Re: Blood and Iron

The gates groaned as Bruno pushed them open, the iron stiff with frost.

The snow still fell, blanketing the world in silence.

He stepped out into the street, cane crunching against the ice, breath curling like smoke in the winter night.

And there she was.

A single car idled by the curb, its engine muffled by the storm.

Beside it stood Heidi. No guards, no attendants, no cloak of royal dignity, just a plain coat against the cold, her hair pulled back, her pale face softened by the falling snow.

Bruno stopped short, a bitter smile tugging at his lips. He shook his head, voice low.

"I should have known you would find me here…"

Heidi's expression mirrored his, weary but tender, a smile more sorrow than joy.

"It wasn't hard," she answered softly. "You tend to come here when life gets too heavy…"

For a long moment, nothing more was said. There was no need. She knew, and he knew, and the silence between them was more honest than words.

At last she spoke again, her voice steady.

"I've notified the family. The arrangements are already being seen to. You don't need to do a thing."

Bruno nodded once, silently.

She did not approach him, not yet. Though she was his wife, though she had stood beside him through war and empire, through fire and triumph alike, Heidi kept her respectful distance.

She knew him too well. Knew that when grief weighed on him, no hand, no embrace, no voice could lighten it until he chose to let them. Sometimes it was only silence that helped, only solitude.

Snow gathered on her shoulders, in her hair, and still she stood, waiting.

At last, Bruno reached out. His gloved hand found hers, rough and cold, and he drew her close.

She stepped into his arms, and together they stood before the graveyard gates, the snow falling heavy around them.

Heidi said nothing. She did not need to. Her silence was comfort enough, her presence a promise that he was not alone.

Bruno did not cry.

He only stared past her shoulder, his eyes fixed on the ice crusting the sidewalk, thoughts spiraling where words could not reach.

He held her, and she held him, and between them the storm passed in silence.

---

The office was silent.

The lamps burned low, throwing long shadows across the oak-paneled walls.

Outside, the city's towers gleamed faintly through the snow, but here there was only the steady clack of keys as Erwin von Zehntner typed the last of the day's reports.

The hour was late.

His secretaries had long since gone home, and the rest of the board had retreated to their estates and palaces.

But Erwin remained, as he always did, shoulders bent over his desk, sifting through ledgers and cables that stretched from Berlin to Tokyo, from Buenos Aires to Cape Town.

The weight of an empire in trade, industry, and finance pressed upon him, and he bore it with the same quiet diligence his father bore the Reich.

The phone rang.

He frowned. No one should be calling him at this hour.

He let it ring, hand still poised above the typewriter keys. The ringing stopped. Silence returned. Then, it rang again.

He placed his hands flat on the desk, drew in a slow breath, and answered with a calm voice. "Erwin von Zehntner."

The line was quiet. Nothing but the faint hiss of static. He did not speak. He waited, bracing himself, his jaw tightening as though preparing for a blow.

At last, a voice came, low and deliberate. The words were brief, the meaning unmistakable.

"I understand," Erwin replied. His tone never wavered. He set the receiver down and sat back in his chair.

The silence pressed against him, heavier than any ledger.

He closed his eyes, the stillness broken only by the faint hum of the ceiling fan above, spinning lazily in the winter air.

After a long pause, he reached for the phone again and dialed.

Alya answered on the second ring.

"It's happened," he said, voice steady. "I'll be home soon. We must be ready to greet my father at the palace when he returns."

There was a silence on the other end, then a soft reply. He said nothing more before hanging up.

For a long time he did not move.

His gaze followed the fan as it spun slowly, round and round, hypnotic in its monotony.

His thoughts drifted, back to family gatherings in the old halls, the stern but warm presence of his grandfather at the head of the table, the laughter of his grandmother softening the edges of the old man's pride.

He remembered, too, how he and his sisters had once been treated, the whispers, the cold looks from uncles, aunts, cousins who saw only the stain of their mother's birth.

But his grandfather had never wavered. His grandmother had never withheld affection. To them, Erwin and his sisters had always been children of the house, not shadows at the feast.

The memory lingered, bittersweet, as he pushed his chair back.

He thought of how those years had marked him.

How the sting of rejection from his own blood had driven him harder than any tutor or master ever could.

While others laughed at salons or paraded through their youth in uniforms, Erwin buried himself in books of trade, in maps of shipping lanes, in contracts that bound nations together.

He swore to himself that no child of his line would ever sit in a hall and feel lesser again.

Wealth, power, industry, he would master them all, and by doing so, erase the stain others had tried to pin upon his mother's name.

Slowly, he rose, reaching for his coat.

The office loomed around him, stacks of paper, ledgers, and telegrams, the machinery of empire.

He left them where they lay, the last sheet still in the typewriter, the last sentence unfinished.

He turned off the lamp, closed the door behind him, and stepped into the night.