A/N: Well, here goes my first attempt at writing a multi-chaptered SOM fic. I was inspired by Jane Austen's Persuasion (which seemed only natural as it also features a sea captain!) and I'm hoping to write more (and longer) chapters soon.

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

– T. S. Eliot, "East Coker"

Chapter One: Aigen, 1921

It was a homecoming Georg never wanted to remember. The war had thrown his world completely out of joint; he had gone into it a newly wedded husband and came out a decorated captain but with no country, vocation, or wife to speak of. The telegram calling him home had arrived too late. By the time he returned to Zell am See, Liesl and Friedrich had already been motherless for two hours. Losing the war had been nothing compared to never getting to say goodbye to Agathe.

That had been three years ago. Austria however – for that was what it was called now, no longer a sprawling Austro-Hungarian empire – was slowly moving on, no matter how much he resists. Agathe had made sure he and their children had wanted for nothing, but the feeling of emptiness nevertheless remains.

Desperate to get away from the sadness of Zell am See, Georg moves them all to Aigen, just outside of Salzburg, and the packing dust has barely settled when he throws himself into Liesl and Friedrich's education. But the schoolroom, of all things, defeats him. The pain and the absence of their mother is much too raw. During the teary drive to their boarding school, he promises that once he got back on his feet, they would all be together at Aigen again.

The sudden emptiness of the new house only compounds his sorrow. In his darkest and most despairing of moods, Georg allows himself to recall another love lost, one before Agathe, one even before the war. She was rich in everything but fortune, but that mattered little to him. Very little mattered then, except her love.

But the church had taken her away, persuaded her to spend her days in its sheltered confines when all he could offer her was an unpredictable life at sea. It had been a terrible blow and for a split second at their fraught last meeting, he was certain that it wasn't entirely Maria's decision to be a nun. She had railed at that, her pride – and his short temper – leaping to the fore. They parted bitterly, though he had looked back at the last minute, catching a final glimpse of her proud, gold head. She did not.

And now he is alone once again, save for the company of his friend Max who is having a new lease of life in Vienna. Max had been a hopeless sailor, but his ear for music seemed to be doing him wonders. Letter after letter comes filled with his finding new acts for the burgeoning music scene and although Georg can hardly make head or tail of them, he is grateful for the distraction.

'Why don't you come over to Vienna, Georg?' Max says over the telephone one evening. 'I could do with your advice.'

Georg resists the urge to scoff over the line. 'What advice? You're the musical one.'

'Come now, no modesty between friends. You were pretty good with a guitar, if I recall. Among other things.'

There is a heavy pause. 'That was a very long time ago, Max.'

'Or you can keep me company, at the very least,' continues his friend. 'Show business can get a little giddy – for want of a better word – and I fear your particular blend of stoicness is in short supply.'

'But the children –'

'Are at boarding school, poor dears.' Max sighs audibly. 'But I'm sure Franz and Frau Schmidt can hold the castle for a little while, in case anything should happen. Tell you what, I'll put you up at my flat. How's that for an enticement?'

'Hardly,' smiles Georg, despite himself. 'In that case, I'd rather put myself up in a hotel.'

He hears a triumphant shout down the line. 'I knew you'd come around!'