Hurt
A/N: This has been rattling around in the old brain-attic for a few months. Timeline overlap with lostrocket's wonderful Away the Dark is coincidental.
Scarlett was right.
He was a murderer. He had killed their baby. Their—his—darling, sweet, fearless Bonnie. Who lay as though sleeping in her small bed. She would never be old enough for a big-girl bed, now. And he was totally to blame. He could not bring himself to deny her anything, and it had cost her her life.
From the sickening dark swirl came haunting pictures and echoing sounds—splinter, thump, hoofbeats… splinter, thump, hoofbeats—unceasing, unyielding. There was no relief anywhere, not in Belle's comforting embrace, not at the bottom of a bottle or five. Out of this vast, yawning agony, only two thoughts clearly bubbled to the surface: Bonnie was dead because he spoiled her, and because he had cared so little about others for so long. Faceless men lurked in the periphery of his vision, men he'd killed over gold and rum and women he didn't even know, men—and some boys—fighting to keep a nation together, fighting for a cause he had always known they would win.
He had watched people die, by his own hand, and never spared a thought for their families, for the people who loved them and waited in vain for their return. And all that time, the Furies had sat back silently, counting his toll, waiting to exact it back on him. Splinter, thump, hoofbeats… The universe no longer seemed a great cosmic joke, but a relentless accountant, mercilessly balancing scales. And he had only himself to blame. If he had cared more, sooner. If he had cared less, now. A lifetime of selfish acts culminating in his desperate desire to remain first and only in his precious daughter's affections: he had given in to her every whim, and this was what he had finally wrought. Splinter, thump, hoofbeats…
Scarlett was right—he was a murderer.
But it did not make him hate her any less.