It's been a while. Hasn't it, guys?
The Diary of A Young Girl
By Ymir Fritz
Entry #5
To put it lightly, the remainder of Heinrich's twelfth, thirteenth, and half of the fourteenth years were painfully mundane. He was not the sole individual to be that way; everyone was like that. A life brimming with exquisite sensations and experiences was not permitted to Eldians. Instead, they absorbed a routine that implanted in their minds like a parasite and became a psychological rule book for their lives. It drove the body before even conscious thought could. Working, eating, shitting, and breeding were the four pillars that defined much of their existence.
The Marleyans trained inferiority so profoundly in these Eldians that a majority took that to be the truth. This did not allow a rebellious attitude to emerge in many Eldians, and they did not believe they deserved more. It did not matter that the Marleyans preached a flawed opinion of them since, in their minds, the Eldians preached a flawed attitude first.
In truth, many Eldians could never rise above their opinions of themselves. I have yet to rise above mine either, for I am a slave to this opinion, even without a master.
But that concept did not matter to Heinrich in his early double-digit years.
The remainder of Heinrich's fourteenth year was where all the pivotal moments occurred, moments that Heinrich himself detailed extensively in his journal. While they may not have been a one-hundred percent accurate recollection of what happened, some accuracy underlined the fiction that filled memory gaps, the fiction he was forced to construct due to inefficiencies of the human psyche. As I have stated earlier, what lines Viktor—and other people—-had in the journal were not all what the real Viktor—and other people—said. "Viktor," the journal's version, was a shadow with estimated curves of his tangible counterpart and thus was a shadow that waxed and waned depending on the author who penned him: his dear friend.
This shadow was simply Heinrich's interpretation of what he saw Viktor Dassler as. This interpretation was molded by Heinrich's own understanding of life and society and his knowledge of Viktor's relationship with all those things.
No one could present Viktor better than Viktor himself. He would best know his intentions for his actions, inner monologues, and feelings, but his memory would nonetheless be a false recording by no fault of his own. Regardless, Viktor himself knew the "inside" component of what made him tick.
The "outside" component of Viktor existed in fractured understandings of those around him, friends and strangers alike. It was essentially the image they saw of him from a third-person perspective. They all had slightly different ones, like a shattered piece of glass doing its best to reproduce an image but unintentionally separating it into its gradients. Each person observing Viktor saw a slightly derivative gradient.
No one thing could have the wholly truthful "outside" and the "inside" perspectives to present a human in its completeness. An infallible view that knows all, someone omniscient unswayed by nothing, and something so divinely perfect, simply does not exist in this world.
I may be the best "outside" perspective as I have a perfect recollection of memories, but my interpretation is tainted like Heinrich's. I have a set of memories unique to me and millions of other Eldians' memories that will always be at the forefront of my bizarre consciousness, making me peer through colored glass panes. Therefore, if the aim is to present Heinrich's life with one hundred percent accuracy and all his intentions intact, I cannot fulfill that because I lack an objective view. No one can satisfy that aim.
Because the truth is, I cannot see.
For that matter, no one can.
It is because no one can objectively see that there are misunderstandings, "two-sides of the story," detectives, and propaganda in this Marleyan land. It is like everyone peers through a bottleneck, conveniently finding information supporting their own opinions, and information is produced on a factory line to create the same opinions.
People only saw what they needed to see to keep surviving. If they saw the truth, the truth that both Eldian and Marleyan races have committed travesties of devastating proportions for understandable reasons, they would have creeping thoughts sucking energy from them like mosquitoes. Who could live peacefully knowing no side was either wrong or right, and any action done could turn that in either direction for either side's favor? It is pathetic that most of Marley's Eldians think the obliteration of the Paradisiens will bring them peace. At the same time, the tragic irony exists that many Paradisiens feel if the rest of the world is obliterated, that will bring them peace.
It seems suffocating to know good and evil is not cleanly cut, but instead, the worst of both worlds runs rampant hand in hand, intertwined like the strands of a rope, like a frolicking brother and sister who share identical faces.
Yes. If everyone could see, there would be madness, for the truths would steam these people's eyes like potatoes in a scalding pot. The curved retina, the flock of little color rods and pins, the iris, and the pupil would roast together, but they were useless anyway.
My aid in eradicating these folk must have permanently prevented them from saying again, "We will have peace after this group dies." Why could they not just be peaceful instead of fighting to hopefully have peace later?
It does not matter. I have already stopped them from ever seeing the truth, and I have digressed again. I was simply thinking about Viktor, and look where I have ended up.
-X-X-X-X-X-
Skipping ahead to the trio's military mission, Heinrich and his friends left the town of Asrub shivering in the tender knowledge that the most critical test of their fragile mortality had passed. It contrasted my understanding that they had a great deal more to reckon with.
Heinrich had faced the revenge scheme of someone he showed pity for: a gassing with mustard gas, an extremely lethal toxin acting as a significant cause of death in the military, permanently sedating the hearts of millions with its unassuming garlic essence. All three friends were exposed to it but on differing levels, with Kurt receiving the brunt of the poison cloud. It was an unexpected occurrence but not tangential to the realm of probability.
Heinrich and Viktor took turns carrying their weakening friend while Heinrich solely moved the guilt of indirectly causing his friend's declining state. If he had only killed every enemy soldier in that town he saw, there would not have been anyone to use leftover Marleyan weapons against him and his friends. But "ifs" do not contribute to problem resolution; fortunately, Viktor believed there was something else that could help. He thought this issue could be solved by a serum left in a first aid kit they first found in an enemy truck. Possibly, it could have been a counterfeit planted to trick soldiers like him who did not study their medical books sufficiently for commonly used traps.
Hours passed as the friends labored to get to the Cullens, a group led by Commander Magath and two warriors were temporarily stationed there. Heinrich needed to get a letter to them which summarized his mission and requested the warriors' help. But their circumstances made this goal seem increasingly unattainable as the gas called for symptoms to rise from the trio's skins, breaking through their spottily ashed arms.
Kurt, no longer in Viktor or Heinrich's arms, relied on his disdain for Heinrich as a wheelchair to carry himself along. He blamed Heinrich for his soon-to-arrive demise, and rightfully so, Heinrich's civilian empathy did him no favors on the battlefield, even causing consequences for his friends. The symptoms were too much to bear at one point, breaking Kurt through the mental wheelchair. A fire was ravaging within him that no one could see, nor did it exist, yet it left its calling card in every inch of the body—it was not a flame of ambition. It was not as bad as that. The landmines of blisters and pustules that grew through the battlefield of Kurt's body had grown unbearable and, combined with the gun wound, brought Kurt to a halt.
It was a shame since the Cullens were within sight. If only Kurt could bear the suffering for a while longer. But even if he could handle it, his body would give up.
Kurt spoke like one thousand hands grabbed his vocal cords, restraining them. "They're right over there…the Cullens. That little speck. I can see them. That has to be them, right?"
The truth was Kurt could hardly see anything. If he had been able to see, he would not have fumbled on every little gap on the ground possible. It was a wish talking, a lone wish to hopefully bring a truth.
"Yes, Kurt." Heinrich rushed to his friend's side. "We've almost made it"
"It's not fair. I'm not going to make it." Kurt opened his mouth, and his throat convulsed, bringing forth his final meal guzzling from his mouth. Heinrich turned his friend to the side so his friend would not choke on his own vomit.
"You're going to survive, and we will be back at the internment zone one day," he yelled. "Don't you want to go back there?" Heinrich could not believe what he had just asked as he quickly bit off the end of that question. "This is why I told you to stay back at the trenches." Heinrich tapped his friend's clothing aimlessly as if looking for a safe place to pick him up.
"It feels like…as I'm nearing the end…that I see what's it important now," Kurt wheezed. "Dammit, I think it would have really helped to know this earlier."
"Kurt, stop it. You're going to be—"
"Listen, you guys," he coughed. "Don't do anything brash when you get back to the internment zone, okay?—What we had before getting here was enough. As long as there's decent people around you, it doesn't matter how rich we are, how unhealthy we are, how oppressed we are, because—" he wheezed. "When you're about to die like me, you see that the moments you had with your family was enough." Kurt clasped onto Heinrich's upper arm, "It's enough."
Heinrich and Viktor argued whether to run as fast as possible to the Cullens or shoot chance with the serum, but those moments of arguing were a waste of time in itself. Viktor ultimately did not wait for Heinrich's consent and injected their friend, hoping that luck would be on their side.
Kurt throbbed as his whole body vomited together. His iris and pupil, parts with initially conflicting signals, one dark and one light, had agreed on something: a mixture of the two opposing spectrums—grey. A grey that smoothened over both iris and pupil and formed the most barren set of eyes that managed to make the dead seem reborn. That is quite an irony for someone that was very soon going to perish.
One final twitch followed. A light hiccup of the cheek.
The secretive titan serum made its spell, like a liquid wand bringing forth a crackling, splitting boom that plunged the air like cannonballs decimating every level of a fleet of military cruisers. The lightning was gold. Luminescent. Demanding. Calling for respect, but respect it did not get; fear it received. The fear came from the boys as they served it on a file of bark to the swift footsteps of the gold curtain.
From the resignation of this curtain of gold did not come a princess, a prince, a king, or a rehabilitated asthmatic boy. Instead came my artwork. My prose. My quote. My devil.
A titan.
Kurt's final form, an embodiment of the will to keep living, was crafted handily by me. I remember it clearly among the billions of orders I received once upon a time. My employer was the Eldians working so diligently to die, and I had to obey the orders to keep each one "existing" if they were triggered in a certain way. The deaths demanded much of me, but I kept fulfilling the orders like a mangy mechanic.
In the paths where I did all this work, there was just me, a water bucket, and sand whose color teetered between a crystalline blue and white. The ethereal glow from the central tree always gave me good lighting to complete my work, and its faint buzz would accompany the lavishly moving branches like they were floating tentacles. I was a one-girl army, lacking help in every department, unlike the abundantly cramped Aldo Industrial Company that sat outside the Internment Zone.
When I received an order to sculpt, I would feel something, not in the air since there was none, but rather a rough hand pushing me in a direction. It would knock me over each time like my falling signaled the need to make a sculpture rise. It was like King Fritz's everlasting hand over my shoulder, "Get to work, my slave, Ymir."
My creative process was like this: I had none. A schema, blueprint, and design scroll would be handed to me, not physically. Everything in that realm was based on intuition.
I would start by pouring water on a patch of infinite sand and kneel on the ground to scoop the wet sand with my bucket. I would flip the bucket, and the mixture would form a small mound. It seems much like a children's activity within a sandbox. In fact, it is the same activity, but it differed in that there were no bullies to knock my hard work down, no sandy shoes and dirty knees to wash off, and the key one was reality kept those kids' models from ever turning real while mine did. I had shaped histories in my infinite sandbox; those kids made ludicrous castles and picked their noses like gargoyles.
When I got to work on Kurt's form, I honed on the central tree's hum like it was a mother's lullaby. I followed through with the previously mentioned points, creating the first mound and putting some more on top of it, forming a leg. I then dipped my hands in the water, letting them sway with the altered gravity of the liquid, and pulled them out without caring for my wrinkled fingers. I formed the titan's calf muscles, carefully curving my palms, avoiding creating any harsh edges and making the veins. It was arduous work, but I had grown masterful at it, especially the smaller titans that called for refined detail.
The legs were finished, and I moved to the torso. Then I moved to the arms and then the neck. After those were finished, I stepped down the staircase that I made to reach the neck to observe the sculpture.
Yes, the sculpture looked like chaos with its triangle torso and pin legs, anemic to an extreme degree. The central tree's luminescence applied a shading from the left, coating the soon-to-be beast with a comforting teal, green, and blue hue—it was too peaceful in this realm, too contradictory to this mission.
I began work on the head, where most of the personality belonged. I formed the jaw, drawing my fingers from a wide claw at the base below the ears to a sharp pinch at the chin. I filled in the rest of the skull, creating an egg shape from individual slices, but patted it down at the top for it to have the height of a human head. I added the other features and remember poking freckles into the cheeks with my fingertips.
The hair was the trickiest part, where I had to make a solid wig but run small tracks to mimic the nuance of strands of human hair. It is challenging to mimic keratin, the materials in nails and hair, with celestial sand.
But when I was finished, I wiped my hands on my dress, which I had stained millions of times before. I then observed the structure disintegrate from top to bottom like desert winds had whisked it away, grain by grain. That is how I knew it was arriving on the material plain to terrorize.
It was terrorizing friends.
Returning to Heinrich, Viktor and he escaped their transformed friend's vicinity with their items and Anti-Titan rifle. They proceeded to the Cullens with their full might behind them, with Heinrich pushing through his growing chemical burns as he sprinted. I did not construct those muscles with sand myself.
When they arrived at the Cullens' camp, the titan had only a few limbs remaining. Viktor had shot some off but hesitated to shoot the nape to end the misery. He was dangerously reluctant. Sympathy had dug too deep into him; it impaled him. This avoidance of ending the titan led him and Heinrich to dispute again, resulting in Heinrich stabbing Viktor in the leg to weaken him and get back the titan rifle.
Ultimately, a few dozen or so soldiers were killed in the time it took for Heinrich to get back the titan rifle, and he did the deed. He shot the titan's head off cleanly.
Did I feel remorse watching my creation slaughtered?
No.
I felt no joy, no agony when making the sculpture itself. I bore what bullets do on the battlefield: cold indifference to see it perish.
-X-X-X-X-X-
Heinrich and Viktor were taken away in handcuffs by a patrolling soldier. They indirectly killed dozens of soldiers since they had been constrained by the brotherly compassion and guilt for their friend, who was no longer of the world. They were poor soldiers but standard humans. They felt remorse for it, but they had a mission to complete and needed to hand the letter to Commander Magath. If they could not succeed, Kurt's death would be for naught. But everything did feel for naught with the lack of trust and respect a large portion of the camp had for them.
Poor boys. They did not even have time to mourn their friend. They had a mission to complete.
After the friends were patched up at the medical tent, they were stuffed into a small office with a few chairs and the patrol officer. This man could not forgive the deaths, and he could also not see the grander picture of what was at play. His observance of someone's "disregard" for morals allowed his morals to descend. He was depleted to a severe lack of them when confronted with the perpetrators at their weakest point, in cuffs.
He could no longer hold sympathy but for an understandable reason.
The patrol soldier aggressively inquired about the letter while the boys were in cuffs and knelt.
"This letter is utter bullshit. I know for a fact that you two made it up."
"Sir," Heinrich pleaded. "I swear, it is real. I wouldn't have gone through all this trouble for something fake."
"Normally, no one would, but we Eldians are a desperate bunch. This could be an elaborate scheme for you to gain an Honorary Marleyan name for being a hero in a mission. I have seen dozens attempting to distinguish themselves to escape this oppression we face." He scoffed, "We are such a pathetic group of people."
The patrol soldier waved the letter in Heinrich and Viktor's faces like carrion in front of a dog. The sounds of the individual flakes of wood that made the paper were all played together in a long, dreadful rip. It was worse than a gunshot, for many gunshots were made to bring this letter to those who needed to see it the most.
Heinrich and Viktor boiled over this occurrence for a few hours as they saw the limp paper shredded on the ground.
"This sight burned me more seriously than the chemical burns I had to bear for so long. It was corrosive, like I was being punished for suffering. As I lowered my head to see the letter, ripped into eighths on the deplorable floor before me, my mind became contorted with rage. The inked words were losing their meaning."
When the moment was right, when the patrolling soldier's cockiness had reached a peak, the boys launched their assault. Heinrich banged his head onto the ground as a distraction and thrust his scalp into the oppressive soldier's groin, tearing instinctual cries of pain out from the man. Heinrich and Viktor proceeded to demean this officer at every level by kicking him relentlessly in his stomach and head. It was cruel, but when logic and persuasion had failed, violence was their only option.
After leaving the room, the friends came across a ginger-haired officer that shouted his orders to his men with such fierceness that it edged on being comical. He too did not provide respect for the two desperate boys, but that did not stop them.
Heinrich and Viktor quietly peered at a line of infantrymen who discussed approaching the front trench line. The friends knew what they had to do. They mixed into the chain like catching a ride on a steam engine.
The soldiers had been linked together by anxiety and a captain's order. Perspiration dripped down everyone's glum faces like a poor man's water, salty and impure, and their mouths were shaped like flat staples, firm but wavering. Nails of masculinity held the flaps of their faces together, like a man forcing his pants to button together, hiding their true feelings like they were concealing a beer gut. Everyone was crying in the intestines of their minds, acids sputtering to digest the imagined fates to follow, the sights to see, and the red to see. Red would be in the air. Could you sense it, Heinrich? Red would be in the air.
The standard infantry was separated into lines sorted by race. The Marleyans sat with their backs against the outter most trench wall while the Eldians rested on a short slope raising into No Man's Land, the great space separating enemy trenches. The Eldians would be the first to plunge into the field and test their mortality, while the Marleyans would follow up. They were so alert, drugged by fear and anxiety, that if you held a deck of cards up to a young private, their gaze would stab through the diamonds, spades, and hearts.
Heinrich and Viktor did not join into any of these lines. They stood awkwardly, in cuffs, attracting a few stares. The letter that explained the entire mission all relied upon the tenacity of Heinrich's grip, for he held its shreds. He needed to get to Commander Magath, whose cut and cover was along the front line.
The pair walked between the separated Eldian and Marleyan infantry in the tight path that remained. Their bandages tightened their movements, dampening their scurrying and making them continue with a slow trot. Heinrich winced as he incurred the wrath of the chemical blisters that persisted despite the treatment.
Heinrich questioned an officer fumbling for a whistle, "Sir, do you happen to know where Commander Magath is located?"
"He's a few hundred yards down from here." He pointed in a direction the pair was already heading. "What business do you have with him?"
"It's—"
A shell landed about twenty meters away. This was the work of the Mid-East men hiding in the distance from their trenches.
Heinrich and Viktor persisted as dust bloomed from the path. Holes were scooped out of the soldiers in the blast radius, and craters were formed a yard and a half in radius. Years of nurturing, love, hatred were deleted in the cruel indifference of a shell's millisecond-length arrival.
The friends hastened their pace, seemingly undeterred by yet another test of their mortality.
"Viktor and I increased our speed to avoid getting hit by the explosives. An invisible hand must have launched the devilish things hundreds of meters away from across no man's land. That is a difficult feat for any military.
Screeches fired all around us, and the dust formed a fog, but I kept moving. The thought of making our struggles worth it was a raw motivator that shut off distracting thoughts.
We even came across a crying soldier and a crying officer. How would these tears inspire anyone? They mourned for their deaths that hadn't even happened yet.
I ignored these distractions.
It was all just noise, like the static behind a radio broadcast, like the cries of people being abused in the internment zone. I did my best to tune it out."
A cluster of shells shattered the soldiers and ground within a few yards of the two friends, igniting yells of desperate men waiting to hear the golden words "Over the top" so they could storm No Man's Land. But the only thing ignited in the pair were Viktor's ears. He tried covering them, but his restrained wrists did not allow it, so he crouched to hide from the abrasive noise clouding his judgment.
Viktor pleaded for it all to stop, but Heinrich could not grant him that wish yet. The most recent cluster of shells cluttered the path, blocking off a safe way to reach Commander Magath, so Heinrich had to find an alternative solution.
"Viktor, I think I am going to do something stupid." Heinrich's eyes widened as he looked upon the trench edge, panning to it like a careful photographer. "I'm going to have to run across the edge of No Man's Land!"
Heinrich honed in on the glum sheet of gray that was the sky, the mattress of gloom fluffed with crows and ravens' feathers. Heinrich and Viktor were in the darkness of this false day, peering, seeing dreams no mortal dared to dream before. It captivated me—filled me with a ludicrous sensation, a quite unfeminine one, to have death presented at its least private version.
Viktor urged Heinrich, "Just keep moving! Don't go up there!"
This sample of trench warfare was the most excellent quote I have ever seen. One can be embarrassed by running to a couple kissing in public. But do not avert your eyes to the public death of dozens. These were humans. This was the truth.
Did you see the quote in it like I did, Heinrich? My eyes could taste its words while you tasted your mission. Where was your humor now?
Yes. Red was in the air.
As a fountain of rubble leaned over Heinrich, the boy crawled onto the edge and ripped off his leg bandages. The chemical burns had to be wrestled through since the goal was worth it, and Kurt's life was worth it. Of course, Heinrich would say that boy's life was worth it. I have no comment on that.
Heinrich made a light step, and another followed as if he progressed on a tightrope. But increasingly, his steps hastened, and his boots did what they were made for. They gripped the ground, thrusting the boy forward as courage built in his gut from a seed, an original bluff of confidence. The handcuffs rattled as the only restraint as the other inhibitors dissolved.
He never blinked since he would miss the mission's climax if he did.
A captain leading the charge called after Heinrich to stop, and Viktor stood behind him, observing his friend attempt to contradict a fleet of hundreds of men. He ached in his ears, face, and entire body.
The captain gritted his teeth and put a whistle in his mouth. The shrill sound rang through every ear, erupting a jolt from every soldier, jetting them from their trench positions. The charge commenced.
The hundreds of soldiers poured out of the trench like worker ants coming out of a mound, but Heinrich kept pressing forward. His goal was tied on a fishing rod in front of him as bait to arouse unusual values unfamiliar to him: strength, endurance, and resolve.
Heinrich's decision to run perpendicular to the fleet of many was a first-rate example of the perplexing human spirit. He was not great. He was not special enough to make a force of many to yield to him. But his heart found strength when he needed to have it the most. Despite the odds against him, he decided to follow through with his implausible idea, like the cramping of time in demanding situations depleted his rationale.
The same result could have been achieved if Heinrich had done nothing. Humans fascinate me.
The ant-like soldiers continued to jet toward the enemy trenches hundreds of yards in the distance, but they did not stop for Heinrich, and he did not stop for them. On accident, one 'ant' bludgeoned Heinrich's left side, and he tripped and rolled over. That did not deter the boy. He got up and progressed with his contradictory charge.
"I kept pushing forward.
It was a pleasure to have an unerring resolve, a clear goal that I had no desire to stray from. I didn't have the obstacle of second thoughts. I knew what I had to do.
It was a pleasure to enter a state of mind where only one thing mattered. It's a shame it took Kurt's death for me to hone in on the goal finally."
Shells continued to be thrown from a distance like magical stones from invisible giants. The explosions injured the ground like toxic warts, decaying the humans that unknowingly ran into them. One magical stone had to hit Heinrich at some point. Probability required it.
"A cramp irritated my thighs as the adrenaline started to fall from its peak. I had so many yards left to run, but the world thought to bring me down to reality once again."
A few untainted ants approached from Heinrich's left and rammed into the boy without allowing him to recover. The ants were picked off by larger-than-life anteaters, scooping away lives with their explosive warts. Each unintended attack forced Heinrich to yield, accept the flow of the battle, and accept that he was doing something unnatural with himself and the battlefield.
Ultimately, Heinrich Steiner's knees caved in, and he folded onto the soil. He became one with the dirt and acquiesced to the grander flow of the river. He looked up one last time before falling unconscious.
Did you see the sun, Heinrich? It was a sliced pomegranate with jeweled seeds, blazing in the red crunchy jelly that cocooned them. It was an unrealistic observation, much like your wish to follow through with your mission, but it felt authentic in those dire circumstances.
-X-X-X-X-X-
This was the point where Heinrich ended his journal. He abruptly pulled his life to a close on those pages without a proper conclusion to his situation, defeating the cleanly cut process of a typical story where everything should have a defined progression and a finite ending. But reality does not yield to the catered structure of stories since it becomes unruly whenever it wants and disappoints whenever it yearns to. It intruded on Heinrich's recitation of his reality and bore not a shred of guilt for it. It was not a murderer but something beyond that; it transcends labels and mere human categorizations.
Heinrich's chase memory eclipsed, and I moved to the next one where his eyes shuddered to the sun while still lying disabled on No Man's Land. He was out of commission, and the first wave of infantrymen had already finished their charge. The second wave was readying themselves in the Cullens' trench with their bodies quaking from observing the fate of the first wave.
The great inverted warts formed from the Mid-East forces' shells had decimated at least half of the infantrymen whose lives no longer belonged to them. They were preserved in the paths, relegating their husks to remain like poisoned marshmallows on a devastatingly burnt cookie that was No Man's Land. Red sprinkles added a metallic scent and flavoring.
Yes. Red was in the air.
I crouched next to Heinrich biting my lip, and I lowered to his ear, "You're not dying here, are you? Not yet. It's not your time."
He did not return a response. His ears trickled a trail of blood like a corrupted tear, so he must have been shell-shocked once more. He did not need functioning ears to hear me, however. The curtain of filth that caked his skin before was topped by a sediment-like layer as if his body was already unifying with the ground.
Well aware Heinrich would not be able to return to his mission even with raw will and strength, I floated over to Viktor's position in the trench, about fifty meters away, to observe Viktor's reaction play out to this event. As long as Heinrich was faintly awake, I could move freely within his memory for at least a certain distance.
Viktor repeated his friends' names like incantations. His frenzied words summarized to saying, "I can't lose two friends in one day." He squealed, subverting the false strength he had presented for so long, and a lather of sweat glistened in the confines of his palms. He then bolted to the captain, interrupting the lanky man while he gave orders to the second fleet to prepare themselves for a charge after a few corpses were cleared out.
"Sir, since the first wave passed, can we go save my friend there? He's alive. I'm sure of it."
The lanky captain raised his nose but lowered his scowl, "Screw off. Can't you see I'm leading a charge here?"
"My friend has an important message. He has a let—"
"I don't know who they hell you are or why you're here. You look like a criminal and a medic but you're wounded. I would have a good sense to throw you into a cell from the cuffs you're wearing, but I don't have the time or the patience to. So, buzz off."
Viktor was adamant, "You have to listen to me. My friend has an important message."
"Does he now? All these buggers think they have some important message to say before they die."
Viktor's ears must have still been in excruciating disarray from a blast that landed too close to him mere minutes before. I could tell from his constant biting when the captain shouted at him. Ultimately, he looked back onto No Man's Land to spot Heinrich in the crowd of poisoned marshmallows or deceased ants—they all meant the same thing—but could not make him out in all the similar uniforms.
Viktor brushed past the captain and stepped up the trench edge in preparation to rush out and find his friend himself. But the captain had other ideas; the rake-like fellow tugged Viktor down by the leg and disciplined him the best way he knew how: a barrage of foul breath with occasional yelling. "Who the hell do you think you are, cadet? You interrupt my debriefing session, and now you're trying to go out there by yourself? Leave the clean up people to do their jobs."
Viktor gazed at the captain blankly like he was churning a scheme in his perturbed noggin to pursue.
"Are you listening to a damn thing I'm saying?"
Viktor must have failed to concoct a grand scheme since he plunged for the captain's arm and bit it.
"Yow!" the captain yelped, jerking backward. He was astounded, looking back at his speechless men and back at the shallow bite his thick sleeve did little to protect. "You little devil…" He glowered at Viktor, to which the boy attempted to climb over the trench edge once more before the captain tugged him down again. The lanky captain blundered a thousand insults, each one bouncing off of Viktor, who still could only partially hear. He then looked for one of his subordinates and tossed Viktor to one named Dieter.
"Dieter, take this son of a bitch to a dugout with the dead bodies in it."
"Where is that, Captain?"
"If it's not blown to shit already, it should be past the cut and cover the commander is in."
Perfect.
Viktor's face beamed as Dieter pulled him. He did not put up a fight since Dieter was practically leading him to the exact destination he was looking for. Ironically, the subordinate led Viktor through the identical path Heinrich wanted to avoid running across since it had been damaged so severely. Heinrich thought it would take himself longer to push through that path, so he attempted to run over No Man's Land.
But Dieter must have been a subordinate of high intellect since he walked through the damaged path anyway.
It amazed me how if Heinrich had simply waited a few minutes for the charge to finish, he could have cleared the trench path safely. This heroic idiocy is another trait that fascinates me about some people.
Viktor glared at the rubble surrounding him reluctantly, and his nose twitched, observing the casualties to the shell blasts being swiftly carried away by the trash-keepers of the trenches—they were like janitors. I wondered what he was wondering about: was he still thinking about Kurt and how his death was the worst way to leave the world? If anyone cared to listen to my opinion, I would say that getting blasted away without even a chance to charge your enemy is the most abhorrent way to fizzle out of the world. Getting pulped by a gargantuan foot would be even more deplorable, but Kurt did not receive either death.
He got many chances to be helpful on the battlefield, arguably more valuable than his friends, but so many do not get to die a great way. Many die of exhaustion on the factory floor, accidental machine failure, a pathetic viral infection that could be cured by the right medicine, etc.
Viktor noticed the cut and cover, a small pill-box-shaped structure with a guard in front of it, and realized this was where the mission must end. He behaved enough in those few hundred meters that Dieter restrained him that the subordinate sufficiently let his guard down, so Viktor wriggled out and shot towards the guard protecting the cut and cover entrance.
Dieter and the guard threw themselves onto the boy, and Viktor attempted to squirm out, "Let me pass!" This was not time for morals. Viktor sucked in some air and kicked both men in their groins before fumbling through the entrance of the cut and cover.
Viktor took three deep breaths as if inhaling the entire world while trying to gain composure. He then set his eyes upon a shadowy atmosphere interrupted by daylight, peering through a few slots. He could make out four people huddled together who sharply turned to meet his presence while standing around a map.
"Commander Magath!" Viktor shouted.
The Real Author's Note
How've you been, guys? I was writing a chapter mid-July but had to scrap it 75% of the way through since it felt like a big summary chapter instead of bringing enough new content. So, I re-wrote it and that took a bit.
It also hasn't helped that I've been plenty busy writing a research proposal about mental health during COVID and stuff that's a little more useful than writing fiction lol.
Anyway, expect a new chapter in two days, either Sunday or Monday.