Chapter 10 GIDEON #2
And maybe—dammit—maybe she wasn't wrong. Maybe the ruins hid her better than any crowded street would. It was a shitty kind of safety, but it was the only kind she had. Before I could say anything else, a voice called from somewhere inside the rubble.
"Inga?"
Her spine went rigid. "Klaus?"
A small figure appeared between broken bricks. Then another behind him, also small, keeping back like he didn't want to be seen. Klaus clambered forward, clutching the edge of a wall for balance, his clothes dusty, his face drawn.
"Inga," he said shakily, "I'm sorry…"
She rushed toward him. "Klaus? Are you hurt?"
He shook his head too fast. "Bastian and his friends came. They… they trashed our home."
My blood turned to fire. "They what?"
Klaus looked at me shyly and ducked his head. "They took my chocolate."
"He caught a Hershey bar a couple of days ago," Inga looked up for just a moment before she turned back to her brother. "Are you okay?" Urgently checking him over with quick, trembling hands.
"I'm okay," he whispered. "I just—wanted to save some. For later. They grabbed it. I couldn't stop them."
The shame on his face… It hit me straight in the gut.
"Who is Bastian?" I asked, my voice low, dangerous. I already felt the dragon shifting under my ribs. The bastard would rue the moment he dared mess with what was mine. Mine?
Before I could go any further with that particular train of a headache, Inga explained, "He's the leader of the Trümmerkinder."
"The Trumm—what?"
"Trümmer… rubble. Rubble children." She sighed. "Orphans. Kids who live in ruins. They survive in packs, like stray dogs."
I stared at her. "Wait—he's a child?"
She nodded. I felt fury coil so tight in my chest I had to take a breath to keep from growling. "A kid did this to him? To you?"
"They're desperate," she whispered. "Hungry. Angry. Lost. It's just how things are. I'll take it from here—"
"The hell you will," I cut in.
Her eyes widened.
"Show me," I demanded.
Because I didn't care if they were six or sixteen, no one hurt this little boy.
No one terrified Inga. Not while I was anywhere in this godforsaken city.
And the dragon inside me?
He lifted his head, hungry for justice.
"Take me to them," my voice surprised me with its roughness. "I'm not letting this happen again."
She didn't answer right away; her mouth opened, then closed again, like she couldn't decide whether to tell me to go to hell or to thank me. But before she could find the words, Klaus looked up at me with wide, shining eyes. There was no fear in them; it was like he was staring at Superman.
The same look my little sister gave me when I walked through the door in uniform the first time. Molly. God, I hadn't let myself think her name in weeks.
"Hier lang," Klaus said suddenly, gesturing into the maze of rubble—this way.
"Klaus," Inga warned sharply. "Nein."
But the kid shook his head. "Komm."
He didn't speak English, but I didn't need a translator. The meaning was clear enough. He meant follow me.
Inga sighed, defeated. "He wants to show you," she murmured. "Our—what's left of our home. And… what the boys did."
We began to climb through the rubble, Klaus scrambling like it was familiar terrain.
Inga kept close behind him, explaining under her breath, "He was so proud of that chocolate.
He's eaten a small bit each day and said he'd save the rest for tomorrow.
" Her voice cracked. "He… he was trying to save it for me. "
The dragon inside me stirred, furious, pacing behind my ribs like he wanted out.
Before I could speak, a movement flickered in the corner of my vision, small, quick, darting between the rubble.
The same shadow I had noticed earlier. I tensed, ready for trouble.
Until the shape stepped into the moonlight.
It was just another child. Maybe ten. Maybe younger; Berlin shrunk its kids terribly. Thin as wire, limp in one leg, eyes too old for his face.
Inga exhaled. "Axel," she said softly.
He approached hesitantly, then held out something in his dirt-smudged hand. A melted, smashed, but unmistakable bar of chocolate.
Klaus gasped.
Axel thrust it toward him awkwardly. "Hier… für dich." His voice cracked.
Inga translated quietly. "He… he says he got it back for him."
Klaus stared at the bar, then at Axel, unsure. Hope and disbelief battled across his little face. My teeth clenched. I wanted to demand how, wanted to know what those other boys had done to him. But I already sensed the answer.
Inga knelt, and the shaking of her voice hit me in my core. Even more so when she looked up to me to translate what she had said to him. "Axel… they'll hurt you when they find out you took it back."
He lifted one shoulder, half a shrug, half resignation. "Sie tun mir immer weh."
"They always hurt me," she translated, her throat tight.
His next words were choked, just like Inga's when she explained what he said, "He says, at least this time…" she swallowed hard, "At least this time, it'll be worth it."
Every part of me went still. The dragon rose—slow, dangerous—like smoke curling through my bones. I'd seen beaten-down men in war zones. Prisoners. Refugees. Soldiers with nothing left.
But a child?
A child saying they always hurt me, like it was a weather report?
Something inside me tore.
Inga reached for Axel, her face raw with compassion and anguish. "Axel…"
Klaus pressed the chocolate back into Axel's palm. "Halb?" he offered shyly.
Inga blinked back tears. "Half?"
Axel looked stunned. Then he nodded, so gratefully, as if Klaus hadn't handed him candy but a crown. My throat burned.
This wasn't what I had pictured years ago from the cockpit of my bomber. Back then, the world was clean lines and orders, targets on a map, red circles marking where the enemy lived. I'd told myself it was soldiers down there, factories, rail lines. Men fighting men.
But here it was—what war really hit.
Small hands. Thin shoulders. Kids who fought over chocolate because childhood had been ripped out from under them.
A cold weight pressed against my ribs. The dragon inside me shifted uneasily, as if even he didn't know what to do with the guilt swelling in my chest. I shoved it down. Focused my anger somewhere safer.
Toward the boys who had done this, who'd hurt these kids, stolen from them, terrorized them. But it didn't stay anger.
Not for long.
Because looking at Axel and Klaus standing side by side—two half-starved boys offering each other the only sweetness they'd seen in years—I felt something tear open.
Something protective and dangerous. I realized, with a force that knocked the wind out of me, that I'd never wanted to shield anything the way I wanted to shield these two kids. And her. Inga.
I looked up.
She was staring at me with an expression she'd never shown me before; it was unguarded and raw.
A glimpse of the soul she'd been fighting to protect with every breath she took.
In that one look, I saw everything. The pain she carried like a second spine.
The exhaustion carved into her bones. The hopelessness she hid from her brother.
The fierce, stubborn determination that kept her standing in a world designed to crush her.
And the truth hit me like a cannonball: She wasn't just a German.
She wasn't the enemy. She was a person. A survivor. A sister.
Someone worth protecting, worth saving, worth… more.
I'd never been this torn in my life.
Part of me wanted to scoop Axel and Klaus up right then, carry them away, feed them, build walls around them until the bruises faded and the fear went quiet. But the other part—the soldier, the dragon, the man who understood what hungry packs of boys could turn into—knew this wasn't finished.
And wouldn't be.
"Show me," I said again, my voice rougher, deeper, something less human bleeding through.
This time, Inga didn't argue. She just nodded, a tiny broken motion, and turned to lead me deeper into the ruins.