#vidalina

~

The picture of Nesta hangs on the living room wall. She moves and its eyes follow. She blinks and it awakens. The other her stares. Her expression a collage of painted lashes, crimson dusted skin, a rose that is cradled in her hands. This Nesta, praying to some unknown deity who never answers.  

She looks innocent. Far too innocent for the amount of horrors she’s seen. And, she’s alone.

A singularity. An outlier.

The image lies off center in the middle of the wall, yet the other pictures crawl up the space like tangling vines suffocating the life out of her. Life is not painted in her eyebrows, or the color of her hair, or the red of her lips, or her pale neck. Rather, it is what is around her. The pictures that are filled with laughter and smiles and heart-wrenching happiness.

They must have taken it from her, she thinks. Poor girl.

But Nesta shakes her head. No, she never had it. It was always the others who laughed, who yelled, who joked those jokes of theirs. She might have been placed here, forced to fit, squeezed into the place they could find room for, but at the end of the day, she is merely a pretty painting tacked in Feyre’s living room wall. Beautiful… but not alive. Cold, and alone, and red with the stain of blood.

Is this what Feyre sees when Nesta skidders through her memories? If it is, she is even more certain of their foolish want to love her.

“I painted it the day you left. I think it came out beautifully, don’t you think?”

I think I look dead inside; she wants to say, turning to Feyre who leans against a table, all starry skies and none of the bleak, burning black holes.

Dead.

Dead and buried.

Feyre grimaces, taking a breath as if she’ll recite poetry in the hall. What other words will spew from the depths of her throat and croak out in sounds and syllables?

Are words even enough to describe memories turned to dust and rose-colored wounds freshly healed?

The fiery anger blooms out of Nesta’s lungs. Its laid dormant for far too long, all those winter days in the mountains trapped under frost. But, Nesta can’t respond, doesn’t know what she’d say to her little sister who means so much to her, but at the same time makes her heart ache as if it bleeds from a chest wound.

Nesta opens her mouth to speak...

Elain strolls in.

“Dinner’s almost ready,” She grins, grasping her forearm, pulling Nesta towards the dining room in glee. “I thought I’d show you what I made to celebrate.”

Nesta shudders at the thought, at the feeling of her sisters at her side and behind her. Huddling around her as if they mean to keep her close. Nesta thinks it feels like a prison. “Celebrate what?”

Elain looks at her oddly, “You being back—and Cassian, of course… Your health.” She adds, her brows furrowing in concern. Nesta doesn’t know what that look means.

Tell me, she wants to yell.  

Elain swallows, the dandelion charm at her throat bobbing. “When Cassian carried you in, you looked so… small. Feyre and I were worried that you’d—”

“We had complete faith that you’d be safe and well again,” Feyre smiles, the mirth never reaching her eyes.

An odd phrase, Nesta thinks, for she’s never been safe or well.

Nesta squints to the table and Elain perhaps noticing the shift, moves quickly to the image of steaming casserole and piping hot buns. Dessert already sits in each corner and she wonders who exactly they’re all feeding if this is the amount of food they waste.

“The roast is still in the oven.” Her favorite.

“You’re favorite,” Elain mumbles softly—shyly, “I thought since we missed your birthday, we could celebrate now.”

That word again.

Celebrate…

Don’t they know that she rejoices in being away from them? That she finds solace in the quiet day by day. There is no obligation of sterile complacency, of beauty she can never live up to. She doesn’t need to be a good sister, a caring sister, a sister who reaches both hands out in compassion. In Windhaven, beyond Velaris, she is just Nesta. She is no one.  

Nesta resists rolling her eyes or saying something snarky just because she can, just because she knows it’ll hurt. Instead, she touches the plate on the table, a fine porcelain made of blue glass. It reminds her of the chandelier she has at home, blinking and twisting like an unhindered star.

She doesn’t want to celebrate her birthday.

Feyre pulls out a chair, the noise screeching against the floor and Nesta can’t stop the harsh look she sends her way.

If they missed it, she did too.

But at her cold demeaner, Elain is quick to lur her to a seat, proclaiming that Nesta will sit beside her all evening. Perhaps, they’ll exchange stories. I want to hear everything, she pleads. Will Nesta tell her the weather then? The bitter frosts, the buried cemeteries, the avalanches that never came crashing down like she wanted. It was all too perfect, all too according to plan.

Nesta will not let them have the satisfaction.

Elain smiles crookedly, some noise that sounds both like a laugh and a cry barreling out of her lips.

Nesta half-wonders what about her now seems fragile to her little sister when she had treaded precariously past death and disinterest and yet nothing could persuade them a year ago that she wasn’t well enough— okay enough.

Nesta only looks to the stairs. The sound of rustling feet stampeding above. She can feel him even now, wants to call for him even if she abhors the thought.

Her sisters are… different when Cassian is around. More watchful, more cautious. Not as eager to touch her or to offer an array of activities that don’t at all sound pleasing to her ears. He is her guard somehow, even though he offers nothing but laughs and soft, easy smiles.

But he ambles down the stairs as if she calls him. Perhaps she does, in that hollow part of her body she still doesn’t understand. The part that whispers his name, echoes his feelings, reminds her that she is not alone. 

“Sit,” She urges lowly, moving the utensils that Elain sets down to another place setting. Cassian raises a brow but sits beside her.

His hand rests on the table and Nesta wants to know what it would seem like to these… people—her family if she placed her palm in his so openly. She clenches her fist to stop the reaching, turning her gaze away from his golden skin.

“Oh,” Elain says, noting the seat beside her taken.  

Feyre saves Elain from her awkward floundering, nodding her head to a seat beside her.

“Who all is coming?” Cassian asks, scrunching his brows at all the plates of food.

Feyre grabs her plate, reaching to spoon in some mashed potatoes, some green beans. Nesta eyes the mushrooms with a distasteful blink as they plop on her sister’s plate. “Rhys said he’s going to be home soon, and Azriel said he’d be here by 5, but that was an hour ago.”

“And everyone else?”

Elain smiles, looking to Nesta and then to Cassian strangely. “They’re coming down tomorrow. We planned a little get-together at this restaurant that just opened.”

“So… it’s just the four of us today,” Cassian states. She can almost hear the note of relief, and Nesta wonders what about the situation relieves him. Some gut instinct tells Nesta that he is ashamed of her.

Cassian tuts, gesturing to the table. “I know I’m a big guy, but I doubt even I could finish this entire table. And that’s saying something.”

“You can save some for later,” Feyre explains, reaching around to give Nesta the plate. Cassian grabs it first, shaking his head.

“She doesn’t like mushrooms.”

Her little sister’s brows furrow, and Feyre starts talking slowly as if Nesta cannot understand. “You ate mushrooms before...”

“No,” Nesta replies, her words forced. “I didn’t.”

Elain picks up her own plate, pointing to the food, “Which ones Nesta? I can get it for you.”

“I can get it myself,” she answers in a huff, taking a plate from the pile.

Nesta is starting to suspect Elain’s cheek are going to hurt by the way she forces her lips up. “We’re all going to be there at 6 tomorrow—at the restaurant—so you can join us then.”

“Oh,” Cassian looks to her, and Nesta leans back in her seat trying not to sink in the chair, “We were going to see the sites tomorrow. Check out a few places, maybe see a symphony.”

“Just the two of us,” He quickly amends, when Elain opens her mouth to speak.

Elain grins, but it looks like she’s gritting her teeth. “Are you up for that Nesta? You’ve only just been cleared by Madja to get up and moving again.”

As if she’d not been there when Madja had told her.  

Nesta shrugs a nonchalant shoulder, her gaze harsh without meaning to be. “I’m the one who suggested it, so I think I’m the best judge of that.”

True her body is still sore, but she feels none of crippling ache that accompanies her like all those memories as she scans her sisters’ faces.

She moves and their eyes follow. She blinks and they awake.

Before Nesta can tell them exactly where they can shove their suggestions, she hears the rumbling drum of voices. All of their heads go to the door.

“Why aren’t you sitting in the other dining room?” Amren sniffs, as she looks to the table. Judgment painted on a groomed brow. Mor only looks to them as if she is wondering the same. “This table is made for house mice.”

“Then it’s the perfect size for you,” Cassian snickers, ignoring Mor’s questioning gaze.

If her sister’s act different around Cassian then Cassian acts different around his friends—his family. She squints as she watches him, counting all of the signs that say he would rather be somewhere else.

What is he trying to escape from, she wants to ask.

“You can actually stand him?” Amren questions, pointing a finger to Nesta. Nesta blinks at the remark.

Her fists clench as she hears more voices and Feyre looks away when Nesta meets her eyes.

“Why aren’t you using the other dining room?” Rhysand asks, leaning down to kiss her sister on the cheek.

Feyre looks to her, Cassian, and Elain, as if she invites them in her speech, “we were just about to move actually.”

But Nesta doesn’t move as Cassian gets up grabbing her and his plate, as the others start grabbing bowls. A cacophony of laughter and jokes and sneers, the sounds ringing in her ears, she clamps her hands to her head to stop the noise.

And they don’t notice, like she knew they wouldn’t, because they don’t. Notice. Anything.

Nesta stares at the empty seats.

They’re taking him from her, she thinks… Except she’s never had him. She was holding on to something that was never hers—someone who belonged to other people first.

Nesta doesn’t belong to anybody.

It’s a thought that should make her feel relieved.

Instead, she feels bitter.

~

Cassian can hear the chair squeaking from the other room. The rest of them stay quiet as they listen to her footsteps. One at a time up the stairs.

He looks to Feyre and Elain first, but Feyre only looks to her potatoes and Elain sighs without a sound.

Amren raises a brow, what are you going to do about it, it says.

Azriel gives him a sympathetic look. Rhys is only paying attention to Feyre, and Mor is mostly annoyed. For what reason? He doesn’t care to comprehend.

Cassian gets up from the table without another word.  

It’s strange, he thinks, because he spent so much time missing them—wanting Nesta to get to know all of them, and here they are staring at their toes. Is the only solution they know sending her away?

What happened to their support? Why don’t they go after her?

Because Nesta doesn’t want them around, he reminds himself.

Except, they want her around, so why aren’t they fighting for her?

Cassian growls low in his throat as he sees the door to her room. A room that wasn’t really hers, but the first one he ended up setting her in when she was bleeding out and half-awake. He can still see her lying there. Cold and pale. Her eyes closed so tightly.

Open, he remembers whispering, as his hand grips the doorknob.

It’s not locked. Thank the Mother.

Cassian looks around the room, but she is not there, and he pulls that thread in his chest without meaning to.

The closet door opens just a crack.

“Are you in pain?” He asks out of habit, his voice high-strung and reeling as he kneels where she’s sitting, her knees up to her chest.

But she doesn’t answer. Instead, she reaches up and throws her arms around his shoulders. She tucks her head into his neck, and he can smell the scent of lavender. It calms him in a way that only she can.

Nesta doesn’t say a word but he can hear her in the affection. Doubt, an affliction that keeps crawling up her chest. He doesn’t think she knows he can feel it too.

Let’s go home, the hug says.

Cassian holds her tighter.

Just try for one more day…

~

“You’re happy here,” she says as they walk through the teetering streets of Velaris. Riverfronts, bubblegum dreams, and the hot summer sun all in their vicinity. Who would not love this place?

“I’ve known these people all of my life, it’s impossible not to love it here,” Cassian replies, all smiles as he grabs on to her hand, pulls her toward the stalls lined outside of the main square. “Let me show you how amazing they are.”

He talks excitedly with the patrons who sell jewelry at the stalls, hugs the female who weaves tapestries of silk, introduces her to the male and his son selling fresh honey. He laughs with many more, all of these people waiting to talk to him, as if they missed him, as if they wished he was here. In this marketplace filled with a galore of vibrant color that Nesta… hates.

If only because he cannot let it go.

He hands her a stick of candied strawberries, the same ones she’s had in the marketplace outside of Windhaven and she can’t help but compare the two. The other is sweeter, shinier, prettier… Nesta likes this one less.

But Cassian pulls her closer, wrapping his arms around her waist. Nesta tries not to get the melting candy all over their clothes and yet she wants to pull away, even as she sinks into his embrace. All of these people watching, knowing, listening, judging...

Have they been waiting for this?

When she was drunk and falling over as she walked to that shoddy apartment at the outskirts of town with a new male every night, were they waiting for this? When a male at one of the taverns she can barely remember offered his time, whispering that he hoped the general wouldn’t find out, were they waiting for this?

Were they waiting for her to get her act together, so they could make their little commander happy—make him want to buy a house here—to come home where he rightfully belonged?

“The symphony starts in a couple of hours, so I thought I could show you all of my favorite places. There’s this one temple that I think you’ll love. The architecture… the ambience.” He shakes his head, “I can’t describe it—it’s just makes you feel calm.”

Nesta can only nod, her lips forcibly raising as he tugs her along, carefree like he always is, but… content in a way she’s never seen before. Like the familiarity has sunk into his skin, and he is someone new—someone foreign.  

Let’s go home, she wants to say, the words dangling on the edge of her tongue, in the purse of her lips.

“Slow down,” she laughs in a voice that seems strange to her. Artificial and fallacious, but it does the job, because Cassian can’t tell one bit.

So, they continue through the city as if the day has been made for Cassian’s joy.

They are miles past the central markets, when Nesta lets go of his hand. She stares into the shop’s window, looks beyond the glittering glass to the mannequin wearing a high collared shirt and a navy skirt that is shorter than the gown she wears. Not too much shorter, but enough that Nesta rubs her foot against her ankle, for it would have been scandalous to the lady she was supposed to become.

There are tights under the skirt though, black boots that hide some of the skin. Nesta looks to the hat that sits atop and thinks that it is a basking-in-the-summer-sun type of outfit—a stomp-in-the-mud-when-it-rains type of look. It would be easy to move in, cool to lie in, fun to run in as the fabric would flounce around her.  

It reminds her of adventures.

She’d wanted to travel once…

But even if this mannequin is dressed in something that looks like her… the clothing is not something she wears—not someone she is.

“We can go in if you want? The shop should be open, if you want to try it on,” Cassian explains, his shoulders softly touching hers.

But Nesta shakes her head. No.

It is not someone she is.

It is not something she’d wear.

“You were going to show me a temple?”

“Right,” he smiles, too happy for her world.

~

For all her days wandering Velaris streets, she’s never seen this one, where the bricks are painted in cerulean hues leading to a structure that towers over the city.

Nesta tilts her head up to look at it, her neck aching from the angle.

She can see where the top of the temple touches the clouds, as if it is a hand sprouting up from the ground, reaching out to cradle the azure. Cassian pulls her forward, running to the giant like a giddy child through a candy shop and she wonders if everything is a wonder to him when all she sees is something menacing.

White billowy walls and a height so high she could imagine herself falling.

“What is this place?” She mumbles under her breath as they reach the heavy wooden doors. Cassian slows his steps, pushing her through as they open by themselves. His voice lowers to a hush and even then she can hear it echo in the chamber.

“Just look,” he urges.

Nesta does as he wishes, looking up to the offending structure, to the windows crawling up the walls. Stained glass subduing the summer sun. The color dances across her skin. Dances like little sprites of flashing blue. So many types of blue, that she starts counting them all in her effort to capture the light in her hand.

They remind her of fairies, she thinks.

Not the ones that she knows to walk outside in this very city, beasts she used to call them, but the ones Nesta read about as a child. Little wings and hats of leaves, voices that sounded like ringing bells.

Did they capture all of the magic in this one place? All of her memories sprouting from stone floors.

Cassian holds his arms out, circling the foyer. “This is where I used to come, where I used to escape when I had lessons, or I couldn’t stop thinking about… so many things.” He doesn’t elaborate, but Nesta follows him anyways as he weaves through the room, “And it’s a place I wanted to show you because I thought you needed to know.”

“Know what?” She asks, blinking at his gaze. How he can stare at her when they are surrounded by such beauty, Nesta will never know.

“What quiet sounds like,” he muses.  

Cassian smiles as she begins to listen.  

“I don’t hear anything,” Nesta whispers. Indeed, she couldn’t even hear her own thoughts. It was as if they were left beyond the invading structure, the sounds of the city dull and dim. But it wasn’t a silence that scared her, not one that was threatening to drive her mad, instead it made her lean her head back, letting the warmth from the windows melt on her skin.

“It’s a mausoleum,” he explains, moving toward a table filled with incense and myrrh. He grabs the stick and lights it with a candle. “But this wasn’t what I wanted to show you.”

Cassian swallows and she can sense the apprehension tingling up her spine, so at odds with the smell of flowers, but he gives her the incense, the smoke drawing pictures in the air. He takes another one for himself and nods his head to the stairs spiraling along the building in white clay.

She follows him. One staircase after another. Two and three more, until they have surpassed twelve by the time they make it to the top.

When they do she sees squares carved out in the rock. Neat and uniform with pictures and flowers in each encasing. Nesta walks towards it without taking her eyes off the display, being lured by memories as much as dreams.  

Cassian doesn’t follow her, just lets go of her hand and waits for her to say something. Nesta trails her fingers along the structure.

“Why did you bring me here?” She asks, her brows furrowing. But Cassian points to the cube in the corner, the marigolds a bright yellow peaking out.

“I brought these flowers here as soon as I knew you were okay—Feyre was force-feeding you soup and you kept knocking the spoon out of her hand,” He explains with a nervous laugh, “And I just knew that you were perfectly fine and that I didn’t have to worry anymore…”

Cassian shrugs. “But I still worried because that’s just what I do.”

She can hear his steps. Touches of song in his movement, and he parts the flowers with his fingertips, revealing a stone polished and carved.

“I realized that I hadn’t been to this place in a while, and if there was one place I wanted to take you to it was here—but the more I thought about taking you, the more I felt like I was going to puke. Because you mean so much to me… and I didn’t want to push you or to make you feel like I was going to fast.”

Cassian moves towards her, his hands settling on her shoulders. A soft touch that Nesta doesn’t push away, doesn’t want to push away.

“But by the Mother, you getting hurt, scared me more than anything in the world… I didn’t think I could be so afraid.”

He gestures to the stone again, an offering for her to look. She raises her eyes to his then to the polished stone. A name carved into the pink rock.

“So, I thought I’d take you to meet my mom.”

Cassian huffs an uncomical laugh, one side of his lips raising somberly. His hand rubbing the back of his neck. “She’s not… buried here—When she died, no one ever told me where she was. I tried to wring it out of them and… nothing—but I made a memorial for her. Somewhere where it was warm and bright and where someone would bring her flowers.”

Nesta can feel the pain in his words, can hear the love. It makes something roar inside of her chest. Something protective and burning. Someone will bring this female flowers. Someone will love her son.

“I don’t have anything left of her… but I wanted her to be remembered. As she was—as I knew her to be.”

Cassian grasps her hand, his fingers tracing along the skin of her palm and she looks to hazel, notes the stained-glass fragments in his gaze. Memories and want and hope and anger all pieced together to make something beautiful and warm. He leans his forehead on hers and Nesta closes her eyes at the whisper of his lips.

She feels him open her palm and place something heavy in it.

Nesta reads the names and cries.

“I know your father’s tombstone is up on that hill and Elain and Feyre have that for their own comfort,” He wipes at her eyes with his thumbs. “But I thought you should have a place to visit your dad and… your mom. A place that you feel comfortable to do that. I thought if you didn’t mind… they could keep my mom company here.”

His nose brushes against her cheek and she can feel his breath on her face, and Nesta feels all of those precarious weeks dissipate in her exhale, in the quiet sobs. She blinks them away, but they fall and fall and fall and Nesta realizes that she is not falling. That she is not on a cliff. She is not dangling. She is not in the sea. She is not drowning. Instead, he holds her hand, and they watch as the waves crash. Come and go. Come and go. Come and go, she tells herself. Go and come back again.

Because she is not alone. Because for the first time in her life, someone looks her in the eyes, and she is comfortable being seen. She is comfortable being known.

Nesta huffs a laugh as she wipes at her eyes, gripping the stone to her chest.

“Your parents can take care of mine,” He smiles, his lips gently brushing hers, “Mine can take care of yours, and… we’ll take care of each other.”

“Because we’re mates?” Nesta asks quietly.  

“Because I choose you. Over and over again.” Cassian kisses her this time, his hands tilting back her neck. “Do you choose me?”

“I do,” she promises.

I do.

~

Tags: @dreaming-of-bohemian-nights , @missing-merlin, @strangeenemy, @saltydreamcollector, @midnightbluhm, @my-fan-side, @queenofillea1, @tswaney17, @gloriousinlove, @ekaterinakostrova, @thebluemartini, @anishake, @lord-douglas-the-third, @arinbelle, @duskandstarlight, @soitsgorgeous, @lordof-bloodshed, @sophilightwood, 

~

AN: Oh boy, this was suppose to be done a long time ago, and it was suppose to be complete, but... that didn’t happen. And now it turned into another multiple part piece. 3 parts I think-hopefully and then one wedding scene.