A/N: I've always thought Liesl had a special bond with her father. She would have known his paternal side best, given she was the oldest, and I thought she would have been the most sad about how much he changed as a result. At the same time, I also think after they make up, there are a few moments in the film where it's evident they have a strong relationship, and I like to imagine they both silently acknowledge it.

I'd place this fic at some point between when Maria and the Captain get engaged but before their wedding.

I knew parents didn't have favorites, or they weren't supposed to, at least.

But I was the oldest. His first-born. And I really did think...maybe I wouldn't go so far as to say I was his favorite, but I knew...there was a special relationship that we had between the two of us, Father and I.

It had been like that for a long time, before Mother had died. Friedrich and Louisa were born so soon after one another; Father would look after me while Mother and Frau Schmidt took care of the babies. He read to me, played his guitar to me, and walked around the grounds with me. He always told me how smart and beautiful I was. And every night after dinner when it was time for me to go to bed, Father sat me on his knee and sang a song. When I grew a little older, I realized he took the time to recognize our ritual even when he probably could have made an excuse to not—such as when we had guests and parties. He didn't think it embarrassing to show affection to his daughter in front of his neighbors or even his old commanding officers in the Navy; he did it because he wanted to. He was a very proud man, after all, and I was the apple of his eye. I think he enjoyed showing me off.

I never resented him for it; in fact, I was more than happy to oblige. There was no better reward than to see Father happy with me. When someone would comment on how good a girl I was to him, Father would thank the person politely but give me a secret smile, or pat my head. I idolized him. He could do no wrong in my eyes. When we went out, he was always kind and courteous to everyone, from the fancy friends he and Mother invited over for parties to the the poor young milkmaids who we passed on the road when we went to town. He was a good husband to Mother. I never saw them argue and they laughed so often. They were so in love with each other that I thought they were like a couple out of a fairytale. Father was always making Mother smile and blush with how well he treated her, it made made burn with intense jealously. I wanted someone to love me that way when I was older.

Physically, he seemed very bit the perfect person too. Father was tall, and no one could miss his height given his excellent posture; I never saw him slouch. He had a practice of holding his hands behind him, which I assumed was an old habit from his military days. And he was always impeccably dressed, whether in crisp gray suits in the daytime or fine white tie ensembles for formal occasions.

As the family grew, I harbored a secret vanity for the connection Father and I had. Of course he doted on all of us, especially the little ones. And all the children truly enjoyed their own bond with him. But it seemed every one or two years, there was a new baby who was born. They came so quickly that his attention could never stay on one for too long before another came up wanting him in some manner. I thought back to my own very early childhood. I loved my siblings, but I felt very lucky for the two years when I had been the only von Trapp child.

So when Mother died, I was quite unprepared for what was to come.

I tried to not imagine how things might be different after Mother was gone and had been buried in the family crypt. The house was very quiet, and we all felt like we had to speak in whispers. It was unsettling to live in a house in which someone had died, even more so because Father was so heartbroken. All our lives, he had been a model of confidence and vitality, and suddenly he was a shell of a man. We were only children, didn't know what to do around him. I thought, It will all be back to normal eventually. Father will need some time, but that's all right. I will help him.

And I tried to.

He saw us very little during that time, only in the mornings and evenings. We thought he was in his study, where none of us had ever been allowed, even in happier times. But one day I caught him wandering the grounds, and wanting to join him, I ran toward him. Without turning around, he said, "Go inside, Liesl." When I hesitated, he repeated himself, only in a colder tone, one I had never heard him use before. It cut me to the quick, and I retreated quickly away.

Though I had been startled, I didn't lose my composure that first time. I told myself to be empathetic and patient with Father. I consulted with Frau Schmidt, and she advised me that grief manifested itself in different ways in people, and this was how it was with Father. Nevertheless, "Go inside, Liesl" became his constant refrain. Again and again, every time I wanted to be with him. And every time I sought him out, I was turned away with the same restrained steeliness. Then, a few weeks after that terrible day when Mother took her last breath, I saw Father standing at the end of the terrace and went toward him.

Without wasting any time, he snapped at me, "Liesl, must I repeat myself every time?"

I ran back to my bedroom and cried. He might as well have whipped me for how badly his words stung. Not that Father had never been cross with me, but he had always been very measured in his anger—and for reasons that I deserved. Even that time when he walked into Louisa's room to find her playing with the lit candles after I'd left her alone to get her a snack, he'd never acted as though my mere presence was a nuisance, not until then. From that day on, I mourned not only the loss of my mother, but the loss of my father as well, or the father he had been. Once so caring, now as frosty as the Alpine glaciers he loved so much. He couldn't even bear holding poor baby Gretl, and told the nurse to not disturb him if she cried.

Each day, week, month, and year, I prayed Father would come to us again and speak to us with the gentleness I remembered. We were all growing so fast, and he wasn't seeing any of it. Soon Gretl stopped being a baby, and I stopped being a girl. I longed for Father to notice us…to notice me. Hadn't he once told anyone he could how proud he was of me, how I was growing up so nicely? Now he hardly seemed to acknowledge me besides when he was blowing that infernal whistle, much less the fact that I was no longer a child—he always included me in the line up when a new governess came.

At some point, Father met the Baroness von Schraeder. I think they originally crossed paths in 1935, when Father traveled to Vienna for some business, but it wasn't until a year later that I deduced he was courting her, as it were. He showed us a picture of her once. She was blonde and icy-looking, but very beautiful and elegant, like our mother had been. The younger children gasped and cooed over how lovely the baroness was, but I was the only one who seemed to understand the significance—if Father was carrying around a portrait of this woman, she must have been special to him.

This I did resent, for I began to notice Father seemed in a better mood every time he came back from Vienna. Not quite like when Mother had been alive, but he was less prone to shortness for a few days after he returned. I could see shades of an earlier Father in those few days; I could fit him into the father I had known as a girl if I concentrated. I should have been happy for him, but a dark corner of my heart simmered with bitterness. Perhaps this was unfair, for I had never met the baroness at that point, but I begrudged that she seemed to have replaced all of us children in his eyes as the primary beneficiary of his love. And I was angry at Father, for letting it all happen. And then I was angry at myself and my brothers and sisters, for not doing enough to make Father happy. What did the Baroness do to make him smile again, and why didn't his own children know how to do the same?

I took my frustrations out on the long-suffering governesses that Father kept hiring. The younger children had started it. In the beginning, I thought I was too old to take part in such juvenile nonsense and avoided directly conspiring with my siblings on the matter. But as the years went by and Father showed no sign of reversal, I finally joined in with my siblings' tormenting of the women sent to instill some learning and discipline in us. By then I could feel only a little sympathy for them, as I had nursed my identity as a malcontent long enough. Father didn't take note of us when we were quiet and docile, so I allowed myself to be selfish and wicked.

If it wasn't for Maria, I don't know if we would have ever had Father back again. I didn't want her here initially, but I admitted to myself a reluctant respect for her after witnessing her earliest interactions with Father: part naïveté, part defiance. I had never seen any of our previous governesses protest the whistle and certainly none of them had ever blown hers towards Father.

I was not surprised that the children took to Maria very quickly, but that Father did take me aback a bit. When I examined Father's (albeit brief) record of women, he seemed interested in those who were graceful and proper and demure, as Mother had been. Maria was outspoken and blithe and spirited. But then maybe that was why he had chosen her. I knew Father would always love Mother, and maybe that was why he couldn't be with anyone who was too similar to her ever again—like the baroness. Maria was a world apart; it didn't feel like she was replacing Mother. Father could love both of them equally, and that was something his children could accept as well.

In any case, Maria brought our father to us again and I loved her for it. I was well aware of the disconnect of my new relationship with my father, however. I had been a girl, and now I close to being fully grown—but there was next to nothing to speak of in terms of Father and I in between those two stages of my life. Suddenly, Father was treating me like a young woman. He invited me to talk with him and Maria in the drawing room after dinners—him sipping a glass of wine or brandy while Maria and I took coffee or tea. He asked me about my opinion on a variety of things, from current events to which flowers I wanted to request of the gardener for the spring. He discovered I was of a quick mind, quick enough to match his own, and I had great fun trading barbs with him in a way only father's nearly-adult daughter could. It was everything I had wanted from him for so long. And yet now that I had it…I wished I could be a bit of a child again. Or maybe just one more time. Just to know what it would have been like with us when I was thirteen or fourteen.

I wondered if Father felt some of the same shyness around me as I did with him in the initial rediscovery of his paternal instinct. I had to test the boundaries with him for a couple weeks, wondering if it would be awkward for him to express fondness or leniency after years of suppressing any inclination of emotional bonding or allowance. I was too old to be read to now, but would he compliment my new dress? He did. Would he remark on the new guitar piece I was learning if I played while he was in the room? He did. Would he let me take the children to town for an afternoon? He did.

Would he let me invite Rolfe over for dinner? Well…I didn't dare ask this, even.

Besides this, though, Father seemed back to his old self with every other matter. I was as happy as I had been before Mother's passing, when I had thought my life was perfect.

One summer evening, I passed the opened back door. It had been propped open since it was so hot, but now it was near twilight and cooling off. I stepped outside and saw Father's lone self at the far end of the terrace. Force of habit rooted me so I remained close to the house, and I studied him from a distance. I realized with some bittersweetness that he still cut that impressive figure that I had admired so ardently and unfailingly in my girlhood—standing erect, head up, hands clasped behind him. With all the years Father and I had lost between us, I had not thought of him in that fashion for a very long time.

I wanted to go to him but could not compel my feet to move. That incident long ago had been the moment the remnants of a dream had finally collapsed around me. A singular moment had ended the innocent, familial idyll I had concocted, and idyll that had surrendered at last to the grim reality that had been closing around me since the day Mother died. It was a rupture that had left an indelible scar on my memories, and even though I forgave Father for it, even though he had reverted to his old self once again, I knew that short exchange and what it did would never leave me.

So I could not make myself approach him. For several minutes, we stood still outside, me watching Father and Father watching God knew what over the lake. It was so quiet; the only sounds were of the breeze teasing the grass and the leaves in the trees. The water rippled with the wind, lovely, glossy undulations that rolled across the lake surface, on and on. There was something I loved about the water. It was serene and pliant, circulating around forever. If a storm hit in the night, the water would be long settled again come daybreak.

I looked back at Father. Father wasn't like the water, I thought, able to accept whatever obstacles life put in his way and keep going with the current. It was the Navy blood in him, ironically enough, I supposed; he had to put up a fight. He was stubborn and firm—but at the same time determined, willful, and protective. Father was earth: The cornerstone of our family. The only constant in my life, whether he had really been there or not. I took a few steps toward him.

Halfway across the terrace, I stopped. I had tread softly, my shoes just barely making a sound as they skimmed over the flagstones. But he had heard me anyway, and he turned his head only halfway, not meeting my gaze. I held my breath, waiting.

"Are you coming to join me?" Father asked, speaking to the trees on the shoreline.

"If you would like me to," I said.

Father continued to look aside. A bird sang its evening song somewhere in the trees, the wind blew again. Without a word, Father turned to face me. His blue eyes met mine, blue like his, and he nodded once. It was all I needed before I broke into a run and threw my arms around him, tears threatening to spill over. Father held me, like he always had. I knew he was remembering that day too.

fin