my desire to write fanfiction vs it's five in the morning plus the project i'm thinking of starting is like, "ten thousand words of rewrites on an old fic" which is. A Lot

plus the thing i really wanna write is just. an addendum. in that universe. one that would go in like, the extras file

the idea is "conversation between jens fiedler and dieter frey about life, and work, and why the hell dieter is willing to work with mundt, where dieter is tragically jealous of fiedler's moral certainty" specifically in that one au. you know the one

like my idea of Who Dieter Is At Forty is deeply, deeply self-hating, because he is distrustful enough of the state to see its flaws, but he doesn't have enough power to change it, and he's still pretty sure it's the best way forward

but he DOES have enough power to abuse his power, and he has, because he's human. he has weaknesses. like, The Party, Socialism, and Honor are not the only recipients of his loyalty. he has pulled strings to help his mother, or those closest to him, or to hurt his enemies

fiedler is young, and fiedler also has lived a much simpler and less cynicism inducing life than dieter. and his loyalties are simpler. if he were forced to choose between his honor and, say, a family member, then yes, his honor would be tested, but that has never happened

but he has no secret poetic heart of patriotism, no sense that it's him against the world. he's experienced antisemitism but not the way dieter has, he's very much the sort to think socialism will just iron that out like every other human flaw

he's a believer but without dieter's anti authoritarian neuroses, nor has he experienced the evils of governments the way dieter has

and so fiedler is an uncomplicated idealist, as well as never having really compromised himself, and dieter desperately, desperately envies him that

the idea of them having a nice tea together occasionally isn't even that weird? like, mundt was dieter's direct underling and fiedler and mundt were rivals, and if we take the tinker tailor model of how the top levels of intelligence services work as accurate

(it's not but it is in the le carreverse) then even without those relationships, they would probably at least be acquaintances. plus, the tinker tailor model is probably way more plausible in a smaller intelligence service, such as east german foreign intelligence

obviously east german internal intelligence was unbelievably comprehensive, but at least in le carre's novels, which is all that really matters, their foreign intelligence was pretty stunted around the time i'm setting this piece

so it's not unlikely they would have the occasional cup of tea together, even if they hated each other, bill and george certainly did. and it's unlikely that they would have hated each other

fiedler doesn't seem to be the kind of guy who hates easily, you need to commit a real crime to earn his ire, not just be a sort of generalized misanthropic asshole like dieter. he's not petty

dieter IS petty and hates easily, but fiedler is exactly the kind of guy that the tiny core of idealistic hope in his broken, cynical spirit wishes for as a colleague, so he would find it hard to hate fiedler, even though his envy would make interacting with fiedler uncomfortable

so like. it seems inevitable that they would have occasional chats