Hello all, I am back to his wonderful fandom with another story and once again it is about the Von Trapp children all played by wonderful actors throughout the movie.
Again the central characters to this story are Liesl and Brigitta but there is going to be a planned sequel to this story about Louisa as well. This story is the longest I've done for this fandom and takes place over the course of five years from the start of the Second World War to the end of it. Some events might not be historical accurate including anything about pre-war immigration but I will do my best to get as many details right as humanly possible.
Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine just this chapter and the events that follow.
Please Read and Review and let me know what you think.
A Sister's Love.
During the escape from the convent, Liesl and Brigitta are separated from the rest of the family. Forced into a situation where they only have each other to survive and surrounded by unfamiliar faces and places they must rely on each other to survive the daily difficulties that becomes life in the Second World War. SPANS FROM 1939 (Prologue) and 1945 (Epilogue). Based on Film Ending. MASSIVE AU.
Chapter 1-Push
In which a separation happens and two sisters must find their way out of a country in which half of it's occupying force are out to capture them.
Looking back on those days, on those weeks, even without looking back at the last few hours Liesl Von Trapp was honestly not sure how on earth they had managed. The storm clouds had been brewing for some time and yet they had all clung to the happy charade of childhood hidden beneath the fact that politics was not a topic to be engaged at the dinner table with or without their father present.
She had known (even without seeing Rolfe) that several people in Austria did hold the belief that they were German at heart. She had known some of the views of Adolf Hitler and it had chilled her to the very bone. She had Jewish school friends and she'd seen them going to their place of worship and had never seen so much as one problem that Hitler was claiming the Jews had, the dangers that they possessed. It had all seemed to her laughable. Even when the boy she had loved had dressed up in the uniform her father had hated.
And now look at where they were.
In the space of a month they had gone from planning and executing a wedding with perfect military precision (as if their father would have them do it any other way), to being woken up one morning and finding the world had gone upside down and the German troops walking the streets were not going away anytime soon.
Of course it had taken time to realise what that meant, why their newly married parents had rushed home from their honeymoon in Paris to be with them. Why her father had stood there in the hallway of her house and swore at her Uncle that he was not going to enlist with the German Navy and where the badge of 'The Black Spider'.
Liesl had come full circle upon the actions of was happening when she had been told to pack a bag and prepare to flee the only home she had ever known. Even now when they had done that and preformed at a singing contest to boot she still couldn't believe that she wouldn't be going home and sliding into the cool sheets of her soft bed. Understanding what they were doing and why they were doing it was too very different things.
They had somehow got through singing in a packed music hall full of people trying to pretend that the world was still the same as it was yesterday and the day before. Like people weren't being forced out of jobs and forced out of their schools and God only knows what else. Like there weren't soldiers waiting all over the place to arrest and shoot her father if he so much as thought about leaving without being in their custody.
She thought she was going to be sick when it was time to split up and make it to the car. Friedrich had gone ahead running fast and she had, had to find a way to keep up even though her knees were shaking and bile was constricting the back of her throat.
Somehow all seven of them had gotten to the car unseen. Their parents had joined them and then they were speeding off to the nunnery to be taken in for what they thought might be a night where they could sleep on clean course sheets and formulate something that resembled a plan.
But that was not to be either.
They had arrived at the convent, the Mother Superior waving them in without a second thought, posting two nuns on a lookout to see if Herr Zeller was on his way with his soldiers. Gathering around Liesl had looked at her father and had seen for the first time that he was looking old and tired rather than the dominating figure that he had once been.
But now was not the time for those kinds of thoughts.
"Liesl" he was saying thrusting something at her and it took Liesl a second to realise it was her passport and her identity papers. She took them seeing the picture that had been taken last summer when her head had been filled with lipstick and Rolfe's smile and not his look of cool superiority and the tramping of boots on the cobblestones that sent shivers down everyone's spine.
"Liesl" her father said urgently and it was that tone, the commanding tone he had employed throughout all of her childhood that pulled her back to the moment in the sharpest clarity in the way that couldn't be bested unless he had a whistle.
"Yes Father?"
"I am keeping all documents for your young siblings but I am entrusting you, Friedrich, Louisa, Kurt and Brigitta to keep your own on your own person. When we get to the train station we are departing for Switzerland and then by boat to America. I have access to some money but I want you to keep some as well."
She felt rather than saw a heavy amount of notes all American no doubt slide into her pocket. American currency she knew was one of the easiest to exchange alongside the British one. Liesl swallowed again and nodded though she was not sure just who or what she was nodding too. Again the whole thing was so impossibly surreal. How this morning had she been worried about a telegram and a singing competition?
Her Father, perhaps seeing all of that on her face cupped both her cheeks in his hands and kissed her on the top of her head. Liesl closed her eyes and wished she could close her ears as well even as she knew her parents were reaching for their other children, gathering them close in this stolen moment of peace before it was so rudely shattered. She was one of the few children who could remember a time when their father was like this, when he was affectionate and laughing and coming to him had been easy rather than terrifying. But for so long they had been left out in the cold that it was still rather unnerving to be let back into the warmth.
Liesl supposed they had their mother to thank for that.
They had her to thank for a lot of things.
There was a banging at the door connecting the room they were to the main corridor and Liesl jumped burying her face a little into the soft wool of her father's winter coat. Next to her she felt Louisa slip her gloved hand into hers.
"They are on their way" came a hushed voice and suddenly she was being pushed back against the wall as the Mother Superior crossed herself and said that she would offer a prayer that they would pass the convent by—or take their word that the most wanted man in Austria and his family were not hiding here.
Liesl couldn't muster up a prayer for that.
After all what was the point?
After directing two of her nuns to walk at such a slow pace it was like a snail, the older woman took her ex-novice's hand and jerked her head towards the side door. Rucksacks, suitcases and anything else they had with them clutched in their hands the Von Trapp children followed. Liesl saw what looked like a chilly courtyard with small stones and statues embedded on the floor. It looked like a graveyard and she shivered again feeling like her head was going to implode. She wanted to sink to the ground and never get up again.
She was utterly and completely pathetic.
Pull yourself together Von Trapp. She told herself sternly as they waited until the iron gates at the end of the courtyard were open. Pull yourself together and then you'll be able to breath. This time tomorrow it will all be over.
Oh how very wrong she was.
They were forced behind huge headstones crammed between two, packed like sardines in a tin that once upon what felt like a long time ago they had eaten on a picnic where they had learnt how to sing and had felt joy for the first time in a what had felt like forever. She was squashed behind a stone with Marta, Brigitta, Kurt and then her father bending down so that even his hat was hidden. She felt Brigitta's hand creep into her own and Liesl clutched back though trying to impart as much courage as she could into the simple gesture though she knew that she was just as scared as her little sister.
It felt like hours but in reality it was seconds when they heard the pounding of the jackboots on the stone steps as the soldiers came up. Liesl took a breath through her nose and closed her eyes wishing it was over. The adrenaline coursing through her was so intense she thought she was going to burst out of her skin. Brigitta next to her was shivering, Marta curled into Kurt both of them trying to make themselves as small as humanly possible. She peeked a look at the other headstone and saw her brother trying to peer round his whole body a stiff line, Louisa with her hands in her mouth trying not to scream with panic and her baby sister curled up in their mother's lap not understanding what was going on but realising it was something terrible.
She shot a look at her father and saw his mouth in a grim line. She didn't know what to make of th—
The first banging of the gates trying to be forced open made them all flinch. Liesl supressed a moan of anxiety and she felt herself pushed forwards by a hand so hard she knew it had to be her father. He was back in sailor mode now and she was so used to that rather than how he had been acting recently that it was surprisingly comforting.
There was another banging. Another and another and then suddenly Friedrich was rearing back as if seeing a snake and the light in all it's brightness and it's harshness was pressing down upon them. Brigitta's head was digging painfully into her shoulder and Liesl tugged her a little bit closer. Brigitta had always been a resistant child, she had always struggled with her nightmares in private and had not come running into Liesl's bed like most of her other younger siblings had done. Now she was trembling like the hedgehog Louisa had once rescued and there was nothing that anyone of them could do except pray that this nightmare would end.
She looked up as the flashlight passed them the second time as more footsteps came. She edged round as delicately as she could so she could see—
And she saw him.
Rolfe.
He was standing in a clear patch of moonlight, brown uniform crisp and clean, his hat covering the gold curls that she had once loved to twist round her fingers as his head had been in her lap.
He was here now.
He was hunting them now.
Liesl couldn't help it, she gasped.
It was instinctual to see him standing there gun at his hip and though she clapped her hand over her mouth as if to pull back the sound she knew it was too late.
Still she couldn't take her eyes off him even when her father shot her a look that was part glare and part curious glance.
They left eventually and gradually the Von Trapps began to move, coming out of the darkness like blind creatures desperate for light.
And then Rolfe returned. And Liesl realised she was wrong.
The nightmare was not almost over.
It was just starting.
Somehow they separated.
Looking back, even years later Liesl was not sure how that had happened, she just knew that it happened. One moment she was chasing down a stairway Brigitta's hand in hers their rucksacks on their backs and she could see their father in front of them trying desperately to make it to the car and then…
She saw him out of the corner of her eye. Rolfe.
And then Herr Zeller was coming down the steps.
It happened so quickly she couldn't even think. Rolfe's hand came out his gun in it and before the horrible little man could even see them Liesl was aware of a sharp and blinding pain in the back of her head and a terrified Brigitta still holding her hand.
And then all went black.
And there you are. I hope that you enjoyed this opening chapter. If you have read any of my other fanfiction works you know I like to do a double update around Christmas so there should be another chapter following this one.
Next Chapter-Liesl and Brigitta regroup after the events in the abbey and as Austria tightens it's boarders they begin their escape.