Disclaimer: I don't own Spring Awakening :(
A/N: So this isn't really a story...but it is I guess. Moritz is the italics and his mother is the normal font, I wrote it picturing them just talking and a pause sort of thing.
There were days when he was younger when he would cry and beg to walk the dirt path to the schoolhouse with his brother. I remember the first day he went to school. He'd barley slept that night, he was so excited. He ran out the door before half the town was even up, grabbing hold of his brother's hand and never letting go until he reached the school house.
I remember when I was younger; I would watch Fredrick run off to school, nearly skipping down the path with excitement. I would grab onto Mama's skirt and look up at her, begging to go with him. "Next year when you're big enough you can go" she would always say, the same thing, and I thought next year would never come.
He would always ask when it would be next year. I would just reply "Soon enough, Moritz" and surely, soon enough did come. My little boy was gone, running down the road hand in hand with Fredrick.
I was so excited the first time I entered the schoolhouse. Then lessons began and at first things made sense, I could do them. But then I got older and things weren't as clear as they used to be. Fredrick got older too. He finished school and he became a doctor, a great doctor in Berlin with a huge house, a beautiful wife and three kids. My parents said if I ever wanted that, I had to do well in school, just like him. I remember when he would bring home his evaluations. They would always smile and hug him, they would be so proud and then we would have a great big dinner to celebrate. Ever year, he would be promoted; always the top of his class.
He was nothing like his brother. Fredrick grew up smarter than the others. Moritz did well in the beginning but then he became, well, lost. He just didn't get it. He would sit there for hours at his desk working away at his homework but I suppose he never got it.
All I ever wanted to do was make them smile the way Fredrick did, to make them pleased with me; for once to be the one they were proud of. When I was little everything I did Fredrick would do better. There wasn't a single thing that he couldn't do, but we could both make Mama smile. Until I brought that evaluation home. Mama didn't smile then; she looked up at Papa with a look I'll never forget, ever. He told her to leave the room and tears began to tumble down her cheeks. He yelled so loud, I'd never heard it before. And then he hit me and I knew then that school was all that mattered.
I supposed I could have prevented it some how, helped him a little, but it wasn't proper. His father and I had decided to let him work out his problems on his own, so he could be a man. He was twelve then, and he was at the age where he could take care of certain things on his own.
I'd be up all night, not out of excitement and anticipation anymore, but out of fear: fear of Herr Sonnenstich, my father, of being hit. Fear of failing my parents, of ruining our family name. I had to succeed. There was simply no other option.
I would walk past his room at night and hear him reciting Latin, hear him crying over fights with his father, but he was growing up. He was fifteen. I couldn't pick him up and hold him as I could at the age of seven. He was on the verge of becoming a man and he had to learn how to be one. Coddling him wouldn't teach him that. I would simply have to walk by and ignore the yearning pleas coming from the crack in the open door.
I saw the smiles on their faces less and less. I was a disappointment. I was no Fredrick. I couldn't do it; I couldn't be at the top of my class and bring home the marks to make my parents smile. I couldn't live up to him. I'd fallen down into a hole and he'd risen to the sky. He was up there and I down here, and there was not way I could ever climb up and rise above him. I knew it, and the professors made it clear that the upper class only held sixty. I knew what I had to do to save the family. I had to disappear. It was the only option. When I'd shown my father that paper…the look on his face! I knew I'd ruined it. I'd done exactly as he feared, but I knew how to fix it and I did. I did it. I pulled the trigger. I didn't let Ilse distract me. No matter how badly my body wanted me to, I didn't. I knew I would be no use to her. I couldn't give her a fancy house in Berlin for our three children. I couldn't ever get promoted to a medical school. There was no way I was good enough for Ilse. So I lied and she went away just as my mind had hoped. I pulled the trigger, ignoring every stirring of protest in my soul. And after that, every feeling was gone. There was nothing, nothing but darkness. And a few stars, providing the reassuring hope that there soon would be light…