Extract 2 - Old Friends

"What is about old friends?", he heard the prisoner ask, "You keep going on about them over and over." It was true. Thinking of it, nothing had flamed up his rage as much as the thought all which had happened to his friends and his friendships. He took a better look at his prisoner, trying to find out if he had any old friends and how their friendship would be like. Did he really have so little idea to ask him such unforgivable question? How dared he? Did he not know anything of the sacred oath? 
So he pictured him closely. His prisoner was a young man with strong features. He looked healthy and somehow provided with the essentials a man needs, here on the battlefield as well as at home. Yet nothing on his face indicated traces of happiness, neither recent ones nor any further back in time.

"Years go by", he started, now obviously trying not to think of the prisoner as his enemy, as the enemy to his dearest friends, but as a young fellow with little expectation of his own precious life, "and one day, in all amazement you look and see someone there, who knows so much about you it feels as though they wanted you to be like this. At first you want to fear them but just then you realize, that they have been there  watching over you all through these years, right by your side."