#madesins

his eyes are dark and cold, staring down at her like a storm. there is no spark of amusement around his lips, no hint of any friendship or trust to be found in his gaze. elia slowly becomes conscious of the tight grip he has on her shoulders, one hand close enough to her neck that she feels her breathing become shallow in response. the concrete wall feels cold against her back. the way he looms over her might have intimidated her, had she not realized a fundamental truth: if he wanted to hurt her, he would have done it already. this is just a warning. keep your damn mouth shut.

elia places her right hand over his. she does not avert her gaze as she moves his hand down to her heart, so he can feel the steady drum of her heart under his palm. months of working like a spider in her web to procure him information, providing him access to rooms and archives and people, months in which she had felt the walls around her heart slowly crumble. days, weeks, months... and yet after all this time, nearly every interaction still ended the same way: a dire warning or cold look, a threat if he was truly worried. " i don't know what happened that made you this way. but you need to start trusting me, adam. i want vought to end just as much as you. and you know i value my life enough to keep my mouth shut. trust me. "

he thinks very little of himself. it is the shadow of his past that haunts him, convincing him he is incomplete or broken and wholly undeserving of love. if only he knew how untrue it is. he cannot see his own kindness and courage, his sweet spirit, his selflessness. in her long lifetime she has met countless divine and mortal men and women, enough to know no one is fully good, no one fully evil. the soul is inherently flawed. he is merely a good man who has done a terrible thing. and he will spend the rest of his life trying to atone for it.

soft arms score around him. elia kisses his chin and his stubbled cheeks and the cold tip of his nose, his smooth right temple. she breathes in the scent of him deeply and tries to memorize the cologne, something warm and woody like cedar. " my sweet unpolished gem. my stars. you have no clue just how enough you are for me. every day i marvel at how lucky i am to have found you and kept you. every day i wonder what my life might have been if i had not met my wounded soldier at that hospital. how empty things would have been, how utterly meaningless. i... i have seen the centuries pass me by. i have seen hundreds of thousands of beautiful sunrises and terrible storms, miracles and disasters, the best and worst of humanity. but it was you, bradly moore, you that made me feel alive again. it was you that made me look forward to waking from my sleep, that made me smile again, made me laugh again. you are everything, bradly. everything that matters. you are more than i deserve. i love you as you are, and i will take you as you are. any day. i love you. "

a tap on her shoulder, and her attention is pulled away as the elevator she'd summoned dings with its arrival. it's been a long day, an exhaustive day, and she's fully expecting a coworker with some convoluted favor that's going to prevent her from leaving to ask of her when she turns around. instead, a stranger's face surprises her as the elevator closes and moves on without her on it. " oh, it's no problem. can i, uh, help you find someone? "

chart in one hand, coffee in the other, adorned in scrubs, there is purpose in her stride. it's been a good day. two surgeries down, one more to go, and it's looking like she's going to land successes on all three. she's occupied, reading from behind rectangular glasses when somebody falls into step beside her, pulling her from her thoughts. " sure — it's a free hallway. " with the lighthearted invitation, she tucks her paperwork away. " where are you headed? "

how did i die ? elia breathes in sharply and looks the other way. she had heard about it happening, abe dying and coming back, hell, she knew the winchester brothers had died and come back several times, but seeing abe drift into death was a different matter entirely. she wasn't used to mortality, had never seen death capture the spirit of anything but an animal. when she closes her eyes she can still see the blood, still smell it too. like rust or iron. seeing the light go from his eyes...

“ sword. it wasn't pretty. ” she feels sick saying the words. she had not realized how much she cared about abe before that night, how scared she was seeing the blade sticking out of his chest, blood gushing from the wound. the worst part of all had been dean's terror, seeing the way he had hugged abraham's body close to him, afraid that this time would be the day he did not come back. sam had been just as tense next to her, his body stiff as he held her to him, his grip just a little too tight. “ is that normal ? do you not always remember... going ? ”

every day i fight, i fight for all of us. elia scoffs and rolls her eyes, positively steaming in frustration. she paces through the room, throws her arms up in exasperation, disbelieving laugh ringing from her lips. “ oh please, adam. you fight for no one but yourself. yes, no need to argue that your actions are for the common good of the people, we both know it's because you need to have your vengeance. you're just too proud to admit it, just like you're too proud to let anyone help you. what were you thinking out there today, going after firecracker on your own, during a fundraiser no less, in front of half of vought ?! you can't do this on your own. there are too many of them and homelander is too strong. you are going to get yourself killed. ” she turns to face him again, seizes his hands in hers even though she knows he'll hate it. her grip is tight, nails digging into his skin, forcefully holding him in place. “ look at me. i know you think i'm stupid, that i'm useless, weak, a liability rather than an asset, but i'm not. you want to fight, then start fighting with me instead of for me. if you want to take down vought, to truly destroy them, adam, you're going to have to start trusting other people. you might as well start with me. ”

how did i die ? elia inhales sharply and winches, quickly looking away as a series of images flash through her mind. craters filled with mud and the dead, red staining a khaki uniform, his pale face, the light of a soul leaving his green eyes, her hands as she kept pumping his chest in the hopes of keeping him with her, her trembling fingers as she tried to remove his dried blood from under her fingernails hours later. she swallows her nausea. it takes her a minute to look him in the eyes again. when she does, all she can see is the memory, his dead eyes staring back at her.

infinity. elia turns her head to look at him, grass strands tickling her cheek. the american soldier has his gaze fixed on the heavens above, his finger pointing out an imaginary path among the stars. he looks boyishly young in his dreamy excitement, as though he has momentarily forgotten the war, the wounded in their ailing feverish sleep just a few hundred yards away. it is as though it is just them for a moment, safeguarded by the velvet dark blue blanket of night, the planets watching over them. if you can imagine it, somewhere out there. it exists. she closes her eyes briefly and does try to imagine it, the endless universe he's talking about, somewhere beyond light, beyond time. infinity means a million possibilities, a million versions of their world, a million versions of them. if it exists, it means there is an earth where this war never happened, a place where they meet and get the chance to go out, dance, fall in love. there is a world out there where they get to live an ordinary life, with an ordinary happy ending.

her hand drags through the grass until she finds him, fingers gently brushing against the back of his hand before they interlock. she waits for him to look at her, and when he does, the light of the stars overhead catching in his eyes, she sees herself reflected back in his gaze a million times. “ i want to believe that it does. more than anything. ”