The Meaning of Life (2/9) - The Book Thief
Story Title: The Meaning of Life
Chapter Title: Beginnings & Endings
Fandom: The Book Thief
Characters/pairings: Rudy/Liesel, Life
Warnings: Violence, death, and some bad language. Spoilers for the book.
Disclaimers: The Book Thief is the property of Markus Zusak, who is an effing genius. Life and the LSE men are mine.
Summary: What would have happened if Rudy had survived the bombing of Himmel Street?
A/N: Chapter 2 of fics always seems to be the hardest to write. If I remember rightly (I wrote this months ago) it took me from November to March to actually get it off the ground. -.- Why is that?
1 - Life Goes On
BEGINNINGS & ENDINGS
Rudy awoke from a dream of drowning, and found himself unable to breathe.
For a moment, he panicked. Then he realised that he was still dreaming, and took a deep gulp of blessed air.
He should be up, he thought muzzily. There were things to be done. Places to go. Food to steal, maybe. Anyway, he should be up. From the light blazing through his eyelids, it must be morning. Why hadn’t Mama woken him?
He ached all over, from head to foot, and he couldn’t think why. It didn’t really matter, after all. He was probably just stiff. It would pass.
Yawning widely, he opened his eyes.
There was only darkness there. Darkness, and a strange, dull smell of dust and smoke.
And Rudy panicked. Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t anyone? Lunging out of his bed - only it wasn’t his bed, it was something else, something hard and rough and almost like bark - he clawed at the dark air, coughing.
WHAT WAS RUNNING THROUGH RUDY STEINER’S HEAD
“Es ist nur einen Traum… nur einen Traum…”
It’s only a dream
I think, now, that he probably knew better. It wasn’t a dream. Not at all.
But it probably felt like one, in the dark and the stifling stillness of where he lay, buried in a little heap of rubble and tangled branches at the end of the denuded Himmel Street.
His mouth was dry. Too dry. He tried to scream for somebody, anybody, to wake him up from this, but nothing came out except a garbled croak.
Now that he was fully awake, and fully aware, his eyes were beginning to adjust to the dim grey light. He could see shapes, a few colours… not much. Not enough.
But too much, even then. He turned to find Bettina’s ragdoll body hanging broken behind him, open eyes staring and dull even by that poor light. Her back was broken over one of the sturdier boughs, but what had most likely killed her was the explosion that had blown her apart from the waist down. Her blonde hair was dark with blood and ash.
Rudy managed to scream, this time. Wordless, voiceless, a scream of absolute horror.
Somebody wake me up… please, somebody wake me up!
But nobody did.
He could hear footsteps, now, and the garbled voices of the LSE men, a low, meaningless hum. They hadn’t heard him, he realised, and tried to scream again. But all that happened was that dust caught in his throat and in his eyes, turning his roar into a hoarse cough as he crawled forwards again, searching for a way out.
“Rudy! Rudy!” It wasn’t his voice. He strained his ears, breathing a blessed sigh of relief.
“Liesel!” he croaked, rolling to the side as her foot set a stone rolling down inches away from his head. She didn’t hear him.
“Rudy!” she screamed, over and over again, her muffled voice fading away, as did her footsteps. He groaned inwardly.
“Liesel! Liesel! Saumensch!” The last word came out almost clear. Encouraged, he yelled it again, at the top of his voice. “Saumensch! SAUMENSCH! SAU…”
“Crucified Christ!” This was a man's voice, low and shocked. “Hellner! Schnell, schnell! There's somebody alive down here!”
And then there was light.
Red and burning, it flooded into the imprisoning ruins like water. He gasped for breath, the air fresh and thick with dust. One heartbeat, two, thundering in his ears, and then the light was blocked out again, as the last chunk of stone was pushed aside, and the LSE men knelt at the rim of the hole they'd made.
“Son? Are you hurt?”
Rudy opened his mouth, meaning to answer. But then Bettina's body, limp and lifeless, caught his eye again, and he found himself crying, deep, hacking sobs which turned to retching. Collapsing forwards onto his hands and knees, half-in and half-out of the burning morning, he vomited up everything in his stomach. He felt limp, boneless, as though his own control over his body had been taken away along with everything else.
The second of the two men, the man called Hellner, swore under his breath as vomit splattered his knees and calves. But although his lip was curled in something like disgust, there was pity in his eyes.
“Are you hurt?” the first man repeated, when Rudy had emptied his stomach and his tears were starting to dry. Their hands, black with soot and dust, reached under his armpits, hauling him bodily out of the ruins and into the fresh air.
“Mama...” was all Rudy could manage, childishly, nauseatingly. “Is Mama... is she hurt?”
The first man frowned, as people tend to when they're faced with the sort of question they don't want to answer. After a too-long second, Hellner came to his rescue.
“We haven't checked all the houses yet,” he told Rudy soberly. “We've dug out... a lot of people. I don't know if your mama's one of them. Can you stand?”
“I... I think so.” His skin still crawling and drying vomit crusting on his lips, Rudy scrambled onto his hands and knees, then, putting all his strength into one more push, forced himself onto his feet. His legs felt like wet rope, shaking under the weight of a heavy heart, and his mouth had the bitter taste of bile as he looked along the flattened desert of Himmel Street. “Yes,” he said numbly, after a moment. “Yes, I can stand. But it hurts.”
“I'm not surprised,” Hellner said, dark, dusty hand still under Rudy's arm, propping him up. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, when Lorenz called just now...”
“You're lucky to be alive,” Lorenz finished for him, unsmiling.
Looking up and down the denuded remains of the place that had been his home, Rudy felt like arguing. He was anything but lucky.
It was gone. That echoed in his mind, over and over again. It's gone. Everything's gone.
Hubert's Oval, the track where he had false-started twice on the last race, the tailor's shop that smelt of his father... The school. The houses. The people.
But not Liesel. Liesel was alive. He knew Liesel was alive. Hadn't he heard her voice?
“Saumensch!” he yelled, as loudly as he could manage, dust and soot falling in clouds around him as he turned. The LSE men exchanged frowns over his head, but he didn't notice. Didn't care. He shrugged their well-meaning hands away, and then he was running, face soot-blackened, bare feet thudding on the burnt ground. Jesse Owens. But there was no finish line to this race. No tape to break over his chest. Just his heart, thudding in his ears, the pounding of blood in his head, the fear, the rage, the pain that pushed him forwards, his voice sounding hoarse and useless.
“Saumensch! Liesel! Where are you?” Pain blossomed in front of his eyes, his vision blurred by tears. The men behind him were starting to give chase, and he knew they meant well, but he didn't want them to stop him. Not yet. “Saumensch!”
“Rudy?”
It was her. He knew it straight away, but through the haze of tears and darkness, he couldn't see. Her voice was trembling, tired, weak, disbelieving.
Liesel.
He didn't say it out loud. He couldn't. But his lips formed the name, and he stopped dead, doubling over and choking on the air.
“Rudy!” She ran over to him, reaching him just as he collapsed, the LSE men catching him and propping him between them. For a moment, silence hung between them; the book thief and the boy with hair like lemons. It was an adult silence, pregnant with pain and a shared grief.
Then, with a suddenness that shocked even her, she rushed forwards, tears making tracks of mud though the dry dust on her cheeks, and came to a stop inches away from him. Her eyes were red, puffy from tears, and under the dark dirt, her face was pale.
He managed to smile, just for a second.
“You've got... you've got dust on you,” he told her, through the blood roaring in his ears.
She said nothing. But her face was crumpling under the weight of an adult grief, and the smile she gave him was old and tired. His own smile faded away, as quickly as it had come.
“Mama?” he whispered.
“Oh, Rudy...” Her voice cracked, as broken as Himmel Steet, and those two words told him everything he needed to know.
And it flooded in on him again, and somehow, there were more tears. He thought he had cried the last of them out, but they were back again, and the air seemed suddenly thick, difficult to breathe. She was crying, too, deep, racking sobs that matched his, and for the first time, he found himself wondering about the rest of Himmel Street.
It was unthinkable. No Hans Hubermann, chatting with Papa on the street. No Rosa Hubermann, who had come into school to yell at Liesel for a hairbrush that wasn't a hairbrush. No Frau Diller, with lollies and heil Hitlers and a face like a hatchet. No Freddy or Kristina Muller, no Frau Holzapfel, no Andy Schmeikl, Viktor Chemmel, Pfiffikus... He even wished for Franz Deutscher, for a moment, just to have somebody to hate. Somebody to break the endless, roaring silence.
There was nobody. Just Rudy, Liesel, and a dead street. The LSE seemed distant and unimportant; passers-by, nothing more.
The emptiness howled in his ears like a storm breaking.
“Papa's dead,” she said eventually. Her voice was as fragile as glass. “Mama, too. I was with them when I heard you... when I heard you shouting.”
“Bettina's dead, too,” he told her, bitterly aware of the smell of vomit and earth hanging over him like a shroud. “She was behind me. When I woke up, she was behind me.” Then, his voice flat and empty, he asked stupidly “What happened? Were we bombed? Why didn't the sirens wake me?”
“There were no sirens.” She sounded absolutely certain. “I was awake. There were no sirens. Not... not until later.”
He managed to straighten up as the men holding him withdrew. Silence filled the air. His hand found hers.
A THOUGHT
There is nothing as terrible as an ending.
There is nothing as wonderful as hope.
There is nothing as painful as a new beginning.
Chapter Title: Beginnings & Endings
Fandom: The Book Thief
Characters/pairings: Rudy/Liesel, Life
Warnings: Violence, death, and some bad language. Spoilers for the book.
Disclaimers: The Book Thief is the property of Markus Zusak, who is an effing genius. Life and the LSE men are mine.
Summary: What would have happened if Rudy had survived the bombing of Himmel Street?
A/N: Chapter 2 of fics always seems to be the hardest to write. If I remember rightly (I wrote this months ago) it took me from November to March to actually get it off the ground. -.- Why is that?
1 - Life Goes On
BEGINNINGS & ENDINGS
Rudy awoke from a dream of drowning, and found himself unable to breathe.
For a moment, he panicked. Then he realised that he was still dreaming, and took a deep gulp of blessed air.
He should be up, he thought muzzily. There were things to be done. Places to go. Food to steal, maybe. Anyway, he should be up. From the light blazing through his eyelids, it must be morning. Why hadn’t Mama woken him?
He ached all over, from head to foot, and he couldn’t think why. It didn’t really matter, after all. He was probably just stiff. It would pass.
Yawning widely, he opened his eyes.
There was only darkness there. Darkness, and a strange, dull smell of dust and smoke.
And Rudy panicked. Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t anyone? Lunging out of his bed - only it wasn’t his bed, it was something else, something hard and rough and almost like bark - he clawed at the dark air, coughing.
WHAT WAS RUNNING THROUGH RUDY STEINER’S HEAD
“Es ist nur einen Traum… nur einen Traum…”
It’s only a dream
I think, now, that he probably knew better. It wasn’t a dream. Not at all.
But it probably felt like one, in the dark and the stifling stillness of where he lay, buried in a little heap of rubble and tangled branches at the end of the denuded Himmel Street.
His mouth was dry. Too dry. He tried to scream for somebody, anybody, to wake him up from this, but nothing came out except a garbled croak.
Now that he was fully awake, and fully aware, his eyes were beginning to adjust to the dim grey light. He could see shapes, a few colours… not much. Not enough.
But too much, even then. He turned to find Bettina’s ragdoll body hanging broken behind him, open eyes staring and dull even by that poor light. Her back was broken over one of the sturdier boughs, but what had most likely killed her was the explosion that had blown her apart from the waist down. Her blonde hair was dark with blood and ash.
Rudy managed to scream, this time. Wordless, voiceless, a scream of absolute horror.
Somebody wake me up… please, somebody wake me up!
But nobody did.
He could hear footsteps, now, and the garbled voices of the LSE men, a low, meaningless hum. They hadn’t heard him, he realised, and tried to scream again. But all that happened was that dust caught in his throat and in his eyes, turning his roar into a hoarse cough as he crawled forwards again, searching for a way out.
“Rudy! Rudy!” It wasn’t his voice. He strained his ears, breathing a blessed sigh of relief.
“Liesel!” he croaked, rolling to the side as her foot set a stone rolling down inches away from his head. She didn’t hear him.
“Rudy!” she screamed, over and over again, her muffled voice fading away, as did her footsteps. He groaned inwardly.
“Liesel! Liesel! Saumensch!” The last word came out almost clear. Encouraged, he yelled it again, at the top of his voice. “Saumensch! SAUMENSCH! SAU…”
“Crucified Christ!” This was a man's voice, low and shocked. “Hellner! Schnell, schnell! There's somebody alive down here!”
And then there was light.
Red and burning, it flooded into the imprisoning ruins like water. He gasped for breath, the air fresh and thick with dust. One heartbeat, two, thundering in his ears, and then the light was blocked out again, as the last chunk of stone was pushed aside, and the LSE men knelt at the rim of the hole they'd made.
“Son? Are you hurt?”
Rudy opened his mouth, meaning to answer. But then Bettina's body, limp and lifeless, caught his eye again, and he found himself crying, deep, hacking sobs which turned to retching. Collapsing forwards onto his hands and knees, half-in and half-out of the burning morning, he vomited up everything in his stomach. He felt limp, boneless, as though his own control over his body had been taken away along with everything else.
The second of the two men, the man called Hellner, swore under his breath as vomit splattered his knees and calves. But although his lip was curled in something like disgust, there was pity in his eyes.
“Are you hurt?” the first man repeated, when Rudy had emptied his stomach and his tears were starting to dry. Their hands, black with soot and dust, reached under his armpits, hauling him bodily out of the ruins and into the fresh air.
“Mama...” was all Rudy could manage, childishly, nauseatingly. “Is Mama... is she hurt?”
The first man frowned, as people tend to when they're faced with the sort of question they don't want to answer. After a too-long second, Hellner came to his rescue.
“We haven't checked all the houses yet,” he told Rudy soberly. “We've dug out... a lot of people. I don't know if your mama's one of them. Can you stand?”
“I... I think so.” His skin still crawling and drying vomit crusting on his lips, Rudy scrambled onto his hands and knees, then, putting all his strength into one more push, forced himself onto his feet. His legs felt like wet rope, shaking under the weight of a heavy heart, and his mouth had the bitter taste of bile as he looked along the flattened desert of Himmel Street. “Yes,” he said numbly, after a moment. “Yes, I can stand. But it hurts.”
“I'm not surprised,” Hellner said, dark, dusty hand still under Rudy's arm, propping him up. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, when Lorenz called just now...”
“You're lucky to be alive,” Lorenz finished for him, unsmiling.
Looking up and down the denuded remains of the place that had been his home, Rudy felt like arguing. He was anything but lucky.
It was gone. That echoed in his mind, over and over again. It's gone. Everything's gone.
Hubert's Oval, the track where he had false-started twice on the last race, the tailor's shop that smelt of his father... The school. The houses. The people.
But not Liesel. Liesel was alive. He knew Liesel was alive. Hadn't he heard her voice?
“Saumensch!” he yelled, as loudly as he could manage, dust and soot falling in clouds around him as he turned. The LSE men exchanged frowns over his head, but he didn't notice. Didn't care. He shrugged their well-meaning hands away, and then he was running, face soot-blackened, bare feet thudding on the burnt ground. Jesse Owens. But there was no finish line to this race. No tape to break over his chest. Just his heart, thudding in his ears, the pounding of blood in his head, the fear, the rage, the pain that pushed him forwards, his voice sounding hoarse and useless.
“Saumensch! Liesel! Where are you?” Pain blossomed in front of his eyes, his vision blurred by tears. The men behind him were starting to give chase, and he knew they meant well, but he didn't want them to stop him. Not yet. “Saumensch!”
“Rudy?”
It was her. He knew it straight away, but through the haze of tears and darkness, he couldn't see. Her voice was trembling, tired, weak, disbelieving.
Liesel.
He didn't say it out loud. He couldn't. But his lips formed the name, and he stopped dead, doubling over and choking on the air.
“Rudy!” She ran over to him, reaching him just as he collapsed, the LSE men catching him and propping him between them. For a moment, silence hung between them; the book thief and the boy with hair like lemons. It was an adult silence, pregnant with pain and a shared grief.
Then, with a suddenness that shocked even her, she rushed forwards, tears making tracks of mud though the dry dust on her cheeks, and came to a stop inches away from him. Her eyes were red, puffy from tears, and under the dark dirt, her face was pale.
He managed to smile, just for a second.
“You've got... you've got dust on you,” he told her, through the blood roaring in his ears.
She said nothing. But her face was crumpling under the weight of an adult grief, and the smile she gave him was old and tired. His own smile faded away, as quickly as it had come.
“Mama?” he whispered.
“Oh, Rudy...” Her voice cracked, as broken as Himmel Steet, and those two words told him everything he needed to know.
And it flooded in on him again, and somehow, there were more tears. He thought he had cried the last of them out, but they were back again, and the air seemed suddenly thick, difficult to breathe. She was crying, too, deep, racking sobs that matched his, and for the first time, he found himself wondering about the rest of Himmel Street.
It was unthinkable. No Hans Hubermann, chatting with Papa on the street. No Rosa Hubermann, who had come into school to yell at Liesel for a hairbrush that wasn't a hairbrush. No Frau Diller, with lollies and heil Hitlers and a face like a hatchet. No Freddy or Kristina Muller, no Frau Holzapfel, no Andy Schmeikl, Viktor Chemmel, Pfiffikus... He even wished for Franz Deutscher, for a moment, just to have somebody to hate. Somebody to break the endless, roaring silence.
There was nobody. Just Rudy, Liesel, and a dead street. The LSE seemed distant and unimportant; passers-by, nothing more.
The emptiness howled in his ears like a storm breaking.
“Papa's dead,” she said eventually. Her voice was as fragile as glass. “Mama, too. I was with them when I heard you... when I heard you shouting.”
“Bettina's dead, too,” he told her, bitterly aware of the smell of vomit and earth hanging over him like a shroud. “She was behind me. When I woke up, she was behind me.” Then, his voice flat and empty, he asked stupidly “What happened? Were we bombed? Why didn't the sirens wake me?”
“There were no sirens.” She sounded absolutely certain. “I was awake. There were no sirens. Not... not until later.”
He managed to straighten up as the men holding him withdrew. Silence filled the air. His hand found hers.
A THOUGHT
There is nothing as terrible as an ending.
There is nothing as wonderful as hope.
There is nothing as painful as a new beginning.