Complete Combustion

IX. Cynosure of the Sacred Sky

"Can't you see that you're smothering me
Holding too tightly afraid to lose control
Cause everything that you thought I would be
Has fallen apart right in front of you"

Numb by Linkin' Park

It was logic to follow Ike. Nothing but simple logic. It was the better option. It was the morally correct option. He had to go this time.

"What do you mean "really?" Ike asked raising his eyebrows at Kyles obvious confusion. His body might be weakened by the ongoing starvation, but his voice still held the same defiance and energy as always and that assured Kyle, that escaping was the right thing to do.

"Didn't he give it to you?" Ike continued.

Kyle eyes widened, and his heart dropped in his chest. He had hoped Ike would offer him some answers, the last thing he needed was more questions. "Didn't who give me what?"

"Officer Cartman, asshat." Ike shot his older at brother a look which more than merely hinted, that he failed to comprehend why Kyle was being protracted. Then all of a sudden a boiling, unpleasant wave of realization washed over Kyle, causing his cheeks to burn with disappointment. The emerald orbs widened slightly, and a shadow fell over his face.

"Oh..." He felt really stupid right now. Had he really believed Cartman would hand him that note, only for the sake of his health?

Kyle couldn't lie to himself any more, and accepted the inevitable fact, that he had wanted Cartman to care about his well-being. He hated himself for being that naïve. Cartman was a Nazi for Gods sake. He would never care about anything besides food, sex and being a cantankerous biggot. How could he possibly have thought, that Cartman would do something for him? Ike was intelligent and designing. It was obvious that he had brewed a plan together, to trick Cartman into giving him the note. Yes, that did sound like something Ike would do.

"You get it now, Einstein? I made Cartman give you that note."

Just like I thought...

"As much as I want it to be my idea, it was actually one of the other members of the resistance group, who came up with it. We just told the Kapo of our barrack, that one of the SS officers had ordered us to reforward an important message. We made him believe, that an SS officer had ordered the Kapo to tell Cartman, he wanted him to give you permission to go outside, so he could "accidentally" catch you, and interrogate you. We told the Kapo, it was because you had important politic connections, and the whole "catching" had to seem accidental, so you wouldn't become suspicious. That way it would be easier to get the truth out of you."

Kyle frowned, placing one hand on his hip, staring somewhat accusingly at his younger brother. "And he bought that?" That had got to be the most complicated, and tangled story ever. There was no way anybody would believe that.

"You wouldn't bother asking, if you knew our Kapo." Ike retorted, grinning with a know-all attitude, like had he been waiting for the question to surface.

"What about him?" Kyle asked.

"He's just incredibly stupid is all. You can tell him whatever, and he'll believe it. He's really naïve. His name is Leopold."

"What is a Kapo anyway?"

"It's a prisoner the SS'ers pick to guard the rest of the barrack. It's usually a big muscular guy, but sometimes the just pick someone, who they know will look ridiculous trying to order the rest of us around. To get a good laugh."

"But that's wrong." Kyle objected. "That is turning the prisoners against each other."

Ikes face went gloomy. "Well, yeah. They do that. Why do you think they picked Leopold in our group? Because he's weak, and they know he'll eventually break down, or that the rest of us will gang up on him. It's just the way they work, and it's effective as hell, I tell you."

Kyle mused over this new piece of info for a moment, before contributing with his thoughtful reply.

"Ike..." he trailed off, lost in thought.

"What?" Ike sounded slightly inpatient. "Snap out of it." He waved his hand in front of Kyles face on the other side of the thick window.

"Oh... sorry." Kyle returned to the present. "I was just wondering, do you suppose the existence of these labour camps are common knowledge to the rest of Germany, 'cept the Jews? I mean... not that our family communicated much with the neighbours the last couple of months in Leipzig, but wouldn't we have gotten the wind of it, if everybody knew about them?"

"I see where you are coming from..." Ike looked doubtful. "And yeah, I guess nobody must've known about it, unless if of course the camps were brand new. I mean, then maybe there are too new and haven't been revealed to the public yet. But it's pretty evident they've been around for at least some years. The facilities are pretty dilapidated."

"So maybe this whole thing is a secret." Kyle made out, "but whose secret?" He eyed Ike incisively, but only received a questioning stare in return.

"What do you mean "whose" secret?" Ike asked in light confusion.

"Well.. On one hand, " Kyle began, "it could be a limited group within the SS organization, who orchestrated the camp system, and now they are keeping it secret from the government. On the other hand, maybe the whole government is in on it..."

"Isn't it pretty writ large, that the whole government knows about this? Think about the Night of Broken Glass. I was only nine back then, but I still remember how the Gestapo ransacked our house, and the Schwartz families shop panes got smashed up. The Government organized that, so naturally they organized the camps too. They are out to get us Jews. I thought you were bright, but you've really gotten naive lately."

Yeah, I wonder who caused that...

"No, I'm just questioning whether there could be other options," Kyle shrugged. "but you might be right about the Government. It's just hard to accept that they are all in on it."

"Don't know about you, but I was pretty convinced they were bastards, ever since they... oh let's see, burned down our churches, forbade us to work, squeezed us into camps..."

"I get it, I get is." Kyle exclaimed, eying Ike with the slightest hint of irritation. Let's just find a way out from here."

A good ten minutes later, Kyle found himself outside Cartmans barrack, next to Ike. They were on their way away from the barrack heading for the exit of Auschwitz I. Ike had told it wasn't a far walk.

The two adolescences walked in silence, passing several squads of SS soldiers. Some sauntering blithely around, chatting carelessly with cigarettes hanging from their mouths, others with downcast eyes sheltering their unfathomable orbs. They were lumbering on the outsides of the troops of marching prisoners, with their guns at the ready, like sheepdogs waiting to dig into a defenseless group of sheep.

Kyle saw the prison uniform-clad Kapos with their green armbands and inversed triangle marks on their chests, breathing nervous groups of marching prisoners down the neck, with stern miens and cold eyes. The prisoners were all perfect copies of Ike. Soulless, marching robots drowning in too big uniforms, holding too little hope, and appeared like they needed to gain at least 20 kilos.

The environment was even more uninviting than what Kyle could recall. As he moved farther into the camp, he started remembering the towering brick buildings closing in on him on the narrow roads, the smoke from the chimneys, painting the sky in a filthy gray color westwards and the smell of putrefaction in the chilly air.

"Shocked?" Ike asked casually, as though being able to read Kyles thoughts.

"Well," Kyle began in self-defense. "You can't blame me. I haven't been outside for three months, so I have no clue what's going on out here."

"You can't blame me, for blaming you. During those three months you've been cooking dinner for a fat Nazi inside a warm barrack, while I've been chopping wood, dragging heavy iron rods and cleaning latrines in degrees below freezing-point, with gun-carrying, Jew-loathing SS soldiers watching my every move." Ike complained in a bitter tone.

Kyle was slightly taken aback by his brothers reaction to his self-righteousness. After having gaped at Ike, for a second or two, a strong feeling of guilt and remorse gushed into him:

"No way in hell I'm doing it. I don't care if you are an officer, I refuse to clean the latrines!"

"So, anyway, we have to go now Kyle. Come on." Ike had already spun around, ready to leave. "Just break the window or something.

"What- now?" Kyle asked taken by surprise. "No, that's irrational. They'll begin a search for me and before we know it, we'll all be dead." Kyle argued, painfully aware of how much it sounded like some lame excuse. Maybe it was, but it was true that he didn't want his brother to get hurt, he justified.

"In fact," Kyle continued, "I think I would like it, if you did it again." Kyle had no idea, what he was doing. Disregarding the outside world of the camp: the torture, the shootings, the suffering, everything, the fact was, that he had liked the small sign of affection.

Kyle didn't say anything to Ike, as their pace quickened. They looked to each their own side, Ike with a look of self-consciousness on his face.

Kyle figured he felt abashed, from his sudden truthful outburst, but also concluded that his brothers regret didn't match the strong remorse Kyle felt. Everything he had done from the day he arrived at Auschwitz had been meaningless and imprudent. He had been selfishly giving in to his desires while debasing the harsh reality. He realized that only if he multiplied what pain and degradation he might have felt with Cartman by a hundred, no a thousand, he was nearing the suffering Ike had been put through.

Kyle decided that from now on, he wouldn't let Cartman have his way with him. Though it was hard to acknowledge, Kyle had ascribed feeling and humanity to Cartman because they'd had sex, and he felt disgusted by- and disappointed in himself for committing such a horrendous mistake, which had been committed by so many people before him. Sex had nothing to do with feelings. It was human nature to moan deceptive lies in your partners ear, when aroused. It was human nature to say or do anything to get satisfaction. Kyle felt incredibly stupid for letting himself be fooled, by such a predictable game. He could picture Cartman walking from the barrack, a haughty grimace plastered over his face from looking forward to torturing prisoners all day long, and returning home to a willing victim with spread legs. That vision was so realistic it literally hurt.

The truth hurt. He decided Cartman wasn't worth his sympathy. This time he'd focus on the important matters at hand; His brother.

They had already passed the prisoners kitchen, two moveable gallons and some prison barracks, when Ike turned down yet another a narrow road squeezed in between two read brick buildings. The one on the right side was a post office.

Then he led Kyle into one of the plain, red brick barracks, where Kyle was met by at least ten pair of eyes, starring expectingly at him. Kyle immediately recognized them as Jews, when he saw the Star of David on their shoulders, on top of their striped rags.

A couple of them nodded obliging at Kyle, while others took to casting nervous looks around, as though the walls were equipped with ears.

"You got back." Someone stated, addressing Ike. It was a tall man. Kyle scanned him with his eyes, but found no remarkable characteristics worth a description. He was thin like the others, dressed like the others and wore the same permanent dehumanized stare as the others.

"Yeah, and it was easier than we expected. The dumb Nazis must be slacking off. Not one asked us, what we were doing. They are probably busying themselves down at the Winter Line."

The others laughed contemptuously.

"Anyway," Ike continued. "This is Kyle, my older brother." He turned to Kyle. "See, we have to make these meetings quick, 'cos we have to be back at our barrack for the mandatory evening roll call. If we're not there..." Ike moved his hand in a slicing movement over his neck to demonstrate his point and shrugged casually. Kyle starred from person to person and could quickly tell they were not joking. He decided not to cling to the subject of possible death right now, but there was still one thing he had to know.

"I was just thinking..." he began, scratching his hair. "You guys aren't even from this camp, right? You are from Monowitz... There are not many Jews here in Auschwitz I. Cartman told me that. Here's mainly prisoners of war, homosexuals and gipsies."

"Sure, sure. I know what you are getting at, " Ike cut him off, with a silencing hand movement. "The three camps are connected by a railway system. The Monowitz camp lies further east, and this camp is in the middle, so it wasn't terribly hard to get on a train and get here."

"Nothing like a nice expedition." Kyle groaned sarcastically, wondering how his brother had come to grow into the Jewish version of Marco Polo. He possessed curiosity and qualities of leadership that by far exceeded Kyles. The still shared the same stubbornness though.

"If I can interrupt, I just want to remind you, that we don't have a lot of time," a brown, curly haired boy, with a strange downwards turning mouth objected. He spoke in rattling gasps, like every word caused him trouble breathing. The other Jews nodded in confirmation.

"Weird little dude," Kyle thought to himself.

"Right," Ike said. "So we've thought up a plan on how to escape. The thing is, for that to work, we need you to fool officer Cartman."

"Cartman?" Kyle echoed vaguely, allowing the words to seep in. "What the hell do you want me to do with him?" he complained, voice growing shriller with every word.

"Manipulate him." Ike replied blithely. "Have you seen those giant Opel Blitz* wagons, usually parked just outside the Arbeit Macht Frei gate?" He elaborated.

Kyle remained looking like a question mark. "...No." He offered shortly.

"Okay, but they are there. It's some military wagons, really huge ones, and they sometimes drive outside the camp. Anshel here found out." He gestured toward a guy in his late teens.

"When do they drive out?"

"No idea, but we'll find out." Ike replied self-assured, blinking at his brother with sparky eyes.

"So you guys want to use the cars as an escape," Kyle quickly deduced. "and you want the fat Hitler-wannabe to drive." He snorted loudly at the thought of getting Cartman to do that. He'd be more willing to let Kyle rape him in public in front of his whole family, the entire SS army and his beloved Führer.

"Who said that?" The adolescence, Anshel remarked. "Getting officer Cartman to perform such a task would be impossible," he began, and Ike nodded, endorsing behind his back, "the thing you need to do is to get the keys from Cartman."

"Aha..." Kyle said unimpressed, and sighed deeply. Maybe he was being too cynical about this plan, but it seemed way too simple to get out, according to Ike and his group. They acted like they "just" had to get the keys, but did they even know Cartman like Kyle did? Did they have the slightest idea what a obnoxious, malignant, gleeful, callous dick face he was? If Kyle asked him for anything, he'd thrive on showing it into Kyles face, offering it with a factitious attitude of friendliness, only to snatch it away roaring with laughter, the moment Kyle reached out to touch it. Wait, how did they even know if Cartman had a key? Why the hell would he have one? Kyle voiced this question.

"Because we know him, bro." Ike replied. "He doesn't have a permanent function in the camp, as far as we know, but he often comes by I.G. Farben, driving a wagon like the one I described to you. Then the kapos select some people, load them into the wagon, and he drives off."

"Where to?"

"Outside the camp. No idea if the prisoners are tagging along all the way. Maybe they are unloaded somewhere, but we definitely overheard Cartman telling one of the other officers "he'd be fucking stoked to get outside, after having dealt with this load of crap." He was probably referring to the prisoners of the wagon, so I guess they are dropped off beforehand."

"Probably so." Another inmate said.

Kyle eyed his brother through narrow eye slits, his mind racing him with 150 km per hour. He thought about all the things he didn't know about Cartman, and it hit him how little he really knew. He had had no idea what Cartman did in the camp. Surely he had imagined it to involve torturing Jews, but he had always braked, putting his train of thoughts to a stop, before the vision could develop details, and become more than a fraction of the dimmed truth.

He remembered how he had concluded Cartman wasn't worth his concern earlier that day, but now that decision seemed wavering. Cartman had a prepossessing quality about him, which caused Kyle to be pulled back in, whenever he decided to stop obsessing about the guy.

"How come he doesn't even have a permanent job?" Kyle asked in feigned indifference, hoping he sounded sincerely casual, though the curiosity was bubbling inside him.

"You know, because he's privileged." Ike said in a dismissive tone, like something was implicit, but Kyle didn't know what he meant by "privileged".

"Actually I don't." He replied.

"You don't?" Ikes eyes widened in astonishment. "You live with him Kyle, you ought to know," Ike continued almost reproachfully, exchanging puzzled looks with the others, who mumbled in subdued voices.

"I have no idea what you are talking about."

"Why the hell hasn't he told you that?" Ike asked rhetorically. "You sure you don't know?"

"Know what?" Kyle cried out in frustration. This was getting annoying. What were they on about now, that he didn't know? Kyle detested feeling stupid, because he was used to be intelligently superior to people his own age.

"Who he is." Ike emphasized, eyebrows raised in disbelief. He gesticulated. "You really, really don't know who he is, right?" He asked, apparently determined to make Kyle appear as dumb as possible.

"No, I REALLY, REALLY don't, so if you'd just tell me already, and quit the smartmouthing!" Kyle exploded. Ike looked even more confused at Kyles sudden outburst than before, and fell silent for a moment.

"His father is Heinrich Himmler, Kyle," he told bluntly.

This was too much information for one day, and Kyle felt as though his brain was about to seize up, like a ruined motor. Kyle started massaging his temples, eyes still locked with Ikes. His expression had changed from annoyed to completely dismayed.

"Heinrich Himmler as in the leader of SS?" Kyle asked slowly.

"One of the most powerful men in Germany." Ike said affirmatively.

Kyle was always quiet in Cartmans company. He contemplated the thickset Nazi from across the room. Said Nazi had besieged the couch the moment he entered the room, and now he lay there, sprawled peacefully across the heavy piece of furniture, with a cigarette between two fingers. He had chucked his uniform coat on the floor, for Kyle to pick up, and was wearing a red sweater instead.

Kyle sat on a chair across from him, polishing his black boots, piercing him with glares whenever Cartman wasn't noticing it.

So this was the identity the concise and reserved adolescence had hidden?

He was the son of Heinrich Himmler. A full-blown Nazi.

Of course Kyle knew who Heinrich Himmler was. Which German didn't? He was the man responsible for most of the Anti-Semitic laws passed in Germany. The Chief of the German Police and Minister of the Interior, second in command to Hitler and one of his most entrusted allies. An extremely national socialistic and slightly lunatic man,with extreme power, who was constantly being extolled in the radio.

Though having been very surprised about Himmler being the father of Cartman, several thing fell into place now that the puzzle was solved.

How could an SS soldier be chubby? Well, because his father was Heinrich Himmler. How could an 18-year-old get into the SS, when the required training took three years? Well, because his father was the psychopath Heinrich Himmler, king of eugenics, Hitlers right hand, the leader of SS.

When rethinking the matter, it actually seemed right. Kyle had no trouble imagining the happy Nazi-family, Cartman, Himmler and that fat wife of his- what-was-her-name, playing a "fun game of"dart with Jew-heads for dartboard on a Sunday afternoon.
He wondered why Cartman hadn't bragged about being the son of such a powerful man yet. It would be very Cartman-like to look up to an Anti-Semitic asshole like that, so why would he keep it a secret? The forthright Cartman Kyle knew, would tactlessly boast about how great his dad was for "putting those god damned heebs out of their misery" or something alike. Yes, he would buzz like a killer-mosquito needing to be swatted.

For some reason unknown to Kyle, he felt like Cartman owed him an explanation, though Cartmans family was none of his business. He wasn't sure if he would dare to ask yet. The possibility for Cartman blowing up in his face was predominant, and Kyle risked destroying the somewhat friendly terms which had developed between them lately, so he was undecided and wavering.

Right now Kyle just wished he could be a little bit more like Ike, who was always serene and resolute. When he arrived at Auschwitz, he'd been like a sacrosanct and resolute too, certain that no Nazi could ever break him down. Well, they hadn't broken him down yet, but he had certainly managed to screw up his brain, with his over-analysing tendencies and his confusion over Cartman.

A/N:
Soooo muuuuuch infooooo _ Argh!
Sorry if this chapter is unnecessarily detailed and stuffed with information, I just needed a break from the secluded "Cartman x Kyle in their own happy bubble" scenes, and get some action going.

I hope I succeeded.


I personally think the idea about Heinrich Himmler being Cartmans dad was great, though a little far-fetched. It would probably be relevant to tell you, that Heinrich Himmler is a complete nut case. He told one of his friends he would shoot his own mother if Hitler ordered it, he ordered his own nephew to be shot for being gay, and he generally just enjoyed killing people. He seems like someone Cartman could relate to, right? Anyway, I'm relieved this chapter is done, 'cos it took several sleepless night to write. A really hard one to get through.

And another thing. I hope you don't hate me for using too much slang, for a fic taking place in the 40's. I just think it adds dynamic to the story, and helps keep the persons in-character, and I hope it doesn't ruin the reliability. I can't make everything a hundred percent correct after all.

Well, I think that was it for this time.

Please review and I'll love you for all eternity :D

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*A German car-brand. Actually this particular car-brand were during the Holocaust referred to as gas vans or gas wagons, cause they were the forerunners of the gas chambers. People would get into the wagon, and then be gassed. Of course Kyle and Ike have no idea about what the cars are actually used for.