[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

S

tay this way, she wants to whisper to him. Stay smiling.

I’ll cherish however long you can give me, she wants to promise.

I’ll understand when you hate me for what I did, she wants to lie.

She holds her tongue.
Her heart feels like it is in a fist clenched so impossibly tight.

He smiles then, and she feels his joy, and Elena is sure her heart must’ve died in her chest, ruptured and turned dark like a black hole, breaking all her ribs in the process because suddenly it hurts too much to breath.

Oh gods that smile.

It takes the wind out of her sails and leaves her silent, her blue eyes widening slightly and jaw snapping shut. Part of her almost lets the truth out then—almost spills it all out an onto the ground like the blood from a wound, she almost tears her heart out and shows to him how full it has become because Elliana is in her life—but she remains quiet. She takes in all of his happiness, his pride, his delight and pulls it deep into her chest. She lets it sit there, lets it rot, because she knows that it will flutter away in a moment and her own guilt will take its place. She deserves to feel that way. She knows that she has earned it.

But nothing stings more than when that smiles fades with the lie she places inside his chest, barb wire against his heart.

“I’m sorry,” she says when his expression shifts, her voice small, and the tremors racing up her spine. Elena takes away all the light from him. She hates the way he looks then. He had always been a man of shadows, but shadows need light, and now without it, he looks like nothing but downtrodden darkness. And yet a part of her is glad for his misery in this moment, she wants him to know how she had felt. Because how could she ever explain the marrow-deep anguish she felt in his absence? She can’t and so she doesn’t even try, just lets it sit inside him. She placed a daughter in front of him and tore her away. Just as he did to her with his heart.

And then comes the anger. So rarely has she felt this from him, towards her none the less, that it almost shocks her when she feels it falling from him as powerful as the waterfall she knew as a child. It cuts her deeper than she could ever explain—the way it feels like a vice wrapped around her throat. The way the lie tastes in her mouth long after she has said it, it tastes bitter, like a mistake, like anything but what she wanted. She hates herself in this moment. She hates too how his anger hurts her so much as it claws at her, vicious and brutal and biting.

She hates the way how he looks so calm while she is standing her, coming apart.

The shadows push her and Elena opens her mouth with a truth and then promptly shuts it before he can see, and then falls quiet. She cannot. She can’t bear the thought of pouring out her heart again—telling him how much she has missed him, telling him how much the night meant to her, what it gave her—for him to break it all over again. She can’t bear to tell him anything more when it just ruins things further, when it doesn’t do a lick of good, when she’s left aching in the aftermath.

She swallows her pain and lets her gaze drop to the ground and just breathes in slow.

Whose?
He asks.

She tries to remember that she cannot fall apart now. She cannot splinter apart. She cannot forget who she is and what she is meant to do. Not now. Not now. “Oh,” is all she says at first because it is the only sound that her lungs will allow her to make. It is a quiet thing, but she forces it to be whole. She forces it to not completely come apart. There is another moment and she is acutely aware of the fact that she has been completely quiet. That she hasn’t really responded to him, to either of his questions. Her heart constricts painfully.

She can’t ruin this just because she is greedy for things she cannot have.

She can’t ruin this just because she so desperately wants more.

“We weren’t together like that,” she says as if that could offer him some peace, some comfort. But Tenebrae and Elena have proved that there are ways to be intimate without needing to touch. “His name is Azrael, and it is his daughter,” Elena whispers, those words like glass in her mouth, making her bleed all over them.

And she feels him, the storm of him—just his mere presence—whip around her and her throat grows dry. Each of his words still hit her like whiplash. Her breath gets sucked from her lungs, and she doesn’t say anything for a moment. She just stands there, tall and straight, her icy blue eyes guarded as she looks into the shadow and reminds herself of all the different ways to hide.

“I met him the same night I met you,” she confesses. It would seem she would always be the one to be the first to confess, to be the first to lay bare her sins.

She swallows hard.

For a second, there is nothing again but the silence that continues to stretch between them. It grows taut and too thin and she is afraid for what will happen to her when it finally snaps.

Something like pain flashes across her features that she chases away with indifference, with another failed attempt at apathy as she rolls a golden shoulder and lets a heat settle into her bones.

“I should probably go,” because like she is the first to crumble, she is also the first to run.

@Tenebrae
Code by rallidae
picture by cannon