It's always a matter, isn't it, of waiting for the world to come unraveled? When things hold together, it's always only temporary
S
he would never regret Elliana, never. She loves her wholeheartedly. When she had been born, she had cried into her fuzzy neck, and never regretted her. She was a bright spot of joy. Beautiful and adventurous and so undeniably perfect.
So it has not crossed her mind that she would regret it. Even when she was alive with pain from the missing of him—the massive hole that he had left in the very center of her. “My little wildflower.” She had called her, and gathered her up, and cared for her, watched her little girl starting to bloom and loved her more and more and more. “By blood,” she had said kissing the top of her head. “And by bond,” she kissed her cheek. “We are bound.”
They go to the ocean today. Away from Terrastella, away from it all. “Nic and I are going to look at the tide pools, we are going to look for crabs,” Elliana says to her mother excitedly. Elena smiles and nods her way, a silent confirmation. There is always a twinge of worry when Elliana strays from her side, a little burr of sharp uncertainty when she wanders too close to the deep shadows beneath trees just out of her reach. She know of the things that live in the dark - not soft, beautiful things like Azrael, bathed in stars, sewn together by dreams. It is usually the broken that the dark is filled with. Those who find solace in an hour where unease creeps.
But she doesn't stray too far from her, not far enough that she couldn't reacher her daughter should something happen, and Nic was with her. So her expression stays soft and gentle, a tired smile stretched in velvet white across her lips. She is changing though, a weight in her expression that never used to be there - a weariness she felt in her bones. She feels like a slow wave as she walks down the beach, blue bruises in her eyes.
Here is the part of the story where Elena tells herself she is getting better—and she is starting to believe it. If only because it has yet to be tested.
She feels directionless, unsure of where to move to next. “Come on, Lilli,” she says. “Give me a sign.” Be my light in the dark.
Elena is still haunted by him, try as she may to forget. She is haunted.
By everything about him.
The way they danced when they first met, when he first touched her, so tenderly, and then so hungry later. How he had pressed promises into her skin and dreams into her heart. How she had built her hopes around him, somehow finding it in the shadows of the stallion.
She is haunted by his love. By the way that her world crashed around her when he left her, when truths came out. When truths stayed hidden.
She is haunted by his absence.
By his presence.
She is forever marked by his time in her life, forever changed.
So perhaps that is why mindless wandering took her here today. Perhaps the ghost of his scent dragged her to the edge of the ocean. Her stomach had grown and grown every day, when she left him, turning her normally lean figure round with the child she would never regret, would never take back. And now she look so much like that old Elena, slim once more, the pregnancy feels like a distant if not still pleasant memory. She looks different too, despite that same Elena smile. She wears motherhood well, it cannot be denied. She thinks this was all worth it, she never needed to see him again. A whole season had passed without word of him or Boudika for that matter. She had Elliana, she did not need Tenebrae.
Such thoughts break when she sees him.
Her face falls open, cracked wide with surprise and then grief and then a wave of emotion she cannot bear to confess. She almost staggers beneath the weight of it, but manages to stay upright.
The intimacy of it, the way she knows how he moves, the curve of his body, the wrapping of his shadows.
She doesn’t move but his name escapes her mouth, split apart with everything that rises in her, “Tenebrae.” Her throat closes and her velvet lips press shut, and she wonders at how after all this time the mere presence of him nearly manages to undo her. Her heart is a hammer tapping holes into her chest, her pulse the drum-beat to a song she has never heard before. Her eyes ache to settle against that beautiful shadow strewn face, ache to lose themselves in every hollow and angle and ridge of elegant bone, but she denies them for fear of what he might find in her eyes. She just blinks those too-blue eyes.
She is always the first to break before him.
She is always the first to crumble.
Maybe, in time, she will learn to live with it and not hate the way that her body betrays her, a slender golden leg lifting and threatening to carry herself closer to him before she firmly plants it again. But, for now, she only hates herself for the weakness that blossoms like a flower in her chest when she catches his eyes as she stands before him. The way that she immediately begins to tremble as the faultlines split her open.
So she swallows and tries again, desperately grabbing for any kind of strength. For any kind of armor.
She cannot survive him again, she thinks.
Not if she is vulnerable.
“Tenebrae.” This time she is able to feign almost indifference, almost able to pretend that she barely remembers the name. Like she hadn’t spent nights recreating the shape and feel of him. But she feels a fissure open up in her, threatening to tear her apart, and she knows that she can’t give in. She can’t be so weak in front of him again. She can’t. She can’t.
So she straightens, pulled on her mask, her features smooth and cold, her eyes glittering.
“I didn’t expect to see you here.”
A truth, one wrapped in a blanket of apathy. Her mask slips for just a second as she studies him, as she feels that dark and painful ache that grabs at her chest, but she pulls it on again, rolling a shoulder.
“I hope that you have been well. I was not aware there were monasteries on the beach.” While the apathy is rampant, there sits too, a measured ounce of animosity weighted in her words. “Must be a pleasant experience to both pray and sunbathe.”
let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going, no feeling is final
She stands, spinning sunlight upon the beach. It peels in slender rays from her body as if she were a piece of the sun, fallen away. He believes that she is, for all that she has left her marks upon his heart.
For a monk whose only study should have been his goddess, he knows the moment Elena breaks. He sees it in the widening of her eyes, the way they shimmer dark and light reminiscent of sunlight playing across the waves. In a moment, in a dip of her gilded lashes she reveals the depth of her pain. But it is gone in a moment, in the blink of an eye she adorns herself in strength. Yet still she is gentle in her strength. Elena stands as bold as a tree before his oncoming hurricane (for he is running to her). The sand sprays where his feet fall and darkness descends fast and thick and terrible.
The Stallion reaches her, his darkness pressing, pressing upon the gold of her. His shadows remind themselves of her light, they press upon the curves of her body. The monk looks over her, searching, searching. SHe looks as she always has, slim and full of delicate curves. Her fine bones paint her as fragile as a dove, but he knows the lion heart that beats within her breast.
Her words, her words fill the air. First his name tumbling from her tongue like a litany. (It is still agony to hear it come from her lips). Then her words, filled with bravery sharp with the sting of their bite.
Gods. He has missed her.
His eyes close, for he knows how he has hurt her, Still her agony whispers to him, he still feels the echo of that dark look. Mere seconds, but he feels it for months. He would whisper another apology, he would press his lips into her neck and beg again for her forgiveness. Or at least the monk thinks he would, until he realises that he would not be here, she had demanded so. Told him never to return. He wished to honour her again, he wished to give himself wholly to Caligo again. And he had. Until Moira, until her revelation…
“Is it true?” Tenebrae breathes, suddenly frantic, suddenly his body too small, his skin too thin to contain the maelstrom of emotions that clamour at his insides. He searches her again and again. His eyes pressing upon her golden skin, her curves, looking, looking, looking. Then beyond, out to her sides where he expects a child to stand, watching. There is nothing. Elena is as she has always been. There is no child here. He is overjoyed.
He is bereft.
“Do you have a child?” The Disciple asks and the words tangle themselves within his throat, disorientated with anger, battling with hope. Oh to have a child! It is joy and it is horror. Tenebrae is a condemned man, his sight is soon to be gone and oh, to just see his child once.
It's always a matter, isn't it, of waiting for the world to come unraveled? When things hold together, it's always only temporary
I
t hurts to stand here before him, to feel it all come back and rush through her. It hurts to feel all of the edges and the broken glass in the back of her throat—to know all of the different ways that she has fallen apart in the recent months. It is easy to think back to a time when she had thought she had been broken, when she had gone to the fires in Dencote, and he had come up to her, with summer on his breath and she had let his shadows flood her light. He had caught her on a cliff, pressed kisses onto her lips, and given her the gift of her daughter. She could go back to that, back to summer nights.
But she doesn’t, she can’t, just remember the golden glow of their love.
And all the hurt that followed.
His shadows kiss against her like they always have and at first it had felt like her soul was unraveling, all those carefully knit-together pieces coming irreparably undone. But it felt different now. Empty. It felt like nothing. She tries to tell herself it feels like nothing, even as her chest is pounding, like her own heart was betraying her. The roar of the ocean speaks to the storm in her soul.
And like how the ocean pushes and pulls, so too does Elena. She pushes everything out, every happiness, every sadness every accomplishment and every regret. And in their place she tries to erect walls: tall, vast, impenetrable. It is the only way she can look at that face she had loved so much, and still loves, without shattering to pieces like a dropped porcelain doll. She tries to think of his flaws, his weaknesses, but the animosity does not come as easily to her. She thinks of his hunger, his need, and she loved him for it. Her heart trembles reflexively in her chest, battering itself to death against the cage of rib-bones like a trapped moth. She stares at the dirt at her feet and wishes herself anywhere but here, but then wishing no other place existed except the one built between the two of them.
She doesn’t know how he manages to do this: how he strips away all of her defenses. “Is what true?” She asks, this time her voice is softer, but still broken and bruised, each syllable aching with the pain.
Each second that she is around him, she can feel the knife digging deeper and deeper into her gut, and she can feel the blade with excruciating detail.
The emotions that flare between them are too much—too much for anyone to handle. Certainly too much for her to understand. She is tearing apart at the seams, dissolving between his very fingertips, and yet, she is still a wildfire. Her golden skin is all nerve, alive and waiting for him, and she loathes herself for it. She loathes that every inch of her is alive and longing for him. She hates that she is all need, all want, all his.
In this moment, trapped between the splintering emotions of her fears and her desires, she wonders what would have happened if she had not met him. That day, she was only meant to to have fleeting conversations. She was only meant to dance and smile pretty smiles and move on. There was never meant to be any weight.
But this? This is all weight.
“I do,” she says and she knows this is just the start, can feel the desire leaping off his skin this time not for herself, but for another—for Elliana. And the emotions he feels, it makes all of Elena’s soul quake as she wonders if what she is doing is right, for herself, for Tenebrae, for their daughter.
“But she is not yours,” she finally chokes out, and her bones scream with the agony of it. “If that is where your concern lies.” And she wants to make him the villain, a man who cannot love his own daughter. She wants to make him the villain even if he doesn't know it. Some part of her had died in a dream; some childlike corner that had ached for a normal life, that had ached to love simply. She knows now that this will never happen.
She should have known though, simplicity for Elena has always been a dream out of reach.
let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going, no feeling is final
I do, Elena says and all that went before those words is forgotten.
Tenebrae does not think for a moment that the child might not be his. The timing is right from when they had a night together. The monk does not see how his naivety carries him fast and blind down a path of assumption. He smiles in that small moment. He smiles wide and pleased, delighted. Staggered. The breath is stolen from his lungs as even his fear, that deep gnawing terror of being a father is gone. And the Order… the great and terrible punishment he will face for fathering a child is forgotten.
In this moment Tenebrae is wholly and completely overjoyed. He never knew what love, what family would feel like, until then until…
But she is not yours
His smile disappears like dew in the morning. As all things were with Elena, such deep rooted joy was soon to be dashed. Either she broke his heart or he broke hers, it seemed to be the only way their hearts knew how to work together. His breath leaves him like a gust, a hurricane. He does not think he will ever breathe the same again. His lungs are scarred.
It should not hurt this much. That is what he thinks when he looks to her. He missed the way she choked over the words. Tenebrae misses the way her bones scream out in agony - a twin symphony to the shattering of his heart. They have always been a symphony. An answer to each other. They were the two that were never supposed to happen, yet they did, inexplicably. He was never supposed to have a child and he thought, for a moment, that with Elena all things were possible.
But it wasn’t.
And her revelation should not hurt this much. Tenebrae turns from her, from the hard angry set of her jaw. He is breaking, as he turns from her. He is shattering into a thousand fractals of glass. He does not recognise the pieces of himself. Each shard is an emotion as complex and different to the one that lies beside it. He has no name for the mess of emotions except the four that sing out the loudest and hurt him the most: jealousy, grief, relief, shame.
His shadows claw at her, begging. They whisper against her golden skin all the words he does not say. His shadows hate her for her revelation and they beg her to take every word back. They crawl over her body, gather her in in an embrace and yet smother her in a darkness so cold, so filled with jealousy…
“Whose?” Tenebrae asks and he has no idea if he managed to mask the croak from his own voice, the way his breaks upon the question. “Who’s her father?” But all he wants to ask his Who is the father of the daughter that could have been mine? It is dangerous for a monk to ever think that and he keeps the words locked away, he keeps them tied up amongst the things he should not say and never do.
And then, oh, then comes the question he cannot help, the one that is filled with such blazing irony he deserves all his agony for it, “Were you with him when we were together?” And he looks to her and sees only himself. He feels the pain of her revelation as if he were Boudika. He is not as proud and strong and magnificent as her. His asking is small and quiet, though his shadows billow, though they cradle Elena and whisper don’t answer into her delicate ears.
He should be glad he does not have a daughter and he is, he is, for to have a child and never see her again when the Order takes his eyes would be a punishment he could not bear. The monk can go to the Blinding tomorrow, content, relieved. He knows he will. But Tenebrae also knows he will go to the Blinding a jealous man, wishing Elena was his, her daughter was his, in spite of everything.
It's always a matter, isn't it, of waiting for the world to come unraveled? When things hold together, it's always only temporary
S
tay this way, she wants to whisper to him. Stay smiling.
I’ll cherish however long you can give me, she wants to promise.
I’ll understand when you hate me for what I did, she wants to lie.
She holds her tongue.
Her heart feels like it is in a fist clenched so impossibly tight.
He smiles then, and she feels his joy, and Elena is sure her heart must’ve died in her chest, ruptured and turned dark like a black hole, breaking all her ribs in the process because suddenly it hurts too much to breath.
Oh gods that smile.
It takes the wind out of her sails and leaves her silent, her blue eyes widening slightly and jaw snapping shut. Part of her almost lets the truth out then—almost spills it all out an onto the ground like the blood from a wound, she almost tears her heart out and shows to him how full it has become because Elliana is in her life—but she remains quiet. She takes in all of his happiness, his pride, his delight and pulls it deep into her chest. She lets it sit there, lets it rot, because she knows that it will flutter away in a moment and her own guilt will take its place. She deserves to feel that way. She knows that she has earned it.
But nothing stings more than when that smiles fades with the lie she places inside his chest, barb wire against his heart.
“I’m sorry,” she says when his expression shifts, her voice small, and the tremors racing up her spine. Elena takes away all the light from him. She hates the way he looks then. He had always been a man of shadows, but shadows need light, and now without it, he looks like nothing but downtrodden darkness. And yet a part of her is glad for his misery in this moment, she wants him to know how she had felt. Because how could she ever explain the marrow-deep anguish she felt in his absence? She can’t and so she doesn’t even try, just lets it sit inside him. She placed a daughter in front of him and tore her away. Just as he did to her with his heart.
And then comes the anger. So rarely has she felt this from him, towards her none the less, that it almost shocks her when she feels it falling from him as powerful as the waterfall she knew as a child. It cuts her deeper than she could ever explain—the way it feels like a vice wrapped around her throat. The way the lie tastes in her mouth long after she has said it, it tastes bitter, like a mistake, like anything but what she wanted. She hates herself in this moment. She hates too how his anger hurts her so much as it claws at her, vicious and brutal and biting.
She hates the way how he looks so calm while she is standing her, coming apart.
The shadows push her and Elena opens her mouth with a truth and then promptly shuts it before he can see, and then falls quiet. She cannot. She can’t bear the thought of pouring out her heart again—telling him how much she has missed him, telling him how much the night meant to her, what it gave her—for him to break it all over again. She can’t bear to tell him anything more when it just ruins things further, when it doesn’t do a lick of good, when she’s left aching in the aftermath.
She swallows her pain and lets her gaze drop to the ground and just breathes in slow.
Whose?
He asks.
She tries to remember that she cannot fall apart now. She cannot splinter apart. She cannot forget who she is and what she is meant to do. Not now. Not now. “Oh,” is all she says at first because it is the only sound that her lungs will allow her to make. It is a quiet thing, but she forces it to be whole. She forces it to not completely come apart. There is another moment and she is acutely aware of the fact that she has been completely quiet. That she hasn’t really responded to him, to either of his questions. Her heart constricts painfully.
She can’t ruin this just because she is greedy for things she cannot have.
She can’t ruin this just because she so desperately wants more.
“We weren’t together like that,” she says as if that could offer him some peace, some comfort. But Tenebrae and Elena have proved that there are ways to be intimate without needing to touch. “His name is Azrael, and it is his daughter,” Elena whispers, those words like glass in her mouth, making her bleed all over them.
And she feels him, the storm of him—just his mere presence—whip around her and her throat grows dry. Each of his words still hit her like whiplash. Her breath gets sucked from her lungs, and she doesn’t say anything for a moment. She just stands there, tall and straight, her icy blue eyes guarded as she looks into the shadow and reminds herself of all the different ways to hide.
“I met him the same night I met you,” she confesses. It would seem she would always be the one to be the first to confess, to be the first to lay bare her sins.
She swallows hard.
For a second, there is nothing again but the silence that continues to stretch between them. It grows taut and too thin and she is afraid for what will happen to her when it finally snaps.
Something like pain flashes across her features that she chases away with indifference, with another failed attempt at apathy as she rolls a golden shoulder and lets a heat settle into her bones.
“I should probably go,” because like she is the first to crumble, she is also the first to run.
let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going, no feeling is final
I am sorry, Elena whispers and he wants to ask her what for - for the fact that the child was not his, that she was with someone else?
The fae girl relishes his smile, treasures it, longs to beg him to keep it upon his lips. But when he thinks back, when the shock of this moment slips from his body, leaving him exhausted and broken, he will recoil from the memory of his smile, his joy. It leaves him feeling a fool. It is another reminder that he is young and foolish. At least now he has an eternity to grow wiser to the affairs of life and love.
He thinks of eternity, how his was given in the darkness of the underground vault with Elena by his side. The night Order’s magic turned them both immortal and he was content with that, with her by his side for an eternity. But, now, now all he can wonder is if her daughter is immortal too. Tenebrae can only hope that his envy, his sudden, desperate want of a daughter will be just a blink in his endless existence. He fears he might carry it with him forever. In that moment, he fears his own immortality. It is a long time to want what was never his. He will be consumed, of course he will. His learning to let go begins now, now, now.
His shadows, that clawed at her and clinged to her and pushed and pulled at her, they fall still, exhausted and penitent. They lie like a cloak across her body before falling away like silk, dissolving. It is, Tenebrae thinks, like letting go. It kills a part of him, for all he wants is still to hold her.
The Disciple turns away from her and the darkness draws in across his body, until all of him that remains is the glow of his half moon and his eyes - whose light will be extinguished. He turns them upon her, he bathes her in silver light, ensures the moon possesses her. The monk had always thought she belonged in darkness as much as light. Where in her body, he wonders, does the darkness of immortal magic turn the threads that make her into endless, unbreakable cords of silver and gold.
The name, the name, the name.
Azrael.
It comes sharper than the whip he had used to try and purge his love of her from his body. It cuts deeper than the corded thong had sunk into his back. It bleeds more. His heart bleeds, it gushes. It fills him up with crimson blood hot with agony, wet with grief.
And then, and then he laughs.
It is a terrible noise, void of joy and even anger. It is frighteningly empty but for the emotion that laces through it, turning it awful and broken. “Gods, Elena.” He breathes when the laughter abates and he looks to her. He drinks in her beauty like a man drowning, this is the last sight of her he will ever see. And she stands before him with her lips turned down, weighted by anger, resolve and sorrow. At once he feels as his shadows had been, he feels how anger and grief and jealousy are turning him into the sea. He has only the Night Order ahead of him. He has only the darkness of Caligo left for him. Is he to remain angry forever? He can carry his ire and jealousy into his tomb of darkness or he can try to make peace with it now, he can try to be the monk he was always supposed to be.
Tenebrae swallows it all down, bitter anger, sour jealousy, fermenting grief. He nearly chokes, but he walks to her as she whispers that she should go. SHe has become a doe, a frightening rabbit. He moves to her, less a wolf, a predator.
“I am sorry for what we have done to those we love,” Tenebrae whispers into her skin as he presses against her and drinks in the salt of her - her tears, her own anger? He is sorry, he is sorry for Azrael, for what they did to Boudika and to each other, but… “But a part of me wishes she was mine.” He says and smiles and laughs at the ludicrousness of it. “It is better than she isn’t though when my punishment begins.”
He could stay forever there, pressed into her skin, surrounded by the warmth of her, her body, her smile, the light of her soul. Yet, she wasn’t his. Not when she is Azrael’s family. Tenebrae steps back, too fast, for that thought is a twinge in his stomach. He gasps, as if run through by a blade, but it is only jealousy and he needs to learn to live with the pain of it, if he cannot let go of it.
The distance is sobering and he looks to her, bathed like sun goddess in the silver of his sigils. “Does Azrael know that I am the other man?” He asks, but does not think that he cannot hate Azrael just a little bit. He knows some days he will be ruled by pain, by jealousy. “What is your daughter’s name?” He asks, “I shall listen out for her.”
It's always a matter, isn't it, of waiting for the world to come unraveled? When things hold together, it's always only temporary
H
ow should this have gone? Is there a world where this tale ends differently?
She thinks about the first time they met often—perhaps too often. She thinks about the way he had managed to stir life into her. It only increased the more times they met. She had been alive for the first time in months, those times with him. He had made her feel the entire spectrum of her emotions. From rage to helplessness to sorrow to heat.
He had made her want.
He had made her need.
Perhaps most dangerously of all, he had made her hope.
The memory of it is something she carries with her often, tucked against her breast. She remembers all the ways she had come apart. How she had beat fists against his chest and hunted for purchase on the granite walls of him. How he had finally melted into liquid heat and the way that he had lit her on fire—how he had showed her everything she had known existed but never found.
That heat is always with her now, simmering just below the surface, but she is too focused on the way that the pain rises to notice it now. She shivers, her skin flinching. His question digs into her and she thinks about all of the answers she could give him. She could tell him that she’s haunted by his daughter that he doesn’t know about. That she’s haunted by the look on Azrael’s face when she had talked about Tenebrae.
How she had known it was too late for her to change course.
How the only option seemed to be swallowing the poison alone.
When she tries to think about them, it is too much. It is overwhelming, to ponder what she’s done, what has been done to her. That somewhere in between every lake shore and bonfire they created something, a kind of sickening romance – love, but more than that.
What they had consumed like a wildfire, leaving them blackened and burnt.
What they had is a virus, destroyed them from the inside out until their bones rattled to dust.
What they had spawned a shadow golden girl who talks to ghosts and wanders with spirits, a girl who should not exist.
They are quantum physics – strange and unnerving and indescribable.
She longs for Lilli desperately, longs for the emerald carpet of Paraiso and the thundering falls she had so foolishly left behind—for the world she knows, the home she loves.
What a fool she has been to run from it.
But in the same breath, Elli comes to mind and she knows she would change nothing. There does not exist a world in Elena’s mind without Elliana in it.
The shadows comes to rest against and she thinks, she could hate him. She could loathe him for dragging her into this, for igniting this fire in her life that has nearly razed her clean. Those white-hot flames that have incinerated that life she had, that life she had known. But staring at him as he turns away, studying him, she can’t find it. She can only feel love, can only feel grateful for every moment.
She could have gone her entire life without knowing passion, and yet here it was. This exquisite pain was everything—it brought clarity, sharpness, joy. For every painful moment, there is a counterweight. For every memory she has of him running from her, she has one of him cradling her. For every barbed word or weighty silence, there is his voice, the way he cradles her name as if it is something precious.
So, no, she cannot bring herself to hate him.
She never could.
He laughs and she thinks should she be angry? But the way it sounds, she knows that feeling well. For a moment, her empathy reaches out to him, sings through his veins, before she pulls it back and coils it in her chest. It is the lightest of touches, the only way she has of reaching out to him without him seeing, without him knowing, the only way she has of testing the waters. And suddenly he is closing in on her.
“Me too.” Her voice is small, almost apologetic, but she doesn’t waver. In truth she is not sorry, she cannot be, not when she has a daughter, a perfect, perfect daughter. She presses back into him, like she is not a liar. There are tears that shudder behind her eyes, hot and fierce. But she hides them well, hides them carefully.
She breathes in deep and feels the way her throat burns.
She is such a stupid, stupid girl.
But a part of me wishes she was mine, he says and she hears it so loud and clear that it pounds into her chest.
She will fall asleep to the sound of it.
She will wake to it.
She tries to hide the creaking sound of her heart shattering in her chest.
He steps back. “Tenebrae.” His name is easy to say and she hates herself for that. She could do it now. Tell him. Be brave. More than anything, Elena has always longed to be brave.
“Mom! Come look at the seashells we found!” It is the voice of her daughter that causes Elena to freeze. Did Tenebrae hear it too? Did it sing to him in much the same way it did for Elena? She eyes him for a moment with something like warmth, like shared pride and joy for the daughter they created, before blinking, and the summer from her eyes is gone—winter frost is left in its stead. “I need to go,” she says and turns to do so. “My daughter needs me.” My daughter and mine alone, she thinks. There are echoes in her head, things she has said before. ‘Don’t come back to Terrastella.’ ‘Don’t come back to me.’ She begins walking away. “Don’t follow me, Tenebrae,” she says, and she covers her fear of the truth with piles and piles of sand that is hot with anger. “Don’t come looking for us.”
She shouldn't do what she does next.
It is this and this alone that spells her demise.
“Elliana, her name is Elliana,” she says, though she shouldn’t. She softens then, forgetting the anger for a moment. “And she is beautiful, perfect, and— she’s everything, Ten.” And with her daughter’s image in mind, Elena leaves the monk alone on the beach. She wonders, but does not listen for the answer, what does he do alone on the beach? Does he pray for guidance, does he laugh with relief, or does he grieve for a child lost?
let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going, no feeling is final
Hope.
That is what they said he had given both Elena and Boudika. But all Tenebrae would think is that, in his foolishness, he has deprived them all of hope.
It was a precious thing, as rich and golden as his fae-girl’s skin.
His fae girl.
His.
Elena was, no longer, his. Had she ever truly been? When she lay with this monk was she also not with Azrael?
The monk hopes she loves Azrael more. That when she whispered I love you against his skin, upon his lips, it meant something different. He hopes.
He is a fool with his gold that is not gold at all. He squandered hope like he squandered love and in so doing he sold a part of himself into the slavery of sin. Now Tenebrae is incomplete. He flounders like a sheep fallen from a cliff and washed out to sea. He was never supposed to be in this environment of love. Caligo was his shepherd, he should not have strayed. That’s why there were vows for men like him - for monks.
Elena looks to him with her wide blue eyes. They are filled with all the things she does not say. He can see them, feel the way they press upon her tongue and the way the weight of them in her gaze is like a fingertip upon his pulse. He feels his blood thumping, thumping. Tenebrae does not know the words to her questions. Neither her thoughts that press down upon him, upon her. The thoughts that want a tongue to cry them out. Tenebrae would pull them from her tongue, if he could. ANything to relieve their shared agony and this terrible parting that comes with the teeth of betrayal and the claws of departing.
But Tenebrae does not know the venomful bite of betrayal. Not yet. He does not know that when Elena says, Elliana, she speaks the name of his daughter and hers. Instead, all he feels is the venomless bite of jealousy, shallow and vapid in his veins. The monk wants a chance at a family. It is a thing he should never hope for.
Tenebrae looks to Elena and knows that they are love and loss, hope and destruction, contentment and jealousy. They are pure and yet tainted. He wants from her all the words she does not speak. Still that dangerous part of him wants to press his lips to her cheek and beg of her, speak, so that all may be well.
Ah. He is such a fool.
They hold each other and he wonders why it feels so much like clutching.
It feels like need and remembering and grasping onto all that might disappear when they part, when time sweeps in to smooth over the dunes of their love and render their love life lost. Or maybe, a vain and dangerous part of him hopes, it might never be lost at all. Maybe their love was a river that carved out a valley through their being and irrevocably changed them…
Me too.
The Disciple stares at his fae-girl.
Did she speak of her regret like his? Or her wish that Elliana was his?
Now it is Tenebrae’s turn for his eyes to be so heavy with things unspoken, questions unanswered. But some, words are never meant to find the tongue, the teeth, the voice or even an answer. So he does not speak. Just as Elena did not. They do not speak the things that matter most.
And then she is leaving. She is turning towards a girl that calls her Mum, and finds shells upon a beach. From that voice, like bells, like angels, the monk hears a girl he wants to meet. She becomes so real he could touch - could see on the last day that he sees anything at all.
He turns away as Elena leaves.
A monk will content himself with only a voice and only a name. He does not need to see the girl.
Only he does and yet, he does not know it. He will spend an eternity regretting not turning to the daughter who calls out for her mother in that moment.
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