His words draw her silence, draw something she strangles in her throat that is laughter and sobbing. Hysterical, a high endLondon Doctor would say. But she feels it - why she comes to detest this camps distrust of her is not because it is unreasonable for them to do, but she cannot stand this idleness, she has never before had the luxury of looking back on - on this -
This full life. Oh, there was no contesting it was that. From one end of an Empire to another, from one battlefield to another, from the beautiful halls of the Fortress of Jhansi where she and her ladies would throw spears and her adopted son would grip to her leg and beg for a sweet - to cradling a half-dead man in the worst back streets in the filth of the Thames, to watching Lycans rip the helpless limb from limb, to the starving, the poor, the disenfranchised that ate hope because they had nothing else to hang onto. The children of Purebloods that did not look like monsters, who were fair skinned, freckled children, that she had shot anyway.
That was the problem, wasn't it? A full life. What a curse a full life could be. How numbing, how exhausting. ] It has been. It continues to be, I can say that much is true. [ Words at odd with her face, older than she is. Given without explanation because she offers neither apologise not explanations anymore. She does, she acts, she is. ]
[ She is quiet, for a time. Her fingers busying with the chains, in the intricate way they link together, once to the piercing in her ear, then up to the chain on her crown, hooked in together, and why she needs help, not difficult, merely fiddly and something, more than anything, what she can feel in control over.
Perhaps there is their difference even in mutual understanding. ]
I did not do it for spite. They were my people, and I am theirs, I did not serve them as ashes. [ A sobering breath, in through her nose, out through her mouth, as her father taught her to keep her head when such things felt overwhelming. With it, her eyes are down again, but it's nothing lady-like, no demure bride or fair maiden, a habit of shutting away her own emotions when there is neither time nor place for them and she never has either.
She has been fighting since she was a young woman, and she fights still.
Because in her choice to do so, did she really spare them anything? She cannot know, perhaps she might have been better put to the flames. ]
no subject
His words draw her silence, draw something she strangles in her throat that is laughter and sobbing. Hysterical, a high endLondon Doctor would say. But she feels it - why she comes to detest this camps distrust of her is not because it is unreasonable for them to do, but she cannot stand this idleness, she has never before had the luxury of looking back on - on this -
This full life. Oh, there was no contesting it was that. From one end of an Empire to another, from one battlefield to another, from the beautiful halls of the Fortress of Jhansi where she and her ladies would throw spears and her adopted son would grip to her leg and beg for a sweet - to cradling a half-dead man in the worst back streets in the filth of the Thames, to watching Lycans rip the helpless limb from limb, to the starving, the poor, the disenfranchised that ate hope because they had nothing else to hang onto. The children of Purebloods that did not look like monsters, who were fair skinned, freckled children, that she had shot anyway.
That was the problem, wasn't it? A full life. What a curse a full life could be. How numbing, how exhausting. ] It has been. It continues to be, I can say that much is true. [ Words at odd with her face, older than she is. Given without explanation because she offers neither apologise not explanations anymore. She does, she acts, she is. ]
[ She is quiet, for a time. Her fingers busying with the chains, in the intricate way they link together, once to the piercing in her ear, then up to the chain on her crown, hooked in together, and why she needs help, not difficult, merely fiddly and something, more than anything, what she can feel in control over.
Perhaps there is their difference even in mutual understanding. ]
I did not do it for spite. They were my people, and I am theirs, I did not serve them as ashes. [ A sobering breath, in through her nose, out through her mouth, as her father taught her to keep her head when such things felt overwhelming. With it, her eyes are down again, but it's nothing lady-like, no demure bride or fair maiden, a habit of shutting away her own emotions when there is neither time nor place for them and she never has either.
She has been fighting since she was a young woman, and she fights still.
Because in her choice to do so, did she really spare them anything? She cannot know, perhaps she might have been better put to the flames. ]