Ekos 8 - Das Mädchen im Kleid Weißen

Posted on Sunday, 18 April 2021 - 3:10pm by Crewman Leopold Eberhardt & Lieutenant JG Adrianna Eberhardt
Edited on on Sunday, 18 April 2021 - 3:13pm

Mission: Operation: Neu Reich

Adrianna turned around instinctively and swung the rifle round and aimed it at a figure in the distance. She fired back twice watching the person fall. With any luck, it was the shooter. She failed to see anyone else, but that didn't mean they were working alone.

"We definitely need to keep moving, the hunt has start-" Looking around her words faded from panicked command to silenced shock. She lowered the rifle slowly as she looked back at the siblings properly. Her jaw went slack as she put the pieces together.

The moon was low and the sun would be up soon but Adrianna could make out blood. A lot of blood. Who's was it though? She wasn't sure if it had been from a reunion of the pair, since Leopold was injured anyway, or if something more sinister had engulfed what would have been a bittersweet moment of freedom. They both looked like a bloodied mess. Had Leopold really been that injured to begin with? How had she not noticed?

"Leo...?" she asked, almost in a whisper, looking frantically between him and Emilia.

Sunrise was not too far off, it was becoming light enough that shadows were taking more shape, and colors albeit muted were distinguishable from shades of blackness. Emilia's white lace dress had already been fairly noticeable against the dark midnight indigo sky as it shifted through a spectrum of azure overnight, but the morning was soon breaking simultaneously with Leopold's heart. The violet of a new dawn was within arms reach as was the haunting image of a girl's body in a ghostly white dress with a ghastly wound.

"Ade," Leopold called out, his voice was tremoring like a catastrophic seismic event. His knees buckled beneath him as he fell to the ground in the valley of rolling green hills with the mountains standing in the background, high tower, and mightiful spectators to a gruesome scene. An angel had fallen, a resistance flickered as her life source left her soul, that mortal coil which had been wrapped so tightly around her had begun to loosen its grip on her existence, no longer harming her; she would soon be set free of this world. "Ade," Leopold called out to his soulmate as he scooped the girl into his arms.

It had been his sister, the angel in the white dress, nearly lifeless in his arms as he turned and caught sight of his beloved rushing towards her. "She's been shot. She's losing too much blood" he reported as if he had been a field medic for several years through wartimes. "We need to stop the bleeding," he said scrambling to bring her body up the hillside and toward the mountains that were nearest, her blood-soaked his hands and nourished the fields of white edelweiss in full bloom, the blood painting their white canvasses with droplets of scarlet.

"Emilia, mein schatzi. Nein, nein, verlass mich bitte nicht," the man wept holding his dying sister. She was turning paler by the moment, soon to be as delicate as the flowers beneath them. He called her name, his little treasure, and pleaded with her not to leave him, but her fate was not in his hands nor was it in his. The stars had sealed it and though he refused to yield to their will, it was a futile resistance of an inevitable ending.

Adrianna didn't know what to do. She had seen death, but she had not witnessed devastation of this magnitude. A girl so young, with so much life ahead of her, to resort to a grim fate that riddled this planet worse than a plague.

"Leopold," she whispered, reaching for his arm, "we cannot leave her behind, but--" Adrianna couldn't finish her sentence, the woman, regardless of how much she was fearing for her life, she couldn't bring herself to drag her fiance away from a grief like this, it would be cruel.

If they were on the ship, if only they had Starfleet with them. Emilia may have stood a chance, but out here, Emilia was subject to death being considered mercy.

Adrianna stepped quicker to walk with Leopold and opted for silence. Nothing she could say would help. Nor was there anything she could do. She simply watched the exchange of panicked dispare and pleadings for the girl to be spared.

The girl clung to life as though she understood how precious time was. She was not dead, not yet, and Leopold had managed to carry her up a hill and towards a cave. One that he had not rigged to explode. "Let's get her inside," he said to Adrianna. He knew that they had to leave her, but he could not bring himself to ditch her there just to die alone. He was her brother.

"Le," the girl struggled as she looked up into his eyes. She barely had any life to her eyes, but they still had flickers. "I want to see one more sunrise," she added choking and struggling to breathe. Her brother had carried her just inside the cave entrance, its opening faced where the sun would be poking through in a few moments. "Sing to me, one last..." Leopold pressed a finger to her lips as if to tell her to rest, that she didn't need to say anything.

He looked at Adrianna as he got to his knees and rested his dying sister's head on his lap and ran his fingers through her hair. He wanted to grant her her dying wishes whatever the cost. If she wanted to see one last sunrise, he would give his life for her to see just that one more, and if she wanted to hear him sing as she faded away, then there was nothing that would stop him from one last act of brotherly love.

Adrianna knelt down near the pair. She was unsure what to do, or if they needed space. She just simply rested her hand, softly on his arm. Her brown eyes looked out to the sunrise forming as the sun fought with time to seemingly give Emilia more time.

She looked back to Leopold and seeing him attempt to stay strong was heartbreaking. She could feel tears forming in her own eyes. Whilst they stung in retaliation to her blinking them away, the woman wanted to stay strong for Leopold. He'd need this.

Agape styled love was one that Adrianna could only have ever dreamt of for herself. But with love, there came tragedy and the Italian was strong, but this sense of emotion was stronger.

The others who had escaped had scrambled after the gunfire, undoubtedly heading to safety and refuge in the mountains. The Ekosian Nazis would be coming, but none of that mattered to Leopold. Not in the moment, not in the slightest. His sister and her last moments of life took precedence. He continued to hold her knowing she was looking out at the sunrise which was beginning to happen, small beams of light touching the white fields of edelweiss.

She wanted him to sing to her one last time, and the only song that felt suitable was one that he would sing to her when they were younger, more innocent, but still harshly aware of the world around them. It was what he would sing to her before bed when things were grim. He crooned a bit and softly went with it as he ran his fingers through her hair.

"Edelweiss, Edelweiss
Every morning you greet me
Small and white, clean and bright
You look happy to meet me."

The sun was beginning to rise enough that the light hit the girl's face and her blood-stained dress. The sunlight kissed her skin with warmth, but as Leopold ran his hand down her cheek, he felt how cold she truly was. His voice cracked and trembled as he knew this was goodbye.

"Blossom of snow, may you bloom and grow
Bloom and grow forever
Edelweiss, Edelweiss
Bless my homeland forever."

The sunlight was eclipsed by several figures in Ekosian Nazi uniforms with Sturmgewehr 44 assault rifles pointed at him and Adrianna. Emilia's body was cold, limp, and lifeless. Leopold's only thought was that he was grateful that she passed before the Nazi stormtroopers arrived. He wanted her last memory of her homeland to forever be a peaceful one, a hopeful one, not this cruel reality.

Adrianna wiped her eyes with her arm quickly and then stood up slowly, raising her arms in surrender. "Please, one more minute," she bravely pleaded with the group. Adrianna looked to Leopold and his sister's peaceful corpse, "one more minute, then take whatever you need."

"Bury her," the one quipped back. "But make it quick or you can make three plots, and have a nice long family reunion" he added. It was either bury his sister there and now, or they all would be slaughtered on the spot. Surrendering was the only option to keep them physically alive, but a part of Leopold died with his sister.



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