Anniversary of the fall of Königsberg.
>Re image 2: POV, you just woke up.
The anniversary was actually April 9th, but Tuesdays are so chaotic for me I didn't get around to posting.
Now would be a good time for you to go and research the history of the city and it's destruction.
The subject of Königsberg should not be used to stoke division, it is the tragic, shared legacy of many European peoples, may we hold hands and morn losses on all sides.
Description of Image 1: Three Prussian Officer Cadets and a junior Lieutenant gather outside of Königsberg Castle, wearing walking out dress, in April 1908.
Characters are from my pre-wwi Prussian Officer Cadet drama, Moth. Their names from left to right: Vincent Odinkirk, Leon von Zelewski, Siegfried Isenstein, Gottlieb Witt.
Description of Image 2: The same view of the castle, but in April 1945. Three crosses represent the deaths of the comrades in the first image. A Soviet has crawled out from a burning tank and is screaming to be put out of his misery.
The Script of Moth, to which these Illustrations relate, does not continue beyond the 1920's. And so, this is likely to be my first and last piece of wwii art. The two images are 37 years and 2 world wars apart, but the castle and the surviving German officer, are meant to lend permanence to the composition. This is the destruction of his home.
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“Do I have to work with her?” Eddie asks, casting an anxious eye through Hopper’s office window to the redhead waiting anxiously outside. She was pacing up and down but now she’s lingering like a ghost. Held in limbo. Waiting.
“Mayor sure seems to think so,” Hopper says, and he already looks like he’s lost interest in the whole thing. But Eddie doesn’t appreciate being blindsided. And finding the writer girl waiting for him at his desk, wringing her hands like she expects to be sent away again, is blindsiding him.
“It’s a distraction!” Eddie hisses, mindful that Chrissy doesn’t hear. “I have work to do, and there’s murders to solve and I don’t have time to babysit!” Hopper’s fingers twitch, like he wishes he could still smoke inside the station. He probably could use one, what with Nancy’s ability to accrue overtime, Tommy’s aversion to paperwork and Eddie’s…
Eddie just has stuff going on. He can’t afford to have Chrissy around with her huge eyes and soft voice. He can’t be responsible for another person.
Hopper sighs heavily, in a tone that makes Eddie suspect he’s not about to get his way.
“Look, kid,” he says frankly, as though Eddie isn’t a young man in his thirties with an apartment and a detective shield and fucking tattoos. Their captain has always been like that, with an air of having seen too much and seen it all. They don’t know a lot about Hopper’s home life, but they can guess at enough. Everyone here has lost someone, their grief the driving force behind the desire to hunt down murderers.
“The mayor has pushed for this. The Cunninghams are a big presence in this town, and if their daughter - the established, famous novelist - wants to write a new series on you, then the mayor thinks that it’s good PR.” Eddie scowls.
“She’s a romance novelist,” Eddie points out, even though everyone knows the name C.E. Cunningham. Her books are on every shelf, available at every airport, and have been made into countless Lifetime movies. The girl was born wealthy and made her own money a thousand times over at least. She could stop writing altogether and live out her days in peace. Not waiting by a scratched desk, staring at Eddie’s rubber band ball like it holds the secrets to the universe. “She’s not a crime novelist.”
“No, but she’s going to try,” Hopper counters. Eddie frowns. He’s not sure about the whole idea himself. He went home and read one of her novels the night that they met. The warm, cozy romance, with likable, quirky heroines and just enough plot to keep you from falling asleep was a jarring contrast to the pale girl shaking in the rain that lives in Eddie’s memory. Try as he might, he just can’t get the image of her, white shirt smeared with blood, out of his mind. The first time he saw Chrissy Cunningham and it felt like being struck by lightning. He felt like he was awake for the first time in twelve years, every nerve and sense on fire. Maybe Eddie hadn’t been the only one not wanting it to end.
“Why did she have to choose us as inspiration,” Eddie mutters, picking at the loose threads on Hopper’s spare chair. Hopper just raises an eyebrow.
“You,” he says, the word landing like a blow. “She chose you as inspiration. Fuck knows why. You’re a good detective but…” The words go unspoken, because they don’t need to be said aloud. But you’re damaged. But you have walls. But you don’t let anyone in.
“Look,” Hopper says, keeping his voice low to avoid drawing the attention of the bullpen. Detectives are a nosy bunch and that’s not even getting started on the receptionist, the guy in archives, or the girl that delivers their lunch. Nancy and Tommy have already given him shit about the new girl. He’s never going to hear the end of it after this. “I think this could be good for you. Nancy has her photographer boyfriend, Tommy has friends he sees regularly…but you just…never see anyone.”
“I do!” Eddie protests a little defensively. But it rings hollow and even he knows how pale and empty his life has become. “I have the band and Hellfire…” Hopper rolls his eyes.
“Those are the same people, more or less,” he says bluntly and digs around in his top desk drawer for gum. The lack of nicotine must be getting to him. Hop doesn’t speak again until he’s unpeeled a piece and shoved it into his mouth. “The same three guys you went to high school with. Do you hang out with anyone you’ve met in the last ten years?”
When Eddie doesn’t answer, Hopper triumphantly smacks his gum.
“Thought not,” he says and leans forward over his desk. “You need to come out of your shell. I get grief, especially when you don’t have answers, but this isn’t the way to do it.”
“He was the only family I had,” Eddie says stiffly, because even a decade later, this wound is still raw. The sound of the sprinklers turning on. The door swinging in the late night breeze. Uncle Wayne lying on the trailer floor. And still, no answers. Eddie has followed every lead, chased every piece of evidence, hunted for any possible clue…and still, the only person who ever looked out for Eddie doesn’t have justice.
“I know,” Hopper says softly, so softly that Eddie can see the thread his mind is following. His daughter died, and it wasn’t murder, but it was no less a violent death.
But Hopper doesn’t understand it, the desperate need that has its claws hooked around Eddie’s throat. The need for answers, the need for revenge. To have someone to focus his anger on. He needs to put a face to the person who took his only family away from him, instead of the shapeless ghoul who broke into their trailer and murdered Wayne in cold blood.
Eddie’s gone round and round in the usual way - he should have been there, he shouldn’t have stayed out so late, why was Uncle Wayne even home at that time when he worked night shifts - but all these years later, none of it helps. There’s just a cold case file and a well-polished photo on the bedside table. Uncle Wayne’s favorite baseball cap sitting on Eddie’s desk.
“I’ll try,” Eddie says, because he doesn’t have a choice. And they’d worked well on the Driscoll case after all. He’d even go so far to say that he might not have solved it without her help. For a girl that deals with love triangles and happy endings, her mind works like a homicide detective. She’s sharp. “For a while. If it doesn’t work, she’s out, mayor or no mayor.”
“Sure," Hopper says, as though Eddie has any say in the matter. The mayor would do anything if it meant the town got good publicity. Crime rate keeps rising and that doesn’t look good for his re-election campaign. Sweet little Chrissy shadowing the department has a good spin. “But if you two work together anything like the way you did yesterday, then we won’t have a problem.”
Eddie looks up through the window to catch Chrissy staring right back at him. She can’t possibly hear them but the way her eyes stare right through him make him feel like she already knows everything. His empty apartment. The murder board he hides in the closet. That solving the Driscoll case with her was the most fun he’d felt in years. His job has turned into something dry and repetitive, something he uses to get through the day. Uncle Wayne may not have justice yet but there’s other people who need it.
Chrissy has never known anything other than a charmed life. There is no reason for her to want to follow a disillusioned detective round to the darkest parts of town to see people at their lowest. Some people might think that it’s a gimmick, a sick fascination, a means to sell more novels to a wider audience. But Eddie knows differently. There was something in her eyes that night, some pain that went deeper than the shock at the blood smeared across her hands. It was the look of someone having the veil of the world ripped away and needing to do something about it.
She’s a distraction. She’s a liability. She’s an antidote.
“It already is a problem,” Eddie says and finally, Chrissy turns away.
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