+ 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

[poppycock]

Of course she's tried. She's his sister; his strong, capable sister, determined with every bone in her body, every fibre of her being to protect and survive. She would find a way out of this. Whether or not she knows where she is, what this is, she is far too powerful and clever not to fight.

His hands squeeze her arms as if to keep her here, keep her with him, and away from her torture. His eyes round with his own realization: she's been through this madness before, perhaps dozens of times. If she cannot alter it, there's only one use for this terrorization, only one thing left in which Wonderland holds over her head. "Your guilt is admirable, but it is useless." There's a note of pleading in his voice. Perhaps her guilt is justifiable. Perhaps she should feel it. He knows intimately about the guilt his family should bear, but that doesn't mean, right or wrong, he will allow it to weight them down. To weigh her down. She's a Mikaelson and she is more important than any remorse for a foul deed. She's his sister, and he needs her.

She's good to him. "You don't deserve to suffer indefinitely for this."

[deathlessness]

Honestly, she thought she had reached that point. She thought that she had managed to put it behind her, after five years and things coming back together between herself and Kol. But she knows that was as much show as it was false hope.

"Is it entirely fair of me to absolve myself, though?"

That's the real question. Is this the type of scenario where you can forgive yourself and that makes it all okay? She doesn't really think that that is where she should be starting.

[poppycock]

"It has nothing to do with being fair." The words come quick and sharp, decisive in only the way Klaus can be: he knows it is not a simple answer, nor a comforting one. But it's one that he, too, has lived with for ten centuries. There is blood on his hands. A never-ending river of betrayal and sin. Some he cares for and some he does not: through time, through desensitivity, through necessity.

But he knows what it's like to have them stained. He is past trying to rub the red off. He lives with those brands.

He doesn't want that for Freya. It's why there is fear and desperation in his eyes; he considers that because of his own wretchedness, he will never be able to pull her out of this hell. That, even more important, he'll never be able to aide her outside of it. In the same moment, he knows he won't need to do so. Freya is perfectly capable of it herself, and perhaps if she can't clean off the blood on her hands, it's not too late to atone for it.

"There is only one way for you here and that is forward. Davina may never forgive you; you may never be able to forgive yourself—" His voice becomes watery; his smile is sad. "But you can always do better, as Elijah would say." He lifts his hand at that to cradle her face.

Their brother did this wrong too. They both know that. All the more reason to invoke his name: if he can find his way through this debris, so can she. So can they, as Elijah has forever wanted for him. For their family.

[deathlessness]

Freya considers his words carefully, and nods because he's not wrong. She can't let the guilt drown her if she expects to survive, and he's right. Davina may never forgive her. Kol may never forgive her. But she has to deal with it and accept that it happened all the same.

"Do you really think we're capable of better?"

Given all the damage they've done, time and time again.

[poppycock]

No. The answer is in his eyes, his mind; a dim flicker. He has the same doubts, the same fears: how could they be? How could anything he has done — that their family has done — how can anything after that ever be enough? Be better?

But it has to be. Holding her tightly, firmly in his grasp, thinking of Hope — it has to be, no matter what they've done, what they might still do. "Yes." He says firmly, forcefully, as if he needs to believe in it himself. A part of him does. "We've already started."

[deathlessness]

She exhales slowly as she looks up at him, a small watery smile because she knows that the things they do to make things better aren't really for them. They are for Hope, so that she can live in a world where her parents didn't ruin everything for her.

She glances back over his shoulder to the scene behind them for a moment. "I just wish I could make this right."

[poppycock]

He knows. He knows she wishes this; of course she would. Ruthless through Freya is, she has a good heart. With a gentle squeeze, with faith in his eyes, he says, "Perhaps you do."

[deathlessness]

That may be true. The story isn't over yet, even if it feels like it's already been done. She doesn't know what she will do, but for now, she has time. The image finally starts to crumble, around them, fading into history where it belongs and Freya sighs heavily, before turning back to her brother.

"I don't know about you, but I need a drink."