A Little Elriel Because I Can’t Make up My Fucking Mind
There was a knock on Elain’s door.
It wasn’t Nesta. Nesta didn’t bother. If Nesta entered a room, she was coming in, no warnings, no requests, no pauses – the same as how she lived her life: unapologetically, and constantly at full speed and momentum.
It wasn’t Rhys. Last time he’d visited, he told her he would be gone for awhile. He didn’t say where. Elain didn’t ask. She never responded to anything Rhys or Nesta said, except to tell them she wanted to go home.
It wasn’t Cassian. He meant well, but he didn’t know how to help Elain, and Nesta threatened to remove his favourite part if he came near her rooms again, anyway. Elain didn’t care. She couldn’t bring herself to care about anything. Everything hurt too much. Not physically. Physically, she was fine. Technically, she was physically better than she ever had been when she’d been human. Mentally, she was slipping into a dark chasm with no handholds, and nobody at the top to throw her a rope.
She felt like she was drowning.
The knock came again, insistent.
She tried to move – to acknowledge the visitor – but she couldn’t force herself.
“Elain?” It was Azriel at her door. He hadn’t visited her yet. Absently, she wondered what he was doing here. “Elain, I’m coming in.”
And so he was. When he entered the room, it was to see that Elain had perched herself, knees clutched to her chest, atop the window seat near her bed, and was looking to the sky outside of her window. Her hair hung limply on her shoulders and dully reflected the sun’s light. It wasn’t unclean, but it seemed she was wholly incapable of shining the way she had as a human, with her insistence upon hope. The long pale blue gown she she wore draped over her legs and hung down the wall, and her small feet peeked out from under the hemline. She looked beautiful in the way that faded paintings are beautiful: Stunning, but with no vivacity.
It broke Azriel’s heart. He walked towards her quietly, almost reverently. This room felt like a tomb, not fit for living people… but then Elain’s existence could hardly be called living lately. She slept, ate, and bathed all in her rooms – the latter two with Nesta’s assistance – and had not left them since Rhys had brought them there upon their arrival from Hybern. Nothing could persuade her.
Azriel sat down on the floor by the wall facing Elain.
“I am not here to force you to talk, or to do anything else you do not want to do. I am here to remind you with my presence that you are not alone. If you wish to ignore me the whole time, that is alright. I will not argue, and I will not begrudge you that decision. It is yours to make. If you wish me to leave, make any indication of that wish, and I will do so immediately.”
He had brought a book, and so they sat there in comfortable silence for a considerable length of time, and when the sun set, and Nesta came in to help Elain get into bed, he closed his book, bid Elain goodnight, and left.
He came back the next morning, saying the same thing, and bringing a different book. Again, when night descended, he bid Elain goodnight, and took his leave.
For several weeks he did this, and then one day he didn’t come.
Elain had grown accustomed to his presence, and even rather liked having his quiet breathing, the whispers of his shadows, and the sounds of his pages turning in the background of her consciousness. She didn’t know when it had happened, but he had somehow actually succeeded in making her not feel alone. And now he wasn’t here.
He came back the next day.
“I am not here to force you to talk, or to do anything else you do not want to do. I am here to remind you with my presence that you are not alone. If you wish to –”
“Where were you yesterday?”
“Sorry?”
“I said,” Elain wanted to turn her head, but it cost her so much energy – so much energy – even just to speak. “Where where you yesterday?”
“I had to go deal with some Illyrian Warlords who had been causing trouble.”
“Oh,” she said, quietly – and then, even more quietly “I missed you.”
“I missed you too, Elain,” Azriel found himself saying.
He had been worrying about her while he was gone. He didn’t know why. It wasn’t as if he did anything while he was there, or as if his presence were necessary for any part of Elain’s day, but he had developed a tender awareness for her presence, and monitored her breathing – since that was the only thing that ever changed – even while he read.
He moved over to sit on the other side of the window seat from Elain, and reached out to hold her hand.
“Yes.” She still didn’t move. Still didn’t make eye contact with him.
“Do you want me to keep speaking?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to keep speaking?”
“No.”
Azriel considered this for a moment. He was not good at talking aimlessly. Cassian, Rhys, and Mor could all talk until they’d run themselves out of oxygen, but Azriel tended to need something to talk about before he’d talk.
“Do you want me to read to you?”
“Yes.”
Azriel got out his book and began reading aloud. It was an adventure book, but it had a lot of comedy in it, too. Elain was surprised that the stone-faced Illyrian liked books like it, but she supposed everyone had to have their surprising tastes.
They continued in this way for a few more weeks. Sometimes Azriel had to be elsewhere for a day or so, but he always came back. Nesta informed him that in the evenings when he was there, he was to help Elain get into bed, since he was already there. It wasn’t a request, but Azriel would’ve done it even if it were, and it was a mark of immense trust that Nesta allowed him to do it at all.
One day, Elain laughed at something a character had said, and Azriel stopped reading to beam at her.
She looked away from the sky to smile at him, too, and Azriel’s already uncharacteristically bright smile became blinding.
“I don’t have the energy to move my legs, but I’d like to lean against you if that’s alright?”
Azriel lifted her up and rotated her so she could rest her head in the nook between Azriel’s shoulder and chest, and then he kept reading. He hoped she couldn’t hear his heart thumping away furiously in his chest, but he had a strange feeling in his chest at having someone so pure wanting to be close to someone so tainted as he was by death and pain. It felt like someone had grabbed hold of his heart and was lightly squeezing it. And when she had smiled, Azriel had thought his heart might stop, and he thought he mightn’t have minded if it had – if the last thing he ever saw was her face, so full of life, even for a moment.
Presently, he realised she had fallen asleep, so he picked her up, left the book on her nightstand, and tucked her into bed before starting to walk quietly towards the door.
“Don’t go.” Elain weakly reached for his hand as he made to leave.
“You don’t need to read to me anymore, just. Don’t leave me this time. I don’t want to be alone.”
Azriel knew what it was like to feel truly alone and abandoned by everyone, and knew what it was like to see your last hope turn away from you, and could not force himself to do that to someone else, so he took off his shoes and lay, fully clothed, on top of the sheets, next to Elain – who giggled.
“You’re being ridiculous, Azriel. You’ll get cold like that. Get under the covers.”
“But that would be improprietous,” he said, mildly concerned for Elain’s sanity.
“It’s also improprietous that there’s been a strange fae man in my bedroom almost every day for months. I’m sure if there were going to be a problem, it would have already happened,” she returned, eyes twinkling like they hadn’t in months.
Azriel thought about pointing out that he had never stayed the night before, and always left before the sun was finished setting, but decided better of it. He didn’t really want to leave her alone, and wasn’t going to fight too hard against it.
He slid under the covers and reached for her hand, which she used to pull herself closer to him to nestle in his embrace, and Azriel and Elain – both of whom had nightmares every night – slept peacefully through the night for the first time since Elain went into the Cauldron.
