Howdy y'all.
To say the least, this oneshot was written as a bit of mental therapy for me. After recently seeing this movie, too, I've been inspired to reread the book and write fanfiction on Liesel and Max, whose relationship I somehow had managed to forget the extent of my adoration for. It walks right between platonic and romantic and it's absolutely perfect. I remember once again exactly why I officially decided that this was my favorite book in all that I've read. Even if the end sucks. Anyway, no names are used in this piece, and it's my usual brand of angst. I hope you enjoy it and drop a review if you get the chance. Catch y'all later!
When they say goodbye, it's eleven o'clock at night and the sky is full of impassive stars.
Golden light sprawls across the kitchen floor, bathing it in a warmth that does nothing against the ice of the moment. Less than a handful of human strangers curl in the light's glow, the ghost of guilt and sorrow curving their shoulders despite every attempt they make to stand tall. The silence tolls darkly. Words hang in the air unspoken, waiting to fall.
A dusty suitcase hangs in the hand of the feather haired man. A coat and some food lay over his arm, consolation gifts to help him through the harshness that will come. No one speaks.
"Thank you," the dark haired man says. "For all you've done." He shakes the other man's wrinkled hand, and their eyes meet for a moment. Silver eyes whisper an apology to dark ones. I'm sorry, they say. It has not been enough. The one human who spoke out against monsters and had his head cracked open in revenge apologises for his misstep, for the mistake of breaking the silence of bystanding. He apologises, because his debt will now never be repaid.
It's alright, dark brown eyes reply.
Then the wardrobe woman. She wears a surprisingly kind expression on her face, though sorrow still carves lines into it. Oddly enough, he doesn't find the occurrence to be very strange, since he's seen glimpses of her kindness before. It doesn't make an appearance often, but it is there, for those who look at her at just the right moment.
"Thank you for looking after me, and for the soup," he says. The soup had been terrible, and they all know it.
Her mouth struggles to smile. "Saukerl." It's all she can manage, and it is enough. He knows what it means as he shakes her hand.
Then, the book thief. Dark brown eyes wide open, she drinks in every detail of the moment as if it might be the difference between life and death. Her eyes plead with his. Don't go. As if they could stop this moment.
You kept me alive, his eyes whisper back to her again. You and your words. Don't ever forget that. Her eyes brim with tears, and he is not sure how he will ever manage to quickly dig out the words which will break this off painlessly. Within a moment, he realizes there are no words.
A ghost of a saddened smile flits across his lips. No words between the two people who loved them most and had bonded between over them. Leave it to Nazi Germany to cause such a phenomenon.
So instead, the man with feathers for hair leans over and kisses her gently on the forehead, giving her one more saddened hug. "Goodbye," he says, as he feels her frame start to shake.
He pulls away to the door at the end of the hallway, and only hesitates a moment as he opens it. He doesn't look back for fear that he'll stop, and the door clicks shut behind him.
It had been two years since he'd last breathed in this air, when he'd stumbled to this home half dead and alone and beaten by the guilt of his mother back in Stuttgart, who would no doubt be dead while he lived. Now, as he leaves, feet soft on the stones of the road, he is guilty once more of a different crime, the crime of wanting to turn around and say something else.
For a moment, he does. The man turns around looks behind him, and spies the tear-streaked face of the book thief in the window of the house. She is watching him, and he is watching her. Now, this is their goodbye. No witnesses, just the two of them and silence.
He smiles once more, faintly. She struggles to return the gesture with a watery smile of her own, and he nods. Goodbye, dark brown eyes scream across the street. I will miss you. Come back.
I will, he promises her silently. Then he turns and continues on his pathway, refusing to look back again and put them all at risk even more. They have done enough. He cannot ask for more.
The feathered man is swallowed by the night as if he is a ghost, and it does not give him back.
The next time he hears her name, he is in a parade.
His limbs ache, heavy with the walk and the yellow star he wears on his coat. Two months ago, he was found. He had been beaten then, violently, and the names he was called still echo in his brain now. Every day since then, he has been beaten as well. If it's not their fists and rifles painting bruises onto his skin, it's their words, their red, white, and black hatred that tears away bits of him and who he is, throwing them like garbage to the ground where they are stepped on, kicked around, and abandoned to die.
This march especially is not good for him. It weighs on his shoulders, drags them down even as his eyes search the crowd. It is hard, being in the town that he left during the start of winter. Now that it is almost the start of spring, he knows that the world should ring of new life and hope, but all he can think is that he has come back, and if he is seen by the people he left behind, he will hurt them once again. The thought makes him feel guilty, but it does not stop him from searching and looking for them, for her. He has no hope now, but if he sees that they are alive and alright, he can convince himself that he made the right choice, and create his own hope.
It is during his search for dark brown eyes that he realizes he is not searching alone. In the sea of forgotten humans, their eyes meet again. She calls his name, and for a moment, he wonders what on earth she is thinking, wonders why she is revealing her secret and how she can possibly think that this is in any way a good idea. Doesn't she remember what happens to those human enough to fight monsters?
It doesn't take more than a second to remember that this is the book thief, the girl who read to him for weeks on end and kept him alive. Of course she remembers. She is too brave to care.
She catches up to him, and they walk together for a moment, human strangers in a sea of the lost. The first time, she is thrown out of the dead ocean, but he knows she will come back, and she does. This time, she comes with words, words that he gave to her.
"'There once was a strange, small man,'" she says. "'But there was a word shaker too.'"
This time, he does not keep moving. He listens. It is the book thief. She is here. She has found him again, he knew she would. She has come back. "'Is it really you? the young man asked. Is it from your cheek that I took the seed?'"
The words, the words, the words. His words, hers, theirs. How could there be so many of them? How could so many exist? The sea of humans parts around them, and for a moment, it is only the Jew and the book thief, alone in a moment of time.
He looks to the sky, as if it can explain the miracle of her existence and her timing. "It's a beautiful day," he whispers. Of course it is. Of course it is.
Questions fall from parched lips to the paving stones. A longing ache drips from her words, and from his as well. He kisses her palm. And then the whip kisses his back, and he falls. It reaches for him once again, but is intercepted by that brave, beautiful girl. Bravery runs in that family, it seems, and the whip slices down her collarbone. Her name sails in the air from where a lemon haired boy has tossed it.
Twice. Three times. On the third strike, the whip knocks the book thief down, and the lemon boy collects her, struggling under her weight. The Jew struggles as well, though he cannot move to pick her up. Instead, he has to pick himself up under the weight of the bleeding girl in the street and the weight of his own guilty, broken body and the words that tear at it.
I'm sorry, his eyes plead, though the only one who could read his eyes or would try is now lying in the street with lines scorched across her. I'm sorry, forgive me. I'm sorry. I will find you again and make it up, I promise.
He is only barely able to catch sight of the girl as she is lifted and carried away before he himself disappears into the sea of the broken again.
There is a final reunion between the two of them, two years later. After he is freed from the darkness of red, white, and black by the salvation of red, white, and blue, he is once again on the brink of death. His starved, beaten body is barely clinging to the windowsill of life by its fingertips. He is clasping onto the ghostly hand of a memory as if his life depends on it, because the person behind the hand has already saved him more than she will ever know, and he wouldn't put it past her to work one more miracle.
After nearly a month, he survives, though this time it is somehow a more hollow survival. It is nurturing and care and measured consideration that brings him through, somehow impersonal regardless of effectiveness. He longs for the words that saved him years ago, and for the girl who delivered them. He longs to tell her family that he is alive, that they succeeded and kept their word, and that she herself is a primary savior.
But when he ventures over to the place where he hid for safety a handful of years past, it is no longer there. The street named after heaven is reduced to a smouldering hell of broken stones and shattered houses. When he asks what happened, he is told the answer.
He will never be able to thank the family. They are all gone, except for one survivor who lived and cried and was saved by her own words, the sole soul that the bombs left alive on Heaven Street.
He searches for her for only a few days before he finds her, in the shop of a dead friend. It would seem that the lemon haired boy's father returned from the war to find only ghosts left behind, and the childhood friend of the oldest ghost still alive. She works for him now, doing whatever needs doing. As he enters the shop, the feather haired man feels a personable silence in the room, formed by a shared loss and the fact that both employees of the store knew each other's pain.
He asks for the book thief. While the father of the lemon haired boy asks who is calling, the feather haired man sees the younger girl come out from the back of the shop, drawn by the sound of his voice.
Her eyes are uncomprehending of what she is seeing, and disbelief weighs heavy on her face. How could he be alive? How could it be him, if it really was?
His eyes grin. I told you I would come back, book thief. I promised. She reads the words he doesn't speak as she always does, and finally, her own grin cracks her face, and she runs toward him.
More than two years of loneliness tightens their arms crushingly around each other. They're laughing and sobbing and holding each other upright, both of them so glad that the other is still alive, that by some miracle, they were not really left all alone. For all of the people who have died on both sides, she is still alive, and somehow, so is he.
And while they cannot replace all of the dead and erase every scar, they are both still breathing and there for each other. Right now, it's a small comfort, but it is a comfort nonetheless.
It's not everything, but it is enough.