[P] lets light this house on fire

[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

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.

@Tenebrae
Code by rallidae
picture by cannon