Work Text:
You knew what it was like to be a woman - more than that, you knew what it was like to be a woman and loved. You were capable, and confident, and you were able to quiet a crowded room with one gesture or lead armies into war. You had a thousand people who celebrated with you, and you had friends and siblings who you celebrated with, and relaxed with, and talked to.
Talked to, and trusted.
You have none of that now. You lost it long before the train crash quite literally struck it all from your life.
You lost it when you saw your sister creating her own hope for herself and realized you would never be able to do the same. All your old friends told jokes you could barely remember and your parents thought you (thought, because they no longer live) the same daughter they left behind before the war. You tried not to be bitter when you thought of how she seemed to be everyone’s favorite without even trying, how she did not seem to understand how wrong the world’s become, how you no longer fit without trimming little bits of yourself away and stitching on new ones.
You lost it when you saw how your brother, the younger one - though none of you are young, not truly - used all his talents to spin the world into treating him as an equal. That felt too far, suddenly, disallowed in a way you didn't know how to vocalize. You weren't allowed to be both young and respected, were you? Maybe it was the sinking, choking thought that even when you looked your age again in some future that slipped through your grasp, all people might call you would be gentle, though it would no longer be accompanied with true respect. You saw already how your professors looked upon you with all the scorn old men have for young girls who are too serious and not quiet and pretty when they should be, and you wondered how you’d ever missed it. (On the days it hurts most, you paint your lips red and you smile, and you long for a weapon that can kill, that you were given in the same breath you were told a girl’s place was not in battle, though you made your way there anyway.)
You lost it when your brother, the older one - though you are all older than you look - stopped looking towards the future. When the four of you were kings and queens in the land that became your home, the strange land that made England all the stranger on return, it was always tomorrow the two of you spoke of. You talked of laws and of wishes and of what could be done. Now that you had returned to the present, he seemed only to want to talk of the past. You would have said you felt the same, if only in your head, but it felt shameful to dwell on it, on the fact that you want so badly to return to but were told you never could (and were told it was your own fault).
You lost it when you were told that, too - you lost it when the only one you’d ever so fervently admired told you that and expected you to accept it! Accept that it was final, that you’d lost everything.
But really, you lost it before any of that. It was when you tripped and tumbled out onto carpeted wooden floors and behind you a wardrobe door slammed closed. You picked yourself up like you always did, though your hands were no longer your own, and you could see your brothers and sister doing the same. In that moment, you hardly felt capable or confident or anything like yourself, just a silly little girl. And it took so long to change.