Weeks had passed since the Captain had left for Vienna, and a blissful sort of peace had transcended down upon the von Trapp villa.
There were no rules, there were no limits on what she and the children could do. They were, in a sense, free. No watchful eyes lurked about waiting for the next slip-up. No orders were barked out from left and right. Not even Frau Schmidt reprimanded her unorthodox ways. In fact, Maria swore she would catch the woman suppressing a smile at times.
It's not to say that she didn't listen to anything the Captain had said.
She did follow his routine, to an extent. They met for breakfast at the same time every morning, and spent most mornings working on their lessons – she may have skipped a lesson once or twice in favour of taking the children to spend some time on her mountain. They would eat lunch, and spend the afternoon playing games, or taking a trip into town or exploring what the countryside had to offer.
Why, just that morning, not a mile from the house, they had been climbing trees. It had started out innocently enough. Louisa has seen a cluster of trees just off the path they had been walking and declared that she could climb a tree the fastest. Protests came from each of the children – surely, Louisa wasn't the fastest. And so, Maria proposed a bit of healthy competition. They would all scale the trees and see who could climb the fastest. In the end, they were all laughing so hard, no one could even recall who had won.
Maria smiled to herself as she wondered what the Captain would think if he knew his children had been climbing trees.
In truth, she didn't know what he would think anymore. Weeks ago, she would have been certain she would be met with the rage of a thousand suns if he knew she had allowed his children to even think about climbing trees. Now, she wasn't so sure. Over the days that had stretched into weeks, Maria had heard so many different stories about the Captain, stories that had entirely conflicted the image of the man she had met the day she arrived.
She wasn't at all sure where the stories ended, and the man began.
The children only described him warmly. They talked about the things they used to do together, the way he once was – full of laughter and joy. They talked about the way he so loved his Navy and the sea. They talked about the way he adored their mother more than anything. They talked about his bravery and his kindness and his strength. They only ever talked about the things they loved about him, and it was clear that all they wanted was to have their father back.
It had changed Maria's perspective entirely. With each day that passed and every story that was told, it only further cemented in her mind why she had been sent to the von Trapps. She was sent there, not only for the children, but for the Captain as well. She would reacquaint him with his children, and they would prepare to become a family – a real family – again.
The idea energized her in a sense. The idea that she could make this man see just how truly wonderful his children were, to make him recognize that they were a gift and not a burden, filled her with a humbling sense of purpose. She almost desperately wished for him to come back so she could see the look on his face when he realized what he had been missing out on with his children.
The children had told her briefly of the way that music used to be a staple in the von Trapp household. They told her about the way the Captain played the piano and occasionally sang, and the way their mother would sing as well. While they had never had the chance to develop their musical talents, Maria had made sure music lessons were incorporated every other morning. They had truly beautiful voices, and she knew that if the Captain just gave them a chance and heard them sing, he would realize just how special they were.
The children had mentioned that he had barred all music from the house after his wife's passing, but Maria didn't let that deter her. She firmly believed that he had let himself forget about the music within himself, and she would simply have to show him that it was still there, within his children. She was convinced that once he heard the angelic voices of the children, everything would change. After all, he had to still have his heart, didn't he? After everything the children had told her, there was still a loving father in there, wasn't there?
She didn't ponder the question too much. She had to resolve that he was, in fact, the same person from the stories the children so proudly told her. He had to be in there somewhere.
It was early afternoon. The sun was out in full force, warming Maria's skin blissfully. She sat at the helm of the von Trapp family rowboat, Kurt and Friedrich enthusiastically rowing them around the lake. The children laughed and sang, and Maria was certain that she had never heard such a beautiful sound. She smiled as she watched the children she had come to care for so fiercely laugh with abandon. It was a pretty picture – a perfect picture. It was idyllic in every sense of the word, and Maria never wanted it too end. She never wanted to see the smiles cease or the light extinguish from the children's eyes. This is how they were made to be – youthful and happy.
It wasn't until a new sound erupted above the singing and laughter that she looked away.
As they came near the gates of the von Trapp residence, shouts of Father! were shouted into the air as the children began to stand. Maria turned to see that the commotion was about, and upon looking at the landing, she saw him.
Captain von Trapp stood just at the gate, looking larger than life itself.
She felt a sort of relief that she hadn't expected to feel – a comfort that he had come home to his children. She felt unnecessarily elated to see him again, to see the man that the children had raved about to her for weeks.
She stood up in the boat, her excitement worn right on her sleeve as she exclaimed for his return. She looked at him standing there and pictured the man that radiated warmth, that loved his children, that cared. She saw the man from the many stories and desperately wanted to know him better, to have the children know him better.
Before she could lose herself to her thoughts of reuniting him with his children, the boat trembled and rocked beneath her feet, and with a loud exclamation, she felt herself being thrown overboard.
It was then that everything began to go downhill at an alarming rate.
Georg was beyond words.
The rage that coiled itself around his insides was incomparable to anything else he had felt in a very long time.
How dare she disobey his instructions while he was away. Climbing trees? Taking the boat around the lake when they were supposed to be marching around the grounds? He was shocked, and what's worse was that he shouldn't be shocked – he should have expected this. How could he have fooled himself into believing she wouldn't do exactly this? Parading his children around in play clothes – made from her old drapes, no less – was something he should have seen coming from miles away.
She had never given him an indication whatsoever that she could – or rather, would – follow direction. Even on her first day, at every turn she had defied him or spoken out of turn. He had tried to convince himself that she would do right, that she was capable of taking instruction, of heeding warning, and he was so very wrong. He had given her more credit than was due. He was not the kind of man who often made the same mistake twice.
She would need to be fired; of that, he was sure from the moment he put together that it was his children that he had seen climbing trees that morning. He couldn't trust her to follow simple instruction, how was he supposed to trust her with the education and well-being of his children? No, she had to go.
However, he found himself wanting to hear her out, to justify herself. He wanted her to argue with him, to give him even more reason to send her back to that precious Abbey of hers.
What he hadn't anticipated was the beratement she would give him, nor had he expected just how hard it would be to look at her, standing there on the landing, dripping wet with eyes full of fire, without picturing the image he had spent the last days trying to erase from his memory. Every time his eyes met hers, he was struck with that image of her again – her looking up at him from beneath a veil of white. It made him falter.
He hesitated. She spoke to him in a way that no one had ever dared to speak to him before, not since his cadet days at least. She gave as good as she got, and she wasn't backing down. Perhaps that's why he let her go on for so long – or so he would tell himself to fall asleep that night. It certainly wasn't because simply looking at her was enough to bring back a vision so sharp in his mind that it threatened to bring him to his knees.
He should have fired her on the spot, but instead, he took the verbal lashing she provided him with about his children. He listened to every word. He heard every plea, every cry for him to love his children. Did she see just how much he did love them? Didn't she see that he ran away so often to spare them from his grief? From the broken man he had become?
She couldn't possibly understand. She didn't know that the rules and the discipline were easier for everyone. For things to be the way they were before, for him to love them in the ways he did before… He couldn't, not without Agathe. He couldn't be what they needed, not without her.
His thoughts were heading in a dangerous direction. With every cry and plea from the governess, he felt his thoughts become muddled with everything he had fought to keep repressed for years. She was getting to him. Her words were seeping under his skin, creating cracks in the barriers he had spent months putting in place. He couldn't let this continue.
He commanded her to stop, and if she hadn't, he thought he just might have begged. He was relieved when he didn't have to.
He began to tell her that she was done, that he was done with her services and that she would return to the Abbey and he would be free of her. He was beginning to feel relief wash over him as he regained control of the situation he had so uncharacteristically lost control of.
Until he heard the singing.
The children, she had informed him. The children were singing? Surely, not. They hadn't sung since…
He found his feet carrying him before his mind had caught up. He followed the voices in through the house, his mind reeling. As he reached the door of the salon, he came across a scene that stopped him. His children, all seven of them, stood, singing.
His features softened as for a moment he just watched the scene unfold. Their voices carried beautifully, mingling together in an enchanting harmony that would captivate any audience. It truly was a sight to behold. For a moment, he simply looked at each of them, taking them all in truly for what might have been the first time in years.
Take Liesl, she's not a child anymore. One of these days you're going to wake up and find she's a woman. You won't even know her.
Friedrich, he's a boy, but he wants to be a man like you and there's no one to show him how.
Brigitta could tell you about him, if you'd let her get close to you – she notices everything!
Kurt pretends he's tough not to show how hurt he is when you brush him aside, the way you do all of them.
Louisa, I don't know about, but someone has to find out about her.
The little ones just want to be loved. Oh, please, Captain, love them, love them all!
He was startled by the way her words came back to him so clearly as he looked upon her face. He was far more startle by the realization that dawned over him in that moment – she was right. She had been right the entire time. He didn't know his children. The way they sang now, their youthful voices rising up in united song – he had forgotten. He had forgotten who they were. He had forgotten what made each of them special.
They were so young, so full of life, so full of her, and he knew that was why they had shut them out in the first place. He simply couldn't deal with how they reminded him of her, of how they brought back the memories and the pain and the heartbreak all over again, and so he had stripped them of everything that might remind him and made them little soldiers instead.
Hearing them sing – a lullaby she used to sing to them, no less – hurt far less than he expected it to. It stung, yes, he expected it always would, but he didn't feeling the earth shattering pain he always anticipated. Instead, he felt guilt. Guilt for taking their voices away, for brushing them off, for conditioning them to be something they weren't. In his own brokenness, he had broken them, and somehow, that insubordinate little governess had fixed them, and he owed her his life for that.
His own voice rose in song with his children as he allowed himself to remember. The time Georg had held Liesl in his arms for the first time. The time Friedrich had taken his first steps. The time Louisa had brought back a toad from the garden – the first of many – to show her parents. The time Kurt had broken a cookie jar trying to get a cookie before dinner. The time he had found Brigitta curled up in the chair in his study fast asleep with a book open on her lap. The time Marta had fallen and scraped her knee and cried for her father, and only when he held her tightly in her arms did she stop. The first time Gretl fell asleep tucked against his side as he played the piano.
He allowed himself to remember the good. He allowed him to remember everything he had feared to remember out of the terror that it would shatter him. He allowed himself to remember that they were children – his children. His seven beautiful, courageous, precious children that he had ignored for far too long.
He watched as their eyes filled with tears as they saw their father for the first time, the first real time in years. He knew then, looking at the pain wash away in their faces and the hope brighten their eyes that he would need to do better. For the first time in years, as he really saw them, he knew that he had to do better. They couldn't go on the way they had, trying to forget and erase the past. He couldn't do that to them anymore. They deserved better, and he vowed from that moment on that he would do whatever it took to fix things, to erase the years of pain and suffering he put them through.
As he felt the pairs of arms begin to wrap around him as his children embraced him, Georg felt for the first time in years that he had finally returned home.
A/N: Well, that ends the ride of the Introspective Character Study Stage. From this point on, we will delve into the meatier part of the plot that I have planned. I hope to have an update soon.
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