I could see the unpleasant look his face held slowly fade away, he was thinking of what he wanted to say. Sitting back in the chair I released my grip on the armrest as he drummed his fingers against his.

He paused, looked at me for a second, then sat forward in his chair smiling halfheartedly.

"Contessa, what I'm about to tell you will be hard to accept, but I hope that you will listen to my words before doubting any of it."

"Okay, I'm listening,"

My stomach churned and twisted up in knots as I waited to hear what he had to say. I could feel the atmosphere around us become heavy.

"The thing Zen said earlier, about this being your home planet is correct; you are from Nami. Born and raised here in Jusye."

Leaning forward in my seat I waited for him to continue. This could be what I had been searching for my entire life since that numbing day in the hospital. He could be giving me the answers to so many questions. Sure, it sounded far from being real, but the resemblance between me, him, and Zen was too much to be a mere coincidence.  

He exhaled heavily and shifted in his seat as he searched for the words he wanted to say.

"Okay, let me start from the beginning. You were born the year of the Red Suns at the second high noon to a military couple, your mother, Santessa, and your father...me."

I stared at him and let his words process. The name he mentioned sounded so familiar and I could feel my head start to become cloudy and the dull pain came back again as I tried to think of where I knew it from. I placed a hand on my temple and slightly rubbed it and took deep breaths.

"I'm sorry, but I can't remember anything. "

"I know...it is a lot to take in. I was informed that you may have lost your memories after the impact of the landing. You may never get your memories about your past back," He looked down at his hands and then back up at me with a smile, "Fortunately, no one found you in the capsule that transported you. It was empty when the people of that planet found it. Our reports indicate that you were able to eject yourself from the ship before it crashed, but you injured yourself somehow. This caused your memory loss."

I looked at him and I slowly remembered the dreams I would have for weeks on end. Walking in an unfamiliar deserted street. Not knowing anything more than my first name. The beeping of alarms... waking up in a bright room.

"I don't remember any capsule. The only thing I remember is walking for a while and then it went dark. The next thing I know is I'm with the couple who later became my foster parents in a hospital. They wanted to adopt me, but things didn't pan out the way they were planned. The state we lived in took me to a group home for a while. I've had a recurring dream about a few things, but none of it ever makes any sense."

He nodded his head and sat back in his chair. With a faint smile on his face, he took a deep breath and slowly released it.

"I suppose I owe a great deal of gratitude to these 'foster parents' of yours. If not for them, you would have died. Although I am curious as to how they were able to treat you?"

I fiddled with my fingers as tons of questions flooded my mind. I wanted so badly to just blurt out every one of them, one right after the other, but I restrained myself.

"I don't know. We always knew I was different, but we just didn't know how different I was," I looked at the door thinking this would be a good chance for someone to come waltzing in, "Um, if you are my father then what about my mother? Will I get to meet her soon?"

His face lost what little color it held as I asked him about my mother. He averted his eyes and looked at a painting hanging close to where we sat. 

"I'm afraid that she won't be able to see you. Your mother was extremely beautiful, she was in the space force and was well-loved by everyone." 

He kept using the word was. As in the past, she wasn't alive. A slight tightness appeared in my chest as I listened to his words. 

"She was amazing, your mother. Always full of unexplained energy. Excelled at everything she put her mind to, except when it came to you. I would watch her struggle to get you to call for her. For a while, she thought you didn't like her, but she wasn't a quitter and she kept trying to get your attention. You were completely in awe of me and would try to follow me around everywhere I went. Your mother was too proud to admit it then, but she was a bit jealous of the affection you showed me."

"So, I was a daddy's girl," I followed his gaze and saw a painting with a beautiful woman draped in a white flowing dress, holding some flowers in one hand, and a sword in the other. Her long silver hair blew gracefully in the wind and her eyes smiled as they looked upon you, "What happened to her?"

I heard it in his tone when he spoke of her that something tragic happened and I had hoped it was just my imagination, but his next words hurt me more than I had thought they would.

"She died...trying to protect you."

I looked over at him and stared for a moment. Such a beautiful woman had given her life for me. I didn't even have the faintest idea of what she was like and why she had to die in my stead. Then another question popped into my head. One that I could not keep to myself.

"Do you blame me for her death?"

Zori snapped his head over to me and reached for my hand.

"No, never child, you were not the cause of her death. You shouldn't blame yourself, ever, because I haven't, or would she. Your mother knew the risks of what she did." He looked around the room as if to gather the memories that the walls held, "This room was her gift to you. She had this room prepared for you before you were even born. You stayed here until your sixth year and then I was instructed to bring you before the Elders so they could pass judgment on your occupation. You were taken to the Academy two weeks after you met them. Five years later you were sent on your first mission."

I pulled my hand away from him and shook my head.

"Mission? What was this mission?"

He frowned and I could see how much my rejection of his fatherly love hurt him.

"The mission was simple enough; they thought if a child were to go then there would be less of a chance of causing any commotion. Unfortunately, they miscalculated the coordinates, and you ended up in that messy crash on the wrong planet."

My mind froze for a moment. My life was just some botched attempt to exploit children. So many emotions surged through me.

"So once the mission failed what happened? If I crashed when I was eleven. Did you just leave me there until you wanted me back?"

He looked at me and began to tear up. I could see the pain in his eyes as he sat there reliving the moment, he lost me.

"No. It took us a while to find your exact coordinates and then even longer to produce the means to bring you home. For years we tried to get a ship that could make the journey to retrieve you. As the ship you used was lost and we didn't even understand how it could make the journey in the first place. We gathered so much information on this planet just to be able to bring you back home safely. We had to make sure that our attempt to get you back went unnoticed. So as not to alarm the occupants of the planet. All the advancements we have when it comes to technology and it took us so long to get you back," Zori leaned forward and sighed deeply. His hands knitted into one another "I watched you grow by hacking into their board casting connections, but they were only brief glimpses. Short clips from security logs or small snips of audio. Each day of each year that went by was like death hanging over me, but never delivering the final blow. I curse myself every second for agreeing to let you do the mission and only ask you to forgive my poor judgment as a father. I wasn't able to protect you as I should have and then to have left you for so long by yourself...it is unacceptable."

I sat there for a while stunned and thought back about how I never really found a place to call home until I met my foster parents again. All this time I grew up thinking I was alone and unwanted. To find out I was just lost and that someone was searching for me all this time, my eyes began to tear.

"Just out of curiosity what exactly was the mission I was to complete?"

"Just to gather information on a rival planet not far from us. There was reason to believe that they were planning to invade us again and we were trying to gather the data needed to counter any attack, but the intel was a false report. It was an error that cost me more than I wanted to give."

I blinked my eyes. It was a roller-coaster inside my head and I found myself flipping from being upset and wanting to just forgive him. It angered me that they would send a child to do a job that would cost them their life. Yet he more than likely had no say in the matter, and they would have sent me regardless of any protest he did.

"So, they sent an eleven-year-old child to gather the information. What exactly were these asses thinking?"

"It was not up to me. You were trained very well in hand-to-hand combat as well as other fields. Brenten was the one who trained you. I oversaw Zen's training. We are not allowed to train our family members."

"Zen, was the guy that left earlier? He was a bit eager earlier to have me remember things. Where are we close? How did the two of us end up engaged?"

"You two were promised to each other three months after your birth. He was about three years old at that time. He is the son of a very dear friend of your mother and mine. Our family ties go back. You two were close so the match was made official after you turned four. I remember the two of you always being together. Be it after training or while studying. The two of you were like gips fluttering about. He started his training well before you, but you wouldn't let him have the upper hand. You forced him to show you some of the stuff he had been trained in."

"I wish I could remember it all," running my fingers through my hair I let out a huge sigh. I felt a slight pressure at the back of my head. I closed my eyes for a bit then looked up at him, "I need a few minutes to think all this over."

He smiled and nodded his head.

"I understand...take your time. In time you will regain the memories lost to you and if not then we shall have to make new ones."

I gave a weak smile, and he returned it with another smile of his own then got up from his chair and headed towards the door.

Thinking back on all the years, I felt alone. How I always wanted to know my parents. It always baffled me how I could never find anything about them or me in any of my searches. His explanation, although far-fetched, seemed to make perfect sense. I grew up on Earth in the eyes of the public for a while until my story slowly faded into a tabloid article that could be found in a supermarket magazine for only six dollars. The mysterious young girl was found half-dead by a couple on a hiking trip. For two years I bounced around being asked question after question.

I looked at his hair and how it reminded me of snow. As he walked slowly towards the door my head felt incredibly heavy and for what felt like a moment my vision went black. I saw a quick flash from my dream about the same man before me and I spoke without thinking,

"Dad..."

He turned around and looked at me,

"Yes."

I blinked my eyes not understanding what happened. All I knew was I remembered something about him. Not sure how to explain it I just said the first thing I could think of. The dreams I had been having must be about him and the people here.

"I just wanted to try it out. After feeling like I was alone for all these years...I kind of like it; having a father."

He took a deep breath and released it. His face showed a sign of relief and regret. He walked towards me slowly at first then faster until he was sprinting and then dropped down to his knees in front of me, his face becoming covered with tears.

I stared at him briefly and began to cry myself. It was a lot to take in and I was confused, but right in front of me was a warm, kind, gentle man who just told me I was his daughter, that I was home. That was something that I had been searching for since I woke up in the hospital.

It explained a lot of things. Like why no one had any information on me before my eleventh year. Why couldn't I remember anything that happened to me before I ended up in the hospital? Only remember my first name and being given a last name by the orphanage. I would listen to some of the other children speak of what happened to their parents and wonder what happened to mine. I wasn't sure if I could trust this man's words, but everything felt so familiar, and for the first time in my life that I could remember I felt at home. Not to mention if I stayed, I could regain these lost memories Zori spoke of. The key to my memories was right in front of me.