Isolation

Bonus: What Lies Ahead

She grimaced as she opened the large window drapes to let in the afternoon light. The bright light filled the guest bedroom she had claimed as her own. Unfortunately, it also furthered the intensity of her pounding headache. She flinched back from the window as she rubbed at her eyes, she hated waking up. Waking up meant facing another day of misery, a world stained by her many personal failures.

Willow did not bother to adjust her hair, leaving it to freely remain in its messy state as she headed towards her closet. She walked into the closet, ignoring the piles of randomly discarded clothing on the floor, and grabbed one of her hung up long silk robes. Before putting the robes on, she took a few steps away from the robes to open one of the drawers of a small wardrobe within the closet. She grabbed two bottles of wine from her stash and a small glass.

With her bare essentials handled, Willow returned to her room to take one of the two seats at her round glass dining table just a little ways away from the window. As much as the bright light bothered her, seeing the outside of her personal prison was a temptation she could not avoid. She poured herself a small glass of red wine as she reached for her Scroll she kept on the table beside her binoculars.

She sent a quick message to Klein to prepare her something to eat before she reached for the pair of binoculars. Her view of the back of the estate had been dull in the past, once merely nothing but the empty decorated grounds covered in snow. Yet now the back of the estate contained a source of entertainment for her. A once makeshift shooting range had slowly sprawled into a professional setup for select members of the estate.

She raised the binoculars to her eyes to observe the shooting range. A small smile crossed her lips as she saw her three children at the range together. Winter was standing between her siblings, occasionally adjusting their stances or grip on their weapons before they took turns practicing. She felt a wave of happiness at the sight before she was ruthlessly swept away by a tsunami of guilt.

It should have been her. Her eldest daughter was teaching her children once more. How many things did Winter teach to Weiss and Whitley in her place? Willow filled her glass of wine, her hand shaking. Did Winter even learn anything from her in the first place? She placed her empty glass down on the table.

She filled the glass again as her head was filled with another invasive thought. Were they even her children? She may have given birth to them, but they were raised by others. Winter's birth had been such a joyous moment in her life. Winter was the first child she had with the man she thought she would love for the rest of her life.

Jacques had been there for her for a few weeks at most before diving right back into his reforms of the SDC. Willow didn't know what she was doing, so she simply picked the easiest choice given to her. She pushed the burden of being a mother onto her staff. She no longer had to change diapers, to listen to a screaming baby at night. Klein and the others could do so in her place.

Weiss had been her chance at rekindling something with Jacques after the distance between them grew over the years following Winter's birth. She repeated her mistake. Winter had done so well in the hands of the staff; Willow saw little reason to change how Weiss was raised. It was unfortunate the distance between her, and Jacques bled over into how they both treated Weiss. They both spent even less time interacting with Weiss as she was growing up compared to Winter.

Whitley was the final chance she gave Jacques to recapture what they once had. The last chance to prove her father had been wrong about the type of man Jacques was. Even the birth of a son was not enough to recapture her husband's interest for more than a week. She simply handed her third child to the staff to handle as she wallowed in her misery.

Her three children did not need her. It was far too late to start any relationship with them. Her day-by-day lifestyle, most spent in a hazy blur, did not offer a promising opportunity for trying to forge bonds that never existed. The best thing she could do for her children was to leave them be. She needed to focus on outliving Jacques just long enough to ensure he doesn't do anything to fracture the family as much as their combined efforts already had. Not that she was doing much of a good job on that front given the half empty wine bottle on her table and the still full one.