𝚖𝚒𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚗𝚒𝚌𝚎 - 𝚋𝚎𝚗𝚎𝚍𝚒𝚌𝚝 𝚋𝚛𝚒𝚍𝚐𝚎𝚛𝚝𝚘𝚗

𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚏𝚒𝚟𝚎

1815, London, England/ 1805, Sweden

TW : SUICIDE ATTEMPT, BLOOD MENTION

A week had passed and Florence though she would never admit it to anyone, had missed her occasional interruptions by a sudden Bridgerton. Every now and then, she would spot Lady Danbury on her daily walk around or her horse riding and would casually remove herself from the situation and avoid her completely.

It wasn't exactly ideal having someone point out obvious facts about yourself and another. She hadn't really felt like this before, she hadn't gone out of her schedule for just a hope at a glimpse of someone. But then again, she had isolated that from her life ever since she was young.

And well that's because.

Well because Florence was sure her parents loved each other once. But the eldest child is always a witness to something unchildlike, and traumatic, are they not?

Florence spent her childhood forced into habits she never wanted, she adopted singing and acting as a mother. It wasn't that her mother wasn't capable but more of the fact that every pregnancy her body was forced through she grew worryingly more fragile and breakable. Viktoria and Ulrika had flocked to her as children, for Ulrika's birth Viktoria was too young. Too naive to know a woman's role, and so Florence sat her down, sang a calming tune whilst braiding the blonde's hair into various styles.

Even sneaking some of her mother's products so Viktoria could play a role as a lady, but with Ulrika it was different, she wanted dolls whilst Viktoria wanted to play dresses and fancy ladies, and wanted her sisters attention, oh and to draw beautiful ladies with multi coloured parasols.

Florence could only be divided so many ways, everytime her mother was in agony in either childbirth or a developing miscarriage, she would do her best. She pushed herself to the brink too many times, but it was only when Viktoria had called her 'mama' was when she broke. It was just after Ulrika had died. Florence hadn't cried once. What was a twelve year old to do?

She had knew for a while before then how her sisters had viewed her but to hear it be uttered, sent things hopelessly and ruiningly on a spiral. Nothing slowed down around her. She would hit, scratch, punch herself until her body was scattered in bruises. She would scream and wail at all untimely hours, her most consistent prayer to God was for death.

She prayed for another life, prayed for wings like a birds so she could fly away, so she could wash her hands clean of her high expectations family. She became a broken sack of glass shards, and even when broken once it didn't make her immune. Everything last thing reminded her of her previous state of mind, and eventually she had hit herself too hard.

She had slammed her head into a brick. It had took her parents hours to find her, she had done it in a forest, that she had checked beforehand for any others. For she had decided, if God wouldn't take her, then she would simply do it herself. God would forgive her, surely, he wants none of his followers to suffer, and one of his angels would be returning, it wouldn't be awful. And so she had found a brick somewhere, and an idea flashed. She would bash her head in, inevitably causing her to pass.

It was a breakdown for sure. That was undeniable, the first of many, many followed but to not such extreme manners, the first for a long time to challenge that run was the forced engagement.

She hadn't expected her parents to care about her death, her mother was too busy cradling her stomach, she was determined to have a son, and carry him fully and birth him wonderfully, and dote on him to no end but at the cost of neglecting her daughters. Her father, despite his insistence on pure undying love for his children regardless of the gender, would disappear after each failed birth (one which resulted in a girl or a dead son) for a walk and would return home after the sun had fallen and the moon had invaded, he would come home, trip over each stair step, cursing life completely as he did. He smelled of drink, and cheap women, damp lip marks scattered down every inch of him, although Florence had never smelt it, her mother had ruthlessly told her what she had thought of him, described his smell as repulsive, described those women that had doted heavily on Florence, making a purpose of showering her with approval as 'smutsiga kvinnor'. Dirty women, she had suspected her mother wished to share her thoughts more disastrously.