direct continuation from last chapter.
Nathan didn't answer Ezra, after all, it was obvious it was going to be him explaining the situation to the others, they likely wouldn't believe Ezra, and hell Ezra would probably put embellishments in that didn't need telling, stuff about their Ma that didn't need telling. Oh, Ezra was a crafty sort, and he always had been, but the problem with him was that he was surprisingly honest in his craftiness. It would be guaranteed that he wouldn't tell a single word of a lie to the others and yet the others would still be left just as clueless as before.
He tuned out the normal comments Ezra made when they were alone and he was stuck patching his fool brother up again, comments against his skills, his teachers, the people who made bandages, or rubbing alchol. There was a whole list of things Ezra complained about, just to get a rise out of him. Instead his thoughts drifted back, back further than Ezra could remember and to the stories his father told him.
~*~
Obediah had been a slave on the Standish plantation for many years, he'd worked in the fields, like the other slaves, having no aspirations to work in the house. There were stories of how the men who worked in the house were forced to stand by and do nothing while the masters of the house took the slave girls to their beds. Obediah knew he would never be able to stand by like that, he would end up killing the white bastards who tried it.
He had always known about the young mistress of the house Maude, the masters only daughter, the only woman in the house after her mama's death. She was a kind, but wilful child, and could often be found going head to head with the foreman of the plantation, arguing over the punishments he set for the slaves, bringing those same slaves food and water.
Master Standish wasn't the worst master a slave could ever have, he never allowed them to go hungry, or be too badly whipped and punished, it was simply his taste for the young slave girls that earned him a cruel reputation. His foreman on the other hand was such a cruel man, but he lost more oft than he won because of Mistress Maude.
Obediah wasn't sure when he realised he was in love with the young mistress, nor could he tell when she had begun to love him. All he knew was that he would often find her seated near where he was working, reading or drawing, though she spent more time watching him that completing her other tasks. He began to say good-day to her when he did see her, and she responded in kind. All to soon it seemed they were engaged in some kind of secret courtship ritual, which eventually lead one day to a meeting of their bodies. Now Obediah was a religious man, and he knew that making consummating love was best done after the wedding, but he also knew that there was no way he and Maude could ever have a wedding.
They continued in this fevered, loving fashion for four months before Maude suddenly didn't show up anymore. Obediah worried that they'd been found out, but no one came to hang him, so he could do nothing by wait, and wondered. Many months later he was suddenly dragged from the fields and to the main house. Once there he saw Maude, his beautiful Maude, on her knee's, clutching a baby to her, begging her father to let her keep it. Her father ripped the child from her arms and threw it towards Odediah, who, when he caught it, realised that it was his. It was difficult to tell just who the mother was, impossible to tell she was white, but Obediah could see her clearly in the baby's nose.
He was sold that day to Master Jackson, the baby along with him.
~*~
Nathan always remembered the sadness in his father voice when he told him that story. At times Nathan, in his youth, had hated that he had been born looking so much more like his father, and hated his mother and her white family for turning him away and into a slave. But his father had always gently reminded him that if she'd had the choice, Maude would never have let him go.
~*~
It was four years later that they were reunited, suddenly sold from Master Jackson's plantation. They had been bought by Maude, who was heavily pregnant at the time under the pretense of a manservant to fetch and carry for her as she would be travelling, and a child to be company and a servant for her unborn child. It was the perfect pretense, and one that he and his father had lived under for many years.
Ezra was born two months later, the son of one of her fathers friends. She had been married off soon after they had been sold, she told them, and the man she had been sent to was not a gentleman by any means. She had been trying since her marriage to escape from the man, and only managed to when she fell pregnant, and the man had let his guard down, believing her incapable of leaving him in her present condition. She had taken her chance and run, stopping only long enough to raise the money she needed to buy the two of them.
Ezra's insecurity about Maude's feelings towards him were not entirely misplaced, and they were the only things Nathan would agree (if only silently) with Ezra about in regards to her. Maude had not reacted well to the new baby, in fact she tended to ignore him in favour of Nathan, the child of her love. Nathan had learned much later that Ezra was the product of rape, and so he invoked certain feelings in Maude against his birth father. However Obediah had taken to Ezra and cared for him until Maude could treat him with the same care she did Nathan. Eventually, by the time Ezra turned four, she could look at him without the anger and fear she felt towards the man who had raped her, but it was always obvious who was her favorite son, to them at least.
~*~
"Nathan." the tone in Ezra's voice let him know that he ad been trying to get his attention for a few minutes at least.
"Yes?" he asked.
"I should hope you don't go woolgathering when you are performing surgeries." he said with a smile. "What were you think about?"
Nathan shook his head and stood, resting a hand on Ezra's shoulder. "Ma, and how unfair the world is."
Ezra shrugged. "The world is always unfair." there was an edge to it and Nathan frowned, he knew Ezra still had unresolved issues with Maude, he always would.
"You know she loves you? Right? And you know Pa loved you to?" Nathan said, squeezing his shoulder and looking Ezra square in the eye.
Ezra shrugged again.
Nathan sighed and sat down on the cot beside his brother. "You've got to stop taking fool risks like that Ezra." he said. It needed to be talked about at some point, and it might as well be now. Maybe he could make it sink in this time. Ezra was stubbornly silent. "Ma would skin me alive if she thought I was letting you get yourself banged up like this regular."
"Only because I'm a reflection on her. And besides, she would do far worse to me if she found that I'd allowed her favorite child to be killed when I could have prevented it." Ezra pointed out, a little bitterly.
Nathan sighed again, but changed track, no convincing was going to change Ezra's mind on that, unless it was Maude herself that told him, but Nathan knew his mother's limitations, she would never tell Ezra how much he meant to her, not in any way that would mean something to him, in a way that he would understand and accept. Nathan often thought it maybe hurt her too much, hurt to care about something that was the reason she had been ripped from the man she loved and the child she had had with him.
"How about you give me a break then Ezra. I don't wanna see my little brother dead because of me, or dead full stop. Four Corners wouldn't be near as much fun if you weren't around. ok?"
The silence streached for a long while before Ezra nodded.
"Fine, I'll do my best." he promised, then he grimaced. "We still need to tell the others..." he looked at Nathan seriously. "Could we diffuse the situation you think?"
Nathan smiled. "I don't think they'll find anything wrong with Ma and Pa being together Ezra, it should be ok to tell them the truth"
Ezra nodded. "Allright then, but you will be informing our comrades of this situation."
Nathan ruffled his hair, a habit he had developed as a child to break Ezra out of his 'Maude sulks', Ezra made a noise halfway between a protest and a squawk and batted his hand away.
This was a crappy followup, even for me. But I wanted to try and explain just how I saw them being real brothers, and a little of the history of Maude and Obediah (at least I really hope that's his name!). Please forgive the spellings, I'm having a bad day with them. Please review of you enjoyed