Hi, so here is another chapter and I hope you all enjoy. Again these are shorter chapters but most of the plot doesn't start until after our first time jump which will be very soon.

Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine just this chapter.

Please Read and Review.

And Enjoy.

Poetic Justice

Chapter 4-The Whole Package

The Von Trapp's make a decision that will forever alter their lives in the wake of recent revelations. Slightly Smaller Chapter than previous ones and mostly Louisa thought-centric.

She never told anyone about that conversation with her father. Not even Friedrich who in this mess was the one person she was arguably the closest to. She didn't even know what to say about it. What was she supposed to say? That she had told her father that she was this close (insert fingers together so that they were almost touching) to being done and then her mother had gone up and told him that she was pregnant and one of the two had given him life and she was utterly terrified that she didn't know which one it was? Seriously what was Friedrich going to say to that?

Actually she did know what Friedrich was going to say to that. That was the problem.

Ask him was what her brother would say.

And asking her father was out the question simply because if she was being honest with herself staring up at the ceiling listening to everyone breathing in sleep, she was terrified of what the answer would be.

And that did not help her emotional state whatsoever.

Louisa was fourteen, even without all that was going on her emotional state was all over the place. But right now she found that she was utterly terrified that the words that she had uttered would all come to nothing. That it was the thought of the nameless, faceless child that had managed to get her father up out of his bed and not the children that he already had. It was suffocating to think that after all of this they still didn't matter. And it was terrifying much in the same way. And there was nobody that she could talk to about it that would understand it.

Except…

Except maybe Liesl.

But then again if she had Liesl here with her she wouldn't be in this mess. If her big sister was here with her they wouldn't be spending so much time in this little hotel room wishing for a miracle that never happened and watching as the doors of Europe shuttered shut as everyone battened down the hatches and pretended that keeping their heads down and not seeing what was in front of them would work and the Nazi's would pass them by.

Stupid.

Louisa thought about it all through the night until a drowsy kind of sleep came to her.

Another fact in the equation of unhelpfulness? Her father seemed to go about pretending as if nothing had happened between them. She did not know what to make of that either and that was perhaps the most worrying of them all. She did not know what to make of the fact that she had spilled her guts to her father for the first time in her life and her father was acting as if nothing had happened. It was both bizarre and utterly terrifying and it made her want to scratch at her skin until it turned bloody. The idleness did not help. She did not like to stay indoors and even the little work that she did, did not help when everyday she was waiting for her sisters to walk through the door and everyday she knew that they would not.

Carefully she did not let her thoughts get to close to that sensitive topic. To think of Brigitta and Liesl in any shape or form was to let her guard down and Louisa was not going to do that. She had never been able to let the protective armour around herself down in Austria that much she was certainly not going to do it now. Here. Today.

The consequences…the emotional ones…she was not sure if she would be ready for that.

Ever.

But as she carried on her work she felt a change in the air. The family speared for the first time since the festival by their father had a new attitude. There was this sense of hope and discussions about what would come next. Clearly he had realised (and again she would never know if it was because of her or if it was because of the baby) that they could not stay where they were trapped forever. He was a marked man and more to the point he was marked by a high ranking Nazi. He was a man with seven (soon to be eight) children and because of that he was sure that he would be spotted. They were on dodgy grounds with cash depending on how long Swiss banks would be able to remain neutral and to be honest as much as she hated the idea of leaving, of leaving Liesl and Brigitta out there to the great unknowns—and again she had to stop thinking about them because it made something inside her yank so badly she thought she was going to retch until her insides were all over the floor—she knew that they could not carry on as they were. The practical side of Louisa that had kept her going strong for so long was screaming loud and clear right now and it was that side of her that she listened to.

It was amazing all things considering just how easy it was to do just that. How easy it was to separate the two of them. The emotional side of her and the practical side of her. It was something she had done since childhood. She had accepted her father as no longer there and then she had moved on as hard as that was to accept. The little girl who could never understand why he wasn't there and the big girl who understood that he was there but that he didn't want to be could be separate.

She was still not sure if she could ever understand why he would not want to be around them. Perhaps one day she would but right now as a fourteen year old girl her feelings and her thoughts for her father were as complicated as foreign policy.

Actually foreign policy was a lot more easier to understand. Good and evil. Nazi's and everyone else. And a war on the horizon that they were heading towards like a runaway train heads to the end of the tracks.

She was sure somewhere along the lines there was some smart person somewhere who would listen to her and finally put the pieces together of why she was so good at putting her emotions into neat little labelled boxes but for the life of her she couldn't find one.

There was nothing that could be used to describe this nightmare that had become the rich embroidery of their life. Louisa thought about how once upon a time they had sang and now the feeling or even the thought of singing made her feel sick to her stomach with an emotion that she could not describe but she knew she didn't like to taste in the back of her throat.

So when she woke and dressed one morning and tied back the blonde hair into a knot on the back of her head she was surprised to see that it was just her and her father up. They had always been early risers, she with her desire to be the first in everything and he with his navel careers and on more than one occasion she was sure that they had ran into each other as they had been the first in the big house to awaken. She had always pressed back into the shadows and watched the big hulking figure (or at least to her) of her father come into the light. She had been scared of him then. Not of his hand like other girls were off their fathers but of his presence. The coldness. Now she's scared of something else but if she's being honest she couldn't name that if she tried.

"Father" she said quietly. He looks at her then and she wonders if he's going to say something…anything…certainly he's got the look of a man who is trying to form words and Louisa finds that for once she is looking him dead in the eye wishing that he could say what he wants to say, the good, the bad, the ugly and the lovely. The whole package of fatherhood that allows for honesty.

Instead he just stares at her for a long time as if he's calculating something in her but she can't…she just can't…she's tired, so bone-achingly tired of overthinking her relationship with her father, or wanting something that she's not so sure exists anymore. There's a new baby on the way for the new Georg Von Trapp. She's still dealing with the old one.

And communication was never her strongest point.

She pushes past him towards the bathroom but before she does he stops her by speaking one sentence. It's not what she wants to hear, it's not what she needs to here but it's something and again she's so utterly fucking confused and tired by it all that she doesn't know what she is supposed to do with it.

"How do you feel about America?"

America. Seriously what the hell is she supposed to do with that?

She knows where he is going with this and to be honest it's not the worst plan in the world. America right now are one of the few countries outside a decimated Europe that are taking refugees. They all speak English which makes a huge difference. They all have managed to make it through the difficult tests and tricks and God only knows what the immigration officials will throw at them. She understands this. Plus there is a community there of people like them. People who are running from all sorts of dangers. She could understand his reasoning. America was the perfect place to be. Not even she could disagree with the analysis of his thinking.

"America" she responded. "Where?"

"There is a community of Austrian's in a place called Wisconsin. There is snow on the ground in winter and the place is welcoming to refugees. There is a school and…"

She listened to him without really listening to him. She could see the cookie-cutter life that he was trying to build for them and she wanted desperately to escape it. She was fourteen years old and already she knew that the life that he had was not the life that she wanted. She wanted to do something.

When she thought about the war that everyone was pretending was not a thing that she knew was coming she knew that she was not going to sit by the fireside and knit socks for the wounded boys at the front. She was going to do something with her life. Something practical. Something real.

And not singing. Louisa was not sure that she was ever going to sing again.

And that was a tragedy that she would unbox another day.

She realised that he was still looking at her and she struggled to answer him. There was so much to say and nothing that she could say all at the same time. Stuff she wanted so desperately to know but at the same time she couldn't ask him because she was utterly terrified of the answer.

The main question was as nameless and faceless as the thoughts in her head.

Even now she still couldn't think of how to even phrase it even though she had been burning with the need for an answer since her mother had come back from the doctors with the children.

She hated this. She hated being this out of sorts, out of place, out of control.

"Wisconsin" she replied realising that he needed an answer. "Sounds lovely"

She couldn't quite muster up enthusiasm in her voice. She found that her hands were trembling a little and she shoved them behind her back. Sometimes she had thought Brigitta was right, sometimes she and her father were just too much alike.

At the thought of her silly little sister she had to turn on her heel and she walked without caring it was rude, past her father, past her mother her hand on her still flat belly and past the faceless, nameless people that were her brothers and sisters into the bathroom door which she slammed shut and stuffed her knuckles into her mouth as the first swells of emotion hit her and her knees buckled and she leaned back against the shut door and buried her head in her knees and let the emotion hit her silently crying for the sisters that she had lost, the sibling she was gaining and the world that she had loved that was falling away at her fingertips like water that she was trying to catch desperately through cupped palms.

Nobody came after her.

To be honest she didn't expect them to.

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

Next Chapter-The Von Trapp's leave for America and the boat ride is less than smooth. But America is on the horizon and Louisa thinks that has to mean something. Right?