Discalimer: I do not own any of it.

I saw your mother, Moira said.

Where? I said, I felt jolted, thrown off. I realized I'd been thinking of her as dead.

Not in person, it was in that film they showed us, about the Colonies. There was a close-up, it was her all right. She was wrapped up in one of those grey things but I know it was her.

Thank God, I said.

Why, thank God? said Moira.

I thought she was dead.

She might as well be, said Moira. You should wish it for her.

The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood.

"We drive matricides from their homes ... Since a mother's blood leads us, we will pursue our case against this man and we will hunt him down ..."

The ERINYES. Aeschylus, Eumenides 210, 230

Mother

He remembered.

Long after Christine had gotten up and made her silent way to the bed chamber, he sat by the organ and remembered.

No. He tried not to remember. He tried as hard as he could to keep them back, he tried so damn hard…

How have I been doing this so effortlessly?

For so many years, for so long, he'd kept it at bay, kept it safe. Locked within him, his secret, his secret that no one else knew. But now…now she knew. And he had said it. He'd admitted it. He had admitted what he'd done. I killed my mother. He'd told her. He'd told her. And the walls, the walls he had made to protect himself, the walls he had made to defend himself from what he'd done, to keep himself alive after what he had done, to keep what was left of his sanity, polished and made opaque, effortlessly over the years, the walls, the walls-

The walls came tumbling down.

Her smile was like the wide crescent moon, turned on its side, only unlike the moon it was always there, not a few days in a month, but always, always. She smiled when she talked, she smiled when she prepared food, she smiled at all those around her. When she did her work she sang.

But her greatest beauty was not her smile, it was what appeared when she smiled, what it did to her cheeks, set high on her face like tiny rosy apples. He would often reach up, trying to pluck the fruit that appeared when she smiled, which was often. When he'd realised that they were not to be had, he'd licked her instead, hoping for a taste. That was make her laugh, from deep in her belly. Then she'd lean forward, and touch her nose to his, and then kiss him on one cheek, and then on the other, and finally on the mouth…

No! No!

He grabbed his head in his hands, bending over in his seat, trying desperately to think of something, anything but that, anything but those kisses.

Something swam in front of his eyes; a sketch for Don Juan he had drawn idly, in fancy. Of Aminta, in her corset and gossamer skirt, her shoulders outrageously bare.

It seized him again, doubling him over.

She would rise early every morning in her corset and chemise, and wash herself thoroughly and dress herself, before coming to wake him. What she didn't know was that he was awake already, watching her from his view on the bed. He loved to see her arms and shoulders bared, pale and freckled, curving like a milk-maid's pail-carrier made flesh from white wood, and her lovely dark hair spilling down over the skin above her bodice to hang in perfect curls upon her plump breasts. He would curl into himself and watch her splash water on herself, cleansing herself, the sunlight catching every feature and outlining it in gold, revealed in all her wondrous beauty. The light shone around her and through her, and he wondered what it would be like to feel something like that – to feel something both solid and elusive. He longed to be held during that time, as he was at other times; feel the slickness of her skin as she poured the cool wetness upon it, and feel it flow onto him, carrying her own magical, mysterious water scent that only emerged when she became wet; and let the sunlight shine upon them and turn them both to glass. But he could not; he would not. This was a time for her alone, a time that excluded him; a time when she washed herself in the morning, and was once again a maiden, though set apart from other men.

Make it stop. Please, make it stop…

He didn't know who he was appealing to any longer. God wouldn't hear him; God had never heard him. Never, in all his years, never. But-

He had often been puzzled by why they went to church each Sunday. They sat alone together at the back of the church, in an otherwise empty pew, and everybody ignored them, except sometimes to point or sneer, but never to whisper. Not there. They did it outside, but not there. No one ever went near them with the collection plate. They just sat there, or stood up or knelt down when the other people did so. He was often bored.

"It is our duty to God," she'd said, when he'd asked her why. "We show our love to Him, by going to His house each Sunday. And He shows our love to us, by forgiving us for what we have done wrong."

"But if He loves us, wouldn't He forgive us for not going to His house?" he had asked.

"Perhaps, but we also go to His house to give Him our thanks. And I have a special thing to thank Him for."

"What?"

"You," she'd said, putting her arms around him. "God gave you to me, Erik, and as long as I live I shall be forever grateful to Him for that."

He had never questioned going to church again after that.

He slumped against the organ keys, which chimed a fervent discord. With an effort, he raised a hand that seemed no longer his, and tried to trace out a melody, some melody, that would make it go away, but the music was out of control, and it seemed to slide from his fingers like a snake, a snake in firelight…

He'd been seven when she'd taken him to see the gypsies dance.

When the camp had come near the town the locals had sniffed, like cats turning up their noses.

"Vagrants."

"Filth."

"Dirty scum."

All the children had been admonished from going anywhere near where the wandering people had made their camp, with threats of the most terrible punishment should the order be disobeyed. But the threats had only set all the young ones on fire with curiosity, the desperate desire to know more.

He had been called such things by them, and worse, since he had been young. He had been told he was a monster, a demon child, Satan-spawn. Women had spat at him, men's hands had itched to cuff him, the only reason the children of the village had not hit him was because they feared him as much as they hated him.

It intrigued him to know that they had any hate left for anyone else.

When he made his way home, he had told his mother about the camp, and at once had been caught up in her glee. She quite forgot the washing, and thought only of the new excitement. In their infectious enthusiasm they'd danced around the kitchen together, hand in hand, nearly turning over the wash-tub on the table.

"We'll go tonight," she cried. "We'll go and see them dance, my love. If you do not see them dance, I shall blame myself forever!"

Only the fact that it had been daylight had prevented her from setting off at once.

When it was dark, they'd left the house in the way that they always did when they were going truffle hunting and didn't want anyone to know, because they wanted to get the best ones first, and they'd made their way to where the fires of the camp were. He had been afraid, and had clutched her arm, especially when the demand of who they were came out of the dark. He had hidden his face in his mother's skirts, fearful of the curiosity that would turn into horror and anger.

But then the lights were no longer glaring but welcoming: the gypsies welcomed them into the fold, like long lost relatives calling them home. There was fire, and stew, and hard bread that cracked under teeth, and talk. She had talked to them as if she had known them all her life, and from the way they called her 'Magdalene', something no one else did, they knew her as well. They'd fussed over him, calling him a fine young man, and made no comment about his mask or the face that lay beneath it. They gave them seats around the fire with them, and he felt as if his mind would overflow with the talk, the companionship. He'd hardly ever known anything like this, and he loved it.

And then music had started up, and someone had called "Come on, Magdalene, show us you can still dance as of old!" Then she had laughed, and jumped up from her seat into the glow of the fire, and began to dance. He had watched her, still sitting, his mouth open at the sight of his beautiful, his special mother moving in such a beautiful, sinuous way, unlike anything he had ever seen before, rolling her shoulders, snapping her hips like a whip, gyrating with the rhythm of the music, her eyes transfixed with wild, dark delight, trilling away to the music and to herself as well, as she so often did now. It was terrible and beautiful, and he loved it.

One old woman sitting next to him had sighed, and clucked her tongue. "So sad," she had whispered. "So young." When he had asked her timidly what she meant, she had only smiled at him, and whispered to him to look after her well, that she would need him soon.

She had needed him…and he had failed her. Again and again, he had failed her. Again, and again, and again, forever and ever.

The boy who had shouted "Mad bitch!", and thrown the stone at her as they were coming back from the bakery, probably had not meant to actually hit her. Most likely he just wanted to look good in front of his comrades, tormenting the resident outsider, the woman who consorted with outcasts, who gibbered to herself, who had given birth to a devil's offspring.

He probably hadn't meant the stone to hit her.

But it had.

As long as he lived, and even after that, he would remember the sound the stone had made as it smacked into her forehead – like the softness of fingers tapped smartly against a table. He remembered the way she'd squeaked the second after the impact, whether in shock or pain he didn't know. He remembered how she'd swayed, and then suddenly fell forward onto her knees, her eyes wide and dark in their sockets.

He dropped the basket. He remembered the rolls falling onto the dusty path.

He remembered the sight and, what was more, the smell of his mother's blood, as it began to seep from the gash on her forehead, delving into her hair line.

He remembered the screams; not from her but from him as he shrieked, his arms around his mother, holding her up, that he'd kill the boy, kill him, kill him, kill him…

Then Father Mansert had come, the only one in the village who was nice to them, and he'd yelled at the boy and shaken him, and then pushed him away as if he had dirtied himself even touching him. He'd helped him get her back to the house, without either of them saying a word to each other. The grown man had been the one who'd held her hands as, after cleaning her wound with alcohol, even though she moaned and flinched away even from his careful fingers, he'd carefully sewn up the gash in the flesh as she had done so many times for him when the village boys had overcome their fear in favor of their hatred, working his rage into making the stitches as small and neat and strong as possible. He remembered the priest standing over her bed as she'd slept feverishly, like a guardian angel, not even protesting as he'd slipped out of the house.

He remembered the smell of blood again, and the feel of it on his fingers; but this time it was that of the bastard boy who dared to hurt her, after he'd broken three of his teeth and his nose. He remembered standing over the weeping, sniveling, weak animal, and thinking:

I could not protect her.

I could not protect her.

I could not protect her.

He dug his fingers into his ears, his head, gasping and moaning at that thought; his mother's blood on his hands, because he could not defend her as he should have, would have done.

You could not save her.

He remembered that night.

She'd just dished out the stew into the bowls; he was raising his spoon to his lips when there was a loud knocking at the front door. Whenever that happened at this time of night, it was never good.

He'd looked at her, his pulse already hammering.

"Stay quiet," she said softly, her smile gone, her face quiet and calm, but her lip slightly trembling. "They're not here for you."

She'd gone over to the door, and pulled it open. And the men were standing there, all of them, and they had said she would have to come with them.

"I won't," she said simply, and even in his exquisite terror he had never felt more proud of her, and proud that he was her son.

Then one of them grabbed her by the arm, and she had panicked as she did so often now, and screamed, batting ineffectually at him. But he'd only pulled her towards him, and she screamed all the more.

That made him scream. Nothing else in the world could make him scream, not even his own pain; but the pain of his mother made him shriek in torment.

He'd leapt over the table, knocking aside the bowls and the pot and threw himself at the men, biting, kicking, punching; but they were grown men and he was only a boy, even if he could beat an adolescent youth six years his senior to a bloody pulp. One of them kicked him away, his ears ringing with his mother's screams, his mouth filling with blood from where he'd bitten his tongue.

He'd grabbed her skirts as they dragged her away, hanging grimly on, hoping to hold her to him by simply not letting go; he was dragged across the stone of the floor painfully but still he hung on. He yelled for her, and she for him, but neither of them could reach out to each other because he didn't dare let go, and they were holding her arms.

Then one of them had cruelly stamped on his hands and crushed down on his fingers until he had to let go, and he was tumbling away, his mother's face disappearing like the moon down a well, still screaming his name, and he knew that he'd never see her again again; that no one would ever hold him or help him again; that she would be alone forever, because he had failed her.

I failed her.

He was on the floor now, the mantra beating through his head, like the pulse that he no longer had.

I failed her. I failed her, and I…

I killed her…

Opening the window was depressingly easy. He would have expected more, from such a 'high class' institute.

She lay on the bed, but not as she once had, not with her head under her arm so that a useful pillow was provided for any little shape who slipped under the covers with her during the night. She curled into herself, like a mouse, a wounded, wretched animal.

She was asleep. Even when she slept, she whimpered.

He went down on one knee beside the bed. He looked into her sleeping, shivering face, and clenched his teeth to see the greyness that had infested it.

I'm so sorry…

Gently he blew on her face, to slowly wake her. It worked; her eyes gradually opened a fraction, then blinked at him. Still the same eyes. The eyes did not change.

He had expected her to squeak, or squeak, or flinch away from him, as she had done with the handlers who had ministered to her while he and his companions had watched from behind the door. Instead, she looked quietly up at him.

"Erik?" she managed.

"Yes."

There were sticky, shining trails down her cheeks. She had been weeping. But she was smiling now. There was no harvest, but she was smiling.

"My boy. My beautiful boy." She reached out, slowly, and touched his face. Her fingers felt like twigs, peeling in winter. "You're all grown now."

"Oh, Mama," and he broke down, like the little boy he had been. He rested his head on her shallow breast, and cried until he could cry no more. He hadn't wept since that night when she had been taken. How fitting that he should find it in him to weep now. She hissed through her teeth gently, as she had done to calm him when he was young.

"I looked for you for so long," he said, when he could manage to talk again. "They wouldn't tell me where you were, until a little while ago. As if it were some sort of reward. I didn't know where they'd taken you, and I looked for so long…"

"So many years lost." She stroked his unmasked cheek softly, perhaps still unable to believe he was here, was real. "So many years stolen. But look at you. My fine son. My fine boy."

"I won't forgive them for this. If I forget all else they've done, I will never forgive them for this."

"Don't say that." But she knew that he could not be persuaded. Heaven was gone. Hell was empty, and all the devils were inside his heart, and they raged for release.

"How are you?"

"…Tired. I'm so tired of it all. I cannot remember when I last slept. I longed to dream of you. But they stole my dreams along with the years." She closed her eyes, then opened them again. "But now my dreams have come true. I knew I would see you again." She smiled. "I knew we'd meet again, my son."

He buried his face in her hands, since her hair was no longer there, cut short and grey. He longed to cut the throat of the one who had done the deed with their own scissor blades. "Mama, I love you so."

"And I love you too."

There was silence in the room. Even the falling moonlight made not a sound.

"Mama, I have something for you."

"For me?"

"Yes. It will help you sleep at last." It was the last thing he wanted to do now, but then again, wasn't it what he had come to do?

Her eyes watched the glug of the dark liquid in the vial, and then looked at him. She knew what it contained, and what the raft would bring.

"It is a mortal sin," she whispered. He longed to say that God wouldn't care. He longed to say that if God cared, he would not have subjected her to this life in death. He longed to say that it was a mercy which God, if he existed at all, longed to deny them.

He said simply, "Then let your sin fall upon me instead."

Her mouth opened, her lips moved. "I will not let that happen. Give it to me. I have seen you again. That is enough. Now you can help me to let go." Her eyes, still the same, still the same lovely eyes brooked no disagreement.

And after all, wasn't it what he had come to do?

It was so easy, in the end. She needed barely any aid to lift the vial to her lips. Once, twice she swallowed, then sighed, as if satisfying a deep thirst, and looked at him again.

"How long?"

"A few minutes. You will feel no pain. It's just like going to sleep, as I told you."

He took the vial back, and then climbed carefully up onto the bed beside her and put his arms around her, to hold her in his embrace one last time, to feel her heart beat against him once more, and then never again. She pressed herself to him, breathing shallowly, and they lay together on the bed, his arms around her, her head on his shoulder, and looked up at the ceiling.

"Do you remember," she said, and now her voice was slower, slightly slurred, as if she were tipsy, "how we used to sing each other to sleep at night? I'd start, and you'd always finish?"

"I remember." He had promised himself he would not start crying again.

"I loved going to sleep with you in my arms. I felt as if nothing could hurt us; as if the world would crack beneath our feet and the skies would rend above us, and I would still hold you safe." She shifted slightly in his arms, so that her head was against his chest. "I love you so much, Erik," she whispered. "My boy. My gift from God. My life. My love."

Those were the last words she spoke. As he lay there and watched her drift into a sleep from which she never woke, he whispered lullabies that he remembered from his childhood, old songs, old tunes, serenading the one he loved more than anything else away from him, into whatever waited for her. He was determined that she would meet to music that was worthy of her.

Eventually he could not deny that the only beating he felt was that of his own heart. Carefully, he looked down at her face – oh, so gently, as if he might still wake her, might still call her back to her prison! – and saw that her eyes were closed, her face calm and quiet as it had been when she had sat outside on rainy summer days, her lips not smiling but relaxed in her last sleep, which to him was far better. Even though she did not smile, the harvest had returned to her cheeks.

Carefully, he withdrew his arms, and slipped off the bed. He straightened the sheets, drew the coverlet over her still warm body, checked that all was as it had been when he arrived, save for one thing, and left as silently as he had come. He allowed himself one last look over his shoulder, at the pitifully small shape in the shadows on the bed, just before he ascended from the window, locking it after him.

The empty vial clinked softly at his side; the vial which had measured out his mother's life and death.

He thought of those who had led them both to this, and of his own hand which had put the poison into hers, and he had to work hard to force down his hate.

He remembered the old Greek legends he had been taught; of the Furies, the avengers of family blood spilt, who would chase after and destroy the one who committed that most heinous of all sins; the shedding of the blood of the mother. He wished they would come for him, to make an end of him once and for all; but it was too late, he could not die a second time. He must remain existent for all eternity, with what he had done, and what he had failed to do.

He had failed her, and he had killed her, and now he must pay the price.

He thought his head and dead heart would split and burst and burn from it all; the rage, the grief, the guilt, all the memory of what he had done.

I loved her. I failed her. I killed her.

I killed my mother…

There was a soft noise that intruded into the red pain in his head. Something gentle passed across where he thought his brow might be; a silken touch of a hand. He looked up, everything swelling inside him forcing its way out through the corners of his eyes, to see an angel descending into his purgatory, an angel kneeling down beside him where, he realsied, he lay on his side, his hands clasped to his head, as if trying to shut out terrible sounds, the sounds of baying wolves, the shrieking of birds. She reached out to touch his shoulder.

Christine gulped, and tried to speak, but could not seem to find the words. She tried again, and this time they came.

"I watched my father die before me as well. My heart goes out to you."

Then, to his shock, she put her arms around him, pulling his head down onto her breast with one hand, cradling his shoulders with her other arm. She repeated her whisper: "My heart goes out to you."

He could do nothing but put his arms around her slender waist, hugging her to him, and hear her heart beat so close to him, so very close, yet so far; and soak her dress with tears, and feel her own tears reach through to his scalp.

Both the angels, one shocked and disillusioned, the other fallen and hounded to the limits of endurance, wept in each others arms, and did not let go of each other for a long time.

Enough.

I was practically weeping as I wrote some of this. And I'm the author, I know what's going to happen? What does that say, hmm?

I was trying desperately not to think of Star Wars, Episode Two here, I really wasn't! Please believe me! I can't think of anything else to say now. Oh, yes: The Furies were fairly prominent in Greek mythology, as a sort of divine version of the Gestapo – only they were usually justified in what they did. They were only called into action in the worst cases, i.e. the shedding of family blood. My, but they were spooky in Neil Gaiman's The Kindly Ones. Read the comic book, I beg you, The epitome in graphic novels!

Now, this will DEFINITELY be the last chapter for a while, I'm afraid. Nope, sorry, but I really have to do work! Be patient, though. I plan to have something extra special for the phic's birthday…

In the meantime, wish me luck!

And also, give me some reviews! Thanks!