Moonlight

Drip...drip...

Hans awoke sometime in the middle of the night, listening to the distant dripping of water somewhere in the prison. Moonlight streamed in through the cell's only window, high above the floor and grated over. They were alone, as far as he could tell.

The mutant, Xavier, had taken them to the Spreebogenpark, and as they'd arrived Hans began to appreciate the full scope of the mutant presence at the park. Their defenses were light, but there were at least two hundred Sturmutants throughout the park, plus a few dozen Rotters. There were humans as well. Prison labor, as far as Hans could tell. Tending to crops and the like. Xavier had taken them to the Reichstag, down to what could best be described as a dungeon, where they now rested.

Hans sat up, wondering the time. They'd taken their weapons back at the hotel, but had left them with everything else. Hans held his watch up to the moonlight. Just after three in the morning. His movement had stirred Hilda, who slowly rose up. "Hans?"

"Just checking the time," he said. After such a long day Hans had appreciated the sleep he'd gotten, but now was starting to wonder what was next. They hadn't been brought before Queen Ilse yet, though he was sure it wouldn't be long.

"Can't sleep much anyway," Hilda said, and sat up. Hans sat back down a respectful distance from her, wondering about other things as well. She looked at him and sighed. She was sitting cross-legged, resting her head in her hand, her elbow on her knee. "The Munich Massacre... That's what they're calling it?"

"Yeah," Hans said. He tried not to think about Munich, The Final Order, or anything that they'd been through in the name of Projekt Natursturm. As big a waste of time it had been he couldn't help but still feel bitter about the whole thing, despite how much time had passed since then.

Evidently, though, there were people who still thought about it. Still cared about it. Enough to have formed and trained a whole squad of Vengeance Troopers to hunt both him and Hilda down. Why, he didn't know. It wasn't as if she'd killed any Sturmutants that day.

Hilda got up and moved to sit next to him, close enough that their bodies were touching. Hans took that as a good sign. She put a hand on his knee and he grabbed it. "When we get out of here," she said, "we're going to slaughter every last one of these fuckers."

Hans looked at her, wondering just where her bloodlust came from. Her childhood, as traumatic as it had been, didn't fully explain why she had such a short fuse. He'd known her for years, and still he was sometimes surprised just how far she was willing to go.

Power... Hans thought. Her whole childhood she'd been utterly powerless to stop what was being done to her. She had no autonomy, no agency... She doesn't enjoy killing, she enjoys having control over others, the same way her owner had once controlled her.

Hans frowned. No, that wasn't it. If that was the case, she'd be controlling in her relationships. She'd be abusive. She wasn't either of those things with him, or Paul for that matter. There was something else there. Something he didn't understand, that compelled her to visit violence on all those who tried to harm her.

That was it. She didn't kill for fun, or to exert power over others. She killed to prevent others from controlling her. She killed to express her agency. To announce to others that she was a free person, a free woman, who could not and would not be held down.

That doesn't explain the Munich Massacre, though...

"Hans?" Hilda said, still looking at him.

"First," he said, "we have to get out of here. I saw human slaves working their fields. I imagine that's what they'll do to us, in which case we'll have time to come up with a plan to escape."

"Good," Hilda said. "I won't be anyone's slave ever again."

Hans frowned, thinking back to what Xavier had told him at the hotel. "There's going to be a trial first, though, apparently. That mutant seemed to think you'll be executed at this trial."

Hilda scoffed. "I would rather be dead than slave away for this mutant garbage," she said, and then her expression softened. "Hans, about what happened at that robot factory..."

"I was wondering if we would talk about it. I was wondering if we should talk about it," Hans said. He'd decided that if they did, he'd let her be the first to bring it up. "I'm sorry."

Hilda seemed to think about it for a moment. "What you did, and didn't do, goes far beyond just saying you're sorry. You know what I've been through, what it did to me, and you betrayed my trust," she said. "That being said, though... You're the only person who's ever cared about me. In this world, that's more important than anything else. So... I don't forgive you, but one day I might."

"That's fair," Hans said. "He did save your life, though. Friedrich. When we got jumped outside the hotel. If I'd killed him back in '97, that wouldn't have happened."

"If you'd killed him back in '97, we'd still be in Munich, looking for a replacement GECK. And the Natursturm machine wouldn't have been destroyed, and Klara would still be alive," Hilda said.

Hans shook his head. "Friedrich shot Klara after the Natursturm machine was destroyed. It was already over by the time he entered the picture. That's why I didn't kill him; no point to it."

"Mmm," Hilda said. "So he's not a bad guy. Just misguided. Or misinformed. The point is, we didn't do anything wrong back then. History would've remembered us as the saviors of Germany. But it's people like Friedrich Ademar, whether he thought he was doing the right thing or not, who fucked it all up for us."

"Friedrich wanted the same thing, though. He wanted to work on Natursturm, and bring stability back to our country. Just didn't agree with what we were doing with the Rotters."

"And that makes him an idiot," Hilda said. "Natursturm was going to make the world like how it was before The Bomb came. Zombies and mutants are a part of that. Letting them stick around would've just kept reminding us of The Bomb."

"Ehhh, remember the Genetics Institute at Dahlem? And the BMW headquarters? A lot of the fucked up shit that plagues our country was created long before the first nuke was even launched," Hans said. "And sometimes... Sometimes I think having all these mutants around is a good thing. At least to remind us of The Bomb's dangers."

Hilda looked at him. "If you could go back to before The Bomb came, and somehow prevent it from ever coming, would you? Even if it meant you and I would never meet?"

"Yes," Hans said without hesitating. "As miserable as the world was before The Bomb, it was so much better than life now. And who's to say we would've never met?"

"If you would go back to how life was then, then it means you want to live in a world free from the horrors of The Bomb. That means no more zombies and mutants. That's what we tried to do in Munich," Hilda said with an air of finality. "Like I said, we didn't do anything wrong, and I would do it all again. Consequences be damned."

Hans thought about it a moment, thinking back to what Friedrich had said to him at the top of that mountain in Berchtesgaden, all those years ago. "I know," he said, and put a hand on Hilda's thigh. "And so would I."