Fic © Ele Characters © WEP Written for FlashFiction Challenge 2007

I live in fear that one day my biggest secret is out, and you will forsake me. One day it will be out, like it happened with your father. I mean Edward, the man who raised you like his own. When you were four, you fell off from a horse and injured yourself badly. You needed blood transfer and I was already ill with my disease. Only your father was the closest blood relative who could save your life. I confessed everything to Edward and, instead of killing me on the spot, he took the first flight to Yuma and, instead of killing him on the spot, he brought Charles to the Highlands.

I will never forget your father’s, I mean Edward, eyes when I told him. Ever since that day, they’re hollow and brighten up only when he sees you, now so rarely in our lands. He will always remain your father to you because he is the only father you ever knew. April’s mother and I were good friends and knew each other since college. She asked me to be the bridesmaid of honour in her wedding, and when we were walking down the aisle to the altar, his, mine eyes met, and I realized that the man I would crave for now forever belongs to her. Soon after that I was engaged with your father Edward because it was a good agreement for our clans. In my way, I did love Edward. He was always good and kind to me, even though he knew my heart wasn’t free, and so wasn’t his.

April was only two when her mother died, and I was pregnant with you. That’s my greatest heartache: I will never know if she died knowing the truth. Charles told me once that she begged him to remarry and find a mother for their daughter. He told me he couldn’t do it because the only woman he would see in this place was already another man’s wife, even though expecting his child. I didn’t pretend it was Edward’s child, lies disfigured our lives enough, but Charles refused to interfere with our family. I told him he was a coward and a heartless bastard who was giving up on his own flesh and blood, and he told me it was for everybody’s sake. So, he remained a grieving widower and I remained married to a clan lord. I should have insisted on some further actions, but I didn’t. I’ve always lacked a backbone and I destined little April to grow up not knowing what motherly love was. That’s my second greatest heartache that’s eating me more than my illness is.

When you went to Yuma and became a Star Sheriff, I was very afraid that the two of you spend so much time together and might fall in love, and what can happen next. I begged Edward to find you a bride in the same way our parents found marriage partners for us; he only laughed. He said that if it were destined for you two to fall in love with each other, no human could prevent it from happening. Why Edward raised you like his own, even though he saw another man’s reflection in your face, I cannot explain. I feel that he wanted to demonstrate that his being noble means that you are not responsible for the actions of your parents and you should not suffer, and the last thing in the world he’d do was to cause you any pain. He gave me an example of what it really is to be a true aristocrat for I was none. Then I begged Charles to separate you in all possible ways, even if that meant different outposts on different parts of the galaxy. At first he agreed, but then he changed his mind. He said he wanted to be close to both of his children. Now, after all these years!

I try to be a good mother but my every short day is filled with fear that also shortens it. When very time you enter the room and say ‘Mother, you know what?’, my heart leaps. I dread the day your next question is why, how could this happen. This is the question I don’t have the answer to. It’s this divine sparkle, that moment of passion when the surrounding world stops existing, but when we come back to it, we have to live with consequences.

You had two fathers you could take after, and you grew up into a fine young man every father can be proud of but I was the worst kind of a mother.

Forgive me, Saber.

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