#gray faces

Catherine was a very religious woman. She held her beliefs close to her, no matter what lives she was in, and always made time for her Lord. And that was why she was up late.

And that was why she was in Anna’s room, holding her close and gently running her fingers through her hair. 

“Anna, Anna, shhh. What’s troubling you, mija?” Lina’s voice was gentle, rubbing the younger’s arm, placing a gentle kiss on her forehead. 

“I just...” The German queen sniffed. “I survived everybody, Lina... Outlived them and it’s like...” She hid deeper into Catalina’s embrace, trying to make herself a little less visible from the world. “I should have done more for them.”

“You weren’t in the country for the first three,” Lina reminded her gently, placing them in a lay-down position with the intention to stay the night. “You helped Kitty as best as you could, right?”

“And she got beheaded because I wasn’t-- enough--”

“And she still loves you. She’s still so grateful for every piece of happiness you gave her. We all feel the same way.”

Anna was quiet after that, just thoughtful, but as her lids felt healthy and her mind began to wander to other things, she was just so thankful that the eldest queen was here for her.

YE WILL

The queens had a routine that they stuck to religiously. Monday was a cleaning day, Tuesday was movie night, and so on, and each day of the week would be topped off with their show (unless one of more had a day off). 

Sunday was reserved for religious things upon Catalina’s request, but as well as this it was also their day to just be together. They’d make a Sunday dinner, they’d watch a few movies, they’d do a little karaoke, and then their favourite way to end the week was...

“Anne! Have you got the blankets yet?!” Jane called out towards the stairs behind them as she laid down on the sofa, head in Catalina’s lap and legs resting on Anna’s lap. Cathy was perched on the arm of the sofa, her arm wrapped around the eldest woman with a smile as Katherine sat on the floor on a beanbag, another one beside her where her cousin would sit.

“I’m comin’, I’m comin’, hold your horses!” Came the second queen’s response as she padded downstairs, Anna tutting in mock offense. 

Catalina was a proud queen. She felt she had a reputation to uphold as the first of six, and although she loved every single queen that lived with her, she felt like she had expectations placed on her. If you asked any of the other five, however, they’d tell you the opposite; she was her own person, and she was allowed to make mistakes.

The eldest took comfort in the fact that she didn’t have as much residual trauma as the others had (although that was a lie, and she often stayed awake at night praying a seemingly endless prayer to not let the others get sick of her and to not send her away), and like Jane, often helped the others when they had their bad moments.

But after a night of staying up late doing her (endless) prayers, Catalina just found herself so exhausted. It would have been her turn to make breakfast, always the early riser, but she found herself out of bed at nine in the morning. 

Katherine was actually, genuinely, having a good day. She had an opportunity to be with all the queens, whether that was making breakfast with Jane and helping her read the instructions, watching a morning show with Catalina on the television, playing games with Anne and hanging out with her cousin, exercising with Anna and watching a documentary with Cathy.

And she loved it. She loved doing stuff with her family, her fellow queens, but sometimes she was just... exhausted. It wasn’t like they did anything wrong, not at all, but Kitty just loved to sit in front of the keyboard she’d set in front of the window and just play, just to decompress.

Sometimes they were songs from the past, little tunes she’d learned when she was younger (though she never tried to think about much more than that when it came to those pieces), songs from more recently (Classical pieces were always so fun! But she also just enjoyed playing songs from musicals or what was in the charts) and other times, it was just original compositions she’d made. 

Sometimes, it really was just the little things that Catherine Parr could appreciate both in her past life and this one, and that was the couple of hours that the Earth stood still.

She’d step away from writing for a while, or if she slept early and woke up early, she’d move her rolling chair from her desk to the window to just... watch. Sometimes that was with a book in her hands, other times just a cup of hot tea and her laptop playing one of her many curated Spotify playlists quietly in her own little bedroom, and she’d just look out into her little London street.

She watched as the cats who’ve escaped their houses would play, or as the people who had work in the morning would briskly walk to their car or the bus stop close by. She’d even see dogwalkers start their day or even, on occasion, Anna do her daily morning runs.