Hi, so here is another chapter and I hope you all enjoy. This is more of a deep-dive into Louisa's background and her views which true to the way I write her will clash with Maria's. This is a very trying time for woman in history fighting against the traditional role models they grew up with and the emancipation that the war gave them to have careers, to have love, to have a job all without the traditional trappings. Again all of this will be explored as we carry on with this story.

Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine just this chapter.

Please Read and Review and let me know what you think.

Enjoy.

Poetic Justice

Chapter 2-Throwing It All Away

Liesl and Friedrich take over with their siblings as they try to escape Austria, there is no sign of either one of her sisters and something is wrong with Maria.

"We need to get a move on"

She would only say it to her brother and it was only because Friedrich had been saying the same thing. They had managed to get into the hills and over the boarder but Louisa felt like they could still see Austria over the next hill and she never seemed to get past it.

It wasn't so much the sleeping on the floor, the weather was nice and the stars in the sky kept their siblings occupied but it was the total lack of a plan going forwards that worried her. It had been two days now and her father had been torn between going back to find his two daughters and trying to get the rest of them to safety.

Louisa wouldn't have a problem with that theory but it was the lack of everything else that was jarring her. At some point it was going to become more and more difficult for them to travel. Granted she did not even think the Germans would be mad enough to invade Switzerland's neutrality. Switzerland the bedrock of peace in Europe but she also had never thought they would be mad enough to invade Austria so then again it showed how much she knew about Hitler, the Nazi's and the broader scope of this whole thing.

Friedrich said nothing.

"Friedrich if we don't get a move on the boarders to other countries will be closed. And there is no guarantee that Switzerland will be—"

"Louisa do you think you are telling me anything that I don't already know?"

"No" Louisa said sharply. "But I wish we could tell father, this cannot go on"

"You want to leave this spot with our sisters still missing?"

It was a simple enough question but the look that Louisa gave him was enough for her brother to go pale with fright.

"Do you think I like this?" she hissed so that nobody could overhear. They were stood on the edge of a cliff like hill looking over the mountains where it was so cold that the snow never melted. Somewhere she thought she could see her house and the lake and the bedroom she had left with the bed still unmade.

"No I—"

But she did not give him time to finish.

"Friedrich my heart is breaking every second that they are not here with me. They are my sisters! And my best friends but someone has to be practical—" she spoke in an angry hiss as so not to be disturbed by any of her siblings crowded round a fire with their mother waiting for the news that was never going to come.

"But we have to be practical…we are literally a stone's throw away from the border. We need to get into a town and get out of Europe and we need to do it fast! And we need a father for once—and nobody understands the irony of this more than me believe me—who is a navel captain and not a father!"

Friedrich watched her for a second.

"Ironic" he said softly. "We spend so much time wishing for a father and when we eventually get him we wish he becomes a navel officer again and starts barking out orders"

"Barking out orders would be better" Louisa said. It was all that they could say. Neither one wanted to comment on the irony that had hit them. Or the crushing realisation that their sisters were not going to come back with their father. They had no idea what had happened but Louisa and Friedrich were the two Von Trapps (they knew) who were the most practical out of all of them and their instincts were telling them that soon it would be too late to get away regardless of weather or not Liesl and Brigitta were with them.

"Someone should speak to him"

She shot her brother a long look. "Well…"

"Good Lord, Louisa you don't mean me do you?"

"Yes I do bloody mean you" she snapped. "You're the one whose gone around telling every man, woman and child that you're the man of the house whenever father's gone"

"But…oh seriously Louisa I can't have that conversation with him—"

"You think it should be me?"

"Well your bloody fearless" Friedrich muttered but Louisa didn't say anything. In truth he was right but she didn't know when she had become fearless…or at the very least when she had started acting fearless. In truth she felt a terrible kind of fear when she thought about Liesl and Brigitta and it made her hands curl into fists. She didn't want to become the older sister, she didn't want to lose her best friend, older sisters in this family turned into mothers regardless of weather or not there was another mother in the picture. She had seen that herself. Liesl had been more mother than sister, wife than daughter and she did not want that for herself. She did not know what she wanted for her future but she knew that she did not want that. She did not want that.

"Mother needs to tell him"

"Mother isn't well"

That was true. It was probably stress—coming back from your honeymoon to find out that your country had been invaded, your husband almost kidnapped for military service and then fleeing like criminals while putting your old home firmly in the Nazi's view was Louisa thought exceptionally taxing. That was before you got to being stranded on a cliff with two of your children missing and an increasingly erratic husband.

"What do you want me to do about?"

She knew she was being harsh but she was…crawling out of her skin here. The panic that she was doing her best to keep down was threatening to explode and it made her feel sick. If she started crying then she wasn't sure that she was going to stop and there was no Liesl here. She was not sure that she could be the one to mop up tears and wipe faces and she was still unsure of how this was going to even work. It had been so long since she'd had a mother that she felt like Liesl had when her mother had first arrived—she was now fourteen she didn't need guidance and yet at the same time she was sure that she did.

Couple in with the fact that Louisa knew this was not a great time for any child and the fact that there was a war over the horizon (at some point there had to be right?) and you had a recipe for emotional disaster right there and then.

Friedrich's hand found her own for a second.

"I'll talk to him when he comes back" was all he said. "Your right it should be me. We can't be this close to the boarder. If we can get into the main cities where the Red Cross is based then we can try and find out news…Liesl's not stupid she knows that was where we were going to go. If she can find a way to get to us she will. Who knows? Maybe she's with Brigitta and on her way there now"

Louisa smiled but she said nothing. Friedrich wanted to cling to false hope for as long as he could then he could. She wasn't a masochist. It was ripping her insides into shreds but the truth of the matter was that there wasn't a choice in the matter. She couldn't even begin to feel the pain that she was sure was going to hit her at some point.

Not when everything was still so much at risk.

And so she followed Friedrich back to the little camp that they had made up and waited for their father to come back alone no doubt with that look on his face that made her want to rage and cry all at the same time for reasons she did not know, and feelings she could not control.

Whatever conversation took place between her father and Friedrich, Louisa did not know. Most of the children were asleep listening to the strumming of her mother's guitar and though Louisa wanted to go to the top of the cliff and listen into the conversation that took place between father and son (though son seemed to be even taller than the father in the firelight) when she had tried to move her mother had asked her in a voice as sweet as sugared milk if she would help tuck Marta into bed and that had been the end of that.

"We should let the men talk" she said gently. "They don't need advice from us women right now"

And that pissed her off for reasons that she couldn't speak out loud. This was 1938. The role of woman were changing and even though many were confined to the role of wife, mother and seemed content with that. Louisa was not that person. She was not that kind of person who would be happy she thought behind the walls of a house not expressing her opinion. Not being included in the conversations that took place because she was a woman. She was not sure if that was the spirit in which her mothers comments had been taken but she was sure enough to know that she was not going to want that for herself. She wanted to work, to live on her own, to be a confident woman in her own right who didn't need a man for anything.

Hell if you listened to some gossip you didn't even need a man to have a baby…well…beyond the first instinct.

Brigitta was not the only one who had connections with the local booksellers.

Eventually Friedrich came back. Louisa who had been staring into the fire feeling the heat on her face stood up uncaring of what it looked like and she followed him until they were a little away. Not enough so that they were not in sight but enough so that they didn't have to be overheard.

"Well?"

"I think he get's it but Christ…he makes it so…he makes it sound like I don't care and I know…I know that he's hurt and I know that he's broken over this and believe me I am too but I swear to God Louisa I really did think that I was going to snap and tell him—" he cut himself off abruptly and Louisa knew what he was going to say, what he had tried to say and what he had stopped himself from saying.

The Von Trapp children were independent, had been independent and hadn't needed anyone during their childhood, they had been mostly unloved or certainly had felt unloved and they had done things their own way. Their father coming back and asserting his parental control and actually staying to see if through was something they did not understand. He had been back nearly five days from his honeymoon and already it was wearing thin. In fact before Maria had come to the house five days had been the longest he had ever spent with them within two years.

"You remember Rolfe right?" Friedrich said once into the silence.

Louisa shot him a look, it was dark but by the smile on her brother's face she knew that he had understood.

"What about him?"

"Remember when he used to sneak Liesl out at two in the morning?"

"You knew about that?"

Friedrich rolled his eyes and Louisa could understand it. Subtlety was not Liesl's strongest suit and it had certainly not been Rolfe's. Both of them had gone around with stupid lovesick smiles on their faces and Liesl had always been in a good mood whenever she had come back from those long walks that she'd had with him.

"Course I did" Friedrich said speaking over her thoughts.

"I knew all of it. But what I was saying was…did you know that when I caught him waiting for Liesl he used to bribe me to keep quiet?"

"Chocolate?"

"Cigarettes"

"Really?"

"Really"

She was stunned almost. "How the hell did you keep that quiet?"

Friedrich shot her a look and carefully didn't mention it was because they had a father that didn't care what they were doing as long as he didn't have to read about it on the front page of the newspaper.

"Ah"

"Yeah. You get used to it as well. You get used to hiding the smell but God…what I wouldn't give for one now. I ran out you see, the night of the invasion but…I swear when we get settled I'm getting a pack and a lighter because neither my heart nor my temper can deal with this for much longer"

Louisa laughed though it was a little grating.

"We should go back" she said carefully. Friedrich didn't have to look to know that both of their parents were staring at them.

"Yeah" he said casually. "I suppose we must. God knows I don't think he can do it alone. It used to be Liesl that carried him. Now I guess it's got to be us"

And he went, Louisa took a second long look in the direction that Austria was and gnashed her teeth together. She hated this…she hated…hated…hated this. She hated the fact that they were running.

But when their father told them that they were moving from this spot and going to find a Red Cross unit in a town she looked at him and the age that had settled on him in the past three days and she felt a great wave of longing for her sister, her big sister whose comforting presence was needed and who would have had the sense to act as a buffer so that Louisa could get her own feelings under control.

As it was they were left to bubble under the surface and how long they would stay there Louisa really could not say.

And there you go, now begins this story. I do start work back up again so please be aware of that when it comes to updates, as always your reading this story means the world to me and I will post the next chapter as soon as possible.

Next Chapter-Maria's illness continues as the family move into Switzerland leading to a shocking revelation. With options rapidly running out of time and no news from the Red Cross, Georg Von Trapp begins to break down.