Pomp and Circumstance

June, 479 IC, Odin

Graduation itself was a subdued affair, which everyone attended, despite a significant fraction of the senior class spouting ugly, green-healing and fading bruises and scrapes. Everyone had gotten yelled at and reprimanded, but the IOA had decided that it would be a far worse image to not allow so many students to walk at graduation, so the verbal reprimand for fighting had ended up being the only punishment. It helped that in the confusion of the fight and resulting breaking up of the fight by the police, no one could quite pinpoint who had started it.

Gautier perhaps kept his mouth shut for his own protection. Sitting in the front row of graduating students, the two contesting factions glared daggers at each other, but all outbreaks of violence at the actual event were avoided.

The weather was beautiful, cloudless and sunny, and the full heat of summer hadn’t yet arrived. Everyone was arrayed out in their dress uniforms in stiff plastic chairs on the green, in front of a constructed stage on which the ceremony was conducted.

Reuenthal gave a fine speech. He was one of the few students who was not ugly-bruised, but only because he had been able to avoid getting hit. Yang didn’t have to speak: after a debacle involving Eisenach failing to drop to third place the year before, someone in the IOA administration had decided that it would be far less of a headache to have only the valedictorian speak at graduation, and not the second place.

Yang remembered Eisenach’s smirk and message that he had sent to Yang on that subject: “They’re just lucky I never bothered to take first. I could have, but I figured I’d spare them the trouble.”

“How generous of you,” Yang had said.

After the speeches, everyone walked across the stage in rank order to receive their diploma and commission. Although their class had started out 1500 students strong, their number had dwindled to a mere thousand over the four years, many students unable to handle the rigors of the work and the social pressures of the school.

When the ceremony was over, most of the students (no longer students!) went to find their families. Though Reuenthal had been right next to Yang at the conclusion of the event, he somehow immediately vanished into the crowd.

Yang tried to find him, but, before he could, he was stopped by someone who came up to him and grabbed him from behind. He stiffened, his first instinct being that it was someone attacking him, but then he realized that the hands wrapping around his midsection were far too low to be from another IOA student, and the voice yelling, “Hank!” definitely belonged to a ten year old girl.

Yang extracted himself from Hildegarde Mariendorf’s vice-like backwards grip with some difficulty.

“Fraulein Hilde,” he said with a wide smile when he was finally able to turn around and look at her properly. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

“My dad wanted it to be a surprise,” she said. “Oskar sent us the invitation and told us not to tell you we were going to be here.” Hilde was dressed in a smart little suit jacket, with her hair tied back in a short ponytail. She could have looked like the younger brother to half the students here.

“I’m glad you did come, though I’m sure it wasn’t very exciting.”

“It was,” Hilde said. “I liked Oskar’s speech.”

“He did a good job,” Yang agreed. “Have you seen him? I lost track of where he went.” Yang and Hilde both peered out through the crowd, though Hilde had a significant disadvantage, coming up only to Yang’s shoulder, and Yang himself was a little shorter than average.

While they were both looking around for Reuenthal, Count Mariendorf appeared, finally having made his way through the crowd to where his daughter and Yang were standing.

“Congratulations, Sub-lieutenant von Leigh,” the count said.

Yang rubbed the back of his head. “Thank you, sir. I’m, uh, grateful that you came.” Grateful was not exactly the right word—Yang was perpetually overwhelmed by the kindness that the count showed to him for what felt like no reason.

“I wouldn’t have missed it,” he said with a smile. “If I’m allowed to say such things, I’m very glad to see what a fine young man you’ve become over the past couple of years. “

“Thank you, sir,” Yang said, feeling fiercely awkward.

“Is Oskar around?” the count asked. “I would love to congratulate him, as well.”

“We were just looking for him,” Hilde said.

“Hm. He’s always been a little slippery.”

“I’ll thank you for coming on his behalf,” Yang said. “I don’t know if he would say so in person, but he is grateful for your friendship.” The last word wasn’t quite right, but Yang would have to take it.

The count smiled. “I know,” he said. “I try not to tie myself in knots worrying about him. My wife always did, for all the good it did either of them.”

The mention of the late countess was a sad one, but the wound had healed a little over the past three years. Yang just nodded.

“He’s probably still around,” Yang said. “We can look for him, if you want.”

“Of course. I’d like to take you both out to lunch, if you don’t have any pressing concerns on your time.”

“Not at all,” Yang said. “We’re allowed to stay in the dorms for the next two days, until we ship out to our first assignments.”

“It’s a shame you don’t get the summer off,” the count said as they pushed through the crowd, looking for Reuenthal.

“No rest for the wicked,” Yang said.

They didn’t find Reuenthal, though they did run into first Wahlen and his family, then Bittenfeld and his. Yang made the introductions with more or less grace, and Hilde seemed happy to meet Yang’s friends. It was impossible to miss, when walking away, the booming voice of Bittenfeld’s father (somehow even louder than his son), asking, “Now, why couldn’t you make friends with a count like your number two over there?”

The whole ordeal made Yang cringe.

Still unable to find Reuenthal, Yang eventually let Hilde ride on his back, to see if she could see him over the crowd. When she said no, Yang said to the count, “Maybe he went back to the dorm already? I can go look, if you want.”

Mariendorf had a pensive look on his face. “We can look.”

So Yang led the count and Hilde back towards the senior dorms. “Did you want to come in?” he asked, holding the main door open.

“No, I think there’s no reason for me to invade young men’s privacy,” the count said with a smile.

“I want to see Oskar’s room,” Hilde protested.

“He might not even be there,” Yang said. “In which case, you’d only see the outside of his door, which is nothing special.” He glanced at the count, asking permission, since Hilde was not letting go of his sleeve. The count waved his hand, and so Yang and Hilde entered the dorm.

The place was weirdly quiet and empty feeling, like the building itself was holding its breath as it waited for this group of students to leave forever. Yang and Hilde trooped up the stairs, passed Yang’s room, which he pointed out, and then turned the corner towards Reuenthal’s.

As soon as they did so, shouting became audible. Hilde stopped in her tracks, as though she had been struck, and she grabbed onto Yang’s arm, hard enough that her little fingernails dug in through his sleeve.

“Are you okay?” Yang asked.

“That’s Oskar’s dad,” Hilde whispered.

“How do you know?” Yang asked, but Hilde didn’t get a chance to answer before there was another round of shouting.

“And what do you expect me to do with all of this shit?” Reuenthal’s father yelled.

“Hilde,” Yang whispered, “Do you remember the way we came in?” She nodded. “Go back out to your dad, okay?”

She shook her head and clutched Yang’s arm. Yang was torn in several different directions. He wanted to somehow help Reuenthal, but he knew that Reuenthal would not want his help. He wanted Hilde to not see whatever was happening just down the hall, but he also couldn’t get her to go away.

“Can you stay here, then?” Yang asked. “I need to go deal with this.” He pried her fingers off his arm as gently as he could. “If anything bad happens, you go run to your dad.”

The shouting down the hall continued, with Reuenthal’s father yelling something about Reuenthal not leaving things in his house. Yang straightened his back and put a smile on his face. Rear guard actions, wasn’t it?

He walked towards Reuenthal’s room, where his father stood menacingly in the open doorway, the same height as Reuenthal, but broad where Reuenthal was lithe. Yang ignored him completely.

“Hey, Reuenthal,” he said, looking into the room where his friend stood next to a few neatly taped cardboard boxes, which presumably contained all of his belongings—the room was stripped bare, aside from the few crisp and new sub-lieutenant uniforms hanging up in the closet. “Want to go to lunch?”

Neither Reuenthal nor his father seemed able to process Yang’s sudden presence. The intrusion made the yelling stop, at the very least. Reuenthal went through several emotional shifts as he saw Yang, conveyed through the tiny twitching of his eyes and the way he held his shoulders: he had been standing stiffly under his father’s tirade, then his eyes lit up briefly when he saw Yang, but that didn’t last-- as soon as rational thought kicked in he became defensive. That tiny fraction of relief that Yang saw was all he needed, though, to keep him on his course. Reuenthal could be upset later.

“Who the fuck are you?” Reuenthal’s father asked, getting right into Yang’s personal space. He was sweaty up close, and smelled like he had been drinking earlier, though he didn’t seem drunk now.

Yang continued to ignore him, looking steadily at Reuenthal, as though his father didn’t exist at all. “It’s past lunch time, and I’m hungry, and we’ve got nothing better to do, right?” Yang asked. “Let’s go. My treat.”

“I said, who the fuck are you?” Reuenthal’s father repeated.

“I have to deal with this,” Reuenthal said, voice very tight.

“No, you don’t,” Yang said. “Come on.”

“Is this one of your ‘friends’?” Reuenthal’s father asked, turning towards him.

“Yes, sir,” Reuenthal said.

Reuenthal’s father snorted derisively and pushed Yang’s shoulder, hard. Yang took a single step sideways, but continued to ignore him. Reuenthal’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “Let’s go have lunch,” Yang said once again. He was taking it as a kind of victory that Reuenthal hadn’t yet told him to leave.

“Clearly, all your friends are as worthless as you are,” Reuenthal’s father said. “Though the fact that anyone tolerates you continues to amaze. You should leave,” he said, to Yang. “He doesn’t want you here.”

“Leigh,” Reuenthal began, his voice steady but with an undercurrent of pleading. “I can talk to you later.”

“I want to have lunch now,” Yang said. “What do you need to do in order to come get lunch?”

“He’s not leaving with you,” Reuenthal’s father said.

“I would like to put my stuff in the car, so that it can be taken home,” Reuenthal said. “That’s all.”

“I’m not taking your shit,” Reuenthal’s father said.

“Just put it in the basement.”

“I’m not putting it anywhere. I don’t know what right you have to keep things on my property.”

Yang, who continued to steadfastly ignore Reuenthal’s father, wanted to yell, ‘Because he’s your son,’ but he resisted the temptation.

“I’m sure we can find somewhere to put your stuff,” Yang said. There was no way that the Mariendorfs would refuse to take Reuenthal’s things, or they could even be shipped to Mittermeyer, if it came to that.

“I can’t impose,” Reuenthal said.

His father laughed. “You’re damn right you can’t.”

“Please just take the boxes, sir,” Reuenthal said. “I’ll come get them out as soon as I can.”

Yang stepped into the room, bent down, and picked up one of the boxes. It wasn’t too heavy, so he suspected that this one was filled with Reuenthal’s bedding and perhaps school uniforms that he would no longer need. Or maybe Reuenthal wasn’t so sentimental as to bother keeping those. “Where do you want me to put this?” Yang asked. “I’ll take it where it needs to go.” He figured that anything to break this stalemate would be better than standing around perpetually having a yes/no argument.

“Leigh,” Reuenthal said again. “I’ll deal with it.”

“I want to help. Where do you want your stuff to go?”

“There’s a car in the lot out back,” Reuenthal said after a second, when it became clear that Yang was not going to back down. “The green one.”

Yang took several steps forward, but found his passage out of the room blocked by Reuenthal’s father. “Excuse me,” Yang said, finally forced to acknowledge his presence.

“That is not going in my car,” he said.

“I’m taking it downstairs,” Yang said. “Please excuse me.” He attempted to duck under Reuenthal’s father’s spread arm, but the arm came down hard and knocked the box out of Yang’s hands, sending it tumbling to the floor in the dark hallway.

Yang ducked out into the hallway, now that he was unencumbered by the box, and picked it up from the floor. He took a couple steps down the hall, then Reuenthal’s father grabbed his shoulder, yanking him backwards. “That is not going in my car,” he repeated.

Yang went back to ignoring him, and tried to shrug out of his grip, but he couldn’t quite escape, and Reuenthal’s father was bruising his arm. “Please let go of me,” Yang said, with as calm and flat of a voice as he could.

“Put the box down,” Reuenthal’s father said.

“It doesn’t belong to you,” Yang said. “No.”

The flat denial was apparently too much for Reuenthal’s father, and he grabbed Yang’s collar from behind and threw him to the floor. Yang hit the ground, and dropped the box, but wasn’t seriously injured. He was about to start picking himself up when he heard Hilde yell, “Hank!” and come charging down the hall.

“Hilde!” Yang shouted. “Go downstairs!”

But Hilde positioned herself with her hands on her hips in front of the prone Yang, in between him and Reuenthal’s father. She glared up at him.

“Oh, and the little Mariendorf is here, as well,” Reuenthal’s father said. “How cute. It’s amazing how you’ve amassed such a following of useless hangers-on, Oskar.”

Yang scrambled to his feet. “Do not speak to her like that.”

“Then leave,” Reuenthal’s father said. “I have no idea why you’re here.”

“Leigh, please take her out of here,” Reuenthal said, and now there was a real kind of fear in his eyes, flicking between Hilde and his father.

Yang put his hand on Hilde’s shoulder, and bent down to speak in her ear, “Please go back downstairs, fraulein.”

She shook her head vehemently. Reuenthal’s father laughed, an ugly, bitter sound. It was cruel, Yang thought, that his voice was just like Reuenthal’s in its timbre. But Reuenthal never sounded like that.

“Sir, please let me put my things in the car. That’s all I want.”

“All you want?” Again, with the bitter laugh. “That’s never all.” He advanced a few steps towards Reuenthal, which on one hand was a relief because it took him further away from Hilde, but on the other hand, he was moving closer to Reuenthal, which seemed like towards the eye of the storm.

“Reuenthal, we can put your stuff somewhere else,” Yang said. “Don’t worry about it. Please.” He knew the idea of accepting that kind of help was abhorrent to Reuenthal, but he wanted this situation to end.

“Leigh, please just go,” Reuenthal said. “I can deal with this myself.”

“And what are you dealing with?” Reuenthal’s father asked, taking yet another step forward. Reuenthal didn’t step back, but he half met Yang’s eyes over his father’s shoulder.

“I am just trying to pack up my room, sir,” Reuenthal said.

“What are you looking at?” Reuenthal’s father asked suddenly.

“Nothing, sir.”

“Look at me when I am speaking to you.”

“Yes, sir,” Reuenthal said, but continued to look behind his father at Yang, an unreadable expression on his face.

That was all it took for Reuenthal’s father to lose what was left of his composure, and with one quick forward motion, he punched Reuenthal in the stomach, hard enough that the impact was audible. Reuenthal could have dodged or blocked the punch, but he didn’t, just standing there and taking it. There was a brief moment of silence, then Hilde wrenched herself out of Yang’s grip and threw herself onto Reuenthal’s father, whaling on his back with her skinny little arms.

Yang leapt for her at the same time that Reuenthal’s father turned around. He would probably have hit her, had two things not happened almost simultaneously: Yang grabbed Hilde’s waist and pulled her out of harm’s way, and Reuenthal punched his father hard in the mouth. He was sent crashing backwards into the wall, knocking over two of Reuenthal’s boxes.

Yang kept a firm grip on Hilde, despite how much she was trying to wiggle out of his grasp. Reuenthal’s father got to his feet slowly, rubbing his jaw and opening and closing his mouth like a snake.

“You’ll pay for that,” he said, then turned, storming out of the room, past Yang and Hilde. When he was gone, the tension in the room changed, and Reuenthal glared at Yang.

“I told you to take her downstairs.”

“I’m sorry,” Yang said, though he was apologizing more for everything that had just happened than he was for not leaving.

In his moment of distraction, Hilde escaped his grasp, and ran towards Reuenthal. She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his shirt. “I’m sorry you had to see that, fraulein,” he said, and patted her back. He didn’t have any natural graces around children, but he had regained his composure enough to at least say that much to the sniffling Hilde. “It’s okay.”

They did end up having lunch with the count, who looked at Reuenthal’s stiff face and silently agreed to not discuss whatever had held the three of them up inside the dorm for so long. He would hear the story from Hilde, probably, but that would be later, and Yang wouldn’t have to be around to explain how exactly the whole thing had gone so wrong. At least Hilde hadn’t gotten hurt-- that would have been inexcusable-- and she would probably paint both Yang and Reuenthal in the kindest possible light, granted by her childish innocence and overall devotion to the two.

Later that night, though, as Yang packed up his own room, throwing out huge stacks of papers and old notebooks, he wished that Reuenthal would speak to him. He knew he had severely overstepped his personal bounds and that Reuenthal would probably not forgive him for that, but he didn’t want to leave on such an unspeaking low note.

He kept glancing at his phone, hoping that Reuenthal would message him, and with every set of footsteps in the hallway, he hoped that it was Reuenthal coming by to knock on his door. It wasn’t, though, and eventually Yang laid in his bed in his now too-empty room and stared up at the ceiling. When the clock read two in the morning, and he was completely unable to fall asleep, he finally gave up on waiting for Reuenthal and texted him.

> are you up?

To his surprise, Reuenthal did text back after a minute or so.

> can we talk?

There wasn’t a response to that question, but Yang assumed that his willingness to text back in the first place was as much of an invitation as he was going to get. He got out of bed and walked in bare feet down the hall to Reuenthal’s room. He thought about knocking on the door, then just tried the handle, in order to not make noise in the hallway. The door opened.

Reuenthal was sitting on the floor. He had his boxes back open in front of him, and he was carefully going through them, sorting his honestly meager possessions into two categories.

Yang sat down cross legged on the floor in front of him and just watched for a minute. Reuenthal picked up the chunk of pyrite and copper that had decorated his bookshelf for several years and turned it around in his hands a few times, then put it in one of the categories, though Yang couldn’t figure out what the categories meant.

“What are you doing?”

“Determining what I can mail to Mittermeyer,” Reuenthal said. “I’m not going to spend hundreds of marks that I don’t have on postage.”

“You should have asked the Mariendorfs--”

“I am not going to ask the Mariendorfs to loan me their pity,” Reuenthal said. His tone was positively venomous.

Yang fell silent and just watched. Reuenthal continued to sort. One of the categories ended up far larger than the other, encompassing most of Reuenthal’s belongings. The small pile, Reuenthal began to neatly pack into one box-- mostly important documents, a couple books, some data disks, one or two trinkets that were either small or sentimental enough to live. It was a ruthless pruning, and Yang felt pretty bad watching it.

“I’m sorry for causing you trouble,” Yang said finally, as Reuenthal picked up the trashed objects and tossed them into the other empty boxes.

“It’s fine,” Reuenthal said shortly.

“You are upset at me, though.”

“You don’t have to stick your nose into things,” Reuenthal said. “There’s a reason that I didn’t want you to see any of that. It’s not your problem.”

“If I held that same stance, I’d have bled out on the ground of Neue Sanssouci several years ago,” Yang said, a wry note in his voice.

“The two situations are quite different.”

“I’m not sure how you expect me to walk away from a situation when I see that you’re…” He didn’t know how to end the sentence. ‘Suffering’ felt too melodramatic, and ‘in trouble’ felt like the wrong tone completely. “I think that doing that would make me a pretty poor friend.”

“But a less stupid man,” Reuenthal said.

“You threw a punch at Gautier for me. I could say that that was equally stupid.”

“Gautier is an inconsequential person.”

“At the risk of making you angrier at me,” Yang began, “I will say that your father is as well.”

Reuenthal didn’t say anything for a moment, just began writing Mittermeyer’s address on the side of his one packed box with a thick black marker.

“It’s hard for me to get angry at that, because it’s almost hilariously untrue.” There was no trace of humor in Reuenthal’s voice whatsoever.

“Why do you say that?”

“He’s my father.”

“He doesn’t own you.”

“He thinks he does.”

“What he thinks is his problem.”

“And yet, somehow, also mine.”

Yang shook his head. “You’re leaving. You’re going to have a career and surpass him in every way. You never have to speak to him again.”

“And then what will I be left with, Leigh?” Reuenthal asked.

Idly, Yang picked up the marker that Reuenthal had dropped on the floor, and twirled it around in his hands. “People who actually care about you.”

“Small comforts.”

“You don’t have to insult me, and you certainly don’t have to insult Mittermeyer.”

“It was not intended as any kind of insult,” Reuenthal said.

“I’m not sure what it was intended as, then.”

Reuenthal didn’t have a response to that, and looked across at Yang with an inscrutable expression.

After a moment of silence, Yang said, “It might not be enough for you, but it has to be enough for me. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Will it be enough in five years? In ten?” Reuenthal asked. “You’re about to leave me, Wen-li.” And there was the root of the bitterness, the fear that this all was temporary.

Yang closed his eyes before speaking. “What do you want me to tell you?” he asked.

“The truth.”

“There’s no such thing,” Yang said. “Especially not about the future.”

“I know.” Reuenthal’s voice was tired-- perhaps Yang had said the wrong thing. He didn’t want Reuenthal to believe that he wasn’t completely sincere in saying that he could rely on him.

“You know who I am,” Yang said finally, trying to elaborate on what he meant. “I would do anything for you. But…”

“But.”

“I told you, a long time ago, that I am a man with the wrong kind of ambitions,” Yang said. “Do you want to tie yourself to my sinking ship? If you do...”

“You’re telling me that there is no other.”

“There’s your own.”

“And you think that that alone would be enough?”

“I believe that you could make it enough, if you needed to. But you have Mittermeyer, and he isn’t nearly so likely to sink.”

“I do have Mittermeyer,” Reuenthal said, sounding somewhat melancholy. “That’s true.” He paused. Yang’s eyes were still closed, but he opened them when Reuenthal said his next line. “But I also said then that I was a man with the wrong kind of ambitions.”

“A different kind.”

“Not necessarily.”

“What are you saying?”

“You would do anything for me.”

“Yes.”

“Then I would do the same for you.”

“It wouldn’t be against your nature?” Yang asked, meeting Reuenthal’s eyes.

“No.”

“What are you saying?” Yang asked again, very quietly.

“Aren’t some things better left unsaid, around here?” That was the way things had always been, but Yang felt a shift in the air, like the drop in air pressure before a storm. He shook his head, ever so slightly.

Reuenthal reached out across the distance between them, and Yang grabbed his hand. “You have my loyalty, in whatever you do,” Reuenthal said. “If that is enough for you.”

“Yes,” Yang breathed. “It is.”

End of Part One