The Bright Colours of Misery [COMPLETED]

𝙲𝙷𝙰𝙿𝚃𝙴𝚁 𝚃𝙷𝙸𝚁𝚃𝚈 𝚃𝙷𝚁𝙴𝙴 -war-

The Seide family had many problems, individual ones and collective ones, but on September 3rd 1939, all of their existing issues had to move and be pushed away to make room for a new one, of a completely different scale. Everyone was home, except for Walter, which sometimes still seemed quite strange to the family even if he had moved out more than half a year ago by that point.

Trudy was knitting a suspiciously small hat, Alfred was smoking from his deceased father's pipe, Frieda was figuring out a new way to braid her hair, Gisela was watering her little improvised garden, Manfred was playing with his marbles and Heidi was painting, nothing was out of the ordinary, until my human faintly heard someone outside.

"War! We're at war with england!" An unfamiliar voice roared, but the words were quite unclear to those who weren't sitting close to the one window in their living room. Trudy looked up from her knitting with a sigh as she heard the sound of a paper being thrown against the door.

"Very funny." She muttered under her breath as she saw the postman, who looked no older than 15. Heidi had followed her out into the hallway and watched as her mother picked the paper up, once she'd had the time to read the headline, her body froze.

"Mama?" Heidi called, getting closer to her. 'Mama, what's going on?"

Trudy turned to her slowly, Heidi barely got to read the headline before Trudy walked back into the living room with the palest face I'd ever seen.

'Alfred," She said, sitting down next to him, he raised an eyebrow at her, and then his eyes narrowed once he read that dreaded headline.

"Oh, god.." He whispered.

"What's going on?" Frieda asked, still standing in front of the mirror, braiding half her hair.

'Nothing, dear-"
"Tell them." Wilma Interrupted with a firm tone. 'Everyone will know anyway."

Trudy sighed, and looked over at Frieda. She couldn't say it, she just couldn't. She had lived through a war before and she did not want to do it again, she did not want to lose any more family members. She just gave her the paper.

Frieda gasped as she saw the headline.

"War?" she exclaimed. "Why-"

No one answered this, the room was quiet for hours after that. It felt unreal, and nothing had happened yet, it seemed like they could have just forgotten about it and moved on but of course they couldn't.

***

The next day, the girls went to school, Manfred couldn't stop talking about how Walter was going to be a soldier. He was quite excited about it. Frieda and Heidi shot each other some uncomfortable glances, he did not know what he was talking about.

They didn't know much about the great war either, but they had heard stories about it, some from old men who served in the army, some from bitter women at the market and even some from their own father. None of them sounded particularly as glamorous as Manfred was making it out to be, but who could blame him? He was a nine year old boy who barely remembered a time where swastika's weren't everywhere he went, so the fact he was happy about his brother getting conscripted wasn't too surprising for anyone, and it wasn't rare either.

Franz Günther turned out to be just as happy about it, saying this was time for Germany to take their revenge on England. Heidi barely knew what to think during the first few weeks. Her life seemed normal, but people were now being drafted for training, and it was only a matter of time before her brother would be too.

The family spent much more time together. Heidi would sometimes find her mother crying in her room, or just letting a little tear escape every time her tall brother would walk through the door. My human never particularly liked Walter but that didn't mean she wanted him to witness horrible things, get hurt or even killed, after all they were siblings and the growing melancholy in her home made it impossible for her not to feel anything.

Especially as her classmates' brothers and father's disappeared one by one.

One night, when Walter came over, he seemed quite preoccupied, more than he had the day before. Heidi was quietly slurping on her soup when he cleared his throat, all heads turned toward him quickly.

"I got some mail today," he started, and everyone knew where this was going.

Wilma's face fell, Trudy held her head high, but her trembling lip didn't go unnoticed.

"I'm leaving in two days," He finally said, sliding the letter to his mother on the table.

Heidi noticed Wilma taking his hand and holding onto it tightly, and as her eyes wandered around the table she also noticed Frieda looked terribly upset.

She caught her attention making sure to give her a reassuring smile, although she didn't know if it would even make a slight difference. This was a situation so unfamiliar, so unthinkable that nothing and no one  could truly help.

"Now, I have to do this, there is no escaping it, but I'll be back as much as I can." Walter assured, he was the most composed of them all, which I found quite remarkable.

"That's not much, Walter." Alfred reminded him. The young man nodded.

"But it'll have to be enough."

A silence entered the room, it felt as if it were a person, who no one wanted to offend by speaking although they had so many words to say.

Trudy wiped her tears with her hands and forced herself to smile as she looked at her son.

"Two days left then?" She asked, as if it were a privilege, which it might have been, I'm not quite sure about it.

Walter nodded once more and so did Trudy. Silence had entered again, they all fiddled with their fingers, their hair and all of a sudden the ceiling of their old shabby house was much more interesting than it ever had been.

"I do have something more to say," Walter eventually began again. "Or well, I have many things to say but, I was wondering if by any chance, there could be some space for a guest for dinner tomorrow or the day after..."

Frieda stared up at him, almost alarmed.

"Have you met someone?" She asked, before anyone else even what his request even meant.

Walter smiled a bit.

"Yes, I have." he confirmed, smiling a little.

Trudy's eyes widened, Alfred chuckled and Wilma gasped.

"Her name is Alma, and I would like you to meet her before I-"
"Are you intending to...?" Trudy asked, not even daring to say the word.

Walter shook his head. "Not now."
Everyone nodded, hurried war weddings had left many women to be widows before.

"Well, we could probably manage for one dinner," Alfred turned to his wife. "Right, Trudy?"
She took a deep breath and nodded, of course they could.

"Yeah, yeah, natürlich."

She started gathering everyone's plate hurriedly, everyone looked quite confused but Alfred gestured for them to keep their mouths shut. Trudy needed some space.

Wilma gave Walter a quick hug before leading the children upstairs in complete silence, followed by the two twins.

Heidi sat down on her bed then rested her head on her pillow without even bothering to take all her clothes off. She stared right in front of her for a good minute, her mind felt suspiciously empty.

She heard Frieda sniffle at the other end of the room.

Go give her a hug. You know how much Walter means to her.

I told her, and after a lot of hesitation, Heidi got up slowly, the floorboards creaking under her feet.

"Frieda?" She whispered. Her sister looked up at her abruptly, and seeing her expression in the faint light of the room, Heidi dropped onto her bed and wrapped her arms around her twin.

Frieda took a while to understand, but eventually she melted into this hug, resting her head on Heidi's shoulder and sobbing. Heidi didn't pronounce a word, no comforting lie, no nothing. She just held her as her tears ran, in that moment, that they were in this together and they would have to, for survival.