A Gentleman's Ghost - Prologue
Author's musings:
So, this is actually my first fan fiction. I normally only tend to read and only very rarely even give any comments. But I was inspired to write this story because of Blaine's unique characterisation in Season 2. It always struck me as odd how a teenager in the 21st century could have such a gentleman like behavior and he seems to be from a time long past. It went from there and this is the result.
This is going to be a longer series of Blaine's journey on the one side and of Klaine's relationship in modern (read Glee) times and in the past. I don't wanna give away too much yet but this story is going to work with a Time Table as it progresses as the chapters won't be posted chronologically. There might even be some chapters which can be read as one shots. I have very much already mapped out in my head and in notes but the writing process will take its time (I don't always have time to write or enthusiasm and university can be quite a bother sometimes, too).
Whew, thanks for everyone who took the effort to read my rambling :) But now onto the first glimpse, the Prologue! And please forgive me for any mistakes, I tried to beta myself ;)
A/N: I'm in desperate need of a BETA. My first language is not english, so I'd appreciate it very much if it could be someone whose first language is english, so they can look out for mistakes especially in the grammar/incorrectly-used-words department. Please just drop me a message if you're interested!
Title: A Gentleman's Ghost - Prologue
Rating: NC-17? (not too sure how graphic this is going to be yet, but better safe than sorry)
Pairings: Klaine, Blaine-centric
Spoilers: Complete Season 2, AU from then on
Warnings: character deaths/suicides/murders (d'uh it's a ghost story! so death isn't as final here), violence (so far for the whole series)
Word Count: ~ 2,000
Summary: Blaine Anderson was unlike any normal teenager Kurt had ever met. His boyfriend had more manners than was considered the norm and he seemed to be from a time long past. He was actually too perfect to be real.
A Gentleman’s Ghost
Prologue
---January 31th, 1943 - Stalingrad---
Snow had been falling for over a week without any break. Frozen snow was crunching under his boots as Kurt walked over the ground.
His feet were wet and cold, the leather of his boots not enough to keep the frost away anymore. Snowflakes were falling onto his neck, between the helmet and the collar of his coat, melting into cold drops and running down his back.
"Richter! Get your ass over here!“ yelled a soldier, a few feet ahead of him. Kurt shouldered his gun and hurried over to his comrades, who were all crouched down behind one of the higher snow hills they had dug up the night before. Kurt’s regiment only consisted of roughly thirty men anymore, many already having fallen in the long months of the battle beforehand.
They almost had no munition left, food had run out two days before. The Red Army had advanced and gained more territory in the last two days than in any of the weeks before. The commander of their regimen had left roughly about three hours ago, to try to get through to the head quarters, but he hadn’t returned.
It was rather likely that they all might die today, but Kurt didn’t fear death anymore. The last months in the pocket had shown him enough suffering for a lifetime. The daily struggle to stay alive became harder with each day. It was already too late for desertion, you’d be killed by the Red Army before you even made it to the outskirts of Stalingrad. They were circled with no way out, the only possibility of survival was captivity, but how high were chances that you weren’t just shot on the spot?
So in all likely-hood, Kurt was as ready to die as he’d ever been in his life. He had no one to return home to, his mother having died last year. He hadn’t even been home, he had only received a letter from the local district committee stating that his mother had passed away. Kurt had no one to live for anymore. The only other person to live for, the person Kurt had been looking for his entire life, he had never found. That was the only true regret he had in these last days of his life. His death would likely be the 31th January 1943, dead at the age of twenty one.
And as strange as this may seem, all these twenty one years he had been looking for this one person he had never met. It felt like a part of his life was missing.
Kurt Richter was born on the 9th October 1923 in the Weimar Republic, in Eisenach, to a judge and his wife as their first and only child.
His parents loved Kurt dearly: until he was ten years old his life had been full of happiness and joy. He had many friends and his father was a respected man in their town. His best friend was a jewish girl named Rachel. She was as ambitious in winning their games as he was and she never turned down a challenge.
Later, when Kurt had become a soldier, the memories of his childhood always consisted of warm summer days, when him and Rachel stayed outside the whole day, playing hide and seek in the nearby woods and eating berries, before coming home in the evening to his parents, and his father would teach him about history and politics (Kurt didn’t understand everything but he tried very hard), while his mother was cooking.
Kurt’s life changed in 1934. His father had seen the change coming for some years already, but how fast it happened and how democracy vanished from one day to the other, in the course of merely a year, had been shocking. The changes were gradual, but there was a new feeling in the country, more aggressive and destructive than before.
When Kurt was 14 Rachel and her family vanished. All the people, including his father and mother, seemed know what happened, but when he asked no one would tell him anything. Only when Kurt was on his knees in front of his father, begging him, he received an answer: that it had been better this way and that Kurt shouldn’t try to look for Rachel anymore, he’d never see her again.
Kurt had known that his parents had never approved of his friendship with Rachel, “because she was jewish“. But that day, in front of his father, Kurt felt like he had lost not only his best friend, but also his loving father. Kurt never mentioned Rachel to anyone again.
It was the same with the boy he had always dreamed of when he was younger: as long as he didn’t mention him to anyone, there weren’t any problems.
Kurt could remember this boy as long as he had been alive: or more accurately - a memory in which the boy talked to him, was his very first he could recollect. People sometimes say, your very first memory is of the moment you were born. If this was true, his birth would have been very pecuilar: in the memory Kurt was standing on a graveled path in a courtyard, in front of a very expensive and old looking mansion. He couldn’t see himself or what he was wearing, only a boy running to him (he seemed to be older already, most likely a teenager), the face of the boy not clearly distinctable, wearing a uniform and screaming something. Kurt couldn’t hear him, but he felt as if it was something important the boy was trying to tell him.
Kurt was five years old when he first told his mother about the boy. She only chuckled, looked at him like a parent humouring their child and told him, that it must have been a dream of him becoming a respected boy like his father was in his youth and going to a prestigious school. His mother instructed him to always listen closely to what his father was teaching him in the evenings, so his dream could one day become true. Kurt insisted that it couldn’t have been a dream, because of the boy, he knew him! But his mother only looked at him with stern eyes and told him that he couldn’t know any boys this age and that there was no such school in town or nearby where he could have met a boy in a uniform.
He was unsure after the talk with his mother and as he got older, he convinced himself that this memory had always been a dream he had to have had when he was younger. His younger mind had mistaken a dream with a memory. This also explained why it always was a recurring dream he had once or twice a year. As Kurt got older the dreams became less frequent, until he didn’t have them anymore and had long since given up trying to tell his parents about them.
When the war began in 1939, Kurt was preoccupied with other worries: His father wanted to fight for the “good cause, so the pride of the country could be restored again“, so he left his family and they only got letters from him very sparely. At the same time, Kurt realized that he wasn’t interested in any girls, like other boys his age were. His mother always told him that he couldn’t find a nice girl because he hadn’t forgotten about Rachel yet and that he really should try to do so.
Kurt just knew it was because he hadn’t found the right person yet. Rachel had been very dear to him, that much was true, but he had always known that she wasn’t the person he had been looking for. Kurt had lost her, but the person he was looking for he had never found so far. The yearning for a special someone became stronger and stronger over the years of war.
Just before Christmas in 1940 his mother got a letter: his father was dead. She was devastated, but Kurt almost felt relieved. He didn’t know why and he felt guilty because of it. Two months later he just knew that the only person left in his world was his mother and they didn’t get by very well. They needed money, but Kurt was still in school. So his mother convinced him to be a soldier. She told him how very important it would be to end what his father had begun and how they couldn’t forsake the faith of the “Fuehrer“. Kurt did enlist in the army - but only because of his love to his mother. Never anything else. He saw how she had lost much of her strength because of his father’s death. He was scared that if he refused and she lost faith in him, she might become only a shadow of her former self. Also, maybe, just maybe, if he got to see different places in the country other than his hometown, he might find the person he was looking for.
Kurt started to shiver after having lain still in the snow for three hours. It must have been mid-day and there was no sight or sound of the enemy. One of his comrades sighed and nugded at the top of the snow hill with his gun. They were all waiting for anything to happen. Suddenly the man next to him, who was looking over the hill pulled himself up and started screaming:
“Angriff, Angriff! Die Russen kommen!“ and bullets flew past above them, the air filled with the sound of gun shots and screams. The man tried to take aim with his gun, but a bullet shot into his head and he fell back towards the ground. Blood splattered onto the side of Kurt’s face and he panicked. There already were only so few left of them and men were dying right and left of him. If he stayed here the Russians would get to him without a doubt, it was impossible to hold the line.
Kurt stood up; he only felt the pain of the bullet lodging itself into his chest before he flew backwards because of the momentum. He crashed backwards into the frozen ground and gasped.
Bullets were still flying through the air above him and there still was the rushing of soldiers past him and shouting - but it sounded like filtered through a haze: muffled and faint. His ears were filled with his own loud, gasping breathing. Kurt felt cold and the snow around him started to feel warm and wet.
He heard a shuffle of snow and a loud gasp that wasn’t his own. He sluggishly turned his head to the direction of the sound:
And there he stood.
The young man from his dreams, clothed only in a black wool coat and a hat. No military attire. Kurt strained to lift his eyes enough to see his face - and it was beautiful. Warm, hazel eyes, wide with shock were staring directly at him. The boy (man?) had black, curly hair and his mouth was forming a whispered word, again and again: “Kurt...“
It sounded utterly broken, but it was the same word he had never been able to hear the boy utter in his dreams.
Feelings of peacefulness started to fill Kurt up, he smiled at the person and whispered with a broken voice as blood started to fill his mouth:
„Oh, there you are. I’ve been looking for you...“
The boy started to stumble towards him, but Kurt couldn’t see anymore. A black haze started to cloud his vision and his body felt ice cold. He shuddered and lost consciousness.
------ January 31th, 1943 - Stalingrad: Kurt Richter dies in the Stalingrad Pocket --------