A/N: Bloody hell! It got past 50 reviews while I wasn't looking! *jawdrop*
I'm sorry I haven't updated in so long. I have had writer's block like you would not believe, and once I got to about halfway through this chapter, I seriously couldn't think where to go. I think my problem is that the story's getting less and less plot-driven, and I don't work too well without a vague sense of plot. The writing was fine, but it was going round and round in sort of aimless circles without me really noticing.
I think this chapter should help it get back onto the straight and narrow. ^-^ Thanks for reading, thanks for commenting, and thanks for all the love you've given me! ^_^
Enjoy the chapter!

A HEART, ONCE BROKEN

It was raining.

This wasn't the slow, soft rain of dreams. This wasn't a distant summer haze. This was rain, real, torrential rain that came down in thundering sheets, roaring like a wild beast against the roofs and shaking at the windows, as though trying to get in. The world outside was turned to crashing silver fishscales, the window panes rendered opaque by the water that ran down it. It smelt of agelessness and of the chill in one's bones on a winter night. It screamed for attention as every eye in Molching was forced away from the unreadable windows.

Liesel and Rudy sat together on the floor of the library, watching the rain cascade down the windows she had once climbed through.

Even surrounded by books, she wasn't reading, and he felt no desire to get up. They simply sat there, curled together against a bookshelf, and watched.

They had been at the mayor's house for a week, and already, it was hard to believe that they had lived anywhere else.

Had they really had homes once? School? Family? It all seemed so far away now, so distant, like a memory of a dream. The pain of that loss had whittled away at them, softly, softly, until they felt pared down to almost nothing. All that was left was to hope, somehow, that they could be rebuilt from that nothingness, that core. Hope that, somehow, they might bring their lives back again.

Until then, all they could do was wait.

THE TRUTH OF WAITING
Waiting is one of the hardest things to do.
Waiting without hope is almost impossible.
Luckily for Rudy and Liesel, they both had hope.

Rudy dreamed of his father.

Liesel dreamed of a man with muddy eyes and hair like feathers or like twigs.

Together, coiled in the shadows of the silent, looming bookshelves, they dreamed. Dreamed, as the rain thundered at the window, as the wind chased itself around the house, as the closed pages of the books on the shelves stared down at them. Their eyes were open, but they were dreaming, and they didn't even hear Herr Hermann walk into the library, closing the door behind him.

One thing I know about Heinz Hermann for certain is this; he was a good man. Whatever he did, whatever may have happened to him later on in life, he was a good man, and he didn't deserve his fate. Under the bluster and the self-importance, he was a good man, and a kind man. His son's death had struck him deep, and who can blame him?

But good and kind does not necessarily equate to right, and maybe things would have been better if he hadn't been there at all. Who knows? I don't know what might have been, or what should have happened. After all, wasn't that why I took Rudy from my brother's arms in the first place?

"Horrible weather," Heinz commented after a moment, sitting down in one of the chairs scattered around, and stretched his legs out with a sigh. "With this rain, even God Himself would seem dull and dark."

Neither of the children moved. Neither of the children spoke.

Heinz sighed, and tried again.

"Sometimes things seem darker in weather like this, don't they?" he said with a false, brittle brightness, to stony silence.

A SMALL FACT, UNREALISED
It was raining the day my brother took Johann Hermann.
Torrential rain. It fell with the shells, and his body hung on the barbed wire as I passed, heading for Alsace.
Heinz had forgotten this. Ilsa had forgotten this.
I have not.

Again, Heinz sighed, heavier this time. This was unfamiliar territory – the library, the children, the raw, undiluted grief. Once again, that feeling that he was a stranger in his own home.

"What I'm saying is…" he started again.

"We know what you're saying," Rudy said flatly, "sir." He had shifted slightly, careful not to disturb Liesel, whose head rested against his chest, but far enough that he could look back at the mayor. "Things seem worse in weather like this. Maybe you're right."

"He's not."

Taken aback by this blunt rebuffal from Liesel, Heinz opened and closed his mouth for a moment. He hadn't talked to Liesel much, and the impression he had formed was that she was polite, if quiet. He would hardly have imagined that she would contradict him quite so openly.

In fact, he didn't know her at all.

"What do you mean, I'm not?" he asked after a moment, keeping his voice carefully level. "I think I know…"

"It can't seem worse than it is," she said brusquely, settling back against Rudy's chest again, with her bare feet tucked under her. "It can't."

Heinz opened his mouth again, to counter her assertion, then closed it sharply. He remembered now. He remembered the flooding rains the day the news had come; he remembered sitting at the kitchen table, Ilsa's hands clasped in his, staring at the scrubbed wood; he remembered the feeling of hopelessness. He remembered not crying.

More than anything, though, he remembered how it had felt. It would have felt as bad if it had been summer or winter, rain or sun or snow. It wasn't the weather. It was the facts of the matter. The world falling apart around you.

And he had only lost one son. These two… they had lost everything.

"Liesel…" he started, his tones unusually quiet and unusually gentle. But before he could get any further, there was a sharp knock at the front door. All three of them – Rudy, Liesel, and Heinz Hermann – looked up sharply at the sound.

"What sort of an idiot is out in this weather?" he grumbled irritably, levering himself out of the chair to go and answer the door.

On the doorstep, with his hair plastered to his head and water dripping off skin shiny from the rain, a broken man was waiting. It was obvious in his eyes, and in his mouth, and in the way he held himself, shoulders drooping and head bowed. In one hand, he held a full trunk, the leather worn thin and cracked in places. His coat was pulled up past his chin, obscuring most of his face. He had no umbrella.

The man on the doorstep was a man in pieces.

THE NAME OF THE MAN
Alex Steiner