1939
Lucerne, Switzerland

"Maria," Georg said quietly, stroking a finger along the length of her silk-clad figure.

Craning to look over her shoulder, Maria placed the pencil she was writing with in between the pages of her journal and answered, "Yes, love?"

"Might I ask you something?"

"Certainly you may ask," Maria agreed, "though whether I answer is another matter entirely!"

"Are you angry with me?"

Maria's eyes widened at this, and she relinquished her hold on the journal so as to turn to face her husband. With a slight noise of annoyance, she kissed him languidly and pulled back just as he moved to pull her flush to his body.

"Does that answer your question?"

"It seemed to me rather a non-answer," Georg said, swallowing hard.

Maria shook her head. "I don't understand why you would ask me such a question. Why would I be angry at you?"

"Because I tore our family away from everything we've ever known and now we're stuck here in Switzerland for the unforeseeable future."

"At least most of the natives speak German," Maria pointed out.

Georg knew it was a quick-witted quip meant to lighten his mood, but he sighed heavily. "I can't help but feel the coward, sometimes. So many of my fellow officers did their duty."

"I should hope they did not do it under duress!" Maria said sharply. She moved quickly to her knees and took Georg's face in her hands, locking eyes with him. "Listen to me. I don't want to spend the rest of our lives having this conversation. You're my husband and I love you. I will always support you in the important things. If you up and took off for the sea tomorrow, I wouldn't stop you. If you decided we should leave Switzerland for some reason and go back, I would go. Certainly, you have your moments where you're being impossibly stupid. Now is one of those moments. But by far, you are a strong, wise man and the furthest thing from a coward."

"I would be shot for desertion."

"Do you truly believe that every man who flees his duty does it out of malice or selfish whim?"

"Do you?"

"God, no!" Maria said forcefully.

"That's where you and I differ, then," Georg muttered. It was not lost on him that she had taken the Lord's name in vain out of mounting frustration and an attempt to make her point where others would have cursed bloody murder, but he couldn't get around it. A lifetime of service and sacrifice and duty…

"I really don't know what to say to you, then," Maria said in a low voice. He could see tears glistening in her eyes. "If only you saw yourself the way I see you—how the children see you!"

"That's where I'm a most certain failure—setting an example for my children."

Releasing her grasp on her husband, Maria dashed her wrist against her eyes and sniffed. "Yesterday, Friedrich was writing an essay that I assigned him about the Great War."

And Friedrich, he's a boy and he wants to be a man like you, but there's no one to show him how!

Maria peered down at her husband. "You're not listening to me!"

Georg looked up at Maria, met her eyes. He opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again and slowly shook his head. He couldn't even muster anger… only a sense of terrible loss.

"Do you know what he said to me?" Maria said loudly, eyes flashing. "He said, 'Mother, I am glad Father brought us here.' He pointed to what he had written and told me, 'Father is such a great seaman, and I don't think that I could ever look him in the eye if he had given his talents to the Nazis. The republic should have been left alone!'"

"What?" Georg choked.

"School has not left him immune to Nazi teachings," Maria said plainly. "You know this. And he's fifteen! Not a child. But, Georg, my point in sharing this is to show you something that he knows and I know, and you need to know too: even with other things landing in his lap, you have taught him and been an example to him, and though he may not understand everything at play, he understands enough to know that you had no obligation to what is more or less an impostor."

"I don't know…"

Shaking her head slightly, Maria sighed. "Georg, my love. I don't want to sit here and argue the finer points of political rhetoric and self-doubt with you. I am vastly out of my element in that regard! Take it at face value that your son is a boy after a man's heart and believes that you have done the best thing for us."

Georg swallowed. "Alright. I won't press the issue anymore."

Maria frowned. "I do not want to leave anything for want of more 'pressing,' here. What will it take to convince you?"

"Time," Georg answered.

His wife was still frowning at him.

"I'm going to make a deal with you," she said levelly. "You are not allowed to bring this up again until you've relinquished your hold on this absurd notion that you are a coward. In return, I won't complain anymore and will only listen."

Given his current state of mind, Georg wasn't inclined to agree to anything he could not keep to, but then Maria got up from the bed and rummaged through her bedside drawer. Eventually, she held up his Maria Theresa Cross.

"Does this give you any perspective?" she asked. "Or this?"

She climbed back into bed and pushed aside his robe, revealing his bare chest. Her hands lighted on scars that she knew by heart. "You are so brave, and I won't hear otherwise."

He'd had no idea that she'd stowed it away. "How… Why…" he trailed, eyes on the medal.

"A safeguard," Maria said. "In case you forgot again who you are."

"Thank you, Maria."