[P] he would not ascend; he learned his lesson | party

[Elena]

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

A

part from each other, Elena and Torix grew up together. Worlds away, they each faced their own tragedies that forced them to grow up faster than they would have liked. There is something that rests inside both of them, a scar where childhood was ripped away with too much force, and too little grace. But Elena grew too in a land where her hand was taken and her tears were caught. She was loved, she was loved, and the children there were seen as more than just girls and boys. Elena was told she would be a healer because it was what she wanted. Elena hopes she can do the same for her own daughter.

There is exhaustion on him, it slips from his shoulder and onto her own, like a little blue bird. Elena cannot find him unworthy of the prince, but she does not fight with him. She fights enough with herself to know that the walls constructed around such emotions are better fought on the inside than someone outside the castle walls.

“No,” she says, “Maybe it doesn’t.” And she yields because he drives his own sword into his heart and Elena would not deliver the final blow, even if it could be merciful. She is no killer, but maybe, by watching, she might as well be.

If she could read his thoughts, if she could read what he believes, Elena would shudder because she thinks about it every day, every night when she kisses her daughter’s brow that is adorned with a perfect ivory heart. Elena knows she is the worst kind of liar, she is the kind that lies with love. “You will have my forever.” he had murmured into her skin, the only warmth on that cold autumn night. And he held her, he held her. But Elena thinks, how fast he would have let her go if he knew the truth, if he knew what would come from holding her so close.

Elena rolls her shoulder, trying to shrug off what he says, like it hasn’t already buried deep inside of her. “Do you have children, Torrin?” She asks him then, bringing a question to him from his own. “I have seen men abandon their children for duty, I have seen them given second chances, only to leave them again. My daughter will not be left.” She says with some sense of finality. His next words catch against her skin like a thorn, not enough to draw blood, but the prick of it sends fire through her nerves. “Well then, thank goodness her father refuses to leave the shadows he so worships,” she bites at him, at Tenebrae. Elena clenches her jaw. “I think you should let the subject of my daughter, rest now.”

@Vercingtorix
Code by rallidae
picture by cannon