A child saying they always hurt me, like it was a weather report?
Something inside me tore.
Inga reached for Axel, her face raw with compassion and anguish. "Axel…"
Klaus pressed the chocolate back into Axel's palm. "Halb?" he offered shyly.
Inga blinked back tears. "Half?"
Axel looked stunned. Then he nodded, so gratefully, as if Klaus hadn't handed him candy but a crown. My throat burned.
This wasn't what I had pictured years ago from the cockpit of my bomber. Back then, the world was clean lines and orders, targets on a map, red circles marking where the enemy lived. I'd told myself it was soldiers down there, factories, rail lines. Men fighting men.
But here it was—what war really hit.
Small hands. Thin shoulders. Kids who fought over chocolate because childhood had been ripped out from under them. A cold weight pressed against my ribs. The dragon inside me shifted uneasily, as if even he didn't know what to do with the guilt swelling in my chest. I shoved it down. Focused my anger somewhere safer.
Toward the boys who had done this, who'd hurt these kids, stolen from them, terrorized them. But it didn't stay anger.
Not for long.
Because looking at Axel and Klaus standing side by side—two half-starved boys offering each other the onlysweetness they'd seen in years—I felt something tear open. Something protective and dangerous. I realized, with a force that knocked the wind out of me, that I'd never wanted to shield anything the way I wanted to shield these two kids. Andher. Inga.
I looked up.
She was staring at me with an expression she'd never shown me before; it was unguarded and raw. A glimpse of the soul she'd been fighting to protect with every breath she took. In that one look, I saw everything. The pain she carried like a second spine. The exhaustion carved into her bones. The hopelessness she hid from her brother. The fierce, stubborn determination that kept her standing in a world designed to crush her.
And the truth hit me like a cannonball: She wasn't justa German.
She wasn't the enemy. She was aperson. A survivor. A sister.
Someone worth protecting, worth saving, worth… more.
I'd never been this torn in my life.
Part of me wanted to scoop Axel and Klaus up right then, carry them away, feed them, build walls around them until the bruises faded and the fear went quiet. But the other part—the soldier, the dragon, the man who understood what hungry packs of boys could turn into—knew this wasn'tfinished.
And wouldn't be.
"Show me," I said again, my voice rougher, deeper, something less human bleeding through.
This time, Inga didn't argue. She just nodded, a tiny broken motion, and turned to lead me deeper into the ruins.
Berlin — July 11, 1948, Sunday, early morning
I didn't knowwhat to say to him. Gideon stood there like some impossible pillar of strength in a world made of dust and broken edges. His jaw was tight, his eyes dark and burning with something that wasn't anger alone. Something heavier. Something that made my stomach twist in a way I didn't understand.
"Show me," he'd declared.
Not asked.
Declared.
For the first time in a long while, something shifted inside me, something that whisperedI don't have to do everything alone.I wasn't sure if that scared me or relieved me.
I swallowed hard, nodded, and motioned for Klaus and Axel to follow. "Kommt."—Come—I said in German.
The boys obeyed instantly. Axel's limp was more pronounced than usual, and I suspected he hadn't told usquite the truth about how he had liberated Klaus's chocolate. Klaus stuck close to Gideon, glancing up at him with those wide, hero-worshipping eyes. He'd never looked at anyone that way before.
