Hi, so here is another chapter and I hope you enjoy this one, again it is small but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. Next chapter will have a bit more of a time jump to it.

That being said here we are, I intend to do one maybe two more chapters and then I will do a multiple update around Christmas. I always do this with whatever story I have and if you have followed my work you with know that. So if we get to December and there are no updates whatsoever please don't panic.

Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine.

Please Read and Review.


Poetic Justice

Chapter 13-Sleeping With The Enemy

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.


"So you are going then?"

"I told you Kurt I got my orders like everyone else"

Kurt watching her over the breakfast table rose an eyebrow but didn't say anything for a second.

"I'm surprised he let you go" was all he said and it was a quite mummer that she could easily ignore. Which she did.

In truth she had been quietly surprised as well. Louisa had took it as a victory on the day that she had come down for breakfast and her father had all but thrown the papers at her giving her the right to go but the truth was she didn't know how to handle what had happened next.

It was not like he was being overtly cruel. If he had given the silent treatment then she could have done her level best to ignore him back. They had both been comfortable with the silent treatment or at the very least she would have been but the truth of the matter was that she it was more unsettling than that.

It wasn't that her father was blanking her or that he hated her or anything that she (sadly) thought she could handle. The truth of the matter was that her father was perfectly civil to her. But there was a coldness that she couldn't get around and it unsettled her. It threw her back to the days where he had been Captain Von Trapp and they had all tiptoed around him. With Alexander on his lap and Gretl and Marta by his side he was the perfect father, with Kurt he was calm and with their mother he was still the same loving man that he had been from the second he had ended his engagement to the Baroness but there was a civility with her and her with him. It was as if they both knew that there was nothing else that they could do. They had hit the bottom of where their relationship could go (which in her opinion was saying something) and now there was nothing else to do but try and repair it.

The problem was she didn't know how and the other problem was she really didn't know weather or not she could. She was tired…she was so tired of trying to put on a smile and making things work that couldn't do it anymore.

And all there was to do was walk away.

Sometime she thought, in any failing relationship it was the best thing to do. Maybe it would help. Her, her father. Anyone, anything, anytime, anyplace.

And she was going to the Office of Strategic Services and she was doing a translating job.

They had asked she bunk in with some other operatives while they all went through the basics of military life but it was not essential for her to board there. She gathered the main mission of their lives was secrecy. What they were doing was to be kept secret at all times. She could understand that. She didn't know what the job entailed but she had known that she could do it.

She was sixteen, she was undeniably and perhaps understandably naïve about this. Her father wasn't and whenever she talked to Kurt (because Friedrich was gone and they'd had not even a letter from him in the weeks that he had disappeared into the big cog machine that was this war and had never looked back) and she was going too. Kurt would soon be called up as well if the war dragged out any longer. It was 1942. The news was grim and there was a determination in the country and indeed amongst the Allied powers that they would keep going but morale was hard and the losses cut deep within them even the younger ones.

And they were homesick.

They were missing their family and they were missing their home.

She didn't know what had happened to that big house on the lake but she knew that it was more than likely in Nazi hands and she had sneaking suspicion which Nazi.

Herr Zeller.

If there was a God or indeed anything resembling justice in this world then she was going to do her best to watch that man burn. And if she couldn't watch him burn then she was going to do her best to help light the fire.

It was more than personal between the two of them than she wanted to admit. Of course there was a very good chance that he hadn't given her a second thought.

That was going to change.

One way or another that was going to change.

Kurt had come downstairs the morning she was due to leave still sleep mused and tired and she had watched him out of the corner of her eye as she had made herself tea and forced herself to eat some toast. It was before dawn and he was in his dressing gown. She downed another mouthful as he watched her.

"Don't" she said finally. "I am not going overseas there is no need to look at me as if I am"

Kurt said nothing for a second and then…

"You think you will?"

Louisa shrugged.

"Perhaps"

"And you want to go?"

"Kurt at some point were all going to have to go. May as well get it over with. Besides…I always wanted to travel and see Europe"

Kurt shot her a look that spoke of the levels of stupidity in which he regarded that sentence.

"I will miss you" he said quietly. "The house will seem very strange without you"

"I doubt it" Louisa said taking another gulp of tea. "I doubt that it will seem very strange without me, I'd imagine it will have all gone back to normal by the time I am back to upset it"

"Don't sell yourself short" Kurt warned. "You've thought a lot about yourself here and I get it but I too was never supposed to be the oldest."

She stopped looking at him.

Shit. She had never considered that before.

She got the impression that Kurt knew that as well from the way he was looking at her and she was filled suddenly with a sick, swooping feeling of shame because he was right. She had never considered that before. She had never really considered him before. She and Friedrich had bonded together so tightly after they had lost Liesl and Brigitta that they had never considered Kurt who was always on the outside looking in, too old to talk to his younger sisters and too young to talk to them.

And actually he hadn't been too young to talk to them. It had not been that they had excluded him deliberately it had just been that they had never thought to consider him and Kurt had hardly banged down their doors demanding to be included in their conversations had he?

It had just been something that had fallen through the cracks and it had happened at a time when things this important should never, ever fall through the cracks.

"I'm sorry" was all she said. It was all she could say and it was not enough. It would never be enough but Kurt was gracious enough to let it slide.

"I know" he said finally. "And I wasn't desperate to be a part of your conversations, but I also was missing my sister's, I too remember father as how he used to be and I too remember the change around, and I too was not made to be the eldest child. And now when you go I will be"

"And then you will go"

"And then it will be Marta"

"God help us"

Kurt had the decency to snort. Louisa considered herself fully rebuked and from his small smile she knew that he knew that. In the contradictory way of siblings he had forgiven her no doubt as soon as she had recognised that things had been done badly.

Brothers were easy.

Fathers were not.

Speaking of father's…

She had not expected either one of them to come down and yet there they were. Her mother and her father.

Her mother hugged her and Louisa tried to put into that hug as much as she felt she couldn't say. There was a lot she couldn't say, a lot she could barely think but one of the good things about Maria had been weather as a governess or as a mother, she had never really needed to hear them. She had always just understood.

And Louisa knew that she understood exactly what she was telling her know.

"I do wish you would let us see you off" her mother said quietly. "It really wouldn't be any trouble to take you to the bus stop"

But Louisa was already shaking her head.

The last thing she wanted was a big long drawn out goodbye.

And the last thing she wanted was to be in a car with her father again. Already the silence was deafening and they were both on opposite sides of the room.

Opposite sides of the room…Jesus even that was a metaphor for the mess that they were in.

"I'd like to walk" she said and that was the truth. "Gives me more of a chance to burn off the nerves before I get on the bus"

That was true as well.

"Well darling…if you sure"

"She's sure" her father said watching from the top of the stairs.

"Trust me Maria, she's sure"

Louisa bit down her response which was to say something sarcastic and instead she bit her tongue. She was not sure what the point of that was but she was going to play nice this time.

And to be honest she couldn't wait to be gone.

Maybe he knew that as well.

"Well I should be going"

"Stay safe wont you" her father said suddenly. "I don't need heroes for children you know. I don't…I love the ones I have you understand"

Louisa blinked a little but she nodded anyway.

"Yes Sir"

"And don't…don't let the boys push you around. Military is still very much an old boy's club and believe me they know it. Don't let them do anything…shameful"

Louisa cracked a smile.

"Stay a virgin. Got it father"

He looked at her for a second, the first time that he had looked directly at her since he had come downstairs and she got the impression that he was trying not to smile. Certainly his eyes were very warm compared to what they were normally.

"Yes" he drawled finally. "That"

She managed to flip a small smile at him and then she gripped her suitcase tighter.

"I'd better be off"

As far as goodbyes went it was better than she was expecting.


She had been telling the truth when she had said that she had wanted to walk to the bus stop to try and get the nerves out of her system. She had wanted to be calm when she got on the bus and it wouldn't do if she turned up at the barracks with her heart beating out of her chest on the verge of a nervous collapse. Louisa was only sixteen (very, very nearly seventeen thank you very much) but she was also very, very aware that first impressions counted and her first impression was not going to be that she was an utter wreck that couldn't be trusted. Her father was right, the military was still predominantly male orientated and it would do no good if she turned up the stereotypical hysterical female who cried every five seconds because she was homesick.

But her heart was light when she got on the bus and she hummed under her breath. She didn't sing, she had not…could not sing since Liesl and Brigitta had gone missing and with them the joy had gone out of their lives and opened up this void that was damning and dangerous. She did not think she would ever sing until she could hear her sisters voices rise with her again and even then she thought it would have to be a special occasion—like victory—before she could do it.

Liesl had come in that night after they had sang about their favourite things her hair dripping wet and her smile almost illuminated against the light in the room. Then she had started singing and Louisa who didn't even share a room with her had listened.

She fingered her necklaces.

She had not known about Rolfe then. She did now.

And when she arrived at the barracks she walked forwards without a look back and she hummed to herself even though she knew she shouldn't have.

The song stayed the same.

You are sixteen going on seventeen.

And though it was not part of the song her heart filled a little bit with hope when she thought this one.

And the world is full of hope.

She didn't know then, what her father had known.

But that was a story as old as time


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

Next Chapter-There is a time jump and Louisa is still working, still at odds with her family and yet just as everything is getting better an oppertunity comes along that she just can't say no to.