Walter Cuthbert Blythe (walterblythe) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2014-04-01 09:48:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log, anne shirley (books), walter blythe |
Who: Walter Blythe & Anne Blythe
When: Monday night (slightly backdated)
Where: Anne's apartment
What: Anne meets her son; Walter is reunited with his mother.
Rating: PG-13 -- possible triggers for infant death, PTSD, wartime violence, suicide by enemy fire.
Walter didn't mention to Hallward where he was going when he left their Park Slope flat. But he did stop long enough by the door to select one if the painter's scarves, which he folded around his neck carefully before heading out into the night. The fabric smelled like Basil, like his paints and his clear, uncertain honesty. It was a comfort, really. He sent Septimus a text message on the way in to the tower to let him know what was happening; that he was going to see his mother, a woman who had never met him, and that he might want to drop by after. Perhaps stay the night to save himself the trip back out to Brooklyn. There was some solace in the fact that Anne didn't know him, actually. It meant that she would have no expectations, no memory of the man he was before he went to war — and while she could read the stories or here tell of the boy that slept beneath the shadow of a cross, it wouldn't be the same pressure, or the same pain as it would have been if she's looked into his eyes and recognised exactly how much of the spark had gone out. And that wasn't to say he wasn't happy -- he was. He loved Basil very much and he had the support of incredible people that he cherished. The nightmares had subsided, and no one expected him to be unchanged by his experiences in the war and it helped — he was lucky that way. He knew that had he had the misfortune of surviving the war, his end would have been no different than Septimus Smith's. He would never have fit in, he could have never gone back to Rainbow Valley and seen the shine on the water and not think of the swamp waters in the trenches. So he couldn't go back at all. On his walk from the subway to Potts Tower, he ducked into a store and bought his mother a bouquet of wildflowers — daisies, baby's breath, sprigs of sweet-scented lavender — and continued on, building up his courage with each step. He wasn't going back, he told himself, this wasn't a return to what was -- or an attempt to regain a life that he'd lost the minute he kissed the mulch in France, this was something different and wonderful and new, with the one person who he'd always loved and adored more than anyone. |