Chapter Text
He closed his eyes.
Too late to turn back. Too late to become who he once wanted to be.* Too late to undo all the bloodshed, even if he were to fall here.
The world had already been slashed open by his sword, guided by the spirits she summoned. 1
So be it. If he plunged into the abyss this very day, he would take his enemies with him.*
His grip tightened on the pistol.
He raised the barrel up to his temple. For once the noise from the world outside the command tent—the clashing of muskets and the screams of his troops…were gone. Out of 49,000 men, only 3,000 remained, and Berlin is
open to enemy attack. Everything was lost, and every trusted confidant has left him. Even Michael Gabriel.
Inside the tent, it was dead silent except for the ringing in his ears.
What hope was left for him still? Farewell forever! 2
Just a brief moment and all my pain would be over. *
He tried to calm his heartbeat, to make his mortal flesh accept the fact that it was a misfortune he was still alive. 2
Just about when the perpetual ringing in his ears stopped, at the corner of his eye he saw a glimpse of ghostly white.
Maria Theresia!
She stood there in a white dress that exposed the neck and shoulders, stained red by the deaths of her soldiers, of his soldiers, of innocent civilians, of his horses shot and killed in chaos. In the chaos he created with his own hands.
Her face resembled most of his memory of seeing her for the first time twenty-three years ago at the court in Vienna, but fatigue and wrinkles have crept up due to all those years of stabilizing her succession, attempting to
guard her lands, and the birth of numerous children. An otherworldly gleam surrounded her figure to suggest she was only in his head. Her spine-chilling glare hit him like the musket balls that perforated his coat, and spoke as
hauntingly as if the dead had borrowed her voice.
“I saw through from the beginning that it‘s just a facade, and how lost and small you feel in truth.”*
No. I need to prove to the world I am justified and undefeatable. I can only do this through war. Behind his facade, what was left of him was only just enough to keep him standing.
“You hide behind wars, attacking me again and again, so that no one can see the wound in your soul.”*
No, stay away!*
His true self was meant to be hidden from the world. Could he acknowledge even a faint thread of hope of being understood at last, albeit by his archenemy’s phantom? Her eyes saw right through him, just like when they had first exchanged glances in the state room of the Hofburg, when he bowed and attempted to kiss her hand to seal a Habsburg-Hohenzollern marriage alliance offered by the Emperor Karl VI. He lost any possibility that day to be met by those eyes with anything resembling gentleness, to have almost thought them beautiful.
He thought of twenty years ago, when he had mocked her with amusement upon hearing the news that her first three children were all daughters.
If I were her husband right now, she would be the Queen of Prussia,* not a winter queen who will melt away in the summer.*
Yes, yes.
It is she who lost her greatest chance.*
A faint smile crept at the corner of his mouth before he heard her voice again.
“I will now put an end to what you have begun.”*
Swiftly, she picked up the pistol he had dropped onto the stump in his shock at her earlier appearance and aimed it right at his chest.
His thoughts fractured and distant memories surged forward in a burst: the times when his father beat him after he discovered his secret flute-playing, the days of imprisonment in Küstrin after the execution of his beloved Hans, the brief, impossible promise of a new future when Austria’s letter of marriage alliance arrived that had defied his belief of predestination for a fleeting moment.
He will not give in. He always stands firm, even in a hail of bullets.* He will not give up fighting, even if he goes down with it. Even if he drags the world into the abyss. Even if he drags her into the abyss with him.
He thought of his brother Heinrich, of his successor—his nephew. He will continue to fight. If he is no longer here, then Heinrich will, then Friedrich Wilhelm II will. His successors will carry this war to the very end* and see the day when Prussia holds Silesia firmly in her hands.
He opened his arms to the pistol’s muzzle and looked her in the eye. In the reflection of her pupils, he saw himself staring back.
He needed to be the son that his father wanted him to be. He needed to be the Prussian king the world sees him as.
He opened his arms to the truth that had taken shape in his obsession. Her. Woven from a tangle of conflicting emotions he could no longer name.
He needed to prove her wrong—needed her to understand him—needed her to see him—
Never.
He could never afford to be seen. Not by her.
As long as he had not won, this was not his final blow. He knew she would think the same.
This is not the last blow. This will never be the last blow. Not until he wins and everything is over.
The next strike will bring you death.*
Her phantom was suddenly at the entrance of the tent. She opened her mouth to speak the same words.
“The next strike will bring you death.”
“The next strike will bring you death.”*
He stumbled outside, everything in his field of vision a blinding red.
Death! Death! Death! Death!* It echoed through the battlefield, blooming through every living thing that set foot upon that ground.
Her image disappeared, so did the pistol she took in her hands.
He dropped to his knees.
And still, it was not the last blow.
And still, death did not end.
Footnotes:
1. From Goethe’s “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, an allegory for things that go out of hand, also referenced in the number “Dass ich liebe, hasse ich” return to text
2. From Friedrich II’s actual letter to his old tutor, Count Karl Wilhelm Finck von Finckenstein, at the end of the Battle of Kunersdorf return to text