A/N: I'm posting this mostly as a I-don't-want-to-do-my-homework thing.  And I'm afraid that if I let it sit too long I might want to scrap it.  And I'm afraid imnotacommittee might get over-titillated if I wait too long ;o)

Thanks to everyone who's been asking about this; it means a lot to me.

Ok, credit where credit's due: the opening was probably inspired by INAC's Bats and Bouquets (hey everyone, go read that one!).  There are a few lines in here stolen from Anne of Green Gables, because I'm a miserable cheat.  A lot of this was written in October, so if there's something wrong, don't blame me, blame winter (and my homework, and life in general).

*

Chapter 12

Once Georg and Elsa commenced planning for the ball, the Captain abruptly remembered one of the reasons he'd stopped throwing balls, and just as promptly forgot why he'd agreed to Elsa's proposal to throw one.  More than once over the next week he found himself looking longingly out of his office window, where often, the governess and his children were laughing, singing, climbing trees, and acting, in general, like a pack of unruly wild heathens. 

A smile would turn down the corners of his mouth at their antics, and then, startled, he would turn back to Elsa, who had commandeered his desk for the interval leading up to the ball.  "I never knew you were such a dismal planner, Georg!" she had commented laughingly, slapping him on the shoulder and grabbing the fountain pen out of his hand to cross out his garbled and untidy instructions to the caterers. 

"You're the one who throws the parties, dearest," Georg had replied, shrugging.  "I merely go to them.  And stand about depressing everyone, I might add." 

"I'll cross you off the invitation list then, darling." 

"Please do," he'd said, and wished that that was all the planning he'd have to be involved in. At any rate, today, Elsa had released him from his duties early and with a gay laugh, telling him she would visit the florists on her own, as she needed to see her couturier for a new dress anyway, and would he be a darling and take care of hiring the band, as he'd said he would? 

He reveled in the idea of snatching these few hours alone.  It wasn't that  he didn't enjoy spending time with Elsa, it was just that with her, and his rejuvenated relationship with his children, and Max, who demanded attention with all the subtlety of Gretl, he was beginning to feel a bit claustrophobic.  In the past four years he had begun to nourish a need for solitude that he wasn't sure would ever be gone from him again.

He stood at his balcony, at last free of responsibility, and wondering suddenly where that little governess had got to—the children certainly were noisome this afternoon.  It was Louisa's day again already, picnic-time, but they had had to go without their father and the Baroness, who had been consumed all morning with planning. 

He would have thought they would have calmed down by now.  Frowning, he tried to block out their noise and absorb the peace and lovely tranquility of the yard, when his eyes lit on a solitary figure. 

For a moment, he tapped his fingers on the balustrade, merely watching.  Slowly, he smiled. 

Looked like someone else wanted some time off, too.

*

"Slacking, Fräulein?" 

She turned at the sound of his voice, mouth open, lips forming into a polite smile on seeing him.  "Just breathing, Captain."

Startled, he paused in his movement to stand beside her at the gate to the river, and now he stood, studying her.  He hadn't pictured her before as someone who needed a great deal of privacy or who would come out here to find it.  He wondered, for the first time ever, what she thought of being a governess, particularly his governess, or more correctly, his children's.  "Recovering?" he asked, tilting his head, brows raised.

"No, sir, more like . . . remembering.  I miss home, sometimes."

That took him a moment.  She seemed like such a permanent feature of the household that it was difficult to remember she hadn't always been there.  Advancing to the gate, he mimicked her posture, putting a hand down to lean against it.  He looked at her, amused, as she twirled the crown of edelweiss one of the children had made for her in her hands.  "You miss the Abbey, do you?  The Villa Trapp doesn't live up to the standards you're used to?"

"The food is much better," she admitted promptly, and then sighed.  "I adore your cook's strudel."

Georg chuckled.  "You and Max."

"But I do miss the sisters.  They've become my family; do you know what I mean?"

Idly, he reached out to the flowers to stop the rotation of the wreath in her hands.  Taking one of the blossoms out of it, he absently began to shred petals in his fingers.  "I should think there's enough family here to satisfy three sisters, Fräulein, if not more," he said finally.

"Yes," she conceded.  "If I may say so, I do like it here, Captain.  I like it very much."

He chuckled to himself, still looking down at the poor flower in his hands.  "You may say it any time you like."

"But the sisters are in some ways like my own mother I never had," she went on, and Georg glanced at her, perhaps surprised that she had more to say on the subject.  The children's governesses had never been exactly prone to volunteering personal information—then again, he had never sought a single one of them out before.  "They're always guiding me," Maria was saying, "even if I don't realize their wisdom, even if I resist guiding.  I didn't originally want to come here, you know.  It wasn't my decision."

Georg blinked.  "Oh?"

"You see?  The Reverend Mother always seems to know what's best for me."

"And has this been what's best for you, Fräulein Maria?" he murmured.  His tone was sardonic, but his voice was very light, and his hand brushed her arm, as if in question also.

She wasn't Elsa.  There was no confident, glib response, no caustic wit that reassured him that she wasn't as confused as her eyes were just now.  He didn't want there to be.  After so long not knowing what was best for himself—after needing her to show him what it was—it was refreshing to be confronted with her confusion, to know that she wasn't sure either and that he could question that in her. 

"Well, I think so, Captain," she said at last, shrugging.  "The Reverend Mother says it takes a bit of trial and error to find the will of God, and that nothing is written in stone.  I used to add 'Except for the Ten Commandments'—but now I do believe I know what she meant."  She paused, shrugging again, as if unaware that she was rambling.  At last she looked him in the eye and said steadily.  "I don't know if I was meant to come here, but I've tried my best."

"You've done well; no mistake about that," he told her gently.

In the silence that followed, it was she who looked away first.

"You're just like Louisa," she said presently, eying his hands.  "She likes to maul poor innocent flowers."

"Don't worry, Fräulein.  They stopped feeling things after you ripped them out of the earth."

"I'm sorry to hear it," she replied.  "They reminded me of my mountain.  I couldn't help myself."

"Your mountain, Fräulein?" he asked her, raising his brows.  "When did they start issuing Austria's mountains to convent girls?"

She shrugged.  "Austria has some to spare.  I love it all,--but I was little, you know, and I wanted one that was mine, just mine, for keeps." 

He knew that feeling; he had felt it up there in the mountains, thinking of Austria, and Edelweiss, and looking at everything he loved arrayed before him.  It was a longing to possess something you loved, possess it completely and emphatically, so that it belonged to you as your heart already belonged to it.  It was less ownership and much more mutual understanding, but he understood it—he understood what this little Fräulein was talking about, even though she was telling him she possessed a mountain. 

"I used to go out to that place," she was saying, "and it was as if nothing could touch me there, as if I knew every rock and tree and bird so well that they knew me as I knew them.  And the wind in your face, when you're up high like that—it's as though it wants to sweep you away, and you can almost hear song in it, and it's as though the mountains themselves are speaking to you, speaking and calling and singing, and—"

She had suddenly stopped, head tilted to the side, as if frozen.  "Yes?" he said, expectantly.

Fräulein Maria sighed, fidgeted, and looked chagrined.  "And that's all, really.  Sister Berthe always said I could talk a hind leg off a mule.  I do have this habit of saying whatever comes to me.  "  

"I like you to talk," he told her simply, and it was the truth.  Hearing her speak what was in her heart like that was both soothing and invigorating.  So few people did it—said what they thought and felt, and with such a wealth of passion.  He liked it; it reminded him of himself and some truth he was searching for now and couldn't quite understand.  "It's only honesty."

She nodded.  "That's what the Reverend Mother said.  Still, I'm working on it."

"Don't," he said abruptly, and was silent.

"Captain?" she queried, tilting her head to try to meet his eyes, which were gazing over the lake in front of him.  He had tossed the little edelweiss away.

"Truth is very precious," he muttered, "especially in these times."  'The truth will set you free, Georg,' Agathe used to flute at him, tapping him reproachfully on the shoulder.  She would say it even now, with Nazis milling at the front door of their country.  'The truth will set you free.'  "The children's mother used to say that a good deal," he murmured. 

The little Fräulein blinked, surprised.  "Your wife?"

His wife.  He never called her that, even in his head.  In speech she was 'the late Baroness von Trapp' and 'the children's mother.'  In his head she was merely a presence, smooth and blonde and in white, with lace, because 'I don't care what all these modern ladies say, Georg; lace is pretty and it will be fashionable if I say it's fashionable'.  She was a sharp commentator in his mind and every once in a while his conscience, and a presence in troubled nights that made him ache in ways that were beyond the needs of his body.  He rarely spoke of her to anyone, let alone impertinent governesses who talked too much. 

But he had spoken of her, and the pain of her absence was suddenly tight in way it had not been for a long, long time.  Why was it now, when he had been allowed for a while to think that his life was in order again, that he kept thinking of Agathe?  Now, when he was at last at peace with his children; now, when he had brought Elsa here specifically to see . . . when this little Fräulein looked at him in that way, that one particular way that made him—

"You miss her, don't you?" she said, into his silence.

—and what did she bloody well think? 

Anger flared, and suddenly.  He was a widower with seven children, for Christ's sake; he didn't know the first thing about interacting with them without their mother.  Add to that the fact that he couldn't bring himself to ask Elsa, whom he loved, to marry him.  She had convinced him he didn't want to be alone any more—and yet he was still alone and his bed was still bloody empty, without that soft presence in it that could wrap her arms around you and tell you you would survive whatever was to come.  Of course he bloody missed her!—

He missed her like he missed those sunny days, when he had thought Austria had had a future.  He missed her like he missed youth, and innocence, and all those things that had been ripped from him with war and the death of a wife he had loved too much and missed too much now.  He missed her like—

She had come up beside him, almost so close as to be half behind him, and her hand was resting on the back of his upper arm.  His head turned with a surprised half a jerk.  He met her eyes—and there was that look again: heat in her eyes that he had dismissed in frustration and a glass and a half of brooding brandy—that warmth in her expression that was alive, compassionate, full of life and hope and another thing he didn't quite want to think of right then. 

"She is with you, Captain.  And somewhere, she's waiting," Fräulein Maria said simply, her voice earnest, alight with faith.

The things her eyes were doing to him made his voice sharp.  "Oh, you think so?"

"I know so," Maria replied, and her fingers tightened about his arm. 

It was a casual touch—that of a counselor and a friend.  A corner of his mind was amused, that she could be so free, when he had seen her also be so shy.  She was a wealth of contradictions, was Maria.  Snap at her, and she bit back—right where it hurt.  Tease her, and she was suddenly silenced.  Doubt for an instant—anything, himself, God, the world around him—and she overflowed with compassion, the true strength and passion behind her faith eager to reach out to anyone in need.  It was refreshing, but it was also very . . . very amusing.

It was in this vein of thought, and not any other, that a smile played about his lips, and his hand closed over hers.  He raised a brow and looked significantly at where her hand gripped his arm.  She loosened her fingers quickly, and bent her head, chagrined.

Perhaps it was that tinge of blush and embarrassment; perhaps it was the strength and comfort she had given him with her assurances about Agathe, and perhaps it was all these things and an incomprehensible build up of what he had felt, watching her on the mountain-side, and later, giving her the words to Edelweiss . . . but whatever it was, it compelled him to hold on to her hand, to move his thumb into the warm cup of her palm, so that he could guide her fingers to touch the spot above his heart.  

Maria smiled ruefully and pulled her hand away.  He smiled too, and looked out over the river, and was reminded of something he hadn't been reminded of in a long time: of sinking himself inside someone and . . . letting go.

"I should see what the children are up to."

"You should.  You're an unconscionable slacker, Fräulein, and if you don't improve, I will simply have to let the Reverend Mother know that of all her trials, this was a definite error."

"Why . . . thank you, Captain."

Georg turned back to the governess, a little surprised at her teasing reply.  "Any time, Fräulein," he said, raising a brow, and making as if he was looking her over.  "Just remember, in the future, I will not always be so . . . solicitous of you."

She blushed, but did not look away, and they held each other a moment with their smiles.

Suddenly, she blinked.  "I really must go."

"I'm not stopping you, Fräulein," he said, gesturing back toward the villa casually.

She looked like she had to think about it for a moment.

"Oh," she replied.

He laughed, gave her a wry half smile, and presented his arm, at which she laughed too, and eventually took, and they made their way back across the green and back up to the house.