6th of June 1941
A lone silhouette stood before the tall window, hands clasped behind his back.
Below, the city stretched out in grey light. A wide boulevard ran straight toward the Thames, its bridge cutting across the river in the distance. On either side of the road, spaced with military precision, red flags hung motionless in the cold air. German flags. In London.
Paul did not move.
He had stood in front of many windows in many conquered capitals. But London was different, and he had never quite been able to name why. Perhaps because the British had believed, longer than anyone else, that it could not happen to them.
"And they continue to," he whispered, his gaze drifting further into the distance.
Then one of the flags dropped. Not in ceremony. Forcefully, suddenly, torn from its pole by hands from below. Paul's eyes moved to the boulevard and he saw it. A mass of people, hundreds, then thousands, filling the street from one side to the other, moving as a single body directly toward the building. They screamed. They shouted. Some had climbed the flagpoles, others had set the flags alight, the red fabric curling and blackening as it fell.
Paul studied them without expression.
"Men mostly," he said quietly. "But also women. Some teenagers."
He watched a burning flag collapse onto the cobblestones below.
"They seem unhappy with their King."
The voice came from behind him, carrying a familiar mockery that had not changed in years.
"Do you know why I brought you here, Churchill?"
Churchill sat on the sofa, a cup of tea placed before him, arranged as though he were a guest rather than a prisoner. He looked at it but did not touch it.
He did not answer.
"I thought so."
Paul walked toward him slowly, stopping just behind the man. Churchill did not turn around.
"I wanted to test something," Paul said. "You may call it an experiment of sorts."
Churchill tilted his head, twisting to give Paul a look of pure, tired contempt. "What is it. What torment do you wish to put me under, Jaeger?"
"No torment. Just a question, and two answers."
Paul began to move, drawing slow circles around the sofa, his voice unhurried, almost conversational.
"I am no fool. We control this country on the surface. The infrastructure, the military, the institutions. And yet." He paused. "Rebel groups. Partisans. Politicians who meet in basements and print pamphlets in the dark." He gestured vaguely toward the window. "The resistance does not come from weapons."
He stopped.
"There is not a single figure in this country who has yet shown submission. Not one face that the British people respect, that they have rallied behind for years, that has stood before them and said: it is over."
Paul looked down at the back of Churchill's head.
"Once they see that figure broken, they will not fight for a ghost. They will grieve, and then they will move on. People always do."
Churchill said nothing for a moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was low.
"Then why am I still alive?"
"Because killing you would make you a martyr," Paul said simply. "Not a symbol of submission, but of vengeance. A dead Churchill is worth ten thousand recruits to the resistance. A living one, standing beside me, is worth nothing to them at all."
Silence.
"That is why I need you to submit to the new government. To speak publicly. To stand before your people and tell them that the fight is finished."
For a long moment Churchill was completely still.
Then it began. A low sound, almost a cough, that built and built until it broke into full, genuine laughter. It filled the room, enormous and defiant, so unexpected that even Paul went still.
"Hah. Hah." Churchill's shoulders shook. "HAHAHA."
The laughter echoed off the walls. Outside, the crowd still roared.
Churchill wiped his eye with one finger, composing himself with the unhurried dignity of a man who had decided, long ago, exactly who he was.
"Never," he said, the laughter still alive in his chest.
"Of course," Paul said.
He laughed too. Quietly, almost warmly.
Churchill's smile faded. His eyes narrowed. There was something deeply unsettling about a man who laughed with you rather than at you.
"That," Paul said, "is where my experiment comes into play."
Outside the Party Headquarters, London
"Assemble!"
"Orderly lines! Move!"
Dum.
Dum. Dum.
The sound came before they did. A deep, rhythmic one that resonated off the marble facades of the building.
Then the great wooden doors swung open.
They came in rows. Long, perfectly measured rows of men in black uniforms, steel helmets pulled low, shadows cutting across their faces. They moved without urgency, without noise beyond the drumbeat and the precise impact of boots on stone. Hundreds of them, filing out onto the boulevard and spreading into formation, line after line, until the entire street was filled from one end to the other. Batons in their hands.
The mob that had been tearing down flags minutes ago suddenly stopped. The shouting died. Not gradually. Suddenly, as though the air itself had been drawn out.
Silence fell over London.
The drums continued.
Dum. Dum. Dum.
For a moment they just stood there.
Then, out of each of the lines, a few men stepped forward, breaking the perfect formation. Each man held a launcher, raising it in unison without a word of command.
A lone voice carried over the boulevard.
"Fire!"
The shots came simultaneously. Not toward the crowd. Upward, at a steep angle, the canisters tumbling through the grey London sky.
For a fraction of a second the crowd watched the arc overhead, confused.
Then the first canister hit the cobblestones and the gas began to pour.
White clouds bloomed across the boulevard, low and fast, swallowing the front rows of the crowd before anyone understood what was happening. Then the screaming started. Not the defiant shouting of protest, but something rawer and more desperate. People clawed at their eyes, stumbled into one another, the neat mass of thousands dissolving instantly into chaos.
"Teargas, not anything barbaric."Paul explained, both he and Churchills were standing before the window.
Churchill looked at Paul with absoulute anger in his eyes.
"It stops when you speak. It would be the best for all."
"Will you....or will you not?"
Paul turned his gaze back to the street.
Below, the long rows of black uniforms moved in unison, each man pulling his gas mask into place with a single practiced motion. The lenses reflected the distant chaos, turning their faces into something expressionless.
Silence.
"Disband!"
"ROAAR!"
The lines broke forward.
Hundreds of men surging as one, closing the distance to the disoriented crowd with terrifying speed and discipline. The protesters had no formation, no coordination, half of them still blinded and coughing, stumbling over one another in the dissipating gas. They had come as a mob and now they scattered as individuals.
Churchill's breath fogged the glass.
He had not moved. He had not looked away.
"Enough," he said. The word came out quietly, almost to himself.
Then louder. "Enough!"
Paul nodded once. A small, unhurried gesture toward the officer standing beside the door.
Moments later, the black uniforms began to reappear through the thinning gas, emerging from the side streets and scattered crowds in steady, disciplined columns. They assembled before the building once again, line by line, exactly as they had stood before. Helmets straight. Hands at their sides. As though nothing had happened at all.
The boulevard was nearly empty now. Torn flags lay in the gutters. A few shoes here and there.
"Nobody died," Paul said. "Make sure that stays like that."
He patted Churchill on the shoulder once, almost gently, and stepped back.
The very same picture.
Churchill in his suit. Paul behind him in his military uniform, one hand resting on Churchill's back. The same composition, the same quiet dominance.
Only the setting had changed.
They stood on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.
Below them, the space, now lined not with protesters but with crowds held back by cordons, journalists, cameras, the machinery of a moment being recorded for history. The red flags still hung from their poles, many had been replaced exatly for this occasion.
Churchill stood at the railing and looked out over his city.
The crowds below stretched as far as he could see. Cameras. Journalists. Faces he did not know, looking up at him the way they always had. Waiting.
He gripped the railing once, briefly, then let go.
"Dear people of Britain..."
His voice carried across the square with its full, familiar weight. The crowd stilled completely.
Churchill paused.
He still did not know. Of course he had his script, the words Paul had prepared, measured and careful and utterly final. He had read them three times in the car.
But standing here, above his city, with ten thousand faces-
The sound was small. Almost delicate.
He did not hear it so much as feel it. A sudden, impossible pressure in his chest, high and to the left, that stole the next word of his. His hand came up instinctively, fingers finding the source of the warmth spreading beneath his jacket.
He looked down.
Blood.
Then his legs gave way.
The railing caught him for a moment, then didn't.
The square below erupted. Somewhere in the middle of the British crowd a single voice screamed one word before being swallowed by the chaos.
"TRAITOR!"
On the balcony, Paul stood completely still.
His hand had shot out, gripping the wrist of the guard beside him, who had lurched forward trying to catch Churchill before he fell. Paul held him back without a word, without looking at him, his eyes fixed on the square below.
The man stopped struggling.
Neither of them spoke.
Paul lossened his grip, tilting his head towards the guard besides him. A strange look in his eyes.
"Who would dare?"
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