


Found

by Cruelest Sea



Category: Zorro
Genre: Family, Hurt-Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-15
Updated: 2011-08-15
Packaged: 2015-04-25 09:33:49
Rating: K+
Chapters: 1
Words: 328
Publisher: www.fanfiction.net
Story URL: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7288626/1/
Author URL: https://www.fanfiction.net/u/2405972/Cruelest-Sea
Summary: New World Zorro, pre-series. There was an exact moment that Diego started viewing Felipe as his son.





	Found

**_Found_**

_"Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body." - Elizabeth Stone_

For the first time in his life he's frightened.

It's getting late, he thinks, hours since it happened. The smell of death and gunpowder still lingers in the air and he can't comprehend how he's found himself here, alone and lost.

He's young, too young to fully understand death, to realize that when people die they cease to exist in this world, that they can be cruelly snatched away, love stolen from you, leaving you alone.

When Don Diego sees the child he's huddled against the base of a tree, tears falling silently from eyes that seem too big for his thin face.

He looks up as he approaches, swiping at the tears, looking at the stranger, into the kind eyes and at the strong, outstretched arms.

He's a tiny and fragile child, as light as a sparrow, and Diego holds him as gently as the birds with broken wings that he nursed back to health when he was a child himself.

He can feel the boy's heart beating through the thin fabric of his shirt, feel his chest lift with a soundless sob.

He carries him to the carriage, climbing up beside him, and lightly slapping the reins for the horse to hurry away from the battlefield.

After a long time the boy falls asleep, the motion of the carriage lulling him, tears drying on his cheeks, revealing the dark smudges of exhaustion through the trails of dirt. Diego removes his cloak and drapes it over the child, pausing to tenderly run a hand over his hair. He looks down at the tiny hand resting in his large one, and feels his heart break.

He's almost home when he realizes that in all this time the child has never let go.


End file.
