YOU WILL TAKE THE HIGH ROAD,

@copiesofme​ asked: “You don’t grieve. You shatter.” From Pirate Dolores.

      How many nights had Anne spend laying in her cot and wishing that something had taken her, too? It would be better than this uncertain stretch of time ahead of her where she wonders how long it would be before she could join them all. All of those who’d worked their way into heart, and remained there even long after they were nothing but bone beneath the earth. Good things didn’t last in this world, and Anne’s naivety had been the one thing that had let her down above all else. She believed that once they were free of that prison, whether that would be by hanging or by escape, that they would be able to just take off into the world where no one knew who they were and live just as they wanted to. Anne and James would be together, they would have their son and their daughter and the world would be wonderful. They would work hard, but their home would be filled with laughter and love.

      That had been robbed from them the moment they were shoved into those shitty little cells. Treated like they were less than human because they had turned pirate and turned against the expectations of the poorer classes. If asked if she would do anything differently, Anne never would. The few short years James Kidd had been in her life had been when she’d truly started living. Truly loved in a way that left her breathless and wishing that she still had it. Sometimes when she wakes up in the morning, there are a few blissful moments where she reaches for the space beside her where he would usually be moulded against her back. He is never there. Not anymore. Sometimes, she takes someone in the crew to bed, just so that illusion doesn’t shatter as quickly.

      Anne spends more time than she’d like, because alcohol has a way of numbing everything that’s bad and turning it into something more neutral. Stops the ghosts in her head from rattling their chains, and puts a hand over the mouth of her rage so she can be a bit more palatable to talk to. What they don’t know is that she’s heard how the men whisper and speculate what happened between the time that she’d left the ship to her inevitable return. 

      Tonight is another one of those nights, where she can see, hear and smell everything as clearly as if she were still there. She has taken to sitting against the wide wooden railing and swinging her legs into open air. Were it not dark, she might’ve pushed off and fallen in, cherished the shock of the cold water on her skin and the distraction that it offers, however brief.

@takivvatanga​ asked: "When I'm angry I don't yell - I burn." (Assire)

      Anne wishes she could say the same for herself. When the anger takes over, yelling feels like all the doppler could truly do. Stomp her feet, kick up a fuss and uselessly waggle her fists around like it was going out of fashion. In some ways, it had been described as a wonderful thing by those who knew her well enough to discover what she was but it had been an endless frustration for her that she could never truly take up arms and join her men in battle, or give a cheeky, handsy bastard a good hard slap. 

       Sometimes, it gets bad enough that she is at the point where everything catches fire only for it to fizzle into numbness. Burning would be better than that sinking feeling of going from one extreme to that weird, sinking feeling in the aftermath that settles in her guts like a stone. Anne moves to settle against the edge of the dock with her feet hanging off the sides. Even though the tide has come in, the waves barely lap at the toe of a well-worn and torn boot.

@bardbattled​ asked: ❛ he makes my tongue so weak it forgets what language to speak in. ❜

      Being in love was a wonderful thing. Anne had seen it a hundred times with many different outcomes. There was wedded bliss, that slow burn wonderful kind of love, and the kind that fizzles out in its infancy. Looking at Elsie, now, Anne can see it on her. In the brightness of her eyes, the tenderness of her smile as she thinks of the person her affections are directed towards. She wonders, vaguely, whether or not she will have something as brilliant as that and if she would ever wear that very same expression in her lifetime. She hopes so. It looks like a wonderful thing. There would be many years ahead of her where she thinks that she might find someone who makes her feel that same way, and Anne hopes that she has the good sense to chase it before it turns into a one that got away kind of situation.

       Anne had always been a woman who had hoped for a dizzying romance that would be sung in taverns through the lips of bards. Not for it’s grandeur, but for it’s gentleness and the way that love had a habit of defining people. It had shown itself in how she’s conducted weddings; how she’d walked, smiling to her own; how she’d welcomed  her son into the world and smiled despite the fact that she’d almost died. It had shown itself in how she had faced down dragons, trolls and whatever else the world would decide to throw at her, all for the sake of some peace and quiet. Anne would have loved how the bards had sung of the dragonborn and her love, had he survived it. The tales, now, remind her of drinking curdled milk. It sat uncomfortably in her stomach until she’d been forced to excuse herself to take in some air.

     She had considered taking back her role as a priestess, but with what she had seen and who she had lost, well-wishing to newly married couples didn’t sit right with her and were it not the quickening of a child in her belly, Anne would have sold her sword and her muscle to whoever would need it. Her life was not completely her own because of it, but it would be the final gift that he blessed her with. 

      Grief was a complicated thing. It was a consequence of loving someone so much that her bones ache for them in a way that catches her off guard. Anne thinks if things are clean, then the messiness of her heart and head will allow her some reprieve and a rare moment where she can breathe. She would have no such luck, it would seem, for as she moved to shake the water from the plate in her hands, it was quick to drop and shatter into a thousand pieces. 

       For the first time since Anne had returned to Riften, she cries. Not over the broken plate, as one who didn’t know her well might think, but over everything else. The horridness she has seen in the world since she’d been arrested had been quick to burst the bubble on the excitement she had held at being able to see the world, and somewhere between her head being on that chopping block and the fall of Alduin, it had felt like nothing was going right.