Re: Blood and Iron

Before Bruno knew it, the day had arrived. During Erwin's wedding, Bruno had maintained a respectable distance, allowing his son to become a man in full. But tonight, tonight one of his little girls was being handed off to her husband.

It was an entirely different affair. And because of this, Bruno inspected Elsa's changing room after knocking to ensure she was decent. The door opened to reveal Heidi, Eva, and the bridesmaids all gathered around Elsa.

She was dressed in the latest fashion of German aristocratic design. Elegant, conservative, beautiful.

Her dress was whiter than the snow, unblemished, untainted. The girl's platinum blonde hair was tied up into an elegant and braided bun. Her veil cast behind her face as she held a bouquet of white roses in her hands.

Elsa was anxious. Her flushed cheeks betrayed her. The familiar ice-princess façade had vanished, and that alone told Bruno how hard she was trying to keep it together.

Meanwhile, Heidi approached her man and asked him the question that if about any other women would get him in trouble if he answered accurately.

"She's beautiful, isn't she? Our daughter is the living personification of an ice goddess…"

Bruno dragged his wife in close and kissed her on the lips. He didn't know exactly how to respond to this statement.

On the one hand, he could state that his wife was the fairest maiden of them all, but on his daughter's wedding day, when she was so lavishly dressed? No, that would wound his daughter's pride.

And Bruno could never do that, instead after taking his wife into his arms and holding her tight, Bruno's gaze shifted towards Elsa's figure, and was quick to come up with a compromise.

"She is as radiant as her mother was on her own wedding night…."

This was a remark that was deemed acceptable by both women, causing Elsa to rush forward and join the hug with her mother and father.

"Oh daddy! I love you both so much… Thank you for always being there for me while growing up."

Both Elsa and Heidi were trying their best to hold back their tears, lest they ruin their makeup. While Bruno himself couldn't help but pat the girl's head one last time, before sending her off.

"You don't have to thank me, baby girl. It was my honor, and my duty as my father to raise you right. Now I think we have kept your guests waiting long enough, don't you think?"

Bruno hooked his arm around his daughter's and dragged her off to the venue where the groom was waiting for his bride to be.

---

The music played as the sun illuminated the Saint Isaac's Cathedral and its sublime interior. The Groom stood at the altar, waiting for his bride to walk down the aisle.

And there she came, dressed like a true imperial consort of the next Tsar of Russia. By her side was her father, locked arm-in-arm, escorting her to the altar as he should.

Bruno was dressed as extravagantly as his daughter, but it was not his German Field Marshal's uniform, which he normally wore for formal occasions such as this.

Rather, he had dusted off his old Russian ceremonial uniform, and the medals he was given for the part he played in winning the Russian Civil War for the House of Romanov.

The guests gathered varied from the extended families of both sides, to the houses of Hohenzollern, Habsburg, and various others from across the German Reich, Russian Empire, and Europe as a whole.

At the end of the walk, Bruno handed his daughter off to Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich, which thanks to Bruno's actions, in this life had managed to grow into a fine young man. Unburdened by the illness that kept him infirm in his youth.

Bruno's investments into the field of medicine, and the creation of a joint Russo-German research block, allowed for Alexei's condition to be treated in a way that mitigated its effect on his daily life.

The young boy who had been slain too young in his past life, by the wickedness of Karl Marx, and the murderous madmen his beliefs had spawned, stood in full ceremonial regalia, a true Prince, one who would one day come to the throne in his own right.

And on his face was astonishment, as his wife took his hand at the Altar, smiling, in a way she had seldom done in public, bashful, meek, embarrassed. And him the same.

Neither of them knew what was happening in the world beyond where their eyes met, until the traditional Orthodox Wedding Ceremony was concluded, and they were named Husband and Wife.

Their kiss had been photographed and published in the papers. It was an image that would one day be the subject of many paintings that would become quite legendary in their own right.

And once Elsa had been kissed by her groom, Heidi, who was standing in front and center in the pews finally couldn't hold the tears back, and began to cry profusely with joy in Bruno's arms.

Bruno gazed upon the scene with a complicated slurry of emotions. This, this sight… Of his children marrying, and living happy lives, unburdened by the hell he had once lived through. Well, what parent wouldn't want that for their child?

Time and again, Bruno knew that family was his reason for moving forward. For digging his hands into the filth and getting himself dirty, just 0so that they would not have to.

It was his reason for fighting, enduring, and continuing when it felt like the weight of the world was on his shoulders. And more often than not, this was not just a feeling. But the reality of his circumstances.

And yet in that moment, blinded by the light of the heavens, Bruno remembered: this life was no accident. His presence here wasn't luck.

It was providence. Ordained by the Father above.

After all… how else could he have been born again in precisely the place needed to save the world from its fate?