My Echo

By George deValier

We three, We're all alone, Living in a memory. My echo; my shadow; and me.

We three, We'll wait for you, Even 'til eternity. My echo; my shadow; and me.

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Summer, 1943

The Russian Front

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Captain Vash Zwingli walks slowly into the makeshift command hut, carefully shuts the door behind him, and with a steady, deliberate breath, leans his hands against his paper-strewn desk. The bare, wooden rooms of this silent, broken, abandoned house close in around him. Rage, frustration, fear, disbelief, overwhelming panic: a clashing cluster of emotion tears through his head, claws at his chest. Vash holds it back. Vash is so used to holding it back.

He tries to focus on the papers before him, on the reason he is here commanding this prison unit in the backwoods of Russia. Because here, Vash can control his fury and unleash his madness and chase his wildness. Here, Vash can lose himself in death; here, he can forget. But now...but this...The maps and strategies and letters of command blur before Vash's eyes. Six years he has tried to escape one face; one name; one memory. Six brutal, blood-soaked years, shattered in an instant.

Master Roderich Edelstein. Vash's breath catches to even think the name. Roderich Edelstein, standing in line like a common German criminal, disguised in military grey and using a name not his own. Vash fumbles for the flask at his waist, pours the clear, burning liquid down his throat. He fumbles for some sort of understanding. But all Vash can think is that Master Roderich Edelstein is still more beautiful than anything he has ever seen. He is still the only person Vash has ever wanted, needed, desired, yearned for with every last thread of his existence. He is the only man Vash has ever both loved and hated: stripped of his humanity, and sent here to die under Vash's command.

"God DAMNIT!" Vash slams the flask on the desk. He closes his eyes, takes deep, slow, steady breaths. One... two... Not here. This is not the battlefield. He will not lose control here. Three... four... No use. Vash's world turns red. With a furious roar, loosed like a gunshot from his throat, he over turns the desk and sends its mashing to the ground.

What the fuck is Roderich doing here?! It's insane. It isn't possible. He should have left Europe by now, should have escaped to America. Vash looks to the ceiling, runs shaking hands through his hair, kicks the broken desk with all his strength. His mind spins- too hot, too hazy, too fast– while every word Roderich spoke in their last exchange echoes through his head like a reverberating bullet of steel.

"I am not a soldier." Vash laughs wildly, incredulously. Master Roderich Edelstein, a soldier! Master Edelstein, the delicate heir, who wears suits of cashmere and plays on ivory keys. Master Edelstein, whose fragile nobility could never protect him from the stones and insults of those less refined: Judenschwein! Judenscheisse! A rush of furious memory boils Vash's blood. No, Master Edelstein is not a soldier. Master Edelstein belongs in parlour rooms and concert halls, not in this Russian hell. His hands belong to crystal glasses and violin strings, not to rifles and grenades.

"I don't really know." Vash strides to the wall, clenches his fist, smashes it against the cracking wood. Roderich never knew. He never saw. Roderich was blind to all but his music, blind even to the Swiss town's hatred, blind to everything but his own small, closed, perfect world. The hours Vash sat listening outside the music room window- the days he spent watching and wanting and sheltering and protecting. Roderich never understood; he never knew.

"Rather, it pleased them too much. There are certain things I will not be associated with..." Vash feels blood run between his fingers. How very like his prideful aristocrat- always better than those who mocked and those who protected. Who did he offend this time? Who did he ignore? Who did Roderich Edelstein finally insult enough to end up in this last destination for the ruined and the condemned?