Author's Note: So here is the second chapter the third should be out soon, this one is a little short sorry but I felt like there wasn't as much to say for Rudy I see him as more of a straight forward character compared with Liesel. I hope you like it.

His feet are sore, he is tired he is hungry he is thirsty and yet none of this matters in fact none of this even crosses his mind right now two things are on the mind of Rudy Steiner.

The mind of Rudy

1) The war is over

2) Himmel Street was bombed

Immediately he asked if anyone survived, the man only looks down and shakes his head, and yet he refuses to believe it, even thought he has just been told that his mother and his sisters and all he has ever known is gone he refuses to believe that she is dead, she can't be, she won't be. He turns away, he goes back to the barracks now and packs among his friends that he has come to know so well. He will go home, even if it is for nothing else than to visit the graves of his family, and her grave.

As he packs he tries to hide the weakness that rolls down his checks. Weakness, the stupid humans consider it a weakness, but is it not strength? A weak person would refuse to believe it, Rudy's expectance and sadness only proves his strength. And when his entire life is packed up he hails a farewell smile as his companions, he will miss them he knows but with a bittersweet feeling for they were only friends out of necessity.

He walks down the road out the gate and onto the long road that will lead home, he has no money but he has enough food to at least get him to Molching. And it is here that we find Rudy clinging to the same desperate hope that we left Liesel with, but Rudy is better than off Liesel. Maybe he would be the same if had lived the amount of time she had worried over his fate. In general we all know that fate has been a little gentler to Rudy, but maybe you could argue that it hasn't, no one is really in any place to say expect for him and that is not on his mind right now.

In fact at this particular moment he is thinking about a dangerous eyed girl of darkness who had a fondness of stealing books. He is thinking about soccer games with twitching players, a heavy weight school yard champion and two stupid children feeding bread to Jews. And now his face cracks into a smile with the thought of a young girl with the large print of a boot across her arsch. And it is at this moment he realizes just how much he loves her and how much it will hurt if he must visit her grave among those of his family.

But just as she does he refuses to let the hope of seeing her slip from his grasp. So he walks and walks, when night rolls around he stops, has some bread and cheese and takes a long gulp of his water before he packs up what little he has gotten out and begins to walk again.

Tell me have you ever seen a man desperately in love? I have, I have seen men die for the women they love I have seen them kill and I have see them let their hearts be torn to pieces just so the women who hold such power over them will be happy.

And now I watch a man walk miles and miles on so little I know that it is not the food that substances him for if it was then he would have most defiantly passed out on the side of the road many miles ago, and as he walks he hears voices from his past he see his memories playing in his head like a movie. He remembers everything and anything, he remembers her. But let me not give you the wrong impression because even though it is thought of her that substance his long walk she is not all he thinks about.

In the long days and nights of solitude the voices of his sisters and the broken face of his father pass though his head. The sound of dominos falling against each other and the sound of his weeping mother, his family, for it is one thing to hope they missed the little foster girl of Himmel Street it is an entirely different idea to think that they missed an entire family. I would say that somewhere deep inside Rudy knew that he might never see his family again he had felt it on that subconscious level and the word of the messenger only proved what he had somehow already known. It was also on that same level that he knew that somehow Liesel would be alive. And so he kept walking.

***Same disclaimer***