Published at 6th of May 2026 6:46 am

Chapter 948: What Remains

This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl

Bruno returned home after a brief trip to Paris. He had settled the matters that required his attention. And when he arrived at his family’s estate, he found himself isolated in his office once more.

How many years? How many hours, had he spent throughout them all secluded away in this room. With only the occasional disruption by his wife.

Few had ever stepped foot in this room besides himself and Heidi. And those who had were usually men of global importance.

The medals, the photographs, the uniforms, the room was a living museum to a life lived on the battlefield.

A life lived on the battlefield... Is that what his life was, is that all it had truly been? Bruno sat there for a long while in silence until he heard a knock on his door.

He knew exactly who disturbed his peace now, and frankly, he desired it.

"Come in...."

Heidi entered the room, two glasses in her hand. But to Bruno’s surprise it was not beer contained in them, but water. She placed one cup down in front of the man, and took a seat in front.

"So... our grandson seems to be in a mood. He has been sitting outside by the fire, gazing at the mountains all afternoon. If it weren’t for the fact that his mother and sisters kept bringing him water, he’d have suffered from heatstroke by now. What did you do this time?"

Bruno looked up at the woman, and he could tell she wasn’t being playful with him this time.

"I didn’t do anything, he did what was required of him, I simply refused to interfere. He could have chosen her, and I wouldn’t have stopped him."

Heidi’s brow raised, her eyes looked over Bruno as if trying to pry out his identity.

"Uhuh... The man who spent his entire life waging wars to preserve the Reich would not interfere if his grandson had chosen to ruin those plans by marrying the woman he loved and not the one that was most politically viable. Sounds about right...."

Bruno rolled his eyes at his wife’s sarcastic tone and took another sip of the water in his cup. Looking down at it in disgust.

"I’m old Heidi...."

"I know... hence the water." She said with a taunting smirk. One that couldn’t help but alleviate a small portion of the weight Bruno felt in his chest.

"What I meant was that I’m too old to be micromanaging everything that happens in the world. I’ve spent my entire life fighting for the victory I have already achieved. Not just in wars, but building a new foundation for a better world. Brick by brick I laid it, carefully, meticulously.... If it can’t stand without my direct input, then everything I have ever done was for naught. Karl Franz disproved those fears with his choice."

Silence existed between them momentarily.

"Then you should be happy?"

"How could I ever take joy in my grandson’s misery?" Bruno said, his voice shifting low and quiet as he continued to stare at Heidi.

She sipped her own drink, not paying her husband direct attention. Instead, she looked at every painting, every photograph, every medal, and relic of war taken from some foreign soil.

This wasn’t an office, it was a museum. Perfectly organized chronologically. She walked over to table nearest to the door. Picking up a pristine, but antique picture frame. A black-and-white photo of her and Bruno on their wedding day.

She laughed and shook her head, they were smiling looking into each other’s eyes as the photo was taken. She remembered that day almost as if it were yesterday.

Back then, photographs took a long time to set up, it was why smiling was rare. Few could maintain such a pose for so long. But they were so young, so in love, and by looking at each other, all they could do was smile.

She placed the photograph downand looked at the next one. There, Bruno had graduated from the Main Prussian Cadet Institute, just before he shipped off for the Orient.

He looked calm, stoic, emotionless. But his eyes told a different story. He was eager, and... a bit fearful for what was to come.

The next photograph was taken in the East. Bruno held his rifle in his hand, he wore the bars of a Captain on his collar.

The photograph was taken after a small skirmish with the local remnants of the rebellion. In the photograph, he was smoking a cigarette, covered in sweat, mud, and grime. He wore the webbing of the infantry and carried a Karabiner 98a along with a C96 pistol holstered at his waist.

The photograph had made headlines back in the fatherland at the time. The Prussian Junker captain who disregarded protocol and decorum to fight with his company at the front.

It had been a large part of why Bruno’s career skyrocketed so quickly. What he did in the Orient early on had completely shaken up the traditions of warfare as the civilized world had known them during the 19th century.

But Heidi saw something else... a look that became increasingly present with every war photograph Bruno had taken throughout his life.

The lines beneath his eyes, and the darkness within them. She looked at each photograph, one by one... Every campaign, theater, and war waged. Every battlefield Bruno had stepped foot on that was preserved through history.

It told an increasingly grim story. In the end, she sighed as she placed the final photograph down. One taken of him just after he had come home from the Second Weltkrieg.

Bruno could tell something was bothering her, and he was quick to pry.

"You seem unusually melancholy today... Is everything all right?"

Heidi nodded and sighed as she sat back down in front of her husband.

"Yes, those photographs you have kept all these years have always been a bit hard for me to swallow."

Bruno didn’t speak. He knew where this conversation was heading, he had known it in silence for a long time. And Heidi had known it too. They had gone decades without ever speaking about it.

But no longer...

"Every time I look at these photographs, I am reminded that a part of you died every time you left my side. And all I got in the end was what was left of the man I had always loved, supported, and watched march into war again. But it’s fine, I have long since made peace with the fact that this... this is how it was always meant to be, huh Bruno?"

There were no words... No apologies to be made, no condolences to be given. Nor any tears to be shed between them. Because in truth those tears had been shed dry decades ago.

Bruno could only nod and whisper the truth they had never spoken.

"I am afraid so...."

Heidi chuckled bitterly as she reached into the cabinet and pulled out two bottles of beer, popping off the caps she poured Bruno a drink first, and then one herself.

"Sometimes I wish you hadn’t done it...."

"If I hadn’t neither of us would be here... We were destined to lose Heidi... If I hadn’t interfered there would be no Reich... There would be no Prussia... And whatever remained after the flames of war had burned it all to the ground, wouldn’t be a life worth living."

She was perhaps the only one in his entire life that Bruno had been entirely truthful regarding the second set of memories that had always haunted him. That had always compelled him to go fight, to build, to prepare for the next fight that had yet to come.

When she thought of the night, he revealed it all to her, it had felt so surreal. And she had chosen to believe him, nonetheless. She had lived to see the tides of history change away from the course where they were naturally headed.

She had lived to witness Bruno sacrifice himself so that fate would lose its control over the world.

And she remembered the words he had spoken to justify the immense weight of the burden he carried even now.

"And yet... you still lived it."

Bruno scoffed when he heard these words. Shaking his head and laughing bitterly.

"I survived it... At least until I no longer could. I had nobody to love, nobody to cherish, and there was nobody who could be considered worthy of such affection or loyalty. In the end, I died bleeding out in the streets of a country I no longer recognized. Killed by the failures of an occupied government which had forsaken its people."

Heidi nodded her head... not only in understanding, but in comfort. The picture he painted of the world he had averted from becoming reality. It almost seemed worth it. But there was only one person who could truly answer that question.

Heidi finished what remained of her beer and placed the glass down on the counter. She looked Bruno squarely in the eyes and asked one simple question he had not even managed to ask himself.

"Was it worth it? Every sacrifice, every life lost, every battle waged, every desire denied? Was it worth it Bruno?"

Bruno didn’t answer immediately, he looked around at the room, the museum of his life’s achievements. He studied every photograph, every uniform, every honor earned. He relived an entire lifetime in that moment, and every act partaken.

"Absolutely, I would not change a thing even if you gave me the opportunity to do so," Bruno said these words without any bitterness, remorse, or regret.

Despite the melancholy that had overcome her moments before, Heidi could only smile genuinely, with warmth, as she stole her husband’s beer, or what remained of it, and drank that too.

"Then I suppose I have no complaints."

Bruno chuckled when he heard this and shook his head.

"And that is why I love you...."

Share