"Last night I wept. I wept because the process by which I have become a woman was painful. I wept because I was no longer a child with a child's blind faith. I wept because my eyes were opened to reality...I wept because I could not believe anymore and I love to believe. I can still love passionately without believing. That means I love humanly. I wept because I have lost my pain and I am not yet accustomed to its absence." - Anais Nin
Where had it gone? That happiness that had filled her to her toes and kept her in the clouds. As a child, although motherless and lacking a father, she had smiled, light exuding her eyes and warming the lives of those around her. Magic curled in her blood and singed in her veins and yet it was her blind faith that made her a force to be reckon with. Bonnie did not recall when it was that realization came crashing in but the moment it did, her lungs lacked air and she forgot that her heart pounded and desperately wanted to beat...to live...
Perhaps it was the moment she entered her grams manor, felt the empty-silence wash over her and knew that something was awfully wrong. Pain had etched her features but it was her resolve and spirit that snapped; like a twig under a careless foot that neither cared nor knew the damage that ensued.
She had no one left.
Her eyes were so swollen with the tears she had let slip that they remained shut, unable to open and like that, she slumbered.
Pain had drained her heart and spirit and all that remained was a listless girl still shrewd but lacking the vibrancy that used to wrapped around her like an aura. She slept until the morning rays sneaked through her thick winter curtains and settled on her face.
Family.
It was all that she yearned for and yet it was denied at her doorstep.
Her mother and now her grams.
Was it too much that ask for? That she was allowed air to breathe and have warmth to come home too?
Perhaps life was not meant for her and the only purpose she fulfilled was looking on, a by-stander among her friends whose lives she gathered and fixed and protected but never fully entered anymore.
Where was her place?
Night after night, the thought that she was only used for her magic and was otherwise a listless void...blotch more like it, haunted her and she began to dread sleep.
She could hide behind a languid smile but it was in her subconscious where old demons thrived and emptiness consumed her; the past coming to reside in her thoughts and plunging her in despair.
That night was no different...
"Mama?" her voice was the only sound in the dead of the night and she was five again. She was five again and her one piece pajama with the blue bow at the neckline was riding up on one leg. She clutched at the stuffed bear she had gotten at Christmas more securely against her warmth. The brisk night air ran through the thin material of her clothing and brushed against her face and hair, causing her teeth to chatter. The water by the shore line of the lake at the back of her grams lake house was inclining inwards and each retreat pushed the water closer to her tiny feet. Her nose was stinging and she began to tremble. Usually when her mother sleep-walked she could easily find her, slip her small hand into her mothers much larger one and pull her out of her trance. It was different this time. Something cold and empty lurked in the pit of her stomach and replaced the beating in her chest.
Panic began to boil in her throat and she fought back the sobs that threatened to betray just how helpless and weak she truly was. Mist from the water slamming against the rocks grasped at her face, drenching her further in her despair. The night sky darkened ominously and the blue glow of the moon that normally reflected over the water and the shore turned to pewter silver. A storm was coming in and the water became aggressive. Bonnie recoiled as the biting cold of the water coiled around her feet and began to rush back to the house, positive that her Grams would know what to do. She would know where her mother had gone.
As she padded up the stairs leading back to the house, she missed the figure of her mother, standing on the cliff of high rocks over on the other side of their lake house; the lighthouse looming behind her. She stood there listlessly, her limbs stringing alongside her; lifeless and limp. She did not rouse from her unconscious state until after she had dived from the cliff, her body making contact with the frigid water; the dark. gloomy abyss enveloping her. She snapped out of it instantly and fought to resurface but it was too late...the water was consuming the life she had unwittingly fed it and the last thing she saw was a glimpse of the moon above her and a small bow being toyed around in the wind, skittering to and fro; looking a lot like that of Bonnie's. She hoped and prayed that for once, Bonnie was tucked away, that she did not witness her under the sway of black magic. Closing her eyes, she passed on the light of her powers to her heir and allowed herself to be drawn to the lake bed, her back hitting the sand and that involuntary breath she had been fighting to take finally releasing...
"Your mother betrayed me for the first and last time the moment you were born and protected you from death by my hands. To this day I wonder why Nicklaus...worthless and a disgrace to my name..." He turned over, the room getting too hot to breath and suddenly his dream switched. He was back in the dungeon of their home, chained to the solid stone wall. He wrangled and clawed until he bleed at the wrists, the enchanted steel chains that trapped him unsettling his very nature to be free. 285.He had begun to hate the number, seething with rage and bitterness. 285 whip lashes with a cat-o-nine was torture but his father knew he could endure the pain and the almost unbearable process in while the wounds began to heal, but not before it was seared with hot coals, which were laid out of the marble slab. The first time he had seen the table, a kindle of hope lit his eyes as he hoped his father, having seen his bloodied back and heard his heart-wrenching, blood curdling roars had satiated his blood-lust. At last, his hope was crushed instantaneously as two of Mickael's men entered, detached his chains from the wall and in his weak and helpless trance of agony and torment, pressed him onto the table and wound the chains so there was no escape. He yelled and bucked, the instant contact with the burning coals shooting volts of fire onto his wounds. The chain pulled taught and he used his feet to lift off and away from the table only to have his feet dig into the hottest coals of them all, the tender soles unable to fight like the thicker, now scorched flesh of his back. He collapsed and only flinched when his back made contact with the coals. He went unconscious then, the tingle of blood oozing from his feet down onto the cold of the ground.
He did not regret killing the man he had only sought love and approval from. Yes he was the bastard child of his mothers infidelity to Mickael but what was an innocent baby to blame for the mistake of his mother? Had she loved him, she would have killed him but again he was haunted by her tears.
"How could I sacrifice you? That would make me no worse than your father. Contrary to the hate he has unleashed upon you for my mistakes, I can never regret you or any of your siblings." He had brushed away from the clinging grasp she had on his shoulders, crying into his chest as if it would heal all the years, centuries of agony and torture he had received, never once a consoling word or comforted kiss on the cheek. Bitterness boiled in him but that feeling of unworthiness would not be wiped away; snubbed out like he had finally made his father kneel and beg like he had.
His voice still rang in his head, as he dripped with the blood he had so quickly drawn from his "monstrous" son...
"Who would love a useless, pitiful excuse of a bastard..."
To this day his words refused to leave him be and somewhere in the deepest, darkest parts of his soul, he feared that they were true...after all who would love the dark prince that always appeared to drive away the happiness in the lives of his dear ones and only cast despair...an ominous cloud that never knew where he belonged...