Beauty and the Beast

Insieme Per Sempre

He watches Himmler go.
He watches him close the door behind him. And he waits.
He is hot, so hot. Sweat trickles slowly down the sides of his head. His throat is dry, and parched. The front part of his head throbs mercilessly. Pain radiates throughout his body from the wound in his side.
He strains to keep his eyes open. He can not afford to close them. Because if he does, he will see her.
It doesn't faze him. After all these years, where she's been all along—in his head, in his heart. The memory of her has followed him like a shadow. Lina and the children, Sophie Gabcik—they had all been distractions to get her out of his head. And now, in death, she eclipses him completely.
He doesn't dare to blink, because if he does, he will see her—her blue eyes, her pearly white teeth that gleam whenever she smiles. Her blonde hair that fans itself out over her shoulders like a flaxen mane.
She never conformed to Nazi ideals for as long as he knew her. The last time he saw her in 1939, she had her hair down instead of braided, and it reeked of hairspray. He had felt the urge to spin her around and braid it himself, the way he always did when they...when they still loved each other.
But had they ever truly stopped loving each other? He didn't think so. For as long as he had lived, she remained the one great love of his life. She occupied a space in his heart that even Lina despite her best efforts failed to take up. Lina might have been the reason why he was where he was in life, but she...
She was who he was. She was the missing puzzle piece; the cork on the bottle. She made him feel validated; loved; desired.
He blamed himself for letting her go. He hated himself for pretending he hadn't, for pinning the blame on her for the disintegration of their relationship. It had all been a coping mechanism to protect himself from the gnawing guilt that it had been his fault entirely.
He hated himself for thinking the Czech girl could ever replace her. People only come once in a lifetime. He should have known that. His ignorance cost an innocent girl her future.
It is becoming harder and harder for him to keep his eyes open. He knows he will have to close them, eventually. And when he does, he knows they will never open again.
He always knew he was never going to see this through.
Something told him the moment he felt the stabbing pain in his chest during lunch this afternoon. He had been sitting upright, poking morosely at the food on his plate, wincing at the pain lancing through his body every now and then. All of a sudden, there was a sharp, biting stab of pain that began as a sharp pinch and slowly intensified to a slow, agonizing burn. The pain mounted until he felt he was going to black out, and he did. The next thing he knew, medical orderlies surrounded him, looks of concern plastered on their faces.
Most of them were Czechs. He was sure they were all praying inwardly for his death.
How could they not, after the way he's treated them?

She took care of him once when he was sick. She came every single day to his flat in Kiel and fed him vegetable broth and read stories to him. She had made him want to wish to be sick his entire life just to have her come and play nurse to him every day of his life.
He wants her here now, with him. He wants to feel her cool palms on his forehead. He wants to feel one side of the mattress dip familiarly as she sits on the edge of his bed, storybook in hand. He wants to watch her apply ice packs to his forehead, her brow furrowed in concentration. Even though none of those things will help him now...
It will help him die easier.
"I'm sorry," he hears himself say.
His voice comes out barely louder than a rasp. It makes him sound small, and weak. But isn't he just that? Wasn't he always weak, behind the mask of ruthlessness and authority he cowered from the rest of the world behind?
He imagines that, wherever she is, she can hear him. He wills his words to reach her, that she might find it in her heart to listen to him and to forgive him.
"I'm so, so sorry. I never meant to hurt you...I've always loved you..."
And then he falls silent.
As if he expects to hear a reply, when he knows he will never get one.
He forfeited that right that day in his office, after he personally ordered the arrest of her father in front of her face and the family home to be put under constant surveillance. Why had he done that? They hadn't done anything wrong at all.
He did it because it made him feel good. She left him; she got him kicked out of the navy; he would show her who was the stronger of the two. And he did a good job of it by all accounts.