SWEET LITTLE LIES // BELLAMY BLAKE // THE 1OO

TWENTY-THREE

✿ TWENTY-THREE ✿

"Waste my time

Lost, and now my love is cursed"

___

As soon as she saw her face, she felt like her breath had been taken away. She hadn't exactly known what to expect, only what to fear. She had feared brown lifeless eyes with huge dark circles around it, wrinkles of worry and a sickly pale skin. She had feared that her mother wouldn't be her mother anymore, but some sort of döppelganger with fewer emotions. 

But her mother wasn't either of those things. In front of her sat a woman who seemed to be radiating confidence. Her eyes held curiosity, but love and sparkles of life as well. Her face hadn't changed either, except for the natural ageing. She seemed to glow. 

"Mom," Katherine breathed out, feeling her eyes burn. She wanted to reach through the screen, to feel her mother's soft skin and one of her firm hugs. The tips of her fingers bumped into the glass screen and with a little jolt, she drew her hand back. "I love you, mom."

"I love you too, baby," her mother said, a smile covering her face. She too wanted to reach through the screen and she sounded just as out of breath. "You grew up!"

"Four years is a long time," Katherine chuckled softly, a tear escaping from the corner of her eye. She brushed it away quickly, afraid that more tears would follow soon. It was only now, as she looked into her mother's loving eyes, she realised how much she had missed the woman. For all those years she had managed to shut herself off. She hadn't allowed any feelings of regret, guilt or homesickness to get to her, and now all those emotions forced themselves upon her. 

"How are you holding up, Katherine?" her mother asked concerned. Her eyes were slightly narrowed, like she was trying to note something. Her face was framed with her usual brown curls, making Katherine feel a wave of nostalgia. She had spent hours trying to learn how to braid with her mother's hair. 

"I missed you so much. I'm so happy to see you," Katherine said, a loud sob erupting from the depths of her chest. She wanted to hold her mother forever, or at least for a second, but she would have to wait a long time until that could happen. She wanted to ask her mother a hundred and one things, but it was their first conversation in four years and she didn't think it should be a bitter one.  "Earth is so beautiful, mom, you will love it. When will you come down?"

"Well, I'm still the chief of nurses, so I'm assigned to the first ship that goes down," her mother said. She smiled reassuringly and Katherine knew that if her mother would have been here she would have grabbed her hand and squeezed it just a little too hard for it to be comfortable. 

Katherine was glad about so many parts in that sentence. She was happy to hear that her mother still had her function, the one thing she loved most in her life aside from her daughter, and that she would come down as soon as possible. Another tear escaped, along with a loud sob. She couldn't hold it any longer. "What happened... you know... after that day?"

Her mother seemed to be taken aback, just for a second, before she quickly recovered. Perhaps she had expected that the conversation wouldn't be bitter or dark as well, perhaps she just hadn't expected the question to come so immediate. "They accused me of complicity, saying I used you as a pion to do my dirty work."

Katherine bit her lip, an overwhelming feeling of guilt taking hold of her. At that moment, she had thought about her mother only. She had felt guilty then as well, because it had taken so long for her to connect the dots. But she hadn't stopped for one moment to think further than a day, to contemplate the consequences of her action. She could have floated her mother.