Warning: graphic violence.

* * *

On the other end of the fort, a massive metal door opened, and a group of women huddled around as they peered out. Carly raised her hand to hold them still.

"We need to wait for the Resistance to get the signal," she whispered. "They'll pull the attention away from the south. That should give us an opening."

Eren walked up beside her. "It was supposed to be Armin to give them that signal."

She smiled up at him. "If I know anything about German soldiers, it's that you're trained to be flexible with plans. If Armin can't give that signal, your men will figure out a way to make it possible."

Eren knew he could trust his men to get the job done. Looking around at the dark space between the fort and the defensive wall, he caught sight of a door immediately across the way.

"That must be the entrance to the tunnel. Armin said it might be guarded."

Carly smirked and held up a syringe. "I still have tranquilizers."

Eren frowned at the needle. "What is that stuff anyway?"

Carly hesitated, and then awkwardly admitted, "It's the same drug Nicolo used to knock you out."

Eren's eyes widened, and he exclaimed softly in shock, "He got it from you?"

"I sold that man many things. I was smart enough not to ask what he used it for."

Eren scowled, but he could not really be angry at her for being cautious. "You said you knew who drugged me and attacked Levi in the attic, but you refused to say who, only that it was not the Resistance. The Gestapo told me tonight, it was Nicolo."

Carly's normally placid face now pinched in grief for her lost friend. "To protect him, Yelena, Levi, and the entire Resistance movement in the Lorraine region, I couldn't tell you his identity. I took a big risk helping him." She glanced around at the internment camp walls. "In the end, it didn't go so well for any of us."

Eren glanced down at her hip soaked in blood from a bullet. "Well, I know for a fact, they will sleep soundly."

"Not for long, though. Taken orally like you did, it takes many minutes to kick in, but the effects can last up to eight hours. Administered intravenously, the effect is instantaneous but is limited to an hour at most. Pharmacology can be tricky at times."

"You'd make a terrifyingly efficient doctor."

Carly smiled proudly at the compliment.

Oktyabrina walked up to them with Levi in her arms, looking more contrary than ever as he was cradled like a child in her massive arms. His brows were tense as he whispered, "Écoutez. Listen."

They held silent, and faintly they heard the gunfire shifting.

Carly smiled that the plan worked. "The Resistance is moving north. They got the signal."

Eren still looked stern. "Wait until the soldiers also move positions."

They held still for a few more minutes. To his side, Eren saw Levi shivering from the cold air and his injuries. He seemed to hold his breath at times, probably struggling not to groan. Eren began to reach out to hold Levi's hand, until he realized that he now had two missing fingers. He grimaced in anguish.

Things would never be the same between the two of them.

Levi grumbled in English, "Don't look at me like that. I'm not that hideous."

Eren smiled with a pained expression and said, "You're still handsome."

"Bullshit," he grumbled, looking flustered. He ignored that by looking down at the makeshift splint. "What happened to your arm?"

"Slipped and fell," Eren said dismissively.

"Idiot. What did they do to you?"

Eren had wanted to keep up a brave front, he hated the idea of upsetting Levi after all he had been through, but his brain felt too foggy to keep up a facade. "Woermann broke it," he confessed. "Armin fixed the bone. Don't worry about me."

"Of course I'm worried! You're just a kid."

"I'm hardly a child!"

"You're a brat. A damn stubborn brat. What else did they do to you?"

"Hit in the stomach a few times. That's all," Eren said, trying to assure him. "I was thrown into a prison cell and left there." His forehead creased as he muttered, "They knew they couldn't hurt me too much."

"Good," Levi mumbled, relieved to know Eren was not subjected to the same torture.

Guilt flooded Eren's face and burned his eyes. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It was my choice. All of this—falling for you, staying with you, wanting one last time with you—it was my choice, and I'm not going to regret it. Ever! Pas de regrets. No regrets. When I die, I want to say that and mean it. No regrets!"

Eren smiled sadly. "But I regret it. If I had known that loving you would lead to this—"

"Stop it! Pas de regrets. I don't regret falling for you, and I'm the one half-blind and bleeding out my arse, so don't you dare say you regret falling for me. You have no right to think that after what I've been through, so don't you dare say it."

Eren closed his mouth. "If those are your orders, Captain Levi."

"Oh, shut up," Levi muttered, blushing slightly.

Carly cut in, speaking in both French and German so they would both understand, "Vous êtes adorables, Ihr seid bezaubernd, mais taisez-vous, aber haltet den Mund." You guys are adorable, but shut up.

Both Levi and Eren clamped down their lips and looked away. Outside, the sound of gunfire was slowly shifting, and shouts from soldiers called for them to go north and follow the unseen enemy. In some other part of the internment camp, they heard the earth-shaken explosion of a bomb hitting part of the fort. Out of instinct, Eren brushed his fingers over the Enfield gun at his side. With only one bullet, he could not do much with that weapon, but it was a comfort just having it.

Then Eren saw Carly putting pressure on her bleeding hip. "Are you okay?" he whispered in German.

Carly laughed and shook her head. "I've had cramps worse than this."

"You don't have to be brave in front of me. I've been shot; I know it hurts like hell."

Her face stiffened with determination. "I can handle the pain. Rescuing them is more important than anything else."

Eren glanced down at Levi again. "Yeah..." Then he looked forward. "I think we're clear. Stay here. Wait for my signal."

Eren stepped out first. Wearing his uniform, he would look like any other soldier. He glanced around, seeing the soldiers around the perimeter shifting northward, thinking the Americans were making a run toward the main city.

He waved to the others, and they hurried across the open courtyard, hearing fighting nearby, machine guns, rifles, and shells exploding. Then there was the whistling sound of something big incoming.

"Get down, takhshet."

Carly yelled a warning in Russian, and the girls behind them screamed as they dropped. A few seconds later, not far ahead of them, an artillery shell hit the ground, close enough so that Eren was blasted backwards by the shock wave. Debris rained down on top of him. The burst shivered through his bones and deep in his chest, until it felt like his heart might burst from the vibrations.

One of the brothel girls had been too close, and she began to scream as shrapnel cut up her face and arms.

Carly leaped up, grabbed the girl, and smothered her cries into her bosom. "Ne plach'. Ty dolzhna vesti sebya tikho." Do not cry. You must be quiet.

The girl sobbed as blood ran down her face. "To boli tak bardzo."

"That one's Polish," Levi realized, and he told the girl, "Musisz być cicho, bo inaczej będą do nas strzelać." You have to be quiet or they'll shoot at us.

Another Polish girl came over to help talk to the girl and calm her down. Levi looked ahead at Eren, who had fallen to the ground not far from where there was now a crater. Levi realized he was not getting up.

"Eren? Eren!"

Eren stared up into the sky full of clouds turning purple and pink with the coming sunrise. The world rang in a screaming siren. Numbness. Coldness. His vision was going black. For a few seconds, he thought he was dead and floating up to Heaven.

He suddenly gasped a deep, shivering breath. He felt stabbing pain in his chest and fluttering convulsions from his heart. He coughed, sat up, and began to pound over his heart with his slightly-better arm, until he felt a hard but firm pulse returning.

Had his heart really stopped?

There were still black spots in his eyes, but he tried to take in the scene. A bomb, for certain. He had been close to artillery like that in Anzio and knew the devastation. He looked over at the women, worried for them. He saw the girl holding her bloody face, but the others seemed to be unharmed. He looked over and saw Levi still in Oktyabrina's arms, his lips moving. However, all around him was one massive ringing noise as his ears burned deep inside.

"I'm fine." Eren knew he had spoken, but he heard only a muffled sound. He flinched as he moved his arm and put a hand to the side of his face. When Eren felt wetness, he pulled his hand back to see blood.

Levi also saw the blood trickling out of Eren's ear. "You ruptured your eardrum," Levi realized. "Dammit."

Eren heard Levi's voice, but none of the words made it through the shrieking sirens.

Oktyabrina walked over, set Levi down, and looked at Eren's bleeding ear, then at some cuts to his head from the debris.

"I said I'm fine," he told her in German, although it sounded weird only to hear himself on the left side, and sounding so muffled. "It's just an ear."

She grabbed one chunk of stone embedded behind his jaw and pulled it out. Eren yelled in pain.

"You'll survive," she declared. Then she stood up, offered him her hand, and yanked Eren up with ease. She lifted Levi back into her arms, and the group continued across the courtyard under the cover to smoke from the artillery shell.

They reached the door on the far outer wall of the fort. Eren opened it, but there was a guard inside. Without warning, Carly strode in and right up to the soldier.

"Mon amour, I am so happy to see you."

The soldier looked stunned. "Madame Carly?"

She took his shocked face into her hands, as if about to plant a kiss, but instead her hands gripped hard and twisted. The man's neck snapped, and he dropped to the ground. Her smiling face fell grimly.

"That bastard hurt my girls," she said with a sneer.

To the side, Oktyabrina looked proud.

Eren frowned at seeing how adept Carly was at breaking someone's neck, like she had done it many times before.

The women hurried into the small space and shut the door, blocking out the sounds of battle. In the room was a spiral staircase. Carly groaned as she saw the steps leading down, and she pressed again on her shot hip.

"There's a moat around this fort. This must go down under it." He looked over to Carly. "Can you make it?"

She grimaced against the pain, but her jaw was set with determination. "I have to."

Oktyabrina came up to them. "I will carry him down, then I will get you."

"I'll be fine—"

"Milaya," the Russian said softly. "I will carry you."

Carly smiled faintly and nodded, both an agreement and a silent thanks.

Eren went first down the spiraling stairs, down, down, deep until the rumbles of the battle above were gone. The world got dark quickly, and he worried as he could no longer see the staircase.

Finally, he felt flatness in front of him. It was pitch black, and he heard the women coming down muttering worried complaints. Then he felt a small hand touch him, and he jolted.

"Mozhno mne tvoy fonarik?"

Although muffled, he recognized Annie's voice. "Hä? Was?"

"Fonarik?" She tapped his chest again.

Eren realized that she was pointing to the torch attached to his uniform. "Ah, ja. Nimm es." Ah yes, take it.

She unclipped the square box and turned the taschenlampe on. Then Annie shined the light up for the women making their way down the stairs, lighting the steps.

Ahead of them was a long tunnel. Eren looked around, but there was no light switch. Was the tunnel without electricity?

Oktyabrina then made it down with Levi. She carefully set him down, and then headed back up to fetch Carly. Levi leaned against the tunnel wall to hold himself up as he breathed slowly through the pain. Eren drifted over to him.

"Are you okay?"

"I'll manage. How are your ears?"

"What?"

"Can you hear anything?"

Rather than reply, Eren looked confused.

Levi tried louder, "I said, can you hear anything?"

Eren winced in confusion, lifted his good arm up to his ear, and rubbed it.

"Fuck, don't tell me you really are deaf." Louder and slowly, Levi said, "Can ... you ... hear ... me?"

"Barely. I can't hear anything out of my right ear, and there's a loud ringing in my left ear." He flinched at the siren wailing in his ear. "How's your arse?"

"Shoved so full of gauze, it feels like the worst constipation ever. I'm gonna be shitting out bloody bandages all day."

"Huh?"

Levi sighed. "Never mind. At least I can talk shit about you and you won't get upset."

He was hoping Eren might laugh at that, but he still looked frustrated with his face pinched up. Levi sighed and looked around. It was impossible to know how long this tunnel was.

He saw Annie come down the stairs with his supply bag on her shoulder. He called her name, and she walked up to him and Eren. In Yiddish, Levi told her to look for the torch in his bag. She set the large canvas pack down, began to rummage through, and saw the three remaining trench knives sitting on top. Rather than looking scared at the daggers, she picked them up in wonder.

"Do you want one?" Levi offered. Annie looked over to him, and he saw the glint of interest in her blue eyes. "Take it. A gift from the Americans."

She unthreaded one of the leather sheaths and tucked it into her skirt waistband.

"Give me one as well," Levi requested.

She handed him another one of the sheaths, and Levi tucked the knife away into the coat Eren had draped over him.

Then she continued to dig through the bag until she found the torch. She closed the pack up, hoisted it back onto her shoulders, and turned the light on. She shined it ahead, but the beam stretched out into a long tunnel with nothing to see.

Oktyabrina finally made it down with Carly in her arms, smiling with adoration in her eyes at the large Russian woman and wrapping her arms around her neck, nuzzling her slightly. Once in the tunnel, Oktyabrina set her down and turned to Levi. However, she spoke to Eren in Russian.

"I will stay with Carly in the back with one torch, you and Annie lead. Agreed?"

Eren asked, "And Levi?"

"I will carry him." She looked over to Annie and spoke to her in Russian. "Are you sure you can fight if needed?"

Annie pulled out the massive trench knife. "I'm sure."

Oktyabrina nodded, lifted Levi into her arms, and remained there as the women began to move forward. She felt into step with Carly, who now held the other taschenlampe.

They walked along the tunnel, only a cone of pale light ahead of them in utter darkness. Eren was just starting to wonder how far this tunnel went when Annie's arm swung out, forcing him and all the others following them to come to a sudden stop. Eren now saw a faint light ahead and could smell the scent of a forest. They were near the end of the tunnel.

Oktyabrina and Carly walked up to the front of the group.

Annie turned to Levi and handed her torch to him. In Yiddish, she softly whispered, "Keep the group here. I will call when it's safe." She shrugged off Levi's bag and handed it to Carly. In Russian, she said, "There are knives in here. If we fail, use them to defend the group." She began to walk forward, but she realized Eren was walking alongside her. "Ostan'tes zdes." Stay here.

"I don't know what's going on, I can't hear you anyway, but those are soldiers up ahead. You're not going alone."

Annie looked frustrated, turned to Levi, and said in Yiddish, "Tell your boyfriend to stay here. He's injured, and it's not safe."

Levi whispered, "What I want to know is how he knows there are soldiers up ahead if he can't bloody hear anything. Let him go with you. If I know him, he'll purposely act as a distraction for you."

"I'd rather he not be in my way," Annie mumbled. Still, rather than yell loud enough for Eren to hear and alert the soldiers ahead, she let him follow her.

Eren had seen the faint light ahead, but more importantly, he had smelled cigarette smoke. His nose would never lie about that aroma. He realized it must be a soldier by the exit of this tunnel, enjoying a smoke now that it seemed like the battle was moving north.

To his side, he saw Annie pull out the trench knife. He had one by his side as well, fitted there by Jean. He silently motioned to Annie, who barely saw his movements in the darkness, and Eren motioned to the knife on his belt.

"I can't use my arms anyway," he reasoned.

Annie stared, his words foreign, but she realized why he was gesturing. She slowly reached for the sheath and pulled out his blade. The way she gripped both knives, Eren realized this young woman must be skilled in fighting.

Finally, they saw moonlight ahead. The guard at the exit remained shrouded in darkness, except for the red embers of the cigarette.

Eren motioned to Annie to stay back, and he strode forward.

"Kann ich 'ne Kippe haben?" Can I have a cig?

The soldier startled and reached for his gun, but relaxed when he saw the German uniform and Heer officer's cap. "You shouldn't sneak up on me, sir."

"My apologies. After all that bombing, I could really use a smoke."

"Are you coming from the fort?" the soldier asked as he reached into his pocket for a box of cigarettes.

"Yes. How are things on this end? Oh, can you light it for me? I hurt my arm earlier today."

"Sure, lieutenant." The man placed the cigarette in Eren's mouth and lit a match, holding it up for him. "It's been quiet..."

Just then, Annie slipped up behind and swiped her leg under the man, sending him falling hard. Eren stepped back as the match fell and the girl stabbed the soldier over and over again. He howled in agony.

"Ziegler?" someone yelled, and another soldier rounded the entrance.

Annie rose up, saw the new soldier, and bolted forward. She swiftly sliced the back of his knees, sending him dropping instantly with a howl of pain. Then both bloodied knives raised in the moonlight and slammed down into his back, one into each kidney. When the soldier shrieked, she pulled out one knife and slammed it into the man's skull, piercing through bone. He went suddenly still.

Eren gawked in astonishment. "Scheiße!"

Annie wiped her knives clean on the man's uniform, handed one back to Eren, and pointed to the ground. "Podozhdi menya zdes." Wait here for me. Then she trotted back into the tunnel.

Eren's cigarette almost fell out of his mouth as he looked around at the carnage.

Over so quickly!

The first man was still groaning in pain. Eren looked down at him, thick blood seeping out in a puddle around him. The man's blue eyes looked up in anger and confusion.

"Warum?" Why?

Eren frowned. No excuse would ease this man's death but one.

"Für Freiheit. Für den Sieg." For freedom. For victory.

"Sieg heil," the man whispered, like it was an automatic response programmed into him to be his last words. With that, he went limp.

Eren knelt down and put his hand on the man's head. "Möge der Himmel dich umarmen, tapferer Soldat." May Heaven embrace you, brave soldier.

As the man did not move again, Eren pulled out the cigarettes and box of matches. They were slightly bloody, but inside the cigarettes looked clean. He recalled pilfering the body of an American soldier he had killed in Maizières-lès-Metz for cigarettes, just like this.

"I feel like I really did just switch sides," he muttered, furrowing his brow deeply. "Verdammt."

He shoved the cigarettes into his pocket and stepped away from the two bodies. Looking around, he guessed they were still up on the hill, only a little more south and on the slope. To one direction, he faintly heard the sounds of bombing and the buzz of airplanes. To the other, the silent forest seemed to beckon him, nature existing peacefully while these silly hairless apes killed one another.

Eren decided to patrol the area surrounding the exit to make sure there were not more guards hiding around, but all was still. The exit seemed well-hidden. In fact, when he turned back around, he could not at first figure out where it was. Only the body in front of the door hinted at its location.

Then Annie stepped back out, and with her was Oktyabrina with Levi in her arms. She stepped over the bodies and looked down at them in disgust. The large woman called back into the tunnel in Russian, waved at Eren to come forward, and set Levi down. Eren reached out to Levi with his left arm, holding him steady. Then at a command to the blond girl, Oktyabrina and Annie pulled the two German soldiers out of the exit and into the woods so the other women would not be too scared. After pulling the bodies away, they removed their guns and put the Lugars into their pockets.

Levi glanced up at the acrid smell of smoke and muttered, "Where did you get the cigarette?"

Eren looked down at him. "Huh?"

Levi rolled his eyes. "I'm half-blind, you're half-deaf. What a pair we make!" Suddenly, he grabbed hold of his stomach. "Eren, can you hear me at all?"

He turned his good ear toward him. "Sort of, when you speak up. What is it?"

"Help me over to a tree. I doubt you could grab me if I collapse. Fuck!" he cringed, almost doubling over.

Eren tried his best to support Levi, but he was right. With his right arm broken and his left shoulder shot with half of his hand numb, there was no way he could hold Levi's weight. They walked to a nearby tree, and Levi leaned against it while the brothel girls began to exit the tunnel one by one, looking around at the forest in awe. For some of them, it was the first time they had seen nature in years.

Levi wiped sweat from his brow. Already, he felt feverish, and he dreaded to know just how bad of an infection must be setting in. Eren watched him with worry, unsure what to do or say.

"Do you need to sit?"

"Hell no! If I sit, my arse will explode. Merde!" He put his hand on his lower abdomen, grasping it through searing pain.

Carly finally exited, limping and holding her blood-soaked hip. She ordered Oktyabrina to take a headcount. Eren wished they could hurry along for Levi's sake, but he also did not want to lose any of these women.

Between hisses and labored breaths, Levi watched the women and saw one of them holding her stomach similarly to him, wincing with pain. One of the girls whispered to her, motioning down at her belly, but the woman seemed to reject whatever assistance had been offered. She merely rubbed out her cramps and straightened back up. The brief scene made Levi snort out a curt laugh.

"Women really are amazing. I wonder how they do it, bleeding out their vagina for a week every month, cramping so bad they want to puke, yet they're forced to keep going: cooking, cleaning, raising kids, doing farm work, doing schoolwork, tending their store or business. Society forces them to keep on going. They don't think it's that big of a deal, because it happens every month. Shit! Men would die within a year if we had to deal with pain like that all the time. We definitely wouldn't have enough spare blood to fight idiotic wars. It makes me think the world should be run by women. Maybe that's the only way to end war."

Eren's ear was starting to regain its hearing, enough to hear some of what Levi said. He smiled at the ladies around him. "If it means peace, I'd vote for that!"

"Oh, you heard me? Is your hearing back?"

"Huh?"

"Never mind." Levi suddenly hissed and pressed on his gut as waves of intense pain burned through him. "Fuck. I'm not going to make it."

Eren shook his head stubbornly. "The hospital isn't far. You can last that long. I know you. You're too stubborn to die."

Levi looked up at him. He wished he truly believed that. At least for Eren's sake, he forced up a smile. "Damn right I am."

However, he looked away, feeling sickened. He hated the idea of lying to Eren, and this was one time when he truly was not sure if willpower alone was enough.

The headcount complete, Oktyabrina walked over to Levi and bent over, ready to pick him up again. Rather than act stubborn like before, he welcomed not being on his feet. However, as Oktyabrina lifted him, Levi let out a howl of agony, only to slap his hand over his mouth.

Eren jolted forward. "Levi!"

"Get us out of here!" Levi snapped. "Fuck! Someone could have heard that. Fuck! Fuck!"

He gritted his teeth to hold back another growl of pain. Oktyabrina grabbed his head, yanked it toward her, and slammed his face down into her coat to smother his cries.

Carly also rushed over and put a hand on Eren's back. She told him in German, "After a scream like that, we need to go."

Eren tossed the cigarette down and crushed it out. His military training kicked in instinctively. "I'll take point. We travel in pairs, following the column. From here on, we go without lights. If your partner trips, you pull them up and keep them going. If anyone sees anything—a soldier, a wild animal, anything—hoot like an owl. If you hear a hooting, you stop where you are and drop to the ground. If your partner doesn't drop, you grab them and drag them down. Let all the women know that. Also, tell Annie to be in the back. I trust her to be the rearguard. She's vicious!"

Carly related the information in Russian, while Eren repeated it to Levi, who translated it into Polish so every single person knew the plan. The women began to pair up, and Eren took the lead, with Oktyabrina right beside him.

They began their journey through the forest. Eren carefully picked the easiest route through the trees, avoiding roots that could twist ankles, thorn bushes that might snag skin, and make sure they were still heading south and not veering too far east, which would take them toward the main highway too soon, or to the west, where they might meet up with American soldiers.

Behind him, the women traveled two-by-two, trying not to trip as they headed down the hill. In the very back, Carly and Annie made up the final pair. As they went through the forest, Annie had her knife drawn, glancing over her shoulder and all around her.

Overhead, planes sometimes buzzed low, circling around for another bombing or strafing run on the city. The fort's artillery still punctuated the air, although out here amid the trees, the sounds of war began to fade.

Eren wanted to keep an eye on Levi, but he had to keep his focus on the ground around him. As much as he wanted to rush and get Levi to a hospital as quickly as possible, if more of these women got injured, it would slow them down. Going slower would save them time in the long run, although as the minutes ticked by, he grew more and more worried. The sky was getting lighter. The sun was probably starting to rise now. They would soon no longer have the safety of the cover of darkness. As soon as they exited this forest, they would be easily visible.

In the very back, Annie heard a noise further up the hill coming down toward them rapidly. She cupped her hands around her mouth and let out a hooting call, then pulled Carly down, slapping a hand over the madame's mouth as the movement made her hip burn with agony.

At the front, Eren heard nothing with his partially deaf ear, but Oktyabrina did. She hooted as well, and now Eren caught the warning. They all dropped to the forest floor carpeted with wet leaves.

Eren looked around and wanted to curse that the blaring ring in his ears deafened him. What a time to lose one of his senses!

With everyone stopped, Levi heard the crunching footsteps of someone racing downhill and the wheezing whines of a man panting in terror. He tapped Eren's back and silently pointed to the noise, figuring the man could not hear all of that. After a moment, they caught sight of the fleeing person.

Eren's eyes squinted in the indigo darkness. "That's a Heer uniform," he breathed.

Levi whispered, "Some coward running away from the battle."

Now that they could see and hear the soldier, the women flattened themselves in terror. Even Oktyabrina slammed her eyes shut and whispered to herself, "Ya ne vernus tuda. Ya ne vernus tuda." I won't go back.

Eren watched the fearful soldier and shook his head in disappointment. Maybe this was some newly drafted soldier who had never been in a battle before, or some veteran still dealing with shell shock from the horrors of war. In any case, his first instinct was that this was pathetic, and his second reaction was to sympathize.

Overhead, an airplane exploded in a fireball, briefly lighting up the forest just enough for Eren to see the man's face.

"Wait..." Ignoring all pains, Eren shoved himself up with his left hand and suddenly bolted after the fleeing soldier.

"Takhshet!" Levi hissed, reaching out to him, but Eren was already stomping after the man. "You idiot." He looked over at Oktyabrina. "Porte-moi. Après lui!" Carry me. After him!

She hefted Levi up into her arms and hurried after the lieutenant.

* * *

Eren ran through the woods, pain forgotten, murderous hate burning in his eyes as he chased after the fleeing shadow. He jumped over fallen branches and roots, snarling in rage.

He had caught a glimpse for only a second, but there was no mistaking it.

The forest opened up in front of him, and a vast field gleamed with recently fallen rain. Eren ran out into the open. He pulled out the Enfield revolver with his left hand, but when he tried to raise it to aim, his wounded shoulder throbbed. Clenching his teeth hard to fight the pain, he lifted the revolver, aimed carefully, and fired one-handed.

Instantly, the kick of the gun felt like a hot brand to his shoulder. He lost his grip, and the Enfield fell to the mud. Eren gasped in pain, too shocked to even scream. He felt a crackle as the scab ripped apart, and wetness began to saturate the bandage. However, he heard a cry from the man in front of him.

Eren looked ahead and saw his prey had been stopped, holding the back of his shoulder that had been struck by the bullet. He took a deep breath and screamed out all of his rage.

"Feigling!" Coward!

The person spun around, and now Eren saw him clearly. Kitz Woermann, his sunken eyes more insane than ever before, looked pale with terror as he held his bleeding shoulder.

"Deserter! First you faked an injury, now you're just running away? They should have stripped you of your commission and executed you."

Kitz straightened up, ready to lecture like he often did. "As the Führer said—"

"I don't care what you think he said." Eren marched forward across the muddy field. "Do you know this quote, because I sure do. The Führer said, 'Those who do not want to fight do not deserve to live.' Hitler would call anyone who ran at the first sounds of war a coward, unworthy of their Aryan blood. Even some of my platoon who were foreigners, even they fought and died for the Fatherland. You are a disgrace to Germany and to that uniform."

Kitz snarled. "A dirty Jewish fag like you has no right to talk about what disgraces Germany."

"At least I stayed when the bombs fell in Italy. I stayed for four months! I fought through the flames in Machern-bei-Metz and led our company all alone, while you stabbed yourself in the leg just to get out of there."

"Lies!" Kitz cried out.

"Even Lieutenant Dietrich saw you do it." Eren smirked in triumph. "I just happened to be the one brave enough to report you to the Gestapo."

Kitz's teeth clenched in a snarl. "You son of a Jewish whore!"

"My men and I earned our combat badges. You couldn't last one artillery attack. You'll pick on half-starved Jews, but you can't fight the real enemy right in front of you."

"The real enemy are the Jews," Kitz screamed hysterically. "All the rest—France, England, America—they are only our enemies because they are Jew-lovers. Jews are the eternal enemy of mankind, and you took one as a lover." Kitz paused, and his eyes widened like a demented madman. "No. You are a Jew, Eren Jäger. You're one of them. You are my enemy." He pulled his Webley revolver out and pointed it at Eren with hands shaking with hatred.

Eren reached for where his holster was, only to realize he had dropped the gun. It had only one bullet in it anyway, and despite blood running down from where he had been shot, a single bullet was not enough to kill this insane captain. Eren considered pulling out his knife, but it was useless. He could not throw a knife that far, even if his shoulder had not been so grievously injured. He cursed to himself as he realized he had barged onto this battlefield without a plan, and now he was facing down the barrel of a gun that had pointed at him many times before.

"The Final Solution," Kitz said with maniacal, unsteady words. "The Final Solution to the Jewish Question. Death. Death is the only solution, and the final one. Death to Jews! Death to Mischlinge! Death to foreigners! Death to homosexuals! The international Jewry and its acolytes are to blame for this war. Kill all Jews!"

With a smug grin, Kitz's finger pulled back on the trigger.

Eren tensed up. Fuck! This was the end.

At least Levi had a chance to escape.

"No regrets," he whispered, holding his head up proudly.

Then Kitz's hand was hit hard upward, and the gun went off high. Eren watched in astonishment as Levi had somehow sneaked up behind Kitz. The tiny man with silent feet now had the captain in his grasp.

"No one hurts my takhshet."

In a flash of silver, the trench knife sliced apart Kitz's throat. Eren flinched as a spray of blood dyed the rain-soaked field red.

"That's for murdering my companions."

Levi shoved the captain face-first to the mud. Kitz choked as he grabbed at his throat. Levi flipped the knife and swung down hard, stabbing the captain's kidney.

"That's for the Resistance." He stabbed the other kidney. "That's for shooting the man I love." He made another stab down at Kitz's ass, giving the knife a sharp twist to increase the pain as the man shrieked in agony. "And that's for Moses, although you deserve Satan's own pitchfork up your arse. May you get that in Hell, you fucking sonuvabitch." He ripped the knife out and stepped aside.

Eren sighed in relief at seeing Levi was safe. "How did you get out here so fast?"

Levi pointed back, and now Eren saw Oktyabrina. "This lady is quicker than you'd expect."

"You should have gotten out of here while you had a chance."

"Not happening. Someone needs to take care of a brat like you. I mean, look at you, takhshet. You can barely use your hands. I bet you can't even wipe your own arse anymore."

Eren laughed. Still so contrary, even as he saved someone's life!

Oktyabrina walked over to Kitz and kicked him over onto his back. Blood spurted in pulses out of his slit throat, and Eren turned away at the gruesome sight. From the wheezing gasps, they realized Kitz was still alive.

Her face cold in loathing, Oktyabrina placed her foot on Kitz's groin, slowly pressing more and more. Kitz writhed in pain and tried to scream through his slit throat, getting out only sickeningly moist wheezes. Oktyabrina kept applying pressure, harder and harder, until they all heard a crunch. A hideous, gargling scream ripped out of Kitz's throat.

Eren cringed and asked her in German, "Did you just crush his testicles?"

She glared up at him. "He deserves worse."

He nodded grimly. "A thousand deaths are less than he deserves."

"Good, then we agree." She stomped down hard again, drilling the heel of her boot into Kitz's groin.

Levi watched the Russian woman torture Kitz with no emotions, not after what he had been through all whilst this man watched with excitement. In Yiddish, he cursed, "Er zol kakn mit blit un mit ayter." May he shit blood and pus.

Levi suddenly knelt and tore Kitz's uniform tunic open. He yanked his white undershirt up to expose his abdomen. Then he pulled forth his knife, and it hovered just above the pale skin.

"While he can still feel pain, what's the German word for deserter?"

Eren answered, "Fahnenflüchtig."

Levi raised an eyebrow. "Are you shitting me? I can't write all that. Something shorter, quickly."

Eren thought he knew what Levi had planned, and while it made him queasy, he still offered one word. "Verräter. It means traitor. V-E-R-R-Umlaut-A-T-E-R."

Levi's knife sliced into Kitz's belly. "Tell him while he's still conscious: we will make sure his family back home knows he was a traitor, a coward, and a deserter. His death will be meaningless, like his life was honorless."

"I don't think honorless is a word." Eren looked down at Kitz as the man gasped his last breaths. "Ihre Familie wird wissen, dass Sie ein Verräter und Feigling sind. Er schnitzt es in Ihre Haut." Your family will know that you are a traitor and a coward. He is carving it into your skin.

"Nein, nicht das." No, not that. He attempted to struggle away from Levi's knife, but he had no strength left.

"... E ... R. Done." Levi stabbed twice for the umlaut-A. "I'm tempted to carve that other big-ass word into his flesh."

"We need to go," Eren sighed, really wishing Kitz would bleed out and die quicker.

"I'd write Jew lover on his dick, if this lady hadn't already crushed it. I did promise once that I would cut his dick off and shove it down his mouth." Levi snarled menacingly down at Kitz. "Du schwanz..." he said, pointing down to his crotch with the bloody knife, "... in your Mund."

Despite the terribly butchered German, Kitz's eyes widened in horror, and he shook his head. Levi merely chuckled sadistically.

Eren gulped back revulsion. Torturing a dying man was too much. "Levi, enough."

Levi looked back up at him. "After what I went through, I'm enjoying this."

"Levi..."

"Don't pity him! He shot you, and he was about to shoot you again..."

"He's still human."

Levi's eyes narrowed. "He didn't just watch as they tortured me. He helped. That's not being a human. He is what he says I am." He glared down at Kitz's writhing body. "Lower than an insect. I have no pity at all for him."

"Levi..."

"I just saved your life, takhshet."

"I know..."

"Don't ever forget that," Levi shouted. "I saved your life!"

Eren walked up to him and pulled Levi up by the hand. "A wise Jew once told me, 'whoever rescues a single life earns as much merit as though he had rescued the entire world.' I won't forget this." He leaned in to give Levi a kiss. "You're a hero."

Levi scoffed and looked away with a blush. "Stop it."

Kitz coughed in a dying display of disgust. "Schwulette! Sie sind widerlich und abstoßend." Faggot! You are disgusting and repulsive.

Levi glared down. "Is he cussing us out?"

"Yeah."

"Too talkative," he grumbled. "I obviously didn't slit his throat deep enough." He pulled his knife out. "Both of you, look away if you're going to get sick."

Eren saw the knife go back to Kitz's throat. He pulled Oktyabrina to turn aside.

"Nein. Ich werde bis zu seinem letzten Atemzug zusehen." No. I will watch until his last breath.

Eren let her, but he kept his head aside. He heard the gargling cries and final chokes as Levi finished the job by slowly beheading him.

Eren had never particularly liked Kitz Woermann, but they had shared many drinks together at officer meetings. He knew Kitz Woermann had six children, one about to get married, and his eldest son was training to be a naval officer. His wife would hear about how her husband was found outside of Mets, beheaded, Verräter carved into his belly. Those children would grow up hating their father for deserting his troops.

If they could have just shot him, it might have been written off as a casualty of war, but like this ... it was definitely an execution.

Eren had always reasoned that the captain was just doing his job. That was the root for every atrocity. Just following orders. Just obeying the chain of command. It's all for a greater good.

None of that excused the brutal atrocities committed by this man.

At last, the wheezing breaths and attempts to scream stopped. Eren sighed with relief as his stomach began to settle. It was over!

Levi wiped the knife clean on the Nazi uniform. Then he reached into one of the uniform pockets and retrieved the two rings the captain had taken from him and Eren earlier that night. He looked down at the gold band and pearl filigree ring, then at his mutilated hand. Levi sighed heavily.

"At least they left the ring finger."

He put the ring back onto his hand. Oktyabrina helped him to stand up. He walked forward in order to look Eren straight into his pale, nauseous face. Eren could barely meet his gaze.

"Do you think I'm a monster?"

"No," he said faintly, but his resolve quickly strengthened. "No, I now know who the real monsters are, and I'm sickened that I'm one of those monsters."

"Maybe you were once," Levi said, and he took Eren's hand. "Not anymore."

Eren felt the bandages on Levi's hand, looked down, saw the two missing fingers, and his mouth began to quiver. "Do you hate me for being a Nazi?"

"I could never hate you, takhshet." He took the gold ring and slid it back onto Eren's finger. "Even if you had chosen to kill me to save yourself, I wouldn't have hated you." He leaned over to Eren's hand and kissed the gold ring.

Guilt surged up and strangled Eren. His eyes burned with tears that dripped down his face. He burst out in chaotic emotions. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry." He had no idea who he was saying sorry to. Levi, Floch, Armin, Jean, Reiner, Connie, everyone he was leaving behind. Everyone!

Levi used his good hand to caress Eren's cheek. "It's going to be okay."

Levi gave Eren a moment to cry and mourn those he was leaving behind. He walked back over to the dead body again, removed Kitz's gun holster and a pouch of spare ammunition, and helped to thread them through Eren's belt.

"You earned this gun through right of combat. Now, let's get out of here."

Eren tried to calm his sobs, but he still felt so much pain deep inside, like acid pumping through his heart and burning through all of his veins. He looked back at the fighting going on in Metz. He could see smoke rising into the air.

"I'm deserting my men."

"No," Levi said sternly. "Today, your men staged a daring rescue mission, and they succeeded. They risked their lives, and one of them died, all so you could live. Honor that!"

He gritted his teeth and shook his head. "Mein Vaterland..."

"Eren!" Levi yanked him to turn him around so he would stop looking at the battle. "You can't go back there. To the Wehrmacht, you are dead! As of this moment, you are not a German soldier."

"No!" A sob caught in Eren's throat. He knew Levi was right, but it hurt so much. "I feel like you should carve Verräter into my flesh."

"You're not a traitor. You just couldn't be everything they wanted you to be." He squeezed Eren's hand. "Come with me. Let's leave this all behind. All of it. Wherever we end up, we can be together. Come with me ... please."

Eren's sobs calmed, and his eyes softened. He leaned in and gave Levi a gentle kiss. "I did promise not to run away from you, right?"

"You better not! I'll drag you away myself, if I have to. Now, let's wipe those tears. Your nose is running like a snotty little brat."

Eren sputtered out a wet laugh. So typical!

Across the field, Carly was just exiting the forest with the escaped women. Oktyabrina sprinted across the field, reaching them before they had time to look around.

"Not that way. They shouldn't see that."

"What happened?" asked Carly.

"A well-deserved execution. Come. There's a road up ahead."

Carly ushered the girls eastward across the field. However, she glanced at the sight of Eren and Levi embracing in the rain-spangled field now turning rosy with the coming dawn. Beside them, she could not see it clearly, but there was a head sitting atop a body ... and that was enough to make her turn away.

"Who was it?"

"Do you remember Nicolo telling us about Kitz Woermann?"

"The man who slaughtered the Jews in Eren's last post. Eren's captain, right?" Carly looked back over to Eren. "That's why he ran after him. Well, go get them. We have a long walk ahead of us," she told Oktyabrina.

The Russian woman returned to the two men. "Sie haben tapfer gekämpft. Ich kann Sie tragen."

Eren translated, "She says, you fought bravely, and she can carry you."

Levi sighed in annoyance, but as the adrenaline rush faded, his pain returned. "Fuck it, probably for the best."

Eren looked up to the Russian woman. "Er sagt Danke." He says thanks.

Oktyabrina hoisted Levi up. They walked over to where there was a small road. Eren recognized it. He had driven down the road when he dropped Louise off at her family's farm.

They met up with the group, where Carly was once again counting to make sure they all made it out. Annie walked over to Eren and handed him a gun. She spoke in Russian, and Oktyabrina translated into German.

"She says she picked this up in the field."

"It's empty," Eren said, taking the Enfield and looking it over. He walked over to Carly. "You can have this. It belonged to Yelena's cousin. If you can find bullets, you can use it to protect your girls."

Carly nodded grimly and tucked the gun into the waistline of her skirt.

"We need to be cautious. There could be troops along the road."

Oktyabrina glanced over at him. "You need to be cautious. We're just innocent women. You're the one wearing a German uniform."

"We'll find you something else to wear," said Carly.

As smoke rose from Metz and the sun lit the road ahead of them, the group began their long trek across the French countryside and south toward freedom.

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Revenge is sweet!

Hey, if anything is a bit weird in this chapter, please let me know. I had a seizure a couple weeks ago and my brain completely scrambled.

I will be in SoCal from Nov 19-26: LA, OC, a few days in Bakersfield. If you wanna hang out, grab a coffee or burger, or if you aren't into meeting weirdo writers but you know of a good place to eat, let me know. I am always looking for good grub when I travel.

(The field they crossed, Google Maps Streetview from D955 looking toward Fort Queuleu. The fort is on the top of that wooded hill. The blurred area is a modern-day penitentiary ... built next to a Nazi internment camp. Oh the irony!)

They are traveling down Avenue de Strasbourg, now called D955, a two-lane road from Metz heading southeast.

Kitz taking the wedding rings was actually something I added in later, as I realized I really wanted this scene between the two of them, like renewing their vows. Plus it makes Kitz that much more of an asshole, and it was something Nazis did to Jews: strip them of any wedding rings, watches, necklaces, and sometimes pulling out gold teeth.

Regarding the Deafening Bomb – A couple years ago, a bolide meteor air burst occurred near my home. I was sitting on the couch—actually working on this story—when there was a huge flash outside my window. A few seconds later ... BOOM! The walls shook, some windows around my apartment complex cracked (luckily not ours) and it set off every car alarm in a 30-mile radius (50 km). Even inside my apartment, my ear that was closer to the window began to ring piercingly loud, and the percussive shock wave felt like I had been hit in the chest with a basketball launched from a cannon, to the point where my heart began to go into a painful arrhythmia. I had to pound my chest to restart my heart's rhythm, which is terrifying! Part of me wishes I could have been outside at the time to see the meteor properly, but it's best that I wasn't. One man out jogging at night right where the air burst happened ruptured his eardrums and went partially deaf.

And THAT was my inspiration for Eren getting too close to a bomb. Just thought I'd share the story.

The Final Solution to the Jewish Question ("Endlösung der Judenfrage") – A Nazi euphemism for the extermination of the Jews. It referred to a question common throughout Europe in the 1800s and 1900s: what do we do with Jews as the majority of Christians refuse to coexist with them? Many countries tossed around ideas (see notes below) but Hitler's answer was deemed the Final Solution: Death! Mass genocide! What Jews would later call Shoah, or The Holocaust.

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My character notes include a highly detailed backstory for Kitz Woermann, going all the way back to his childhood. I came up with a whole movie in my head about his life, from fictional siblings, children who never even get mentioned, and an entire military career. Very little made it into the story, but tidbits drop in from time to time, like him speaking about his eldest children and mentioning about turning in a gay uncle to the Gestapo.

(This is an example of Hemingway's iceberg theory, where only the "tip of the iceberg" is shown to the reader, while the expansive knowledge the writer has about the character shines through as subtext.)

Like any good villain, there is a reason why Kitz acts this way, a tragic past that explains his intense hatred. A sob story does not excuse a person's actions, but it shows how society needs to change in order to prevent the cycle of hate from continuing.

Here is what lies under the surface of Kitz Woermann, the history that tainted his heart with so much darkness that my readers have been practically chanting for his death. There could practically be a story just about him, except it'd be quite grim with no redemption arc. Only swift and brutal justice.

So, as a story-within-a-story, here I present:

KITZ'S HISTORY

Kitz Woermann was born in the German city of Leipzig in 1902, the eldest of three children born to Lothar and Johanna Woermann.

Lothar was a factory worker, alcoholic, and abusive, forcing Kitz to stand outside their front door naked if he did poorly in school. Because of this, Kitz learned to associate nakedness with humiliation and punishment, a correlation he would carry on by forcing prisoners to strip naked. Meanwhile, Johanna took copious amounts of laudanum to deal with depression after losing two children in infancy, leaving Kitz to raise his younger siblings, Maximilian (Max) and Gertrud.

When Kitz was 11, his father was fired from his job at the factory for chronic drunkenness, but Lothar insisted it was due to his boss being "a greedy Jew." Kitz took jobs to support the family. Seeing his preteen son holding down two jobs while he could not even keep one made Lothar angry. He frequently beat Kitz and accused him of "sucking the cocks of those Jews." Kitz had to defend that he was not resorting to sexual favors, but Lothar would still hit his mouth so his lips would be "too swollen to suck those half-castrated cocks." Kitz managed to appease his father by imitating his hatred for Jews and homosexuals, which inevitably grew into genuine antisemitism and homophobia.

As the First World War broke out, Lothar got another factory job, which he once again lost after repeatedly showing up to work hungover. His violent outbursts grew worse. Kitz brought his brother, Max, to work with him, purely to get him out of the house and away from their father's fists. He thought his sister Gertrud would be safe at home. Tragically, that was not the case.

When Kitz was 14, he and Max returned home from work to find their mother Johanna on the kitchen floor, cradling the blood-soaked body of 7-year-old Gertrud, while Lothar repeatedly hit and kicked them both. When Max tried to run to their aid, he was thrown into a wall, breaking his arm and knocking him unconscious. In a burst of rage, Kitz took his massive work wrench and bludgeoned his father over the head repeatedly, killing him.

Gertrud had severe head trauma. Although a doctor saved her life with trepanning (drilling a hole into the skull to alleviate pressure from cranial bleeding), she had permanent brain damage and cognitive impairment. The girl was left with the mind of a toddler, unable to speak or feed herself, blind in one eye, and she suffered from intense ringing in her ears that made her scream for hours. Kitz blamed the Jewish doctor for his sister's suffering.

Johanna was too traumatized to raise a child and felt Gertrud was better off dead. Her younger brother and Kitz's uncle, Felix, had to stop her from strangling the girl "as a mercy kill" more than once. Kitz saw how his sister screamed in constant pain and began to wonder if it really was a mercy to end her suffering. Uncle Felix decided to place Gertrud in an asylum for her own protection. After that, Johanna kept herself drugged constantly on laudanum. Kitz pretended like he did not even have a sister. Only Max and Felix ever went to the asylum to visit Gertrud.

In 1918, as soon as he turned 16, Kitz eagerly joined the military. He saw only one battle. A British captain had already surrendered, but Kitz shot him anyway and looted his Webley Mk VI pistol, a moment he boasted about whenever he could, without mentioning that the officer had already surrendered.

After the war, he continued to serve in the military, mostly because it was the only stable job during the Weimar Republic years. In 1919, he entered officer training school but saw no promotion past lieutenant for 15 years due to the military cap placed on Germany after the war.

Kitz married in 1921 and had six children, Helga (1923), Maria (1925), Werner (1927), Hildegard (1930), Adolf (1932), and Horst (1935).

Note that you can see his descent into Nazism by the names of his children, starting with common religious names like Helga and Maria, then militant names like Werner (guard-army) and Hildegard (battle enclosure), and then a blatant shift in politics with his sons Adolf and Horst, named after Hitler and the Nazi martyr, Horst Wessel.

In 1929, Kitz bought Mein Kampf. As a member of the German military, he was not allowed to join a political party, but he became utterly enamored with Adolf Hitler, feeling that here was a man who felt the same way about Germany and Jews as he did. He once even risked getting kicked out of the army by attending one of Hitler's speeches.

In 1936, Kitz received a phone call from an asylum doctor that they were going to "put down" his sister as part of Aktion T4, Hitler's plan to free government funds on "useless" invalids by mass murdering permanently disabled people. Since merely knowing that Gertrud was still alive brought up the dark trauma of his father, and remembering how his mother said that killing her was a mercy, Kitz felt it was best for the entire family to put the girl out of her misery. He approved giving her a lethal injection.

He did not bother to attend the funeral since it was near the day when he would finally be promoted to Oberleutnant, now that Hitler had unfrozen the German military and officers could rise in rank. Kitz instead felt that the entire family should have delayed the funeral to attend his promotion ceremony, since that was something he had waited 15 years for, whereas his "useless" sister would still be dead the following week.

Mere days later, he received a phone call that Johanna killed herself right after the funeral, leaving a suicide note: "My no-good son has now killed both my husband and my daughter. I'll end this before he decides to kill me next." He attended her funeral in Leipzig, since it was held after his promotion ceremony. He looked completely unperturbed by the accusations made by the family.

During the funeral wake, he overheard gossip that Uncle Felix was homosexual and in a relationship with a man who lived in the house next door. Kitz alerted the Gestapo immediately. Felix and his lover were taken away right there in the middle of the reception of mourners. Kitz was proud to have saved his family from homosexual depravity, but it turned the entire family against him, especially as everyone was still grieving two back-to-back deaths.

In 1939, Kitz was sent to Kraków, Poland. As Germany planned to make Kraków "the most racially pure city in Poland," Kitz decided to move his family there. Although he was not assigned to the ghetto, he took great delight in slowly killing lawbreaking Jews, especially as an outlet for the pain of having his family reject him.

In 1940, he rose to Hauptmann. Due to his lack of distinction and short temper, he was not promoted any higher. Shortly after his promotion, his 17-year-old daughter Helga ran away with a Polish boy. Kitz refused to speak of her again and got angry if anyone even mentioned her name.

In 1942, Kitz attempted to murder a Jewish boy who was caught outside of the ghetto by crushing the boy's head with his boot. A young lieutenant shoved Kitz aside and told the boy to run. Kitz shot the boy and the lieutenant. The young officer turned out to be the son of a high-ranking member of the Nazi Party. Kitz was admonished sharply, and High Command made it clear that he was lucky they did not outright execute him. Instead, he was transferred to France, where he was placed on coastal guard duty with Ian Dietrich and Gunther Schultz.

After what happened to Helga, Kitz decided not to take his family to France. He sent them back to Germany, where they lived with his brother Max in Leipzig.

Kitz saw in Ian Dietrich the sort of ambition he had at that age, and he felt it was his duty to cultivate the man's innate sadism, using it against partisans. In 1943, he sent Ian's platoon to put down a group of Resistance fighters. Ian not only captured them, he publicly executed their leaders. Proud of how well he had learned, Kitz put him in for a promotion to Oberleutnant. He saw far less initiative from Gunther, deeming him weak for having a conscious opposition to killing civilians.

In 1943, his son Werner joined the naval officer academy. Kitz would often say that this was the proudest moment of his life, and he hoped the war lasted long enough for his son to show the world how great the Woermann family truly was.

On February 20, 1944, Leipzig was bombed in the "Big Week" (Operation Argument). Around 4:00 AM, Max's house took a direct hit. His wife had spent the night in the bedroom of one of their children who was sick, and the bomb destroyed the entire room, killing Max's wife and child. Hearing about the attack, Kitz ordered his wife to move to the countryside and set her up with the family of Major Fischer, a retired officer he knew back in the First World War.

In May 1944, Lieutenant Eren Jäger joined Kitz's company. Along with his arrival were new orders: they were to be relieved of coastal guard duty and move inland to flush out members of the French Resistance from a northern village. Kitz resorted to bombing the village, which chased away almost all of the civilians, including the Resistance. Berlin was not happy that his tactics wasted artillery and resulted in capturing only one teenage courier. His original orders were to not interrogate Caven and wait for a member of the Gestapo, but with the attacks on French railroads, Berlin could not send an inspector, nor could they send a translator. This forced Kitz to use Levi and Eren to translate as he took on the task of interrogating Caven himself.

One day after taking the village, two Waffen-SS platoons arrived, led by Reiner Braun and Untersturmführer Schmidt. While the SS gave no reason why they were to be stationed there, secretly it was about the lieutenant Kitz killed in Poland; the SS had received orders to keep an eye on Kitz and kill him if he stepped out of line. Kitz deduced why the SS were there, and he reserved his sadism only for the Jews. (In reality, it was Zeke Jäger who sent the SS, using his network of spies, specifically choosing Reiner since he was an old friend of Eren, all so Zeke could protect Eren from Kitz.)

Kitz realized that Eren had Jewish sympathies, and looking into his files, he saw that his mother was 1/8 Jewish. This made Kitz want to kill Eren on principle, but with the SS there, he was wary of killing an officer again. He purposely targeted Levi, hoping to push Eren into a confrontation where shooting him would be legally warranted. He grew to enjoy seeing Eren mentally shut down and blindly carry out orders to hurt the Jews. While he still did not like Eren, the young lieutenant's resolve not to break privately impressed Kitz.

Just days after Reiner and the SS left for Normandy, Kitz murdered Obergefreiter Marlo Freudenberg for his Jewish sympathies. He had been waiting to kill Marlo in particular since he physically looked Jewish and openly flirted with the Jewish girls.

After that, he again tried to force a confrontation with Eren Jäger, hoping for any excuse to kill him. He chose Levi to be forced into having sex with a male Jew, purely to see if Eren would try to defend him. When instead Eren killed a German soldier—with his bare hands, no less—who had raped Levi in the dungeon, Kitz was both impressed and intimidated by Eren's raw physical strength. This made him hesitate about provoking Eren even more.

Kitz's anger issues were best showcased when an army was spotted to the east, but Lieutenant Gunther Schultz had not inspected it. Kitz threatened to execute his entire platoon, only held back by Eren and Ian.

Before leaving for Metz, Kitz massacred the Jews. He almost shot Eren when he ran into the room, but he realized, with Ian Dietrich in the room as a witness, he needed an excuse to kill Eren. He told Eren to shoot Abel or he would kill both Levi and Abel. He had hoped that Eren's sympathies would make it impossible for him to obey orders, and thus he could be shot for insubordination. Instead, Eren once again coldly obeyed, which intrigued Kitz, although he was disappointed at not having an excuse to kill the lieutenant.

Kitz led the company to Metz. While in a village in Belgium, he had problems with the locals not understanding orders, since Eren and Levi were in a town further up the road. He ordered that any villagers who gave the company problems were to be shot. When he was told that the soldiers had begun to rape girls in the village, he shrugged it off, figuring the men deserved a little fun. He made the call to make up for lost time by giving the entire company Pervitin, and then pushed them to ride for over 24 hours without rest. They reached Metz, only losing three men (whom Levi had killed for trying to rape women in Bourglinster).

Against his will, but strongly urged by both Ian and Gunther, Kitz put Eren up for a promotion and Iron Cross, but he chose others to also be promoted in order to lessen the praise given to Eren personally, including making Jean Kirschstein an officer. Kitz ignored Eren after that, no longer finding fun in tormenting him.

Kitz traveled with his company to Maizières-lès-Metz. For the first few weeks, he led his men from within the town hall. After the M-12 "Doorknocker" pummeled the town hall, Kitz was shaken to his core. It was the first time since 1918 that his life was truly in danger from an enemy. Seeing the devastation, including Gunther who took a direct hit, Kitz panicked, took a piece of concrete, and gashed his own leg so he would get out of combat.

He was taken back to Metz to get the wound treated but had trouble with the doctors and nurses. They tried to point out that his wound was superficial, he had no muscle or nerve damage, and could return to duty. Kitz threatened the medical staff, even pulling his gun on a doctor, demanding a medical transfer out of Metz. A nurse informed Eren Jäger of the fake injury, and Eren informed Gestapo agent Colt Grice. After Colt looked into things, Kitz stopped limping on a cane. He was punished by being reassigned to one of the outer forts as soon as they formed a new company for him, as both Ian and Eren requested transfers.

In early November 1944, Kitz pressured his daughter Maria to get engaged to Kitz's old military friend's son, Heinrich Fischer, an Obersturmführer in the SS. Kitz was planning to get permission to return to Germany for the wedding, another attempt of his to get out of the war zone.

He happened to come across Eren receiving oral sex from a man in a dress. He recognized Levi and tried to shoot him, but Eren jumped in the way, getting shot in the shoulder. Rather than kill Levi outright, Kitz decided to use him to torture Eren. He once again wanted to see Eren shut down his emotions and put aside his conscience in order to follow heinous commands, so he offered to let Eren go if he killed Levi. When Eren refused, Kitz got enraged that his "fun" was over. He instead beat Levi until Theo Magath showed up.

Kitz sat in on the interrogation. The actual questioning infuriated him, as it was cold, calculated, and psychological, not something he comprehended. He wanted torture! However, Magath terrified him, and any outburst was instantly shot down. He escorted Eren back to his prison, but when he saw his chance to torment him, he did by breaking Eren's arm.

He then returned to the interrogation room, where he savored watching Magath rip fingernails out, but off two of Levi's fingers, rip out his eye, and brutally sodomize him with a broom. Unlike some of the men in the room who nearly vomited at the brutality, Kitz felt an infectious thrill and arousal.

He spent the night in Fort Queuleu to make sure Eren was not freed by his platoon. The arousal he felt at seeing Levi's torture troubled him. Surely, he was not aroused by the brutal sodomy! It made him want to drink and ignore the tingling thrill. Then Carly Stratmann showed up, taunting the fact that he had not had sex in months. Again, the fact that Levi's torture aroused him made Kitz confused and feeling like he had to prove his own heterosexuality. Although he was not the sort to use prostitutes, if High Command also felt his masculinity was questionable, then he would prove it! He agreed to have sex with Carly, but just as she seemed to be seducing him, she injected him with a drug that knocked him unconscious.

When Kitz woke up, the Americans had already begun to bomb the fort. Kitz panicked just like in Maizières-lès-Metz. He fled blindly out of the fort, into the forest, not realizing he was heading toward the Americans.

He crossed paths with Eren and Levi as they also fled. Kitz was about to shoot Eren when Levi attacked and slit his throat. Levi then carved the German word for "traitor" into his chest while Kitz was still alive. As Kitz still refused to die, Levi fully beheaded him.

He died in the early morning hours of November 9, 1944. His body was discovered by American troops, who found the gruesome execution amusing, so they made sure to have his body shipped back to Germany to demoralize them.

Given the obvious execution-style killing and "Verräter" on his chest, the German military assumed Kitz must have been caught abandoning his post. His history with the Gestapo and a self-inflicted wound to avoid battle only concreted this accusation that he was a coward who was executed for running away. They stripped Kitz of all honors as an officer.

Rather than mourning, Kitz's wife was relieved. It turned out she was having an affair with Kitz's widowed brother, Max. They got married shortly afterward. She would spend the rest of her life trying to distance herself from the fact that she had been married to a Nazi officer.

His daughter Helga (the one who was disowned for marrying a Polish boy) had hidden a family of Jews from the Nazis in her house: a mother and her two teen daughters, after the father and sons were taken to a concentration camp. After the war, Helga reconnected with her mother and siblings, who warmly welcomed her back.

The second daughter, Maria, called off the engagement to the SS officer, which was just as well, as he died before the end of the war; she married a Soviet officer who was stationed in East Germany during the post-war years and went back to Leningrad with him.

The third child and eldest son, Werner, became a naval officer in 1945. Rather than Kitz's hope that he would showcase the pride of the Woermann family, mere weeks after becoming an officer, Werner's U-boat was torpedoed in the Arctic Sea by an American convoy bringing Lend-Lease goods to the USSR.

The fourth child, Hildegard, went to visit her sister Helga after the war and met the Jewish family Helga had been sheltering, including the eldest daughter Adinah. The two became "very good friends." Hildegard and Adinah moved to Geneva where being homosexual was not a crime, and they lived happily together for the rest of their lives.

The fifth child, Adolf, legally changed his name to Johann to distance himself from Nazism as much as possible. Tragically, he would be plagued with alcoholism and depression just like his grandparents, and he took his life on his 21st birthday.

Almost like a final slap in the face, in 1953 his youngest child (whom Kitz proudly named after Horst Wessel) would come out as a trans-woman, spurred on by the story of Christine Jorgensen, an American Army veteran who got sex reassignment surgery in 1952. (Not the first such surgery, but it made world news since she was a former soldier; she went on to become an actress and singer.) Kitz's child changed her name to Christine in honor of her trans hero. She and her boyfriend fled East Germany and moved to Sweden so she could get sex reassignment surgery at the same clinic as Jorgensen.

As a man who learned to hate Jews from his antisemitic father, authorized the murder of his sister for being disabled, turned in his own uncle for being gay, and shot German soldiers for sympathizing with Jews, Kitz would be remembered as a sadist, a coward, and a traitor. Thankfully, most of his family would distance themselves from that generational hatred and thrived with tolerance and acceptance of differences.

#

The Final Solution and Attack On Titan

Throughout the 1800s and early 1900s, as nationalistic pride surged across Europe, an issue was tossed around, called in various languages The Jewish Question:

"How do we deal with Jews as a growing sense of nationalism creates conflicts with the idea of allowing Jews to coexist with Christians?"

Countries had varying ideas. Germany looked into sending Jews to Ukraine or Siberia. Britain controlled Palestine and suggested mass deporting Jews there. (Which they eventually did, in a sense, to rehouse victims of the Holocaust.) France seemed rather content at having forced most of their Jewish citizens to live in the Alsace-Lorraine region, but many in power still wanted the Jews completely gone.

Then in 1938, a coalition of France, Germany, and Poland, led by SS Lieutenant-Colonel and Chief of the Jewish Office of the Gestapo, Adolf Eichmann, came up with the Madagascar Plan. This multi-nationally approved plan involved deporting all Jews in Europe to the African Island, at the time a French colony, with the coastlines guarded by the Schutzstaffel to make sure Jews did not escape. This would allow Jews self-governance, but it forced them to stay in a walled-off island far from Christians.

(Side note: Nearly every article about the Madagascar Plan calls it a "Nazi plan," but it's important to realize that this was something originally thought up by France, Poland, and Germany. Countries can't "wash their hands clean" by claiming it was only Nazis.)

The plan was put on hold as Germany attacked both Poland and France, but it was raised again in 1940. Although Adolf Hitler liked the idea of using Madagascar, mass deportations and long-term patrolling of the coastline would be expensive. His "Final Solution" was more cost-effective: kill every Jew.

The Final Solution to the Jewish Question, or Endlösung der Judenfrage, is now called the Holocaust.

What does this have to do with the anime?

In Attack on Titan there is a map of Paradis and Marley that is a mirrored-upside-down image of our world, with Marley stretching across Africa, Europe, and parts of the Middle East (a bit like European colonialism had stretched across Europe, Africa, and many areas around the world), while Paradis Island is in the same location as Madagascar.

This makes the Eldians being relegated to Paradis Island, with a coastline made secure by the presence of Titans and patrolled by the Marleyan navy, nearly identical to the Madagascar Plan.

This shows that Attack on Titan heavily draws on concepts of World War II and the Holocaust. In this "upside-down" alternate reality, the Eldians/Jews were sent to Paradis/Madagascar and only a remnant remained on Marley, to be used as living weapons, much like how, near the end of the war, Nazis used Jews to fill their ranks on the Eastern Front as little more than cannon fodder in order to lower "Aryan" casualties.

Then, as outside countries like Marley and Hizuru realized Paradis was rich with special minerals and iceburst stone and ultrahard steel, they planned to attack and wipe out the Eldians once and for all, that way they could get their hands on this valuable resource and increase their own wealth and power.

Exactly like how Europe realized that Africa was full of gold, iron, diamonds, and other precious resources, so they attacked, slaughtered and enslaved the people, and colonized Africa in order to get at those resources and grow their empires.

I could probably list more similarities, but that's enough.

After World War II, 3,000 tons of paperwork was discovered detailing various aspects of the Final Solution, from setting up the Gestapo and Kripo, establishing ghettos and concentration camps, government-sponsored mass shootings, death trains, building extermination camps like Auschwitz, and years of experimentations—using disabled people—to figure out the most effective way to kill thousands at a time. The Germans were meticulous in documenting everything, which helped during the trials against Nazi leaders after the war.

Although the term "Holocaust" specifically refers to the systematic mass-murder of Jews, 11 million Gentiles (non-Jews) are counted as victims, as this includes ethnic, religious, social, and political groups who the Nazis considered to be "subhuman" or undesirable.

-

Estimates of Holocaust victims:

* Jews: 6 million (possibly as high as 7.5 million)

* Soviet civilians: 4.5 million

* Soviet POWs: 3.3 million

* Non-Jewish Poles: 1.8 million

* Romani: 250,000 - 1.5 million (the true scope is unknown due to a traditional secrecy among the Roma about what they endured)

* Serbs: 310,000

* Disabled people: 250,000 - 300,000, including 10,000 children

* Freemasons: 80,000

* German "asocials" (homeless, alcoholics, nomads, nonconformist women, prostitutes, and Aryans caught having sexual relations with Jews): 35,000

* Slovenes: 25,000

* Homosexuals and bisexuals: 15,000

* Spanish Republicans: 3,500

* Jehovah's Witnesses: 1,700

* German political opponents and dissenters (Communists, Social Democrats, capitalists, anarchists, anti-fascists, trade unionists, Catholics): unknown, likely tens of thousands

* Black Germans: unknown, perhaps hundreds

-

To this day, there are still people who push for sterilizing the mentally ill, deporting gay and transgender people or forcing them to live on "reservations." In Europe, ethno-nationalist and White supremacist groups never went away after the defeat of the Nazis, with La Lega political party in Italy being openly Neo-Fascist, and the Jobbik Party of Hungary proudly using Nazi symbols.

In the United States, one-third of Americans believe in the White Genocide/Great Replacement conspiracy theory based on a manifesto by Neo-Nazi David Lane. Some American right-wing political leaders promote Neo-Nazis online or are rehashing Hitler's own speeches in their rhetoric. Over the past ten years, there has been growing support for White Separatism movements in America, Canada, France, Hungary, and Russia, which is spreading to many other nations.

An hour browsing Twitter shows that Hitler's "Final Solution" is still strongly supported by white nationalist groups. Posters espousing hatred for Jews are strongly supported online by conservative-leaning people as "protection of free speech" (despite them leading to deadly violence against Jews).

Especially since 2016, Neo-Nazi groups like The Daily Stormer have been far more active, bulk-dumping anti-Semitic fliers that use swastikas or 1930s-style artistic portrayals of Jews to rally for "global white supremacy." This has occurred across America, Germany, Australia, and Britain in just the past few months, and Neo-Nazis still attack Jews in countries that once fought against fascism.

(I'm sickened just sharing this garbage, but it's important to know that THIS IS STILL HAPPENING TODAY!)

Such posters urge white men (they believe women only exist to cook, wash dishes, and make babies) to hate Jews, blame Jews for attacking an ally of Donald Trump who was accused of rape (but still became a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court and then struck down women's right to bodily autonomy ... again, these men think we only exist to make babies), falsely say that nearly all of President Joe Biden's cabinet is made up of all Jews, or mock the concept of "white privilege" by claiming that a disproportionate amount of Jews are wealthy.

Don't think any of this hatred is bygone history. The hate never fully died away. There are still people who believe "Hitler was right" and the Final Solution needs to be fulfilled. Worse, there are plenty of political leaders out there who not only do nothing to stop the hate from flourishing ... they're actively promoting anti-Semitic rhetoric.

Side note / Rhov's Rant:

Okay, a moment to talk about the claim that a disproportionate amount of Jews are wealthy, because it's a case of using a real fact to promote a false narrative. It's actually a claim that began in 1845 with Alphonse Toussenel, a French writer who promoted socialist antisemitism and argued that French finance was run by the Rothschild family ... which was true, one-third of the banks were run by the Rothschilds.

That's because, throughout the Middle Ages, usury (lending money and charging interest) was forbidden by the Catholic Church. Usury laws still exist, although it's usually contained to only high interest rates. However, at the time, this meant charging any interest at all.

A Christian could run a bank that merely kept a person's wealth in a secure location, but they could not give out loans that charged interest. Therefore, if placing your money into a Christian bank in the 1300s, if you put in 20 coins, you got back 20 coins, unlike today where you make interest based on the success of the bank's loans and interest rates.

So, in the Middle Ages, only Jews were allowed to give individuals, companies, and whole nations loans. The European wars of the Middle Ages up into the 1800s were funded by kings taking out massive loans from Jews, and then either repaying with interest when the war was over, or (as often happened) slaughtering all of the Jews in the region so they did not have to pay back anything.

Banking could be dangerous, but highly profitable, and only Jews were allowed to create banks that dealt with borrowing and lending.

So yes, Jews really did run a disproportionate amount of the French banks in the 1800s. And yes, Jews really do make up a larger amount of wealthy people in America compared to how many Jews live here.

Yet like how there is a valid historical reason why most French banks were run by Jews, there is a historical reason why a disproportionate amount of wealthy people in America are Jewish, and that is...

THE FUCKING HOLOCAUST!

Richer Jews managed to book passage and fled to America, while poor Jews were slaughtered by the millions in Europe. So the fact that there are many rich Jews in America isn't shocking at all.

They're the ones who MANAGED TO SURVIVE!

It doesn't mean ALL Jewish families are wealthy due to some Illuminati cabal. (Hell, I wish my husband's family were millionaires! Then we wouldn't be living in such a crappy, tiny apartment.)

You could just as well claim ALL White Male Christians are wealthy due to the power of Kentucky Fried Chicken, and conspiracy theorists could point as proof the fact that Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Warren Buffet, and Bill Gates are all White, Male, Christian, and live in America.

The real advantage is that Jews tend to be better educated. Jews realized, in a world that wanted (and frequently tried) to exterminate them off the face of the planet, education was their key to keeping food on the table. They took daring investment risks because what have they got to lose when Christians kept burning down their house every year as part of their pre-Christmas revelry?

So yeah, Jews seem to have a disproportionately large representation on Forbes Magazine, not due to "White Genocide" but due to centuries of oppression culminating in the Holocaust. Throughout most of European history, Jews were not allowed to own property or work in many business fields. Banking was one of the only jobs legally available, so of course many became bankers.

They literally had no choice!

References:

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/the-germans-initially-planned-to-send-jews-to-madagascar-then-decided-not-to.html

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-madagascar-plan-2

https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/historian-nazis-wanted-to-deport-all-jews-to-siberia-and-ukraine

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/09/sterilizing-a-child-for-a-better-life/279765

https://www.washingtonblade.com/2015/04/17/egyptian-court-okays-deportation-of-gay-foreigners

https://apnorc.org/projects/immigration-attitudes-and-conspiratorial-thinkers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_genocide_conspiracy_theory

https://www.counterextremism.com/content/european-ethno-nationalist-and-white-supremacy-groups

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/salvini-italys-minister-of-fear-and-the-new-fascism-37067742.html

https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/sites/default/files/Jobbik-Party-Fact-Sheet-final.pdf

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-echoed-hitler-speech-withdrawing-paris-climate-accord

https://www.theroot.com/why-white-separatism-is-on-the-rise-1790898324

https://www.adl.org/resources/glossary-terms/white-separatism

https://www.amren.com/news/2019/09/white-separatism-richard-mcculloch-racial-segregation

https://theconversation.com/dear-white-people-wake-up-canada-is-racist-83124

https://theconversation.com/frances-new-separatism-law-stigmatises-minorities-and-could-backfire-badly-162705

https://worldcrunch.com/world-affairs/ethnic-separatism-russia

https://www.jns.org/houston-latest-city-where-anti-semitic-fliers-dumped-in-bulk

https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/antisemitic-flyer-in-german-tram-blames-jews-for-the-covid-pandemic-1.9532732

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/315899

https://www.timesofisrael.com/anti-semitic-fliers-found-at-chicago-campus-for-second-time

https://www.syracuse.com/news/2017/10/cornell_university_awakes_to_anti-semitic_fliers_on_campus.html

http://www.jewishledger.com/2019/09/fliers-accuse-jews-9-11-attacks

https://www.latimes.com/socal/daily-pilot/news/story/2022-02-23/area-police-investigate-antisemitic-fliers-distributed-in-huntington-beach-newport-beach

https://newyorklatestnews.com/anti-semitic-leaflets-found-in-multiple-cities-across-the-country-investigation-underway/413883

https://worldnewsera.com/news/politics/antisemitic-flyers-distributed-in-dozens-of-u-s-cities-in-recent-months

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/23/opinions/marjorie-taylor-greene-dangerous-holocaust-comments-obeidallah/index.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphonse_Toussenel

https://wallethub.com/edu/cc/usury-laws/25568

https://jweekly.com/2013/04/12/jews-and-money-the-stereotype-the-history-the-reality-jccsf-series-explores

https://judaism.fandom.com/wiki/Nittel_Nacht

------

So heavy ... but so important.

Now for something lighter.

For Halloween, I put out a narration of Edgar Allan Poe's "Lenore." This sets up the backstory to his most famous poem, "The Raven" (which I'm working on editing now). I'd be honored if you checked it out.

I have been thinking about doing narrations for a long time. Like, YEARS! I think it is something that I would enjoy doing, but only if people are actually interested in hearing my voice.

(Side note: I have no idea what is going on with my accent. I do NOT normally sound semi-British! If anything, I normally have a faint Southern twang. I liked the accent, though. It felt natural for this type of poem.)

https://youtu.be/9aP4KlCYkSc

Do I have to say like and subscribe like a YouTuber? Shiver!