[P] even his falling was only a pretext for being

[Elena]

elena

I've hidden memories in boxes inside my head before. Sometimes it's the only way to deal with things.

She thinks no one has ever loved all of her.
Just bits and pieces here and there.

Such a hard thing to love, she believes herself to be. She cannot blame them for believing this to be so, a whole person is a hard thing to love. Is that why we find soulmates? To fill in those spots too hard to love?

To love was to lie.
To yourself, to the other person, to everything between you. You lie for love, because of love, in spite of love. There are lies woven in the fabric of every relationship, even when they come to light, even when they are brought to the front and center, they are still lies, hanging there.

In all truth of the matter, Elena and Vercingtorix should never have become friends, should never have seen each other beyond that stormy cliff side. But Elena, she is the kind of girl who waltzes into the lion’s den with a smile on her face. The kind of girl who would love the lions, sink fingers into fur gold as sunlight even as teeth sink in. It will be her downfall, sure as anything, if it hasn't already caused her to spiral, but she’s a girl bred to love disastrous things. And seeing him bloodied and broken and changed, she knows in this moment, she loves him, as she loves Po, Moira, Michael, Anandi, and so many others that have tucked themselves into her heart.

It is strange how quickly things can unravel, stranger still how far they will go once the momentum has built. Her emotions that she conjures for him, she pushes them onto him, keeps pushing because she would claw her way into his heart and grow a will to fight even if it meant she had to tear down every wall, feel every one of his emotions to get there.

“We will get through this.” Words that sound too much like promises not be counted spill from her lips. “You have me, you will always have me.” And she wants to say it this time, how she promises, but she bites her tongue against it. She wants to cry before him, wants to fall into him. He knows her tears, he has seen her pain before. Maybe this would show him, show him why he needs to fight. But the tears do not come. She does not feel her back wracked with sobs. In some ways, she feels completely and totally hollowed out. She has lost too many. Though she does not allow herself to fall into that abyss just yet. She would not lose another.

****She continues sewing, pretends it is a quilt and not flesh, as she nods her head in the rhythm of his voice. “Listen to him now,” she says when there is a break in his words, whether he pauses from pain or for a breath, she does not ask. “Where was the sun?” She asks him as she finishes sewing, starts preparing a salve to place over the stitches, to hold them and ward off infection. ****

Elena wants to cry for him now wants to send those tears down like rain, like another had. “The rain,” she says, swallowing something like agony. “Did it ever stop?” She asks. Rain, it wasn't rain, Elena. But she cannot believe in tears now, not when her own are perched so close to the edge.

“And had you fallen, I would have had nothing to cry onto that night but a shattered shoulder of a man I never got a chance to know,” she admits so selfishly. “And had you fallen, I would have been lost inside a city, a belly of a beast. And had you fallen—,” she doesn't want to say the rest. Selfish girl.

“What is the thing that breaks a poet’s heart most, Elena?” Ramiro asked her one day. This had been a time she had returned to Windskeep, to see her grandmother. “The ending,” he had answered for her. She smiles then, for herself, for Torix, for all the poets out there. No hearts would break today.

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