And Hermione listens. Every thing that Charles shows her she drinks in, and she has to breathe in sharply as it sweeps over her, digging into her heart and leaving fresh little scars there, opening old, salt-broken wounds. She knows what it's like, to try and hold things together, to try and push everything into one piece, and sometimes it's impossible - sometimes you just want to break. She can empathise and she feels it even now, wanting to reach out and wrap herself around Charles because she understands. It might not be identical, their situations might not directly mirror each other, but it doesn't stop the flow of empathy.
Slowly, her mind opens.
Instead of the good things, Charles can witness the bad, the evil. He sees a picture of a tower falling apart, hundreds of dead bodies, the feelings of guilt in her heart tied without any doubt to it; that the deaths were a result of her own actions. Hermione shares the memories of offending a native and being cursed, unable to eat or sleep, only surviving on water and biscuits and almost dying from it. Memories of a giant, winged monster, like a dragon but worse, haunting her in visionary nightmares before it became a reality, causing her skin to rot and her hair to fall out. There's a towering image of Gilgamesh and the love-hate-idiot-why emotions that come with it and how he had come so close to murdering her in cold blood, as a lesson, to teach her to be brave.
It doesn't stop. There's the memory of the first time she killed someone, of Dorian dying for her and the sword through his stomach touching her own, her body transforming into a lion before she literally ate someone alive. Memories of her heartbreak, of losing people, of the weight of power as she rose up to become Marchioness - the knowledge that people hated her, the fights she had with Katsa, learning that her best friend intended to murder people in her court because she felt it was right. Losing Harry to some kind of darkness she couldn't understand, ending up isolated because she couldn't bear to be around people anymore.
She knows she's crying now, but she leans against Charles all the same, afraid and freed all at once.
cw: gore, death
And Hermione listens. Every thing that Charles shows her she drinks in, and she has to breathe in sharply as it sweeps over her, digging into her heart and leaving fresh little scars there, opening old, salt-broken wounds. She knows what it's like, to try and hold things together, to try and push everything into one piece, and sometimes it's impossible - sometimes you just want to break. She can empathise and she feels it even now, wanting to reach out and wrap herself around Charles because she understands. It might not be identical, their situations might not directly mirror each other, but it doesn't stop the flow of empathy.
Slowly, her mind opens.
Instead of the good things, Charles can witness the bad, the evil. He sees a picture of a tower falling apart, hundreds of dead bodies, the feelings of guilt in her heart tied without any doubt to it; that the deaths were a result of her own actions. Hermione shares the memories of offending a native and being cursed, unable to eat or sleep, only surviving on water and biscuits and almost dying from it. Memories of a giant, winged monster, like a dragon but worse, haunting her in visionary nightmares before it became a reality, causing her skin to rot and her hair to fall out. There's a towering image of Gilgamesh and the love-hate-idiot-why emotions that come with it and how he had come so close to murdering her in cold blood, as a lesson, to teach her to be brave.
It doesn't stop. There's the memory of the first time she killed someone, of Dorian dying for her and the sword through his stomach touching her own, her body transforming into a lion before she literally ate someone alive. Memories of her heartbreak, of losing people, of the weight of power as she rose up to become Marchioness - the knowledge that people hated her, the fights she had with Katsa, learning that her best friend intended to murder people in her court because she felt it was right. Losing Harry to some kind of darkness she couldn't understand, ending up isolated because she couldn't bear to be around people anymore.
She knows she's crying now, but she leans against Charles all the same, afraid and freed all at once.
That's who I am. That's what I've done. ]