Re: Blood and Iron

The train to Tyrol glided through the Alpine valleys beneath a brittle winter sky, the snow-draped peaks standing tall like ancient judges bearing witness to the choices of men far beneath them.

Bruno sat alone in the private compartment. The rhythmic thrum of the rails beneath him offered no comfort at all. There was no warmth in the landscape, no familiarity in its vistas. It was beautiful in the way that glass was beautiful—polished, cold, and easy to bleed against.

The seat felt foreign. The silence earned. He stared out the window, watching his reflection blur against the mountains, and thought of her.

Since the moment they departed, saying one last farewell, Bruno hadn’t thought of her. Marie-Adélaïde. The Grand Duchess of Luxembourg.

The woman was a rarity, something he couldn’t understand, comprehend, or even predict. For years she had chased him, and he had always thought it was for the same reasons that all other women had tried as well.

Bruno was still haunted by the memories of a past life. A different time, a different place, where virtue was dead, buried beneath the sands of time. And people? Well, they weren’t much of people anymore.

The societal bonds that once kept us from falling to our baser instincts had been burned in the name of liberty, and with them, so too the soul of humanity. Trust couldn’t be forged, and if you were foolish enough to believe such a thing could exist, you deserved what happened to you. In the end, nobody would bat an eye or care.

It was a selfish world, a cruel world, a cold world. One he had desperately tried to prevent from becoming a reality in this life. There was just one problem that Bruno was starting to realize as he sat in his booth, waiting to return home.

While he had prevented the initial blow that would damn the soul of the West, he had never truly given the people within it the benefit of the doubt—the belief that they could still be good, noble, virtuous.

He had always assumed—no; he had learned—that without order, without the fabrics and institutions of society to keep us in check, we were all damned, wicked, evil beings at heart. He had seen too much madness in the eyes of too many people claiming virtue and “love” to believe anyone could really be such a thing anymore.

Heidi was an exception, a rarity, a gift from the heavens. Their journey together began as children and had been forged through struggle, sacrifice, and duty—for each other, and for their children. It was the truest expression of love in this world. And it’s why Bruno trusted her, and her alone.

But Marie? How could she have possibly genuinely loved him? They had only met a handful of times over the years. It wasn’t until she sold her kingdom to the Reich without question that Bruno truly pieced together the truth.

Marie had truly loved him. And he could never accept this, because he couldn’t accept that such a thing could exist outside of the way he and Heidi had built it.

But the moment he realized she had wagered everything on him—not to leave Heidi, but simply to care enough to fight for her people, to defend her against the wolves on both sides of her borders that sought to devour her—he understood the sacrifice she had made. A wager placed. And one poorly at that.

That was what weighed upon Bruno’s heart. Not that he had rejected her. Not that he had let the Kaiser annex her territory and steal her crown. But that he had failed to understand, or even entertain the idea, that she was genuine. That she had deserved a proper response—one that would help her understand how futile her hopes were, without crushing the purity of her intent.

Perhaps in another life, as he had once told her, they could have been together. But he had already given everything he could to another—to Heidi. And had he simply taken the time to explain this in a way that Marie could understand, perhaps she wouldn’t have fallen into such a trap, hoping he would save her?

Ultimately, Bruno arrived at his new home. The estate in Tyrol was newly built under the façade of restoration, but in truth, it was a modern fortress disguised as a noble residence. Stone walls. Reinforced halls. Hidden bunkers. The best alpine artisans and German engineers had shaped it for a man of rank.

But it was not his.

In the past, Bruno had seldom cared where he lived, so long as the people he cared about were there with him. And Heidi had tried to make their new palace a home.

She’d chosen the tapestries, the iron chandeliers, the grain of the wood in the library. But none of that changed the truth: this place had no memories. No ghosts. No worn steps or laughter echoing from staircases carved centuries ago.

It was sterile majesty. A crown without a kingdom. And on a day like today, it stung worse than usual—a subtle reminder that life was changing, and he was stuck in a past that no longer existed, unable to truly move on with the world he was helping to create.

Bruno arrived just before dusk. The freshly laid gravel crunched beneath his boots as he stepped from the armored staff car to the front entrance. The guards at the gate saluted with sharp discipline, but their eyes betrayed unease.

Word had reached them.

Not of failure. No—there had been no scandal, no official disgrace. The world still saw Bruno von Zehntner as the iron hand of the Reich. But those close enough to serve near his shadow knew something had changed.

He entered the great hall in silence. Heidi met him there, descending the staircase like a ghost returning to earth. Though Bruno had been summoned by the Kaiser without proper explanation, she had heard the signing of the treaty on the radio.

It took one look at her man to understand all the weight he carried, a burden she could never help with directly, but could only support in her own way, by his side, as Bruno shuffled forward in life.

She was the only one who knew. The only one he had ever told in earnest and detail about his past life. Jokes had been made to those who would never believe him, but she knew everything.

The world he had come from. What he was fighting so hard to prevent. And why he had such a hard time understanding that here, and now, in the year 1918, there was still good in the world. And he had already helped preserve it.

Heidi couldn’t help but ask, a gentle tone in her voice as she confirmed whether or not Bruno would need some extra care tonight.

“Are you okay? You look like you have been thinking again… and I know how you get when that happens…”

Bruno, having wanted nothing more than to shove away his current melancholy, decided it would be best to throw himself into the depths of work. And because of that, he simply scoffed before preparing to come up with some excuse.

But something came over him just as he was about to lie and say he was fine, that he just needed to tidy up the books. No, he was not going to lie. Because to do so would not only deny the truth—that he might be incapable of coming to terms with the world around him as it existed here and now.

It would also cheapen the feelings Marie had expressed for him. The sacrifice she had made, gambling on the slightest return for her love. And his brutal rejection that such emotions could ever be true and pure without being built upon a long and hard foundation of mutual struggle.

Because of this, Bruno sighed and shook his head, revealing the extent of how far he had fallen inward during the journey home.

“Truth be told, Heidi… I don’t know if I have ever been okay. And I don’t know if I ever will be.”

Heidi immediately made an aggressive move toward Bruno—something she had never done before. And while the man instinctively braced himself, he quickly realized she wasn’t attacking him. She hugged him tightly around the chest, softly soothing him with her gentle voice.

“It’s okay to feel like that sometimes… I told you before, didn’t I? You don’t have to do this all by yourself. I’m here for you. Isn’t that the point? Of us? I might not be able to carry your burdens, or even help with them… but I can at least try my best to help pick you up when you fall.”

Bruno stared at the woman he loved more than anything. She looked up at him with her azure blue eyes, almost a crystallization of the sky itself, now filling with diamond-like tears.

He simply smiled. Not because he was free from his depression, but because he realized that while he had thought Heidi was an exception to humanity’s wickedness, the reality was that she was the personification of its potential inherent virtue all along.

He couldn’t help but chuckle as he masked the singular tear falling from his own eye with the palm of his hand, expressing his thoughts aloud.

“I’ve been such a damn fool.”

Heidi, seeing this as an opportunity to help her husband recover from whatever was currently ailing him, leaned in and forcefully stole a kiss before whispering in his ear like a temptress reforged in the body of a saint.

“Yeah… but you’re my fool.”