"We were foolish," Friedrich says one evening, staring into the warm fire at the local guesthouse they've settled in, still playing the parts of travelling noblemen. Peter just looks at him covertly for a moment, contemplating the memory of years of quiet hurt, unwittingly conjured up by Friedrich's words; times when his feelings of loyalty and affection had felt like a burden instead of a choice. Friedrich isn't wrong: they were, undoubtedly, foolish back then, and Katte, just as foolish, payed for it with his head - but it weren't their hands who signed the death warrant and Peter is done pretending otherwise.

In retrospect, Peter knows that out of the three of them, he himself had gotten the best outcome, despite the terrifying uncertainty and guilt of the first months and the ten years of exile and loneliness that followed. He'd at least found his own kind of freedom in the end, learning and travelling, until his new King had called him home. Maybe that's why he can look back at the past much more easily than Friedrich, be more forgiving of his young self, so in love and ready to do anything his Prince needed: unlike Friedrich, he didn't have to stay in invisible chains for ten years, didn't have to watch Katte die and bend to a father determined to break him.

"We were young and desperate," he says, straightforward as he still can't help but be sometimes, "but we are free now, Sire." It's a gamble he didn't think himself capable of anymore, a foolish one maybe, but when Friedrich's head snaps up and he looks surprised instead of angry, Peter holds his gaze and ignores the trembling of his own hands and the quick beat of his heart. "We are, aren't we," Friedrich says, still sounding surprised, and then he laughs, quietly at first and then louder, reaching out to squeeze Peter's hand, eyes bright.