○● Regret ●○
A/N : Sorry for not posting, guys. College is kicking my ass lol. Enjoy!
In a way, Katherin regretted how her and Nathan stopped talking, but it wasn't her fault! With everything going on in her life, the divorce with Ron, the kids, the house, the move, Nathan's messages became less and less of a priority. And now it seems to have come back to bite her in the ass like she subconsciously knew it always would. Now she's in charge of a massive hotel that Nathan got from god knows where, ghosts running rampant through the building and screaming at night, mirrors bleeding, ghosts claiming the rooms, and a demon in the body of a little boy running around causing havoc on top of it all.
But now, knowing she'll never see him again, an odd feeling arises within her every time she lays eyes on the ghost of what was once her older brother. She wishes he'd have talked to her - and she told him so - but deep down she knows that his message would have yet again become just one in a mass of them, ignored in place of things she considered higher priority. She'll never feel him hug her again, never be able to touch his arm and feel a solid body there, a solid presence by her side as he had been for so long during their childhood before life took them on their different paths. A path she regrets.
The hotel feels too big, and too empty. No matter what she does, it always feels like there's something missing. Ben and Esther don't seem to mind the move, neither of them seeming very affected by it, but some days, she questions whether it was really the right choice or not.
The night she got the call about Nathan was the night something within her she'd been pushing away for so long broke, and from then on, nothing felt real. Organising the funeral, seeing his body, cremating him, putting his ashes in a pot to stare at every day on the mantle but never being able to see him properly again. None of it felt real.
There was nobody for her to express this to either, and with the divorce happening at the same time she was expected to be strong for her children who had just had their once normal lives ripped apart, all while her guilt is eating at her from the inside out. Therapy didn't help that much, no matter how much she tried to fool herself that it did. But she faked, faked that she was fine and functioning and that everything was okay when she knew it was far from it, but it was no longer just about her.
The hotel made it all worse, trying to support the family as a whole whilst tackling ghost problems and trying to make the place suitable to live in, not many guests (if any) ever coming due to the hotels well known reputation of being haunted. The ghosts scared off every guest anyway, so perhaps it was for the better. But when you're a single mother struggling to make ends meet, you end up doing anything for your children, no matter how ridiculous it may seem.
Seeing Nathan every day made everything hit just that little bit harder, but she forced herself to push the feelings away, to be the person everyone needed her to be to keep life going, because the world didn't stop spinning when her world stopped spinning.
Knowing he killed himself, knowing he drug himself through every day likely thinking about what he was inevitably planning to do, knowing he was stuck within his own head trying to reach out to her whilst she was pushing him away reminds her that he probably wouldn't be dead if she had responded. If she had shown him she was there, that he wasn't alone like he thought he was. If she had shown him there was another option.
But in the end, it's too late for that now.
Too late to reverse what has already been done.
Too late to regret.