sable_cloak | A meeting of the Aces

The Black Eagle's feeble craft careened through the night sky, diving between lights hastily aimed upward. Flashes from muzzles welcomed his appearance below as he felt the plane buck as a larger round landed home. He heard bullets whacking into the hastily added metal plate to the floor of the cockpit as he forced the plane into what should have been a deadly dive. He'd done this maneuver before, scouting a flight line and then letting the enemy believe they had shot him down, leaving him free to roam behind enemy lines until he had learned what he desired and then returned home to begin again.

A loud boom from below forced the yoke to buck unexpectedly in his hands, not by a failure of his nerves, but part of his plane was now missing. The brief had not included canons in the list of armaments to concern him, and if he survived the crash, he was certain that intelligence officer who assured him the report was complete would require a day in hospital upon his return. As it was, he could only brace himself, sliding the plate from its spot below him and using it like a shield as the trees smacked into the plane.

The plate saved his life, but in the process had injured his arm. It wasn't broken, but the swelling told him it had nearly been so. Regardless, he dragged his bruised body from the wreckage, taking a small survival kit with him and then set the engine on fire. It would rage long before anyone could come to put it out, destroying any evidence there might have been a body lacking within.

On his crashing path, he had spotted a road nearby, and would make his way toward it. He would have to be careful, but it would ease his navigation until he could find out the exact bearing his plane had taken him on its unexpected divergence from flight on this moonless night.

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The man knew how to be still. That alone made him watch as he was taken away. "Gerhardt," he called to the Captain of the guards, "remember - we are not barbarians."

He turned away after he said it. No, they weren't barbarians. They were just all killers, Allied or German. There was no chance, no escape. And thus, burdened once again by his thoughts, he returned to the airfield, the men staring in awe at the Rittmeister who could so down men in cold blood. If only they knew. He slept fitfully, and was awoken the next morning by a telegram saying that the man they had captured had escaped the guards. Without fatalities, though a few guards would be smarting for a while.

And he thought no more of it. Because the war went on. And on. And on. The darkness unfolded until the last act. And then...and then he faded, retreating from a society he could barely understand. Until his country, until there were lives for him to protect again. And so he served under the regime he despised, and watched his country die for the third time.

Time went on. Almost before he knew it, it was 1968. He almost never left the castle now - a tired old man on his last legs. He knew that the tiredness he had been feeling was going to be it, even though the doctors said otherwise. A few more months, a year perhaps. Then he could rest. But there was the anniversary, the 50th anniversary of the end of the first war. The airmen had gathered, and he had been invited.

Honour alone had dictated he had come. He had, and had shaken hands with old comrades and enemies alike, and had been forced to excuse himself, to weep in his room like a child to see peace between old adversaries. He was to give a speech later, and he wondered idly if his sentimentality would allow it.

He sat, hands resting on his cane, in the hotel garden, watching the sun set.

He was not alone in the garden. Decades of training and practice, along with the trials that followed him like the scars hidden beneath his many masks had made him truly a shadow. He watched that old man, a jacket folded over his own hands which rested on an eagle-headed cane as he remained hidden and watchful. Time was as cruel as war, and though the Shadow did not need the cane, most others there were of such a state. He was not one to mourn for loss, but he had heard of a great pilot who had survived the wars, and a name which he had traced back to that fateful night. A night not long before he began to understand the true lengths to which he had to go to fight evil.

"I beg your pardon, and hope that you don't mind sharing the view, Colonel." He spoke in German, a far more practiced and clean accent with a slight wistfulness as he came to stop a respectful distance from Von Hammer, so as to not sneak up on him too much with his silent approach.

His head snapped around with a semblance of his old speed, and he nodded. He turned back to the view, annoyed with himself. Two years ago, maybe three, he'd have heard the man coming. Sensed it. But the instincts had to fade, eventually. His skills had gone, and very thoroughly.

"Not at all," he said, finally, eyes fixing on the panorama before him again. "Your German is excellent," he replied, in English. "A trace of Swabian to it. You had a good teacher."

He paused, his still-clear blue eyes focused on the horizon.

"You are here for the reunion?" The man scarcely looked old enough.

"I had opportunity to practice." He responded in a rather standard Northeastern accent. He returned to German, by ease of conversation. "And I am." He leaned on his cane lazily, taking in the view before glancing down at Von Hammer from the corner of his eye.

"I was concerned when I heard of your declining health, but I am pleased you are here with us today. I understand you've been asked to make an address tonight." He turned his head, a smile vacant from his lips but the corners of his sharp blue eyes crinkled very faintly. "I am looking forward to it."

"We all die sometime," he replied, simply. He had no fear of the end coming. If anything, there was some surprise that he would live to die in his bed, where so many others had not. "I wonder only what awaits on the other side. I wonder if I will see all the faces. The people I killed. Will they await me? I think they will not hate me, much as I could not have hated them for doing what they had to, to survive."

He sighed, and was silent for a moment. "And here we are. Survivors all, gathered as comrades, friends. The only ones who can understand, the things our children and grandchildren can never understand. That I am supposed to address that memory, that understanding we all have...I do not think I can do it. Not in words."

He shook his head.

"My mind wanders. To absent friends, mostly. Forgive me."

"Sentimentality is nothing to forgive, Colonel. Even today the world could do to have a little more of it." The Shadow watched the sun start to touch the horizon, the skies filling with pinks and oranges. "I only wish for others to hear your words. They saved my life a long time ago, I believe they will touch the generations to follow."

He quirked an eyebrow at him, confused by that utterance.

"I do not recognize you, I am sorry to say. Then again, you look entirely too young to even be here. As for other generations...no, I suspect not. I am a footnote in dusty old books, nothing more. We all are."

A faint smile works its way into the corner of his eyes again.

"I've had many faces. Even this one is borrowed, though with permission of the owner." It was not a bragging statement, more like an apology in the way it was delivered. "Even President Lincoln misjudged the measure to which words may be remembered, alongside the deeds. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here."

The Shadow straightened his shoulders, looking out over the view and then taking a seat on a small wall near Von Hammer.

"There was once a rash young pilot who made flights during the night in the first war. Only in the beginning of his calling, he found himself facing who he thought was his equal not in the skies, but on foot. It was a tense hunt that cold night, but in the end that young pilot made a foolish mistake by threatening those in the care of that soldier. That was the night he relearned the value of a life."

Edited 2012-06-18 04:31 (UTC)

He was silent for a very long moment.

"I remember," he said, slowly nodding. "I remember them all, you know. They say time dulls the sharp edges of memory, but it does not. I remember every encounter, every life I took. Every life I lost. And it was a foolish mistake - I'd killed others for similar ones."

He paused again.

"Then at least something good came of it. Almost nothing good came of that war."

"Much good has come of your words and actions since, Colonel." He reached out and set a hand calmly on the man's shoulder, that smile that was limited to his eyes seemed to grow just a little more. "I have seen to it, and continue to do so to this day. I've had many teachers in my life, but know you were one of the first. I do not forget those who cross my path, whether they enrich my life or intend to take it. The day I acquired my own fledglings, I gained a greater appreciation for how fortunate I was that night." He removed the hand, setting it on top of his cane as he looked out at the view. "And I thank you for sparing the life of that lost boy, and giving him the chance to learn."

He was silent for a very long moment, as his dry eyes glistened for a moment.

"Then something good came of it, after all," he said. "One good thing from my life."

A meeting of the Aces

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