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Luke - 11/3
Liesel has been in Darrow for just under a week. So far, she doesn't know exactly how she feels about it except that it's not home. For the first day she'd wandered the streets looking for Papa, but she knows she's not going to find him. She knew it then, too, but she had to look anyway. She doesn't like to think of the ruins of Himmel Street, of Papa's silver eyes closed forever and his accordion case cracked. Instead, she focuses on how he used to wink at her across the kitchen table, risking the wrath of Mama's wooden spoon. She remembers her first taste of champagne and the feeling of paint drying on her nose and Papa's smile, warm and like a blanket wrapped around her.
When they'd found her walking the streets, they'd put her in the Children's Home. Liesel has been forced into a new home before, but this is different. This time there's no new family, no room of her own, no basement to hide in. She sleeps in a dormitory with two other girls, and nobody reads with her when the nightmares come in the middle of the night. Back on Himmel Street she'd left Werner on the front steps of Grande Strauss, finally leaving her to sleep through the night. In Darrow he's returned to her, dead eyes and snow waking her up in a cold sweat each night.
The worst of it all is that she doesn't have her books. She misses The Whistler, she misses The Dream Carrier, she even misses The Gravedigger's Handbook. Worse yet is the loss of the books Max painstakingly wrote for her. She feels like she's let him down by losing them, though she has each of the pages imprinted on her memory and copied meticulously into her own book. Hers is the only one she has left, the words of her life written down in the little black book which she now keeps tucked under her pillow. She hasn't shown it to any of the other girls and she has no plans to. It's her secret, and one that she keeps well hidden.
Today, Liesel has snuck out of the Home. The afternoon is slipping away into evening when she passes the bookshop, and Liesel stops outside, her feet refusing to move. She can feel the itch in her fingers already, the need to feel the pages, run her hands over the covers, rake her nails along the spines on the shelves. She remembers the sound it used to make in Frau Hermann's library and she wants to hear it again, desperately. But she's too late, the shop is already closed, and even as she watches the light turns out from inside.
She could come back tomorrow. It would be easy enough. But this city stole her and Liesel has a mind to steal something back. It always made her feel better in the past, she thinks, and maybe that's exactly what she needs now. In this city there is more food than there ever was back home and so Rudy would say she has no need to steal anymore, but Liesel knows different. Here, she has no books.
Liesel darts to the side of the building, eyeing a window. It's not open like Frau Hermann's used to be, but she likes the challenge. She picks up a rock instead, weighs it in her hand, feeling the strength of it. Throwing it would be too loud, so she drags over a nearby rubbish can and clambers onto it. From here she can reach the window ledge, and Liesel takes her coat off, wraps the rock up in the fabric and knocks it against the window, quiet as she can. Her heart is in her throat but she revels in the thrill of it, finally feeling like she's taking control again. At first the window doesn't budge, but bolstered, she hits it again, and this time it smashes enough of a hole that she can reach one small hand through to the latch and swing the window open.
Grinning, Liesel kicks off her shoes in one practised move, and then drops down silently onto the floor. There are books everywhere and Liesel hardly knows where to start. Until she does. Biting her lip, she moves quickly to the nearest shelf, and then she lifts a hand and runs it over the spines, just like she remembered. Her fingers catch on one with a simple grey spine and she hovers over it before she tugs it out with careful fingers. Alice in Wonderland. Liesel runs her fingers over the cover, committing the title to memory with all of the others, and just as she's about to open it, a light flicks on and she freezes.
When they'd found her walking the streets, they'd put her in the Children's Home. Liesel has been forced into a new home before, but this is different. This time there's no new family, no room of her own, no basement to hide in. She sleeps in a dormitory with two other girls, and nobody reads with her when the nightmares come in the middle of the night. Back on Himmel Street she'd left Werner on the front steps of Grande Strauss, finally leaving her to sleep through the night. In Darrow he's returned to her, dead eyes and snow waking her up in a cold sweat each night.
The worst of it all is that she doesn't have her books. She misses The Whistler, she misses The Dream Carrier, she even misses The Gravedigger's Handbook. Worse yet is the loss of the books Max painstakingly wrote for her. She feels like she's let him down by losing them, though she has each of the pages imprinted on her memory and copied meticulously into her own book. Hers is the only one she has left, the words of her life written down in the little black book which she now keeps tucked under her pillow. She hasn't shown it to any of the other girls and she has no plans to. It's her secret, and one that she keeps well hidden.
Today, Liesel has snuck out of the Home. The afternoon is slipping away into evening when she passes the bookshop, and Liesel stops outside, her feet refusing to move. She can feel the itch in her fingers already, the need to feel the pages, run her hands over the covers, rake her nails along the spines on the shelves. She remembers the sound it used to make in Frau Hermann's library and she wants to hear it again, desperately. But she's too late, the shop is already closed, and even as she watches the light turns out from inside.
She could come back tomorrow. It would be easy enough. But this city stole her and Liesel has a mind to steal something back. It always made her feel better in the past, she thinks, and maybe that's exactly what she needs now. In this city there is more food than there ever was back home and so Rudy would say she has no need to steal anymore, but Liesel knows different. Here, she has no books.
Liesel darts to the side of the building, eyeing a window. It's not open like Frau Hermann's used to be, but she likes the challenge. She picks up a rock instead, weighs it in her hand, feeling the strength of it. Throwing it would be too loud, so she drags over a nearby rubbish can and clambers onto it. From here she can reach the window ledge, and Liesel takes her coat off, wraps the rock up in the fabric and knocks it against the window, quiet as she can. Her heart is in her throat but she revels in the thrill of it, finally feeling like she's taking control again. At first the window doesn't budge, but bolstered, she hits it again, and this time it smashes enough of a hole that she can reach one small hand through to the latch and swing the window open.
Grinning, Liesel kicks off her shoes in one practised move, and then drops down silently onto the floor. There are books everywhere and Liesel hardly knows where to start. Until she does. Biting her lip, she moves quickly to the nearest shelf, and then she lifts a hand and runs it over the spines, just like she remembered. Her fingers catch on one with a simple grey spine and she hovers over it before she tugs it out with careful fingers. Alice in Wonderland. Liesel runs her fingers over the cover, committing the title to memory with all of the others, and just as she's about to open it, a light flicks on and she freezes.
no subject
"Was there a war going on?" he asks. "Is that what happened to your home?"
It's possible she won't want to talk about it and Luke won't push if she hesitates, but that simple question will give him a lot of insight into her behaviour tonight. Luke has lived through his own war, though Shadowhunters don't fight with bombs, and while their attacks can be devastating and while he knows the Circle hurt people who didn't deserve it, he does find the slightest relief in the knowledge they hadn't hurt any mundane civilians. It doesn't excuse what he's done, but it's one less burden for him to carry.
no subject
He asks about the war and Liesel nods. They'd called it World War II in the broadcasts and in the newspapers. She remembers the day the Führer announced it, remembers Papa talking worriedly to Mama in hushed voices in the kitchen. "They said our basement wasn't deep enough," she says, recalling her skinned knees and the soldier who they'd tried their best to distract as he inspected the basement. Max had hid under the dust sheets and held his breath, and Liesel had never been so scared that they would find him.
She doesn't know Luke very well but maybe that's what makes it easier to talk about it. She hasn't been able to talk to anyone since she was pulled out of the wreckage, and in the beginning she hadn't wanted to but she thinks now she does. Luke doesn't know her family or Rudy or any of the other people she lost, and so it's easier to tell him and know that it won't upset him so much. "But it protected me before I came here. No one else." She thinks of Papa's silver eyes closed forever, the broken accordion case lying next to him. Her throat catches and she cuts herself off.
no subject
"I'm sorry, Liesel," he says. "I'm glad it was enough to protect you, even if it couldn't protect everyone."
And what an abrupt and scary way to arrive, he imagines. He himself had arrived in the midst of an attack, but he's an adult and a werewolf, a man who had spent a good portion of his life training to fight. She's a child, she shouldn't have been forced through that.
"It must have been frightening, going through that and then finding yourself here."
no subject
She'll need a new book. Maybe once she's saved up enough of the money the city gives her, she can ask Luke where to buy one.
"I have Papa's accordion," she says. She'd managed to bring that with her at least, and somehow that made her feel stronger. When she's sad she can imagine the music, remember the precise way Papa used to stumble over some of the keys, the music ringing in her ears like sunshine. "And Nicaise helped me." She appreciates that he'd found her and helped her without asking why her clothes were covered in ash, without asking her where exactly she'd come from or what had happened. It's easier to talk about now, but if he'd asked her then she thinks she might not have been able to hold a straight face.
no subject
Children shouldn't be forced through this, but he knows he can't stop that, and so instead he does his best to be there for them whenever and wherever he can.
"Something familiar from home," he says with a smile. It's just one single item and it can't bring back her family, but he knows something as small of that can make things a little bit easier here and there. His truck, as silly as it might be, does that for him. It holds so many memories, driving with Clary over the Brooklyn Bridge, heading to his farm house. "Did he ever teach you to play?"