Work Text:
After Hermione died, Paulina had to stay strong. Who else would speak their mind to Leontes, prevent him from presenting himself as the martyr, the victim of this story? Who else would make sure her Hermione, her Antigonus, and poor little Perdita and Mamillius did not die for nothing, if she allowed herself to grieve as much as she wanted to, if she lost control? No-one, that was who! Those damn courtiers had let Leontes' folly run its course without protest, until it was too late! Now they would surely urge him to remarry as soon as decently possible, to beget an heir, and the story would start all over again with the next wife. A dead wife was no cure for a jealous husband.
No, she had to stay sane, despite her losses, to prevent any more hurt to come from that man, that king who barely deserved his title, that tyrant without reason. If she could use what little power she had, what little influence on Leontes she could still get for having been right. And how hard was that, really, when it was so evident that Leontes was wrong, and all but himself knew it? But only she had dared to oppose him, and her poor husband's support cost him his life.
But you cannot just decide to be okay, stash your grief in a locked compartment of your mind and never look at it again; like a fume or a ghost it seeps out of the cracks and attacks you when you expect it least.
The first time he tried mentioning her husband, and how good he had been and how much he regretted him - as if he had no hand in his undoing - the glass Paulina was holding just broke from her clenching at it and trying to remain impassible.
She did not care that they labeled her hysterical and crazy and all these other words they put on you when the truth you bear is too much for them to handle. She could hear them as a servant bandaged her hand in a room adjacent, and she could hear them as she turned the corners of hallways. But it did not matter so long as she had an influence, so long as she could do something to keep Leontes under control, to remind him of his most innocent wife and the lives he ruined in his jealousy. No more than it mattered when they started calling her witch when she visited the queen's tomb all-too-often for their liking, and weird materials were brought to her house, and when people talked of candles late at night, and fumes and ghostly spirits. Other nobles suspected her of alchemy, but Leontes in his guilt did not dare question her. He had killed her husband, he had killed her Queen, he could let her live. And even if he'd disapproved, she would have carried on regardless. None of it mattered so long as she succeeded, so long as she could bring Hermione back to a better, safer world and give her a second chance at life, and ease her own sorrows.