#this happened instead

It started with an apology.

Not one that was his to make, but one he felt Nesta was owed nonetheless.

Azriel hadn’t missed the way Nesta’s eyes had turned vacant, empty, when Cassian had pulled away from her. Hadn’t missed the way her gaze had shuttered, didn’t need his shadows to tell him she was hurting. Pained by the way Cassian had pulled his hand from her grip, as if her touch was a crime - an indulgence - he didn’t want Mor to witness. As if it would be an affront to her, to see him touching Nesta, when Mor had no claim on him, and Cassian none on her. No claim, nothing at all except one night shared between them centuries ago, and all the time spent since, dancing around that which none of them dared speak of. Their tryst was short-lived and shortsighted, but it haunted them still, a shadow that remained, ignored, looming over them. A spectre, rendering all three of them incapable of moving on. Of forgetting.

Cassian had sat and let Nesta bandage his wounded wrist, and even Azriel’s heart had stuttered. She was fire and ice, sharp edges and brutal lines, and yet she wound that bandage around Cassian’s hand, the tips of her fingers gentle and nimble. Azriel wondered if Cassian had known. Had realised, how much it would have taken her to touch him so, to care for him so. With Rhys slack jawed and Feyre’s eyes wider than ever, Azriel wondered if Cassian knew how much it took Nesta to keep her focus on his injury instead of the inquisitive, enquiring looks of his family. Of hers. 

Azriel certainly did. 

And when Cassian pulled his hand away, so quickly that Nesta had blinked in surprise, Azriel’s heart hadn’t just stuttered— it had lurched. His brother was a fool— Nesta’s hand had been wrapped around his own, and he’d forsaken it, cast it aside, because he didn’t want Mor to see.

With her beautiful golden hair, Azriel had spent centuries holding a candle for Mor, but in that moment, when her lips curved into a sneer, the eyes he had spent so long trying to catch narrowing in distaste—

That candle flickered. Wavered, and the flame that Azriel had spent most of his life coaxing suddenly shivered and guttered, before, finally, going out. 

With Nesta departed every piece of longing, every moment spent yearning for Mor’s touch. As if a veil had been pulled aside at last, Azriel finally saw the truth— she would never want him. Never had, and this triangle they had perpetuated for centuries was no longer harmless. There were casualties now— always had been. His happiness and Mor’s, sacrificed at the altar of this ridiculous menage a trois. Cassian’s now, too, and Nesta’s— a woman who hadn’t asked for this, never wanted to be dragged into it, and had been regardless.

Yes, Nesta deserved an apology. It should have been Cassian trudging through the mud to her tent, should have been Cassian calling through the canvas, but Cassian was too busy sitting beside Mor and making jokes that lit her beautiful face up with laughter— as if Nesta’s place by his side had meant nothing. 

He only wanted to check she was okay. Reaching her tent, Azriel swore that’s all it was. This was war, after all, and nobody should be left to face it alone— but as he stepped into her tent, as she looked up at him, broken, something stirred, and though it started with an apology, somehow he knew this wasn’t going to end with one. 

“Are you alright?” he asked, keeping his gaze on her face. The eyes that looked at him were mortal still, holding all of the fear and trepidation that came on the eve of battle, and Azriel cursed his brother anew, because Nesta had never seen battle before. The battlegrounds she had grown up with were ballrooms, gilded manors, dripping with jewels— nothing, nothing compared to this. To the blood and the gore, the mud, and the reek of death. 

She was terrified, and Azriel thought he knew her well enough to know that she would never admit it. Had anybody bothered to check on the eldest Archeron? Or had all of them presumed that her barbed words and sharp edges were armour enough, weapons enough to see her through this war? 

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Nesta answered, dipping her fingers into a waiting bowl of water, washing off the mud and dirt. Her hands were dirty because she’d cleaned Cassian’s, washed his skin of dust and blood and in so doing sullied her own, and still, Cassian had cast her aside as if she were little more than the cloth she dragged over her knuckles now.

The water turned murky, and Azriel took a step forward, his shadows whispering in the candlelight. Nesta glanced at them, but didn’t shirk, didn’t shy. She only turned her attention back to her hands, to the crescents of dirt under her nails.

“Nobody is alright during their first war,” Azriel shrugged. 

“Did he send you?” she asked, dropping the cloth into the bowl and drying her hands on a towel. Her gaze was piercing, fierce, her voice curt. 

Azriel didn’t need to ask who he was. Nesta glanced at his shadows, before her gaze landed on his siphons, at the azure blue that was the opposite in every way to Cassian’s fiery crimson. 

“No,” Azriel answered. He tilted his head. “Does that make it better, or worse?”

Nesta huffed a laugh, a wry smile tugging at the edges of her lips. “I haven’t yet decided.”

“Do let me know when you reach your conclusion,” Azriel shot back dryly, and this time he didn’t imagine the way she smiled. Just a little, only tentatively— but there was a dry kind of smile on her face, a quiet humour that matched his own. 

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d have cared much either way.”

“Why?”

One of his shadows skirted the table edge, drawing closer to her with every breath he took. Nesta blinked.

“I’m not a fool.” She dropped the towel onto the table, sending the shadow scurrying, but within half a second, it was back, slinking closer, closer, to her. She marked it, but didn’t comment. Didn’t seem to mind. “I know where your loyalties lie.”

“This isn’t about loyalty,” Azriel countered. No, he thought, not about loyalty at all. If Cassian knew I were here, he wouldn’t be thinking about loyalty. He’d be thinking of betrayal, of daggers plunged deep into unsuspecting backs.

“Oh?” Nesta asked, her voice soft, dangerously low. “So he hasn’t sent you here to plead his case? To speak for him instead of coming to me himself?”

“No,” Azriel answered with a shrug. “Cassian didn’t send me.”

He took a step forward, just one. Nesta didn’t retreat, but held her ground, studying him with a curiosity he’d not yet seen on her face, in her eyes. 

“Why are you here then, Azriel?”

She said his name softly, as if the taste of it lingered on her tongue, and the sound of it falling from her lips made Azriel infinitely more curious, more desperate to uncover all the hidden parts of her. 

“I don’t know,” he said, taking another step forward. “Why don’t you tell me, Nesta? Why am I here?”

There was something about her, something magnetic that made him unable to draw away, unable to look anywhere but at her. At those blue-grey eyes that Cassian was a fool to have turned from, the hands, so elegant and refined, the touch that he ought to be flogged for spurning. Azriel didn’t know why he was here. It had started with an apology, but somewhere between deciding to follow and reaching her tent, that had fallen by the wayside. He could have checked she was alright and left. He should have checked she was alright and left, gone right back to that fireside circle, to Feyre and Rhys, and Mor and Cassian. 

He had a ridiculous urge to reach out and touch her, and when he saw a smear of mud at her wrist, Azriel couldn’t help himself.

His scarred hand crossed the distance between them, took her hand in his, and Nesta didn’t pull away. It was a mirror to how she’d been with Cassian, but it was Azriel’s hand cradling her wrist, and she didn’t back away from his touch.

“You missed a spot,” he said, taking up the cloth she discarded, wringing it out and swiping it over her skin. Nesta’s eyes widened, her gaze turning soft, surprised, but welcoming his ministrations. She turned her wrist in his grip, letting him cross her pulse point, letting him take care of the way Cassian should have. The way all of the people that had failed her should have. Azriel knew little about her father and even less about her mother, but though Feyre was adamant that her father was blameless, Azriel knew a little more of the world to be subjective. A little more about vicious and cruel parents to recognise it for what it was. Nesta had never been cared for, never been allowed to be so vulnerable. Always, her walls were up, barriers erected so high, defences nigh on impossible to penetrate— and Cassian hadn’t noticed it, not realised, that today she had let her barriers drop, just enough to let him in.

Did his brother realise, the gift he had been given? The blessing he had discarded?

When there was no trace of the battlefield left to mar her skin, Azriel took up the towel she had dropped and wrapped her hand in it, pressing the soft fabric against her. His siphons pulsed, and Nesta still didn’t pull back, didn’t move away. For the first time, Azriel didn’t think about his hands, the scars that had never failed to make him shy away from attention. The hands that he had thought made him unworthy of Mor, Nesta didn’t so much as blink at. 

“Thank you,” she said softly once he’d taken the towel away. He made to drop her wrist, but Nesta’s fingers sought his first. Her grip was light, but her touch was certain, and Azriel knew dimly that this was what she needed, but couldn’t ever ask for. Nesta needed to be touched, to be held, to know she wasn’t alone in this field filled with mud and dying men. 

It should have been Cassian. He should be the one holding her, offering her the comfort and consolation she needed— but Cassian wasn’t here. He’d made his priorities clear as soon as Mor had appeared, and it was evident that though Cassian felt something for Nesta, it wasn’t enough for him to make her his priority. Azriel dragged his eyes over her, and thought that Nesta deserved to be a priority for someone. Deserved the world and more, deserved somebody who wouldn’t drop her hand in adversity, but someone who would clutch it tighter.

Hadn’t he longed for the same, in all of his five centuries?

And this was nothing. Really. In the grand scheme of things, this was nothing. Just two souls in the middle of the chaos, clinging to a fragment of peace. Two spirits in so many ways the same, trying to make sense of the world around them as it fell apart.

“Are you alright?” Azriel asked again, feeling her fingers soft and warm between his own. “Honestly?”

“Honestly?” Nesta echoed, shaking her head. “No.”

Nesta should have been a courtier. She could twist her words as skilfully as Lucien, could bend and shift as much as the most adept politician, and was so well practiced in hiding her true thoughts, true emotions, that Azriel suspected he’d never seen her true face before tonight, never seen her offer a kernel of honesty except that which she offered him now. He didn’t blame her. His family had never exactly welcomed her sharp tongue, never really cared for her opinion unless it lined up with theirs. 

Azriel lifted his other hand and dared to brush the back of his knuckles against her cheek.

His shadows whispered, muttered, sang. All of her broken parts lined up so perfectly with his, all of the cracks in her porcelain a mirror to his own. Azriel knew well what it was to be broken, and as he stood in that tent, he decided that maybe he didn’t want to be whole anyway, not if being broken meant he and Nesta were the same. When battle raged and there was nothing but the sound of steel in the air, he didn’t want to regret this— didn’t want to regret leaving that tent before touching her, kissing her, even though he knew that if Cassian ever found out, it would destroy him. But maybe Cassian shouldn’t have pulled away from a woman such as Nesta. Maybe he shouldn’t have put Mor first. Maybe he shouldn’t have given Azriel the opening in the first place.

“Honestly?” Azriel said softly. “Neither am I.”

“No?” Nesta asked, eyes finding his, her gaze, vice-like, holding his. She let out a breath that almost seemed to be one of relief, as if hearing that she wasn’t alone in her fear settled something within her, made this whole ordeal somehow easier to bear. There was vulnerability on her face, a sincerity in her eyes, and Azriel marvelled all over again at the fact that she was here alone. That she’d been out there, cutting bandages and filling buckets, exposed to the blood and the horror of war, and yet when Mor chased her away, not even her sister had bothered to come after her. Was it any wonder Nesta hid herself behind her sharp tongue? 

“No,” Azriel repeated. “Anybody who says they’re alright before going into battle is either a fool or a liar.”

“And you are neither?” She raised an eyebrow, her gaze challenging, concealing some kind of wit that nobody ever seemed to notice. Nesta was kind— witty, and wickedly clever, fiercely compassionate when it came to those she loved, and all of it, every piece, was overshadowed, ignored. Nesta wasn’t half the villain her sister thought she was. Didn’t possess an ounce of the cruelty Mor thought she saw.

“No,” Azriel scoffed, turning his hand so his palm was flat against her cheek. Her skin was soft under his fingers, warm and gentle. He had never dreamed of touching her before, never thought of her this way, but in that tent, Azriel wanted for nothing else. “I am both. For different reasons, perhaps, but I’m definitely both.”

A fool for wanting you, and a liar because when my brother asks me where I have been, I won’t say that I was here, in this tent, with you.

Nesta shrugged, one hand coming to rest on the siphon at his chest. “Then I think I am both, too.”

Azriel hummed, letting his fingers drift across her cheek, and oh gods, he had never relished being a fool more. He decided he was fine with being a liar, if it meant he could steal these few moments before the dawn. 

A liar, a fool, a thief. He was proud to be all of them, if it meant he could have this. 

Lucien wrenched himself away from her lips and mustered any sense of discipline he had left to back away from her, shaking his head.

“Why — why did you stop?” Elain whispered, panting slightly and he could hardly look at her as she glanced at him with those wide eyes, as she licked her lips. He stared at her as she leaned against his closed bedroom door, her sleeping robe now open to reveal a lacy little thing he could hardly comprehend with all her lovely creamy skin on display.

A walking daydream she was. And Lucien was going to vomit. 

“I can’t do this.” he choked. “I can’t do this if you aren’t — if you don’t —”

He shook his head again and looked away from her. It had been three years of awkward tension. Three years of trying to pretend he was fine with the nothing they had between them. Three years he had gladly given her space. 

But then she had reached out to him. She had sought him out. For company. For conversation. For friendship. For a little more than that.

It had been slow and it had been steady but — but this? He couldn’t do this if she wasn’t going to stay. If she wasn't going to be his the way he longed to be hers.

“I can’t kiss you or do all the things I want to do with you if you’re only coming to me as a last resort.” he said quietly and finally looked at her. “I don’t want to be your last option.”

Elain watched him with an expression he couldn’t quite place and Lucien wanted the ground to swallow him as regret and shame spread through his body. He shouldn’t have said anything. He had been given the chance to kiss her and touch her and his damn head was ruining it for him.

He sighed. “I’m —”

“You really think that, don’t you?” she said quietly. “That I…that I would be cruel enough to seek you out because I’m what? Bored? So I might as well kiss you and see where it goes?”

“I never said you were cruel.” he said, straightening. “But you did avoid me. For a long time.”

“I know.” she said and her eyes fell to the floor. Lucien cringed.

“I don’t hold it against you.” he added softly. “But I want you to be sure that I am your choice because you want me. Not because you feel like you don’t have anyone else.”

Elain pursed her lips and he tried not to let his eyes dip to her lovely legs as she took a step toward him.

He said nothing else as she paused in front of him and waited. He couldn’t bring himself to open his mouth, to fill the silence, and Lucien had always been good at waiting. 

He watched Elain as she glanced at him. “I could have anyone else I wanted.” she said. “You wouldn’t get in the way.”

Lucien’s fists clenched and he had to swallow before replying. “No. I would never get in your way.” he said, even as it shattered his heart. “You are your own person first and foremost. Always.”

But then she smiled at him. Smiled so beautifully, his heart nearly tore in two at the sight. Whatever sanity he had left was slowly leaving his body.

“Then I need you to know,” she began and Lucien watched her, mesmerized as she lifted her hands to her robe and slowly slid it off. “That you are my choice. I want you, Lucien, because there is no one else I could ever want to love me. No one else to share everything that I am with.”

Lucien swallowed hard, his eyes on the robe that had pooled on the ground until Elain brought a hand to gently lift his chin and meet her gaze.

“Tell me that I’m yours.” he whispered almost pleadingly. “Tell me that I’m yours in the way that you are mine.”

She smiled again at him, tenderly, and Lucien felt it then. The spark. The warmth of her emotions. The love he craved. 

“You are mine and only mine.” she said softly to him and cupped his face. “You are mine and I am only yours. By fate and by choice.”

“I’m yours.” he breathed and finally let his arms wrap around her waist as she planted a loving kiss on him. “I’m yours.”

“You’re mine.” she whispered against his lips, claiming him once more. “From now until the world is no more. Will you have me?”

“Until the world is no more and whatever comes after. With everything that I am.” Lucien promised and she gave him that dazzling smile once again then brought her lips to his for a kiss worth a thousand kisses. Until she pulled away and Lucien groaned.