Nesta Archeron was alone in the bedroom she shared with her younger sisters. Elain was outside, taking care of the three flowers which had finally grown. Little Feyre was probably in the forest with her beloved bow and arrows hunting for something to eat. Spring was a good time for hunting, or so had said Thomas a year ago, when he tried to learn from Feyre how to set traps for rabbits; he was so stupid it took him months to learn how to tie the rope. Feyre had done it in a day. Still, Thomas was the closest thing to a husband Nesta would find in that village.
Nesta opened her drawer, the one with flames painted on it. Feyre had done that, too. She owned only 3 dresses, and it was already a luxury none of her sisters shared. They didn't really mind it, she realized one day, years ago: sure, it was sad not to have more clothes, but Elain actually preferred to waste her part of the money on seeds, and Feyre, of course, only used it for the essentials, and only if there were some coins left, she would buy paint.
It made her furious to know both of them had found something that made them happy. It was a selfish thought, she knew that, and she didn't mind it at all; selfishness was all she was taught for years, and somehow, it was one of those little things she refused to let go: only powerful people can afford to be selfish, and she wanted, more than she wanted anything else, to gain back that power she once had. Her sisters, unlike her, hadn't lost everything with their fortune, Feyre and Elain, even her father, still had the same hobbies they used to have and had found a way of keeping themselves busy.
But she didn't, she couldn't find anything inside her, any call, any passion. Nesta had loved music, and had loved to dance alone in the library of their old mansion, but now she had no instruments to play, no space to dance, and no books to read. She had nothing from her old life but Elain and her own few memories.
She took her favourite dress, the one she wore only once a year without any member of her family knowing. It was an actual dress from when they were rich, made of blue silk. Feyre and her had argued and said pretty awful things to each other last winter because of that dress that didn't even fit properly anymore, since her breast were bigger now than they used to be when she was fourteen. Feyre hadn't been able to hunt anything for a week and they were starving. Elain was sick, unable to come out of bed, and that had almost made her accept Feyre's order of giving her the dress to sell. She couldn't let her die, not Elain; she would have let their father rot, Feyre or even herself, but not Elain. She spend that night at Clare's house (not much bigger than their cottage) and cried herself to sleep. When she woke up, she had made her mind clear: she was going to give little Feyre the dress, even if it meant losing the only thing she kept from her old life, from herself, and finally turn into the poore skeletal girl she had been for 3 years now. For Elain she would kill every part of her soul.
But when she entered the cottage, there was her sister, sitting next to the fire in their father's chair, and with color in her cheeks. Feyre was nowhere to be seen, and when she finally came, Nesta made sure to let her know how wrong she had been; she let all her despair from the last days and the bitterness of 3 years of poorness fall upon her little sister and then went to their room, locked the door, took the blue dress in her arms and cried in silence. Feyre had cried, too, and she hadn't care.
This time, when Nesta put the dress on, the last two buttons didn't close, her breasts were too big for it to fit, but she didn't mind, since she was not going to leave the house. Her father also knew what day it was, so he was not going to be around until midnight, probably. Nesta sat on the bed and sang an old piece her mother used to make her play in the harp when she was 6. Her voice had always been beautiful, she knew it, but Elain and Feyre were too young to remember she enjoyed singing, dancing and playing. Or they chose to forget, she couldn't be sure. When the song was over, the oldest of the Archeron sisters tried to imagine her mother, the desaprobatory look on her face and her voice saying "again" because her younger self had missed a note, but couldn't hear her voice in her head or see her beautiful face.
Nesta's pulse quickened, but she forced herself to keep calm and evoque other of the three memories of her mother that she kept, even if they were les pleasant.
Her mother in her bed, dying, the last time she had seen her. Nesta had said, as many other times how much she loved her with her eyes wet but no tears: her mother would have said terrible things if she had seen her cry instead of behave and control her emotions. Her mother had looked at her with nothing but indifference in her eyes and said "of course you do".
Nesta only allowed herself to think about her mother once a year, in the anniversary of her death. She kept only three pieces of her, and refused to let them go. Sometimes she felt like her mother would be furious at her for being so weak and depend so much on things like those, but she needed to remember, she couldn't let everything she knew, had and was just… go away. This time, the last words of her mother for her didn't come out. Those four words, the last thing her mother dedicated to her… they had disappeared from her memory. Well, she remembered the words, of course, even the disdain in her mother's tone every time she talked to her, but Nesta couldn't hear her mother's voice in her head.
Nesta's heartbeat was faster than it had been minutes ago as she tried to find the last piece of her mother in herself: the worst memory of all, the last hope.
It had happened a few minutes after the second one, when Nesta left her mother's room, Elain came in, and she and Feyre met in the corridor. The youngest of the sisters was dirty, her hands fully covered in blue and red paint, her hair loose and messy, her dress wrinkled. Nesta couldn't let her come like that to their mother's room, if she saw Feyre like that… Those had been Nesta's thoughts, but her actions were way different. She said nothing, did nothing, but to look at her youngest sister with the cold disdain she had learned from her mother, the disapprobation in her irises. Feyre returned the look understanding nothing, as usual.
Feyre never tried, she was lazy in her lessons: she was already 6 and only knew the letters and a few words. When she was her age, Nesta could already divide and read to Elain those difficult books about plants that she enjoyed so much. But Feyre had no ambition, she didn't even try to please their parents...their mother. Nesta would rip her skin of if that made her mother proud, she would do anything if that meant her mother finally said "I love you" to her. No, she would do anything for way less, for a warm look, of a "good job" note in her bedroom when she went to sleep after a day of harp, dance and math classes. But Feyre didn't care for those things, she didn't mind any of that, and yet the treatment they got from their mother was the same.
So she let Feyre enter the bedroom looking like that when Elain came out, crying, and stormed to her own room. Nesta wanted to follow her, cry with her for the imminent lose, but instead she stood by the door and heard what her mother told Feyre.
The next minutes were thorns in Nesta's heart that had deepened with the years. What her mother asked Feyre to do hours before dying made Nesta know a new king of rage she hadn't yet learned how to control, or how to bear. Their mother had asked Feyre, the wild child who couldn't remember a three-step dance, to take care of the family. She encomended the task to the youngest one, the least prepared. It should have been her. She had been working so much for so many years to please her, to be a proper lady as she wanted her daughters to be… and it was not enough for her mother, she was never enough.
Nesta thought a memory like that would never vanish from her memory, but it actually did. She tried to focus and she tried to remember her mother's voice while talking to Feyre, but the delicate sound of her words didn't came out. She could hear them in her head as she would do her whole life, but it was her own voice.
It took her a few seconds to realize what that meant. she had lost her mother, her face, her voice, her smell. She could remember nothing but the awful words she got from her day after day. The tears came out of her eyes immediately, but her mouth made not sound.
Elain found her sitting in the bed wearing the dress and immediately understood what was going on. She undresses her sister and prepared a bath for her. Nesta didn't speak as she went under the water neither did she when Elain dressed her again with one of her own dresses. It was outworn in some parts, but she had been saving money for an iron bracelet to give nesta on her birthday next week. The two sisters sit in the bed again, in silence, and Elain dried Nesta's tears with a napkin, knowing doing it with her hands was inappropriate for a lady and therefore inappropriate in her sister's eyes.
"She is gone" Nesta said quietly.
"Finally"
Elain knew how her sister felt. She had always known how much Nesta hated herself because of their mother and how much she hated herself for not being able to stop loving her. She had seen her waste away as a kid to please her and how it was never enough for their mother. She had felt like that in the past, too, but not the same way, not so intensely. She had prayed to unknown gods for Nesta to forget their mother, to be happy with herself, but she didn't know if it that was possible. Had Nesta ever been happy? Had Nasta ever not hated herself?
Nesta was her protector and had always been, but once every year Elain had to take her sister's role. She knew how much the oldest of the Archerons was willing to give for her, and even if it was not as obvious for the rest of the world, she and Nesta knew she returned the sentiment. Forever.