TW: violent thoughts, implied past sexual assault, depressive thoughts, canon-typical death, scars, blood, murder, drowning, poison
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A/N: For @cascadingmoon. Thanks for the request! I love writing these kinds of Elain fics. Thank you for being so patient with me despite the long wait! I’m so honored that you wanted me to be part of this project & that my fic gets to be paired with such stunning art!
Thank you to @thewayshedreamed for beta reading. I loved discussing & brainstorming it with you! @duskandstarlight also gets a shoutout for helping me with ideas!
It was some sort of magical, bottomless pail that multiplied the rainwater it collected. To feed the plants, they’d said. You love it, don’t you?
Of course, she’d replied. Of course.
Because what other choice was there?
How could she not love this gift? How could she not love everything in this world? That was her job, was it not?
Nevermind that the bottomless pit made her recoil, made her nauseous, made her want to scream and cry and drag the whole world down with her as she fell to the seafloor.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
She’d allowed herself to purposely forget the pail when she’d gone to tend the garden last time, but she hadn’t been given that luxury this time. Feyre had chased after her and handed her the bucket with a smile — a patronizing smile that would have made a lesser woman clench her teeth.
Feyre thought she was doing Elain a kindness, thought she was being oh-so-thoughtful by bringing her the pail, because Mother forbid Elain ever make a decision!
But Elain, who had been trained since birth to fake a smile, who knew the mask of sweet helplessness to be the safest disguise, had merely thanked her and been on her way.
The pail sat there, haunting her as she worked. It watched as her hands plucked weeds and planted seeds. Her hands were far too smooth, her skin akin to that of a child, but was she not? This body was really only a few years old, and it had erased all the marks of her previous life.
All the hard-earned calluses, created from the hours she’d spent in the small garden behind her house, were gone. Gone, like the scratches from when she’d been dragged to the cauldron, the tiny scar from the cut she’d gotten when using her mother’s letter opener at six years old, and the slight dent on her left ring finger where Graysen’s engagement ring had been.
Perhaps it was fitting that she now had the hands of a child. After all, was that not how they all saw her? An innocent fawn, a naive girl, a sweet little doll. She was just a smiling, happy thing, a girl with rosy cheeks and bright eyes, who knew nothing about the world — and they all wanted to keep it that way, because how precious, how sweet, to have a beacon of innocence among the horrors of the world.
Too bad that it was all a lie.
Wasn’t it convenient how they all forgot that it was her who had stabbed the king of Hybern? It had been far too easy — she’d looked up with her round doe-eyes through her lashes at Azriel, and he’d eagerly handed over his sword. It had been so simple to creep up behind the king unseen, when she’d been overlooked her entire life. They’d all dismissed her, because how much harm could a cherry-cheeked little girl really cause? The sword had stabbed him in the neck and blood had begun gushing out, darker than she’d expected.
Nesta had been the one to twist the blade, to slice his head off, to hold it up like a trophy.
Elain had slunk back into the shadows, unnoticed.
Wasn’t it strange how quickly they forgot? Elain wondered sometimes. How easily they could turn their backs towards her as they huddled together to tell some crude joke they didn’t think she’d appreciate.
Necks were all the same, in the end. It didn’t matter if it belonged to a frail little girl or a muscular Illyrian High Lord — a blade could slice through it and cut short a life.
She had yet to pick up a blade again, after the end of the war, but wasn’t it fun to fantasize? With her head bowed respectfully, no one ever saw her bloodthirsty smirk.
She didn’t always enjoy the role she played. Sometimes she wished they could see that she, too, was a real person. An adult who had lived her own life, who had made mistakes and had terrible thoughts and wasn’t always a sweet little thing. But when it mattered most, the mask would serve her well. They would all underestimate her, because she’d only pick up the knife when she needed to strike true. She served perfect tea blends from the plants she grew, and each blend would be better than the last, until the day she served the ultimate concoction — raw aconite, oleander, nightshade, hemlock, faebane, and ashwood.
No one could see past her smile, and thus it served as her best shield and weapon. Women like Morrigan wore their sensuality on full display, the slits in their skirts so high that anyone could tell that they wielded their beauty as a tool. But Elain’s shy smiles and furtive glances concealed so much more.
Elain focused her attention on plucking a few weeds. Wasn’t it strange, how people had decided which plants were to be considered weeds? Some plants were to be nurtured, watered, and have their every whim cared for, while others were violently ripped from the ground, murdered because they hadn’t been chosen.
She hummed a little tune as she worked. It was a nursery rhyme — a sweet little song that children sang — and just like all others, it concealed so much danger.
Ring around the Rosie.
Elain looked down to see a drop of blood on her finger. The ivy growing next to the weeds had pricked her. She stared blankly at her finger as the cut healed itself before her eyes, until not even the slightest blemish was visible where the cut had been. The drop of blood was all that remained as proof of her pain.
A pocket full of posies.
How fitting, that her scars could literally disappear. She could remain the perfect doll they all wanted to see. The unbroken, joyous little girl without a care in the world. A little naive, perhaps, but her happiness and kindness were bright enough for her light to reflect on them, and that was all that mattered — for that was her purpose to them. A little beacon of hope, like a baby. Because they would never see that she was a corpse reanimated — a dead woman walking in someone else’s magical skin. She had died in that Cauldron, but perhaps she had been dead long before that.
Ashes.
She didn’t know when her sisters had stopped seeing her as a person. When had they decided that all she was good for was to be someone else’s light? Maybe they had never seen her at all. Perhaps no one had ever seen her.
Once, she’d thought that Graysen had seen her. That he’d loved her as more than just a trophy on his arm, more than just a girl with a bright smile and a pretty dress, more than just a kind hand to support him and give him children. But the second she lost her human smile and womb, he’d thrown her away as though she’d lost her worth to him.
He’d promised her the world. He’d promised her forever.
Now, she really would have forever. Just not with him.
Ashes.
Sometimes, she could still feel the grip of those terrible hands — the hands that had dragged her out of bed, searched her far too thoroughly to be proper, and then pushed her head underwater to drown her. She could feel their palms, slick and grimy with sweat, and their slimy gazes on her far too thin nightgown.
She could feel their nails digging into her skin, creating crescent moon cuts, just like her mother’s hand used to as it rested on her shoulder. Their hands clutched her waist too tightly, the way suitors did at balls where they acted as though her smiles and kind words and ribbons were invitations to do as they pleased.
At those balls, she’d often felt like the pearl necklaces she wore were slowly choking her. The room felt too small, too crowded, too noisy. She’d longed to run away, perhaps after kicking the men where it would hurt most, but she’d known she never could. That wasn’t what ladies did in polite company, and her mother would never have allowed it, no matter how much she’d hated the men’s touch. Besides, it wasn’t kind, and Elain was nothing if not kind.
Oh, yes. If only they’d known her thoughts. Yes, Elain was nothing, now.
She’d escaped it all, somehow — the balls, the men, the hands — and yet she could still feel the pearls bruising her skin, clogging her throat, stopping her breathing.
She was still being choked, here, alone in the middle of nature where she’d once felt so free.
There was no escaping now. She would never be free from this rope of ivy tied like a noose around her neck.
Tears rolled down her cheeks. She heard one make a tiny sound as it dropped into her pail. Drip. Drip. Drip.
Maybe someday, if she cried enough, her pail would be as deep as the Cauldron — as terrible and powerful as its waters.
TW: violent thoughts, implied past sexual assault, depressive thoughts, canon-typical death, scars, blood, murder, drowning, poison
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A/N: For @cascadingmoon. Thanks for the request! I love writing these kinds of Elain fics. Thank you for being so patient with me despite the long wait! I’m so honored that you wanted me to be part of this project & that my fic gets to be paired with such stunning art!
Thank you to @thewayshedreamed for beta reading. I loved discussing & brainstorming it with you! @duskandstarlight also gets a shoutout for helping me with ideas!
Don’t mind me, just doing another re-read of this beautiful, engaging fic ❤️
I know I’ve already gushed to you about how much I loved this fic (both in concept and execution), but it’s worth mentioning again that this is inspired!
Beautiful work, Bby Sayo! I can’t wait to read more of your Elain in the future
Dani your reviews mean so much to me bc you’re a phenomenal writer and I’m so honored that u like my writing you seriously make my day. Thank u so much for all your help with this fic!!
Sorry not sorry but if I ever saw my abuser again I would fucking suckerpunch her, kick her, let them physically feel what she did to me mentally. Let them feel the physical pain I inflicted on myself because of her.
tw: mentions of violence, drug usage, mentions of substance use issues
FFF: The Big City
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Holy. Shit. He hates. Cornfields.
He never thought he could hold a grudge against a plant that hard but sure enough, he can and he does- enough so that when he finally sees the sign welcoming him to Pennsylvania, a palpable shudder of relief runs through his shoulders. No one’s fucking heard of a corn field in Pennsylvania. What the fuck do they even grow in Pennsylvania-
Apparently corn.
And after thatstream of curses, his knuckles bone white as he grips the steering wheel like he’s strangling it, he thinks maybe he should stop for the day. He hasn’t been sleeping well. Call it excitement or panic or the beginnings (beginnings?) of a nervous breakdown, but he’s got maybe five minutes over the course of the past twenty-four hours. He needs to calm down. He needs to think through his next moves very carefully, because rushing into things landed him in fucking cornfield hell shitfuck nowhere Iowa and the stakes are alothigher now.
Pull over for the time being. If you can’t sleep, at least take one of your pills and just calm down. He thinks that through and nods and then it’s pulling to the side of an obnoxiously scenic road, his palms pressed hard to his eyes once the car’s off.
Fuck. He can’t act like he doesn’t know what he’s doing at this point, because he does. He’s done exactly one job for the past twenty odd years and he’s doing it here too- making people in his way get out of his way. And, well, he knows exactly who’s in his way here because if it was himwith a six year old daughter, a husband, and some lunatic trying to see them then-
Well, if he had all that, he wouldn’t be in this position first off. But anyways, he’d totally kill that guy.
So that’s that. See your daughter. See your husband. Take care of the hypotenuse to this sick little love triangle. And pray to Christ that whoever the MOIRAI send after you, it’s not someone you trained because that might actually be a problem.
Yeah. Good plan.
And he very pointedly does notthink about what’s next after that because well- he already knows he can’t win. There’s no way out now and no point thinking about that because if he does, he’s going to fall apart entirely. So instead he lets his hands slip down off his eyes, his head pounding, and he thanks god that the asshole he took the car from packed Capri-Suns like a motherfucker because dry swallowing oxy sucks-
One tablet and a sigh and he leans the driver’s seat back. He’s got time. It takes longer by mouth, but there’s no way he wants to fuck up his veins. He lets his mind drift, his eyes shut and the afternoon sun coming through the car’s sun roof, and he considers that it’s a four hour drive from here to there. Maybe five with traffic. Not long at all now.
He should clean up first.
There’s that little piece of him now that wants to make a good impression- that desperate, unhinged voice saying maybe it can work, maybe maybe maybe even as what remains of his logic screams that you can’t fucking kill someone and expect their spouse and kid to love you, even if youare him. Even if you’re a better him. A him who doesn’t bother to hide those little white pills, a him who would be honest because they deserve to know-
A better husband. A better Akihiro, though his birth name barely registers as his own anymore. The man he’s going to kill is Akihiro. And he’s-
He hesitates, because he’s never had the chance to pick his own name. Akihiro. ATROPOS. They were both handed to him by someone else. They both ring hollow now. Neither is him, because he’s-
He is Odysseus. Returning home to Ithaca.
That feels right.
And so Odysseus rests, numbed to sleep, and he dreams about a city and a daughter and a better life waiting for him.
