Re: Blood and Iron

The fire crackled low in the hearth, casting a warm glow over the paneled study.

Outside, Berlin's streets were damp with spring rain, but inside, the air was heavy with history.

Bruno leaned against his cane, watching the man seated opposite him, Henri d'Orléans, Count of Paris.

Even in exile, even aged and worn, Henri still carried himself like a king.

He had visited Tyrol often, seen the power Bruno commanded firsthand.

He was not deluded.

He knew what was coming.

"You've read the reports," Bruno said. His voice was low, steady.

"French shells landing on our border posts. Patrols gunned down under the excuse of 'training accidents.' My men die, and Paris dismisses it as clumsiness."

Henri's jaw tightened. His reply was immediate, firm.

"De Gaulle bleeds France for his own pride. I have condemned his actions before, and I will do so again. What he does in the name of the Republic dishonors our nation and shames her ancestors."

Bruno's lips curved in the faintest ghost of a smile. "Good. That much the world must hear, not from me, but from France's blood itself."

Henri inclined his head. He had expected as much. But then his gaze sharpened, his tone careful.

"You speak openly of vengeance, Bruno. I have seen your wrath when provoked. I don't want to mention names, but I can't even fathom what kind of mad man De Gaulle must be to try to provoke a man like you you…."

Henri's voice wavered despite himself.

"Tell me plain, Bruno… do you mean to annihilate France? To erase her from history?"

Bruno's gaze fixed on him, pale and pitiless.

He did not speak at first, and in that silence Henri remembered the stories, Belgrade gassed into extinction, Osaka incinerated by missiles, and Monrovia given a sentence of death from above.

The fire popped in the hearth, and still Bruno only stared.

Then he leaned forward, his voice low, measured, almost confessional.

"Do you know what they call me, Henri? Butcher. Scourge. A man without conscience. And they are right, at least from their perspective."

His gaze grew colder as he continued. Almost like the devil himself had flashed within his eyes.

"But tell me how can men who measure time in years, in decades, presume to judge me? I do not think in years. I think in centuries. In the span of nations. In the survival of civilization itself."

His hand closed slowly into a fist, resting on the table.

"What is the life of millions, compared to hundreds of millions? To billions yet unborn? Do you think I care for Paris if destroying it spares the world another hundred years of slaughter? Do you think I flinch at being called a butcher, when the alternative is leaving my children and yours to choke on another war once I am gone?"

The Count swallowed hard, the firelight reflecting in his eyes.

Bruno's tone dropped to a whisper, colder than the rain against the windows.

"I will do what must be done, Henri. And if France must be broken so that the world may never again bleed as it has bled, then I will break her without hesitation. But I do not shed blood without good reason… And that is where you come in, my old friend."

Bruno poured himself a drink, and one for Henri. Silently gesturing for the man to sip, before he did so himself.

And once Henri had drank, from his offering, only then did Bruno continue.

"I could render France to ash, and rebuild upon its carcass. The way Frankia was forged from the ruins of Roman Gaul. Or… You can take your rightful place on its throne."

Henri set his glass down slowly. His voice was steady, but his hand trembled faintly against the crystal.

"And what would this throne cost me, Bruno? I know you well enough to know nothing you give comes without a chain attached."

Bruno's lips curved into something colder than a smile.

He leaned back in his chair, the firelight sharpening the angles of his face.

"Not a chain, Henri. A bond. Your daughter, Élisabeth, she is roughly the same age as my grandsons. Our blood may not be as old as yours, but it is tempered by steel and war. If your house joins mine, if your crown rests upon a head bound by blood to Berlin, then France endures. Bound, yes, but alive. Honored, in her place."

Henri's eyes narrowed. "And if I refuse?"

Bruno's stare cut through the silence like a blade.

"Then you have your answer already. France becomes memory. Spoken of in the same way that Gaul is. The subject of Caesar's conquest, the ruin of a people who forgot that mercy is given only once."

The Count exhaled slowly, as if the centuries of his line pressed on his chest at once.

He looked into the fire and saw not just the ghosts of his ancestors, but the shadow of a Germany that had already crushed nations larger than his own.

Finally, he nodded.

"A crown is better than ashes. If my blood must bend to survive, then let it bend. France will kneel, and she will remember she exists only because of your hand."

Bruno lifted his glass, and for the first time that night, the faintest trace of warmth touched his voice.

"Then it's settled. France shall have her king. But he will be a king that serves the Reich."

The glasses touched, and the fire's glow cast their shadows long across the study walls.

Outside, the rain whispered against Berlin's streets, but within, history shifted its weight.

Bruno had offered no crown, only a leash shaped like one, and Henri had accepted it with the silence of a man who knew there was no other path.

In that moment, a pact was struck, not of equals, but of master and ward.

Should Bruno's will prevail, France would not rise again as she once had.

She would rise in chains, forever bound to the Reich's heel.