I can't quite say where this came from… next one up will finally be the reunion with Francis (I guess.)

The world they walked through was wider than any Mary had ever seen, and there was no path through it. Staring at her feet she saw only blue, and stars, pieces of white and brownish light around her. The one shaped like Notre-Dame wasn't the only familiar one. There was a gloomy figure reminding her of the tower, and another, more to the left (as far as she could say that), that almost looked like… "Linlithgow Palace."
"What?" Bash, a few paces ahead, turned around.
Mary swallowed. "This is where I was born." The queen of Scotland. Sweat gathered in the palms of her hands. Here, everything had begun. Her country, her destiny… her mother, strong and unyielding, hard sometimes – but she would never have lost her crown the way Mary had. Betrayed by her own people.
"I see." But when she turned to him, Mary noticed Bash wasn't looking into the distance but at her face. Then he reached out his hand. "It's over, Mary. I know you don't want to hear it but it's over, and whatever happens to Scotland or England or… France, for that matter, lies no longer in your hands. It can't bother you anymore."

"That's an easy thing to say if you have never ruled."
Mary gasped and quickly dropped the hand she'd just extended to Bash. "Mo… your majesty."
"Hello, my dear." With a smile softer than Mary remembered ever to have seen on her mother, Marie de Guise appeared in front of them and gently touched her shoulder. "I'm sorry for what happened to you. As a queen and as a mother both."
Mary bit her lips. "I failed you. I failed Scotland, I failed everyone. I'm sorry."
"You did your best." The older queen looked down as if in shame. "I should have asked nothing more."
Next to her, Mary felt Bash move, obviously irritated by her mother's words. They might sound harsh to him, but she had expected nothing more. She had been born a queen, untouchable by law. She had died a prisoner in England, abandoned by her own people. A shame unheard of in her family, if not in Scotland.
"You didn't ask anything impossible, it would seem." Her voice wavered a little.
Marie de Guise frowned. "But it turned out to be impossible." The moment of softness was gone. "Don't misunderstand me, Mary. I am not disappointed by you, not anymore. You made mistakes, unforgivable ones for a queen, but I saw you fighting to get things right until the very end. With your death, you became the queen I wanted you to be. But I am worried about Scotland. What will happen now? How will our country survive?"
Mary shrugged. "I don't know. Is it in our power to decide that?"

"No. You can't. And it really is about time for your mother to accept that." A voice as sharp as a knife, and as familiar as her own. The brittleness Mary was feeling inside since her mother had appeared increased. Relieved, angry and happy at the same time (where there no pure feelings anymore?) she turned around. "Catherine."
"Hello, dear. You did well down there." Catherine's smile, too, was softer than it had been in a long time. Her face however showed no trace of that softness as she looked at Marie de Guise. "I may have made many mistakes, unforgivable ones as you call them, but I never sinned against my children like you did. Against your only child." She shook her head at the other woman's unimpressed air and stepped closer, forcing her to look up, carrying on a fight that must have started long ago. Seeking for help, Mary searched for Bash, but he was gone, disappeared into thin air. Mary's heart beat faster. Had he abandoned her after all? She couldn't blame him if he had.
"Don't worry", Catherine reassured her, still staring at Marie de Guise. "You'll see him again. Bash would never abandon anyone in need, especially not his family. Even I had to accept that. He'll wait for you at the door."
"Door?" Mary whispered, "what door?"
But Catherine had already turned her attention back to the other queen – her rival, obviously, though Mary didn't quite understand what they were rivaling about. Or why she had to witness it.

"You say I was more fortunate than you? Fine. I don't have to justify my fortune. I made sacrifices enough, I was sacrificed often enough. But that will never matter to you. So accept only that: I was a better mother than you were."
Marie de Guise straightened up, wearing the cold mask Mary had seen on her so often as a child. Far more often than any other one. "You say that to me, over and over again. Do you dare say it to my daughter, too?" When Catherine remained silent, Marie de Guise laughed. "Let's ask Mary herself, shall we? Come on, dear."
Mary's feet shuffled toward the royal beck without her deciding to do so. "You're… you're not seriously arguing about me?" She meant to keep her voice light, but ridiculously as this situation clearly was, it seemed serious indeed. Very serious.
Catherine kept her eyes on Marie de Guise, staring her down. After a moment, the Scottish queen looked away and at her daughter. "Well, yes we are. In the end, it seems we've been nothing more than mothers all along. We can fight about the wealth of our countries and the victories our beauty won us, but in the end…what mattered was your happiness, Mary."
Mary frowned. "What mattered was Scotland, you just said so yourself, you made me…"
"I made you become one with your country because I hoped it would keep your heart safe", her mother cut her off fervently. "I wanted Scotland to make you happy just as you were making her happy."
"Then why did you send me away?" She had hoped she was done crying, but here the tears were again, close to her eyes. Mary clenched her hands to fists. The last thing she wanted was telling Catherine de Medici she had been a better mother than her true one – and surely her arguing would be a sign of triumph for Catherine – but she couldn't accept this, either: an apology. A justification, and a bad one. When actually she had never asked her mother to justify anything.

Marie de Guise looked down and shook her head. "I thought it would save your life. You were always so devoted, Mary, and I thought… I thought that would be enough for you to stay true to your destiny. I have to admit, I didn't expect you… and this boy, Francis-"
"He was a king", Catherine hissed, but Mary noticed how pale she had become. "Don't you call him boy, you have no idea of-"
"Anyway." Marie de Guise waved the other's words aside. "I didn't expect you to fall in love, Mary. To love and be loved back – I never experienced that. I didn't understand how your husband's actions and his death could devastate you so much. I didn't expect your love for him to run deeper than your love for your country."
"Neither had I." Mary's voice was flat and drained of emotion. "But Scotland was I and I was Scotland and after Francis' death I didn't give up and die as I wanted to, so many times." She shook her head. "And you were loved, though I now realize you didn't know it. Or you didn't want to know it." She waited for her mother to look into her eyes. "I loved you, mother. I loved the queen you were, and the mother you sometimes tried to be. So did James."
"I didn't mean it that…"
"Yes, you did!" The anger she felt rising inside had built up for almost forty years. Mary took a deep breath. "I believe that you wanted to love us, but you never did. And you never loved Scotland, either, not the way James and I and all our countrymen love it, not the way Francis loved it!" His name hurt, cried out into the blue eternity. Catherine closed her eyes. "He loved it because of you", she murmured.
Mary bit her lips. "And I started to love France because of him. And because of you", she added after a moment, forcing herself to think back to better days when she turned to her mother-in-law. "Because of Bash and Henry and the moments when you all kept the peace. Do you remember my first Christmas in France? This was why I fell in love with your country. And sometimes I thought it would become like that again, but it never did once I returned. You ruined that for me, Catherine. You ruined my childhood memory, you almost ruined my marriage, you terrorized your children…"

Catherine cringed beneath her words, and Mary found herself enjoying it. Elizabeth had forbidden her to talk, she had chained her and locked her away from the world, but up here, there was nobody to hold her back. Nobody and nothing to stay the desperation and bitterness she had lived with every day. Every day since Francis had died.
"You're really standing here arguing about who the better mother was? Look around! Your children are dead. You couldn't save any of them, and they all died well before your age. You were great queens, both of you. Let that be enough. As mothers, you've failed more than I have failed as queen."

Suddenly, the light beneath her darkened. Mary looked down and gasped. She was standing on stone now, solid and black, and Linlithgow Palace was gone, buried underneath it. "No!"
She looked up again. "What happened? What have I-" There was nobody left to listen. The queens, after hearing their sentence, had vanished as quickly as they had come.
"No…" Mary knelt down. There had been more things left to say. Good things. Things these women had done for her, things that would have made Mary forgive both of them if she had only been patient enough to think about them. Now, however, it was too late.

"Are you done?" Bash appeared next to her. "That was so overdue. I've been here for only a couple of weeks and those two… they make you think you're in hell already. Or again", he added with a sad smile.
Mary didn't even try to get up. "How can you talk about them like that? I mean, how can you live with Catherine here? She killed your mother."
"And I haven't forgotten about that, Mary." The amused tone was all but gone. "But you can't call that "live", can you? I don't have a say in who's around me. As I never had, actually." Bash smiled again, but it was obviously forced. "You just have to get through this. We're here for you. I still believe, as soon as you've made your peace with everyone, we'll get through that damned door."
"The door again…" Mary murmured, then she jerked. "Why me? Why would I keep you all from heaven? How can I be guilty of this, too?" It was becoming too much. She had let hundreds, thousands of men suffer. She had killed men. But could it be that even after death she was found guilty of robbing her loved ones of happiness?

"Oh, Mary." The laughter carried through the space long before the figure danced over the newly created ground, soundless. Mary stood up and automatically wiped her hands, but there was no dust, no ash, no sign of shame. "Because I bear it all on my soul now."
"No." Bash sighed. "Because in this place, values like shame and honor, or good and evil don't… quite work like they did on earth. It's like… would you like to explain it to her? I've got two queens to catch."
Lola beamed. "Go fetch them, I don't envy you." As she watched Bash leave, Mary couldn't take her eyes off her. Lola had been the first to die because of Mary. She had not wanted it, of course not… but it had happened. No historian would ever write it down, but England had not attacked Scotland because it was greedy for land. England had attacked Scotland because Elizabeth was greedy for Lola's loyalty. As Catherine and Marie de Guise had claimed to be only mothers, for a few months Mary and Elizabeth had become only women bereft of their best friends.

"Mary?" Lola gently took her friend's hands and squeezed them. "You used to talk more."
When Mary opened her mouth, she laughed and cried at the same time. "Lola, I'm so sorry." And then she sobbed, again, and Lola held her in her arms like she had done often before.