Re: Blood and Iron

Even after Eva began to approach adulthood, and the prospect of marriage. She continued with her fencing practice. Her skill with the sword was easily Olympic level, and yet she had no desire to compete on an international stage that didn’t yet exist, at least not for women.

No, she understood her role in life. She would marry the Kaiser’s grandson within the year, or perhaps the next, and they would have children together. She would be his Kaiserin, his empress.

Like her mother, she had no intention of merely looking pretty and doing nothing. Whether continuing her mother’s charitable work to raise the next generation of rulers or advising her future husband on policy and international affairs, Eva had spent her days mastering every skill she could, while maintaining her health, beauty, and intellect.

In the mornings, she sparred with the sword. In the afternoons, she debated politics with her father. In the evenings, she performed her chores. Despite being a literal princess, Eva had inherited her parents’ sense of responsibility. No matter how powerful or wealthy they became, they were still beholden to the people who served them.

Meanwhile, Erwin pressed forward in learning to command his father’s conglomerate. He had been educated in military affairs, he knew how to march, to shoot, and to lead men, but he had chosen a different path than his father.

And because of this, he studied law, economics, and politics at university, while training under Bruno’s elder brother, who had decades of experience in the business world.

But Elsa, the youngest of Bruno’s three oldest children, was a quiet, watchful thing.

If Bruno hadn’t been so close to her, even he wouldn’t have known what she excelled at. Elsa was timid and introverted by her very nature, but she possessed a sense of artistic brilliance that Bruno couldn’t help but admire.

She had a classical touch to her photo-realistic paintings, inspired by Renaissance and early modern masters. Elsa dreamed of painting important figures and events of her era—oil on canvas, timeless and haunting.

While she had always been a gifted artist, something changed the moment she saw her father’s portrait hanging in the Tsar’s Winter Palace. From that day on, she shut herself away in her room outside of schoolwork and family meals, working quietly on a masterpiece.

And of course, the subject of her first truly inspired painting was her father.

But not the father who smiled at her during breakfast or tucked her in at night. No, this painting captured the haunted man who returned from war. The haggard lines etched into his face, the eyes that never truly looked at her, but through her.

Time had softened some of those wounds, and Bruno had become more present, more affectionate in recent years. But Elsa remembered those eyes. The ones that filled her dreams.

Not because they frightened her, but because they hurt her. Because she wept, quietly, for the suffering of her father and the men like him who endured so others could live in peace.

Her piece was inspired by photographs from Ypres, where an entire generation of French youth drowned in mud and blood. The rain poured over a shattered battlefield. The German trenches endured the barrage. Biplanes hovered like silhouettes in the storm-filled skies.

Young soldiers scurried for cover, but her father stood motionless. Rain poured down his field marshal’s uniform. He smoked a cigarette. He did not stir. He stood like a bronze statue, lifeless, weathered; gazing not at the viewer, but beyond them. That same thousand-yard stare she had seen a thousand times.

With one final brushstroke; adding the fencing scar to her father’s cheek, earned at the Academy years ago, Elsa stepped back, nodding in satisfaction. She had just set her brush down when a knock came at her door.

“Elsa,” her father’s voice called through. “Are you in there? I have something I’d like to speak with you about—if you have the time, that is.”

Elsa froze. She was covered in paint; her smock drenched in oils and smudges. Panic kicked in.

“Eck! Wait—wait just a minute! Hold on!”

Bruno, having too many memories of his own teenage antics, narrowed his eyes at the tone. Without hesitation, he pulled out the master key he held for every door in the estate and unlocked it, half-suspecting mischief.

Instead, he found his daughter tangled in canvas and oil-stained cloth, having just tripped over a rag. She was smeared in paint, but her masterpiece remained untouched, preserved.

Rushing over, Bruno helped her to her feet. “Are you alright, baby girl? You took quite a fall.”

Elsa, sheepish and flushed with embarrassment, accepted his hand. Her voice was so quiet Bruno nearly missed it.

“I… I didn’t want you to find out this way. I was going to wait until Father’s Day…”

Bruno’s brow furrowed until his eyes found the painting. He froze. He stared. And kept staring. Elsa nearly burst into tears. She thought he hated it. Hated her work. That she had misread everything.

But then Bruno picked it up. Examined it. And a bitter smile curled at his lips. He patted his daughter’s head softly and spoke.

“This… this is a true masterpiece. You really painted this yourself? I have to say… I much prefer it over the one Nicholas commissioned.”

Elsa couldn’t respond. All she could do was blink, stunned, before stepping forward and wrapping her arms around him in a tight embrace.

“I guess… since you’ve already seen it,” she whispered, “I’ll have to paint you another. For Father’s Day.”

Bruno accepted his daughter’s embrace, and held her tightly while continuing to examine the painting, even turning it over where he saw the words inscribed on the back of the canvas, and her signature beneath.

“To the Man Who Stared Into the Storm—And Chose to Stand Still

You never told me what you saw. But I saw what it cost you. Not in words, but in the silence behind your eyes. The way your hand shook when you thought no one was watching. The way you stared beyond us, as if you feared the past might return.

This world was not built on peace. It was built on men who walked through fire and carried the weight of a thousand ghosts, so that we might live untouched by flame.

You never asked to be remembered. So I will remember you. Not as the world sees you, but as I do—Tired, brave, and still beautiful in the rain.

This painting is not just for you. It is for you. And for the others like you, who walked through hell the rest of us didn’t have to.

– Elsa von Zehntner”

Elsa never saw it, but the poem she had written on the back was the final touch that made the man shed a single tear; one of remembrance for all who had died defending the old world. A world fate had tried to murder in cold blood, sacrificing a generation to build a colder, hollowed replacement.

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