CHAPTER 6: Epilogue

Maria's trip up the aisle felt like an endless ordeal. Her journey was slowed to a crawl by the weight of the congregation's gazes, Liesl's maddeningly measured pace and the cumbersome bulk of the satin dress with its long train. But once her Captain met her at the altar and her hand slid into his, the ceremony seemed to fly by in a matter of minutes. The way her senses blurred together everything from the organ and choir's sounds soaring upward, to the children's joyful faces, to the deep rumble of Georg's responses and even her own voice echoing, it could have been a dream, except that it was all real, this wedding: blissfully, unbelievably real. And the trip back down the aisle, with his strong arm supporting hers, was no ordeal at all.

Outside the church, the morning sun shone brightly, but the air held the crisp promise of fall: the kind of day that made you excited for the future. A string of three black cars waited at the curb, ready to take the family back to the villa for the wedding breakfast. "Why so many cars?" Maria laughed. "Even with Max, there are only ten of us!" There had to be a reason, she knew, for her Captain always arranged everything flawlessly, never leaving anything to chance.

"So that we can have our own," he winked, nodding his thanks to the driver who had leapt from the first car and whisked open the back door. Georg handed her in and then, together, the two men wrestled her train into the car, where it took up most of the remaining space, leaving only a small sliver of the back seat for her new husband.

"I was hoping for another kiss," he grumbled as the car pulled away from the curb and inched its way through Salzburg traffic, "but I can barely get close enough to shake your hand!" When she reached across the bunched-up train to swat him on the shoulder, he caught her hand and pressed his lips to her palm. "You were magnificent, Maria. Just magnificent. You looked like an angel."

"And you looked exactly like a handsome sea captain ought to look," Maria told him. He'd worn his uniform for symbolic reasons, she knew that, but it didn't hurt that he was also devastatingly handsome in it. Then again, her Captain was handsome in just about anything, and that, of course, made her mind turn to tonight, and what he would look like wearing nothing at all-

"What are you thinking about, Maria?"

"Oh!" Maria felt her cheeks flush as though she'd been caught misbehaving. Although now that they were married, it wouldn't be misbehaving, would it? As opposed to her other misdeeds. Her eyes flew to the Maria Thereisen medal, pinned snugly just below his tie, front and center, standing out among the many other medals he wore. She reached over to touch it, just a fingertip.

"Hello, old friend!"

Georg glanced down at the medal with a wry smile.

"I haven't seen the medal since the night of the party, you know," she told him. "Another time when you were unbearably, spectacularly handsome. Although that time you nearly broke my heart!"

"No, no," he protested. "It wasn't like that at all. I was so – rattled – at the end of that dance. You ought to have given me a moment to explain myself. To apologize."

"It is I who owed you the apology, though," she tapped her fingernail against the metal. "For Vienna."

"I've long ago forgiven you, you know that, Maria."

"I wasn't sure that you could ever really forgive me, not at first. But the night of the party, the way you looked at me at the end of the Laendler-" Only a few moments earlier, he had been gazing down at her with a fierce, raw passion that had both aroused and frightened her, but when she broke away from him, that small, tender smile of reassurance had told her what she wanted to know. She had carried that smile with her throughout the dark days of her return to the Abbey and the heartbreak that awaited her on her return, until he declared himself to her in the gazebo.

At last, they were free of the scrum of city traffic and were speeding along the riverbank, toward home. On either side of the river, evergreen trees held their color, while others wore fall's wardrobe of scarlet and gold.

"Georg?"

"Hm?"

"There's something I've always wanted to ask you."

"Yes, love. What is it?" he looked at her, gravely and a little fearfully, and she wondered what he expected her to ask. They'd already talked about his first marriage, and her fears of never being able to live up to his memories of his first wife, and he'd done his best to reassure her. And together, they'd made plans for after the Anschluss, which seemed inevitable.

"It's about Vienna."

"I thought we agreed to put that behind us, Maria."

"Y-yes, but I was thinking, and I was wondering. About you, back then. I told you all about me, and Dusterbach, and wanting to be a bookkeeper. And how I came to be at the Crow's Nest. But you never said much about Vienna, or explained – I mean, how did someone like you end up at a place like the Crow's Nest?"

"Well." He cleared his throat, which Maria had come to learn was a delaying tactic. "There's nothing to say about my time in Vienna, really. Nothing interesting, anyway."

"Nothing interesting? You went to the opera, I know that," she said encouragingly. Maria had long ago told him about her own misadventure at the opera house when she had spotted him escorting Baroness Schrader. "You love the opera, Georg. And you saw Rachmaninoff in Vienna, didn't you? And I think you mentioned the Bolshoi ballet, you must have enjoyed that tremendously! It's just the part about the Crow's Nest I don't understand."

"Y-yes. It's just that – well – I don't know. I don't know! I knew I ought to move on, I thought I was ready to move on, I had managed to find some joy in life, but still. Nothing seemed to fit back then."

Ever since that magical night in the gazebo, Maria had secretly found this side of the Captain terribly endearing: the fretful little boy, unsure of himself and wanting someone else to set things right. She suspected that very few people had ever gotten to glimpse that boy through the rare crack in his usual armor of skill, accomplishment, and wit.

"It wasn't the performances, Maria, it was what came after. The parties. Everyone fawning over me, and Elsa encouraging it, though the hero worship did nothing but remind me of everything Austria had lost. Soaking myself in champagne, stumbling about to waltzes by Strausses I can't even remember. Those parties gave me nothing but regrets and a headache. Once in a while, I would step out and ask my driver to run me about Vienna. No destination in particular, just to get away, to get some air and some distance from Vienna's 'better' districts. One night, we passed by the place. The Crow's Nest. The nautical reference intrigued me, so I told him to wait and went in for a quick drink. Of course, I was immediately disappointed. Nothing nautical at all, though it did have a bit of the disreputable air of the bars in port back in my younger days. No one was trying to impress anyone else. No one even recognized me. I slid the medal into my wallet to be sure of it. As you know first-hand." He let out a mirthless chuckle. "I kept going there until – well, you know. Luckily, my driver was never very far away, and he managed to get me back to my hotel that night. So no great mystery, really. That's all there was to it. I recuperated, and then I found myself occupied replacing governess after governess, Elsa demanded a visit to Salzburg, and you know the rest."

"I see," Maria said quietly. "Could it be that – well, at that moment, you couldn't find a way forward. And the Crow's Nest was a way to try and go backward?"

"M-hm. Smart girl."

They were only a few minutes' drive from the villa now. He reached over and squeezed her hand, and they lapsed into a reflective silence which seemed at odds with the lighthearted, joyful mood of the day. But when Maria peeked over at him, she saw that he was smiling.

"What's so funny?"

"Tell me, Maria. Do you still think I'm the type of man to follow a barmaid into the back room?"

"Oh, Georg, please! Not another thing for me to atone for!"

"Looking back on it, perhaps I ought to have let you take me back there after all!" Now the smile had broadened into a wolfish grin. She reached over to swat his shoulder, but he easily disarmed her by clamping his hand around her wrist. "After all, I wasn't married, and neither were you! Surely, I was the best of the lot you had to choose from."

"Your fingernails were clean, I'll grant you that," Maria laughed.

The car slowed to a stop in front of the villa. Through the wide-open doors, children, servants and guests surged forward to greet them.

When the car door opened, she took her Captain's extended hand, leaving the driver to wrestle with her train.

"Oh, Georg, I do so want to make you happy. I will make it up to you, all of it. I promise! Whatever it takes."

In the last moment before the crowd engulfed them, he leaned down to whisper in her ear.

"You have nothing to make up for, Maria darling. But if you insist, I'm sure I can think of something."

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

And that is the end of this curious little story. OK, the ending is a little lame and here's why: all along I planned for them to get to Paris and reenact what might have happened in that back room. Wouldn't that have been spicy fun? But it didn't work, because Georg wasn't the type to have gone with her and she wasn't the type to have gone (OK, she did ask him, but as reviewers pointed out, she was kind of naïve about what she was getting herself into). It felt kind of skeevy to follow them into the back room. Anyway, thank you for reading and hopefully reviewing this story. FF dot net is so messed up right now I don't even know who will see this update. But as always, I don't own anything about TSOM. I'll be back soon! Trying to decide between another plot-heavy AU and returning to Dark Georg. AYC.