Divergence (Originally Posted in 2009)

[JewellRavenlock]

“That’s a good girl.” Even though Jewell had done little to nothing in the end, the Doctor delivered the baby before cutting the umbilical cord and handing the child off to the nurse as he prepared to receive the placenta.

Stephen had become alarmed when Jewell’s eyes had suddenly closed, but he was distracted by the doctor and the baby he had just delivered. The room was very quiet. Why was the nurse rushing out of the room with the baby so quickly? The room so silent. Why did she take their little girl away? He barely even got to see her, to look at her. She had been covered in blood, so much blood. His wife’s blood. Her skin looked blue, too, just like Jewell’s hair. He craned his neck for a better look as the nurse left. Why did she leave so quickly? The silence echoed in his ears.

Suddenly, he felt Jewell’s hand slip lifelessly from his own, and he turned quickly to look at her in alarm. “Jewell? Jewell!” He could barely feel her pulse, he for whom the sound of a pulse was akin to the music his wife heard in the fall of rain drops. Stephen looked to the doctor, “Ye’ve got tae do somethin’, quick!”

“The bleeding is lessening now with the placenta out,” an event Stephen had apparently missed as his eyes trailed after the nurse, “but she’s already lost so much.”

“There must be somethin’ else ye can do, rather than watch me wife die before yer eyes, so do it.” Stephen growled out. Even without standing at his full height, he cut an intimidating figure. The red cast to his eyes—a result of the blood so thick in the air—did much to help intimidate the doctor.

“I do have this serum—they call it a volume expander. It is not at all certain to work…” he babbled on.

“Just do it!”

“Right. Yes. Right away.” Doctor Axelrod fiddled awkwardly with his medicine bag, rifling through. His motions were jerky and things continually slipped from his hands as he held them up to the light to ascertain what they were. Stephen turned away from the incompetence of the doctor to take his wife’s hands in both of his. They were so small and he held them so tightly that the Claddagh ring on left hand pressed into his skin.

“Here we are.” The doctor tapped the glass of the needle filled with a clear liquid. Stephen was forced to relinquish one of Jewell’s hands as the doctor straightened her arm out and prepared for the injection. “Now this will hopefully enhance her own natural healing abilities; she is a rather quick healer, remember. Though how one can survive the loss of so much blood,” he muttered before remembering himself. “Well, she is a strong healer, you must hope in that.”

The pirate grimaced as the needle pierced the delicate skin of the cradle of Jewell’s arm. His wife was hardly afraid of needles—having been poked, prodded, and slashed to pieces by much sharper objects—but seeing even the littlest harm come to her now stirred the well of emotions within him. Stephen found an outlet for unrighteous anger in the doctor. When he was done injecting Jewell with the liquid, Stephen became quite snappy seeing no immediate relief to his wife’s deathly pale visage. “Now what?”

The doctor cleared his throat, standing up straight and meeting Stephen’s menacing gaze. He was a learned man with more education than most in the city and he would not be so pushed around by a mere sailor! “And now, Captain Kidd, you pray to whatever god you worship.” He turned and left the room then, intent on aiding the nurse to see if anything could be done for the babe; he rather doubted it. He left Stephen behind him, his head bowed over Jewell’s hand but not in prayer. Who would hear the prayers of one such as him?

[JewellRavenlock]

It had been hard to wake up over the last few months, but now it felt damn near impossible to do so. To say she felt groggy would be a gross understatement. Her eyelashes fluttered but her lids refused to open, glued shut with sleep. She made a valiant second effort and had to blink rapidly against the mid-day sun that illuminated the room, stinging her eyes. Everything seemed too bright at first, like walking outside after being cooped up in a dark house for weeks and weeks, and nothing was clear. That begged the question: Just how long had she been asleep?

It nagged at her mind but she couldn’t figure out an answer. Everything felt hazy and confused, her senses dulled, as though she was drugged, drunk or at least severely hung over. The last would explain the pounding headache she became increasingly aware of the longer her eyes were open. A shame she couldn’t remember having a single drink; the pain of the morning after was never worth it if you couldn’t even remember the fun you had the night before.

Her vision cleared first and she looked around the room. The windows to her right were open, letting a fresh breeze in that held none of the stifling heat of late summer. Stephen was sitting on a chair at her left side, staring at her eagerly and grasping her hand almost painfully tight. He looked haggard, tired, his face drawn and gray. She couldn’t possibly know that he had been awake since the night before last, watching over her vigilantly. He hadn’t once left her side.

Her sense of touch was the next to fully return—the texture of clean sheets beneath her and the silk of one of her nightgowns against her skin—and with it all feeling. Her body was flooded with pain. A dull ache resided in all her muscles: her arms, her legs, her back, her thighs, her lower abdomen. Her eyes suddenly widened and she tried to sit up abruptly, attempting to turn and face Stephen; she couldn’t remember, what had happened? Her mouth opened in a soundless cry at this attempt to move so quickly, the urge to double-over as pain stabbed at her lower body almost unbearable. Stephen moved forward, reaching out to aid her in lying back down, but she would not allow it. She grasped on to his offered helping hand and looked searchingly at his face for an answer to a question she could not even form; her mouth was filled with cotton, neither her tongue nor her lips would work in producing words.

He lowered his eyes from hers and shook his head. How else could he convey to her what had happened? There had never been any words created for moments like this between a husband and a wife. He couldn’t simply tell her what the doctor had said to him: that the baby had been stillborn, that there was nothing they could have possibly done to save her, that there was nothing Jewell could have really done to prevent this from happening. He couldn’t tell her that they had allowed him to hold their little girl just once, that she was so tiny he probably could have held her with one hand, and that he had almost attacked the nurse when the poor woman had tried to take the baby away from him again. Stephen could not tell her any of these things, so he said nothing at all.

He hadn’t even allowed himself to cry yet; he wanted to be strong for her. She needed him to be strong. Tears formed in his eyes now, though, as he saw the blank expression that came over her face: her eyes were wide open but unfocused now, her jaw went slack, her lips parted just enough to allow the passing of air, and her brow suddenly smoothed of all creases. Her hands released their vice grip on his, the muscles in them just stopped working, and she sank back onto the pillows behind her. Maybe she would sink right into them and disappear.

She couldn’t think. She couldn’t breathe. Something had just shattered inside her.

[JewellRavenlock]

“You bitch!” Jewell spit out the accusation in a strangled shout, her throat constricting with a sob. She leaned forward, arms wrapped about her torso in a self hug, hot tears streaming down her face; she could taste the salt of them in her mouth, as a few escaped past the barrier of her lips, when she let out another raw sob. “How could you? How COULD you!” She cried uncontrollably, without censor, her body dry-heaving under such emotional duress.

“You needed to see…”

Jewell cut her off, her face a livid red as she shouted threateningly, “I never needed to see that! Ever!” Her crying filled the silence that echoed for minutes afterwards, the future Jewell watching her younger self with her head turned aside, features emotionless. Only when her crying quieted, tears spent, did the younger try to speak again, “You knew what I would see… what I would feel, and you still…”

“I did warn you,” her elder self reminded dispassionately.

“You warned me? You told me I wouldn’t like it! You didn’t tell me… you never said…”

“I said I would show you…”

“Show me!” she snorted derisively. “Why couldn’t you just tell me,” Jewell wiped at her eyes with her bare arm, “save me the pain of feeling that loss at least.”

“You needed to feel it.”

“Says who? You?”

The elder Jewell just shrugged, looking away from the accusatory eyes. “It was for the best, to help you make your decision.”

“But you already know what my decision is going to be, don’t you? You already know that after seeing that…”

“Yes,” she cut her off, “I know what your decision is.”

Jewell’s tone changed from accusatory to pleading for understanding, “You know why I can’t choose that future, right? You understand, don’t you? I can’t go through that again, I just can’t! It doesn’t matter if our relationship survives, if we help each other heal…” she was babbling, grasping for reasonable words to justify the selfish course of action she was going to take. She needed someone to understand why she would give up everything, even Stephen, to avoid what she had just lived through. Her heart beat wildly within her chest, panic and anxiety taking hold; the very thought of that future paralyzed her with unspeakable fear.

“Your relationship may survive, but do you really think you will heal after that? We are only so strong, Jewell,” she met her past self’s eyes, her own looking haunted for a moment. She did understand. Maybe she had made this choice once too. She had been afraid too. And she was offering her justification, a way out.

Jewell looked away first, to the non-existent ground, “Then it is settled then?”

“If you have made your choice.” All she received was a nod for confirmation. “Then it is settled. May the path you have chosen lead you to happiness.”

And just like that, Jewell was very much alone.

[JewellRavenlock]

Epilogue.

“It is done,” she announced, stepping into a lofty room and reporting to its sole occupant, an ageless woman sitting on an ornate chair. The woman was not looking at her but at the floor-to-ceiling windows on her right that made up an entire wall of the room. Through the glass, a great stretch of wetlands could be seen: tall marshy grasses that went on for miles, turned to a reddish gold by the setting sun, eventually leading to the river that was the heart of the surrounding lands.

The entrant had to stand in silence for some time before the other woman in the room finally turned her head to acknowledge her. It wasn’t quite like looking in a mirror, but there was definitely a resemblance between the two women. The woman sitting on the chair was clearly the elder, although human eyes could be deceived into believing she was no older than forty at the very most despite the many years her grey eyes had seen. Her skin was taunt, stretched over high cheekbones that she shared with the one standing before her. Her hair, though, was a beautiful gold done up in a tight twist whereas the younger woman she faced had blue hair the varying color of the seas cut short around her pointed ears. “Very well. Now it is a matter of waiting. There is nothing to stand in our way; she will eventually come to us. You have done well.” It was praise without a smile or warmth.

It did little to make Jewell feel as though she actually had done well. Her aunt turned away, looking back out the window in a clear gesture of dismissal, but Jewell did not move. Rather, she stood still and tall—her chin raised high. Her aunt did not even bother looking at her when she finally addressed her again. “What is it, child? Do you now doubt that what you have done is enough?”

Only now did hesitation enter her posture, her shoulders slouching as she shifted, a furrow creasing her bow. Her hands were clasped tightly behind her back, her fingers fidgeting nervously. “No. I am perfectly satisfied in my assurance that what I have showed her has sundered them. She will not allow herself to endure what it is that she has seen.”

“As you said it would be. If that was not your concern, though, what is?”

Jewell frowned, itching to tuck a piece of her hair behind her ear but not allowing herself the luxury of such a nervous gesture in front of her aunt. Instead, she spent a moment composing herself and perfectly phrasing her concerns. “I am just unsure that the use of such deception to separate her from him was the wisest choice, if this will truly make her happy.”

Her aunt’s laughter filled the otherwise empty room. “Happy? It matters not. What is important is that she is now free to fulfill her obligation to the family.”

“But—”

“But what?” Her aunt asked sharply.

Jewell moved her mouth wordlessly for a moment before: “What I did feels wrong.”

“Does it now?” Her aunt arched a well defined brow at her. “I thought we had rid you of such doubts but apparently not,” she sighed long-sufferingly. “Let me ask you, child: are you happy?”

She knew it would be wrong to hesitate, “Certainly, grandmother. Nothing could give me greater pleasure than being of use to my family.”

“Then how could what you have just done be wrong? You have done it for her own good, for your own good! You have ensured her happiness and your future.”

“But,” she just couldn’t give this up, “she loved him. She really loved him.” I loved him went unsaid.

“Inconsequential. What matters is that she is needed and that now she is unattached. Nothing stands in our way.”

Jewell knew that was the final word on the matter; her aunt had entertained her stubborn line of questioning long enough. She bowed her head in a show of respect for her grandmother before leaving the room.

As she walked through the halls of the place she called home, she still couldn’t banish her former self’s anguished cries from her mind or relieve herself of the guilt of knowing that she had willingly separated her past self from someone she loved dearly under the pretense of a lie. A lie similar to one she had been told once upon a time. She stopped before an ornate mirror hanging on the wall, staring at the image reflected on the glass; she didn’t see herself as she was now; she saw the girl she used to be. Jewell reached up, tracing her fingers down the line of her face where tears ran freely, leaving oily streaks on the glass surface. “I am so very sorry to have done this to you, Jewell.”