A/N: I'm not really sure what this, but it was just something within me that I needed to get out, and I suppose that Georg was my window.
Heavily inspired by "Tonight I can write the saddest lines" by Pablo Neruda.

I can write the saddest lines

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

Anyone who knows me intimately enough knows that I can be a furious brooder, even when a situation does not necessarily call for it. I don't know when the habit began, my youth was too occupied, my time in the navy too frantic, and my time with my late wife so…so wonderous. And yet, even before she passed away, I found myself with this infuriating habit. Well, Agathe thought of it as such – but in an endearing sort of way. I, on the other hand, saw – and still see – it as an intrinsic part of me that I doubt anyone will ever be able to eradicate. But sometimes I quite like it. It is often cathartic in its manner, helps me to clam myself, or to process anything that I feel deserves the attention. Other times, not so much.

On this particular occasion, my brooding has become a vile poison in my bloodstream, and instead of soothing me with its hours upon hours of free silence and opportunities to let my heart beat, it has taken all of the most painful and frightening parts of my psyche and brought them spluttering to the surface. And I find myself drowning in them. I thought for a while that I had banished the dreadful habit, brooding to the point where my chest constricts and breathing is far too big a task, and yet, here I find myself, several whiskies into the night and an ache that I doubt even the kindest soul could soothe. No, I know that's a lie, for there is one soul that I know could coax me out of this pit of despair…and yet she is the very reason I'm in it in the first place. Maria…

Oh, how foolish I am to pine for someone who is under my care, to be wanting things when I have no right wanting…and yet, there is just something inside me that has been yearning for her, pulling me towards her even before she escaped out my door. It has been…unsettling to say the least. And I have not understood it, not one bit of it. She is the governess, that is all, appointed to wrangle my children whilst I move ahead in my plan of finding them a new mother – the thing I'm sure they need most. But, now, I'm starting to think that perhaps there was someone else they needed more. Me. And do you know who helped me to realise that? Fraulein Maria. It was always her, always had been, and would have continued to be had she not left…what on earth drove her away? I almost don't want to think…

I am not one for self-hatred, at least not often, and yet, my seventh whiskey of the night is convincing me that I was the final push for her, the guiding hand that led her out of the villa and back into the stone walls of the abbey. Broken as she may be, she has no idea the shell of the man I am now. I shouldn't be. I have no right to be when she is the apparent cause. But who am I to fight it? I have learnt all too well that one cannot simply shut out feelings, nor can we shut out loved ones. I could write verse upon verse about what she has done to me, how she has saved me, opened my eyes to what I was throwing into the shadows and brought music back into my heart…oh, she has done so much without realising it. And all at once, with a simple letter left in the foyer, she has brought it all crashing down. It's almost funny how the very woman who brought me back to life holds enough power to reduce me back to dust…there's irony in there somewhere, I'm sure.

I put down the tumbler of fiery liquid with a crash and hunch over my desk, wincing as a metaphorical pain shoots straight through my chest. It's a torture to comprehend it all, that she is no longer here…that she left us…left me. It would be on nights just like this one I would catch her sneaking out into the grounds during the warmer weather, and against my better judgement, I would watch her. I'm not sure why, there was just something about her that captivated me. She was a delight for the eyes, so pure and so graceful, it was like watching the most innocent part of nature spring to life and flourish with heavenly gentility. And, on these same nights, I would forget myself and my mind would wander, and I would wonder, what would it be like to hold her in my arms on nights just like these…to be the one to hold her protectively, to bury my nose into her cropped locks and to know that she was mine…
Every time I would will myself to abandon such inappropriate fantasies, yet they followed me wherever I went. And whenever I saw the governess, oh, how they would roar back to life.

Perhaps it's worse that I can pinpoint exactly when all of this began, her very first night here when she had become the victim of my childrens' latest prank and sat square on a pinecone. The children had stifled their giggles, and Maria had excused herself rather well; but I – when no one was looking – found myself smiling. It seems so insignificant now, especially after all that has happened, but that night was the first night I had smiled in such a long time. If some asked, I could almost guarantee that it was the first time I'd smiled – truly smiled – since I lost Agathe. And it had shocked me. And that was when it all began to fall into place. I didn't realise it at the time, of course, but now, on my eight drink of the night and a summers worth of reflections behind me, the realisation is finally coming into the light. That night was the night I started to fall in love with her…

Improper doesn't even begin to describe all of this. I, a man twice her age, her employer, a father of seven, and as good as engaged have fallen in love with the governess. My first instinct is anger and self-discipline, and I tell myself that I ought to be keelhauled for my behaviour, but as soon as those thoughts rise, others that are much more soothing begin to sing over them.
Like the angelic voice of the governess in question, they draw me in, sail me above the horizons that hold my problems and guide me towards something much more hopeful; they remind me that one cannot help whom you fall in love with, that such beautifully abstract things are so beyond our control that it's almost terrifying. But if one can find the strength to fly with the winds of such feelings, then nothing else will ever compare to it. During my dark years I had convinced myself that my luck had run dry, that I'd had my time and that I simply needed to settle for something pleasant…I never thought that I'd be lucky enough to feel this way again. And yet here I am.

But the light dies as I remember that I am very much alone, for the one that my heart yearns for, the one that causes the stars to sing has ran from me and barricaded herself into a place I likely cannot enter. She has truly left me. And now, I am truly broken. A few tears escapes my eyes, but I'm not quite sure what the cause is; whether they are the simple tears of a man with a broken heart, or perhaps it has come from self-loathing; for in this state I am sure that I am to blame for Maria's escape. Did I frighten her…our dance outside the ballroom perhaps? Even I found myself fighting trembles as she backed away from me…it must have scared her half to death. I am sure now that I damaged the person I now hold so dear.

Some may argue that it does not matter that I could not keep her, for she has never truly been mine – not in any way – but without her, the night shatters around me; this night, so like the ones when I would admire her beauty, has now become a place of blackness; somewhere I was so sure that I would never return to…but now I'm not sure if I have a choice. I can feel as my heart wills me to search for her, feel how my heart itself will search, and yet the pain comes from knowing exactly where she is: somewhere I can never be, in a life that has no room for me.

No, she has chosen her life, one without me, one where I can never hold her in my arms like I always dreamed. It is the life she is certain that she was destined to live, and who am I to keep her from that? And so, with one final thought of her infinite eyes, I painfully resign myself to let her go and to let her fly. She wishes to pursue the place she is destined to go, and I shall let her. For even though I may no longer exist in her world, I'm so glad that she existed in mine. For her, I shall move on.

But love is so short and forgetting is so long*…

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

* - "But love is so short and forgetting is so long" - A direct quote from "Tonight I can write the saddest lines" (Pablo Neruda)