Schatzi

16

The cobbles scraped his skin, his shirt rucked up as the officers dragged him away from town, their hands under his arms, his screams falling on deaf ears.

He'd given up fighting them. Just gone limp in their arms, not caring when curbs dug into his back or when his legs twisted painfully. He'd lost track of time, lost track of direction. He didn't know how long they'd been dragging him, trying and failing to get him to walk, but every inch of his body ached so he guessed it had been a while.

But even if he was literally on fire, skin melting and burning off, bones turned to ash, it wouldn't hurt as much as his heart did.

Eli.

Jesus fucking Christ. Eli.

They'd killed him. These bastards, these sick, sadistic assholes had killed him like he was nothing, like his life meant nothing.

A choked sob escaped Peter's lips as he thought about his dead boyfriend, his head tipping back as more tears trickled down the sides of his face and into his hair which was already damp with sweat and caked in dirt and dust.

The officers dropped their hold on him and he collapsed to the floor like a rag doll. He didn't know where he was, he was too exhausted to open his eyes and check.

Just leave him there. Just leave him there to die.

He didn't want to face whatever was coming next. Deep down, he was a coward and he knew it. Giving up and dying now was the cowards way out but he couldn't care less about being brave. About his pride.

He was defeated. Just completely broken.

"Sir?" A soft voice broke through the haze of his immeasurable sadness. "Sir, p-please wake up."

High pitched but pleasant, the slight tremble in their words giving away their fear. He could tell by the voice this was a child. Why was a child here? He didn't know where they were taking him but he knew it wasn't good. No place for a child.

He opened his eyes to see a little girl standing over him, her two long plaits hanging in the air over his head. She clutched a handmade doll to her chest, a loose thread trailing down to the hem of her dress that looked like it was once bright and colourful but was now faded so much it just looked brown and grey.

She was biting her lip, her tiny white teeth fitting perfectly into the small dips in the skin she'd already made with this habit. But when he opened his eyes, her face broke into the sweetest smile, dimples appearing in her cheeks, her grip on the doll tightening. She looked back towards the small crowd behind them and pointed at Peter.

"Look, mummy! He's not dead!" The happiness in her voice sounded wrong. Such happiness shouldn't go with that sentence, with this situation.

He noticed that the crowd were all watching him, some intently, others just glancing because they had nothing else to do. At the girl's words, a huge guy about the size of a truck got up and came over, muscles bulging from under his tight shirt. He expected the girl to be scared of such a big man, but instead, she grabbed onto his arm the minute he came over, babbling to him in a language he didn't recognise.

"Yes, you are right," he said in German when he turned back to Peter after talking to the little girl. He was still addressing her, just giving Peter the once over. "He is not dead. Definitely looks it though." He raised an eyebrow. "You look rough. Come join the others or another officer will think you're dead also and cart you off god knows where."

"Good," Peter said, voice no more than a whisper. "I just want to fucking die. I don't know where I am, I don't know where I'm going, the love of my life is dead and it's all my fault."