Rudy felt himself breaking up. He felt himself being thrown into a perilous void of empty thoughts and possibilities. The pure nature of the situation was complex and surreal. He hardly felt like himself, like he had been replaced by someone completely different, a stranger.

* * *A Realization* * *

Rudy was a stranger.

He got up that night, and peeked around the corner of his house. In the home, seven other people were sleeping. There would have been eight if things had been normal. They weren't normal. His Papa wasn't there. His Papa was caught in the thick of something that the Führer had made. Rudy said it once, and he would say it again: he hated the Führer. He wanted him dead. Rudy himself wanted to see his smoking body in ashes.

It didn't take long. Soon he stood outside Liesel's house, in the dreary cold.

He sat in the snow. It crept through the thin fabric of his trousers, given to him by his brother Kurt. It felt cold. It gave him hope.

He sat there all night, waiting for Liesel to awake and see him. Maybe then, he would finally get his kiss.