A/N: Hey, guys. So, this is set right after the bombing of Molching, between where Liesel finds Rudy and when she finds Rosa and Hans. Please review!
Disclaimer: All rights to Markus Zusak.
When he wakes up, he doesn't feel quite right. He should know-he's been doing it for years. Usually, his eyes are heavy, and his mind is clogged with sleep. Not now. His eyes are alert, and his mind is open, and he feels lighter, like he is floating. He looks around in confusion.
The sky is grey, and smoke drifts through the street, twining itself around him coyly like a cat. The bricks of the buildings are blackened, and some are missing. Ash is falling on the bodies lying smashed in the street, tossed away carelessly by the bombs. Windows are shattered, and flames poke their laughing tongues out at the desperate screaming people, taunting. More people run by, down the Street of Heaven that he knows so well, shouting names of people who will never answer. He takes a step forward, and sees something that would've stopped his heart if he hadn't already given it away to his best friend.
A shock of lemon hair is peeking out from the dirty rubble, attached to a familiar face.
It belongs to him. At least it used to.
And a girl is there too, and the look on her face wants to make him cry. She is holding his head, with the tears dripping from her face to his, and he hears his name: "Wake up, Rudy. Rudy, please."
Oh, how he wished he could. He would've given anything in the world to obey her, to open his eyes and smile again. But he couldn't wake up. Even if he tried.
"Come on, Jesse Owens, don't you know I love you, wake up, wake up…" But he hadn't known Liesel loved him. Darn her! Double darn that Saumensch. If only she'd told him, things might have been different...but she hadn't, and now he'd never get to tell her all the things he'd wanted to. How he liked to make her angry so he could see the sparks fly from her dangerous eyes. How he sometimes stole her books to try to teach himself how to read. How he hated and loved that headstrong, impudent, reckless, perfect girl.
And now she was leaning down to his face, tears spilling, and kissing those numb lips of his. And now he does cry, not wanting to but not helping it all the same. Double darn that Saumensch.
Liesel pulls back, wiping her face, and takes a long last look at him before getting to her feet. He throws himself in front of her, his knees grating on the cruel biting concrete, hands outstretched. He knows she can't see him, for he is just a ghost of the past, but he can't resist begging for her not to leave him alone with his body. But she does, her feet tripping roughly on the bomb-torn ground without saying goodbye.
So he curls up in a ball on the unforgiving concrete and cries and cries, wishing that Death would just hurry up and take him to the real Heaven instead of this sorry place.
Why did she have to go?
She walks slowly through the town, dragging her feet and trying to erase the lemon hair from her mind and the sweet taste of his lips. Why, why did it have to be him?
Suddenly something inside snaps, and she starts to sob, walking faster and faster until she is almost running through the street, brushing the shoulders of other brokenhearted people rushing to find their loved ones. Somehow she makes it back to the house she learned to love and collapses on the doorstep, calling out to Rudy even though she knows he can't hear. Something glints out of the corner of her eye, beside her. She looks.
Papa's accordion.
She hadn't even noticed she was carrying it. It grins at her from inside its shredded case, white and black teeth poking out. She looks closer. Red drops are spattered across its beautiful brilliance. The white and black and red reminds her of something else, much more sinister than Papa's accordion. In her mind's eye she sees it, rippling in glory over a stack of burning books. Follow me, it said, and together we will be great. Together we will be bigger and better than ever before. Lies.
And then below it, next to the burning books, there are the believers, hands stretched out to the flag in salute. "Heil Hitler!"
With a moan, she buries her head in her arms, resting it on the accordion case. Nightmares. That's what she was living in. Her life was a nightmare.
If only Rudy were here. He knew exactly what to do, exactly what to say. He could make her smile as bright as his hair. He could make her laugh so hard she couldn't breathe. He could make her curl up over his broken body and cry.
And suddenly the grief is back, worse than before. She hides under her tangled mass of hair, with only an accordion to comfort her, and stares with blank eyes at the ash falling on the street, smothering her old life.
Why did he have to go?
A/N: Please review! You know you want to!