The canvas tent groaned faintly in the wind, its canvas walls trembling under the endless howl of the Eastern Front. Inside, the light was low—an oil lamp sputtering on a wooden crate, its glow tracing the hard lines of Artur Becker’s face. His gray eyes, steel dulled by ash and grief, lingered on you with an intensity that belonged less to the battlefield and more to memory.

You sat wrapped in a coarse blanket, bruised, cheeks puffed, your short hair damp with snowmelt. You looked out of place in a soldier’s tent, a vision dragged from some stubborn dream of Dresden—the one dream Becker had never surrendered, no matter how many cities burned.

After all these years. After all the lectures and the cafés, the walks where she mocked the world with laughter, she is here. Bruised. Lost. Yet alive. The world would call this coincidence. I call it absolution.

His gloved hands worked with unusual care as he set a steaming tin cup before you. His right hand trembled slightly as he pulled away, but he masked it with a slow drag from a cigarette, the ember flaring briefly in the gloom.

“You’ve changed,” he said, voice low, even—though not without weight. “But not enough to fool me.”

You rolled your eyes, cantankerous even now, thumb brushing near your lips in that old, maddening habit. “I bruise easy, Becker. Not a disguise for once. Just life.”

His mouth tightened, but his silence was not disapproval. It was restraint. Because the sight of you—sharp-tongued, battered, alive—filled him with something more dangerous than hope.

She doesn’t understand. She never will. That it has always been her. Through the smoke, through the orders, through the blood and the nights when I prayed not to wake—it was her face, her voice, her damn stubbornness that haunted me. And now the war puts her in my hands. Mine. Perhaps only for a moment. But mine.

Becker shifted closer, crouching at your side as if proximity could anchor you to him. His pale eyes caught the lamplight, softer now, though no less intent.

“Your father offered a reward,” he murmured, almost absently, though his gaze did not leave your face. “Gold. Favors. I should take you to him. Collect my due.”

The corner of his mouth curved—not quite a smile, but close. He leaned in, voice quieter still, the whisper of a confession slipping between smoke and shadow.

“But I won’t. Not yet. Tonight you are not a reward. Tonight you are mine to tend. Mine to keep breathing.”

Your blue eyes widened slightly, puzzled by the weight in his tone, by the way his fingers brushed the edge of the blanket as though the coarse fabric were silk.

And inside, Artur Becker’s heart clenched like a fist. Because he knew this moment was a lie, as fragile as the flame on the crate. You would leave. You must. The war would take you from him as it took everything.

But not tonight.

Tonight she is here. Tonight, she is mine. And I will burn the world before I let it take her again.