Hi, so here is another chapter and I hope that you enjoy this chapter and I will do my best to bring you the next one sooner rather than later.

This one is Georg's point of view of the previous chapter, I hope I have done his thought process in this justice. I have always said that this and the previous chapter are the rock bottom chapters in terms of his relationship with Louisa and this chapter only adds another layer to it.

Disclaimer-Nothing is mine here. Nothing.

Please Read and Review.

Some Trigger Warnings for language as well. So please keep that in mind too.

And there might be some inconsistencies here but please keep that in mind.

Poetic Justice

Chapter 12-I'm Lost Between Right And Wrong.

Georg's point of view of this chapter, saying goodbye to Friedrich, Louisa's decision and whatever the hell comes next.

His father had never seen him off to war. He had gone early in the morning. Kissed his wife goodbye and slipped out of his house like a common criminal.

Now here he was again this time watching his son shivering slightly in his suit and tie and coat watching for the bus that would take him halfway across the country and then halfway around the world with absolutely no promise that he would return.

And even if he did, even if Georg was one of those lucky parents that got their child back with both arms, both legs, their eyes and their ears and their lungs he knew that the boy in front of him would never be the same. War took it's toll on the young and the old and his son would never look the same way that he did right now. He would never look excited again, fresh and innocent and easy.

He made an excuse to get the tickets. Part of it was to leave Friedrich with his sister as Friedrich had asked and the other part was to hide his face. He noticed he was not the only parent with a son in his late teens, that Louisa was not the only young woman here and that several had small children or babies on their hips. So many lives on the cusp of being ruined. So many lives that would change from this moment on.

Friedrich had asked him for some time to speak to his sister. The night that he had enlisted he had told Georg how Louisa had felt. How he had felt. How Liesl had felt and Brigitta and Kurt. How the turn around that he had done from absentee father (which he freely and fully admitted he was) to a loving and caring one had thrown them.

"Of course for Louisa it's also different" his son said with a shrug.

"How?"

"Because she's now the eldest. Eldest girl that is. Stepping into Liesl's shoes is a hard thing to do especially for someone who doesn't want. And I know mother needs Louisa but Louisa…Louisa needs to go out and figure out who she is outside of the labels that society and herself inflict on her. She's a wild person. You can't tame that"

Georg wasn't entirely sure on that but he supposed what his son was telling him was that he didn't know. Maria had been right, he would look up one day and realise that he didn't know his own children. There were so many issues surrounding them. He had never spoken to them about their mother's death, had left them before the funeral was over and had gone to Vienna on postings, parties, sex with the Baroness to fill the empty void that was eating away inside of him and everytime that he came back it was like the empty place at the table, the empty side of the bed, all of it was eating him up from the inside out.

And his children had just been the same. A burden almost.

And that was a horrible, disgusting thing to say.

If this was the punishment for those feelings then he was paying the full price. Two daughters were missing, a son was going off to war and one daughter couldn't look him in the eye and when she did it was as if he was a stranger and when she asked him something it was with a guarded hint of calculation in her request.

And that was the second problem.

Enlistment.

"She'll go you know" Friedrich said quietly. "I wouldn't be surprised if she's already found something. She needs to go, she needs to run to know that she can come back"

Maybe giving his son a whiskey was not the best thing to at that point Georg had thought.

"She needs me to sign for her" he'd said cheerfully. Friedrich had snorted and despite the age gap between father and son the look that he had shot Georg made him feel like he was the son and Friedrich was the father.

"Yeah" Friedrich said his accent more clearer than it had been in a long time. "And it's not like your signature can be forged"

"What do you mean?"

Friedrich put the glass to his lips and smiled.

"Father…did you ever check what kind of books Brigitta was buying?"

"I knew some were…controversial"

Actually looking back that was an understatement. Brigitta had liked history and politics and later on religion and he had never really looked at the books that she was ordering (that would have been too much parenting back then) but he knew some of them had been radical. When he had looked through his daughter's little library before he had married Maria when the girls had been bridesmaids' dress fittings or what not he had looked at them and had realised that his daughter had been ordering some…controversial…books.

Controversial had been the right word for it. Some of them he wouldn't have let in the damn house if he'd had known about them.

But now it made sense because unless his ten year old daughter had a network of illegal black market book sellers (which actually would not surprise him whatsoever when he had chance to think about it) there had to be a reason why these books had ended up in his house.

His daughters forging his signature did make perfect sense.

It just presented him with another problem.

Because Friedrich had been right. She was going to go. He could drag this out for two more years at best but when Louisa was eighteen she was going to go and he wasn't sure if she was going to come back. Even if she survived the war he was not sure if she was going to come back, and the gulf between his daughter and him, the walls that she had put up between them that he had set the foundations for and they had built together were so strong that he did not know how to ask her if when she did walk out the door to start her life, would she come back?

But it was two more years. Two more years and then he could let her go. He wasn't ready to do it at sixteen. He wasn't ready to see his own relationship with his own father play out again in real time with his daughter.

"You will take care of yourself won't you?" he said to Friedrich absent minded.

"Yes" his son said quietly. "And I will talk to Louisa but…but you cannot go back to how it was. You need to be here, present, happy. The rest will come back."

Happy.

Georg wouldn't be happy until he knew where his two missing daughters were and the reality was that he was never going to know that. He wanted to believe that he would know if they were dead already but if truth be told he didn't have a clue. He was utterly clueless when it came to his children.

And if he was being honest he was too tired to fight.

But Friedrich was right. If he lay down now and became what he had once been it was an insult to his children.

So he had to keep fighting.

He had to keep fighting for a relationship with his children. He had to keep fighting.

One foot in front of the other.

Even when he was too tired to take another step.

And that was how it came to this.

To Friedrich on a bus with a hug and a handshake and part of Georg with him. His precious baby on a bus to war and another baby in the car with him staring out the window nibbling at her fingers.

And then Louisa in that way that only her mother had ever been able to do, dropped the bomb on him.

"I enlisted"

He nearly put the car into a ditch. It was only sheer force of will that he didn't.

Friedrich had tried to warn him that it was coming but boy…had he underestimated Louisa's force of will.

And he had seriously underestimated Georg's fury.

Because this…this was the breaking point.

"YOU DID WHAT?"

"I enlisted"

"You…as what?"

"Translator for the Office of Strategic Services"

"A TRANSLATOR?"

Was she out of her of her fucking mind? Georg knew what the Office of Strategic Services was and he knew enough to know that whatever they promised her she was not going to end up like that. It was a spy agency for crying out loud and his daughter was the daughter of a high ranking defector in the Austrian Navy. Georg gave it six months before his daughter and her blonde hair and blue eyes was off behind enemy lines on some sort of special operation and the thought made his stomach turn.

Nursing…nursing he could get behind one hundred percent. Ambulance driver…yes. He could get behind both of those decisions and he could just about see her in a field hospital far from the action but far away from home. He could have gotten his brain around that. He could have accepted that, he wouldn't have liked it but he could have accepted it.

But this?

This?

Not a chance in hell.

"Father" Louisa said with a patience that reminded him very much of his first wife when his temper had run a little high. ""You were the one who paid for my education. I am reasonably fluent in several languages because of that"

He checked a little at that one because damn her, she was right and he both hated that and loved that.

"Why did you not come to me about this?"

"Would you have let me?" Louisa asked honestly.

"No"

She raised an eyebrow and didn't say anything. She shrugged and he felt the urge to shake her. To make her understand just what the hell she was doing and the consequences that it was going to have.

"Well it's done now"

Well it's done now? Well it's done now? Was she…was she…

Oh God he was going to lose it. He was honestly going to lose it.

"Jesus Christ how much do you hate me?"

She turned to look at him and Georg had a sudden revelation that he had actually surprised her.

"I don't hate you"

"No? This punishment that I am to face, this purgatory from you, never moving forwards from the past and never going back to discuss it is just what? For kicks?"

Louisa said nothing for a second.

"I don't know" she said finally as if his anger had forced to be honest and he didn't care because it was the honest she had been with him in a long time.

"I don't…I can't help how I feel. And I don't know how I feel about you. About this new life. All I know is I want to run away from it. And being angry helps because if I don't then I have to cry and crying is just exhausting."

"And your enlistment was what? To punish me?"

"No. No it wasn't. You know that. I was always going to go."

"Your sixteen which means you need me to sign"

"Yes"

"And this is your way of asking me?"

"Yes"

"Jesus Louisa" he got out of the car and slammed the door shut staring out in the landscape that was where they had parked and Louisa got out the car too and watched him for a long time.

"I'll do it anyway!"

"Will you?"

"Yes"

"I see"

Well what was he supposed to say? What was he supposed to say or do to that? To that level of coldness, of determination. He didn't now if forbidding her would help. In fact all that it was likely to do was just to drive her away and no matter how angry he was with her, he didn't want to do that.

The sins of the father.

Christ why did his inner voice have to sound like his own.

"You left us" Louisa said finally and each word that came out seemed to spill out of her as if she was finally able to say what she had been sitting on for so long. "You left us and you made us feel like shit on your shoes. And Liesl she had to become a Mum overnight and she did. She soothed nightmares, she checked the closet for monsters, she played the games and told the bedtime stories. She wrote cards in your name on birthdays and she was the one who protected your children from the governesses that were abusive. We formed this little pack and we survived as we did all of us, Friedrich me and Liesl leading the charge, and then you came back and suddenly…that you were changed and it was like we were supposed to forget. And maybe…I don't know maybe if Liesl was here she could talk me through it but she's not. So here I am, with all this feeling inside of me and I need to go somewhere and let it out before I say things that I can't take back"

Yeah. There were a lot of things that he couldn't take back either.

"She'll go" Friedrich had said and it had reverberated around in his head. "She'll go and your have to let her. Because she'll come back."

Yeah well…that had been then. This was now.

"No"

"No what?"

"No I'm not signing for you"

"Oh for—I am in uniform but I am just reading and translating some documents! I am hardly going overseas"

"They will have you overseas eventually"

"How do you know?"

"Because I know a bit more about the Office of Strategic Services more than you do"

He could see the confusion in her eyes, the hurt, the anger. He wasn't doing this punish her. She'd go if she wanted he knew that but Georg wasn't going to make it easier for her.

War took on a whole different meaning when you had children of your own in the thick of it.

"It's already done. You know that. I am sixteen and I do need you to sign for me but I will go when I'm eighteen nonetheless. And I won't come back"

Her father gave a harsh laugh.

"So an ultimatum"

"Yes"

He laughed again shaking his head. God for a girl who looked so like her mother she was so like him. He was…

Oh what the hell was the point of it anymore. They'd hit rock bottom. How the fuck was he supposed to get back up from this?

So what? Three children lost to him? One lost to the war?

Is that what it was now? No chances of getting any of them back?

Was this really what losing your mind felt like? Because this was what he imagined it feeling like? It felt like he was losing his mind.

Well…what choice did he have after all? He was only Louisa's father and she had made it very clear that, that was a role she didn't need filling.

Maybe someday.

"Very well" he said getting into the car and she followed him sliding into the seat next to him and watching him with those wide blue eyes.

Clearly she didn't know what to say.

That made two of them.

But there was one more thing that he wanted to say. One more thing that he had to say. Maybe it would make a difference, more than likely it wouldn't but he had to say it anyway.

"I stood up for you" he said finally. "It was your words Louisa. But now…now I wish to God I did not know what a heavy burden it would be"

And with that he put the car back into reverse and he drove home feeling very much so like he had left his heart somewhere between Austria and the bus stop where he had lost along the way four of his children.

What was the point?

What was the point of any of it?

And where the hell did they go from here?

Nowhere. That was the answer.

Nowhere soon anyway.

And there you go, I hope you enjoy and I will bring you the next chapter sooner rather than later.

Next Chapter-Louisa and her family hit rock bottom and she goes off to work. It starts off simple and then it doesn't. Things at home are much the same as well.