black_sluggard (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
black_sluggard) wrote2012-01-16 04:44 am
black_sluggard) wrote2012-01-16 04:44 am
Entry tags:
(Ficlet) Black Edelweiss: Interlude 6
Title: Black Edelweiss
Series: Zeitgeist
Follows: One Giant Leap
Wordcount: 1,238
Summary: Two weeks after Claire Bennet's televised leap from the Ferris wheel, the 12th handles it's first case delving into the strange world of specials. Evidence points the investigation toward a former Company Agent, a man Noah Bennet would swear up and down doesn't exist.
Details: Minimal details due to inflation. Full warnings and details in main post.
PREV: Chapter Ten // MAIN // NEXT: Interlude 7
Adam & Konrad—Dresden, Germany; February 13, 1945
Kunz had gone quiet—finally—his initial anguished cries having already continued long after pain and damaged vocal chords would have forced a lesser man mute. Now the young immortal lay silent, curled up in the dust and rubble of what remained of his childhood home, his clothes singed and bloody, his face streaked with claret and ash and tears. Paralyzed in his grief, Konrad had so far stubbornly refused to budge, and he knew the younger man would be utterly useless when the two of them were finally found.
Honestly, he was surprised all the kid's carrying on hadn't brought someone sooner. Though he supposed it was understandable how a single voice could have gone unnoticed amongst the rest of the pathetic wailing that echoed through the broken streets.
As it was, he wound up waiting far longer than he would have liked for their capture.
When the soldiers finally arrived he placed his hands on the back of his head, dropping solidly to his knees. Broken masonry sliced and abraded the flesh exposed by his ruined uniform, but having so recently had large proportions of his anatomy pulped and roasted and regrown in their entirety that brief discomfort was hardly worth his notice.
"Gefangener!" he shouted, as clearly as he could while maintaining a distinct enough accent. "English Gefangener!"
Given their current circumstances, he could only hope they wouldn't stick a bayonet through his liver on sheer principle. Fortunately they managed to avoid that sort of unpleasantness, though judging by the soldier's expressions, it had been a very near thing.
Monroe was the name he gave them when asked, affecting an atrocious grasp of Hochdeutsch—Adam Monroe.
It was an identity that he had seen fit to set up in advance, with papers and tags to match, once the tide of the war had begun to turn in the Allies' favor. After so many centuries, he had learned the lesson of having his escape prepared, and learned it well. While there might indeed be many things in this world worth risking a premature end to his very long life, the curiosity which had moved him to observe the goings on in the Fuhrer's camps was not one of them.
Now, Konrad on the other hand...
Konrad had been a rare and unanticipated find. It wasn't very often, after all, that he found anyone whom he might entertain as an intellectual equal—no one he had met even managed to approach his experience, for obvious reasons. But there was more to a person than just their years of life, and from almost the moment they had met, Konrad Reichardt had him intrigued. A sensitive man, one might almost go so far as to classify Konrad as young beyond his years and experience, though he couldn't quite be called naive. On the contrary, Konrad had quickly proven himself a very sharp young man.
And excruciatingly aware of his place in the scheme of things.
Having spent the better part of his three centuries engaged in mercenary work Adam was well acquainted with war, and had seen young soldiers of all sorts live, fight and die on the battlefield. There were those who followed their orders blindly, secure in the knowledge that this was right. There were those whom delicate conscience would force to disobey—often at the cost of their own lives. And there were—and always would be—those who clung to obedience like a talisman, aware when orders deviated from their own native morals, yet letting blame rest safely on the shoulders of those who directed them.
Konrad Reichardt had been none of these. Konrad had firmly and truly believed serving his country was the right thing to do, and he had believed just as truly and just as firmly that the way he was doing so was abominable. And yet he had done—and would have continued to do—the duties ordered of him, until the weight of his guilt grew great enough to crush him completely...
Yes, Adam had seen plenty of men like Konrad as well. They had all met bad ends just as surely as the ones who were foolishly brave enough to defy. Their deaths had simply been a longer, quieter affair, excruciatingly slow. If not for the miracle which had taken place, had the young man managed to live another fifteen years beyond the war—twenty-five, Adam speculated, at the outside—Konrad would have spent each one of them dying from it.
The speedy execution that insubordination would have earned him seemed a mercy by comparison.
It had caught Adam quite off guard to realize he might actually mourn that loss... Though they were very different in temperament, he and Konrad had shared a surprising number of interests, and during the months they'd both spent at Auschwitz he'd grown rather fond of the younger man. Konrad wasn't a bad sparring partner with a blade even taking his injury into account, and he had a facility with languages that bordered on the unnatural...
Though Adam had since become certain there was nothing borderline about it.
It had been novel enough to find someone with whom he could converse with in English as easily as he could German. After a week's acquaintance, however, Adam had been surprised to find Konrad could manage French and Italian as well. Fascinated, he had come to learn that there wasn't a language spoken in the camp—by guard or prisoner—that Konrad did not understand to some degree, and its prisoners had come from such a varied number of places that that alone boggled the mind. Polish, Russian, Hebrew, Dutch, Magyar, Yiddish, Greek... Though the young man had sworn never to have heard it spoken in his life, it had taken only a single conversation in Japanese for Konrad to begin to grasp it. And Konrad had hinted more than once that he had come to suspect the veracity of Fritz Stahl's American origins—that he had never reported those suspicions had only further served to cement his appreciation of the young man.
And that had all been before the man's unfortunate...accident.
As Adam had watched Konrad draw that first impossible breath on the road, the memory had returned to him of the words Hiro Nakamura had spoken seeing the very same happen to him. Ten'yo—godsend. And it did seem to be a miracle, of sorts, for him to have met Konrad, to have befriended him, and then to have been there to see his death play out just as his own had so long ago...
Magnanimity was not in his nature, but Adam felt he had a stake in Konrad's survival. He deserved to see whatever the young man might one day make of himself.
Though survival was the farthest thing from Konrad's mind at the present moment.
Standing amid the rubble of Konrad's destroyed home, Adam spun his story carefully. He told the German soldiers of how he and his companion—"Dorian Gray" he called him, amusing himself with a reference that went quite unnoticed—had been separated from the other prisoners during the bombing. He didn't know if there were any British being held in Dresden, but with the city in ruin he thought it would be rather difficult for them to check. With luck they' would be shuffled in with an existing group of prisoners, and there they could take whatever time Konrad needed to work through his shock so that they could figure out their next step.
After all, if Mengele had anyone searching for a couple of SS deserters, a POW camp in the ruins of Dresden was probably the last place they would look.
PREV: Chapter Ten // MAIN // NEXT: Interlude 7
Translations:
Gefangener - prisoner
Hochdeutsch - "high German", the standard dialect of German
I've made the assumption that ten'yo (天与, "God-given") was the word Hiro used during that scene. I was never able to figure out which one, but it does contain the character "与" (yo), which is one of the characters that Ando identifies in the helix symbol.
Author's Note: Oh, right, I remember this one... Heh. Way too many WIPs running right now...
ETA: This is also why this AU is never getting a Valentines Day fic...
Series: Zeitgeist
Follows: One Giant Leap
Wordcount: 1,238
Summary: Two weeks after Claire Bennet's televised leap from the Ferris wheel, the 12th handles it's first case delving into the strange world of specials. Evidence points the investigation toward a former Company Agent, a man Noah Bennet would swear up and down doesn't exist.
Details: Minimal details due to inflation. Full warnings and details in main post.
PREV: Chapter Ten // MAIN // NEXT: Interlude 7
Adam & Konrad—Dresden, Germany; February 13, 1945
Kunz had gone quiet—finally—his initial anguished cries having already continued long after pain and damaged vocal chords would have forced a lesser man mute. Now the young immortal lay silent, curled up in the dust and rubble of what remained of his childhood home, his clothes singed and bloody, his face streaked with claret and ash and tears. Paralyzed in his grief, Konrad had so far stubbornly refused to budge, and he knew the younger man would be utterly useless when the two of them were finally found.
Honestly, he was surprised all the kid's carrying on hadn't brought someone sooner. Though he supposed it was understandable how a single voice could have gone unnoticed amongst the rest of the pathetic wailing that echoed through the broken streets.
As it was, he wound up waiting far longer than he would have liked for their capture.
When the soldiers finally arrived he placed his hands on the back of his head, dropping solidly to his knees. Broken masonry sliced and abraded the flesh exposed by his ruined uniform, but having so recently had large proportions of his anatomy pulped and roasted and regrown in their entirety that brief discomfort was hardly worth his notice.
"Gefangener!" he shouted, as clearly as he could while maintaining a distinct enough accent. "English Gefangener!"
Given their current circumstances, he could only hope they wouldn't stick a bayonet through his liver on sheer principle. Fortunately they managed to avoid that sort of unpleasantness, though judging by the soldier's expressions, it had been a very near thing.
Monroe was the name he gave them when asked, affecting an atrocious grasp of Hochdeutsch—Adam Monroe.
It was an identity that he had seen fit to set up in advance, with papers and tags to match, once the tide of the war had begun to turn in the Allies' favor. After so many centuries, he had learned the lesson of having his escape prepared, and learned it well. While there might indeed be many things in this world worth risking a premature end to his very long life, the curiosity which had moved him to observe the goings on in the Fuhrer's camps was not one of them.
Now, Konrad on the other hand...
Konrad had been a rare and unanticipated find. It wasn't very often, after all, that he found anyone whom he might entertain as an intellectual equal—no one he had met even managed to approach his experience, for obvious reasons. But there was more to a person than just their years of life, and from almost the moment they had met, Konrad Reichardt had him intrigued. A sensitive man, one might almost go so far as to classify Konrad as young beyond his years and experience, though he couldn't quite be called naive. On the contrary, Konrad had quickly proven himself a very sharp young man.
And excruciatingly aware of his place in the scheme of things.
Having spent the better part of his three centuries engaged in mercenary work Adam was well acquainted with war, and had seen young soldiers of all sorts live, fight and die on the battlefield. There were those who followed their orders blindly, secure in the knowledge that this was right. There were those whom delicate conscience would force to disobey—often at the cost of their own lives. And there were—and always would be—those who clung to obedience like a talisman, aware when orders deviated from their own native morals, yet letting blame rest safely on the shoulders of those who directed them.
Konrad Reichardt had been none of these. Konrad had firmly and truly believed serving his country was the right thing to do, and he had believed just as truly and just as firmly that the way he was doing so was abominable. And yet he had done—and would have continued to do—the duties ordered of him, until the weight of his guilt grew great enough to crush him completely...
Yes, Adam had seen plenty of men like Konrad as well. They had all met bad ends just as surely as the ones who were foolishly brave enough to defy. Their deaths had simply been a longer, quieter affair, excruciatingly slow. If not for the miracle which had taken place, had the young man managed to live another fifteen years beyond the war—twenty-five, Adam speculated, at the outside—Konrad would have spent each one of them dying from it.
The speedy execution that insubordination would have earned him seemed a mercy by comparison.
It had caught Adam quite off guard to realize he might actually mourn that loss... Though they were very different in temperament, he and Konrad had shared a surprising number of interests, and during the months they'd both spent at Auschwitz he'd grown rather fond of the younger man. Konrad wasn't a bad sparring partner with a blade even taking his injury into account, and he had a facility with languages that bordered on the unnatural...
Though Adam had since become certain there was nothing borderline about it.
It had been novel enough to find someone with whom he could converse with in English as easily as he could German. After a week's acquaintance, however, Adam had been surprised to find Konrad could manage French and Italian as well. Fascinated, he had come to learn that there wasn't a language spoken in the camp—by guard or prisoner—that Konrad did not understand to some degree, and its prisoners had come from such a varied number of places that that alone boggled the mind. Polish, Russian, Hebrew, Dutch, Magyar, Yiddish, Greek... Though the young man had sworn never to have heard it spoken in his life, it had taken only a single conversation in Japanese for Konrad to begin to grasp it. And Konrad had hinted more than once that he had come to suspect the veracity of Fritz Stahl's American origins—that he had never reported those suspicions had only further served to cement his appreciation of the young man.
And that had all been before the man's unfortunate...accident.
As Adam had watched Konrad draw that first impossible breath on the road, the memory had returned to him of the words Hiro Nakamura had spoken seeing the very same happen to him. Ten'yo—godsend. And it did seem to be a miracle, of sorts, for him to have met Konrad, to have befriended him, and then to have been there to see his death play out just as his own had so long ago...
Magnanimity was not in his nature, but Adam felt he had a stake in Konrad's survival. He deserved to see whatever the young man might one day make of himself.
Though survival was the farthest thing from Konrad's mind at the present moment.
Standing amid the rubble of Konrad's destroyed home, Adam spun his story carefully. He told the German soldiers of how he and his companion—"Dorian Gray" he called him, amusing himself with a reference that went quite unnoticed—had been separated from the other prisoners during the bombing. He didn't know if there were any British being held in Dresden, but with the city in ruin he thought it would be rather difficult for them to check. With luck they' would be shuffled in with an existing group of prisoners, and there they could take whatever time Konrad needed to work through his shock so that they could figure out their next step.
After all, if Mengele had anyone searching for a couple of SS deserters, a POW camp in the ruins of Dresden was probably the last place they would look.
PREV: Chapter Ten // MAIN // NEXT: Interlude 7
Translations:
Gefangener - prisoner
Hochdeutsch - "high German", the standard dialect of German
I've made the assumption that ten'yo (天与, "God-given") was the word Hiro used during that scene. I was never able to figure out which one, but it does contain the character "与" (yo), which is one of the characters that Ando identifies in the helix symbol.
Author's Note: Oh, right, I remember this one... Heh. Way too many WIPs running right now...
ETA: This is also why this AU is never getting a Valentines Day fic...