Five days after black and red collide
The motion sickness past, I'll be the first to stand

Crawling on the ash, she's pitiful
She's lost her sense of light; she has to hold my hand

I need you

Get up
Get up

October 13, 1945

The hissing of the train's brakes woke Max, and he sat up, rubbing his eyes. His carriage slowly swayed, working its way to a stop, and he looked out the window. The sun was just rising in the east, lighting up the countryside, and then the city of Munich. It came closer and closer, and Max stared open-mouthed at it.

The train stopped outside the city and all passengers who expected to get into Munich had to walk the rest of the way. As Max stepped off with his suitcase clenched tightly in his left hand, he understood why.

The once great city was in shambles. Colossal mountains of rubble loomed at the edges of the city where they had been dumped to use for reconstruction. Buildings were missing entire floors, chunks blown out of them like some massive creature had taken a few bites. Even two years after the bombing, the city still looked pitiful and crippled, its heart blown apart by Ally bombs. Many of the people walked through their home town looking terrified of their own shadows.

Max wandered through Munich in a sort of stunned silence. He saw the destruction around him and wanted to ask all these people, all the Germans, all the Nazi soldiers, whether it was all worth this. Stuttgart had been bombed as well, but it was nothing compared to this organized chaos. Thousands of people had died in Munich and all over the Axis countries. Max didn't understand how Hitler's master race could have been worth all this death and suffering.

As he found himself on the outskirts of Munich, just a few miles from Molching, Max turned and looked at Munich one more time. He tried to see her in all her German glory, filled with happy people who weren't concerned with being better than everyone else. But he couldn't do it. His imagination didn't stretch that far. All he could see was a once beautiful city reduced to shaking foundations, petrified souls, and crumbling memories.

Max turned his back and walked on.

When Max finally reached Himmel Street, he stopped dead. Everywhere he looked, there was destruction and rubble. This part of the city had not yet been cleaned up after the October 1943 bombing. The houses lay in ruins beside the street, brought to their knees by bombs and hatred.

Max dropped his suitcase onto the dirty road and ran. He forgot about everything else in the world and ran down the left side of the street counting backwards until he reached what he was sure had once been house number 33. He stood silently on the front walk, his arms limp at his sides, his lungs fighting to recover from the sudden exercise, and stared at the rubble that had been his home.

Even during all his fights, all the punches to the face and the kicks to the gut he had taken, Max Vandenburg had never cried. He never showed his opponent any weakness; he believed himself to be strong, stronger than the other boys who screamed when their noses broke under his fist or someone else's. But now, Max realized something vitally important: he was not strong at all. His whole body, his whole being, was nothing but weakness. He realized this as that weakness pooled in his eyes, dripped down his thin cheeks, and fell to the ground. That weakness pushed its way up from his stomach, smashing his heart and choking him as it left his mouth in an agonizing wail.

Weeping, Max stumbled up the cluttered front path and climbed into the rubble of the house. He searched desperately, though he wasn't sure what he was looking for. If the Hubermanns had been here, they weren't anymore, but he looked for them anyways. He shoved a massive chunk of the roof aside and stumbled upon the basement, the quiet corner of the world he had called home for so long. Sliding down into it, Max turned around in circles, half of his cracked heart hoping that he was in the wrong house, on the wrong street, on the wrong planet.

But there they were: his paintings. The rope cloud and the dripping sun held vigil on the back wall, and Max crossed to them, laying his hands against them. They were faded and nowhere near as brilliant as they had been three years ago. Resting his forehead against the cold, dirty wall, Max wept in broken, choked sobs which echoed around him in the small space.

When he turned around and looked up, he was face-to-face with the Fuhrer. Hitler stood before him, his face blank. Rage like nothing he had ever felt blossomed and exploded inside Max, and he launched himself at the almighty Fuhrer. Max gave everything in him to this fight, all of his strength and rage, pummeling Hitler over and over again until he lay on the floor, staring up at Max with wide, terrified eyes.

Panting heavily and ignoring a stitch in his side, Max squatted beside the scared man and spat into his face.

Was it worth all this? Max asked, venom in his voice.

The Fuhrer did not answer.

Was your perfect race worth all those lives?! Their lives?! TELL ME! Max grabbed Hitler by his shirt collar and shook him, but he remained silent.

Max stood up and climbed back out of the basement, leaving the Fuhrer lying in the dirt, beaten and shamed by a Jew, the same vermin he had tried to eradicate from the world. Well, he hadn't gotten Max, and he never would.

A clattering noise alerted Max to the fact that he wasn't as alone as he had thought. Scanning the remains of Himmel Street, Max saw a man dressed in rags digging through the ruins of a house across the street. Forgetting that even in his rags, this man looked much stronger than he, Max ran to him and grabbed him firmly by his jacket.

"What happened here?" Max demanded, giving the startled man a good shake. "What happened?!"

"The – the bombs…!" the man stuttered. "Two years ago! Hundreds of bombs!"

"Two years…" Max repeated, willing it not to be true. Could they really have been dead for two years without him knowing, without him feeling it? "The people. The people who lived on this street… Where are they? Where did they go?"

"They're all dead," the man said, trying to squirm out of Max's grip. "Every single one of them…"

Something heavy and unbearable landed on Max's shoulders and his knees gave out. Crashing to the ground, he knelt in the dirt, weeping again, clutching his hands over his heart. His body folded in on itself, closing him into an invisible box as the pain and the loss assaulted him, beating him where it hurt the most: his heart. He could feel it shatter to a million pieces under the pressure of pain's whips and burning fire of loss. When he looked into his hands, he could have sworn he saw shining shards of glass that had once been his heart.

"Everyone?" He knew the answer, but he had to ask one more time. "Every single person here on this street?"

"Everyone except that little girl that lived in number 33."

Max looked up to find the man pointing back across the street. "She's alive?" Max asked out loud, choking on the words like they were too big for his mouth. How could she be alive after all this? If everyone else was gone, how could she be alive?

The man nodded slowly at Max. "Ja. The rescuers found her in the basement."

The basement! So it was deep enough! Some of the weight lifted away and Max's shoulders straightened. He pushed himself to his feet. "Where is she? Do you know where she is now?"

"I think she lives with Mayor Hermann and his wife."

"Which street?"

The man gave Max a cautious look. "Why? Do you know her? I've never seen you around here before."

"Yes, I know her. She's my…" What could he say? His savior? His angel? His best friend? His family? "She's my niece," he said, settling for a family relation; after all, she really was his only family left.

After another moment of hesitation and a pitiful "Please" from Max, the man sighed. "The top of Grande Strasse, the big house on the hill. You can't miss it."

Without thinking, Max turned and ran again. He snatched up his suitcase as he bolted past and sprinted through Molching, his old coat flapping behind him in the breeze he created. It didn't take him long to reach Grande Strasse, and he jumped right up the front steps, both terrified and excited. He didn't bother with the knocker; instead, he rammed his weak fist against the wood of the door until a tall woman with pale hair opened it.

He stared at her for a second before saying, "Is Liesel Meminger here?"

The woman – probably Frau Hermann, the mayor's wife – cocked her head. "Who are you?" she asked in a low voice.

"My name is Max Vandenburg. I'm Liesel's uncle. Please, is she here?"

Frau Hermann's face lit up the tiniest bit when Max said his name, and she smiled at him. "Liesel is with Herr Steiner today, helping him in his shop." Before Max could even open his mouth to ask, Frau Hermann continued, "On the corner of Leinen Strasse and Munich."

"Danke!" Max said, grinning and shaking the woman's hand quickly before he went bounding off down the street. "Thank you so much!" he called back.

"You're welcome," Frau Hermann said, even though she knew he couldn't hear her anymore. She closed the door with a smile.

Max stood with his back against the side of the brick shop, out of sight of the windows. Alex Steiner's shop was small and empty of people, but he stood behind the counter all the same. A pang of sorrow hit Max as he remembered that Herr Steiner had lived on Himmel Street, right next door to number 33. Max didn't know how he had survived, but his whole family was dead and gone. Max remembered Liesel talking to him by the fireplace on cold winter nights, telling him all about her best friend Rudy Steiner. The boy with the candlelight hair and eyes like a clear summer sky.

Max tried to calm his labored breathing. He took deep breaths as he set his suitcase at his feet and ran his fingers through his hair.

His hair is like feathers, the Book Thief had said.

He smiled, remembering the comparison.

Finally, Max is ready. He takes one more breath, turns, and pushes the door of the shop open. He tries to walk in as if he is any other normal German man coming for a suit, but he has come much too far to be anything but himself: a haggard Jew looking for his family.

Alex Steiner stands up a bit straighter behind the counter and studies Max. Max does the same to him. Herr Steiner is the grown-up and beaten down version of the way Liesel described Rudy to him; Rudy got his candlelit hair and bright blue eyes from his father.

Steeling himself, Max takes his time approaching the counter, his broken heart thundering like a storm inside his chest. He fights tears and looks at Alex Steiner.

"Is there someone here by the name of Liesel Meminger?" Max asks, his voice thick with emotion.

"Yes, she's in the back," returns Herr Steiner. Max's heart leaps wildly, jarring him. "May I ask who is calling on her?"

Just as Max opens his mouth, absolutely certain that no sound will come out of it, an old curtain covering a doorway behind the counter is ripped open and someone is standing there. For a second, Max does not recognize her. She is no longer the little girl he wrote books for in the basement of their home. She is a young woman who has been through hell and back again; it shows in the lines above her eyebrows and the frown on her mouth. But as soon as she sees Max Vandenburg standing in the middle of the shop, staring at her, her dark brown eyes flood with tears.

Without a sound, she runs around the counter and flies straight into Max's slender arms. She gasps his name over and over again, like a prayer, as if she cannot believe he is here. Max buries his face in her long golden hair and holds her as tightly as he can. He says her name gently, lovingly. They sway on their feet, sure to go down soon with both their weight on Max's fragile legs.

They are hugging.

Then Liesel pulls back enough for her to look up into Max's eyes, steadying them both again. She reaches up with one small hand and cups Max's cheek gently. "Is it really you?" she asks, repeating their moving, heart-felt exchange for a third time.

The first time she asked him that question, she was a character in a small, handwritten book given before a quick goodbye and a sad separation. She was the Word Shaker, and he the small, strange man with the hammer and nails.

The second time, she had been the Book Thief, the small, brave girl who cared not what punishment she received, but came to him and kept him going, kept him alive. He had been the broken soul with the twigs for hair and chains for bracelets on his tiny wrists.

Now, this time, the third time, she is still the Word Shaker and the Book Thief, but she is also something more, something Max cannot name, something so much better. He had still been that lost and broken soul up until the second her arms wrapped around him; now he is safe, he is where he belongs, he is home. Now, he is the Sky Stealer again.

Liesel continues: "Is it from your cheek that I took the seed?"

Her smile goes straight to his heart, pulling the pieces back into place and mending them with gentle touches. As his heart becomes whole again, Max feels it wobble inside him, quiver at the sound of her voice.

It takes him a moment to find his own. He digs down deep and pulls it from the depths of his soul as the tears flow freely down his face and hers. "Yes," he says, his voice growing stronger and more beautiful with each word, "Yes, it is me. I'm here."

They are crying.

Max pulls Liesel to him and holds her close, his arms wrapped tightly around her, never wanting to let go ever again. She cries into his shoulder, but she is smiling, weeping for joy for the first time in forever. Suddenly, Max's weak legs are too exhausted to hold him up any longer.

He goes down to his knees on the floor, but without hesitation, Liesel joins him, falling with him, still holding him and breathing his name. They sit sprawled on the floor, unaware of Alex Steiner watching them with tears in his blue eyes, unaware of the horrible world just outside the shop, unaware that they are so tiny, so small compared to everything the world has to throw at them. Nothing matters anymore except that they have found each other again.

They are falling.

They hug and cry and fall and hold onto each other like it is all they need in the world. And for right now, it is exactly that.