OOC: TW for mention of non-consent & past suicidal ideation
The guilt for startling the pretty mare lingers in the back of her mind, coloring her thoughts as she takes in her response. They are both uncertain, it seems, although the little dun could not pinpoint where her own hesitance stems from. She'd approached and been approached by any number of mares during her brief stint as the Peak's Prime Minister, and should not have had butterflies at the thought of a normal conversation with a perfect stranger. And yet she found her gaze flicking back toward the nameless mare every time she moved, drawn to her as a moth was to light.
As she began speaking, Roi quieted to listen, her dark-tipped ears pricking attentively forward as she began. She spoke of her siblings moving on and growing up and felt a familiar pang. She was the eldest of her close siblings, apart from Sig, and had watched each of them grow up and move on into their own lives. It hadn't struck her how far she'd fallen behind until she'd learned that little Aoife had already had a child that was grown and mature. She could already be a great-aunt for all that she knew, and what did she have to show for it? A fractured heart and a string of broken promises?
Falling in love. And I should want that, right? . She went on, the dun's brow furrowed, still silent. She nodded, but it was less agreement with whether the other mare should want love, and more an indication to go on as she wrestled with the sudden and overwhelming realization that perhaps she was not alone. That perhaps she was not the only one whose broken heart was neither tattered nor torn from overuse, but lying dusty and forgotten somewhere in a box no one had ever bothered to unpack. It was a dizzying prospect to consider, especially after lingering for far too long among Tyr and Oswin, who had both abandoned their prospective titles to live in their very own happily ever after.
Roisin's gaze had drifted to the ground briefly as Claret spoke, but as she mentioned being held captive, her gaze shot back to her in surprise and shared commiseration, but she let her finish, chewing on her own thoughts.
"Maybe," she murmured in answer without conviction. "But... I never wanted that either," she admitted, though it was the first time in her life she had ever put words to the feeling. "I watched my mother get her heart broken each time my dad left, and I watched her go back to him each time they returned. She raised so many of us with only stories of what my father was like because I was the only one until my littlest sister that got to spend any time at all with him." Time and again, Bjorn had abandoned them to the whims of the island, disappearing off to his Nordurland. Roisin had never bothered to hide her bitterness about his absences, and even now the abandonment stung. So many things about her childhood could have been different if he had just been there. Even if his only contribution had been acting as a lightning rod for Nyimara's hatred, Roisin would have been grateful for it.
"I watched my mother suffer because of the jealousy of one of his previous mares and I didn't want to become either of them." Her frown deepened as the guilt of lumping Siobhan and Nyimara together in any kind of box was reprehensible. It was Bjorn's apathy that had allowed Nyimara to gain a crown and power to first begin inflicting pain on Sionhan, and it was his subsequent absence that forced the silver witch to take Aranck as a partner and had invited the worst into their lives. "Neither someone so absently cruel as to allow the horrors he let that mare accomplish, nor so tender-hearted as to forgive a lover that would allow it the way my mother does."
"I'm sorry you went through that," she murmured with a miniscule shake of her head after a brief pause. Roisin knew from personal experience that even as she issued them, such condolences were empty. No amount of expressing how sorry you were someone went through something could undo the pain and anguish of living through it. "I was only a girl when my mother was taken in my stead, and when she came back with my little brother in her belly, I..." Roi trailed off, her voice thick.
"I knew it was my fault," she finally managed a moment later. Aranck's reign of terror had happened nearly a decade ago and yet the wounds it had left behind seemed unlikely to ever fade. He had chosen Roisin at Nyimara's request, knowing that taking Siobhan's daughter was the most surefire way to wound the red mare. Siobhan hadn't hesitated to offer herself in place of her daughter, and so they had all watched as Siobhan - heavily pregnant with her twins - marched off into imprisonment with monsters who did not bother to pretend they would not harm her. "If I'd only been more brave, more adamant that I go..." She trailed off with a shake of her head and shifted to stand closer to the mare as if that alone would ward off the chill in her heart. Roisin hadn't even been two years old then, but the guilt of failing her mother - as she saw it - had chased her to the edge of a cliff and then very nearly over it.
"For me," she explained, her gaze cutting shamefully away from the speckled mare. "It's not just that I don't want it, but even if I did... I don't feel like I'd be worthy of it if I found it." She swallowed, hard, and lifted her wet gaze to the other mare. "So I guess that means we're both broken."