Author's Note:

I will always be bitter that Rudy Steiner is dead. He was so precious and he loved Liesel so much; she loved him too, I think. Possibly too late on figuring it out but I don't think they would have been as close as they were if she didn't. And although she moved on with her life and had a husband and kids, grandchildren eventually, I can't help but still want the two together. Keeping that in mind, this is a story where Rudy barely misses death, all because he made one decision that altered his life dramatically.

I don't know how many chapters I'll write to this, simply because I don't want to drag it on but I want it to be long enough to have done both of these characters justice. Please enjoy and review. This is the shortest chapter there will be since it is a prologue. (Note: I know that the quote is from the movie but I loved it so much. And despite how much I love the book much more, I loved the movie as well. Rudy was perfectly casted as well as Liesel. At least for me they were. It crushed me just as much when he died.)

From the book that inspired my username.

"You're all I've got left, Rudy."

"Rudy," she hissed to him, her eyes rolling as blue eyes flickered down to his, "don't you have to be home, Saukerl?"

A laugh, as golden as his hair, boomed from him and filled the room. "Not a chance, Saumensch." In all honestly, he loved to watch her. When she read, her dark eyebrows pulled together in concentration before they flattened out when she understood something in between the lines. This was the first time he had seen her write; she'd allowed him to be near, simply because he knew all of her secrets now. What could she tell him that he didn't know?

And it was in these rarest of moments, if he stilled himself enough, he could hear the scribbles against the paper, the soft sigh when she had to sharpen the pencil. In those moments, he could almost swear he loved her more than the minute he saw how she ran, how she laughed with him indifferently because she didn't understand what the difference between them was supposed to be.

As time passed on, he had given up trying to interest Liesel in his attempts of making games with his soccer ball. She was too engrossed into her writing to give any mind to him. He eventually rested against the desk, humming softly as he nodded off. He was sure to be in trouble from his mother, because dinner had been so long ago, and he'd missed it, along with his goodnight kiss on his forehead. He was sure part of it was that trouble always followed the Hubermanns; once one was out of it, another was knee deep in it.

And because Rudy loved her, he was always sure to be right behind.

The night had been filled with the sounds of thunder, but much angrier; it was bombs, something he slept right through in the night from how used to it he was. Ever since his twelfth birthday, he had been forced to learn that not every boom in the sky would be his end.

So he did as he normally would; he slept. The debris should have woken him up but he was used to the burning feeling in his lungs due to the smoke and ashes that would rise from the ground and into his nose.

His eyes only opened when the ceiling above him made a creaking sound, followed by yelling and grunting. He was almost scared that people were coming for the Hubermenns, only to remember that Max was gone and Liesel's father had fought well. He noticed that the room was completely dark and he felt a soft pain in his legs, as if they'd be scraped against the ground during a game of soccer. He looked about him in the darkness and his hand reached up to the desk, pulling himself up so that he was on his knees. He remembered that Liesel was right next to him, prompting him to shake her shoulder.

Just as she lifted her head to him, the darkness above them being taken over by four men and a grey and ash filled sky. The clouds were dark, almost as if it were going to rain, but the feeling in the air wasn't one where people were waiting for a storm. The men were moving with determination, one taking him under the arms and pulling him out while another moved to take Liesel's hands in theirs and helped her step onto the road of bricks. Rudy wanted to make a beeline for the curly headed girl, but as he looked ahead, he knew why he hadn't quite yet.

Bricks clinked under his feet, a cluster of them causing his shoes to slip off the slides of them and sending him knee first into the ash covered blocks. He picked himself up almost as quickly as he had fallen, not hearing Liesel's voice more than he would have heard a whisper in the night. His hands were covered in small cuts from attempting to break his fall, but that was far from his mind now. What mattered where the five, frail bodies on the ground, where his home used to be.

It was his brothers and sisters, grey faces from more than the smoke that had taken the life out them. He was beginning to shake, his head hanging as he looked all about for someone in his family that was alive. His mother. She had to make it. Who would love him, watch him grow, send him off to possibly lose his childhood in an ill fought war? The same thing his father was fighting to keep him from, had probably died in trying to keep him from.

His eyes search the street and he spotted those curls he knows too well, the kind face marked in dirt, ash, death.

Rudy was at her side as fast as his long legs would take him, collapsing to his knees as he somehow found the strength to pull his mother partially into his lap. He was bent over her body, no longer caring that someone from a mile away could hear his raw, brutal sobbing. He sounded like he'd lost the ability to scream so it came in hoarse sounds, mixed tears falling onto her night grown.

His blue eyes had become an ocean and no matter how much he tried to pull himself together, he couldn't just shake this pain like he could when his ribs had been broken; no, this was something entirely different.

He pulled back and looked behind him, seeing the similar scene with Liesel and her papa, Hans, only to look down to his mama and give her cheek one final kiss goodbye, like he did every morning before walking with Liesel to the school. "I promise to live, Mama." If there was anything she had wanted for him, it was to take in as much life as he could, enjoy it as much as he could, all while he survived.

After his promise, he released her and walked to Liesel, the only one in his life that could've changed the tides more drastically than anyone else. He sat next to her as she wept for his own loss; he could only imagine what rose up in her now. Her first mother and father, her brother, Max, now her family.

She finally leaned against him, in exhaustion, their hands coming together in the comfort that the other provided. For now, she could lay her head in his lap and together, they could worry about the dead rather than where their next bit of food would come from, where they would take shelter from everything around them. For now, they could mourn.