tenebrae
let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going, no feeling is final
I do, Elena says and all that went before those words is forgotten.
Tenebrae does not think for a moment that the child might not be his. The timing is right from when they had a night together. The monk does not see how his naivety carries him fast and blind down a path of assumption. He smiles in that small moment. He smiles wide and pleased, delighted. Staggered. The breath is stolen from his lungs as even his fear, that deep gnawing terror of being a father is gone. And the Order… the great and terrible punishment he will face for fathering a child is forgotten.
In this moment Tenebrae is wholly and completely overjoyed. He never knew what love, what family would feel like, until then until…
But she is not yours
His smile disappears like dew in the morning. As all things were with Elena, such deep rooted joy was soon to be dashed. Either she broke his heart or he broke hers, it seemed to be the only way their hearts knew how to work together. His breath leaves him like a gust, a hurricane. He does not think he will ever breathe the same again. His lungs are scarred.
It should not hurt this much. That is what he thinks when he looks to her. He missed the way she choked over the words. Tenebrae misses the way her bones scream out in agony - a twin symphony to the shattering of his heart. They have always been a symphony. An answer to each other. They were the two that were never supposed to happen, yet they did, inexplicably. He was never supposed to have a child and he thought, for a moment, that with Elena all things were possible.
But it wasn’t.
And her revelation should not hurt this much. Tenebrae turns from her, from the hard angry set of her jaw. He is breaking, as he turns from her. He is shattering into a thousand fractals of glass. He does not recognise the pieces of himself. Each shard is an emotion as complex and different to the one that lies beside it. He has no name for the mess of emotions except the four that sing out the loudest and hurt him the most: jealousy, grief, relief, shame.
His shadows claw at her, begging. They whisper against her golden skin all the words he does not say. His shadows hate her for her revelation and they beg her to take every word back. They crawl over her body, gather her in in an embrace and yet smother her in a darkness so cold, so filled with jealousy…
“Whose?” Tenebrae asks and he has no idea if he managed to mask the croak from his own voice, the way his breaks upon the question. “Who’s her father?” But all he wants to ask his Who is the father of the daughter that could have been mine? It is dangerous for a monk to ever think that and he keeps the words locked away, he keeps them tied up amongst the things he should not say and never do.
And then, oh, then comes the question he cannot help, the one that is filled with such blazing irony he deserves all his agony for it, “Were you with him when we were together?” And he looks to her and sees only himself. He feels the pain of her revelation as if he were Boudika. He is not as proud and strong and magnificent as her. His asking is small and quiet, though his shadows billow, though they cradle Elena and whisper don’t answer into her delicate ears.
He should be glad he does not have a daughter and he is, he is, for to have a child and never see her again when the Order takes his eyes would be a punishment he could not bear. The monk can go to the Blinding tomorrow, content, relieved. He knows he will. But Tenebrae also knows he will go to the Blinding a jealous man, wishing Elena was his, her daughter was his, in spite of everything.
