The Long Walk Home
The physical pain she endured as she stumbled home across the darkened meadow was unbearable, but in her mind it was so much less than the humiliation of it...the shear degradation. Her dirty face was streaked with tears, and blood flowed down her thighs and calves. The ache was deep inside her, rooted in her womb and her heart and she was so far from home.
Why had she let him touch her, she sobbed to herself. Teresa had warned her about men...about their coarse hands and brutish stares. About their lies and desires. But she had refused to believe her cousin, trusting that somehow Edwin was different.
Serpent damn him and his cursed House, she wanted to believe him! Anything must be better than this nomadic life of theirs, constantly on the run from Zane's forces...enemies at every corner. He had flattered her...promised to protect her by offering her the sanctuary of House Jesby...to take her away from all of this. He had offered her his love and renewed her hope, and when she screamed, he ignored her cries and sought only to finish his pleasure. Then it was done, and seeing the blood...the damage done...he fled, realizing that the wrath of Fiona would be savage indeed.
Abandoned, she had crawled from the bloody bed, used the nightstand to prop herself up, and then shambled out of the room...over the cobbled streets she wandered, delirious with pain. She had only run away from them one day prior. Her only hope was that perhaps they were still at the old monastery two miles outside of town. It was a slight chance, but it was all she had left. But two miles was so far to walk...and the pain was relentless, a pulsing rhythm that robbed her of life and will.
She was only a quarter-mile from the monastery when she collapsed, unable to go further. She has lost too much blood, and could feel herself growing faint. To have come so far, only to die a stone's throw from help...the irony of it was cruel. Worse still, after years of struggling to hide and survive, to die at some man's hands...to be killed by some amateur Lothario. Daughter of Fiona and a failure! She had no strength left, save to raise her head a little a scream her pain and anger aloud. She cried out to her mother, and then lay still.
When she awoke days later, she didn't recognize her surroundings. She hurt still, but was stronger. Not easy to kill those of the blood of Amber, she thought, even when one wanted to die. And then her mother came in the room, and she wished anew that she had simply died. Could the physical pain really compare to seeing the depths of disappointment in her mother's eyes...to feel her anger? Whimsy flinched from her mother's gaze, but it mattered not. There minds were too close...they understood each other too well to hide their true emotions. An unspoken phrase rested in Fiona's eyes: how dare you!
"I've done what I can to heal you. Though I lack Teresa's talents, you should recover with no complications," Fiona began, coolly.
"Where is Teresa," her daughter inquired quietly.
"She was out looking for you. We can't reach her via trump. I assume that she has been found by Zane's forces." she replied succinctly.
Then Whimsy understood. She was to blame for both her own weakness and for the loss of Teresa, who had cared for her a great deal. Pathetic enough to ruin her own life, to make her family worry and suffer, but to have been responsible for one of them falling into the hands of their enemies....
"Just what were you thinking...," Fiona began with a hiss.
"That's enough, Fi. Let her rest," Caine interrupted, emerging from the hallway. The locked eyes for a moment, Fiona's gaze steely...his sadly imploring. Fiona turned away from him and left the room. Caine merely looked at Whimsy consolingly, and then followed his sister out.
Her mother avoided her for the next two weeks. Whimsy sank into her own misery, never explaining what had happened. She wept at night, slept through as much of the day as she could, and slowly recovered. The others didn't ask her much; they concentrated on finding Teresa, to no avail. At the end of two weeks, Whimsy began to have trouble keeping her food down. She kept it to herself, attributed it initially to her poor health, but eventually she was forced to recognize that she was pregnant. At that point her hysteria gave way to a much grimmer emotion: despair. She had been burden enough to them...a child would only create further hindrance.
It took her only three days to prepare her escape. Fiona was focused enough on avoiding her daughter and finding Teresa that she did not realize until it was too late. Whimsy had fled once more, leaving a weeping construct in her bed, cloaked in illusion, looking like nothing so much as one of her childhood dolls. And they could find no trace of her passing.
A full nine months passed before Teresa found Whimsy in the city known as Lepidopolous. Bleeding and delirious, Teresa found her in an alley outside a medical clinic, clutching her dead child to her breast. She healed Whimsy as best she could, though the daughter of Fiona was loathe to endure anyone's touch. Together they buried her son Thorn, who had been stillborn. It was only days after his burial that they were both found by Caine and the others. But by then it was a very different Whimsy who returned to the fold.
Of her disappearances, nothing was said. Everyone seemed to understand that the topic was better left alone. The whimsical child was gone, and in her place a grim young woman stood, violent and calculating...bitter and angry. She hid herself in some ways, not letting them note how her odd notions had taken on a more homicidal bent, her humor more cruel. And yet she was loyal to them, and loved her family. Later some understanding was reached between Whimsy and Fiona; they were recconciled, and over time she relaxed somewhat, but she would never again be an innocent.