#basically my kryptonite

They were crossing a sandy expanse once belonging to the Day Court when she had started to get behind, unable to keep up with his long strides anymore. It was the silence that alerted him; their steps were muted by the fine debris, but he expected her to complain like she always did, or at least groan her fatigue to the darkening sky, instead, he found her with her hands on the small of her back, a sight that slightly knocked what wind still existed inside his body clean out of it. Because, well, that was a view from the days before, belonging to a place far away, to a sunny day refreshed by a light breeze that caressed an exposed belly full of a now dead baby. No matter Elain was in no fear of that condition, and she was lean, and eternally young, and fit to a fault, because she looked just about as ruined as her sister used to be, buckled up with the weight of complicated news and exhaustion.

“Can we stop?” she had asked, the spindly little wheedle of her voice cutting through the dirt, giving him pause and making him crook his head to look at her from under his hood. The smoky emptiness around them wasn’t the right location to camp, but she seemed sincere in her query, as if she couldn’t really understand there wasn’t a single good thing in the place.

He had replied only with a long silence, so she had thrown her head up toward the leaky gauze of the dirty clouds and made a sound partway wail, partway chuckle, mirthless and murky much like the heavens she was shouting at.

“Quit hollering,” he had warned her, resuming his march. “You never know what goddamn demon you’d be calling to come try you for a bite.”

He had thought she’d learned her lesson by now, but deep down she was still the fresh fawn he’d met that fateful day, scared by the world and yet still ready to put her nose to every flower and her fingers to every stone. She still hadn’t learned when to fold and when to fight back, but she was getting there, so she had moved until they reached what might’ve been an olive grove, the tree stumps burned and gnarled. Dead things crunched underfoot, bones or seeds or both, all mashed-up and slowly turning to dust. He listened for the sound of her following, a soft tread to his heavy steps, and let his body go quiet when he heard it.

It was the lay of the day and the growing ink of the night that had dragged them to the relatively intact temple. The door was missing, and nearly all the glasses were busted, but inside, aside the waste and ruin, the old world awaited in all its glory with hues of blue and lively yellow, the color of sunflowers and the Morrigan's hair, another futile loss in a war they had brought upon themselves almost by accident.

“We can stop here,” he said, anticipating an echo of his voice that never came. “For a night only, just so we’re clear.”

With a relieved sight she lowered the pack from her shoulders, and grime kissed her fingertips when she touched the pew she was standing closest to, the wood worn and weathered. The silvery moonlight coming from the window wrapped cool through her hair, climbing her face like ghostly vines, forking its way into the shadow of her ear. He felt something start in his stomach, watching her mirror movements she wasn’t even aware she was mirroring, his head over-full of thoughts, bursting at the seams.

“I haven’t been in one before,” she said.

“In a temple?” he questioned, waiting for her to reach him to the altar.

“I’ve seen images in books, read about them,” she explained. “But I guess I never thought they could be so pretty.”

“We seeing the same thing here, my lady?” he asked, and she threw him a look meant to whiter, something to which he wasn’t immune to, nor he could pretend he was, the tick at the arch of his cheekbones and the rumbled tremor of what might be his heartbeat in his ears proof enough.

When she took the last step, and was finally right in front of him, he noticed a bright red bead ready to spill from her left ring finger, so he flipped out a hand like she was some thorn in his side he can’t wait to pick out and crush under his heel – in a twisted and sick way, she fucking was – and he put her wound into his mouth, feeling like a monster watching the maid he kidnapped look horrified as he staunched her sweet, holy blood with his tongue.

“There,” he said tonelessly after he inspected the cut, the metal taste lingering on his buds. “All better now.”

After that, she made a bed for herself in the dipped stone beneath what was left of the altar. The cloth was gone, the little idols chipped and flayed, and she looked too dead with her arms crossed over her chest, her hands up to cup each bloom of shoulder.

“You cold?” he asked from his spot near the wall when she shivered, although he already knew the answer. He had watched her curl up like a baby under her threadbare blanket and he had begrudgingly given her his cloak too many times to keep acting like she was still some perfect stranger, but it was safer this way, it made easier to hawk up and spit out the thought of pulling her head into his lap to stroke her hair smooth against her skull until his warmth bled through into her skin.

“No,” she lied, part of a well-worn routine. He watched her a bit longer, listened as she chattered her pretty white teeth so hard it sounded like she was about to break every single one of them. As he did every night for the last couple weeks, he tried to not pay mind to it, to the thick plumes of white coming out of her mouth, because, after all, it wasn’t his problem, but the longer she chattered, the further he got annoyed. It was more disturbing than her usual blabbing, probably because she wasn’t doing it on purpose, and it pulled a string in his chest to see her fighting against something that will inevitably win. So he got up, threw his weapons and bandolier near her pack, and lay next to her, in hope to keep her warm enough to shut up. Slowly, he shrugged out of his long coat, the tattered ends unable to offer much protection but the fabric still warm and thick enough around the top to protect her from the creeping wind. Being so close to her was distasteful, and she will probably kick him once she woke, but for now the sleeping Elain had figured out there was a new heat source nearby and she turned to face him, one of her arms snaking around his waist and pulling herself as close as possible. When his mind still allowed him to sleep soundly enough, he happened to get lost in dreams of undone corsets, spills of white cotton and the cool skin underneath, but with the real Elain, her face nuzzled into the crook of his neck was enough to make his mind reeling from both shock and complete bafflement. He actually couldn’t remember the last time he had been hugged, let alone by a woman in a bed, if the alcove they were in could be called that, but it didn’t stop him from warming up her ribcage, the tender bloom of her throat and the notch of her collarbone.