A/N: This chapter is a bit of a mess still... but it's the best I can do right now. These pandemic weeks have been crazy - between being a healthcare worker and managing two stir-crazy kids at home, life is upside down and all over the place. But we're managing, and we're going to get through it. Take care and stay safe, everyone. xx

The Open Sea

Georg eased his boat carefully out of its berth. The late fall morning was warm, cloudless, and perfect for sailing. From the helm, he could see Maria, standing starboard at the railing, and the small crowd that had gathered to see her off.

Georg saw her blow a kiss to Alex, who was wearing his trademark worn overalls and straw hat. She waved to Stavros, to the girls, to Theo and his father, who early that morning had filled his galley cupboards with fresh bread and Maria's favourite Greek pastries.

Maria was smiling, waving enthusiastically – the same cheerful spirit that'd greeted him in the morning when he arrived at her apartment to help with her things. She wasn't bringing much; one suitcase, one carpetbag, and her guitar. It had taken him only one trip to bring everything down to the docks. While Georg went ahead with her luggage to the yacht to prepare for departure, Maria had gone to the cemetery to say farewell. Georg wondered how that had gone, saying goodbye to Pierre. Perhaps he had never been a lover, but certainly he'd been a friend, her sole connection to Austria over these past few years. He'd been the man who'd once brought her to the island to start a new life. Now she was leaving, and he would remain for eternity, atop the hill under the sun and sky. If it'd wrung her heart, Maria gave no signs of it as she joined him on the dock.

Georg knew she'd made individual visits to see her friends yesterday, and had given notice to Stavros first thing in the morning, but he eventually realized the real reason Maria wanted to stay an extra day was to work her last shift at the Siren. As much as Georg knew she'd hated it – had hated her working there himself – he understood what it'd meant to her. Working at the Siren was what had lifted her out of her despair. It'd given her a sense of purpose when she'd lost everything. Georg met her there that night, the space so crowded he'd only managed to snag a stool at the counter.

Georg sat and watched her dance, watched her pour drinks, watched her take to the stage with Theo. Maria may have assured him they were friends, but Georg saw the admiration in the way the young man looked at her, the casual way he touched her, more frequently than necessary.

And then with a flourish and a bow, Theo and his pan flute stepped aside, leaving Maria alone on stage. Her blond head was bent over her guitar, as if she were shy, but as she coaxed the first few familiar chords, her eyes lifted to find his. Edelweiss. He was swept back to their first night. She had charmed him then, bewitched him, even, but he could never have known their time together would unfold like this, leaving him with a profound sense of tenderness, of wistful yearning, of regret. Georg could only stare in awe as she began to sing, and a hush came over the listening crowd. He could see her eyes flicker to Stavros, to her friends, but repeatedly, helplessly, they returned to him. In their blue depth, he saw their time together – a greeting, a farewell, a thank you. He was dimly aware she was still performing, still on stage, but the song felt intimate, leaving him aching to respond. All he could do was lean back against his chair and try not to let his uneven breathing give him away.

As her song came to an end, the crowd burst into applause, burly sailors, kitchen staff, dancing girls alike. Next to them, Stavros was shaking his head slightly, wearing a scowl that barely hid the heartfelt expression beneath. Maria stepped off the stage into a huddle of her girls, who surrounded her in excited voices and starry eyes. Georg heard her laugh, but it was him she sought, head titled like a question mark. He nodded slightly, trying to summon pride, or admiration, when in reality she had touched a depth he could not express. When the girls let her go, she walked toward him. Involuntarily, he found himself standing. It seemed the crowd collectively held its breath as Maria stopped in front of him. The moment was both theirs, and not theirs. He embraced her lightly. Felt her exhale against his shoulder. And then the silence gave way to raucous noise.

Maria spent the rest of the evening working with her friends, and the bar returned to its usual lively atmosphere. She turned heads the entire night. Georg could catch snippets of conversation, the appreciative ways patrons talked about her had him clenching his fists and glad he was taking her away the next day. He felt a bitterness in his chest as he swallowed. It was but a small demonstration she allowed herself tonight, a glimpse into the woman she really was. Once they saw – once the world saw – the woman she was… men would fall at her feet.

But Georg had been prepared to accept this. This was her life, only beginning, and he should count himself lucky she trusted him to play a supporting role.

Yet knowing this… it made their journey ahead both too long, and never long enough.

Georg sighed, slowly steering the boat away from the island, navigating between numerous fishing boats toward the open sea. The arms of the harbor slipped further away. Maria made her way around the deck to the stern, so she could still see her friends. Georg heard shouts of 'goodbye Maria!' and when he turned, he could see one of the girls waving what looked like a large headscarf with a printed Greek flag. He knew how final this farewell was for her, how difficult it was to leave what she knew for a journey that might yield nothing. He couldn't help but marvel at how spirited she remained all morning, how she managed to turn this moment into a festivity, and what was incredible about it was that it was not a false act. Maria, he thought, the realization a tender tug in his mind, was courage and sheer will. She waved back until she could no longer make out the crowd. She lingered against the railing for a long while, watching Milos shrink behind them until it melted into the horizon, and then she continued to stare out into the sea. She seemed more contemplative than sad, so Georg returned his attention to his driving and left her to her own thoughts.

Even after he reached the open water, he stayed at the helm for a while longer to chart his course. He would stick relatively close to the coastline, around Greece then along the Balkan Penninsula, rather than put Maria at risk sailing across the sea, where the waves were larger and wilder and the weather more unpredictable. It would add at least another day and night's sailing to their journey. Sailors often settled into an easy routine when they were confined together at sea for long stretches of time – would they? What sort of routine would they adopt, he and Maria?

Georg had spent the better part of the last month at sea trying not to consider it, and now he was about to find out.

Maria. The first woman after Agathe to sail aboard his vessel.

Georg had not let himself dwell on it, the much bigger question being whether Maria would agree to leave Milos and go with him to see Karl Bonnetsmuller in the first place. Would she believe him, trust him, when he had nothing to offer but a vision of who Maria could be, were she given the chance?

But she had. And she was here, sailing with him on his yacht.

He didn't need the significance of that to admit he cared about Maria, in a way he'd never cared about Elsa, never mind the countless women he'd met since. Georg had told her as much. Told her outright he'd wanted her, cared about her. What she didn't know was that he'd spent nearly every night this month pacing the length of his boat, unable to outrun the way she appeared in his dreams. What she didn't know was how much of a fixture she already seemed on the yacht, without even being on it. What she didn't know – would never know – was how frequently he thought of her the same way he'd once thought of Agathe.

It was two decades later, and circumstances had changed.

He had changed.

He could not offer Maria the same things he had once offered his bride. Georg had had weeks to consider this. Weeks to come to terms with it.

"Do you have to man the wheel the entire trip?" The object of his thoughts asked brightly from the doorway. He turned. Maria ducked so she could get through the narrow door frame into the helm, coming up behind him to perch against the small counter that normally held his maps. She appeared comfortable, moving around the boat with a strangely appealing mix of familiarity and curiosity. Georg had to remind himself that she had probably sailed to Milos in something very similar, albeit not with a sailor.

"No," he said, unable to keep a smile from creeping into his voice. "She can self-steer once we get on course."

He watched as Maria examined the panel of navigational instruments in front of him. With her dirndl and headscarf holding her hair in place against the wind, and her bright and curious ways, she seemed much more like the Maria that'd once roamed dusty Milos hills at his side than the woman who'd met him on the docks the other night. She'd seemed fragile then, at once transparently, achingly hopeful, yet cautious and uncertain. Georg knew her, knew that once her mind was made up she'd move forward with fierce determination. He should be glad of it.

Maria stayed a long while at the helm, and he explained how to steer a boat, how to pick safe routes, how to channel the power of wind and currents. She listened eagerly, poking fun at him whenever he turned too technical. He let her take command of the wheel, showing her where to position her hands as not to get back or shoulder strain. In a sense, she was not like Agathe at all, who had loved sailing, but was more likely to be found bird-watching or reading a book on the deck. They moved together with unexpected ease, an intuitive understanding that drove his love for sailing in the first place. If she reacted to his solid presence behind hers, if he reacted to the feel of her hand under his, neither mentioned it.

In the afternoon, Georg let the self-steering mechanism take over, and went to find Maria below deck. She welcomed him with a voice that had grown slightly hoarse from the incessant wind. She had found a pack of bratwurst, now sizzling merrily in a pan on the small stove. She nodded pointedly at a loaf of bread as he entered. Georg made to join her at the counter, both amused and bemused at being commanded on his own boat. It was a small, cozy space, and they worked silently, exchanging small smiles every so often when their eyes met.

Too quickly, they had settled into a routine. Too soon, he would need to forget it.

Maria and Georg shared a pleasant meal in the galley. It was a small space, a corner bench carved along the wall of the yacht. He rarely ate there, but now found himself lingering at the table. He told her more about the children – how little Gretl practically fancied herself a young lady, how they'd roamed the streets of Lausanne until the spotted the perfect parasol Marta wanted, how young Kurt had taken a notion to traveling the world after he graduated.

"He wants to take up sailing?" Maria asked, surprised, thinking it quite an about turn for Georg's younger son.

"In a manner of speaking," Georg chuckled. "He wants to see the world aboard a luxury cruise liner."

Maria laughed, then peppered him with questions about Louisa and Fredrich, both of whom were already considering college. She helped him work through his conundrum about Liesl entertaining young gentleman callers at her boarding home.

From the galley, they watched the sun set, changing from a fiery yellow to a mellow orange, its glow softer and gentler as it leveled with the water. It took only minutes for the sun to disappear, leaving behind pastel clouds in a deepening sky, a sudden chill in place of the sun's warm embrace. Maria watched the spectacle in silence, her chin propped in her hands, eyes sparkling.

"I didn't think there was any sunset quite like sunset on the Greek isles, but this…" Maria sighed.

Georg knew what she meant. Even after years of sailing, he still felt it, the little thrill when the sun went down. "When you're seeing it on the water, you feel closer to it. Instead of watching it, marveling at it, you feel like you're part of it."

She nodded. "The waves, the wind, everything. It all feels so different on the water."

Georg smiled. "By the end of the week, we'll make a sailor of you yet."

It had been lighthearted when he said it. He tried his best to keep it that way.

Maria looked thoughtful, looking out at the water and missing the change in expression that briefly crossed his face. Finally, she shook her head. "No," she said, turning to him with earnest eyes. "I can see how you love it so, Georg. But eventually, I think I'll still need the feeling of grass under my feet. I need trees. Ground I can stand on. Being able to run without falling overboard. Mountains I can climb and fields I can dance across. Church bells and organs that play on Sundays."

People to laugh with, people to love, Georg added silently as Maria stopped, out of breath. Maria needed the world, and the world needed her. If she were trapped on a tiny boat for the rest of her life, she may as well have become a nun.

"Being on a boat could save you from many a scrape," he teased instead, brining her out of her starry eyed vision.

"I suppose it would save me from a great deal of kissing the floor," she agreed with a small, rueful laugh.

She'd mentioned it before, and now curiosity got the better of him. "Kissing the floor?"

Another laugh. "Sister Berthe," she said, shrugging, as though that explained everything.

"Sister Berthe?" Georg looked bemused. "Who is Sister Berthe?"

"The Mistress of Novices," Maria clarified. "She used to make me kiss the floor whenever I committed a transgression at the Abbey. Eventually, I just started kissing the floor whenever I saw her coming, just to save time."

Georg laughed with her.

"I think she was so hard on me because she too, never believed I was truly fit for the Abbey." Maria sighed. "But I miss her perhaps most of all, next to the Reverend Mother. Before I left, she was the one who taught me how to defend myself against danger."

He was briefly surprised. How did a cloistered nun come to know of self-defense, or the need to use it? But even nuns, he was coming to learn, had their own stories. Wasn't Maria herself proof of that?

"Do you miss it?" Georg asked curiously. "The Abbey?" He'd never heard Maria talk about her time as a postulate – the window after she had revealed she'd been one hadn't left much time for storytelling.

"Yes, of course," she said without hesitation. "I miss the Sisters tremendously." Maria launched into a string of reminisces about her time as a postulate, about the Reverend Mother, Sister Berthe, Sister Margaretta, Sister Sophia, and a number of other Sisters Georg couldn't keep straight. While he might not be able to remember the various nuns Maria had befriended, what was clear was how warmly she remembered her time at the Abbey. It had been home. Perhaps the only family Maria had known.

Maria fell briefly silent, worrying her lip along her teeth. "It feels like I've lived a lifetime since then. What wouldn't I give sometimes for the orderliness of it, to know what was expected of me… for someone to tell me what to do!" She gave a rueful chuckle. "Sister Berthe would faint to hear me say that."

Georg could have said that she had done just fine, that of all people, she would find her own way. Would climb every mountain and ford every stream – or sea – until she did. But having just left her little island behind for good, it clearly wasn't something she wanted to hear right now.

"And let me tell you, from the mouth of a retired sea captain," he said lightly instead, "following commands isn't all its cracked up to be." For even if you did everything right, you could still lose everything.

Maria sighed in resignation. "You couldn't discipline me if you tried."

The sudden, unbidden, and entirely inappropriate scenario of him as a sea captain teaching her exactly what ship discipline meant flashed before his eyes. He covered his sharp intake with a cough.

Maria looked him over with concern. "Are you alright, Georg?"

He nodded, pushing back his chair and standing in one fluid motion, taking several hurried steps back.

Her eyebrows furrowed, and she opened her mouth, no doubt to point out that he most certainly did not seem alright. "I – I suppose I need to go up and check the navigation," he rushed on, at that moment feeling no distance between them on this boat would suffice. Clearing his throat, Georg took a breath. "Will you be okay?" He titled his chin toward the door that led to his cabin. He'd taken her there earlier, showed her where he'd left her bags. The cabin would be her room for the trip, and he would do well not to think too much about it. "Is there anything else you need?"

"Oh Georg, I really don't want to impose," Maria protested again, as she had that afternoon. She followed with a thought they had not discussed earlier. "Where will you sleep?"

He waved his hands in a vaguely encompassing gesture. "I don't sleep much on the water – a few hours here and there."

"But I'll be in your bed."

He chuckled weakly. Was she goading him on purpose? "This bench folds out into a cot. I've slept on much worse," he tried to reassure.

In reality, he had never slept on the bench. Never had reason to – he'd always had his cabin, his bed, whether alone or not. Sometimes he'd spend warm nights on his deck. There was once or twice he'd been so intoxicated he'd passed out on the floor, but never the bench.

Now completely unable to banish the thought – no, the sensation – of this woman in his bed, Georg would sleep on that bench if it killed him.

Unable to fully meet her gaze, he watched her stand in his periphery.

"Alright then," she said, a little uncertainly still. "Goodnight Georg."

He managed to return her small smile. "Goodnight Maria."

Georg made sure he was well on his way up the stairs before she disappeared into the cabin, lest it undo him altogether.

How quickly things had derailed, Georg allowed himself to muse as he sat alone at the helm. They had been talking of nuns, and order, and, oh for Heaven's sake, discipline. Perhaps he ought to start keeping a list of dangerous topics – although, he reasoned drily, what were the chances the issue of Maria's discipline would need to be reviewed again?

The yacht was navigating just fine, as he had known it would be, but Georg continued to sit there for an hour, maybe more, as if hoping the night wind might cool off his thoughts. She appeared in his dreams often enough without him stoking the fire. If there was any inkling he'd be dreaming of her, Georg would spend the night up here, anyway.

When he finally returned to the galley, it was silent and still. Quietly, he set up the cot, stretching out lengthwise, not quite sleeping, but enjoying the soft sway of the boat as it moved over the waves, so different from the lurching motion when it was docked.

Before he was fully settled, he heard the cabin door open. He peered into the darkness to see Maria's faint silhouette slip out of the room, her voluminous nightgown billowing from the night breeze even in the sheltered galley. He felt her hesitate on the threshold as she spotted him sleeping on the bench, before padding carefully to the sink for a glass of water.

He caught the silvery glow of moonlight against her hair, the soft profile of her features in the dark. He turned slightly away, and closed his eyes.

The sound of the tap. Of running water. Of stillness. He imagined her bringing the glass to her lips.

"Georg," she half-whispered suddenly, startling him. "You don't have a pillow."

"Hmm?" He hadn't realized she had turned toward him. "I'm fine Maria, don't worry about me."

But Maria left her glass on the counter and disappeared into the cabin, reappearing moments later with the pine cushion from her Milos apartment he had become so familiar with.

"Here," she held it out for him. Georg started to sit up, but Maria slipped the pillow deftly under his head. In the moment he felt his chest clench at the small gesture, when her hand lingered beside him and their eyes met, bright spots in the night, he wanted nothing more than to pull her down onto the cot beside him.

He let the moment pass.

Georg lay there for a long while after Maria returned to her room, smelling the fresh scent of pine.

He would not, refused to dream of her.

He drifted off. Before he had fully fallen asleep, he heard a cry from the room.

Maria.

Heart pounding, he bolted upright, and heard Maria cry out again. Then a sound that could pass for a shriek. Despite knowing there was nothing that could hurt her in that room, Georg felt his mouth go dry.

He sprang off the bench, hastily knocking on the cabin door before rushing in.

She was still asleep, limbs tangled in sheets and ginormous nightgown. She was clearly agitated even in sleep, hands clutching fistfuls of sheets, forehead damp with sweat.

"Maria!" He urged. He switched on the dim light. She continued to tremble, trapped in a nightmare, and he had a very good idea what it was about.

"Maria." He leaned over the bed, giving her shoulder a little shake. She moaned as if she were being restrained, curling away from his touch, arms flailing out inches from his face.

Georg sat at the edge of the bed, careful not to touch her again, murmuring her name over and over, watching as she lifted out of the dream bit by bit. Finally, her eyes fluttered open. They found his, pupils blown wide in the dimly lit cabin, and she struggled to sit up.

"It was a dream," he said gently.

Maria continued to stare at him with huge, fearful eyes. "A storm came," she said blankly.

"There's no storm. It was a nightmare."

She blinked, and Georg gave her time to take in her surroundings – the dark paneled wood of his cabin, the generously sized bed, the white sheets. Her breathing evened. Maria had never mentioned having nightmares before, and in the nights he'd spent at her apartment, he'd never witnessed it. Being on the water again must have brought back visceral memories of the accident. He should have foreseen it - should have known the impossibility of forgetting the intensity of trauma like that. It'd always been there, she'd only buried it.

Maria shook her head. "It was terrible," she whispered emphatically. "I was in the water again."

He nodded. "I know. To feel like you're drowning is a terrifying dream. Don't worry – I won't let that happen." He reached out to give her arm a reassuring touch.

She shook her head, half in fear, half in shock. "It was you, Georg." He paused, going still. She went on. "You were with me. You jumped in after me." Her eyes filled. "You screamed at me to hold on, and then – " she half choked out, "– I couldn't see you anymore."

He exhaled. "Oh Maria. No."

And then he was reaching for her, and she was falling against him, tears and tangled sheets and bare skin, and Georg found himself spending the night in that cabin, after all.