Anne does not want to go home. She knows that at this point the other queens will have found her letters for them. When it comes to death in general, or even self-inflicted death, you never know how one's going to react. You can only predict. And Anne's predictions include a lot of yelling and questions. Both of which she does not want to deal with.
The two queens walk back from the woods, hand in hand, moving at a relatively slow pace for both queens. Catherine doesn't force it. And Anne doesn't want to go back.
"Anne?" Catherine's voice is soft. She'd never dealt with depression or attempted suicide before and doesn't know how to handle it. So she figures the best thing is to not force anything out of her girlfriend, to just be available for her. "What's on your mind?"
"I don't wanna go back." The golden queen didn't expect the green to answer, but is glad she did. "They're all gonna be mad." Catherine shakes her head.
"They won't be? Confused? Yes. Frustrated? Yeah. Hurt? Yes. But Anne, I don't want you to feel bad. We all care about you deeply. Nothing will change that."
"You know, sometimes I wish you didn't. Yet at the same time, I love it when I'm comforted by you guys. It's a complicated feeling, sorry I'm not helping." Another shake of Catherine's head.
"But you're talking about it. I'd say you're doing great mi amor." Anne stops in place. Their house is at the end of the street. Not even the street actually, the end of the block. I'm not ready. "Are you ready, love?"
"No." The first queen waits a moment, then presses a kiss to second's cheek and asks again.
"You good?"
"Not ready, but better." She takes a breath. "We can go now."
<> <> <>
"She said she was going for a walk. Why?" When the oldest queen sprints out the door, the others are left in the living room, wondering what could have made Catherine worry so much. No one moves or pays attention to the TV for a while until Kat stands up and stretches. "I'm gonna head up to my room now."
The youngest queen does as she says, but once she opens the door, there's an envelope sitting on her bed. Her name is written on it in pink, but it's not her most common nickname (as she has plenty), it's one that only her biggest role model uses.
KitKat <3
It's from Anne? Kat thinks to herself. The older of the cousins never uses this form of communication. If she wants to say something, she either says it out loud or messages through text.
Kat opens the letter and starts reading it. Direct everything towards me? .... The actual doing? .... Hanging? Funeral?? The pink queen starts to panic. Is this.....a suicide letter?? The fifth queen starts running into everyone's bedrooms, seeing if they've received one too (skipping Catherine, as she'd probably read hers already and that's why she left so suddenly). She picks up each letter as she finds them, tears running down her face. She doesn't know why exactly, but she opens Anne's room as well. She wrote a letter to herself? Knowing that the others need to see the letters ASAP, Kat doesn't question it too hard, picking it up and running down the stairs.
"GUYS ANNE KILLED HERSELF!" She yells upon reaching the living room. The other three queens to her and see that she's holding a bunch of envelopes. Cath shakes her head in denial.
"N-no. W-what did you say Kitty?" Kat makes her way to the couch and plops down, crying.
"Sh-sh-sh-she.....k-killed.....h-hers-s-self." The youngest somberly hands out each of the letters accordingly. Jane, Anna, and Cath slowly open them, not wanting what Kat told them to be true.
Kat's soft crying turns into sobbing, soon to be joined by Jane. The two grab on to each other tightly, not wanting the other to leave. Anna excuses herself from the living room and goes to sit at the table. She curls up into a ball, trying her hardest not to break down. Cath sinks to the floor. She turns and presses her face into the cushions, not wanting the others see her cry, but she does.
It stays like that for a very long time.
Their cries are spent, but their positions don't change. No one moves. No one evens moves when the door opens. No one moves when two figures walk into the house. Two figures.
Jane's vision is still slightly blurry from all the tears, but she can make out the colors gold......and green. Green. She gets the attention of the queen she's holding, not letting her gaze wander from the two women. Kat turns to the doorway as well, Cath and Anna soon following their stares.
Kat rubs her eyes, trying to focus. Space buns...emerald eyes...neck scar. The youngest queen jumps up and runs to embrace her older cousin, her sobbing returning. The green queen wraps her arms around the pink, joining her in crying. The next queen to jump up and run to Anne is Cath. Then Jane. Then Anna--but the red queen doesn't join the hug. Rather she stands there, emotionless.
"What the f***?" The tone of the fourth queen is not anything positive. "Anne Boleyn." The queens unconsciously move out of Anne's view of Anna, who clenches her fists. "If this is some type of sick joke, it's not f***ing funny."
"Anna...." Catherine tries to get the German queen to calm down, only to be cut off.
"I THOUGHT YOU WERE F***ING DEAD!" The yelling causes Anne to flinch. "You expected me to forgive you for committing suicide, and now you expect me to forgive you for strolling on back in here?! No, Anne! You f***ing cut yourself and told yourself all these things that aren't true! And when it got out of hand, you never bothered to f***ing ask for help!!" Anna storms up the stairs, leaving everyone speechless.
No one quite expected Anna to burst out like that. No one except Anne that is. The green queen's eyes start to water.
"Anne, I'm sure she doesn't mean it..." Jane attempts to comfort the second queen, only for the sentence to go in through one ear, and out the other.
"No, she's right." The silver, blue, and pink queen don't know how to handle the situation any better than the golden. However, Catherine is taking the approach that Anne would prefer. "I-I told myself the lies, a-and I-I believed them. A-and I never t-told you guys. I'm sorry." Anne's arms reach out to her girlfriend, who almost immediately accepts and pulls the girl into a hug. "Feel free to storm out like you should be doing. I don't deserve this." She says, trying to even out her breathing.
"Shut up." Cath stops her rambling. "That's not true."
"Yes it is! 'The biggest sinner is obvs the winner' well guess what? My prize is depression! And it's something that can never be fixed; so haha! My prize is gonna stick with me forever! And it's never going to go away!" The last queen silences herself, not wanting to say something that'll make the second snap again.
"Annie...." Kat's voice is soft, as she, like her cousin, does not like the yelling. "How long has this been going on?"
"......I don't know to be honest. A couple months? Before Lina and I started dating that's for sure."
"That long?" When Anne nods, her baby cousin stares at the ground. "We could've prevented it from getting this bad....I could've done something--"
"Hey." The leader of the household cuts off the youngest queen. "Don't say that. Why don't we all go sit down in the living room? Including you, Anna." The last sentence is made loud enough so that the red queen (who had been listening from the stairs) hears. Once everyone is settled Catherine continues what she was saying. "I am no means an expert on this. None of us are. And I'm sure that we're all feeling a mix of emotions based on what just happened." Anna can feel flickers of glances shot towards her. "But what I do know is that throwing the blame around and pointing fingers isn't going to make it better. It's just going to make all of us feel more guilty." Everyone starts to feel guilty just by Catherine saying that. "Anne? Would you like to add on?"
"Nah. The letters summed it all up." The second queen replies after a shake of her head. Letters...oh right. The fifth queen is reminded of the last envelope in her hand.
"Anne....you left this on your bed." The younger cousin hands the letter to the older, who reluctantly grabs and opens it.
"It's probably her congratulating herself on tugging at all our heartstrings." The sarcastic and somewhat angry comment comes from Anna, who is shushed (and scolded) by Jane.
"Dear Future me--"
"Is she really going to read it out loud?"
"Anna!" The next moment of silence tells Anne to continue reading her own letter, with shaking hands.
Dear Future me,
If you're reading this, it means you haven't succeeded. Well, that's fine. Unless one of your other queens gave this to you. Then it's bad.
I don't believe this myself, (does that make me a hypocrite?) but I'm going to give you a bunch of encouragement. Not that you'll believe it. But at least if the first person who reads this isn't you, then they'll know I tried.
Welp here goes.
You are beautiful. Listen up, Catalina knows it, the other queens know it, the ladies know it, heck, your fans know it. So, yeah. That's that.
There's no need to cry. Not the best thing to say to someone with depression. Ah, who am I kidding? It's one of the worst things to say, lemme just cross this out.It's not your fault. You tried right? You tried and tried to block out the voices, and they wouldn't shut up. This was the only way.
Honestly, I can't think of any good things right now, it's so dark. But I'm sure that there's plenty more that the others see. Not that you'd be able to see that any better than I can.
Let's be honest, that was a bust. I highly doubt that you'll be reading this, but it's fine. That only means that you've succeeded.
And that I will too.
Hoping you'll never read this,
Anne Boleyn
Anna looks down as Anne finishes, feeling wrong for her previous statements.
"Anne, I'm sorry." As the red queen starts to apologize, the attention is turned to her. "I thought you gave up right away, and thought that there was absolutely no hope. I mean, yeah, you did, but you actually tried to get better, and you knew that we cared about you.....so, yeah. I'm sorry for earlier." Anne doesn't respond, but nods to let her friend know that's she accepts the apology.
"I'm glad you two have made up, but this doesn't change what just happened. Anne tried to kill herself." Cath cautiously says, still unsure of how to handle the entire thing.
"I promised Catherine that I wouldn't try to kill myself. A-and I'm gonna try and fix it, but I just need you guys to be there for me....at least until I get a more solid plan." Each queen thankfully nods, glad that Anne wants to try and get better once again.
No darkness lasts forever. And even there, there are stars.
--Ursula K. Le Guin