It began with brick and mortar; with two brothers caught on opposite ends. It began with a loss of pride, with freedoms burned alive in tar pits before their very sights.

It began with a wall. At first, no one really believed it was actually happening. They stood by it, watching the workers stack up those bricks and lift up the fence.

And all of a sudden, Germany wasn't Germany any longer. People got their labels. Were you East or West? Were you crimson or were you clean? All due to concrete and wire.

Families were cleaved clean in half; a piece of beef subjected to the point of the butcher's knife. There was plenty of blood left upon the board, but no one took the time to clean it off. Those assassins certainly didn't care. After all, they were just men just doing a job just as they were told to it. All of this occurred while Gilbert Weillschmidt watched. He watched as his brother was caught on the other side of that prison door, while his half of Berlin was coming to an infection. It's once beautiful flesh was seared red, dipped in pigment and overcome with loving propaganda.

He could feel the pride dying within his chest, that once happy core running and shattering in its fragility.

They had lost the war.

But they had lost far more than just the war.

Families, hope, blood, words. They all grew empty; they died. The sentiments and the people.

There was no certainty at what to do when Ludwig was lost. Gilbert had asked a thousand times to go over to the West. It's only a border after all, so who cares? But every time, he was sent back. It didn't work that way. No longer could you come and go as you pleased. Berlin was not one city; it was two. Why do you keep asking? Don't you understand? Go home.

So Gilbert did what most of them did. He gathered with the rest of the unfortunate at the wall's edge and merely looked upon what used to be his. The West. The unattainable; his brother. They could only wave now.

Then, he joined the communists, and Weillschmidt patrolled that great ugly wall, with his ugly uniform and his ugly rifle in that ugly hell hole.

The only uplifting bit of that day was the promise of glancing at his younger brother through that boundary. Every night, at six, they came to their spot upon the dirt and rose up their ruined hands.

Hello, Gilbert.

Hello, Ludwig. I'm beginning to forget your voice.

That's alright. It's not your fault.

And they would look onto one another, choking down the fact that they might as well never speak again. The entire ritual was like chewing on wretched tin foil. It was terrible to glance at one another; remember what was gone. Reopening the scabs and staring down luscious food with empty stomachs.

But imagine the ache of letting go.

It would be so much worse.

Neither would willingly release the past forever.

So they didn't.

Yes. That was how it began. With two brothers being torn to shreds by the vicious attack dogs of the Soviet Union. A mal-formed iron curtain and everyone forgetting to say their good-byes.

But that was certainly not how it ended.

After all, this is not a story of shameful cowardice. This is about Gilbert Weillschmidt and Gilbert Weillschmidt does not whither beneath oppression. Gilbert Weillschmidt was not a pansy. Gilbert Weillschmidt was a goddamn hero, and that mother fucking wall was crumbling or he was running through it.

I'm certain you can guess what happened.