Bespeak: to show; indicate
February 21, 1017
She did not want to be here. However much she screamed into the wind, however long she drifted through the endless, dark forest, however much she begged to be gone from this place, to simply disappear, she remained.
She did not know why. Helga said, with such a tragic look on her face it nearly shook her from her self-pity, that it was because of the manner of her death. She was so young, so filled with things left unsaid, undone, so many emotions filling the bloodstain hidden by her cape that life could not let her go.
It wasn't fair. Life had never been fair to her. She could have been great. She should have been great. But he had ruined all that. And now she was stuck here, in this castle which she had tried only to leave behind in her childhood. Her mother was dead. Dead before she even could hear of her daughter's fate. Godric was dead, too, from several years before. And Salazar… who knew what had become of him. Helga was the only one left, and soon she would be gone just the same.
Helena was destined to drift through these halls for all of time, alone, and watch the world she had had no chance to impact. She was the first bloody memory trapped here. All because of him. And where was he in all of this? She had seen his body, his sacrifice. But what sacrifice was that? He was gone now, too. Free. Like she could never be.
She hovered in her tower – the tower that had been her chamber for all of her childhood – and did not speak anymore. She let the cape cover her marring wound. She would not immortalize her story, she vowed. It was short and gruesome and filled with shame and pettiness and regret. She would at least not be bound by her name and her misdeeds in the afterlife.
And that was where he found her. She saw him first in the mirror and thought for a split second that perhaps she was finally moving on. But when she turned, there he was, pearly white in the dim stone room. His clothes shone still with her blood, silver now, speaking of his crime for all of time. Speaking of it for him.
And she understood. He could not be free either. They were bound in this, in their last moments, the first bloodstains on her mother's noble school. It was still not fair. Nothing ever was, and she would see that it was not simply that way for her as the centuries swept past. But his silver bloodstains showed his repentance. It was not enough, but it would do.
A/N: Okay, a bit of a throwback from my normal stuff. I've never tried writing ghosts or so far from the main storyline of the books, but I've wanted to, so you'll have to tell me what you think. I don't anticipate very many chapters like this, but I figured the founders' era might come up in this. I like the flexibility of being able to go whenever the word fits. I hope you enjoyed this, even if it wasn't what you were expecting.