[P] no one can hurt you [Azrael]

[Elena]

take this burden away from me
and bury it before it buries me

There is a broken kind of quiet in her heart that never used to be there - a bruise that never healed. You can see it in the dark that hides in eyes beneath the layers of sky blue and hope. In the absence of a smile that used to curl the corners of such a beautiful mouth. She still smiles, still laughs, but for those who knew her before, there is something different, something off about it.It is the weight of learning that love is not kind, and that it is not beautiful, that a heart can only be relied upon to break. It is the absence of faith, and the result of years spent festering in a pain she does not know how to step away from.

A pain she does not remember how to live without.
Who is she if she is not broken?

Elena’s heart has broken again and again, and she keeps giving it to another, watching with baited breath for them to crumble it within their hands.

Elena is so largely underwhelming, as compared to the magical beings that walk these lands and other.

Elena has no magic, has defended no kingdoms, and has saved no worlds. She matters only to a few and she knows one day that number will dwindle just as it always does.

She has no desire to break the world. (No matter how cruel it has been to her, Elena would die before she let it crumble.) She tries to bring as much light as she can, but Elena battles darkness every day as she holds her small candle trying to ignite a universe.

Elena’s lips purse tightly in consideration. “I wish it were that simple for me,” the golden girl says. Just to close her eyes and be where she wishes, to leave everything else behind. She wishes, she knows. Wishes for impossible things, but wishes all the same. “Sometimes, I almost reach it as I sleep, but I never quite make it,” she says solemnly. Like that memory Lilliana had conjured for the two of them to meet in the middle. It had been Paraiso, or as close as either of them could be to reaching it, but there was something about the place that told them it was not real, it was an illusion, a mix between the girls’ memories of the place rather than how it truly stood. There was an emptiness to it that neither Elena nor Lilli could possibly fill.

She is like an injured bird in careful hands pressed close to his side. It is in this place, in a moment that seems scooped out of time, cut away from the rest of the world that she finally feels a sense of quiet diving through the marrow of her trembling bones. “Maybe it is because of wha they have seen they choose to be so far away,” she says. The world was a place of both bliss and horrors. There is beauty in admiring the tragedy from a far rather than living it.

“Dragon fire?” She questions him. Castille. Loess. The Dragon King. “I’m so sorry,” she says earnestly, sympathy is drawn across her face. “Were you there?” She asks hesitantly. “When the fire came?” She finishes her question. The words he finishes with are beautiful, even if they spring from tragedy. Tulips in the snow.

“I wish I could understand them as you do,” she says and though the statement sounds envious, there is nothing by adoration for him in its depths. “I will go back to Terrastella, to the sea,” she says with a smile, oh her seaside home. “But I think I want to stay with you tonight,” she says, cannot make her way back through the fires, the dancing, the music. “You can leave before I wake up,” she assures him. “But please, don't go before I’ve fallen asleep.” She looks up at him once more with blue eyes before they will drift into the clutches of sleep they so longed for.

so take away this apathy
bury it before it buries me

@Azrael

[Azrael]

azrael

If Azrael had known her then, before circumstances stole away her innocence and wonder at the world, would he have truly seen her as he does tonight?  It was a wonder Elena stood beside him, open and trusting.  It was a wonder she could exude such warmth, despite her doubts on love and her guarded heart.  Whether she thought herself spurned and betrayed, the beauty of it all was this perspective had not changed her.  At her core, Elena was still a creature with a beautiful soul.

As night wore on, the stars rose higher in Caligo’s sky, and he wishes they would stay forever – not for the starlight, but so the fantasy would last.  Beside the gilded girl, Azrael feels at ease for the first time since coming to Denocte.  Here, the two are lost to the moment, hidden from the rest of the world.  It is a moment he wishes to last, but still the shed-star knows that morning would come, the illusion lost with the fading stars.  

“It sounds as though you are haunted by memories – it happens to the best of us.”  It wasn’t that he didn’t feel such things, only that he’d learned to quiet his thoughts. Azrael is quiet as he considers his own horrors – the scent of burning flesh, the cries of those who did not heed the star-speakers warnings.  The sound of their pleading was enough to curdle his blood, memories of it roaring in his mind as he fights to still the feeling of loss which washes over him. In dreams, he’d learned to manipulate the horrors away, a luxury he knew not everyone could afford.  If he could, Azrael would steal away the darkness for Elena – to let her soul shine brighter – weightless once more.

While it’s clear that Azrael had suffered from the loss of his homeland, he does not allow himself to dwell on it for long.  The memories were too painful... for the brothers and sisters he had lost, and for the only home he’d known to be reduced to ash.  Still, when Elena asks if he was there, he cannot deny her an answer.  Shifting slowly in the moonlight, a silver-grey mark becomes visible against his shoulder, faded with time but unmistakably the result of a burn rippling just beneath his pulsing glow.  “I was lucky,” he whispered,  “for many lost their lives that fateful night.”  He offers her a sad and knowing smile, bonded in a shared sense of grief for those they’d lost.

Watching the sky once more, Azrael considered her suggestion that the stars hid from the darkness of their world.  “The People believe that stars return to give us hope in the darkness.  When they go, it’s only to welcome the sun, and all things bright that come with it.”   He settles closer to her, lowering himself to a bed of soft grasses beneath the star-flecked night and fitting easily around her as she joins him.  Tucking a wisp of hair behind her ear, his lips graze against her nape for the briefest moment, holding as he draws her scent to memory.  

You can leave before I wake up. Azrael cringes silently into her mane, wishing instead that she’d asked him to stay, even as his voice begins to hum a lullaby to the girl.

Please don't see, just a boy caught up in dreams and fantasies
Please see me, reaching out for someone I can't see
Take my hand, let's see where we wake up tomorrow
Best laid plans sometimes are just a one night stand
Turn the page, maybe we'll find a brand new ending...
Where we're dancing in our tears and

God, tell us the reason youth is wasted on the young
It's hunting season and the lambs are on the run
Searching for meaning...
But are we all lost stars, trying to light up the dark?

Azrael’s song trails off as Elena’s head grows heavy against his shoulder, his glow warm over her as he senses the peace of her dreams.  Tonight, at least, he had given her respite from the memories.  Tonight, she too would haunt his own dreams – dreams of a golden girl racing against the sea, with eyes which thirsted for knowledge and warmth which burned like Caligo’s bonfire in the night.  With great reluctance, Azrael heeds her words, rising with a longing glance at her sleeping form, before he leaves Elena in a puddle of moonlight with his obelisk glowing softly around her neck – a reminder and a promise that the night would reunite them again.  

“Speaking.”

credits
@Elena (sorry, I am terrible at endings)