The rest of October crawled by for Oskar, and November came far too quickly.
It was not a pleasant month.
His wounds, while closing nicely by medical standards, still hurt like hell—especially because he had absolutely no patience for lying still. Every part of him screamed to move, to do, to push.
After the ambush in the park, it was painfully obvious he wasn't a normal human being.
He already knew he'd been reborn into this world, but he had always quietly assumed that beyond that, he was just a man with better information. A clever cheat who knew a few answers to a test no one else had seen.
Now, after bullets had torn through his body and he'd stayed standing like a tree that refused to fall, he could no longer pretend.
Whatever he was, it wasn't, "normal."
He didn't want to think too hard about what that meant. But the feeling lingered at the back of his mind: "Someone chose me."
As soon as he could move without tearing his stitches wide open—which turned out to be only a few weeks after the assassination attempt—he began to "exercise" on the hospital floor.
At first it was just a few sit-ups. Then push-ups. Then more sit-ups. Then squats.
He did them until his muscles burned, until sweat soaked his thin hospital shirt, until the sun outside had begun to set.
The doctors watched in horror.
Nurses followed him anxiously, scolding, begging him to rest, then flinching when one of his wounds reopened and bled through fresh bandages.
When he realised his skin was going pale and sickly from lack of sun, he started walking slow laps around the hospital courtyard in his thin white patient clothes. Soon enough, those walks became light jogs.
The staff were nearly driven mad.
At night, after they had managed to convince him to bathe, eat, and lie down, pain or exhaustion would finally pin him in place. When his body refused to move another inch, his mind wandered.
What exactly was he?
Where did his limits lie?
How had his ribs stopped a bullet?
How had flesh closed so quickly?
How had he stayed on his feet when any other man would have collapsed between the first and second explosion?
And when the doctors quietly told him that witnesses said he only fell after his father hugged him and told him he could rest, he didn't quite know whether to laugh or be terrified.
Even he found it insane.
Some nights, instead of worrying, he allowed himself to dream.
He remembered his first life—his goofy martial arts videos, his childlike fantasies of being some legendary kung fu master. And he wondered: "Could I become that here? In this body? In this world?"
His dreams grew more outrageous.
He saw a future where he was not just a prince, but the Crown Prince—fully in charge, reshaping the government into something sharper and more unified. He imagined German cities full of steel towers scraping the clouds, and rockets planting the Imperial Eagle not just on the surface of the moon, but Mars as well.
He smiled in his sleep at that one.
Then the smile faded.
Because even in his dreams, the truth intruded: "The rightful Crown Prince was still alive."
Wilhelm, his big brother, had tried to have him murdered—and now sat under house arrest in Babelsberg, his image tarnished but not formally disinherited. The official line of succession remained unchanged.
Oskar's expression tightened even in sleep.
His thoughts slid back to the park.
To how easily he had killed those people.
Should I kill him? The question came without drama. Should I just crush his skull like a melon and be done with it?
He'd done worse to strangers in that park without even intending to. Would it really be so difficult to do the same to the man who had tried to have him blown into chunks?
Didn't he have the right to destroy someone who had tried to destroy him? To protect his women, his children, Karl, his people?
He felt the phantom echo of bullets tearing into flesh, the concussive force of explosions, the sickening lurch of the world dimming at the edges.
He remembered Karl screaming and falling, leg bleeding, face twisted in pain.
A line from his first life surfaced in his memory: "I do not offend others, but if others offend me, I will repay in full."
By that measure alone, Wilhelm had long since passed the point where vengeance wasn't just justified—it was expected.
And yet…
Even as he wondered whether he would eventually be forced to wear the crown himself, another thought slipped in:
If his body could shrug off bullets and heal in weeks, if his stamina and reflexes kept rising with no plateau in sight, then just how long would he live?
Would he die at seventy like a normal man? At a hundred? Two hundred, or longer?
The idea flickered through his mind like fever.
An unaging emperor, watching centuries pass, guarding Germany from the shadows, steering it through ages like a living monolith…
The thought thrilled him, but also scared him and made his lips twitch into a faint smile even as he lay half-conscious.
On the outside, he was just a wounded prince doing "too much rehab" in a military hospital.
On the inside, a man who had died once already floated between visions of skyscrapers, moon landings, crushed skulls, and eternal life, unable yet to decide which of those futures he belonged to.
And then reality intruded.
Even through the haze of sleep, Oskar heard it: the low murmur of voices outside his door, the respectful hiss of boots on the corridor floor, the soft creak of hinges.
A familiar feminine tone. A guard answering quietly. The door opening just enough to admit a slender shape.
He wanted to ignore it.
He was comfortable for once, drifting between pain and those impossible dreams—skyscrapers, moon flags, immortality. The last thing he wanted was another round of tears and speeches.
They had all taken their turn already.
Bertha had come often, always on the edge of tears, dramatic and apologetic, blaming herself for "not protecting him enough," crying into his sheets and then laughing through tears when he teased her. He liked her, but even half-dead he found the theatrics exhausting.
His mother came too, nearly every day. Each time she saw him bandaged and bruised, she broke into fresh sobs about "my poor boy" and "this cursed family" and "why must brothers hate each other." Oskar had lost count of how many times they'd had the same conversation.
Luise also came, nearly a fully grown adult now and stubborn, clutching the battered teddy bear he'd given her years ago. She'd sit on his bed, demand he look at her new dress or hairstyle, beg for his praise on the books she'd been reading, the languages she was learning, the exercises she was doing "so I can be strong enough to protect you one day, Oskar." She'd even beaten him once at chess when he was half-drugged, which had been both impressive and humiliating.
Cecilie, Wilhelm's wife, had visited more than once, eyes red, hands twisting in her lap. She didn't come to plead for her husband. She came to ask forgiveness for herself, whispering that she'd seen Wilhelm drunk, shouting, breaking things, but had told herself it was "just something men did."
Oskar had no anger for her, or for her child. He'd tried to soothe her, to insist it wasn't her fault, to make her laugh. Eventually she'd stopped apologising and instead had taken to sitting by his bed, talking softly and even giving him light massages to ease the stiffness in his back and shoulders. Those visits he did not mind.
As for Tanya and Anna—they were too close to giving birth again to be creeping around hospitals at night. He'd banned them from it. They ignored him, of course, but lately they'd grown tired enough that even their stubbornness had limits.
So when he felt a small, feminine presence slip into the room now, his half-conscious mind made a lazy guess: "Bertha again. Another massage. Not the worst way to fall asleep."
He smiled faintly and let his eyes stay closed.
The footsteps padded closer.
No perfume clouded the air, but there was a soft, clean scent—soap, a hint of flowers. The visitor didn't speak. Instead, she moved carefully, quietly. He heard the soft rustle of cloth, the whisper of a shoe being slipped off.
The mattress dipped.
Someone climbed onto the bed.
Onto him.
She moved with care, almost weightless, easing herself to straddle his hips, light as a feather on his bandaged, scarred body. Her legs pressed against his sides, warm and soft. Her hands found his bare abdomen above the sheets—where the nurses had left his torso mostly uncovered to keep the wounds dry.
Small fingers traced over the hard lines of his stomach, then over the bandages on his ribs and chest. Her hands trembled, but they kept moving, as if memorising him by touch.
He let out a low, involuntary sound.
Not pain.
Surprise… mixed with something else.
For a second, he considered snapping awake, throwing her off, demanding to know what she thought she was doing.
And then he thought: "My room is guarded. No one gets in here without the Kaiser's permission. If she's here, she's allowed to be here."
Besides, after weeks of pain, blood, stitches, and grim council talk, the sensation of gentle hands on his skin, of warmth and softness resting against him, was… not unwelcome.
It's just a massage, he told himself lazily. A very thorough massage. Life's been dull enough. Let her have her fun.
He sank deeper into the mattress, letting her explore.
It changed.
She leaned forward, pressing her body down along his.
Through the thin layers of fabric he felt the curve of her against his chest, modest, but warm and real. Her stomach touched his bandaged torso. Her hips shifted in a small, nervous roll that sent a faint tremor through him despite his injuries.
Her hands slid up over his ribs, along his shoulders, to his neck. Fingers circled the base of his skull. She hesitated there for a breath.
He could feel her heart pounding, really hammering, against him.
Their faces drifted closer until her breath brushed his lips, soft and shaky.
"Oskar…" she whispered, voice so tiny he almost thought it came from a mouse instead of a human. "I'm sorry… I know you're tired… but I… I want you to be my first."
His eyes stayed shut. His brain, however, froze like Windows XP encountering an error.
Before he could reboot, she kissed him, although it was just a peck. A Quick, clumsy kiss. Like someone trying kissing for the first time by following vague instructions from a romance novel written by a blind monk.
Then she kissed him again. And again. Each one slightly more confident, like she was learning on the job.
Through the haze of painkillers, exhaustion, and disbelief, Oskar had one very clear thought: "Just what the heck is she doing? I like the act, it's cute, odd yes, but cute."
She drew back half a centimeter, inhaled like she was about to jump off a cliff, and whispered: "Oskar… I love you."
Then she kissed him properly.
Or… she tried to.
Her mouth landed slightly off-center. Then she overcorrected. Then her nose bumped his. Her tongue poked out like it was scared of the dark.
He lay there, half-asleep, half-amused, half-concerned about getting his nose bashed accidentally by a forehead.
He did not kiss back. He mostly endured it the way a parent endures a toddler trying to "help" in the kitchen while holding a knife.
She pulled back, breathless, clearly thinking she had just performed the greatest kiss ever delivered in German history.
"Oskar…" she whispered again, shaking, "…I—"
And it was then that finally the voice registered to Oskar. That high pitched, soft, very wrong voice for any adult woman he had ever been involved with.
His eyes snapped open, and there she was.
Face inches from his. Cheeks bright red. Eyes shining with 100% pure, unfiltered romantic delusion.
"Luise?!"
She froze.
He froze.
Time froze.
A nurse walking down the corridor sneezed in another wing of the hospital but somehow the sound echoed here like the crack of doom.
Luise sat there, perched on top of him like a guilty cat caught sitting on the cake it wasn't supposed to touch.
"…oh," she squeaked.
He jerked backward so hard she almost toppled over.
"What the—?!" His hand shot out to steady her automatically, but his voice came rough, panicked. "Luise, what are you doing?! You… you just kissed me!"
She froze, then sat up on his lap where she'd half-knelt on the bed, hands twisting in the fabric of his open hospital shirt.
For a moment she looked like a child caught stealing sweets.
Then her expression wobbled and she whispered, mortified:
"Did… did you hate it that much? Was it that bad…?"
Oskar stared at her.
The answer, obviously, was yes, not because of her, but because of what it meant.
He swallowed hard and forced himself to breathe.
"Luise," he said more gently, scrambling backward until he could sit leaning against the headboard, legs pulled as far away as his injuries allowed. "It's not that. You're not, it's not about being 'bad.' It's that… this is wrong."
Her eyes filled with tears.
"Wrong…?" she echoed.
He nodded, trying to find words that wouldn't crush her completely.
"We're family," he said. "Real family. You're my little sister. I'm your big brother. That means I protect you. I look out for you. I don't… I don't do this." He gestured helplessly between them. "You know what the church says. You've heard Father, Mother. They would never accept this. It's not just them—it's not right."
She bit her lip, and suddenly the words poured out of her.
"But I love you!" she cried, tears spilling down now. "Why do other women get to be with you and I can't? Why can Anna and Tanya sleep in your arms and not me? Why do you smile at them the way you never smile at me? It's not fair, it's not fair!"
Her whole body shook with the force of it.
Oskar's heart twisted.
He reached out carefully, took her by the wrists, and gently drew her into a hug—not the way she had tried to climb onto him, but the way he'd held her when she was small and afraid of thunderstorms.
She buried her face in his chest and sobbed against the bandages.
"Luise," he murmured, stroking her hair, "you're still young. You're clever, you're strong, you're beautiful, and you're very confused right now."
"I'm not confused!" she mumbled into his chest.
"You are," he said softly, without malice. "You're lonely. You're jealous. And you've grown up seeing only idiots and weaklings at court, so you've decided I'm the only man worth anything."
He tilted her chin up so she had to meet his eyes.
"One day soon," he said, "you're going to find some poor bastard who isn't your brother—someone who deserves you, someone who will walk through fire for you. And when you fall in love with him, you'll look back on this night and want to sink into the floor from embarrassment."
Her cheeks went even redder.
"That… will never happen," she muttered.
He smiled sadly.
"We'll see," he said. "But until then, you have to promise me something."
"…What?"
"No more trying to be like Tanya and Anna," he said. "You're my sister. That's a place of honour all its own. I need you there. I need you to be Luise, not some… imitation lover sneaking into my hospital bed in the middle of the night. All right?"
She sniffled, rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, and nodded reluctantly.
"…All right," she whispered.
He hugged her again, gentler this time.
"Good girl."
They sat like that for a while, until the worst of the sobbing faded.
To change the subject, Oskar reached for the small chess board on the bedside table.
"Come on," he said, forcing some cheer into his voice. "If you're going to keep bragging to everyone that you can beat the Iron Prince at chess, you'd better prove it again. I refuse to let a lovesick child be better at strategy than me."
She swatted his shoulder weakly, but a faint smile tugged at her lips.
They played under the dim lamp light, pieces clicking softly on wood, conversation drifting to safer topics: books, tutors, gossip from court, plans for the future that did not involve her sneaking into anyone's bed.
Eventually, Luise's eyes began to droop.
At some point between moves, she slumped against his side, still in her dress, still clutching the teddy bear she'd somehow smuggled under her arm.
She was asleep in minutes.
Oskar sighed, carefully shifted her so she lay properly on the blanket beside him, and pulled an extra sheet over her.
He stayed awake a while longer, staring at the ceiling.
This, he thought, has to be dealt with. Father needs to find her a decent suitor. Quickly. Before she makes both of us go insane.
Once, he had made a terrible mistake with Anna in confusion and darkness. Tonight, he'd managed to stop things before they crossed a line that could never be uncrossed.
Next time, he promised himself, he would be even more careful.
For now, he closed his eyes and let sleep claim him again—this time with Luise safely snoring, not kissing, under his arm.
Meanwhile, at Babelsberg Palace, while Oskar wrestled with the awkward boundary problems of a lovestruck little sister, Crown Prince Wilhelm was busy losing his mind.
On paper, his punishment looked generous.
Babelsberg was no prison cell. It was a spacious castle-like residence surrounded by wide grounds, gardens, stables, servants, guards, warm rooms, polished furniture, and enough food and wine to keep a small regiment drunk and content for years.
But a gilded cage was still a cage.
"Verdammt noch mal!" Wilhelm roared, pacing the drawing room with a half-empty bottle clutched in one hand like a sceptre. "Why wasn't Oskar killed on the spot? What was the point of those assassins if they couldn't do one simple thing? My father-in-law is useless. Why didn't he send more men? Why not blow the whole hospital into dust?"
He stopped before the dark window, chest heaving, eyes wild, his own reflection staring back at him from the glass.
"I should have done it myself," he snarled. "I should have stabbed him to death in his bed when he was still small and weak. It would have been easy. One shove down the stairs wasn't enough. No, he had to survive like some cursed demon."
His voice struck the walls and died there.
No one answered.
When Wilhelm II had first sent him to Babelsberg, Wilhelm had dismissed it as theatre. A show for the servants. A gesture to calm Oskar's supporters. A temporary inconvenience.
"Father will calm down in a week," he had told himself.
But days became weeks.
The guards changed shifts precisely on schedule. Supplies arrived by cart. He received newspapers, but nothing else.
No invitation back to court.
No summons for Christmas.
No word from his mother.
No request from Cecilie to see him.
He had tried everything.
He threatened the officers in charge. He promised promotions, titles, money, favors—anything—if they would only "look the other way" while he rode into town. He ordered them to obey their Crown Prince.
But the men guarding Babelsberg had all been personally chosen by Wilhelm II.
They did not care about his temper.
They did not care about his promises.
They did not care about his threats.
"Your Highness," the senior officer had said more than once, polite and immovable, "we have our orders. No one leaves without the Kaiser's written permission."
When Wilhelm tried to shoulder past them anyway, two guards crossed their rifles and blocked the doorway.
It did not matter that he shouted.
It did not matter that he cursed.
Once, when he tried to force his way through, one of them simply put a broad hand against his chest and shoved him back.
Hard.
Wilhelm nearly fell.
No punishment followed.
No apology came.
For a man who had spent his entire life being obeyed, being handled like a troublesome drunk cousin was a new and bitter experience.
From that day onward, two guards followed him everywhere.
At meals.
In the garden.
When he tried to read.
When he paced in circles, muttering to himself.
At first, they kept a respectful distance of several paces.
Then Wilhelm grabbed a maid by the wrist and tried to drag her into a side room.
After that, the distance vanished.
His personal attendants were replaced with men. Thick-necked, stone-faced, unsympathetic men who watched him with the patient boredom of prison warders. The women were kept away from him.
"Your Highness," one officer had said as gently as possible, "the Kaiser has ordered that female staff no longer attend you alone."
Wilhelm slapped him.
Nothing happened.
The officer's jaw tightened, but he did not strike back. He simply stared at the Crown Prince with something Wilhelm had almost never seen directed at him before.
Contempt.
His isolation slowly rotted into something uglier.
His mother did not visit.
Not once.
Not because Augusta Victoria had ceased to love him entirely, but because she had no strength left to spend on him. Between Oskar's near-death, the scandal, the investigation, and the Emperor's fury, she had folded into a quiet misery and chosen not to go to Babelsberg at all.
Cecilie did not come either.
She sent one letter. Stiff. Formal. Carefully worded. She wrote that she was focusing on their newborn child and praying for calm within the family.
After that, nothing.
Wilhelm read the letter so many times the paper began to fall apart along the creases.
He told himself it was Oskar's doing.
That demon brother of his.
That thing wearing his dead brother's skin, whispering into every ear, bewitching the court one smile, one factory, one heroic newspaper story at a time.
He read the Bible more now, though not from piety. He hunted through Scripture like a starving man picking bones, searching for lines he could twist into weapons.
"Oskar," he muttered in the evenings, pacing his study with sunken eyes. "Yes… a demon. That is what he is. A false prince. A usurper. Tempting the people with tricks and toys and factories."
He jabbed a finger at the wall as if a phantom Oskar stood there.
"They all love him," he hissed. "The guards. The ministers. Father. Mother. Even Cecilie. Even the filth in the streets. The Iron Prince. The People's Prince. Their savior."
His mouth twisted.
"And what am I?"
He struck his own chest with a fist.
"I am the Crown Prince. It is my throne. Mine. My precious throne…"
Sometimes he paced and argued with invisible opponents.
"No, no, it is not my fault. He bewitched them."
"Who survives bullets? Who stands after explosions? No normal man. No man at all."
"You saw how they speak his name. You saw the guards' faces when they mention him. Enchanted. All of them enchanted. He has poisoned their minds."
The guards at the doorway exchanged glances sometimes, but said nothing.
Stories of his behavior travelled back to Berlin.
Wilhelm II, who had once hoped Babelsberg might humble his eldest son, instead received reports of drunken tirades, smashed furniture, terrified servants, maids in tears, and paranoid rants about Oskar the demon prince.
The Emperor's disappointment deepened into something colder.
Something resigned.
Luxuries began to vanish quietly.
No more special wines.
No more new clothes.
No more expensive books or newspapers beyond what was strictly necessary.
No more indulgences meant to soothe the pride of a spoiled heir.
Wilhelm was kept fed, clothed, warm, and guarded.
Nothing more.
It was not physical cruelty.
It was worse.
Indifference.
For a man who had once walked through palaces certain the world revolved around him, sitting alone in a beautiful house where no one cared what he shouted was its own private hell.
And every time a guard stopped him in the corridor with a calm hand on his chest and the same empty phrase—"No further, Your Highness"—another crack appeared in his once-unshakable belief that he was untouchable.
He blamed Oskar.
He blamed his father.
He blamed Cecilie, the servants, the guards, the ministers, the army, the navy, the people.
He blamed everyone.
He never blamed himself.
And with each passing day, the line between Crown Prince Wilhelm and the broken, muttering man who clutched at empty air and whispered about demons and stolen thrones grew thinner.