Finally, the last part. Sorry about the wait, I have seriously been lazy (and busy in the author's defence) but it is here now!

OVERSHADOWED

Twenty Years Later

The warm summer air caressed the necks of the uncomfortable mourners. The heat was at an almost unbearable degree in the early morning, only emphasised by the vast amounts of black decorum forced them to wear.

In Meg's opinion the weather reflected nothing of the person they were bidding farewell to. Her mother had always been aloft, slightly cold but constant, like winter. An inevitable force to be reckoned with that could be fair to you one day, and the next be placing three feet of snow by your door and deadly black ice under your carriage wheel. Her mother would have been amused by the comparison, no doubt, for she had always enjoyed being feared.

For all of her life up until that point, her mother was a mystery, an unstoppable power figure who refused to back down even when the outlook was bleak at best. Now, watching the simple wooden coffin being descended into the ground, Meg realised she was only a woman, a manipulative one at that who used everything to her advantage, and those she cared for. She could not truly say if her mother was a good woman or not, as she had been almost holy in some of pursuits and yet decidedly devilish in others.

Just like everyone else she had her flaws, and just like everyone else she concealed them to the best of her ability.

She dropped a single rose on top of the casket as the bloodied soil was being replaced, almost drowning the very existence of her mother into its untimely reach, with only a single marker to remember her sixty years on this earth.

Her mother may be dead and forgotten, but Meg would never let what she lived and worked for go to waste.

Taking her daughter in one hand, and her husband in the other, she guided her small family to an awaiting carriage, to travel to a place where the fonder memories of her mother would be discussed over the fine food and drinks Raoul had provided. For he was the one who had arranged the funeral, believing that it would be in his deceased mother's wishes that Antionette be sent off in the style befitting an upper class woman.

As the jostling carriage moved off, the blonde woman looked back, seeing the fresh grave partnered against the slightly older, worn one. Together in death, laying next to each other as if in bed on a Sunday morning, waiting to arise and take a walk together along the river side.

Turning back to the grim face of her husband, Meg realised the one thing that her mother had left her. A warning. Not to waste the short time you have, with the ones that you love.

……………

Hmm. Well, this is slightly depressing if I do say so myself. I was going to do her wedding in this final chapter, but death seemed, well more final.

Comments/Reviews/Emails/Any other form of contact that the author cannot think of, are of course welcome, even if you want to bitch at me for being a tad too depressing when it is almost summer!

This may be my last venture into the POTO fan community for a while, if not ever, so in true Fall Out Boy style:

Thnks Fr Th Mmrs

;-)

Mutinous