Mother
By Djinn (aka Madd Mythe Maven)

ACK ACK PLEASEDON'TKILLMEPLEASEDON'TKILLME!!

* * *

My mother.

The woman who spawned me, from whose womb I was ripped before I ever took my first breath. The woman who fed me, who clutched me to her breast so that I might suckle from her like a helpless pup at the tit of it's bitch mother. The woman made perfect by memory, of whom I am nothing but a cheap facsimile; my hair, hers. My eyes, hers. My skin, hers. My voice, hers.

Une-san is not my mother.

She introduces herself as my mother, though she didn't always. For the longest time, she was my guardian and I was her charge. Then finally, when I was twelve - six years after I came under her care - she said to the headmistress of my boarding school, "Have you been having trouble with my daughter?" And ever since, I've never been anything else.

It's not as if it were made official. There are no forms, no documents, no paper trail to connect me to this woman. But god help anyone who tries to take me away from her.

It was obvious, at first, that she saw me as an extension of my father. One last bit of Treize Kushrenada she could hold onto, possess. But as I grew it waned. I'm nothing like my father was; I never met the man, but I know that much. My mother Leila, I remember her speaking of him as soft-eyes idealist. Une talks of him as a passionate dreamer. The pilots - yes, I have met them; Duo and Wufei, at least - speak of him as a complete enigma; someone whose motives are veiled. But they all agree on one thing - he loved humanity.

He didn't love me.

I didn't have a 'dad'. I had a father, everyone has a father, but he was not 'dad', not 'daddy', not anything. If he was alive, and I met him, I don't know what I'd say. Would I call him father, or Treize? Would I curse him, or be indifferent? Would I tell him how mother pined for him, or how we had to live alone?

I'm not kidding anyone. I know what I'd say.

"I do not know you."

I wonder if that would have hurt him.

Une loves him, even now. She think I don't know, she thinks I am naïve enough to right it off as loyalty to a commander, plain devotion. But devoted soldiers do not cry at the scent of their commander's favorite flower. Loyal officers do not spend hours polishing a sword that is never used, and already flawless. They do not murmur their commander's name in their sleep.

She wonders why I sleep on her floor some nights. I tell her it's because of nightmares.

I just don't mention that it's her nightmares that I'm worried about, not my own.

In her sleep, she says his name. Sometimes it's soft, a caressing whisper. More often, it's a scream. She thrashes beneath her sheets, tearing at them like grasping hands. It is then that I crawl into her bed and stroke her unbound hair until she quiets into dreamless slumber.

Would you like to know my secret?

I love her.

Did you know that the Greeks had three different words for 'love'? Agape is a perfectly altruistic love, like the love of god. It asks nothing in return. Philia is familial love, the kind of love you feel for brother or sister.

And Eros . . .

Eros, mythologically, was the son of Aphrodite, and the Greek basis for the Roman Cupid. He would strike one unawares with magical arrows, so powerful even gods could not counter their pull. Eros is heartfelt, helpless, but somewhat selfish love. It is not like Agape; it does as for something in return. Eros longs to possess, to own. It is as much lust as love.

Eros is what I feel for Une-san.

I can't speak of it, this horrible, incestuous feeling I have for this woman who is not my mother. Because to everyone but myself, she is my mother. I seem the only one able to admit that she is not blood. Not to my mother, not to my father, and therefore, not to me. She loved my father, but that doesn't make her my mother.

Incest.

Such a dirty, dirty word, with such a wordless appeal.

She is slightly more than thirteen years older than me. I think there is some sort of irony in that number. I'm 22 now - she'll soon be turning 36. It not that large of a difference, if you think about it, but she is still distant. She looks the same to me as she ever has, though others say that her hair is going grey so early, and life has put lines around her lips and eyes. But to me, she is beautiful. She will always beauiful.

My mother.

No, my companion, my benefactor, Une-san.

Not my mother.

"Une-san." I say. Hazel eyes look up at me. "I've brought you some coffee."

A smile on those thin lips, and she puts down the pen in her hand, pushing aside papers. For me. "Thank you, dear. Are you in for the night shift?"

"It's already morning, Une-san. I've been here for hours." I don't call her mother. I can't. I won't.

I wonder if that bothers her.

"Is it?" She looks over at the clock; it read 2:47. "My goodness! I have a meeting with the defense secretary at 5:30!" She begins gathering her things. "I must go get some sleep . . ."

"Une-san."

Hazel eyes on me.

"Let me talk to the defense secretary. I know all the projects, and I don't go off duty until eight in the morning anyway." I rest my hand over hers, my skin seers from the contact. "You just go home and sleep."

She looks uncertain for a moment, as if she is not sure that she should entrust me with such important affairs of our office. But she was younger than I when she became the head of our little defensive branch, the Preventers. She was already the commander when I was just the six-year-old figurehead of a revolution, manipulated by my own uncle. She knows that age is nothing but a number.

"Thank you, Mari." She says with a smile so sweet it is a physical experience - something I can wrap my mouth around until it melts against my tongue like candy. "The files are in Sally's office. She'll tell you what you need to know."

I nod, reluctantly releasing her hand from mine. She is not mine to touch. She is not mine to claim. I am her daughter.

But she is not my mother.

Not my mother.