Hi, here is another chapter and I hope you like this one, I will do my best to keep them coming to you. With this one this story is a third of the way done.

The Office of Strategic Services was a real thing, it hired anyone of any country and ran a long line of operations with many resistances in the occupied countries. They did hire translators and they did put operative's on the ground many of whom were very well known faces and many of whom simply faded from memory. Louisa as an early recruit for one of these 'Company's' is therefore not out of the question. The OSS was the makings of the modern CIA but please feel free to do your own research and correct me if i'm wrong.

And Nicholas Heath turns up in A Sister's Love so now we will begin to see bits of the two story merge.

Disclaimer-Nothing is mine just this chapter and the character of Nicholas.

Please Read and Review.

Poetic Justice

Chapter 10-Time To Leave The Nest

Time goes on and the men are marching to war. Friedrich joins the Marines and life will never be the same again. Louisa on the other hand is offered an opportunity.

It was unsurprising when Friedrich announced over breakfast one morning in the grey January that was 1942, that he had enlisted. He had turned eighteen almost three days ago and everyone (even their father) had known that once he could go he would go.

So it wasn't a surprise. Not really.

What was a surprise was that their father seemed to know.

Louisa had just filled up her cup of tea when Friedrich's announcement had been dropped on them over breakfast. She had shot a look to her father expecting some kind of response…some kind of emotional response or something else other than him putting down his newspaper looking at his son and then nodding.

Perhaps he saw the reaction of his wife and children because he elaborated and Louisa could have sworn he looked at her when he spoke.

"Friedrich told me last night what he had done. He has my full support"

And that—at least for him seemed to be the end of that.

"So when do they ship you out?" Kurt asked finally once the shock had been worn off.

"This Friday" Friedrich said finally attacking his eggs. "I want father to come and drop me off. And you Louisa. It's only the bus depo but I wanted you two to come. I know mother that you want to but I just—"

He was cut of shockingly by their mother who raised her hand to stop him from speaking.

"Friedrich you do not have to explain it to us. If you want Louisa and your father to see you off, then they can use the car. We can all send you off the night before. I should…if we are going to make a celebration of this then I should get on with the shopping. Let me get my lists" and with that she turned and walked out of the small kitchen.

It was done very well but Louisa knew looking at her she wanted to hide her face and she could understand and accept that without any issues whatsoever. This was hell. For all that she had thought that she was ready for this there was a very real—in fact highly probable chance that her brother, her big brother, her one sounding board in this crazy world since Liesl had gone missing, could die.

She didn't know how she was supposed to cope with losing Friedrich. Now in this little kitchen she was suddenly aware that she was the eldest in his stead. That if something happened to him it was her that would have to step into the role of the elder sibling and suddenly she felt sick. For the first time the war actually hit her with a punch to the gut that made her gasp a little. She pressed her lip against her tea cup letting the burn through the patterned china cup ground her a little but she still couldn't shake the image. So long wishing that the war would come so that she could use it as her escape and now she was presented with the war at her doorstep and a way out of her life, a way to crawl out of her skin like she had been desperate for and suddenly she was scared. She was scared of what came next. Of what came afterwards. She was scared of everything and anything and all of it in between.

And at some point she supposed that she had to deal with being in a car with her father as well.

She put her cup down and as she did she felt a hand come out and touch hers lightly. She turned to see her father watching her. His eyes seemed to tell her that he had understood all of her emotions and much more and for a second she wished she had not let her emotions get the better off her. That she had not let their relationship get to the point where it had. She was sixteen, nearly seventeen, she was aching with regret and she didn't know what to do with it. She needed to talk to someone but this was 1942 and the one person she had gone to with all of her problems was missing and dare she say it even to herself? Probably dead.

For a second though they stared at each other and then she closed her eyes and pulled her hand away. She stood up and made an excuse to get changed and she didn't look back.

She very carefully didn't look back.

She never looked back.

That morning while the children went to school Louisa snuck out (well not really—she just walked out and didn't bother telling anyone where she was going. This little house was her home after all and despite the way it felt sometimes she knew it wasn't a prison) instead she went down to the recruitment office. The little town they were in had one and it's bright lights were garish in the late morning afternoon. Thankfully there was no que and much to her amusement there was only one man in uniform on duty and so she walked through the doors.

She explained as neatly as she could (and as politely) that she wanted to sign up.

"Nursing is the best for woman" he said and she gritted her teeth. Just because she was a woman in a war did not mean that she was fucking Florence Nightingale.

"No" she said finally. "I don't want to be a nurse—"

"Well their aint much else—"

"Sure there is" came another voice and they both turned the younger man snapping to attention in the presence of the officer (though he must have only been two years older than him). He had a shock of dark hair and high cheekbones and the greenest of green eyes.

"Sure there is Private. She's foreign."

"Don't talk to me like I'm not in the room" she snapped and immediately those green eyes looked at her as if seeing her. She got the impression he was looking at a fine piece of ribbon and his eyes flicked her up and down. She met his gaze with a hard glare of her own and he grinned as if he was truly amused. He had to be about twenty and here he was looking at her like that.

She hated men like that.

"Apologies Ma'am" he said with a mock bow.

"And I'm not foreign" she said spitting out the word like the insult it was. "I am Austrian—and I've heard all the jokes about the accent being close to German. I am about as German as you."

Again he looked almost as if he was enjoying himself.

"Alright then" he said with a mock bow. "What's your name?"

"Louisa. Louisa Von Trapp. I am sixteen and I can get parental permission for anything I do—"

That was technically a lie but she was sure she could forge a few signatures here and there.

"I bet you can" the officer muttered taking a gulp of something that smelt like coffee.

"Alright then" he said nodding. "You thought of translating?"

"Translating?"

"Office of Strategic Services needs translators, lot's of intelligence coming from the resistances in other countries. Not so much in Austria I grant you but…can you speak anything else?"

Never before had Louisa been so happy as to have a formal education that most children didn't get. School might have been a drag but during those years in Austria she had never considered how much use some stuff she had learnt would be.

"German, French, Austrian, English and a little bit of Italian"

Also Latin but she didn't think that was going to do much good.

"I can read and write, German, French and Austrian. English too. And I can pick up languages as I go along"

That was true. She found that she had, had an ear for it. She remembered enough Russian from her time working in the Red Cross to hold a conversation—or at least tell someone to fuck off if their hands got a little bit lower than was necessary.

He raised an eyebrow and Louisa genuinely thought she had impressed him.

"Let me make a phone call" was all he said putting down his coffee mug. "And I'll see what I can do. Because…someone who can speak and read and write German? And looks like you?"

"You think they can use me?" she asked taking a step forwards in her hurry to get started. The man turned around and she noticed that the green eyes had been tinged with a bitterness that only years later she would come to understand.

"Use you?"

He gave her that hard look as if she was a piece of ribbon only this time Louisa felt like she had the black spider (as Marta still called it) all over her.

"Yeah darlin, the brass will find a way to use you"

Louisa had no idea what that mean but what did it matter when his boss came down to speak to her? What did it matter when she came away signed up? What did it matter what the Office of Strategic Services wanted her for? She had been promised paying work, a commission if she behaved herself and a uniform. She might be starting at the bottom but it was something.

And it was just translating reports from one language into another.

How hard could that be?

She left the office with a sense of hope for the first time since the invasion of Austria and she all but skipped down the street.

She failed to notice those green eyes on her.

It wouldn't be the first time.

He watched her go down the street another recruit, another lamb to the slaughter.

Maybe this was a bit of an unfair analogy because he knew he was career military. Being bumped around orphanages for most of your life made you want to grab whatever sorry-ass excuse for a family you could and he had grabbed onto the military with both hands.

But it didn't mean he liked this. The OSS took young people like her and spat her out like it was nothing. He gave her six months and then with her blonde hair and blue eyes he thought she'd be posted undercover somewhere. Germany perhaps, Austria if they could. And then…and then she'd probably disappear into the great unknown that was special assignments and special operations.

Shame really.

Great spirit.

Didn't mean he didn't give her more than six months.

"I don't know Sir" said the recruitment officer next to him when he voiced this opinion out loud despite his promise that he was not going to talk unless he had to.

"Maybe she'll be different. Maybe she'll be the one who makes it. God knows she acts as if there's no fear in her"

"Maybe Private" he said finally seeing without meaning to those blue eyes that had stared at him as if he was an utter idiot for suggesting she do something safe like nursing (which is what they tried to promote most woman too—God knows in a war you could never have too much nursing).

"Maybe"

"Maybe Sir?"

And with that his patience which was never good these days trapped in a little office, in a little town, in a little state (you tell one Senior Office to go fuck himself and this the reward you get!)

"Get back to work Private"

Good to see he still had it, he thought watching the Private scurrying away. Another nameless, faceless, face in the crowd.

There was another long pause as he went back and sat at his desk in the little office hidden from site. He picked up the papers and then threw them back down on the desk sighing.

Louisa Von Trapp.

It was a nice name he thought but it was pointless. He was never going to see her again after all.

And with that Nicholas Heath went back to work doing his small little bit in the great cog that was the war machine (at least until he could get out with the men with a gun in his hand and actually do something) and did his best to put all thoughts of that intriguing Louisa Von Trapp out of his mind.

Chances are he would never see her again anyway.

(Oh, how very wrong he was. But that…that is a story for further down the line)

And there you go, Louisa is sixteen in this chapter but she is very close to being seventeen which makes it a bit easier for recruitment. But again this story is a work of fiction. Any war actives concerning Louisa will not take place for several more chapters however in which case she will be eighteen.

And I will do my best to bring you the next chapter sooner rather than later.

Next Chapter-Louisa and Georg go to see Friedrich off to war. And in doing so they have to spend time together in the car. Alone. And somehow that leads to a...conversation of sorts. The first one in years. But don't expect a happy ending.