[P] in the blur of the stars [fall]

[Elena]

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

If Michael came to her with claws out, Elena will still open her arms wide to embrace him. He could cut her along her shoulder, scratch her across brow and Elena will hold him tighter still, saying I will not let go, because she knows how much that hurts to have someone let go, even when claws are out, she had told them just hold on a little longer, before she felt the ground beneath her feet and their arms no longer holding onto her.

She would not do that to Michael. She will emerge from any encounter with him bloodied and hurt and she will still smile like sunshine.

And if he came to her with a shovel, Elena would wait to see the hole he dug and fill it back in and plant flowers across it.

“I guess you must admire them from afar then,” she says and she cannot stop that small glimmer of humor that flashes across her delicate, golden features. That small sign of the girl she had once been and the girl she could be again if she only let herself try. It softens her face for a second, but it is only for a moment because with the next breath, her expression is quiet again. Washed clean.

She gives the barest hint of a smile, as if apologizing for the freedom of her laughter, when her world was falling apart.

And there, in that pause between words where all Elena hears is the laughter of the partying and the emptying of glasses and she pretends for a moment to join them—like she were someone else entirely.

They dance, and if Elena were to be asked, she would tell you she were drunk on the steps and not the wine. One foot, another, one hip, another, one shoulder, another. She moves towards him and away, her steps fluid, the look in her eyes flirting with the possibility of a truly happy evening. “You aren't tired, are you Michael?” She asks him. And maybe Michael sees himself inside her, but Elena, when she catches his gaze, she gasps silently, because for a fraction of time, she saw Lilli stir behind his eyes. Elena has known blue eyes since the beginning of her life. Blue eyes to Elena is the color of home, it is the color of love, it is the color of determination, of loyalty.

She knows from the blue of his eyes that she and Michael were not finished with each other, not for some time. She would tell him they would be friends forever, if the word forever were not starting to feel like a cage around her heart.

Of course, he says, and happiness leaps off his golden skin and onto her own, finding its way into her marrow, into her bones. “Moira,” she says so readily. Of course he would love her Phoenix friend, her joy, Elena had named her as such. “I can be sorry if it was never supposed to happen,” she says stubbornly, admitting it out loud. The way she coughs up her confessions to him without him needing to ask or say anything. Michael could turn her inside out and Elena would still believe her heart were beating tucked inside her chest and not in the open for the world to see. “I love Tenebrae.”

so take away this apathy
bury it before it buries me

@Michael