him down to his fragile bones. I wish you fell for someone other than a soon to be dead man, my dearest Matthew, he thought, a last desperate prayer before he caught the gazes of his best friends.

For a moment, that was all that existed. Springtime green and so much pain and love that Francis forgot to breathe. Copper red and a break that ran deeper than anything could ever fix.

Francis moved forward without being aware of it, standing over their table. Dead men, all of them. Gilbert lifted his head. His bright gaze had always felt like drinking pure adrenaline. All Francis could feel now was that his foolish, lovesick heart was following the beat of a song he'd sung with someone he loved in a better way than this.

'We missed you,' Gilbert said to the silence. His smile widened into fangs, full of anguish. 'Welcome back.'

As the roaring of the bar rose, dull in the back of his head, like the baying of wild wounded things, Francis felt himself sit down in the chair already pulled out. Here they were, thrown back together against every better instinct. God must be laughing at all of them. Francis stared at Gilbert, taking in the new scars and the new break that ran clear through him, and the simple wooden cross around his neck. He opened his mouth to say something, scream and berate, but all that came out was:

'If Ludwig dies here, I hope you know that it is your fault.'

Gilbert didn't move. His eyes were glassy and blank, like birds dead on the ground, cold with death. The knife-sharp carving of a smile was gone.

If Francis died here, with these two broken men as his last sight instead of Matthew, he'd hate himself. But what was new there?

'Kalmar wants us together,' Antonio said. His hand clenches around empty air like it's trying to hold onto something or someone else. If the latter is true, death would be a mercy to him. Francis wasn't worried about the same thing for Gilbert. Invincible did not exist in this city, but Gilbert came as close to it as anything. He didn't love anything but Berlin itself.

'He says we're his best.' Antonio tipped his head, eyes shining with horrified tears that he blinked away. It was true: Gilbert the weapon to burn through the prison and Francis and Antonio to blunt his edges after it was all dead and done, and leave the body to rot.

The door clattered open again and everyone turned as if Alfred's electric energy was building a thunderstorm inside the very bar. Even out of his jacket, he shone with the art and reckless glory of the West, standing there like a rogue angel in the doorway, transfixing everyone. Mathias stood, swaying on his feet, staring at Alfred with a look Francis didn't understand for the split second before he masked it with the roaring energy of Kalmar.

'We have the West with us now,' he shouted. Francis only saw the bar surge for the pilot, all hands and wide awed eyes, and the pure exultant joy on Alfred's face.

Antonio's hand brushed his when he handed him a drink. He poured the same for Gilbert, who threw it back all at once, clutching the wooden cross around his neck. There was pure prayer in the movement.

'I thought you'd given that up,' Francis rasped.

'I did,' Gilbert said. Antonio refilled all of their drinks.

0o0o0o

Matthew thought that when he returned to Canada it would feel like being able to breathe again after the chokehold hell of the military. Instead, it felt like there was an airless space beside him where Francis should have been but wasn't, where Alfred deserved to be if there was any fairness in the world, and all that had happened to the grip around his neck was that now it was tied to wondering and wishing and wanting for two people he loved who were across an entire ocean from him.

Alfred should be here instead of him, waiting for a flight back to England. Smiling and stamping his feet to keep away the cold, the haunted hollow weight in his eyes banished by the warmth of flying home, back to Arthur.

Francis should be here next to him, laying in the knee-high heathery grass, with the stars spread out like a thousand frozen raindrops above them both. They'd talk and laugh and watch how the moon silvered all the pine trees into hoarfrost. Matthew's tears were icing on his cheeks. The cold bit into his knuckles and slowed his tongue, but he whispered their song to the tear-studded heavens.

Blue moon, you saw me standing alone...

Home had always been Canada, with the ponds silver-slick and the whispering of the trees, with the call of the mountains in his bones. Matthew has been satisfied with that before. He would have been happy to live and die among the wilds, breathing in the scent of winter wind and sugar maple. But it wasn't enough anymore. He felt hollow and ghostly here, fading into the background of snow and trees, freezing into the stars.

Berlin had a way of carving people down to nothing but the raw terrified self and then making them over again into something that was wild in a different way. The kind of wild need that sparked in his bones when he touched the place Francis' collarbone met his shoulder. The kind of wild that came with the hunger he had felt when Francis looked at him in awe and love, hair rumpled from bed. A human kind of wild.

Matthew heard his laugh freeze in the cold air, every breath sharp in his throat. He liked it. He'd reached out with both hands for that hungry, wanting, needing part inside of him that the mountains didn't bring out. The war city had changed him, too, and laying here in the place he had carried inside himself for years as a shield, Matthew knew that there was no stepping back from it. Canada was a bastion where he was at peace, full of nothing but north winds and the scent of pines, but the world was not at peace. He knew too much of the soft burning wonder of love to ever let go now.

He stood and started walking back to his house, and the warmth of the fire and the letters lying on the table there.

Matthew shook the snow off and hung his clothes to dry before he picked up the letters he'd received earlier that day. He wasn't used to getting mail, but he found he loved it. He liked being thought of, all the way across an ocean.

Alfred's was a note alongside his letter for Arthur. Matthew carefully set the latter aside. His fingers with clumsy from cold, and prickling from the fire, but he enjoyed it. He wanted the sensation of waking back up, loving and hurting with it, existing in that incredible way he had with Francis.

Hey Mattie,

I've been talking more with Francis. He likes looking at the stars too. I'm really glad to talk to him. He understands all of it.

I wish you were here instead of me. I bet you feel the same, huh?

One day this whole damn thing will be done, and then we'll be okay. Me and Arthur and you and Francis, and everyone else like us. I promise.

Alfie

He smiled at it. Alfred always promised the impossible things, but this felt like something real. In the future, they'd all be better. He hummed the second verse of the song, carefully picking up the letter from Francis and simply holding it for a long moment, unable to keep from smiling. Francis. Having just this part of him in his hands made Matthew feel whole here, perfect.

He brought the paper to his lips and kissed it, lingering over the soft impressions of a pen in the paper before he opened it. The words cut through the warmth with horror.

My dearest Matthew,

My old resistance contacted me again. They are planning a raid and they needed me. I cannot say more here in case this is captured.

If I am captured instead, this letter will be the last you hear of me for a very, very long time.

I want to give you everything. I wish I could be with you, to give you the moon, to write you poetry about how beautiful you are. I fell in love with you a thousand ways.

What happened in the East ruined me, and you changed me again. I just hope this will not ruin me again.

I love you. I love your hope, I love your laugh and the way you spoke like you dreamed of home. I love how I found my home in your arms. I loved writing poetry for you, writing these letters to you. I found myself in your words.

I am so, so sorry. What I want to tell you is better said in poetry and kisses and laughter than this letter.

If I live, I will come to you. If I live, I'll be done with Berlin until the wars are done. I have always loved the art more than the war.

Yours, as long as you want me,

Francis Bonnefoy

0o0o0o

:: Simple black line tattoos outlining flowers, coloured in with oil paint