Hi, so here is another chapter and I hope that you enjoy it. The character of Johan 'Jon' will in the next chapters become more and more apparent.

Disclaimer-Nothing more than the character of Joh Van Braun.

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

A Sister's Love

Chapter 5-Judgement Call

Liesl is fresh out of ideas when one comes straight out of the sky in the form of an half-Australian, half German man with a past, a radical idea and a smile that is far too dangerous for his own good and her heart rate.

It was clear that she was running rapidly out of ideas.

And she had to keep watching her cash flow.

As the days increased and the ports became flooded with more and more refugees and trains began to get crowded Liesl realised that soon she would have to make a decision about what to do next. She had hoped, desperately hoped that she would have found their family by now but it was clear that they were either the other side of the country or that they had gone on by now.

And she thought she could understand why. Though she was desperately scared and if she was being honest with herself more than a little hurt, she thought she could understand why her father had done what he had so obviously did.

It was now a certainty that Europe or at least huge parts of it was going to fall under German control. And then Liesl knew they would push for outside of Europe and then as sure as the sky was blue in the summer months this would turn into a war and the world as they knew it would be turned upside down.

Their father had clearly chosen to take care of the family that he had left and hope for the best. It was not a totally unprecedented reaction after all she was going to do the same thing. The only thing she could do was put her name down on the list of Red Cross Refugees, have it sent to the main office in any free country she could find and hope against hope that someone would pick it up there.

She thought it was pretty pointless and that thought sent her spiralling into such a panic and a pain that she was not sure if she could carry on putting one foot in front of the other.

If it had not been for her sister, her dark, independent, passionate little sister she was pretty sure she wouldn't have bothered. But she had to get Brigitta to safety, she had to make sure there was some kind of a life wherever they were and as she stared at the immigration forms she had been handed she knew that she had to do it soon.

Thank God that they both spoke English fluently and could read and write in both well. Also she was pretty sure that their Austrian accent had been hammered out of them by a combination of school teachers who believed that speaking their own languages with an accent was abhorrent and sheer fear that they would be found out. It was impossible for them to truly hide but if they tried they could give the impression of living somewhere other than Austria for a few months instead of a few days.

There had been days, many of them in fact when she had hated the fact that she had, had a posh girl's education.

Now she revelled in it for it was the key to their survival.

Or certainly the key to getting into somewhere safe, and somewhere safe was somewhere that had no boarder with Europe.

She woke up early on that morning and as if she was an old guard dog realising something was wrong with the world she knew that today was the day she had to make the decision. Brigitta had indicated a preference for Australia mainly Liesl suspected because of that man that she had been speaking too the night before but Liesl was so desperately unsure of anything and everything. She was sixteen, she was terrified of making mistakes and now she was thinking she supposed that Rolfe had been right when he had told her that she was still a little baby who needed a man to protect and guide her.

Back then it had seemed romantic, right now it seemed practical.

She wondered weather or not she would ever get to a place where she wouldn't feel her heart give a little traitorous thud at the thought of his name, or his smile or his voice or…anything. He had been her first love, she had wanted him to be her last and he like so many first loves had proven tarnished and hollow and empty.

She got dressed in silence as it was barely dawn and slipped downstairs. It was time to go to the ticket office and simply hope and pray for the best. She tucked her travelling cloak over her shoulders against the cold of the morning and then just as she was about to grab her hat she heard a voice drawl out—

"So that's it? Not a word to your dear sister?"

She jumped clean out of her skin and gripped the doorframe to keep herself steady. Anyone who could afford the bed had a room upstairs but many kept company downstairs until the early hours of the morning. She always did her best to avoid them and the housekeeper here understanding her concerns made sure that they were safe.

But still…

She turned around.

It was him again, that bloody man Birgitta had been speaking too who was half German and half Australian—whatever that meant and he was still sat at the same spot. He stretched, cracked his back and then came over. He was still in his coat and he opened the door and Liesl followed him watching as he sat down on the wall and lit a cigarette. He handed one to her and she took it sitting down next to him. She wasn't much of a smoker (it became apparent after the age of fourteen that her father wasn't coming back to deal with her for anything other than a pregnancy) but she had sat on the walls at school with her friends and had them in her mouth pretending she was some artist in Paris and the world was golden and open at her feet.

Now she blew out the smoke and let it wash over her.

It felt good.

It felt…rebellious.

"You alright?" he asked lowly and she shrugged. She was not alright and he knew that.

"My name is Johan" he said finally. "Your sister calls me Jon. You can also call me Jon if you want"

"Liesl" she said just as quietly.

"So Liesl, you off to buy yourself tickets to a new life?"

She shrugged.

"Well you should you know. Better you do it now rather than when it's too late. Get on a boat and never look back. Your one of the lucky ones who can do that. You've left nothing behind and you've got nothing here waiting for you. Enjoy the freedom by all means. It means that you are free of ghosts. And when your free, your free"

It was such an odd way of putting it and yet at the same time it seemed to help. It brought about such a strange emotion in her and for the first time Liesl could appreciate the predicament that she and her sister were in. Alone, stranded and with some money and papers but not a lot and no way of finding out any information. There was no shelter of a parent's arms around her. It was just her. Just her.

And then suddenly she was crying.

Actually she was doing a bit more than crying. She was sobbing hysterically into her hands like a crazy person and yet she couldn't stop. She knew it must look odd, the girl sitting on the wall crying with the man sat next to her acting as if it was totally normal but there they were until eventually Jon handed her a piece of cloth that looked as if it had seen better days. Liesl wiped her face feeling utterly embarrassed by such an open display of emotion, incredibly vulnerable to have shown a stranger such an open display of emotion and yet incredibly relieved to have done so.

"You shouldn't cry" he said shortly. "Your pretty when you cry. And some bastard out there is going to like it too much one day. Never let them seem you down."

"Err…thanks…"

If that was a compliment she was not sure because she had never had a compliment like that before. All of her compliments from Rolfe had been sugar and honey and sweetness, nothings that girls of sixteen loved to hear. Honestly had all of that only been a six months ago?

It felt like another lifetime, another lifetime in another world for another girl.

"Look…Liesl I don't envy you. I really don't I mean, I've already got an option back though…" he turned and looked at her and Liesl suddenly saw that his eyes were very blue and they were staring at her as if she was the most interesting thing in the world which she knew was a complete and utter lie.

"How old are you?"

"Sixteen"

He ran a hand over his face.

"When do you turn seventeen?"

Liesl calculated the date in her head and blinked.

"Two weeks, on the Wednesday"

"Hmm"

He was in thought for a second and then nodded almost to himself.

"Look, I've got an idea and your going to think it's mad but just keep up with me. I've got friends in Australia, and a grandmother who hates fascism in a way that truly makes me worry. If things kick off he can't fight which means he needs looking after and he's been desperate to do something. If could get you and your sister into Australia to work for her as a companion would you do that? At least until the dust settles down?"

He said this very fast and the more he talked the more Australian the accent became and Liesl had to struggle to keep up. But it sounded like a plan, it sounded like the best plan she had heard in a long time, and she found that she wanted to trust him. Truth be told she wanted someone; anyone she could trust.

"It sounds…like a plan" she said guardedly. "But are there not restrictions to enter. Immigration and such? What if they decide that Brigitta and I are unsuitable?"

"Well…that's the second part of the plan. You see…I am somewhat...err…I am on a list so to speak of people who might be viewed as…odd…coming into the country alone. I am half German and even in Australia we have heard of Adolf Hitler. Plus I have spent time in Germany both before Hitler and afterwards. So as a single man I might be viewed as a concern. As a man travelling with a young woman and a young girl concern would be loosened considerably. Do you understand?"

She did. And she nodded as such but she could still see problems that were going to crop up in this seemingly perfect plan.

"But will they not wonder why you are travelling alone with two single girls?"

"Well they might…but there is a sure-fire way around that. And it ties into helping you as well. You see it's really very simple." And he smiled at her and Liesl saw that when he smiled it was like the pain and the misery and the worry and all the years were stripped back off his face and suddenly she could see that he was only a couple of years older than her and not the old man that he seemed to be. He had seen things that she had never understood and could never understand but he was a young man still underneath all that and there was a sense that they could help each other"

"Liesl. Will you marry me?"

She inhaled the cigarette almost.

She spat it straight out and then coughed until her eyes streamed quite sure that she had heard wrongly because there was no fucking way she had heard what she had just heard.

"I beg your pardon?" she said once she could speak again.

"Marry me"

She gazed at him.

"Oh don't worry not a proper marriage. We just need to marry to prove we are man and wife. With a grandmother already settled and your sister underage that would be enough I should think to get us through the gates—so to speak—and therefore we should be ok. It wouldn't be like a real marriage"

"A real marriage?" she asked faintly and then she felt herself going scarlet for she did know (a hell of a lot more than she suspected her father wanted her to) about what a real marriage was and what it entailed.

"No it doesn't have to be anything like that. But it provides both of us with protection. We can get into safety and then once your papers are approved we can get an annulment and claim we were too young to understand what was happening. Hell we can even blame it on the Germans. Give some of my grandmother's friends a sob story and they'll embroider it so that it was Hitler himself standing with a gun to your head as your vows were read out. Then you can concentrate on finding your family and I…" he let that sentence trail off and then shrugged.

Liesl stared at him. It was insane. It was utterly insane. She had no idea what to say to it other than it was the most insane plan she had ever heard off. There were so many ways in which it could go wrong and she was aware that though she wanted someone to trust she was putting a hell of a lot of faith in a man she had met last night and a dark and dangerous smile was not much to go on.

But you have to do something. The voice in her head argued. You have to do something Liesl. You have to do it for Brigitta if for nothing else. Besides it's not like he's asking for much is he.

"You promise me you will not take advantage?"

Jon scoffed.

"No" he said easily. "Not the way I was raised. Besides if I did your sister would take care of me. I've seen the books that she's got with her. Some of those hardbacks are thick and heavy enough to do some serious damage."

She laughed though it was unwillingly forced out of her, it was an utterly mad plan and she knew without even having to think about it what her father's reaction to it would be but…but then again he wasn't here was he? He had gone.

It was her and Brigitta and now this man who was promising her a way out that seemed almost plausible.

Besides if the Nazi's invaded and they found out who they were…

The thought of Herr Zeller's smile as he stared down at her from his point of view in the music hall…

"Very well" she said grasping for any kind of memory to chase away that image and very aware that everything in her life was going to change again from this moment onwards.

"Very well Johan. I will marry you"

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

Next Chapter-A marriage takes place, something resembling a family is created and Liesl and Brigitta finally pack up their stuff and leave.