Chapter Text
This piece assumes that the Anschluss took place in its proper historical time, that Georg and the Baroness never became engaged, and that Maria returned to the abbey when she was scheduled to do so, rather than because of a burst of anger. (Tiny-AU, fer sure.) Alas, I do not own The Sound of Music or anything else referenced in this piece. I tried to make it as accurate as possible in regards to historical figures. Also inspired by "Change", by Tracy Chapman. (Severely edited to bring out the inspiration, but you should totally binge listen to it: Tracy Chapman is an amazing artist and it's an amazing song!)
"If you knew that love can break your heart, when you're down so low you cannot fall...
If you knew that you would be alone, knowing right, being wrong...
If you knew that you would find a truth that brings a pain that can't be soothed, would you change?
Are you so upright you can't be bent, if it comes to blows?
Are you so sure you won't be crawling, if not for the good why risk falling...
If everything you think you know makes your life unbearable...
If you'd broken every rule and vow, and hard times come to bring you down...
If you knew that you would die today, if you saw the face of God and love, would you change?"
Change
Chapter 1
He trembled with anger already, the rage surging with the last word on that page, the name signed to the telegram, Kapitänleutnant Karl Slevogt. Bastards. Nothing had been left for his enemies to steal, but Georg knew himself wrong, now. His honor he had not considered—had refused to consider it, suffocating the little whispers in his mind—and now they demanded it as well. He would not offer it to them freely, no matter how they demanded it! Had Franz said something? If he had, Georg had not understood it, the sound deafened by blood pounding in his ears and the crushing of paper.
There was nothing else for it. Nothing. With the news of the Anschluss, it had taken Georg only a few moments to decide on his course of action. Resist the Nazis, in whatever form he might. Refuse to listen to the reports soon to come on the radio, ignore the reports in the newspaper, purposefully neglect any of the public events, disbelieve any of their bloody propaganda. Perhaps even dispense with the feigning of conflicts, or forgetfulness, and openly declare his hatred for the Nazis!
But with the arrival of this telegram...His own choice had been made for him. 'You will be expected to report for duty as soon as possible, with the approval of the Gauleiter for any delays.' A day for travel at the most that sentence meant, and delays sanctioned only by Herr Zeller. Christ, he despised that man! Something about his small watery eyes made him a rat rather than a man. And he had allowed that bastard into this place, into his own home!
Glancing up to the railing that lined the upper floor of his home, Georg blinked. His own eyes were wet now: there the Austrian flag had hung, a proud display of his loyalty, what Herr Zeller could never have felt a bit of in his entire life. Turning from it, Georg walked into his study. But even there, he was not free from the reminders of the past: the ship was everywhere in one form or another, and with the faded and folded pictures of the men he had commanded, an Austrian flag, just as aged and worn. He turned away from it, continuing toward his desk; just glimpsing that flag was more than he could do now,
The midday sun was just beginning to dip from the highest point of its daily arch, and the shadows in this room were stretching from their noon invisibility. At his desk, Georg tapped his fingers along the surface; else, he would pour himself a glass of port, perhaps brandy, whatever there was nearest, and he had to have a clear head now. He had known it might come to this, but so soon he had not anticipated. Everything he had considered he needed to implement quicker than he had first believed.
From the announcement that Hitler had dispatched an ultimatum to Schuschnigg, expressing his rejection of the vote that had not yet taken place, Georg had been on edge. It was any man's guess whether the population as a whole would remember that Austria laid claim to a vast and great history, far more than the little more than half a century of German unity. One needed only to recall the Weimar Republic to name the German state weak.
But Schuschnigg had caved, and on the twelfth of March, the Wehrmacht had entered Austria—had invaded it! Hitler had appointed another governor and called for a vote on the union, but how did that matter? Ballots handed to officials, posters on display instructing one to vote for the Anschluss...Where in this process was the voice of Austria? Those voting yes were volunteering as German puppets. What did they see in the Nazis? That, Georg had never comprehended.
Perhaps he would have endured losing his country, being German rather than Austrian on his papers though never in his heart, but the this telegram was the final straw. He would not serve in the Kriegsmarine! His face was cold with the knowledge of what the decision meant for his family, and an anger was raging in him, but not at the choice he had just come to. He wanted nothing more than for his children to be raised in Austria, to become Austrian citizens proud of their heritage! But the damned Nazis denied his family what should have been theirs!
The telegram was crumpled in his fist, a fist he did not remember crushing around the paper. Franz's face had been blank when he had brought it from the front door, interrupting a few moments he had been spending with Marta, wondering just how far the mountains of Austria stretched and in what directions. The answer was simple enough to find in an atlas, but her imagination had created a range that went on forever, and it pleased him too greatly to destroy it with a fact or two. Another day and time he might have opened it right beside her, allowed her to ask what it was on the paper, but not in these days. Any telegram or letter, any voice over the telephone might announce the outbreak of veiled hostility and the certain disruption of his family.
And that was but one additional reason to despise everything the Nazis desired, as though their suppression of Christians, Jews, and any other with their own voices in Germany proper. He had just discovered his children again and had spent less than a year with them—truly being their father—in the beauty of Austria, and now they would lose him again, if he did nothing. But he could not stay and let them see him be devoured by the evil of Nazism. He had been theirs for a matter of months, and now he would leave them again, whether as he had before, just in his affect and thoughts, or bodily, to keep them from the coming conflict. Whichever, there would be no Maria to mend those aching pieces of their family.
He had not thought of her for some weeks, or at least he had not let his mind linger on her; no day went by that he ignored her memory entirely. She was never far from his thoughts, always ready to rise when he closed his eyes no matter what he considered. Wherever he went, she went along, either some quip of hers, one of her ridiculous songs—that one that she and the children had sung in that puppet show, The Lonely Goatherd—or simply the joy that could not be divorced from her.
Oh, God, it must be easier to forget her, but he had let her come into his thoughts and she stayed as well as if she stood before him and spoke the words that her presence in his mind whispered. When they danced the Ländler, when his hand took hers, for that moment they felt as one, his soul pouring into her just as hers flooded into him. His skin had only touched hers, their fingers curling around one another's, but something deeper between them had come together. Something for which there were no words. He could not endure forgetting her, for the joy she had brought to him, what she had done for his family, whom she had transformed into.
Could he? Would he allow himself to perform this task, knowing what he did of what had passed between them in those moments?
"No," he whispered with a shake of his head. "You are just imagining something that isn't there." There was nothing she could possibly want from him. Such a young girl—her life ahead of her to do whatever she wished, and she had already dedicated it to the church to be a nun. She had served her purpose in his family, an angel that God had dispatched for a short time to his home to show him what was only a foot before his nose and hidden by his own blindness.
But...how? When she had gone, leaving their home after tearful farewells from the younger girls, hugs from Liesl and Louisa, and kisses on her cheeks from his sons, both of whom had droplets shining in their own eyes, something of himself had vanished, disappearing with her voice. In those moments, he had felt abandoned.
"Captain?" Franz's voice was entirely unexpected, and Georg jerked at the sound. God, he had left the hall to escape from the possibility of another voice, and now here his butler was again! Damn the man, just let him alone!
"Yes?" His voice was calmer than he had thought possible. In truth, he had never dismissed Franz, and the servant performed his tasks with the utmost care. Awaiting dismissal was one of those dull certainties of holding the butler's position, even if it meant following to ask for that freedom.
"Do you require anything else of me?" Georg turned to his butler, a man who had served in his home for nearly twenty years, always with a calm visage and smooth voice, never moved to visible excitement. He had never thought to look twice at the man, but now...His face was too flat, not a spark of emotion anywhere in the lines of his age.
"No." Had Franz hoped that he meant to send a response? No matter, Georg decided, loosening his grip around the crumpled telegram. He would not stay here any longer, not when even his household servants were suspect. Not a matter of would—he could not continue to make his home here. Austria had been only a ruined memory for some time, but he had not been ordered to dismantle what remained of his homeland's dignity. Not until now.
"Very well, sir." Franz still had the poise that had lifted from among other men when he had needed to find such a servant. A character utterly incompatible with a more flippant personality, such as Maria's—
"Don't think on her." He trained his ears on Franz's steps, loud on the marble tile of the hall. Listen for one step after another, and don't think of anything else. How long would they have to get away? The worry that rose suddenly in his gut pushed aside even Maria.
Just a few hours to make the preparations, and then they would be off. But where? He pressed a hand to his face, a warm palm against a cool cheek. Not to the north, certainly—Germany was precisely what he intended to flee from! South? No, even Switzerland would only be a matter of time with Mussolini in power in Italy. Pressed between Nazi Germany—he had to begin to think of Austria as such; it would make the departure less painful—and Fascist Italy, Switzerland occupied a desperate and unfortunate geography, even with its history of neutrality. Perhaps they were safe to pass through Switzerland, but not to remain there.
But then, where else could they go? No nation in Europe was safe...
"Then Europe is not safe," he said to himself. It was that simple. Where else was...America? Perhaps at one point, but could they make it there yet? Better to remember that they simply needed to be gone from Austria. What followed after that could be decided then. Georg opened his other hand and the crumbled paper of the telegram dropped to his desk. This was what had to happen, and it was no use thinking of what might have been. To go that far, though, they truly would leave her behind forever.
God, why not one more day? Time enough to truly prepare, to take the children through Salzburg a final time, to see their beloved Fräulein Maria again—just as much as he needed to see her himself. If they might leave tomorrow...but they needed even that short time, enough to allow for space to grow between themselves and the Nazis.
Some months earlier, if this had come upon them, he would have begged Maria to come with them, plied her with whatever she asked. Anything to keep her with them, but she was locked away in the convent, a prisoner to the vows she had taken.
"Not that," he said, turning away from the light. "It is her choice to be there." As it is yours to oppose these invaders. The both of them had decisions on their hearts they might come to regret. But hers was not his to make.
What was he doing? He slapped the sides of his face lightly; he was wasting time that he would come to regret! With just himself, he had a nearly impossible task—readying seven children to suddenly leave their home forever! This was not the time for—
And not that word! Georg measured his breathing, just thinking of each rush of air passing through his nostrils, the same air he pressed out between his lips. Do not put it on her, he thought. Don't fool yourself into thinking of anything closer.
He had to do what he had to now, not want what was not his. Taking a step, first unsteady but then sure and strong, Georg reentered the hall. For the moment, he needed to find Liesl. Without her, all was undoubtedly lost. Friedrich as well. With his two eldest children, the task was manageable.
Miserable, Georg glanced around the hall, his eyes scraping the railing again, following the banister of the stairs to the landing that led to the outside steps, and up again along its mirror image. A year before, he knew his certain reaction to what was among his happiest memories: his children, singing. There's a sad sort of clanging from the clock in the hall, and the bells in the steeple too. And up in the nursery an absurd little bird...It would have been anger, but not now. Never now. Lord, which did he treasure best, their voices in his ears or her eyes gazing into his? She haunted this place. Maria—their Maria. God, she had become theirs for a matter of months, and now they would be separated by distances his children could not fathom, an ocean he loved. It would be a bitter love, now.
But they could not stay. With what was obviously coming, a war between Germany and any that Hitler designated an enemy of the Reich, he would not have allowed his children to remain for much longer in any case. Himself, he belonged to Austria, to what was left of her, and he would have waited out the war, hoping and praying for that day that he could dispatch the telegram to wherever he had sent them, announcing their return. Now, though, to remain was to serve as demanded or find himself forced to do so. Refuse, and he had a bullet already in his skull.
He didn't know, didn't even know how to begin to decide. Don't think, he told himself, taking the first of the steps onto the landing, the echoes of cuckoos haunting his path and the feel of a ghostly hand quivering in his again, more than imagined. It seemed as real as it had that night, the night he had known nothing was possible between himself and Elsa... No, he had to tell himself again, climbing the steps to the children's rooms. Just find Liesl.