THE QUEEN´S DAUGHTER

CHAPTER ONE: FAMILY SECRETS

Thanks SO much to Mari (Narumi-Chlan) for her priceless help! Love you hun!

Sixteen years had gone away since the last time Shayera visited Themyscira. But she still remembered very well the island´s location and the greek beauty of the landscape. It was the closest to actual paradise she had ever been. She fully understood why the amazon was so fond of her home. Diana. All those years went by after the last time she ever spoke to the princess of the amazons too. It was a long time, so much had happened. She looked like a woman nearing his forties, which she actually was, and she smirked thinking Diana would look exactly the same. Lucky her.

"The same… but not younger" she gasped suddenly, taking a step back and freezing.

Because as soon as she landed over one of the beaches, next to a rocky shore, a fifteen years old girl jumped to the sand in front of her, resting on one of her knees.

She was holding an arch, aiming an arrow straight to her heart, and she had on her wrists the typical bullet proof silver bracelets Shayera knew so well. The hair was longer and the skin was clearer, but she would recognize the ebony locks of her braid and the steel blue eyes anywhere.

"D-Diana?" She asked with a faltering voice, looking at the girl up and down slowly and carefully. She shook her head and stood up, intrigued by the fact the stranger called her by that name. The arch immediately went down. Her moves were smooth, light and agile. Somuchlike…

"I´m not Queen Diana. I´m her daughter, Princess Sophia…" The girl´s answer interrupted her thoughts.

"Daughter?"

Diana has a daughter?

"Sophie!"

A second after they heard her voice and looked to the woods, Diana´s horse emerged from the green darkness and descended from her ride once she saw her daughter. Then, her gaze fixed on Shayera´s. Sophia ran to her.

"Mom! I think she knows you."

Hawkgirl looked in turns from mother to daughter and vice versa. No wonder she got confused. The women were two identical drops of water. Diana hugged her daughter and whispered something to her ear. The girl nodded instantly, kissed her mother´s cheek and jumped over the black horse, riding away with an impressive skill. Diana watched her go lovingly and, once the youngster disappeared, she walked to her former colleague. Her tall, slim figure glowed like sunlight inside the cloudy white of her tunic. Under the weight of her crown, she was majesty herself.

"This is unbelievable. I… I thought she was you."

Diana smiled at the comment. She liked talking about Sophia.

"They say we are alike. Like mother, like daughter."

"Who is her father? How old is she? Seventeen?"

"She´s only fifteen. But she´s tall, and she trains a lot. She´s a prodigy with those arrows."

"I´ve noticed her moves are good." Shayera nodded.

"Better than myself, I´m proud to admit."

"Is she his daughter?"

The question made Diana frown. She thought she would never have to bring up the subject again. It was buried, very deep, and it was fine with her.

"What are you doing here, Shayera?" Diana´s tone wasn´t welcoming I the first place, she wasn´t sure if she could trust the woman. But now, it became frankly hostile.

"Same old Diana. You don´t have to keep your guard up all the time. Can´t you show some joy when an old friend visits?"

"Friend? You threw Thanagar´s army over us! They were going to kill us all! If that is you as a friend, I would rather not have you as an enemy."

"I am not your enemy, and I don´t want to be. Give me a chance! They just wanted to save our planet, I´m sure you can understand the weight of a crown and a kingdom. I didn´t command them to do what they did, I wasn´t even informed of their plans. I stopped them, I saved you all. I deserve some recognition for that. Now I´m no one for those of my own kind and for everyone in this planet. It is hard, you know? You must understand the loneliness…"

Shayera´s voice broke. It was clear the situation wasn´t easy for her. She wasn´t happy with what she did, but she had no choice. Her watery eyes made Diana´s harshness melt down.

"You´re right. I´ve spent sixteen years thinking about it. I am glad you´re still alive." Diana extender her hand to her. "Oil and vinegar?"

"Oil and vinegar." She responded, shaking it. "But you are the vinegar."

"I missed arguing with you." Finally, a smile curled he amazon´s lips.

"I missed you too. But you don´t seem to trust me. Answer my question."

"I don´t want to talk about it. No one was supposed to know of her existence."

"So she is the real reason you left… You didn´t have any duty back here as you said."

"Yes, I did. I attended to both reasons. Don´t you dare judge me…"

Shayera sighed, thinking of another way to approach her.

"She seems like a wonderful girl."

"She is. I´m very proud of her."

"And she deserves the truth."

"How to raise my daughter is something for me to decide…"

"You are not her only parent and you know it. What lies did you tell her?"

"I am the only parent she can count on. This conversation is over."

Every sign of a smile disappeared from her features, she was upset and annoyed by the woman´s insistence. She turned around to walk away but, Shayera grabbed her arm. She tried to be as soft as possible.

"Diana… wait. I don´t really know how to tell you this…"

"Then, start for the beginning…"

"He really needs to see you again. He´s trying to hide it, but I can see it in his eyes. He never forgot you."

"He married someone else, Shayera… That´s forgetting me already."

"He´s sick in love with you. Give the guy a break. It was hard for him, too."

"You´ve always been a close friend to him…"

"Not in the way you used to think…"

"There is nothing left for us. He has his family and I have mine. We belong to two different worlds that would never collide."

"She died, and he is alone. Don´t be so stubborn, woman. Go and see him. If Sophia is his daughter, he deserves to know… You owe him that. She is family to both of you."

For a second, the words got to Diana´s heart. But she knew it would be useless. If Shayera´s word were true, it would make the heartache worst.

"I don´t owe him anything."

"Do you have stone instead of heart, Diana?"

"I lost my heart when he broke it."

.-.-.-.-.-

Sophia was never defiant with her mother and she always did as she was told, but she was a very intuitive girl too. She had a pang that the conversation on the beach would change her destiny forever. And when she had a hunch, she was never wrong. So instead of finding her aunt Donna as she was instructed to, she went right back and, hidden beneath the trees, she heard it all. And she was right. Her world was stumbling down around her and with every word it started to spin faster. Nothing would be the same again. Everything she thought she was got smashed like paper.

Once she saw the stranger fly away and her mother walking back through the beach, she wiped her tears and tried to calm down her trembling hands. Her whole life had been a lie, and she only had her mother to blame for it. She used to think it was perfect, and now nothing around her made any sense. This wasn´t the world she belonged to, because the amazon princess was only half of her. She knew she had duties as the throne heiress, but nothing justified the ways her mother used to keep her on the island. KnowinghowmuchIwantedtogototheoutsideworldasshehadbeen,shealwaysforbidme,andsayIdidn´tbelongthere.ButIdo! Squeezing the rage between her teeth she walked back into her room. It was so unfair.

Sophia sighed when she realized how little she knew about her mother´s former life. Before she became, well, what she was. Her mum. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn´t fly as her mother could, even when she could jump way higher than the other amazons. And she was the only one who could match –and sometimes even outdo- her wits. Until that very day, she was proud of her mother. She constantly questioned her about her days in man´s world. She was always very open about the things she learned there and the way it worked, but never said anything about the people she met.

Someone knocked at the door.

"Come in." She responded distractedly, no bothering to ask who was calling. Diana´s heart sank when she saw her baby girl crying.

"What´s wrong, Sophie?" she asked worriedly, sitting next to her daughter and hugging her tenderly. Sophia looked down and pulled away from her.

"Don´t touch me…" She said in a low voice. Her mother frowned, confused and her worry grew heavier.

"What…? What´s going on, Sophia?"

"You lied to me all this years, mum. You never told me I had a father. You forbid me to leave this island when half of me is out there. Just go away now…"

A pang of consternation crumpled Diana´s heart. She felt indeed a liar for hiding this from Sophie, but she wanted to protect her. She wanted what was best for her. Now, she felt the worst mother ever. She didn´t know a thing about maternity when she got pregnant, and she was all by herself. She left her mother´s side and she was paying the price… she didn´t want to give her daughter a reason to go away as she did.

"I´m sorry, my little sun and stars. I only wanted what was best for you… because I love you so much. You mean everything to me…"

"That is not true. You wanted what was best for you, keeping me here. You forbid me to leave, when you know I belong out there. You allowed me to believe I was like you all this years. Did you never think I could understand? There´s no reason to ever think a lie is better than the truth. Who told you that you had a right to decide what is best for me?"

Diana´s heart sank with this words, because partly it was true. Partly, she lied to her child to protect herself.

"Baby, I´m your mother, I am the one supposed to know that. Everything I did, I did it out of love."

"Don´t `baby` me, mother. I´m not a baby anymore. You should stop treating me like one. If you love me, then let me go!" She hissed.

"Don´t talk to me like that, young lady. No matter how mad you are or what I did, you´re still my daughter and you owe me some respect."

"And I´m not proud of that anymore."

Diana´s suspicions were already up to the sky, and she hissed back to her daughter.

"Listen to me very carefully, Sophia, because I´m deadly serious. Man´s world is off limits for you and so is your father, whoever he is. So forget this conversation ever happened."

"So you´re not even going to tell me who he is?"

"No, I won´t. And I don´t want to hear about this again. Go to sleep."

An upset Diana walked away and closed the door behind her, shaking from head to toe too as she left her daughter even more angry than before. It was a disaster. She couldn´t believe the behavior of her child. She had been such a quiet nice girl always, very smart and skillful, but never a rebel. And she wasn´t going to tell her she was Bruce Wayne´s daughter. He didn´t deserve to know of her existence. But yet, she wanted to talk with Sophie again when they were both rested and calmed. During breakfast the next day.

.-.-.-.-.-

Sophia knew her mother took a lonely walk along the beach every night, so she hid behind the ferns on the side of the hallway, a prudent distance away from her door and observed. The girl had to wait half an hour before she saw Diana leave.

She carefully walked into the room, making no noise at all and headed to the trunk at the bottom of her mother´s bed. The only thing Diana ever told her daughter about it was that she kept things of her past in there, of no importance. Like old clothing and books. Sophia was never particularly curious, but now she knew exactly the kind of things she would find beneath the lid: the things her mother kept from the years she had been away and possibly something she could use to find her father. Because she made up her mind even before her mother left her room. She was leaving and nothing would stop her.

She turned on the lights and kneeled next to the chest, taking a deep breath before opening it. The thick patina of dust rose like a storm when she moved the lid and it made her cough a few times. Her eyes opened wide and she gasped.

The first thing she found was the amazon´s champion´s armor. For a moment, she tried to imagine her mother wearing it and the kind of dangers she faced. The girl knew she was a dreadful warrior and the bravest hero. In some ways, she understood her frustration. Hurryup,Sophia,shewillbebacksoon. So she put it all aside. She was about to grab the golden lasso when she remembered what Diana told her, that she wasn´t aware of it´s powers and couldn´t use it well because she had stolen the armor. She decided not to do the same and left it on the floor again. Her mother became the rightful champion years ago, when she came back, and Sophia knew one day that would be herself.

She took a pair of boots, a pair of jeans and a white shirt. She wanted to dress like any other girl out there, she wasn´t an outsider and she didn´t want to feel like one. She kept digging, pulling away some books and more pieces of cloth. At the bottom of it all she found what she was looking for: a little brown bag tied up with a lace.

"Finally. The money." She whispered relieved and opened the bag, but she didn´t find money in there. A shinning necklace fell onto her hands. "Diamonds. Well, this is going to be useful anyway."

She added the necklace to the holdall with her outfit and kept looking. She didn´t find anything useful, until on the corner she discovered a notebook, with leather covers and her mother´s name engraved on it. She quickly scanned through the pages. It was her mother´s writing. It was, it was… her mother´s diary! She didn't read it, but it couldn´t be anything else. She was about to throw it immediately with the other stuff when the first page called her attention. There was a black and white picture pasted on it. It showed her mother wearing the champion´s armor and standing next to a man. They were both smiling. She ran her hand over the picture and read the inscription someone scribbled over the same first page "Two thousand white pages for you to use well. With love, …"

But the signature was unreadable.

"So… this is my father. I don´t know what happened between you two that made you wish not to see him again and hide his existence from me, mom. But I am going to find out."

As she heard steps coming closer, she quickly replaced the stuff she got out and left through the open balcony doors.

N/A: Reviews, please? O.o Let me know if this is worth a next chapter…!