LIONHEART. "I will love you even through the pain. For I have found myself in you as you have in me. You as my king/queen and I, your queen/king. Together, we are one."
***
From the very moment, Tristan came to know that Ibrahim had arrived ready to exact vengeance on Maha, on that fateful day, she lost their baby; there was never a day that Tristan didn't feel. He had failed Maha.
"I should have been with her and protected her," he told himself. It had become his mantra, and he blamed himself even more.
If Maha had felt guilty about losing their child and had been wallowing in regret and self-blame, he was in a deeper pit. That day, he felt he'd fallen into the deepest abyss or the steepest ravine. He could have cried too like she often does, but being a man and in this position, leading other men through danger and uncertainty, he'd held onto the facade of a man clad in bravery and undeterred by fear.
Since he lost his wife and kids to the diabolical wiles of humanity, he vowed to loathe these men; they were a nest of vipers who don't deserve to see the light of dawn. So, even while heading the organization, his people can't help but regard him with awe and respect.
And the reason he hid his name was to leave a part of him that was once humane and righteous; when he was on the other side of the fence fighting for what's upright and honorable; in contrast to what he had become.
***
And Maha saw that side of Tristan, for which reason, it wasn't hard for her to love him and give their love a chance. Maha came to love Tristan the same way he had loved her.
But she hadn't been honest with him from the start. She made him believe he sired her child. She often wondered, had she been honest right from the very start, that the child wasn't his, could Tristan have still accepted the child as his own?
Could she have raised the child with Tristan, even under their circumstances, and not given him up to his father?
Maha's in torment and had been wading in guilt and regret. Many nights she had been considering opening up to Tristan but now, she's in fear. What if Tristan would ask her to take the child back and raise him with them? It wouldn't be right as well.
She remembered the night she told Jamil that it was their child and he had cried. He couldn't let her raise him in her dangerous world, he had said. That he is his flesh and blood and he deserves to be told and to think of what's best for the child. By raising the child himself, Jamil was probably saving him from turning into a social deviant or society's reject.
Now, she is in a more complicated world. She has to exist in her and her child's life. She needed to see him cure her pain, resolve her grief, and recompense her guilt. And for how long? Can she keep her secret for long? Will, it not haunt her in the future? Will she be able to move on and forget Amir and start anew with Tristan and a new family? Can she console herself with the thought that Amir should be thankful for the better life that Jamil could give?
But she's done Amir wrong when she denied him a mother at the early stage of his life. Yes, Yasmin would one day be his mother. But, Amir needed a mother now when he's reliant on a mother's love and care to live.
For the reasons above, Maha's been living under insistent self-reproach and mental anguish.
***
Jamil feared what he thought could happen should people know the mother of Amir and the repercussions of such knowledge.
What if there's a man, made to believe he was the child's father, who was told the child had died and would discover later that the child was well and alive? What would he do? Would he try to take the child back?
And should he know later that Amara had fooled him, how will he now regard Amara?
He can't and won't just give up Amir; he is the biological father. And he would fight the man for the right to keep Amir with him.
Should that man say he will consider him his son, would he allow his son to grow up in their kind of world? What if he would insist and resort to vile means to get Amir from him?
He hoped his father could help and stop the press from further digging into Amir's life and save them from the perilous consequences.
What about Amara? Even for Amara, this would not help her at all. She had fooled her man, making him believe he was the father when he was not; an outright mockery to any man unless he is as forgiving.
However, she could have had well-grounded reasons to have hidden the truth.
Could she have learned to love the man and feared losing him if he will know that she is carrying another man's child?
Could she have feared punishment in any form? But that would have been absurd, if not downright irrational.
Would they have forced her to take on any man in the organization to father her child and become her partner or husband?
Would they have denied her if she would have wanted to leave the organization to raise her child in a more normal setting?
Would they have forced her to have an abortion, so she could continue to be useful in the organization, or forced her to give up her child for adoption after the baby's birth?
For whatever reason, Amara needs protection, too.
Her only fault was to have loved Jamil. Maybe she had loved him for long and loved him still. All she wanted was a piece of Jamil; to have the child of Jamil. If she was living in a normal world, it wouldn't have posed any problem. Jamil deemed she needed protection, too. He once felt something for her, too. And he couldn't deny that on that night she conceived Amir, he had played a major part in bringing Amir into this world.