deutsche-tapferkeit:

deutsche-tapferkeit:

The man standing in front of her looked much the same as the one she had married a couple of years before – still tall and imposing, with dark hair and pale eyes, a small scar stretching across his cheek like so many men of his upper-middle class background.  

But those pale eyes that once shone when he smiled or laughed were flat and dull now, emotionless and as dead as the flat gray sky before a storm rolls in.  His witty asides were long forgotten, and she couldn’t remember the last time he had expressed any sort of interest or joy towards anything at all.  It was clear, with this return from the front, that something had fundamentally changed inside of him.

She struggled not to cower as he hurled his glass to the ground, the cognac spilling amongst the shards, pooling on the floor, the crackle of the radio reporting yet more grim news.  

This too shall pass.

She tried to tiptoe around on eggshells, knowing that anything could set him off but not knowing just what those triggers were.  Her eyes burned when she remembered the verbal abuse, the fingers around her throat, the boots that stomped violently on her toes, the sharp, open-palmed slaps that raised red welts on her face.  When they had wed, he never would have laid a finger on her.  What had happened in those intervening years?

What had happened was visible in traces on his body, from the scars on his back to the wound that had healed with ragged edges on his chest and the frostbitten patches on his legs.  Every place where a bullet or a piece of shrapnel had hit him bore evidence of the tragic saga.  He had seen his friends and comrades killed in front of him, blown apart by mines or shot by partisans.  He had seen women and children killed in air raids, and he had himself taken the lives of who knew how many enemy soldiers.  Beyond that, she did not know, nor did she care to.

At night she would sob, hiding in the bathroom, praying that he remained asleep and did not wake up to hear her.  Only when he was unconscious did she dare to venture close to him, to wrap her arms around his solid body, to try and give him the comfort she knew he desperately needed.  Unconscious, he could not lash out, he could not hurt her.  He would scream in his sleep, tortured sounds like souls lamenting their sins in Purgatory, and she would lay there, holding that wild beast as she mourned the loss of the man she had fallen in love with.

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She sat on the edge of the bathtub, the cool porcelain refreshing in the heat of the summer night, a damp washcloth pressed to the black eye that Fritz had given her earlier that evening. The clock had already struck eleven, and in five hours she would rise to get a head start on the housework that the next day would bring. It was a losing battle, a futile attempt, but she somehow had convinced herself that if she made their home perfect in every way, he would become well again. She had imbued the crisply ironed sheets, shiny mopped floors, glittering windows, and dust-free door frames with a nearly magical power, desperate to find some way to gain a feeling of control over her situation, however ridiculous and slight.

The salt burned her split lip as she cried silently, trying not to remember how things had been before, struggling to avoid asking the constant, nagging question.

Where did this all go so horribly wrong?

With a delicate finger she applied a tiny dot of salve to her lip, wanting it to heal as quickly as possible, to hide evidence of what had occurred from prying, outside eyes.

The sleeping form was still for once, quiet, but tortured nonetheless. His teeth ground together with a terrible low squeaking sound, his face stiff with stress and anxiety. Carefully, as if approaching a hungry lion, she lay down beside him, pressing herself against his back, burying her nose in the nape of his neck, smelling the scent of cigarettes and aftershave that clung to him constantly. His strong body was tense, ready to jerk into wakefulness at any moment, as if waiting for an attack. The clock ticked on, ever closer to the coming dawn, when the yelling, slapping, stomping, and shoving would begin all over again.

This is not how it was supposed to be.

deutsche-tapferkeit:

Of course it was unbecoming for an officer to get drunk publicly, but the circumstances were extenuating – even his commanding officer would have to admit that, for it was he who should have been standing at that altar taking that woman’s hand in marriage, not his comrade.

He fought to keep his expression from turning into a glare as he watched the two of them sitting together, rings shining on their fingers, talking quietly as the guests approached with their congratulations and best wishes.  The bar was his solace, well-stocked with beer and schnapps and champagne and cognac, everything he could want to numb the anger and pain that burned inside of him.

A thin veneer of sweat coated his face, his tie loosened slightly, his face flushed with drink.  He was still steady on his feet, but he could tell already that his crisp martial stride was soon to become more of a drunken stagger.  

The young woman’s beauty was only highlighted by her white gown, fitting close to and flattering her shapely curves, a body that he knew all too well.  Perhaps Hans would be seeing it for the first time that night, but Reinhold already knew what she looked like in the darkness, laying panting and satisfied between the sheets.  He knew intimately the silhouette of her breasts, the beat of her heart, and how his name sounded on her lips when he had his way with her.  He knew her secrets, her past, her innermost thoughts.  He knew the scent of her hair and the feel of his son beneath her skin.  

He knew everything a man could know about a woman, and yet here he was, standing on the sidelines, watching as another man took his place, powerless to do anything.

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