A/N: For Becky, overall, because I stole her letter. Also because she inspires me whenever we talk (which, as of late, has been depressingly infrequently.) Thank you, and sorry for stealing things! She can be found here: www (dot) fanfiction (dot) net (forward slash) (one of those squiggily things) BeckyScarlettCullen - check out her page, tis awesome!

Will Scarlett left us forever.

Oh, he didn't die: I sometimes think it would have been better if he had, just to save me the emotions of this awful pattern: day after day, it repeats. I wake with hope, walk with desperation, cry myself to sleep. It's mindless, repetitive, painful.

I can only imagine how Djaq feels…

He didn't even say goodbye.

Well, I suppose he did, in a way. A few days after his sudden departure, Djaq received (although she was not present at the time: she was with her family, having taken her daughter- Wills' daughter- with her) the following letter:

This is cowardly of me, is it not? I am sorry.
Djaq--
I love you. And I'm sorry. Please, please do not follow me. I can't bear it if you have to be hurt, because of me. If anyone else is hurt.
Djaq, I'm leaving.
I'm no good for you. Haven't I proved that, a million times? Everywhere I go, someone is hurt. I cannot let the next person be you. I promised I would stay as long as was good for you. I don't want you to come with me-- it will not be safe, and if you were hurt, I'd never forgive myself.
I would like to ask one favour, if that is not too much. Don't do anything reckless or stupid. Do you understand what I'm saying?
And I'll make you a promise in return-- I promise that this will be the last time you ever hear from me. I won't come back. I won't put you through anything like this again. You can go on with your life without any interference from me. It will be as though I never existed.
It has always been leading to this, Djaq. I know your family don't approve of me, and at times, I wonder if my family approves of you.
I'm going on a ship. I don't know which ship, and I don't know where to. But I will be away, out of your life, where I can do you know more harm.
I told you about the cottage, in the forest. Well-- I finished it. It is yours.
I wish I could see you one last time, but that would be impossible. For both of us.
Look after my heart-- I have left it with you. Forgive me.
Will. x

Djaq gave it to me a few days after she arrived home, just hours after I was brave enough to give it to her. Every day, I would look at it, crying my silent tears until they would no longer come. Each day, I searched the text with my desperate eyes, with a growing sense of loss- searching for any hidden meanings, any hint that he might come home soon. Each day, my hopes grew wilder and wilder, and my sanity long gone…

After a month of this, I finally realized that he was never coming back. So I carefully sealed the envelope one last time and dropped it into the river that ran through the woods. With it, I threw my heart.

And as I watched it float away, I vowed that I would never, ever forget.

TWELVE MONTHS LATER

As I walked through Nottingham on market day, hopelessly searching for food an unsupported and jobless mother could afford, I looked around. Every moment, I saw him, and my heart leaped: just the sweep of a cape around a corner, his smile, his beautiful eyes... and then he was gone, and I faced the loneliness and discomfort of growing insanity once more.

Rather than focus on the slow deteriation of my dilapidated mind, I busied myself with my tasks for the day:

One: find food. This in itself was proving impossible: the little money that I had stolen from my violent Master when had I fled from him, carrying his unborn child, was nearly gone, with no promise of return in the foreseeable future. I had, it seemed, no choice but to resort to begging.

Two: Feed Juliet. This task filled me with dread: I did not like acting as a replacement mother for Jules, but Djaq left me no choice. She would leave as soon as I arrived at her new home, and not return until late at night. I did not know where she went to, but I knew why: she was searching.

Task three: try to talk some sense into Djaq. This task also horrified me, but for a different reason: every day, I tried to talk Djaq into getting over him (although, of course, I knew never to mention his name: just one of many unspoken rules between us now), although I knew it was useless. It was the look in her dead eyes that haunted me as she sat before me, silent: no hint of the original passion and defiance that I had once envied and admired lingered in her once beautiful eyes any longer- instead, they were lifeless and empty. No hope shone in Djaq's eyes now. I had to hope for both of us.

Without realizing it, I had come to the edge of the town and ventured, blindly absorbed in my depressed thoughts, to the Den. Djaq would not stay there now- it reminded her too much of him. I had avoided it, too, for so long; too long, it now seemed. As I stood before the empty reminder of my best friend in the world and the place that I had once, for a short stretch of time, called home, I let the memories I had oppressed for over a year wash over me.

Laughing with Will and Djaq as we taught my son, also named Will, how to walk; listening to many a tale of happiness and idiocy that I had missed when I went away to support my family as a maid in Scarborough; celebrating good deeds with food and wine, laughter and new hope…

As I walked away from the hidden sanctuary that Will had built, I felt the first scrap of hope I had felt in months beginning to enter my torn soul.

There was always hope.

Djaq

My hope had long since vanished.

It had, I supposed remained in the worst way possible: every day, when Anna came to care for Juliet, I left without a word to flee into the woods. I once knew them as our woods, but that tern was banished now along with all of my happiest memories. I would never admit it- too much of a man, still, after all these years –but I was searching.

I would stay away for hours at a time, not wanting to return even when my stomach growled. Part of the reason that I stayed away was Anna, and she knew it.

If asked up front if I was able to take after my Jules, my only child, I would have instantly replied 'yes'- and yet I could not do it. I could not even touch her. She looked so much like…

I knew that this was cruel, that she needed her mother, but I could not go near her now. Not now…

Which was how Anna had become my replacement.

"Djaq!" she had cried out in horror, the first time she had seen me since he left. I stared blankly at her terrified face, carefully emptying my eyes of all emotion.

"What?" I asked, cool as snow.

"She hasn't eaten in at least a day! Haven't you been feeding her? And look! She's so weak with hunger, poor mite, she can hardly reach out-"

"You take her, then!" I'd screamed, running out of my shack so that she would not see the tears running down my sunken cheeks.

The last thing I recalled was Juliet howling for her mother.

Anna was there to silence her. Not me.

I was so grateful, of course, but resentment and jealousy ached inside of me. Anna had her own child- did she want mine, too?

That night, I hurried home to see my Juliet, desperate to tell her I was sorry, to hold her. I paused at the door and closed my eyes, calming myself…

"Mama!"

Juliet?

My eyes flew open and I searched the ground before me- sure that I would see my child there, holding out her open arms to me. My little angel…

The air before me was empty.

Confused and fearing the worst (isn't that a mother's job?), I hurried inside.

And if my heart had been broken before, that was nothing compared to how I felt then. For sat on the muddy floor of my threadbare shack was Anna. On her knee was my Juliet.

Juliet had called Anna 'mama'.

A/N: Um… I'm sorry, Amy, if that upset you… And Becky, of course… Sorry!

R&R?