Her Royal Highness

XXII

Harrys expression was unreadable when I finally finished speaking. It had taken longer than I expected, to tell him everything I had learned in the last hour. It was much easier to tell him than I expected. I had refused for the first while, any time he asked me to tell him what was wrong, I would shake my head, burying my face in his neck again. I had soaked his shirt, crying even harder when he brought it to my attention that I was, in fact, crying.

I never cried. I hadnt even known I was crying. And yet, I couldn't stop.

I cried as I told him everything. How I had gone to my mother, just as he said, and started the conversation about what I wanted in my future. How I told her I had researched schools, done the work, and knew what I wanted to study. I told him how she was reserved, almost like a parent indulging a child on a whim, but that she never truly considered my desire.

That I got upset, and somehow, some way, the topic had changed from my future, to my past. How I felt she was afraid that I would repeat her mistakes, and that she never let me reach beyond these walls for fear that I would fall. That I finally lost my composure, cried and demanded the truth, which as she had my whole life, she refused.

I told him of Ford, how he had come in thinking we were trying to kill each other, only to finally be the catalyst for the truth. That he had told me himself he was my father, forcing honesty from my mother. That she had hid the truth from us, until it was too late. Until I was old enough to be independent, and he could have no true claim. He had stolen my childhood from him, and a part of myself from me.

I shook my head harshly, my eyes to the tissue in my hands. It was crumple and damp, little tears from where I had twisted at it.

"I can never forgive her," I said certainly. "I mean, what kind of mother does that?" I hiccupped loudly, my chest hurting. "I never want to see her again."

I heard Harry sigh, his hands on my legs that were still across his lap.

"Never is a long time, Charlie," he said evenly.

My eyes rose to his, wide and incredulous.

He continued quickly. "Im not saying what she did was right. It wasn't. It was wrong on so many levels, and she can never give back what she stole from you. Or from Ford. But trust me when I say that making a decision in anger will only hurt yourself."

I glared at him, my heart stuttering.

"As if Im not hurt now?" I snapped.

"I know you are," he nodded. "And I know you want to hurt her just as badly. But as the anger fades, and I promise it will, I don't want you to find yourself years down the road wishing you hadnt made a decision when you were in pain."

"You don't understand..."

"I do," he interrupted. He sighed, his face tight, before he angled himself towards me. My legs moved with him, but he pulled me closer, keeping me against him at all times. "Remember when I told you I knew how to handle people like you better than you knew? That I wished I had had someone like me when I was like you?"

I could only nod in response.

His lips pulled to a tight line. "When I was about seventeen, I was you. I partied, drank, did drugs. But I was much worse than you, Charlie. I was in and out of the hospital for overdoses at least a couple times a year. My mum spent most of the money she had sending me to rehab after rehab. But I always came out and did the same shit. Over and over again. I blamed it all on my dad, you see. He was absent, just like yours. But unlike Ford, he chose to be. He skipped out after my parents divorced, and just...disappeared. He didn't give a shit about me or my sister. So, basically, I grew up without a dad. Just like you. And I was angry, because where you never knew a father, I remembered little bits of mine. I knew he had made the decision to leave me. Ford never chose that, baby. Ford didn't know."