Work Text:
Prussia loved war. He said so often, proudly, loudly, and everyone assumed they knew what he meant by it. “God, I love war,” he’d say, part curse, part prayer, part oath. And he let them all imagine it, him riding a tall horse with a bight sword in bright armor, high above blood and muck, untouched. And it wasn’t wrong exactly, he did love sharp blades and strong horses and sun on the battlefield. But it was so much more than that, because the truth, the ugly, dirty, real truth, was that Prussia had no illusions, no romantic fantasies. The truth was that Prussia knew war, the truth was that when Prussia said he loved war, he actually meant it.
War was straight lines and pressed uniforms and an orderly chain of command, yes. But war was also the moment when all of that broke down, the chaos of the battlefield, running bodies, friend and foe indistinguishable apart from the colors of their ripped and bloodied uniforms. War was blood under your fingernails and mud flung in your eyes and the scent of sweat and fear and death, and Prussia loved it, every single ugly, granular unsung moment of it.
He understood that something was broken in him.