“A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river but then he’s still left with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away but then he’s still left with his hands.”
She reminds him of Eleven.
The thought hits him like an arrow, running him through before he can draw his own. It's there in the worried crease of her brow, in the light cast off the wet sand that lands at an angle on the curve of her jaw and the arch of her ribs.
He aches this as she nods, creaking like old ships. Elena's face is set in some indefinite, effortless patience with an undercurrent of defiance. It is a look he knows well. It is a look he has dreamed all his life, long as it is--and to see it again feels both holy and empty in a way he cannot bring himself to consider, let alone speak.
He breathes: in, then out. The feeling passes through him like sand. It is an ache a few lifetimes removed. It slips through his fingers like broken glass. Michael doesn't look at his hands, bleeding and bleeding and bleeding.
She turns back to him, teasing, and Michael ducks his head.
"You really shouldn't," he tries, offering her a grim smile. "worry, I mean. I think I'm tougher than I look."
When he looks up his face is buried in the wet, white mess of his mane but he meets her eyes from beneath it. Michael is not surprised to see her full of motherly affection, the kind of open-armed desperation that he seems to invite everywhere he goes. He thinks it is the beautiful droop of his eyes or the dull gold of his coat but it never is.
It is the same look Isra turns on him when he smiles like he is looking at her from across the yawning jaws of a canyon. It is the same look that Moira has never turned on him, not once--and maybe this is why Moira's face settles in him, now, with the quiet reminder that you are leaving her.
Elena is trying. She is trying so hard. He appreciates the gesture, vain as it is.
She says, tell me something about you that I don't know. It should strike him as odd--it's the kind of question he would ask someone. They are perfect strangers. He shivers against her side, and laughs, like apple cider and all bright, warm things.
His head breaks the surface. He bobs. Fine.
Everything is fine.
"So, what?" he chuckles. "Everything? Do you have that kind of time?"
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