Teen Spirit.

『 forty-six : IDES OF MARCH. 』

            "I'm sorry," June says to Iris.

            "For?"

           "Everything," Her granddaughter explains. "I know it wasn't your choice to see the things you do. I know that more than anyone ... I'm sorry for blaming you for telling me all those years ago. I'm glad you did."

         "I'm not," Iris shakes her head.

         "Why?"

        "Do you want to know, truly?"

       "I suppose."

       Iris sighed, sitting down next to her. She folded her hands together and that's when June realized, if she somehow managed to live, Iris is what she'd look like when she was her age. Daphne was too much of a Uley, with her sharp face and rough bone structure, to have the traditional beauty that Iris' blood has. The one that's all high cheekbones, vivid blue eyes, pouty lips, and a button nose.

        "I wasn't in my right mind then," Iris confesses tersely. "Before I told you of your fate, your mother and I used to be as close and you are to her. Daphne told me everything ... there wasn't a decision she made without asking me. That's all I ever wanted. For my children to come to me. Joshua, your uncle Joshua has always been a stubborn oaf like his father, but Daphne was my own summer girl."

June smiles faintly, "I remember you two like that."

Iris nods, "After you turned nine ... I kept having those horrible nightmares of your death. The diamonds and you holding your heart in your hands ..." She sniffled. "It was driving me to insanity, keeping that in, I kept worrying about your mother, you don't understand how scared I was for my daughter. Losing a child isn't a thing a parent should ever live through. So when you visited me that day I couldn't stop myself from saying it — Daphne never yelled at me like she did that day."

June remembered that, too. "I'd never seen her so angry with someone," She mumbles. "I didn't think she could get that angry."

"There's a lot of your mother that's changed since she was a girl," Iris says. "She was still only about twenty-five, being told her only child was going to be killed. I knew her pain. I'd seen it before ..."

That makes June perk, "Before?"

"It's no good bringing up the past."

"Depends on what past," June says.

Iris looks at her, "Your mother had a life before you. She wasn't always the doting mother she is now," Her grandma smiles. "Every boy on the Reservation wanted her — but she only had eyes for one."

June knows this story, "My dad."

Iris chuckles, "In the end."

"You mean ... mom loved someone else?"

"Charlie has always been her true love," Iris corrects. "They has been onto each other since they were children ... but when Charlie met Renée, Daphne was heartbroken. Your father didn't see her as anything more than some pretty fifteen year old girl. But Quil Ateara IV. Now he's someone who did."