Through the shadows cast by the moon tonight
The memory of my mother dances
Like the flame red carp I watched
in the back waters of the lake
Of the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto,
Such burning grace
Though I am ill with my future
And want to confess it to her
I won't. Not tonight.
For my mother dances in the Gold Pavilion
of my heart.
How she can dance
Even the moon is spellbound
with her grace.

*******************************************************************

Todd Manning vigorously rubbed a towel over his damp hair and stared absently at his reflection in the mirror. Although he wasn't awake long, he felt pretty close to exhausted nonetheless.

It had been a long and draining night.

He was no stranger to endless nights in the grip of insomnia, but this time it was different. His own demons, for once, had been silent, beaten into submission for at least one night But last night, it was Tea's sleep which had been uneasy, her spirit "screwed up", and in a lot of ways that was much harder to endure than his own hell. Something within him twisted up painfully to see her struggle.

It's so damn hard to be on the outside, looking in…especially when the window is so foggy like it is…

It made him feel so helpless…useless. The more that she hurt, the more he sensed that she was pulling back from him and disappearing behind some wall inside of herself. A new breed of frustration….
Staring at the reflection of his own eyes set with a mix of fear and resolve, he hoped that within this shell of himself hardened by his own demons was that combination of patience, gentleness, and understanding---the love---that would keep his head cool and make him useful to her.
"Her port in the storm…"
He whispered what he wanted to be for her so low it was lost around him, but that took nothing from the weight of it's importance to him. It was an eternal struggle of his that the most important things were usually the ones he struggled to say aloud, to give a voice to, the most.
Todd Manning knew what it was like to live in an all enveloping darkness, and he wanted to be able to bring her out of it before it consumed them both.
The irony of it all had not escaped him. It was almost as if they had switched identities. Maybe fate was playing a game with them….forcing them "to walk in each other's shoes for a while." Or maybe they were just more alike than either had ever realized. He knew that Tea had always had a deep understanding of him like no other, but he never thought before now that it came from her own knowledge and experience.

He was haunted by the vision of her standing in that patch of moonlight, arms wrapped tightly around herself…too far away for him to reach out and touch, and the distance suddenly seeming as emotional as it was physical in that he couldn't touch her heart---and her pain, in this.
Lost to me…
It caused a sharp pain through his heart to think such a thing…he had to bridge the distance, and he had to keep her safe.
The way she'd rocked herself scared the hell out of him, and it broke his heart all at once. It was as if he had witnessed the transformation of his "Tough as Nails" Delgado, in that unnoticed silence, to that of the broken-hearted seeking comfort as if she was a child again.
Todd felt like he wasn't enough, and though he didn't doubt her strength, he had a horrible fear of this turning inwards on her, breaking her. Somehow, he had to break through before it went too far, and he had to find a way to hold her…and them…together, as she had done for him in the past.
"The broken leading the broken….this should be interesting," he sighed.

In order to fight for her, he had to know "the face" of his enemy. She was so closed off lately, it was hard to know exactly who or what that was. He felt as if he was grasping at air…answers and information eluding him. Leaning forward against the sink, he became lost in thought. It seemed to him like something of a cause and effect type of thing, two things that seemed unrelated each taking their own toll and then feeding off of the other. Such struggle---

They had always had their struggles. They had pushed each other away in the past almost as often as they had pulled each other close to protect one another--each battling their own demons and trying to keep them from rearing their ugly forms at the other---but things had been good for a while…really good.
The walls were not as strong then. They let each other in enough to hold the other up, and to hold this new unit that was "them" together in that. They spent a lot of time just being together, leaning on the other, learning from the other, and the family that they had both wanted, the marriage and Starr, when they had custody, seemed to be more stable than either had ever dreamed possible.
"Remember?" He directed the question at his reflection and seemed perturbed when it regarded him silently. Then he wondered if Tea had forgotten… It had been so good that they had decided it was time to have a baby born of that "victory"…born into a relationship of mutual trust and love that had, for a long stretch, proved repeatedly to be so much stronger than the struggle. He had moments of fear over that decision, and he knew that she did too, but when it came up, they sought reassurance in each other. Often without even needing words. His eyes would find hers, one or the other seeming slightly troubled, and silently they'd renew the pact that they had made one night long ago, without ever saying a word.

We're on the same path together…Our child will know nothing but love because we are always going to do right by our kid…we're going to do better…none of the fear, confusion, and crap that we were stuck with…

But somewhere along this path, things had started to change. First, it was outside of them, things beyond their control. The outside began pushing inward…noticeably more and more within Tea…and this, in turn, started to force its way into him as well.

Exactly a year of trying to have a baby had gone by with a series of false hopes and the extreme emotional dips that followed. Denied something that had become her everything (and his too), Tea's veneer began to crack slowly over that time. Each time the results came back negative, Todd watched some of the hope in her eyes begin to fade. He worried from time to time if part of that was being reflected from his own disappointment. After the ninth month had come and gone, the doctor had gently persuaded them to submit to fertility testing on an individual basis to erase some of the question and the doubt. He hated tests…always that tremendous fear of failing them. But the doctor said that the answers could not only point to the problem but give them new avenues in that it could be something that they could get around. The hope in her eyes silenced his embarrassment at the whole idea. He was so relieved to find that he'd passed the tests with flying colors. This relief only lasted for a little while, however, when he saw the new pain in Tea's eyes. She had yet to be tested, and her odds of "passing" as flawlessly were already decreased.

Once Tea found that the problem was within her, he had watched her slowly retreat into herself…and later, into something else---somewhere else where she wouldn't let him follow. He could actually see the veil go up in front of her eyes, and it made breaking through more and more impossible. But not loving her. It made him love her all the more, it made him want to be her strength that much more--in this time when she pulled further away from him than ever before. The double edged sword of irony. Todd knew from his own experiences that it was times like these that called the demons out of the past, from the darkness of the corners in which they lurked. He watched hers taking hold of her, and he wanted to grab her and pull her from their embrace, before it got to the point of no return. To do that though, he came back full circle. To save her, he had to know his enemy's face. The physical was beyond his control…but the emotional scars were not. His demons wore his father's face. Though he'd never seen a picture of Tea's mother, he had the feeling that was the likeness he was looking at here in direct relation to her struggle. There were things she had never come to terms with that she wouldn't share with him, but he knew she carried them with her, and that it was these things which she was connecting back to their current struggle---her struggle to be a mother--- It was these that held her tightly in their grip as she stood in a patch of moonlight rocking herself to escape them.
You don't have to go this alone, Delgado…how do I get you to see that?
He raised his eyes enough to once again meet his own glance in the mirror, and with a fierce and protective gleam very evident within the determined look, he renewed his promise to Tea, regardless of the fact that she was unaware of it.
"Ana, you will not touch her. Never again. You didn't prove you could love her. I can. I will. You WILL NOT touch her, not even from the grave. You will never hurt her again, not on my watch."

"You can consider yourself busted on two accounts, buster." Tea's voice from the bathroom doorway made him jump a few good feet and pulled him from his thoughts as she sauntered into the bathroom, one eyebrow raised in her typical suspicious look.
"What are you talking about?" The guilt of being 'caught' was evident in his voice.
"That's what I want to know. The court finds you guilty of talking to yourself…muttering…it was more like muttering, actually, AND of hogging the bathroom for waaaaaay too long. And, considering the addition of the defensive tone you just assumed, we're adding a third charge. The court had better not find out that you were thinking and muttering about some other woman or something, the evidence presented being that the defendant jumped ten feet out of his skin at the sound of my voice."
"Maybe you just happen to have a heart stopping voice…" he said, as she shook her head at him. "But, just for the hell of it…and if there was this other woman that I was allegedly thinking about?"
"The death penalty. Death by a mind numbing, heart obliterating kiss."
"What if I throw myself on the mercy of the court?"
"Won't do you any good," she answered, reaching around him to replace her hairbrush on the counter. "The courts on my side."
"Then I give up…I think I want to be guilty. Go on….give it your best shot."
She gave him a sideways glance.
"If you WERE thinking of another woman, you can take your toothbrush and find another place to park it, buddy."
"Hmmm. Okay, then I'm innocent. But can I get that capital punishment thing anyway?"
"The court will need to deliberate."
"Deliberate my ass…" He grabbed her around the waist and grinned at her.
"Oh, I have…many times." She joked back.
He noticed that her mouth was smiling, and her eyes were almost following suit. Almost. But they didn't convince one hundred percent, and in addition, he noted that they were puffy from lack of sleep. He knew that last night wasn't a one time thing with her lately.
"Delgado, how much sleep did you get last night?"
Her eyes clouded over a little more.
"Enough to get by."
"How much?"
"Are you trying to tell me something, Todd? Did I fail to reach the 'beauty sleep quota' required to be your wife?" Her words were joking, but her voice was getting a bit strained.
"Calm down, Tea."
"I AM calm," she said, but bit her lip when she heard her own tone.
"No, you're not. You're me. The role of Todd Manning is now being played by "Delgado". I recognize Defense Posture number 21 in your stance, Look number 11 in your eyes, and that vein above your temple is doing that wacky thing it does. That's not in my playbook, by the way. That must be your own unique interpretation of the role. What's up with you? What's bugging you?…"
"At the moment, you're bugging me…and you're blocking the toothpaste," she interrupted, in an attempt to get him to drop the subject. He wouldn't.
"Are you still stuck on what we were talking about last night?"
"Todd," she started, and then stopped abruptly, putting a hand to her forehead and trying to rub away the ache that was forming already. "Wait…look…I'm sorry, okay? Scratch the irritable Tea act, I didn't mean it. You're right. I didn't get the best night's sleep last night…more nightmares…but it's over now. It's a new day. I don't want to talk about it…bring the darkness from a bad dream or two into a new day. And, you know….the sleep loss from last night wasn't all bad, remember?" She turned to face him, and ran a hand lightly up and down his arm, her face apologetic, her tone softened.
"Can't say that I do. Defense Number 31 is in effect. Any activity so exciting that it's mind blowing has to be stricken from the record to prevent excitement overload at a time when we both have to go to work….and that nails down last night."
"Glad to hear it…I think." She grinned up at him, and he leaned down instinctively to kiss the smile on her face. As the kiss deepened, he pulled back, struck by a thought.
"That means of course, that each night we need to…well, I need new memories, you know…"
"Yeah, you and me both." They stood locked in an embrace, neither quite sure of how they got there or for how long they were there, enjoying the silence and the comfort of each other. The joking had lightened the anxiety, but they were both still carried a weight building in recent times that was lessened by these moments of being together--knowing, without words what the other was feeling.
He couldn't help it. One more time.
"So, you're really okay?" he asked into her shoulder. He still couldn't clear the vision of her that bothered him so much from his mind, and he had to be sure. He almost had this sense that he didn’t want to leave her today.
She stiffened a little in his arms. All too vivid in her own mind was the memory of the mess that she had become when the nightmare caught her so off guard. It was like an ongoing video that she was trapped in, and last night was the first time that her mother's face had appeared. To this point, it had been her voice…only and always her voice. Frightened, and thrown off balance, she had let so much of her angst come out in the open for Todd to see, and in the light of day, she felt a powerful sense of humiliation. She was supposed to be strong. He loved her for that strength. To be anything less…she didn't want to lose him. She couldn't let him see too much…would he leave her?
"I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be? But I think I'd be a lot more fine if you let me get in the shower so I don't have to sprout wings and fly to make it to work on time."
He released her, reluctantly.
"I'll throw something together for dinner tonight. We should---you know---make a night of it. So try to get here before breakfast the next morning."
She raised her eyebrows at him.
"Bug eyes, Delgado."
"Throwing something together, Todd? Such a romantic gesture from you? Who WERE you thinking of when I came in here, and how soon can I kill her?"
"Cool your jets, Tea…You. I'm always only thinking of you. Well, you share some brain time with Shorty, but….Anyway, you know me. 'Throw together' means open a box and throw it on the plate, so don't expect miracles…"
"Cary Grant has got nothing on you, baby," she interrupted.
"…But tonight should be special, you know, because…it's one of those days on the calendar, marked in blue…"
"Todd…" she began, her voice wary.
"Stop. You never know, okay? Look Tea, I'm not giving up. Besides, it's worth a shot, right? And where has all the romance gone? You don’t bring me flowers anymore, you know, Delgado?" He dodged out the door as she threw the wet towel at him that he'd dropped to the floor and left behind in a heap. He laughed as he disappeared from view just in time.
She smiled at the empty doorway.
The smile slowly faded from her lips.
She had met her own eyes in the mirror.
A flash of her dream played out before her, and the eyes were no longer mere reflections of her own. The eyes in the mirror were full of doubt in fierce combat with longing for the baby which seemed further from her reality than ever.
Todd's voice---it had been so full of a hope that he couldn't conceal.
The crying child she couldn’t get to, and her mother…those eyes so vivid in her own mind's eye, in the midst of it all.
She met those eyes in the mirror again.
"Mami, why are you doing this to me? Why now?"

*******************************************************************

Todd was rushing around downstairs trying to pull together all the odds and ends that he needed to run The Sun that day. He couldn't seem to get his mind on track, but he was doing his best to shrug it off. She said that she was okay, and so he had to believe her, to trust in that, and to give her some space if that's what she insisted on.
He left her a pot of coffee brewing, and he grabbed his keys and headed for the door. As an afterthought, he stuck part of the pile of research she'd brought home the night before in the crook of one arm and started out. Todd reached for the doorknob just as the doorbell trilled loudly. For a second, he pulled back his hand as though he'd been burned in surprise.
"Manning, you've got to chill out."
He opened the door to a middle aged woman, with two little girls standing off to the side.
"Yeah?"
"I'm sorry…I can see we caught you on the fly, so we won't keep you, but I have something I think you should have. My name is Rhiannon O'Hara, and these are my girls, Kelly and Barbara. If you are Todd Manning, then I think we have a connection in the form of these…."
Todd watched with his mouth dropping open. Her children were half hiding behind her legs and peering out at him cautiously, and for a heart stopping moment he thought she was reaching around for the kids themselves.
"Uh-uh lady…I think you've got the wrong guy."
She looked up at him and laughed as she read his thoughts.
"Not if you're wife is a Mrs. Tea Delgado Manning, because that makes these…" (she said, handing him a stack of thin notebooks that Kelly had in her arms), "not these…." (she continued, placing her hands on the heads of her two children)…"yours, or your wife's, I guess, is more accurate. We've looked long and hard for your wife." (Todd continued to just stare) "Um…she is your wife? Tea Delgado…?"
He nodded, still staring at Kelly, who was now smiling shyly at him.
"Well then, we just had to make sure that these got where they belonged, didn't we girls? My daughters actually found them…"
"Mommy, why does that man have a funny looking mark on his cheek?" Barbara 'whispered'.
"Shut up, Barb. You're not s'pposed to say things like that. Besides…I think he's REALLY cute!" Kelly whispered back.
"Umm…what are these, and if they belonged to Tea, why did you have them?"
He was at a bit of a loss, and then he directed a quick smile at Kelly, who reminded him of Starr, and it made the little girl blush crimson and start to giggle uncontrollably. Barbara looked at her and rolled her eyes.
"You could say that they were buried treasure that fate unburied. I guess, Mr. Manning, you could say that they are a "lost voice" that I hope your wife will be happy to hear from again. I apologize, but I did read through them a bit here and there…to find out where they needed to go, of course." (she stopped to dab at a tear that had formed in the corner of her eye). We purchased an old desk, and there they were, locked away in a secret compartment, where I guess your wife was meant to find them one day. I'm just glad that we could get them through into the right hands. And now that we have, we'll leave you and get on with our day. I hope they prove to be as important as I think they will be. Come on girls, let's leave Mr. Manning and get out of his hair. Mr. Manning, if you or your wife wants to contact us, my number is on a card within the top volume."
"But I like his hair, Mommy." Kelly remained standing in the doorway.
"Kelly darling, what have I told you about older men and no dating until you're eighteen…" Her gentle teasing drifted with the trio into the elevator, and Todd remained standing there, somewhat clueless about the whole thing. The woman with the Irish brogue had been like a whirlwind (and she had reminded him of Patrick Thornhart a little too much for his own comfort.)
"Oookay….so what the…." He propped himself against the open doorway, and he opened the book on top of the stack to a page somewhere in the middle, never one to do something as ordinary as to start at the beginning. His eyes did a quick scan over the words that drifted across the page in neat penmanship, and they followed their way to a signature sprawled at the very bottom.

Love,
Ana

His heart pounding, he flipped to the front to confirm what he already knew, and he read the inscription there.

~To my dearest Tea,
So many things I longed to tell you, so many things I never got a chance to share with you, they are all recorded here. I could not go on thinking that you never knew that you were my heart and my joy, for the short time we had together. I probably did not deserve your love, but it was the one thing in this life that kept me going, and I treasured it like you can never understand. It is beyond words, and yet I reach for them anyway. I knew who you were form the moment I felt you growing inside me, getting so strong. You made me so proud. But do you know who you are, my Tea? How special you are? And do you know who your mother was, and how much I have loved you and will always love you? I write this for you, so you will be sure, and so you will never lose sight of yourself or how much I loved you, mija bonita..

All my love,
Mother

When he'd finished, he glanced up, lost in thought. Ana Delgado's legacy for Tea, all in these pages.
His shock began to turn to suspicion, and he glanced up the stairs in the direction of the running water.
"You will not touch her, Ana. Not until you have proven yourself to me, first."
He added the stack of journals to his belongings, and headed out for The Sun, glancing one last time at the books, the stairs, and then nodding his head with conviction as he closed the door.