#it just clarified a point of rhys' characterization for me

[much-ado-about-whumping]

Rhys - losing Deomas

Rhys swallows hard.

"I already lost him," he says quietly. "I still wake up some days and for a moment I think- "

He shakes his head.

"If he's up first, if his side of the bed is empty, sometimes I get this horrible, sick flash of panic, like he's gone, like someone's taken him, like- "

Rhys trails off. Looks away for a long moment in thought. His hands flex where they rest against his thighs.

"I guess it's guilt, partly. For a long time he needed help, he needed me, and I wasn't there. He spent months in Merrion's service before I found him, almost a year, and if I lost- if I lost him again- "

He has to pause, to collect himself.

"I'd never forgive myself."

On a scale of one to ten, this fear is an eleven.

From this ask game. Thanks, @whump-for-all-and-all-for-whump ! 😈💖

[featherymalignancy]

The Tender Jar: An Elriel Experiment

                “Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness, and the infinite                                               tenderness shattered you like a jar”

                                         -Pablo Neruda

Wanted to try something new with these two’s dynamic, even if it pushes Elain a little out of her canon characterization. But listen y’all, it can’t all be shy glances and flower crowns. 

Synopsis: Six months after the war, Elain is still mourning all that the cauldron took from her, and it’s only Azriel she trusts not to judge her for her brokenness. However, when she has a vision concerning both Lucien and Graysen, she steals her courage and braves first the Spring Court and then the Mortal World, Azriel at her side. When lines are drawn and Elain is pushed to her emotional limit, she must decide whether she will let her past shatter her or give in to the desires of her tender heart.

Part I/XII 

See the Masterlist of Chapters Here

Rated M for language, violence, and sexual content.

   “Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness, and the infinite                                               tenderness shattered you like a jar”

                          -Pablo Neruda

Part One:

Elan sat, hidden, on the second story balcony of the townhouse’s palatial library, twisting Graysen’s ring around her slim finger and listening as Feyre’s inner circle discussed her like a problem to be solved. Like a taxing, overdue problem they had to solve.

It had been a long six months since the war ended, and though Feyre and the others might not see it, Elain was trying to get better. To be better. To be less—whatever it was she’d become after crawling out of that cauldron. What her sister didn’t seem to appreciate, despite her own struggles, was that Elain was facing different demons. Furthermore, she was a different person who coped with grief differently. Elan loved Feyre’s indomitable willingness to shred her skin and become someone else—someone better—when circumstance dictated it, but that wasn’t Elain. She could see the disappointment on her sister’s faces as month after month she failed to make drastic improvements in her health and mental state, but she was getting better. If she was a bolder person, she would have marched down there and told them so, screamed it into their faces until they were forced to listen. Instead, she remained in the belly of the nearest column’s shadow, twirling the ring and worrying at her lower lip with her teeth, furious and humiliated in equal measure.

“I’m worried,” Feyre said, idly running her hand through Rhysand’s hair as she sat perched on his lap in one of the wingback armchairs. “She’s not eating, and she’s still wearing that ring. I thought surely by now—and with Lucien…” she trailed off, and Elain’s grip on the ring tightened, even as she continued to twist the iron band around and around.

“Maybe we should set up a meeting with Graysen and his father,” Mor suggested. “You know, so she can—“

“So she can what?” Cassian interrupted, polished boots kicked up on the circular table at the centre of the room. “The man’s a prick, and she’s better off without him.”

Nesta, who sat on the chair opposite Rhys and Feyre, pursed her lips.

“I agree,” she said.

At this, Cassian grinned.

“Don’t agree with me, sweetheart. It makes me very uncomfortable.”

Nesta, who had changed in her own ways since the war, forewent her usual cutting reply, but Rhys gave his friend a hard look.

“Knock it off. This is serious.”

“What do you think, Az?” Feyre said. “You’re the only one she ever seems to open up to these days.”

At this, everyone turned to look at the Shadowsinger, who stood in the corner of the room with arms crossed. Of all the attendees, Elain couldn’t deny that his presence hurt the most. Feyre was right: of all of their inner circle, it was only Azriel who seemed to see Elain for who she really was. The only one who didn’t demand she contort her grief into something constructive.

Azriel shifted on his feet, wings rustling the bookcase behind him. His eyes, the color of a well-aged cognac, surveyed the group, and Elain bit down harder on her lower lip, willing him—despite his High Lady’s directive—to say nothing.

“I think,” he began. “That she is young, and impressionable, and that she’s been through a great deal in a short time. And that’s to say nothing of the burden she bears with the foresight or the situation with Vanserra.”

Cassian snorted.

“How elucidating, brother.”

“What are you suggesting we do, then?” Rhys said, ignoring Cassian. “Nothing?”

The shadows around Azriel deepened a shade, writhing over his feet by reaching no higher than his tall boots

“We give her space,” he said finally. “And we continue watching her to make sure she doesn’t lose the progress she’s made. It’s more than any of you give her credit for.”

Elain’s throat burned. It had been humiliating enough to listen to her sisters dissect her brokenness. To know that Azriel had been doing it too was almost too much to bear.

“You want to spy on her,” Nesta clarified, the steel she’d spared Cassian sliding, razor-sharp, into her tone. “Of course you do.”

“Peace, Nesta,” Feyre said, and where she once might have snarled back, Nesta only clenched her jaw.

Even she had lost faith in Elain, it seemed.

After a tense volley of eye-contact with Feyre, Nesta looked down at her lap, and Feyre turned to Cassian.

“What do you think?”

The mirth had bled from Cassian’s rugged features, and he studied the eldest Archeron sister before looking back to the youngest.

“I think you make a good point. She seems to like Az the best anyways. I don’t seem the harm in letting him keep and eye on her and possibly find out why she’s still wearing that sodding engagement ring.”

“So not just spy on her, then,” Nesta said, familiar barbarous tone returning. “Seduce her, too, if the circumstance warrants it.”

“C’mon, Nes, that’s not what I mean and you know it.”

“It’s not healthy to pine,” Azriel said quietly, and Elain’s eyes prickled with humiliated tears. Is that what he thought she was doing? Pining? She might have expected something that callous from Nesta, or even Feyre, but never him. “And with Vanserra coming back—we need to know what to expect.”

Elain felt the first of her tears skid down her slightly-hollowed cheek as no one objected.

“For the record,” Nesta said finally. “I don’t like this. And if you upset her, or lay even one filthy, unworthy hand on her, I will rip off your wings and make a dress out of their tanned hides.”

“Nesta!” Feyre squawked.

Azriel’s magnificent wings flexed behind him as he clenched and clenched said hands, hard enough for the scars on them to stand out, moon white, against his bronze skin. Elain wondered, despite her own humiliation, if Nesta had chosen that barb on purpose, knowing they were Azriel’s weakness. His eyes were indescribably cold, but beneath their chill lay an undercurrent of keen sorrow and shame.

However, Elain’s sympathy burned away and her tears began anew when the Shadowsinger merely gave Nesta a dismissive look and said, “don’t tell me how to handle your sister. I know her a lot better than you think, shrew.”

It was all Elain needed to hear. Not bothering to stay for Nesta’s snarled retort, she slipped from the balcony like the wraith she was, unable to hide her tears from the servants as she retreated out to the garden.

It was late Autumn, and the air held a portent of winter’s chill as it tugged as the skirt of Elain’s gown. She didn’t much care. Hating herself for proving them all right, she collapsed onto the stone bench near the back and began to sob.

She was ashamed. Ashamed that she couldn’t find a way to pick up the pieces of her broken life and make something new from it, like her sisters had. Ashamed that despite everything, she couldn’t bring herself to take Graysen’s ring off, or read any of the dozens of letters Lucien had written her since he’d left for the Southern continent. Ashamed to learn that Azriel, whom she’d considered her friend, had been at her side all these months out of obligation to his High Lord and Lady. And ashamed to realise she was as she’d always feared: a burden to her family.

All of it roiled in her gut, mixing with the heady, ever-present buzz of the mating bond—which beat like a second pulse under her skin, and made her feel ill.

She wished so badly to be different, to have Feyre’s courage or Nesta’s fire, but when she looked inside, all she found was cowardice, yellow-bellied and soft.

She heard the sound of careful footfall from behind her, and she didn’t need to turn to know who it was. A moment later, his cool masculine scent—a mixture of balsam fir and eucalyptus—washed over her as he approached. It was a scent she realised she’d begun to think of as a safe harbour, and the thought only made her cry harder.

“Elain,” Azriel, murmured gently, kneeling at her feet and making a supplicating gesture. “What is it?"

“Go away!” she sobbed, shoving his hands back, which were as rough as his face and neck were smooth. “I don’t want to speak to you.”

He rocked back onto his heels, keen eyes assessing her even as shadows curled at his collar.

“You were in the library,” he surmised, and she only cried harder into her hands, feeling more ashamed than ever.

“I’m not stupid,” she choked quietly, finally mastering her tears, or perhaps simply just running out of any to cry.

“I know that. We all know that.”

“That’s not how you treat me. I know I’m broken, and possibly mad, but I—“

Azriel reached a tentative hand out to touch her shoulder, and it ignited a small kernel of rage in her belly. One that reminded Elain that despite everything, she was still Nesta Archeron’s sister.

“And you’re a hypocrite,” she leveled at him, voice trembling and weak as she rose to her feet and backed away from him. “If I am pining, what is it you are doing with Morrigan? At least Graysen has a good reason for not wanting me. ”

At Mor’s mention, Azriel stiffened, the light in his eyes going colder than moonlight. Some part of Elain was horrified by how true she’d struck, and how deep, but when she thought of the way he’d dissected her pain in front of the others, the apology welled shut in her throat.

Azriel offered no response to her abuse, only hung his head as shadows gathered more firmly around him. There had always been a quiet but tender warmth to him in her eyes, but as Elain watched him, breaths coming slow, she could feel the cold rage that his enemies so feared in him. What little petty courage she’d mustered to denigrate him withered, and she took off for her own room.

It was only hours later, when her tears had finally dried up and she lay awake, that her cruelty struck her. She had been many things in her life—weak, selfish, oblivious, cowardly—but she’d never been cruel. Especially not to someone who had been as kind to her, as indulgent of her brokenness, as Azriel had. Azriel, who had risked everything to rescue her from Hybern, and who had furnished her with the blade that avenged her father’s death. She was still angry with him for agreeing to Feyre’s interference in Elain’s life, but she didn’t have it in her heart to hold grudges, or to let an apology as necessary as this one go unsaid.

Rising, she put on a dressing gown over her nightclothes and tiptoed to the room on the third floor he often slept in, hoping as she ascended that he hadn’t returned to the House of Wind. An odd mix of relief and terror and guilt struck her as she approached the door and saw a dim light pouring out from beneath it.

Her hand shook as she raised it to knock, and a minute later it swung in. If Azriel was surprised to see her there, he didn’t show it, though a spectre of agony crossed his face, disguised as a shadow from the fae lamp on his desk.

“Azriel,” she breathed, having to crane her neck to look up into his face, even with it tilted down to watch her. Though he was not as broad of shoulder or as thick of neck as Cassian, he still stood at nearly six and a half feet, and in slippers, she barely reached his collarbone. She looked down, studying the way said collarbone—covered in Illyrian ink—arced gracefully into his shirt. “I came to—“

“Don’t,” he said, voice distant. “You were right to be upset. And nothing you said was untrue.”

Her throat felt bone-dry, and a horrid buzzing started in her ears at the waves of shame rolling off of him even as the shadows did as well.

“But I—“ she began, determined to she explain that she’d merely been angry, and that she didn’t believe any of it, when a wave of true nausea hit her, along with a vision of a fox and a wolf racing away from a blazing inferno.

She felt herself go boneless as the vision took root in her mind, and she didn’t have time to even call out before she was collapsing the ground in a searing kaleidoscope of colour and sound.

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