Cold

Werner had begun to cry, but he didn't want to. It wasn't because of his fear of other men seeing him, it was because he hated it when he cried even though he was in the right. He forced himself to hold back the tears. The second he left the building his task got harder. It was snowing and the snow swirled around him, biting his cheeks and stinging his eyes. He plowed through the snow-storm, head held low. It was colder that day then any other had been before. 

Had he looked up and around him he would have realized that it was hard to make out Auschwitz. The KZ around him was covered in snow, and the snow in the air even blocked his vision from seeing the fences. It looked like a ghost town, or an old block of run down-houses. But Werner didn't see the picture. He fought against the strong wind. He wouldn't make it to the dining hall or to his residence, it was too cold and windy, he might freeze on the way. 

The place where he and Nikolai had made the ring wasn't too far away, he was unsure how to get there exactly but he knew it wasn't too far away. He turned right and then left and then right again. The anger that had left him hot-headed and boiling was completely gone and had given way to a cold depression. 

He found the building and entered it. It didn't take him long to throw on the oven, and in another quarter of an hour he was sitting beside it, curled up in his coat. The warmth made him feel better but also worse. He wasn't distracted anymore. He was forced to think about what had happened with Wojciechowski. Had he really been in the right?

Nikolai was running around the dining hall like a headless chicken, searching for Werner. He asked everyone (and by everyone, he even asked the Lagerführer) if they'd seen Werner. He was freightened that the boy could have gotten lost outside and was freezing to death. Even Dr. Ziegler was in the hall, but he too had no clue where his assistant was. Nikolai grabbed his great coat and mittens. "I'm off to look for Werner. If I don't come back in an hour I probably froze to death." He added with a grin. The soldiers he'd been dining with wished him good luck in finding their comerade. 

It was mighty cold, but Nikolai had been through worse. Northern Russia got even colder. When he'd been a child he'd been on his way to school once, he had to walk down a few streets and through a small strip of forrest. It wasn't far; maybe a fifteen minute walk. It had been at least minus fifteen degrees, and he was bundled up to the extent that you wouldn't tell if there was a child under the covers or a short grown man. He'd passed through the woods quickly, he was a bit late. He hadn't noticed the man on the ground in front of him until he'd tripped over him. He'd scrambled up off the dirt road. And there he was, a grown man, half-covered in snow and frozen to death. Nikolai had run back to town as fast as he could and had rung the doorbell to the nearest house. He'd told the woman who'd answered what he'd seen and she immediatally called for help. But the man was long dead. The family was gratefull to know what had happened to him, but Nikolai had always wished that he hadn't been the one to discover the corpse. 

He was afraid to see Werner that way. He didn't think he could survive Auschwitz without his friend. He meant so much to him. No, Killian's fine. He promised himself. I bet he went into some building or another. 

Kolya hurried in the direction of the doctors corner, he tried to think of places on the way that Werner might have gotten into. And then he remembered the building with the oven; the place they'd made the ring together. He picked up his pace. 

Nikolai saw the oven and the curled up figure in front of it through one of the windows. He let out a sigh of relief. 

Werner looked up as Nikolai burst through the door, letting in a gust of wind and snow. "Killian! I found you!" Nikolai cried out. He slammed the door shut and locked it, to make sure the wind wouldn't blow it open, then he ran over to Werner. "Are you alright, Killian?" He asked. Werner looked at Nikolai. The Soviet's eyes were dark. 

"I'm alright." Werner answered but his voice broke. Nikolai sat down next to him and gently took his friend into his arms. There was something about the way Nikolai held you that would calm anyone down. Maybe it was the fatherlyness or maybe it was simply his strong core and arms. Werner rested his head on Nikolai's shoulder. He began to cry. "What's wrong, Killy?" Nikolai whispered caringly. 

"I think I'm a Nazi, Kolya." He sobbed. Nikolai couldn't surpress a smile. 

"We are all Nazis, Killian. I'm one too. I'm a communist nazi, I'm even more fucked than you are." His joke made Werner laugh, but his laugh was short-lived. 

"I don't want to be like this." 

"I know. I don't either." Nikolai kissed his friend on the cheek. "The day that Nazi Germany loses the war against the soviets, which I'm sure they will, we'll be put in court. People are going to hate us and judge us, Killian. But we'll have a lot of chances to make it right again."

"You can't make this right again." Werner peeped quietly. Nikolai nodded and then shrugged. 

"It's never going to be alright what we did, but the world has to keep going."

"I can't do any of this anymore." Werner sobbed. He had a relapse of tears again. Nikolai gently rocked him back and forth. 

"Yes you can, Killy." He soothed him. "You're trying your best. You're helping a doctor find a cure for cancer, you're going to try and bust him out of this cursed place." 

"I shouted at Wojciechowski today. I might have killed him if no one had gotten between us." Werner wailed. Nikolai was taken aback, he hadn't expected it. But he didn't show his suprise. He simply took a bit longer to answer. 

"I bet Wojciechowski understands that you're feeling terrible about everything...he'll get over it. And I doubt that you would have killed him. You don't seem like the most physicall man." Kolya laughed loudly after saying it. "And stop holding onto me like that, it feels extemely gay." 

Werner sniffled but he laughed too. And he let go of Nikolai, sitting up straight next to his Russian friend. "You really don't think I would have offed him?"

"I know you wouldn't have." Nikolai reassured him. He squeezed his hand. "You're much too good a person to do that." 

"Thank you Kolya." 

"And listen to me, Killian. If you ever feel terrible, like you feel now. Just talk to me, I can make you feel better." 

"Thank you, Kolya."