day of elijah's death
an undistinguishable amount of time passes. It's still light outside, but the sunshine of the day prior and early morning has vanished. the sky is littered with menacing clouds, and the trees are rustling violently with the wind. It's as if the earth is rumbling with emotion. elowen is unaware of it all.
she's alone in a world full of noise.
she stares at the van deserted in the middle of the road in front of her. white smoke had begun dissipating from the hood, signifying the end of her escape. the van breaking down feels like a laugh in her face on top of what already happened.
vaguely, she remembers a car passing by not too long ago, but the driver didn't stop or seem to notice her sitting in the grass. she doesn't have the energy to deal with anything, really, so she is grateful she gets off unseen.
soon after, there's movement somewhere in the forest. her heart jolts in her chest at the prospect of it being joey coming back for her; she had seen too much. or maybe a stranger got sight of the broken down van and wants to loot it. either way, she tries to make herself as small as possible up against the tree.
the footsteps grow closer. her breaths are ragged. she feels too overwhelmed, wants to turn it all off. every muscle in her body is drawn tight with fear.
when she forces herself to open her eyes again, familiar eyes stare back at her.
It's corpse.
he's alive, to her surprise. he found her somehow. her vision starts to blur with tears again, but out of... frustration. "go away," her voice is impossibly small.
he crouches in front of her to meet her eye level. he doesn't say anything.
her inexplicable anger starts to build and it feels miles better than her guilt. she focuses on it. "are you going to make me say it again?"
"I'm not making you do anything," he says in a low rumble emitting nothing but calm.
It irks her further. "you're the last person I want to see right now." somewhere in her head, it's true. he's unfazed. "I want to be alone. can you not do me that small decency?"
"tell me what happened, and I'll consider it." he can tell something is very wrong. for one, the car is smoking on the side of the road.
elowen blinks incredulously. he doesn't know? had the horror of joey not been his reason for leaving in the first place? she realizes from the genuine look he gives her he isn't kidding. if not that, then she figured he would've walked back to the old spot where the van was parked and even seen for himself. she hadn't been paying attention which direction he came from just now. perhaps he really didn't see. he abandoned her for some other reason.
why did he leave in the first place?
the thought gets placed on hold. she isn't able to think about how she's going to answer his question without feeling the rush of prickling pain, like needles on every inch of her heart, wounding her. "you aren't going to believe me," she says as she realizes it.
his gaze is a careful one. "try me."
she sniffs and wipes the back of her hand over her nose, looking away from corpse at nothing in particular. "elijah's dead." her throat feels raw. "joey killed him. he mutilated his flesh and—" her chest heaves. "ate him."
her face screws into disgust. "he was enjoying it, even," she adds as an afterthought.
she hates that she has to see it again when she blinks, hates that corpse isn't reacting the way she thought he would, doesn't look surprised. he doesn't look appalled or confused or even shocked. say something snarky, she's actually wishing.
the color does drain from his face, and there's a slight twitch of emotion, maybe recognition, that she catches, but then his face is eternally blank.
"say something," she urges him rather aggressively.
"what do you want me to say to that?" he replies.
she clenches her teeth and glares at him. "you don't believe me."
"It—It's not that."
"in what world do I make that up?" she exclaims.
elowen is the one to rise to her feet, her back scraping against the bark of the tree as she does so. she needs distance. she paces further away from him, further into the forest but not far. she needs to not be under his watchful stare. she needs to not feel like she's going insane.
but she is, isn't she?
"elijah is dead," elowen reiterates with her back facing him. "how doesn't matter," she evades for the sake of avoiding her sounding more crazy. "but I... I couldn't do anything for him." I was too late, she hears herself in her head.
he was so little.
he seems to decide it best to stay quiet, which she hates. it only makes her shrivel up further. her eyes are welling with tears again, and her shoulders quiver as she squats down and buries her face in her folded arms.
It's a whisper when she finally asks, "where were you?"
the question hangs in the thin air for ages.
she loathes how useless it makes her sound, that she feels relied on him for things to be okay, but it's the truth. if he were there, things would have been different. and though deep down she feels like this, elijah's demise, is her fault, it's so much easier to be angry at someone else than herself. to put the blame on someone else.
when he doesn't answer, she goes on. "were you even planning on coming back?" his stuff was gone from the van. he took everything of his with him. she knows the answer, and she asks anyway.
more deafening silence, until a few moments later, she hears, "I'm sorry."
she whirls on him, face streaked with tears—from what emotion, she isn't sure. "don't say that. you don't get to say that." the tremble in her voice gets worse when she meets his eyes. "I don't want your apology."
"elowen—"
"you left!" the words rip out of her throat in an outburst not even she was expecting. she looks at him, her expression distant. "you fucking left. no warning, no explanation, nothing. you weren't there... you didn't see—" she finds herself being brutally honest, "I needed you."
finally, a flicker of emotion. his blank expression dissolves into something more tortured, more something. it feeds the fire in her belly. let him feel pain.
maybe he has been, but he's just really good at hiding it. she seems to have cracked him, but her good nature is getting the best of her—her damned conscience. "I want to blame you," she admits regretfully.
"then do it." he takes a resolute step towards her. "I won't stop you."
her eyebrows furrow, and she looks down, defeated. "fuck you."
"you can do better than that." his tone is serious, his face is edging for more. another step.
she's shaking her head, knows well that it isn't him she's truly angry at. it's herself. and still, she gives him what he wants to hear.
"you're dead to me."
It surprises her that it's somewhat true.
the intent is hollow. there's no charge behind the words. but even so, she says them with a hint of venom lacing her tongue. she finds soon enough that she actually is infuriated with him. It felt good to say.
corpse seems sufficiently satisfied by her answer. he wishes he could hear her say it again. even knowing what it is she's saying, the meaning behind it, he can't help but find the words so melodic when they come out of her pretty mouth, smeared in her accented voice. they even wound him.
but he recognizes now isn't the time for his indulgences. his own flood of remorse from staring at the broken girl in front of him overwhelms him. he wants to feel the guilt stabbing his soul, wants her to take her anger out on him. I deserve it.
corpse would dwell on the decision he made to leave her for uncharacteristically long. It's his fault elijah couldn't be saved, and his fault the kid took a piece of elowen with him when he went. no matter what choices he could've made differently, he's stuck in a lose-lose situation where she suffers the consequences he sows.
he hates it. he hates more that he cares so much.
she feels his hands on either side of her face before she sees him. her eyes open, bleary, and meet his endlessly dark irises. his hands feel cool on her hot face, and she lets him keep them there; doesn't have the energy to shove him away.
"God, elowen." he looks at her like he's struggling with something internally, but won't say what.
she brings her hands up to hold each of his wrists, says his name grimly. "corpse..."
"mm?" he hums. his thumb strokes the wetness from under one of her eyes, lightly brushing her bottom lashes as he does so.
"I'm really fucking angry at you," she whispers, and her tone is soft despite her words.
"that's okay." he doesn't mind. she should be.
elowen stares at him for a few seconds in utter confusion. her pulse jumps in a manner that has her looking down at his chest instead. part of her feels like he's pitying her, and the other feels like she's betraying mason to want his intentions to be any other way.
and yet, she remembers what it felt like to sit alone for hours this morning after finding elijah dead. how she really only thought of one person in the midst of that storm. heat flares up within her and makes her heart race again.
"you don't know..." she trails off in her furious thoughts. he doesn't know what she saw, what she went through this morning. what she'll never be able forget. he abandoned her to experience that alone, and she resents him for it.
"do you want to leave?" she eventually blurts. leave me, she doesn't say, but he knows.
she would give him an out. take it or leave it. she knows now leaving people is something he does. with how easily she grows attached to people, the combination would make for surefire disaster.
his fingers thread deeper into her hair, and a shiver travels down the back of her neck. "I'm direly terrible for you," he admits, knowing how much better off she'd be to cut ties with him now. knowing he made the weak mistake of finding her again. "atrocious might be a better word for it."
she steps out of his grasp, disconnects them. "let me be the judge of that."
his expression grows weary. "I wouldn't have it any other way," he relinquishes, but his mind screams, you don't know what I saw. what I was capable of. how I ruined you.
elowen sighs and returns to her earlier question, reframing it. "are you going to leave again?" she asks again, her voice raising with affliction. It begs a direct answer, no bullshit.
one he knows the right answer to. he was warned, after all.
but he's a selfish bastard.
"not unless you make me."
______
they never were above lying to each other...