Torchwood-99

Nesta: I’m struggling with relinquishing my last connection to the human life I was torn from, so I don’t know if I can accept the responsibility of claiming you as my mate at this current time but you know that I love you and I always will

Cassian:

Helion treats him as a friend and helps him with concealing the trove and Rhysand keeps the truth about his son (with the woman he loves) from him.

Lucien works for him without expecting anything in return and Rhysand baits him with his mate and exploits him against Tamlin and Band of Exiles.

Eris spies on his father risking his life and Rhysand betrays him after promising a marriage alliance and throne and help to find his soldiers.

Tamlin helps bring him back to life and Rhysand repays it by telling him to kill himself.

Nesta sacrifices her powers to save him, his mate and his child, and Rhysand wants to kill her for using the trove (that belongs to her) the way she sees fit.

"[Cassian] would never take that away from her: the chance to save herself" ACOSF, Chapter 67

And even if the laws had allowed it, he would never take that away from her: the chance to save herself.

And then in Nesta’s POV she’s thinking:

Cassian ... Maybe he was already on his way to save her. The bubble of hope in her chest ruptured. He couldn’t rescue her. He’d informed her himself about the laws forbidding such a thing.

it was discussing Nesta finally telling Cassian to stop riding the fence and if he's with her then he needs to fucking act like it and tbh? I don't think Cassian knows what go do with a woman who is in her own power, who pushes back against him and Rhysand

I think Nests needs to be independent from a man and a restrictive, misogynistic court where women are so brutalized. I thi k she needs to explore the world and learn and find her place and I don't think she can do that with Cassian at her side with the way he currently is

Cassian needs to grow the fuck up and stop living up Rhysands ass. He needs to start enforcing boundaries with his personal life and the IC. he needs to start enforcing boundaries between him and Mor. He needs to work through his inferiority complex of being but a lowley bastard born

Nestas personality and whole-ness is too big for him to control, especially as he had a hard enough time doing so in ACOFS when Nesta was broken

Or maybe the “real Nesta” isn’t the Nesta who was In poverty with a neglectful father. The Nesta who is stressed from fae coming into to her home (potentially ruining her family if anyone found out) to tell her about a oncoming war. The Nesta just got forced into the cauldron and had her entire life upended and was thrown into a war she never asked to be apart of. The Nesta who is dealing with the trauma of seeing her fathers neck be snapped right in front of her. The Nesta who is around people who have said the will never forgive her for her past mistakes.

It’s actually insane. That entire story was batshit crazy but Mor is the last straw that breaks the camel’s back in regard to Nessian

But now I'm at the hiking scene and I forgot how foul this whole thing is. He's been, in his head, all but thinking about how much he loves her. Needs her. Wants her. She's everything to him, he'd curl up and die if he lost her (his thoughts when she's lost in the bog). He'll take whatever she's offering from him just to have some little piece. Desperate and earnest to see her show up to yoga with him, encouraging her to reach out to her friends, telling Rhysand to leave her alone.

Only to turn around and treat her like trash. Throwing that pack at her, laughing with Rhys that she's gonna HATE hiking, that it's her punishment after Rhys, only hours before, promised Cassian he would kill her. He knows fire troubles her and keeps one going for days and doesn't ever examine the link between his own fire and her constant flinching or how she's curled up in on herself. He thinks about it constantly over 400 pages, how she refuses to sleep in front of fire, how strange that she begs him/the house to make it stop. He knows there is trauma around it. How she's barely eating. That she doesn't speak for days.

And it's troubling and awful to read. He's supposed to love her but it doesn't feel like love. And then it gets reframed as "for her own good" and "cassian knew what she needed" just like Feyre a few pages back immediately forgiving Rhysand for keeping the news she'd die from her but saying she's "furiously angry" with them all. He knows best and Feyre submits to this judgement. Cassian knows what Nesta needs, and Nesta submits.

That hike doesn't solve shit between Cassian and Nesta btw. She's still all set to marry Eris because she thinks Cassian's TOO GOOD FOR HER and she's NOT WORTHY of him. The man who didn't care if she didn't talk to him for days and only felt sorry when she fell face first in the dirt from dehydration and exhaustion. Who took his girlfriend on a hiking trip against her will, he's loving and kind and sweet ONLY because the author says so. Cassian is an asshole. Keeping this scene makes Cassian's behavior feel sinister. He's nice until he's not. He wears his heart on his sleeve until he's mad.