[P] my cherries and wine.

[Elena]

Some girls are full of heartache and poetry

It’s going to be one of those days, she knows it.

A day she spends fighting fires with her own flames.

The world, it never stops burning. There are too many with fire in their eyes, and not enough who are brave enough to face the flames. They don't care who they burn, what they burn, who gets injured. Elena feels her entire body rock with the pain of it all. But they will never stop burning each other until there is only ash. So Elena does what she cant, picks through them tries to find the phoenixes, heals them, and tells them to rise. Rise. Rise if you can.

Elena is not empty, not yet. But the years keep carving pieces out from her. Her parents’ deaths took her stability. Aerwir, Underworld, they took her childhood. Broch took her independence. Val took her trust.

And Tenebrae?

Tenebrae took her heart, her love, broke every rib bounding her chest on the way to pulling it out. And this child, this child was taking her heart too, in a different way, a different love, the way mothers love their children. She wonders what is left.

And then she remembers, every morning when she wakes up, she remembers that little glowing warmth beside her. And Elena thinks she would do anything for that little bundle, absolutely anything. Even hide the hurt, even hide the agony. Elena smiles and smiles and smiles and smiles because if you are smiling then nothing inside you can fall apart. She would hold herself together if it meant protecting Elliana. She would stitch herself up every night, paint a smile on every morning, if only to keep the illusion that between her, Azrael, and now Elliana they were the happiest family, the perfect family. That there was no one else. There are no shadows. There are no shadows until Elliana wakes Elena in the middle of the night. “Mommy,” she says in that little voice that manages to break her more than any man ever could. “The shadows—they’re breathing.”

She drops Elliana off at school, she says she has art today, and how excited she is. Elena tells her to paint her something pretty. Her daughter says she crosses her heart, the shadows are forgotten for now, Elena hopes at least. She kisses the top of her head as she skips off, and Elena turns to the hospital, there were patients she needed to check on today. She doesn't get far towards the swamp—

She finds the blood.

Why is there always blood?

It follows her like some twisted, crimson shadow. She starts to wonder if it isn’t her own heart bleeding from her chest.

There is a loveliness, a fragility, in her slender, angular frame, in the delicate shape of her head as she bends down over her work. The blood begins to coat her as she works, makes its way onto Elena’s golden chest as she tries to stem the bleeding. She doesn't have her typical materials here, she is so far from the hospital. But the swamp has always been generous towards her. Yarrow grows close by, she can see it sticking up from the water. She is holding the bleeding of his injuries, debating how much damage it would be to let go.

Elena, bold as she is, she risks it.

Blood pools out from him once more as her golden body splashes through the shallows of the swamp to grab the yarrow. She is nearly breathless when she returns to him. “Hang on,” she says. Her voice is softer than silk, softer than starlight, she remains calm though, without worry. She doesn't know if she can hear him, but creating that connection with her words has always soothed the healer, allowed her to work.

She grinds the yarrow quickly before starting to place it on the wound, letting the blood clot at the surface, stemming the flow. It is slow work, slow to clot, even as she places more and more. Elena doesn't know how long it takes, it wouldn't have mattered anyway. She would heal and heal until she brought them back, time had never mattered when an injury was set before her. Elena was a medic. Even if she did not know this man, this was more than her duty, it did more than that give her purpose, it saved her soul.

Her golden body eases back once the blood clots and she no longer sees active bleeding. He still needed stitches, needs bandaging, but she couldn't move him, not on his own. She settles by to watch him, leaving an injured man wasn't an option. “Can you hear me?” She asks him, touching his cheek, trying to gently rouse him. “Can you hear me?” She asks again. “You lost a lot of blood.” She tells him. “I’ve stopped it for now, we need to get you to the hospital.”

those are the kind of girls who try to save wolves

instead of running from them