entrancelogs | + Guilt Runs Deep

+ Guilt Runs Deep

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!

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[He's seen scenes like this before, and needs no explanation to understand what's happening. The loss of a child is a very particular kind of grief, and very particular to the mother of that child. He feels like an intruder here, but the door he came in by is gone, and gives him little choice other than stepping forwards and sitting carefully on the edge of the bed while Claire cries.]

My dear girl... [Regis says softly, gently touching her arm.

No need to ask why this happened. How this happened. They never really know. There are tales, stories, superstitions that he could list, but none of them have basis in fact. Sometimes... this is just how it ends.]

What will you call her?

[ She told him once, briefly, about the loss of her child. Never in great detail, though.

When she sees him, his familiar enough to her, important enough to her that her chin trembles. ]

I didn't get to name her.

[ Tears fill her eyes, glassy with a fever she once had. ]

They thought I was going to die. Mother Hildegard called her Faith.

[ A name Claire never would have chosen in a thousand years. ]

Faith.

[It doesn't sound like a name that Claire would choose, but one that a religious person may turn to for lack of anything else. Regis shifts a little closer, enough to be able to put his arm gently around the woman's shoulder, and he looks down at the tiny, still face of the babe in her arms.]

What would you have chosen?

[He keeps his voice low, soft, very warm. There is and will never be a frame of reference in his life for a loss like this one.]

[ Claire's quiet for a long moment and she leans back into him, this person she regards as safe. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knows this is in the past, but it all feels very real, down to the heat radiating off of her. ]

After my mother, I think. Or Jamie's. Ellen or Julia.

[ She whispers the words as if they're sacred. ]

But now, she'll always be Faith Fraser.

[When she leans in, he draws her very gently to his side and presses a kiss to the side of her head. Wonderland can offer up a great many wonderful things, when it has a mind to, but something like this should not be something to be so brazenly shared to anyone who might stumble upon it.]

Whatever you would have wanted her name to be, keep that in your heart, my dear girl.

[He touches her hand, where it curls against the blanket.]

You are her mother. Nothing supersedes that.

I couldn't keep her safe.

[ Claire aches as she looks down at the cold child in her arms. ]

I failed her, as her mother.

Oh, no... no.

[Being from the time period he is, one might expect Regis to have the same archaic views on childbirth as others of that time. He has lived long enough, though, to have developed his own thoughts far beyond that.]

No, my dear, dear girl. This isn't your fault. I promise you that.

[ Louise comes to take the dead baby from her arms and Claire collapses against Regis, her sobs turned against him now instead of her pillow. In between her sobs, she tries to speak, to explain. ]

I bled and thought nothing of it. I should have, I--

[ There's nothing she could have done and some rational part of her physician's mind knew that. Maybe if she'd been in a 20th-century hospital, but there wouldn't have been anything to be done in an 18th-century volunteer hospital. ]

You thought nothing of something which happens to many women when they carry a child.

[He doesn't think anything of putting both arms around her, of comforting her in the way he hopes is best as she turns her tears against his tunic.]

And I know... that knowing you could have done nothing doesn't ease the guilt. Nature is cruel, but this was not your fault.

[ Claire takes a shaky breath and lets it out, looking up at him. She blinks slowly, through the haze of the fever. ]

I used to talk to her. I could feel her tapping against me. Stretching. I felt every alive movement. She never stopped moving until that morning. I didn't...I didn't feel her move at all that day, but I thought nothing of it.

[ She's babbling, exhausted by a memory. Claire's head falls heavily on his shoulder. ]

Don't leave me, please.

Because you were busy, no..? She was quiet, and you were busy, and you thought nothing of it. That is no sin.

[But, ah. He places his hand against the side of her fever-damp hair and cradles her against him.]

If you can't leave this place, then I'll stay here with you. For as long as you want me to.

[ She burrows against him rather like a small child would with her father. Regis has filled that gap for her, of not having a father figure. She remembers being so much younger and so afraid because she was alone in the hospital dying. Jamie was in jail, and for the first time in so long, she'd cried for her parents. ]

I prayed for my father to come. And now you're here.

[ Her words are part fevered memory, part truth. She's told him how she looks up to him before. ]

[If Regis had a heart, a pulse, it would stutter upon hearing such words from her. She has intimated such things before, aligning him so readily to the position that she now places him far more firmly into, but he hadn't expected...

But, no, he should have expected it, shouldn't he? It's only a progression of everything that's come before.]

You honour me highly. [He says gently, lightly chafing her shoulder with the palm of his hand.] Are you tired, little one?

[ Claire nods, slowly curling her body with a pause to wince at phantom pain. ]

I'm so tired.

[ She'd been on the edge of death for hours and hours, alone and terrified, empty feeling. She hasn't escaped the guilt yet, but at least she isn't alone. ]

[There would only be so much he could do for her, here. That he could not be the one to convince her that she couldn't blame herself for this isn't taken as a slight. This is a unique pain, and a deep one, and that she will allow him to be here with her is more than enough.]

Come, lie down here. [He pats the pillow softly, invitingly.] I won't go anywhere. I swear it.

[ She does as he says and lays down. The loop plays, only Mother Hildegard stands with the baby now until Louise comes to take the baby.

Clare's eyes have closed to shut it out, letting herself be soothed by Regis being there. It doesn't take long before she's asleep, just as she'd eventually cried herself to sleep in the loop. Only this time, there are no tears as she drifts. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

+ Guilt Runs Deep

mid-memory // comin in real late but I said I would

it's okay i always need a reason to cry

weh

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