Hi, and here we are again and the end is in sight. This chapter does deal with the Holocaust and so I give you full warning and Triggers for that, if this affects you please do not read this or the next chapter. We are getting a bit into A Sister's Love as well so expect some crossover with this story as we delve into the last six chapters.

Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine just this chapter and the characters of Nick and Jon.

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

Again trigger warnings for this chapter and probably for the next.

General Taylor was a real life man, he did take a look at the camps at Landsberg Germany and he did declare martial law in disgust forcing the residents of the town to clean up the bodies. All of this again can be seen in the TV show Band of Brothers which is being used as the main inspiration for the Europe side of this fic.

Again, I hope you enjoy.

Poetic Justice

Chapter 24-Ice Queen

Back in Germany, Louisa and the men stumble across something so horrific there are no words to even describe it. And a man from Australia arrives as a translator and Nick can only watch as the woman who he loves has her life blown apart for the second time in five years. Trigger Warnings for this chapter for the Holocaust.

They crossed into Germany with a mundane finality. Louisa hadn't even seen the crossing. She was a stone's throw away from her home and she had not even been able to see herself cross into the country that had been at the forefront of everyone's mind since 1914 and had never really stopped.

But she woke up to sunlight and she woke up to Germany and it was jarring. In Belgium the civilians she had seen had been worn down by the war but they had carried on fighting, in France they had just been warn down, in Germany it was a mixed bag. There were some who were happy to see them, others downright hostile, most on the other hand just seemed to watch them with a world weariness that came from being under the thumb of a lunatic (according to a Private Benson who had a thing for looting) for more than ten years.

One of the good things that came out of it was the fact that finally she could get decent clothes. The return to a civilisation that had not been bombed to pieces meant that she had broken into a clothes shop found some decent trousers and a nice black jumper that would last. She kept her jacket though.

Much to the delight of nearly all of the Airborne the houses they walked into or found abandoned had baths and Louisa had sat in one for her allotted fifteen minutes and it had been a struggle not to sleep and drown which all in all was not the way she wanted to go.

But Germany reminded her a little bit of Austria. She could feel the cold air on her face and it reminded her of her home. She could feel the weak sun and smell the tea brewing in the morning and it reminded her of coming down to breakfast at her home.

They went from town to town in Germany, little hamlets while they tried to flush out the men that were still stationed over there. To be honest it wasn't so much the men and the officers. It was the SS. And now in Germany it was the higher ranks of the SS that they were going after and one day she walked into what was Battalion HQ only to be pointed at the phone to be finally, finally given orders.

"Gotta say Von Trapp I am rather glad that you are alive" came the drawling voice of her new boss. Southern by the sound of it and Louisa sighed.

"Thank you Sir"

"Always nice to know that I have people who make the most of what opportunities they are given"

"Yes Sir"

Seriously though what she could she say to a man over the phone that she had just met? What was she supposed to say to the teasing implication that the only reason she was alive was because she had slept her way through the bloody war.

Which was not true. She had not even thought about…well…that.

As soon as she found a decent bed though she was going to have to think about it. This teasing game with Nick was driving her up the wall with desire and madness and pain and pleasure all rolled into one.

"I need you to take the names of everyone we've either taken or killed that is high up in the food chain of the Third Reich" came the voice down the phone and Louisa nodded. She didn't comment on the fact that she thought that he was an idiot, this nameless, faceless person down the phone because she had been doing this since she had landed in Belgium and had carried on in France. Louisa was not stupid. She had listened to her training officer when he had told her what to do.

"There's a chance the Airbourne won't stop in Germany" the voice down the phone continued and Louisa nodded uncaring that he couldn't see or hear her. She had known this too. Not because anyone had told her but because it was nothing else but sheer common sense. They were in Germany. The Russian's were carving up the East there was no point in being repatriated there and the Brits where all over the place but mostly following them and or in Italy. The Pacific was also an option but Louisa felt comfortable looking at the risk assessment that she had made which was that the men in Europe would not be sent to the Pacific until the war in Europe was done.

"Austria sir?"

"Yes. I know your Austrian by birth Von Trapp so I need you to keep your eyes and ears open for any SS or sympathisers to the cause over there. Austria's a country we don't have much intelligence about but we do know that the main man over there is a man by the name of Herr Hans Zeller—"

But the rest of his conversation was drowned out as the buzzing in her ears.

Because she knew that name.

She knew that name.

Fucking finally.

"Do you want him alive Sir?" she asked not caring that she had just interrupted a superior officer.

"I would like him alive Von Trapp…but if he turns up dead then I won't complain either. You get a shot feel free to take it"

Louisa smiled. It was better than what she had been hoping for. Permission to kill.

This had been the moment that she had been craving since that night in 1938 when he had arrived at the abbey and her life had been ruined. When that man had gone into that convent and ripped her family apart and in the process had ripped her apart. Granted she didn't know weather or not she would have done and said what she had done and said if he hadn't…there was no guarantee that she would have been alive after all, but the truth of the matter was that this was personal for her.

And for her…that was all that mattered.

When Nick asked her why she was smiling she said it was because she had finally received something that resembled orders. That and it was a beautiful day.

Nick either believed her or was smart enough to pick up that now was not the time to ask her what was going on.

Louisa didn't lie. Exactly.

She had received orders after all.

The next day however she hardly smiled once.

A group of men had gone out in search of a hunt weather for game or for Germans she hardly paid attention. She had been engrossed in the German library of the small town. Reading German and having a pistol came in handy and God knows that Louisa was dying to get her hands on something that she could sink her teeth into.

(When that failed she burned copies of Mein Kampf for fun because what else was she going to do?)

But she had been reading the back of a book that made her stomach turn with how disgusting it was when Nick came in.

One look at what was on his face and she reached for her own gun at the back of her hip. It was hard to put into words just what his face looked like in that moment.

"We found something"

"Okay"

"In the woods"

Her brain always in touch with what her mission specs had said wondered…

"POW Camp?"

"Nah" he said shaking his head. "Not a POW camp it's…" and he shook his head again and there was a helplessness there that she genuinely didn't know what to do it. It made fear flicker in her stomach and lick up her spine. Throughout the whole thing, throughout Belgium and throughout France and throughout the constant shelling she had never seen Nick look like that. Not even when she had been knocked flat on her ass. She had never seen that helplessness carved over the features of his handsome face.

Something was wrong here.

Something was very, very wrong here.

"Nick?"

He looked at her then and his mouth did a strange twisting thing.

"I don't know what it is" he said finally. "But a lot of them speak German"

"Are the guys up there already?"

"Most" he said. "Don't start okay. We kept some back to guard the town but now we need you. You speak about six different languages and that's what we need. It's just…you just got to be ready to walk through the gates cause if your not…"

Louisa straightened her shoulders and dropped the book onto the floor.

"Alright" she said evenly trying not to show how utterly afraid she was (she was not altogether sure that she had succeeded if she was being honest with herself again). "Alright, let's go"

He was right.

Nothing could prepare her for what was coming.

It was a chicken wire fence in the middle of the woods, no way out, nowhere to run and that was before she saw…

She saw…

It was hard to put into words.

It was hard to even find the words.

They were people but they didn't look like people. They were stretched thin over bone and flesh and the dead littered the ground in waves. Men who had fallen where they stood corpses left to rot in the bright sunshine.

The ones that were standing were hunched over spines clapped to bellies and they looked at her the woman stood there in clean clothes with clean hair that she had tied back in a knot on the top of her head as if they had never a woman like her before.

Nick came and stood next to her as she took in the huts, the mud, the men scrambling in the dirt to try and fix things. She took in the bodies that were scattered in piles and in trucks that they had found. He stood next to her when she spoke to the men who told her that there was a woman's camp down the road in stuttering German as if they couldn't believe that they were being liberated, as if this was a dream and the horror written on everyone's face was almost surprising. He stood by her side when she saw the numbers branded on his arm like cattle and he stood by her side when she asked just what they had done to get put in this place.

For a second the man she'd been talking to gaped at her as if he couldn't understand her ignorance and then he opened his mouth and uttered the one sentence that blew apart her world and then put it into perspective in a way that the shelling never had.

"What?" Nick said flatly looking at her after the man was coxed away by the promise of water and food and whatever spare rations that the soldiers had which they were giving freely though they were clearly out of their depth on what to do for the best. "What did he say?"

"Jews"

"Beg pardon?"

But she was struggling to say it. It was odd. She had lived in Austria during the invasion if only for a month, she had seen the rhetoric that had appeared overnight, she had heard her sister talk about it enough times, Brigitta's dire warnings that it would get horrendous for certain people of Hitler was not stopped. She had been thirteen she had not considered it too deeply and now she was seeing it play out in real time.

And she suddenly understood exactly why her father had refused to help these monsters, she understood why he had ran away. She had gotten it so, so wrong. Because looking at this she understood why her father had gotten his family out while he could. Because she didn't think that this was a one camp kind of thing.

And it made her want to vomit.

(The truth of it was that this was just the tipping point. The worst of what was to come remained hidden from them all. It was not until the Russian's hit Poland that they would fully understand the horror or what the Nazi's had been doing—it wasn't hard to imagine a war breaking out after that)

"I don't understand" Nick said finally and Louisa smiled humourless because no she did not understand either. She did not understand how one human being could do this to another and she did not understand how in the name of all that was good people could let it happen.

"This camp is full of Jews" she said quietly. "Poles, Gypsies, Communists, people the Nazi's didn't like. Answer your question?"

Nick gazed at her. The horror of his expression as the reality sunk in was not one that she was going to forget.

God only knows what he had seen on her own face.

General Taylor so incensed by what he had seen declared martial law that afternoon. Everyone was staying near the camp to care for the survivors and to comprehend what it was, at least until the Battalion figured out where to send them next.

They threw open doors to shops and took what they could and they threw open the doors to houses and they slept while they could. That night, the first night Louisa was in some bed for the first time in months and any thought of Herr Zeller or Nick or anything beyond her. She could think of nothing but the people they had found and how the rumours were spilling that there were more camps that they were finding all over the place.

Nick came to find her. She didn't know if he had known that she had needed him or if he had needed her. Louisa had found some pink strappy thing that she was keeping on principle because the silk was good in one of the closets and she pushed herself up under the covers on her elbows when Nick came in looked wild eyed and red rimmed and as lost and confused and broken as she felt.

He had some bottle but God only knows where he had found it and he clumsily poured two drinks and she watched as the brown liquid splashed a little onto the covers. He kicked the door shut and dropped his jacket to the floor and even though he was a little drunk and God knows they were not going to do anything tonight (not even have a conversation about weather or not they wanted to do anything tonight) but she pushed back the covers and took a sip of the drink and letting the whiskey burn down her throat.

Christ she hated whiskey.

Nick saw her face and gave a harsh laugh and then he dropped his head back on the pillow.

"According to Battalion the Russians found another one months ago" he said quietly. "Somewhere in Poland. Worse than this one, hundreds of huts, gas chambers, ovens…"

"What the hell do you need gas chambers and ovens for?"

"Bodies and from what I can gather gas chambers are for the woman and child—oh shit"

And suddenly she was off the bed and she head first in the sink and the little bread and water she had put on her stomach was being thrown out of her and she vomited it up until there was nothing left.

Nick didn't get off the bed right away, instead he waited until she had wiped her face and then he wrapped one arm around her thin shoulders.

"They want an intelligence report" he said finally. "We've got two days and someone else is joining us".

"Who?"

"Some Intelligence officer were being loaned"

"So I'm redundant?"

Nick grinned.

"Darling you are never redundant to me, however the powers that be have apparently decided that they do not like the idea of you staggering around Europe especially this close to the end. And there will be an end to this, this is all but done but then…you can't go to the Pacific Louisa. Even you must admit that"

"I don't see why—"

"Sweetheart the brass are having kittens at the thought of you going into Germany! You in the Pacific with all those Marines and all that mud and all that…nah even you have to admit that you are mortal"

"So it's not that your jealous of me and all of those Marines?"

"HA" Nick said a tad too loudly.

Louisa smiled.

"I…I had a plan for when we had a bed" she said quietly. Nick smiled and brushed back a bit of hair that was stuck to the side of her face.

"We've got time" was all he said with a grin and she grinned back. God she was so in love with him. She opened her mouth but then shut it. Tonight was not the night.

She slipped back beneath the covers and she felt him slip next to her and she closed her eyes as his hand came around her waist. She wasn't going to sleep tonight, or if she was she wasn't going to sleep well. Indeed she thought that she was never going to sleep well again. She thought that she was struggling to stay warm even though Nick was always warm. She shuddered and closed her eyes and she saw the men in the camp and she knew what it was not over.

"You can break you know" Nick said behind her his voice telling her that he too was wide away. "You can break in front of me. I won't tell anyone the ice queen can melt"

Louisa shook her head and then the well of emotions was too much to stop her and she cried. She cried for everything and anything, for the things that she could name and the things that she could not and for everything and anything in between.

Nick said nothing. He just held her and they silently bled together.

The next day they both met the intelligence officer that was being sent to join them.

His name was Jon Van Braun.

He walked straight up to her and she had been halfway through her report leaning on a wagon and writing notes when a dark haired man about her sister's age landed in front of her.

"Hello"

Christ he was very Australian. Louisa had only met one Australian before in her life but she knew he was Australian, the accent was not one that she had forgotten since her first meeting in London all those months ago.

"Can I help you with something?"

God if he was here to play grabby ass then she was going to smack him so hard his teeth would fall out into the mud. She thought that he was looking at her in a strange way and for once she wished for the solid support of Nick by her side.

"I don't know"

Seriously what was she supposed to do about that?

"Okay"

"My name is Jon Van Braun"

"Good for you"

"I'm Liesl's husband"

For a second she did not hear him and then his words crashed into her all at once.

Liesl's husband.

Liesl's Husband?

This on top of everything else was just too, too much.

And her knees went out and she hit the ground and it took all her considerable effort not to faint.

Looking back she was not entirely sure that she had succeeded.

And so there you are, I hope that you enjoy this chapter and I will do my best to bring you the next one sooner rather than later.

Next Chapter-Louisa attempts to process what Jon Van Braun's arrival means for her, her sisters and the world that she had once known. And as they press further and further into Germany and Hilter's nest Louisa get's her change for revenge.