comfort and empathy

one shot

Author's Note: The views and opinions expressed in this fanfiction are not my own, but what I thought best suited the character I was trying to gain sympathy with. Also, this is purely based on the movie itself and not so much as the actual history of it.

DISCLAIMER: All publicly recognized characters, settings, etc. are the property of those who created the movie The Conspirator. No copyright infringement is intended.

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July 7, 1865

Nobody had ever informed her just how much those tears that were shed for loved ones hurt, and now as they fell from her eyes in a stream of her anguish and heartache, Anna could not imagine anything being worse than this. The feeling wracked itself up and down her body. The amount of frustration to have the one thing that was left to love in your life right in front of you, just an inch or centimeter from a safe grasp, but know that a greater power was keeping it withheld.

It makes Anna detest the North for its will of the preservation of the Union, the sting from her mother's unjust hanging aiding her wounds to a fiery point. She wants to blame someone, there must be a way to help the pain, but she knows that her wanting to blame someone for this is exactly the same thing as the people wanting to blame her mother for what happened. It is frustrating that now she knows what it feels like and it would make her a hypocrite to feel so.

There is no possible way to describe in words what it is like to literally watch as someone you love is murdered and know you have absolutely nothing you can do about it. You can try, so Anna does in hopes of averting her mind to something - anything, but after a few moments of coming up blank she releases a quiet sob and wrings her hands together on her lap, leaning against the rough wall for support.

It is not right and it is not fair. In her mind all she can do is imagine the things that went wrong and every little thing she could have done different to have caused a better outcome of events. All the small trivial matters that she should have done differently, but knowing there is nothing she can do about the past reminds her of the simple fact that she could not have saved her mother if she had tried and it only makes the knots in her chest tighten. They would have shot her if she made an attempt to rescue her mother from the Gallows (which to be completely honest did not sound so terrible just then) because after they gave her time to grieve Anna would be shoved back into the world as a young, clueless, and broken woman, forever branded the sister and daughter of the people who assassinated the President.

She so desperately wants to be a kid again, if that were so then she could simply go crawl into her mother's bed and snuggle close into her shoulder, knowing everything would be okay because no matter what happened she had her mother - and she had her brother.

Anna had been the older one but never had she been the stronger one. Sarcastic, maybe, but when it came down to it John had been the one who was least likely to break. In the months prior to the death of President Abraham Lincoln, he had become as distant as ever and even in that short time Anna had grown a harder, more stable exterior. Perhaps from the absence of her brother's shoulder to lean on.

Nevertheless, she can not decide which side of the war in her heart was winning. Much like the nationwide war, she was torn in between two desires, they thrashed inside her with snapping jaws and it made her nauseous. The beam of light slipping in from the window beat on the right side of her face, easing her pale sweat.

There was a part of her that boiled, bubbling with a form of anger Anna had never experienced before in her life. It made her feel not like lashing out on something or someone but rolling over under covers and sleeping a lifetime. Her insides feel hot, like they were being burnt with coal, and she recognized its origin to be rooted into her brother - John Surratt. This was his fault in every way shape or form and Anna cursed him. Cursed him for rebelling against their mother in such an extreme way (he could not have just ran off with a Yankee girl.) She cursed him for bringing in that Mr. Wilkes-Booth and the others, cursed him for everything.