Author's Note: This is just something I felt needed to be written. I just finished rereading Number the Stars and I felt that Lise needed a story about her, so here it is. The beginning is a little shaky but it gets better. One-shot.
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Lowis Lowry (man does it feel weird not to say JK Rowling!)
There was a meeting that night. In a cellar, they sat and talked about the Resistance, how they were going to fight back against the Nazi. They did not know that at that moment a group of Nazis were preparing to raid the building. When they heard the sounds of the Nazis they all ran in different directions, trying to escape. Lise and Peter were separated. He got away with nothing more than a bullet in his arm. She, however, was not so lucky.
She got out of the building but they saw her running. When she heard the car behind her she knew she would not live. So instead she remembered. She remembered going down to the street with Annemarie to wave at King Christian X. She remembered him waving back, how she had told Annemarie that she was forever special because the King had greeted her. She remembered Papa's story about the boy and the soldier, when the boy had told the soldier that all of Denmark was the King's bodyguard. She remembered meeting Peter through the Resistance. She remembered when Peter had asked her to marry him. She remembered dancing with him in her yellow dress that night, celebrating how she was going to spend the rest of her life with the man she loved. She remembered her wedding dress, which Mama had spent hours on, embroidering the neckline. Her wedding was two weeks away. She would never wear that dress and she would not spend years growing old with Peter. She barely had a minute left to live, seconds only. She remembered her family, and Lise Johansen's last thought before the car connected with her flesh was that she hoped her family would remember her. That she would live on in their memories and not be forgotten. That when they were old they would tell their grandchildren about the beautiful, lively Lise Johansen, who died too young to marry or have children, but lived on in them. But then she felt the cold metal pushing against her, and knew her time was up and that she would join her ancestors and look over those left behind.
By the time her body was found she was long dead. Peter let out a soul-wrenching scream as he knelt beside her. There was blood in her blonde hair, and on her clothes. Her eyes were closed and if she wasn't covered in blood Peter Neilsen could have tricked himself into thinking she was just sleeping, but she wasn't. He could tell her death had not been easy or painless. But neither was this. This feeling of emptiness. It couldn't even compare with the wound in his arm where he had been shot. There was a hole where his heart should be, and he felt alone. Despite all the people running through the streets he felt desperately alone, as if he was the only one in the entire world. But then he heard the sirens and he knew more Nazis were on their way and if he left Lise here they would not recover her body. Her picked her up and cradled her bloody form against his body, ignoring the screaming protest coming from his injured arm. He staggered away from the scene and felt hopeless. She would be buried as Lise Johansen, but if this had happened two weeks later, the name on her grave would have read Lise Neilsen, Beloved wife, daughter and sister. He knew he would never marry someone else. There was only one person for him, and that person was lying dead in his arms.
Author's Note: So, what did you think? I just felt that she was too brave for so little to be said about her. So this story was for her, and just for her. =] Please review to let me know what you thought.
