[P] you're oh so pretty when you stand on the edge

[Elena]

elena

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

This is the reckoning that she has been waiting for.

The secrets that have boiled in her chest, simmered and spit and bit at the back of her mind. She thinks of it every time that she looks down to her beautiful daughter—so beautiful, inquisitive, and bright. She thinks it between the self-hatred she feels blossoming in her poisonous chest. All of it boils and bites and she can barely hold it back.

But when she sees Boudika stalking toward her, she doesn't know it.

Oh, but it was time to meet it.

She can feel the pressing and bruising of listening to Boudika’s venom. Does he know, does he know? She asked Elena. She just shakes her head. “No,” she chokes out and her voice cracks painfully,

But it doesn’t matter. She knows that.

It doesn’t matter because she knew and she didn’t say.

She stayed hiding in Terrastella and pretending that she could be happy with that crown on her head. But Boudika found her anyway, but Elena has never been good at escaping the past, escaping her choices. She was so terribly selfish and her heart clenches in her test and her teeth grit together. “I couldn't tell him, I—.” Words no longer come. Maybe this is what it means to be weak.

Maybe this is the final breaking of her spine underneath her own foot. Because Boudika rages at her and she has no defense. She has nothing that she can say to make this better. To make it right. It doesn’t matter that she didn’t actively try to steal a man away from the shifter. That she had no idea of the connection until her heart had flooded with thoughts of him.

It didn’t matter because she had known and she had stayed silent.

She had known and she hadn’t been brave enough to tell them both.

So she accepts Boudika’s vitriol and swallows it down. Takes the venom inside of her and lets it light her up like a torch. “I should have told you the second I realized,” she finally manages, her voice quiet, the tears silent and steady on her cheeks. “I should have tried to make it right. I should have done anything.” She hates her heart for the way it swells and then clenches in her chest. Hates her heart for loving him, even now, even with all she knows. Even though she knows he does not and cannot love her. Even though she knows that he was Boudika’s before she even knew his name.

Her heart does not care.


It does not occur to Elena that perhaps the reason she cares for Vercingtorix so greatly is because like calls to like. And those with fractures, those who are broken, find one another. Tell him, tell him or I will. “Please, no, don’t. He cannot know. Elli cannot know,” she says and her voice doesn’t feel like her own. It feels alien in her mouth, echoing and strange and she shakes her head as if that would help. “I’m sorry,” her breath catches and her throat burns with the words. Elena turned from her then. “Please go,” she says and can still feel Boudika’s shadow. “By order of the Queen—leave me, leave Court,” she seethes at the woman, and she goes and Elena—

She feels alive with an incredible agony.

She swallows and buries it; she pulls the poison into her belly and lets it simmer.

Queen of the Dusk. 
Indeed. 

She stayed inside her castle for days on end. She did not think if they whispered about her, about the new sovereign that they saw was crowned and then it has been a week, at least and they have not seen her again. But Elena felt like she could not move— and then, the lead that has been anchoring her feet suddenly disappears. 

She goes not to Court, but to the swamp, where he stands there waiting for her. No, he isn't waiting for her, but Elena refuses to believe anything otherwise. “Torix, you look—well,” she greets him evenly, too tired to find a way to put an amused light in her eyes. She doesn't know how her words will land on him. She had healed him, brought him back from wherever he was going before. She approaches him with the grace of sunshine, but the ease of summer breezes. “A change of scenery can be good for the soul, let us explore today,” she says to the vagabond who feels more and more like hers every day (though she would never tell him this, though, he must feel it.) “Besides, some movement could do you good,” she says with a smile and places her cheek against his shoulder for a fraction. “You are still my patient,” she says. You are still mine, she thinks. “I think that means you have to do what I say,” she grins then, reckless and wild, and never has she looked so impish before she send swamp water in his direction, laughter as bright as droplets. 

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