Logs:Pride
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| RL Date: 31 October, 2015 |
| Who: Hattie, Elaruth, Harriet |
| Involves: Fort Weyr |
| Type: Vignette |
| What: The evening of her encounter with Gethin, Hattie regrets. |
| Where: Weyrwoman's Weyr, Fort Weyr |
| When: Day 22, Month 2, Turn 39 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Gethin/Mentions, P'draig/Mentions, Briallan/Mentions |
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| Her desk was littered with correspondence, some of which she had already sent responses to, some not. A letter from Briallan lay amongst the pile that she had set aside, knowing she would be more forgiving about a lack of immediate answer, and it would be a while yet before she got to it. Harriet was a heavy, sleepy weight against her shoulder as she stepped lightly and idly about the room, softly humming a tune of her own devising. She was a good baby, really. She rarely cried. She was beginning to smile more and more. ...She deserved better. « You deserve better, » Elaruth quietly insisted, interrupting that too familiar trail of thought before it could twist further and wring from her the pangs of regret and guilt that were all too familiar these days. « You deserve not to feel this way. » Hattie swallowed down the urge to plead with her, as she so often did as her pale queen slept, not to rise and make everything more complicated than it already was in the tangled mess that was her heart and her head. How long had she managed to live by shoving her feelings and needs aside? How many turns had she managed to conceal any distress she felt? Why was it so hard now? How had it got to the point where her children noticed? ...Maybe that was it. Maybe they weren't children anymore. Gethin was nearly a man and her word was no longer the one to be trusted, least of all about herself. He had been taught to question - his craft was teaching him to question further - and in those moments when he argued with her and got angry with her, he was so infuriatingly like his father that it only made her fight harder to deny any accusations of being anything less than perfectly fine. P'draig had near always insisted that her coping mechanisms were not healthy and no way to live, and now here she was repeating the same cycle of keeping him at arms' length with their son. She'd pushed him away. She'd pushed her son away. Hattie ducked her head and pressed her face into Harriet's hair, like she could hide from her own ineptitude. She'd been so happy to have him home again. She hadn't wanted to embarrass him or be clingy, or demand his time, not when he was all grown-up. She hadn't let herself go running after him and let him see just how pleased she was. He had a whole life of his own to live. He didn't need her interfering. Did he... did any of them... want her to interfere? Was that her word for it and not theirs? « We are good mothers, » her queen told her. « We are proud of our children. » Children. Don't rise, don't rise, pleasedon'trise. Harriet stirred and curled closer, entirely trusting. For just a moment, everything span to rights and she couldn't feel the too rapid beat of her heart, or the sick, sinking feeling that she couldn't face the rest of her children if they all knew what or felt as Gethin did. For just a moment. |
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