He gets his .

This isn’t the fantasy Alicen gave Graeber. There is no lust or desire to **** Natasha. “Du wirst sterben!” he growls, blood spilling from his mouth. There’s a vague registration of her knife hand trying to stab again, but he’s simply too strong. “I’m going to kill you!”

She gasps, face turning blue as she finally starts to feel her heartbeat flutter. “Goret' v adu!!” Her eyes unfocused, her last straggled breath gurgling in her squeezed throat.

Graeber keeps his fingers wrapped tightly around her neck, staring into her eyes… Now lifeless and no longer so vibrant. When he lets go, she falls limply into the mud. He looks at the knife Natasha used to stab him, still discolored and wet with his blood. It's non-standard, he knows in a glance.

A burning pain begins to pulse through his nerves. He grimaces and steps back as his mind reels. He slowly returns to Lukas, hoping to get him patched up before getting himself turned over to the medics in the rear of the attack.

Weber, Werner, and all the others have gone. The noise of conflict was still all around him. Had they fallen back? Graeber crawls low to Lukas and grabs him. “Where did the others go? Why did they leave you here?”

Graeber rolls Lukas to his back, seeing the same lifeless face as he did on Natasha. His heart drops, and his stomach flips. It hadn’t occurred to him he’d been fatality shot for some reason. “Lukas?”

Lukas’s vibrant blue eyes are dim, and they stare right past Graeber as he’s shaken. “Lukas?”

Graeber looks around the desolate area, and bodies are everywhere. Weapons lay about, and planes buzz overhead, Russian this time. “We gotta get out of here,” Graeber swallows on a throat so tight he feels suffocated. He tries to lift, but his body protests. “Lukas!”

His vision becomes watery as he holds his breath, digging through his pockets. Letters… “Lorelei,” he whimpers. “Oh, Gut,” his hands are shaking as he reaches for his ring—more letters, a journal… pictures… wallet. He takes the identification tag before looking up at his surroundings. "Was soll ich ihr sagen?"

Just as Graeber stands up, the Earth beside him blows up into a million tiny pieces. His watery vision blinks black, and he feels nothing.

...

...

Graeber’s eyes open. His vision blurs, and for a moment, he thinks he’s still somewhere inside the village, until his color returns and sound meets his awakening.

There’s a nurse next to him in a clean white apron. Her dress is slightly faded and blue, and her sleeves are rolled up to her elbows. Her chin is sharp, her nose is small, her cheeks are pale, and her eyes are closed.

A white hat with a Red Cross logo tops her pinned, blonde hair, making it golden and clean. At a glance, Graeber knows he’s staring at a German nurse, and he blushes. “Alicen?”

She blinks, and her ice-blue eyes meet his; she looks at him quizzically. “Herr Graeber,” the nurse's eyes are tight with seriousness, not the kind of sexually charged energy usually pushing against him. “Welcome to Kharkiv.”

The nurse reaches for his forehead, pressing the back of her hand to it. Then his cheek, then his chin. “You’re lucky that you’re alive. When you were brought here yesterday, you were so white and waxy that the doctors thought you were dead.”

Graeber realizes this isn’t Alicen. His left arm is wrapped in a case, and his right arm is bandaged. When he looks at the nurse, he sees a faded tag on the nurse's apron— Franziska. He moistens his lips before straining his voice. “How’s Lukas?”

Franziska looks at him. “Which one?”

“Hoffman,” Graeber grasped at hope. However, the wisps of hope whisk away as he sees her expression lighten to a type of pity reserved for bad news.

Beside his bed, there is a cluster of things. Among the pieces is Lukas’s tag. The nurse's eyes glanced at it, too. Knowing it was her duty to serve Graeber the same sympathy she’d been serving all the other wounded. Gently, she shook her head. “Es tut mir leid, Herr Graeber.”

It was quiet for a few moments before she spoke again. “Not everyone was as lucky as you.”

“Did we win?” Graeber grasped.

She didn’t answer, unsure what the truth would do to her. “Are you hungry? Thirsty?”

“Give me a minute alone,” he says, closing his eyes. “Bitte.”

“I’ll fetch you some food. I’ll be back in 10 minutes.”

Graeber didn’t cry; he just thought about what this war was now. And he wondered how he’d face it without his friends. All those memories, recent even, have just now turned vintage. He sucked on his lips, feeling soreness reach everywhere like claws.

Emil Gerhard— lost in the war, but it was never confirmed that they were buried. Lukas has been there since the beginning. But Graeber knew what had happened to him.

Lukas.

Dead.

Dead like so many others now. So many faces buried in grief had gone blurry. Even Katarzyna’s features were smudged. Her warmth was forgotten. Only her strokes kept her as something more than a bittersweet memory of what was.

The sex with Alicen seems like ash now. Like little furloughs that block the horrors for only a few breaths before reality returns and the war takes over yet again, consuming everything and everyone. Tarnishing the youth with the **** of adulthood during the war. **** maturity for powers beyond their own.

“Look at me,” he muttered, his arms bandaged, his side stitched. His mind was clouded with worry and riddled with wrecked memories. “I’ve seen enough to make me older than the old.”

He slept for a few snores before the door opened. Franziska returned with a tray. Soup, water, and a wrapped bar. “Sleeping? I apologize.”

“Will you stay?” He Graeber asked once she had laid the tray for him. “For a moment?”

“It’s busy,” she said with a small smile. “I came here only to rest as the hospital churned with…” She trailed off, settling her gaze on his eyes. “Why?”

“I have letters from my friend,” Graeber stared at the food. “I was hoping perhaps you could read some of them.”

She blanched, looking at the stack of papers beside his personal belongings. For some reason, she worried about reading them to him. “What are they, exactly? Love letters?”

“Ja,” he said quietly, using his less bandaged right arm to reach for the spoon. “They’re between my friend and his wife. They might be personal, but I need to know who she was and where she lives.”

Franziska kept her eyes on the letters as she scratched her chin. “I’m hardly qualified to read such things. I didn’t know him. I don’t know his wife or even you.”

“Please,” he said, setting the spoon down and looking at her. “I need to know.”

Against her better judgment, Franziska took the stack and flipped through them. Some letters were stained with blood. “They’re out of order.”

“Pick one,” Graeber pleaded, staring at the soup. “Just a few letters, Franziska.”

She shot a glance at her name tag and frowned, picking the least stained letter before sitting back beside him. She glazed over the letter and its contents; the handwriting was feminine, and a faint scent of perfume lingered on the page.

“I hope this letter finds you well,” Franziska spoke clearly, her throat closing slightly at the opening. “It’s Spring in Hamburg, and I’ve decided to sit down and write to you. Your last letter was kind, and I must admit I am excited to meet your friend Samson.”

Franziska glances up at Graeber as he moves. But it continues when he swallows the first spoonful of soup. “I still worry, despite your reassurance, that you’re safe with your so-called brothers. I heard… uhm, sorry. This part is redacted,” Franziska says, and then continues after a hum. “Your parents have warmed up to me finally, but I’m sure it’s because I carry—“

Franziska hesitates. “Because I carry your baby. They seem to be able to ignore my job with the army and now invite me for dinner. I had coffee with your mother just this morning.”

Graeber stops eating. All he does now is listen while giving his cooling soup a distant stare. Franziska swallowed, and then she sighed heavily. “Graeber, this feels like an invasion of privacy.”

“We’re Germans, aren’t we? Why can’t we invade letters but other countries?” Graeber snapped, causing Franziska to wince in surprise. They regard each other, lost youths in the abyss of chaos. He could see the gears in her head turning, pushing out comments and retorts. The ice in her eyes warmed after a few breaths.

“Unless you are illiterate,” she breathes with a cold tone. “I will not read anymore of this.”

She stands up and places the letter down. “I’m sorry for your loss, Graeber. But everyone’s lost someone. And not everyone can get the comfort the way they want.”

A sudden understanding crosses between them, and Graeber feels guilty. “Was müssen wir noch verlieren, damit das endet?”

“What’s the supposed to mean? Do you think the war is lost?”

“No,” Graeber says, unsure if he’s lying. After a thought, he knows he’s lying. It’s all lost, and all the deaths to come are pointless. “We still have space to fight.”

“Good,” Franziska’s cheeks are pink. Her irritation changed her complexion. She straightens her apron and dress, giving the room a quick once-over. “You need rest. So eat, sleep, and drink all your water. Other nurses will come to check on you. It won’t always be me… Keep your letters to yourself. And your thoughts.”

When she gets close to the door, she pauses again. “I am sorry, okay? I’ve lost my brothers. And the bombings are…” She lets out a loud exhale, shaking her head, not finishing her thoughts before leaving.

Then Graeber is alone again. With so much to think about, he worries he might split his head. The moaning of the wounded fills the room, a noise he’d blocked out somehow. Now it filled his little heaven like a hellish prison cell. It was the only thing he could hear now: that and the rumble of trucks arriving just outside the brick and mortar of the real building. The thin walls now reverberated with the cryptic sounds of the sure-to-be-failure of their operation in Kursk.

“Schieße,” Graeber murmured, his mind so twisted he couldn’t get any filtered thought out unaccompanied by something else vaguely related.

The night comes, but the crying of the wounded doesn’t cease. It keeps him awake and aware of the horrors of it all. Even the hospital after Stalingrad wasn’t this horrid.

Franziska came back only once. But it was another nurse who helped him up to use the restroom on all other occasions.

It was the witching hour when Franziska came in again. She stood at the doorway, the operations wounded echoing inside from the hallway behind her.

He was trying to sleep when she came in; he opted to pretend he was asleep, even as she closed the door and sat beside him. “Are you asleep?” She asked.