A/N I wrote this quite spontaneously after watching last night's episode. Liz is truly one of my favorite characters this season and I love the potential of her backstory. This one is a little different from other fanfics but why not take any risks, right? Please let me know what you think, I appreciate any kind of feedback. Thank you and enjoy!

- Set a few episodes before 5x10 -

This is Me, a Queen

Dear Douglas,

I remember you playing in a sandbox. You were three years old. Your hair was still light and soft and it flowed in the wind like dandelion seeds. You were so beautiful. I am sure you still are.

Although your mother and I had bought you a shovel, you preferred to build with your hands. You didn't even want to build a castle — you wanted to build a big wall you could sit in. A wall that would protect you, and us, and other people, you said. You were such a good kid.

Just when you finished your masterpiece and got ready to sit down right in the middle of it, you were surprised by a small, black spider that crawled out from underneath the sand. I can still hear your high-pitched scream of shock, but my most vivid memory is the disappointment in your face when you realized that you had destroyed part of your sand wall while trying to escape from the small monster that had invaded your work. You were such a good kid.

I must sound disgusting — the way I talk about the few memories we had together, this sense of nostalgia, when in reality, I don't know you. And after losing these last thirty years, in a way I won't ever know you completely. But there is nothing in the world I would like more than to meet you — I am not asking for a new beginning but for a continuation: to return to your life.

You may ask yourself why I am not telling you this in person as it is certainly a matter which should be talked about face-to-face. But there is something else I need to tell you. Something that has determined my life in a more profound way than most people can understand; something that has given me the best and the worst times of my life. It has taught me what discrimination feels like, what the face of true hate looks like. But it has also taught me what support, friendship, acceptance and, ultimately, happiness feels like.

That is the reason why telling you this makes me vulnerable, almost naked, and, frankly, it is somewhat easier being able to at least have some control over the words with which to tell you by writing them down.

I am not your father. I am your parent. I always will be your parent, although I have not always fulfilled my parental function. But even though you may consider me your father, or your male parent, I am not that. I never have been. I pretended to be, but I wasn't.

I am a woman. A strong, beautiful woman. Unconventional? Maybe. But those are the best women in my experience. I have always been a woman but society raised me to think I was first a boy, then a man. I wasn't. I never was. There was always this quiet voice of darkness, of sadness inside of me. At first I couldn't tell what it wanted or where it came from. But then it got louder, then it turned into screams that I was unable to ignore. And those screams showed me what I already knew: I was not what they had told me. My body did not represent who I was. It was merely a failure of nature, unable to show the essence of my mind and soul.

Of course I could not tell anyone. When even people loving the same sex were being killed in different parts of the world, how could a "man dressing up as a woman" be taken seriously? My whole life, even when everyone saw me as male, I had lived with the fear of being ridiculed, being different, not fitting in. And that was because I did not fit in. Because I didn't even have a sense of who I was — because I was not living as who I was.

There is nothing more painful than hiding your true self from the ones you love. You feel invisible. You lie by omission. You get a little sadder, a little more depressed every day. And slowly, the darkness takes over and you become it.

It was on a beautiful fall day that I first came to Hotel Cortez, where I still work until this day. I found a new light, unexpected support. And even though this hope was immediately met with doubt, ridicule and hatred from the outside, I never went back to letting society tell me who I had to be or that I could not be who I really was: A woman. I was a woman. I am a woman.

And I am a queen.

Douglas, I deeply hope for your understanding. Your support would mean the world to me, and more importantly, it would mean that we would be able to reconnect and be a part of each other's lives — and there is nothing I want more. I cannot force you to accept me, though — nobody can be forced to see what they don't or to understand what they can't.

But when I think back to that raw soul of that beautiful, three-year-old boy, something tells me that this boy who wanted nothing more than to protect the ones he loved, this innocent soul, could not feel the kind of hate it takes to disregard anyone's identity or their existence, for that matter.

I cannot wait to meet you in person. I cannot wait to see who that little boy has become, although I know that, whatever it is, I will be proud.

I am the bartender at the Hotel Cortez in Los Angeles. Ask for Liz Taylor.

— L

Liz dropped the pen and heard it fall on the cold counter. She then folded the thick paper carefully, slid into a white envelope and placed her hand on it softly before leaving her spot behind the bar. Suddenly, she spotted Iris, who had just got back from upstairs.

Including it in her way to the tables, Liz passed the trash can and dropped the letter in it nonchalantly.

"You got some mail?" Iris asked in a raspy voice, more interested in chatting than in the actual answer.

"No," Liz started to collect some empty glasses.

"No, just Chanel informing me about their new perfume collection. As if I didn't have it already."

She chuckled as she carried the glasses in her hands, trying to hide the insecurity she felt while lying, and made her way back to behind the bar.

THE END.