+ Guilt Runs Deep

[vitaelamorte]

Who: Everyone!
Where: The Mansion
When: Feb 23-25
Rating: Please warn in top level subject lines for potential triggers/NSFW
Summary: Various residents are trapped in their own guilt, watching their guiltiest memory play on a loop.
The Story:

Welcome to the gathering post for the event. Please see the plotting post for more information + the bulletin board link. Have fun!

Comments

[givingback]

Brianna frowns, turning her head to look at him. "She didn't deserve this, I know that now."

'Saint' might be pushing it, but Bree won't argue it.

"Who are you?"

[itchtokill]

Kol's bar for better parents is incredibly low. It's easy to hit Sainthood with his parental experience for comparison. "I s'pose you could say I'm one of the folks your mother's adopted around here." he explains with a slight wave of one hand. "Name's Kol." Perhaps she's heard of him, maybe not, he doesn't care much either way.

[givingback]

"Are you just here to torture me, Kol? Because I get it," Bree says with tears in her eyes as she's forced to shout the next line as the memory loops.

God, she hates herself. As soon as she has some sort of control again, she looks at him.

"She lied to me for twenty years. I didn't understand then, why she kept it from me."

[itchtokill]

"Oh, you'd know if I was here to torture. This isn't it, I promise." His methods are much more physically brutal than they are psychologically damaging, truly it is an art form that he's perfected through the centuries. "Parents have a way of always thinking they know best. But the truth is, they're making it up as they go along. And some of them are really awful at it... but your Mum. She's not one of them, is she?"

[givingback]

Bree shakes her head, swallowing a lump in her throat.

"No. No, she isn't. She..."

There's no good reason for the display, for the way she acted.

"I was angry. My father, the one who raised me. He died suddenly and then she's telling me about this other man who's actually my father. I didn't know how to take it, what to think. Who actually believes anything like her story is possible the first time they hear it?"

Maybe not here, in a place where everyone has something uncommon, unusual, or magical where they're from. But in 1968 Boston, where the oddest thing in her life was being a red-head in a family of brunettes, Claire's story had been impossible.

[itchtokill]

"Have you talked to her? You know, since." A vague wave in the direction of the scene again as it restarts.

[givingback]

"Of course," Bree says with a frown. "She's my mother and I was.."

She has to stop to recreate the scene and she hates it.

"I was so stupid."

[itchtokill]

"Perhaps it wasn't a good enough talk, if you're still carrying it all around so much." Or it's just something she'll never get over. Kol is intimately aware how deep some scars--both from others and self-inflicted--can run.

[givingback]

"She left. I told her to go. To find Jamie. We found out...I saw someone travel through the stone and then..."

Bree wipes at her face, clearing her throat and shaking her head. "And then we found out Jamie would have been alive, and I told her to go back in time to find him. To be ready. I was strong enough to tell her to do that, that I didn't need her anymore. It was a lie."

Closing her eyes tightly, she sniffles again and let out a soft breath.

"I think about this all the time because it's the worst thing I ever said to her."

[itchtokill]

"Your Mum forgave you, yeah? Eventually, when the heat of it all blew over and all. She's not holding it against you... maybe you shouldn't either." He has a very different view on mothers in general than most might, but apparently having one set out to murder you and all your siblings multiple times over in a millennia will do that to a guy. Who knew? Apparently not Esther Mikaelson, that's for sure.

[givingback]

"She does," Bree says with a slow exhale.

"I held onto it, I guess, because I thought I'd never see her again. I never said I was sorry before she left. She just forgave me because that's who she is."

And that's what parents do, apparently. The ones who love without conditions, anyway.

[itchtokill]

"Then tell her." It seems ridiculous and obvious when she puts it like that. "You thought you'd never see her, but she's here, and you're here, what's stopping you now? Are you scared she'll change her mind, if you bring it up or something?" Claire is clearly an understanding sort of woman, she's already forgiven her even, Bree has virtually nothing to be concerned about, as far as Kol can see it.