War of Elysium

Chapter Seventeen: Sing me a memory.

         "To my dear Reese."  She scrolled in a hand ever so elegant. It glided across the parchment, ornate golden pen in hand. She wrote of apologies and failures; love and hopes, but it all felt hollow. Her eyes rose from the paper for an instant and found the dusty old looking glass, and the woman within.

A woman... The thought felt an insult. A sarcastic title bestowed on the obviously unworthy. Her eyes traced the cracked and wrinkled monster that glared at her. The short strands of abyssal black that clung to it's scalp; the crows feet, viciously etched into her bloodshot eyes. She didn't feel so old as the monster in the mirror, but she looked much older. A life of murder and war tracked its way across her nose and down her cheek, her makeup was fading. She was alone, the child was out playing with friends and so she wiped away her concealing mask to reveal a vicious old scar splitting her face nearly in two.

She crumpled the paper and threw it away with all the rest. It rolled from the mound of other failures that toppled over the bin and across the dusty old shack floor. 

"To my..." She began but quickly faltered. A heavy grunt rang from her lips as her head found the splintering old desktop. 

"To my..." She mumbled. "Boy? Son?" It felt wrong. How could she still claim him? She hadn't seen him in years and he hadn't seen her in even longer... Apart from that night.
He was so damaged. How could he be so broken already? His little war hadn't even been three months in the making but his eyes already faded and cracked.

She put pen to paper.

You didn't see me, but I was there. I gave Serah a rose on her wedding day. I showed the little warrior how to hold her rifle... You saw me at the tower, but I didn't matter there; or maybe you were too hurt to see me.

She scrapped the sheet again and pulled yet another.

To...
I failed. You deserved better than me. I hope you can forgive me.

Akemi.

A tear welled, but didn't greet the day. She rose and paced the small shack. She remembered her home in Hypatia. Reese and his little gang coming up with mastermind heists in her living room while she drank a beer and smiled. 
Of course, their plans were much more than the fancies of children. Often times they truly succeeded; other times it came down to her to bail them out of trouble.

Why had she left? She loved the boy and poured all she was into him. She loved her home and so did Yua. Would it have been so terrible to let her grow up around her brother? 
Maybe if she had just retired and raised Yua in Hypatia, things would be better?

She looked to her hand, to the scarred knuckles and missing chunks of finger. She remembered giving Reese his own scars, and not just the marks on his flesh. She wasn't a mother when she met him. She was a soldier. She raised him as a soldier. Discipline and order; skill and precision. She taught him to sneak, to spy... To kill.
She should have taught him how to cook, how to talk with girls and other shit other mothers do. She hated herself and everything she was, but she made him the same. Did she hate him? Is that why she left? Did she hate him so much because he was so alike her? 

Pen met paper.

You were perfect, and I destroyed you.
I made you into me. I made you into a killer.
I won't do the same to her. I swear it.

It was wrong again. Why were words so hard? Why couldn't she just write an apology?

I'm sorry.
Mum

There! That was it... Right? It's what he would want, isn't it?
The truth was harder than that, and she knew it.