[P] but what of his love?

[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

erwir and her were supposed to last forever. He was her first love, she was young, so young, and he was the older, brave knight that saved her on the mountains, who promised her eternity. She believed every word he said because she was young and because he had such wisdom in his eyes.

Underworld and her were never supposed to happen. He stole her from her home, he knocked her down every chance he got. But he looked at her and set her every nerve on fire, and she thought she should be scared of him, but she couldn't bring herself to be.

Altair and her should have been together. He was the good one, the loyal one, the kind one. He kept her from running into the snowstorm towards her death, he held her, told her he wanted to see her again. She said no, and he let her go, because he cared for her that much. He cared enough to let her go.

Tunnel and her were a mistake. A nearly deadly mistake. He never loved her, never truly wanted her, he just desired to break something pretty, to cage a bird, to pluck the petals of a sunflower. Tunnel destroyed and she was just something else to obliterate. It was wrong place wrong time, and then the wrong time at the wrong place.

Tenebrae and her were another matter entirely.

Azrael and her—she feels guilt, because after all of this, what does she have left to offer him?

She sees them all pieces by piece. Aerwir begging her to stay, Underworld calling himself a demon, not wanting to contaminate her purity, Altair’s antlers catching in a branch, Tunnel’s teeth against her skin, Tenebrae in the lake, Azrael meeting her under the stars. She can no longer watch the shadows of her home, not when their faces keep finding her, she turns to Torix then, wondering what he sees staring back at him because she can feel him, feel everything about him.

There, just beneath the surface, the nerves bristle.
They spit and they spark.
And if she let them, they would lay her to waste.

Because she knows rage just as intimately as she knows anything else. She, too, has been blinded by it. She has felt it tighten like a vise around her windpipe. She has felt caught beneath its grinding heel. So she does not cower when she feels his own, but he says nothing, he does nothing.

He is the hunter of the wolf, and the shepherd of the lamb.
And what is she now to him? If she holds this power.

“Okay,” she tells him, a promise if he just holds on that it will be over in a moment, though for only a moment. Her head falls against him as her magic works its way in the spaces between ribs, the spaces between breath, between heartbeats. The spaces between raindrops against the window. Elena had not even realized it started to rain. She focuses this time instead of reading emotions, instead of giving emotions, on taking them away. She searches inside him for that love that desire and rips it from his chest with such a force, such a rush that she topples backwards with a gasp and steadies herself on golden legs. She holds it inside her, his love, his desire, and all their faces come flashing back towards her. She holds as tightly as she can for as long as she can, lifting this weight from Torix, to bring him a moment of peace.

She strains to talk to him, her blue eyes are closed. “Torix,” she says. “How does it…” she cant finish the question, she feels her strength draining. “What do you— desire now—?” She asks him.

What does he love?
What does he desire?

@Vercingtorix
Code by rallidae
picture by cannon