Chapter 23 - 23 Meiri

** Attention Trigger warning**

--Content includes graphic references to abuse, and rape. Please skip chapter if these subjects are harmful to your mental state.

Meiri had finally gotten back on her feet. Luckily her little brother had been able to help her. Now she needed to go out on her own again. She would never get a letter of recommendation from Amistad. She didn't want him showing up on her work history. There could be nothing linking them together. At least not on paper. To Meiri, Amistad would always be her little brother. No matter how fast apart in status they were. This was the second time Meiri had asked for Amistad's help. There could not be a third.

Meiri cried as she left Heath in the Noblis family home. She left him the tusk. He knew what it meant. She might not ever see him again. She knew this was for the best. He was safer there. He was safer with Amistad. Amistad had taught the boy how to hide who he really was. Meiri had never even thought of those things.

She was honestly a little relieved to not have to look after him. She did love him. She really did...But sometimes...when his hair was still the same shade as his father's she couldn't bear to look at him. During those times she found it hard to talk to him, much less try to tell him how to not look like his father. And he did look exactly like his father, when his father was a boy.

Logically she knew his parentage was not his fault. So she made sure to take care of him as best she could. But he had been injured now, and a doctor came. The doctor had seen him, but he had not seen her. She knew Amistad trusted this doctor. This doctor had his own reasons for keeping Amistad and Violetta hidden. But those reasons did not apply to Meiri.

She was not under any misconceptions, that the protection Amistad was under also covered her. Who was she anyway? She was born a maid, and she would always be a maid. This doctor had only ever seen Heath's altered appearance. Amistad had introduced the boy as the maid's son. Not as his nephew. If he had truly trusted the doctor, he would have said that Heath was his nephew.

The doctor, not seeing Meiri, and not being suspicious of Heath, had not taken a sample of Heath's blood. She was thankful for that. If the Doctor had seen Meiri, he might have turned them all in. The price on her head was much higher than the price on Amistad's. That creep would never truly let her go. He would never stop looking for her.

She had to keep Heath out of that man's hands at all costs. This was the most loving thing she could do for her son. She had to leave him there. She had to stay away from him at all costs.

She had a new job. She had just applied, and luckily, she had gotten hired. It had a higher pay than working for Amistad. She could put away some funds for Heath in her secret account. She had left the access information with Heath. He could get the money when he turned 18. She wanted him to be able to afford his own place, and be steady on his feet once he got an apprenticeship.

She could imagine him at 18. She hoped she could see him on his 20-year, when it was time for him to enter the workforce. She couldn't believe she was thinking that far into the future for him. She silently wondered if her mother had felt the same when she was young.

Meiri grew up much more fortunate than most commoner's. She grew up like a princess in a castle. Her mother was the Crown Prince Amistad Echinops Angrec Majus's maid. She was an only child of a single mother. The Queen had felt sorry for her mother, and thus allowed her to grow up along-side her own son.

During this time, she also got to know the older prince. Tarragon Echinops Arbutus. He was nothing like his brother. Where Amistad was kind, he was cruel. Amistad had deep purple hair, Tarragon had lilac colored hair. If not for the similar structure of their faces, you could never tell that they were brothers. He was the subject of much gossip. He was the illegitimate son of the Queen's husband. He hated Amistad for having everything, including her attention. So he would pick on her. Make her shine his shoes. Make her climb a tree. Make her clean his room while he watched. "Even if Amistad treats you like a princess… You are still nothing but a maids child destined to be a maid," Tarragon would tell her. "I do this so you can know your place."

He had also told her that if she ever tried to get away from working for him, he would have her mother beaten in front of her so she would remember that she was a mere servant.

She hated Tarragon, but luckily he was almost never around.

She was only seventeen when she finally began to blossom feelings of love for Amistad who had always treated her like a precious princess. Any girl would fall for someone who treated her so well. She loved it when he let her play with his rich purple hair. It was clear to her though that Amistad did not harbor those same feelings for her. He thought of her like a sister, not like a girl. She had just been hoping to gain more of Amistad's affection, maybe he could fall for her. She kept her crush in Amistad a secret.

...But then when she turned eighteen Tarragon created a coup. He said he was destined to be king. It didn't matter what anyone else said. Everyone was killed. She had thought her beloved Amistad had died too. Tarragon saw her crying over Amistad's death, so he locked her up. He said everything she was and everything she had now belonged to him. Even her tears. He would have it all.

When she was locked up he would visit her to propose to her everyday. Then because she refused every time, he would beat her up once a week. He made sure to beat her till she cried. He had said her tears belonged to him. He made sure she knew it. The moment she turned 20 he raped her. He waited till she reached the proper age and then she was his. He raped her every day. She couldn't get away. The maid who had been her mothers friend was allowed to tend to her, but was not allowed to speak to her, had realized Meiri was pregnant. She managed to drug Tarragon, and helped Meiri escape the Palace. The place that had once held her dreams became a place of nightmares that she now had to flee from in the dead of night.

...

When Amistad found her, she had run for a month. Meiri still didn't realize she was pregnant, and thought her body was acting strange because of the stress she was under.

Hiding here and there. Always on the go, eating what she could find in garbage cans, and hiding in abandoned buildings. She couldn't stay in one place for long. She didn't want her tormenter to find her. She could never let that happen!

She couldn't get sick, she couldn't risk going to the hospital, or a clinic. Even underground clinics that served criminals were not safe for her to go to. Every time she saw the security force she would panic a little, thinking that he had found her. She wouldn't go back! She would die before she went back!

There she was sleeping in a box in the technician square backstreet, when she was awakened by a noble looking person with pinkish lilac colored hair. Panic hit her like a sledgehammer. Fight of Flight. There was no such thing. Only Flight. She had to get away.

"Meiri!" She heard the familiar voice. It was a voice she thought she would never hear again. The voice of a dead man. But he wasn't dead. He was alive. Alive and standing before her with the most absurd color of lilac hair. It didn't suit him. His hair needed to be purple again. His purple hair suited him much better. That light lilac hair was way too much like…Him.

"Your hair…" was the first thing Meiri said to the man. He was indeed now a man. He was 20 this year. Wasn't he? She had never thought of Amistad as anything more than a brother. Well, there was once when she was a girl of 17, but that had only been because Amistad was the only young man she had been close to. She was 21 now and she still couldn't see Amistad as an adult. She probably never would. She would forever see that young man of 17.

But the sudden appearance of someone you thought died after living through hell was not an easy thing to comprehend. Especially when he had taken on the hair color of the one you hated.

"I dyed it," Amistad explained. "I- I thought you were dead Meiri..."

'I was dead,' she thought to herself. She just looked at him with a blank expression. How was he here right now? How was he alive? Did Tarragon know Amistad was alive.

"Meiri, are you ok?" Amistad asked.

He took her to a friend. Aurelius Moyer. He explained that Meiri had run away from a very scary place.

Aurelius had decided to keep Meiri safe. He figured out pretty quickly that she was pregnant. He also realized that it was not by choice. When she realized she was pregnant, she tried to stab herself. Aurelius didn't let her. He told her to pretend it was his child, or the child of someone she loved. If she could do that, Aurelius would marry her, and they would raise the baby together.