Author note: This story is very similar to my story Years Pass, but sort of a different version. I liked this one too, so I decided to upload it. If you like this, maybe read Years Pass. On with the story!
Rudy Stiener was now a man of few words. He had a lot of sex. He had a lot of alcohol. He had a lot of cigarettes. He had no one he loved. A ripe and early age of 22.
It was one night at 4 o'clock in the morning, over a bottle of vodka that he decided this should stop. He should sober up, he should return to Molching.
He remembered when he suddenly woke up all those years ago. The doctors had told him he hadn't been breathing, they thought he was dead. They said no one on Himmel Street was alive, to their knowledge. That was the day he left. His house was no longer there. His family was no longer there. The girl he had loved was no longer there. What was the point? But he was a young boy when he snuck onto the train to Munich. His mind thought differently nowadays. He missed the old river and he missed the town. He needed to return, it would burden him if he didn't.
The next morning, Rudy arrived in the small shabby train station in Molching with nothing but a packet of cigarettes, his hat, and the clothing on his back. The first thing he intended to do in his home town was visit the river. He took a cab to the bridge above the river. He leaned against the wooden rail and sighed. There was someone who was supposed to be beside him.
Rudy stood there, looking down at the wide river for twenty whole minutes, and he had no intention of leaving any time soon. Moments later, a young woman came onto the bridge. Rudy was a bit upset by this; he enjoyed thinking alone and being to himself. He thought about leaving. He thought about going back to his apartment and going back to that unfinished bottle of vodka. He glanced at the girl who was only a few yards away from him, leaning over the rail just as him, and staring into the river. She had dark blonde hair that came down past her breasts, and blunt bangs. She wore a light blue dress and white shoes. He looked at her face. His heart instantly began to pound faster when he saw her brown eyes. Most everyone in Molching had blue eyes. This was peculiar. There was only one girl he had known with eyes that color.
When she glanced at him, he knew it was her. He was dumbfounded. She was dead! That's exactly what the doctors had said…wasn't it?
"Sorry, as far as we know, no one else made it, son." Is what they had said. Those stupid, insolent doctors!
"Liesel?" He stuttered out without thinking. She had not once looked at his face, she simply replied,
"Yes?" She then looked at him. She saw a man with a tear in his bright blue eyes. He was taller than her, and she could see lemon colored hair peeking out of his hat. She just stared, because this could not be him. This was someone who resembled him. He was dead. She was sure of it.
"It's me, Rudy." The tear in his eye fell, and was quickly followed by another. He wiped them away. Liesel couldn't find herself doing anything but shaking her head in disbelief.
"No." she said to him, trembling, tears forming. "Rudy is dead."
He shook his head.
"Yes, don't lie to me, Rudy died. I saw his dead body on the ground." Tears wouldn't stop now.
"I started to breathe again at the hospital."
Liesel was angry and she was confused. She grabbed the hat from on top his head to further inspect his lemon yellow hair. She was merely shocked by the fact that his hair was just how she remembered Rudy's to be.
So there they were, atop a bridge over a river. A river that held a very special memory. Liesel had a book in her hand. A book entitled The Whistler, with pages that had once been damp with the Amper's water. She held the book in front of the man's face.
"Do you remember this?"
"Of course I do. I rescued it from the river." He told her. Liesel thought it was about time to believe him. She dropped the book into the ground and almost tackled him. Her arms were around him, his around her. There was no way she was letting go. She couldn't let him go. Not again.
She was crying, wailing. And so was he. And then she kissed him, because it was something she had wanted to do for a very long time.
It was an absolute miracle. It's not every day that two people who love and care for each other so deeply find each other once they're lost.
Death decided to be kind to these two.
