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kickstartmythumpthump · 5 years ago

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Elucien Post ACOWAR Headcanons

I need something to restore my faith in humanity and this is it.

-Lucien coming to Velaris with them, as Elain had requested. They stay in the House of Wind together and often find it to themselves because they both still feel a little bit out of place in this new world they’ve both been thrown into. Everyone else in the circle has a fixed position, a set purpose, a job that they need to do now that the war is over. Elain and Lucien, though, don’t quite fit, so they find ways to fit with each other instead.

-Lucien talks to Elain when she confesses she isn’t quite sure where she fits anywhere in Prythian and he tells her he feels the same. He tells her about his family in the Autumn Court, about how he fled his childhood home after the death of Jesminda and ended up in Spring, how he never truly fit there either. How, after all those centuries, he’s ended up here instead and has had to start all over again. Elain smiles a little and murmurs that she supposes they can help each other start over.

-Lucien talks to Elain about Jesminda, because if anyone can understand what she’s going through with Greysen, he can. Both turning points in their lives involved them losing the person they were engaged to/intended to spend the rest of their lives with. Both involved them losing absolutely everything, their homes, their futures, their loves, their lives. Both of them were traumatised by this, Lucien from watching her die, Elain from dying herself and returning as fae. Lucien assures her, quietly, that he managed to crawl out of that darkness, that he wants to love again, that he will love again…That she can do that too.

-Lucien understanding why Elain can’t take off the iron ring that Greysen gave her, even after everything that they went through, even after how he hurt her. Lucien not pressuring her to take it off, as all the others do, because it’s holding her in the past and stopping her moving on because he understands. The comfort in the familiar, the comfort in something from the past that anchors her to home. He tells her about his bedroom in the Spring Court, how he had it decorated with Autumn colours because for all the bad that happened there, it was still his home. And sometimes he needed that thing to hold on to. Lucien telling him how it took him centuries to stop wearing the ring he had given Jesminda around his neck to keep her close. Lucien telling her that when she’s ready, he’ll help her take it off and carry the weight of it between them.

-Lucien actually telling Elain what’s going on politically, what happened in the war, the events that led up to it. He tells her about Amarantha and his eye, the curse that was put upon them all. He tells her about Andras and how and why her sister killed him and changed everything. He tells her about Feyre being in the Spring Court, tells her about her relationship with Tamlin, what happened Under the Mountain, what happened afterwards. They both find something in this, Elain, who is literally shielded from important meetings, understands what’s happening around her, has someone trust her and not underestimate her because she’s quiet, because she suffered, as they know all too well what that feels like, to be shut out and kept in the dark that way. Lucien finds someone who will actually listen to him, to his story, someone who will give it the weight that it deserves, who will understand that he too has suffered, that he too is important. He doesn’t have his opinions dismissed with Elain, he doesn’t tentatively have to request that she hear them, he tells her what he needs to say and she listens to what she needs to hear, and they find a gentle equilibrium in the quiet that follows.

-Lucien helping Elain to heal after everything she’s been through. Lucien being soft and gentle and more than happy to let her sit in silence for as long as she wants/needs to. Lucien talking to her for hours on end, telling her stories of his childhood, of the Spring Court, of anything he can think of just to see her smile or hear her laugh. She learns that she can still laugh after all that she’s endured and Lucien…Lucien remembers that there was light for him, even in the darkest places. They draw that light out of each other.

-Lucien understanding Elain’s trauma, telling her she was not weak for how she reacted after everything was taken from her. He tells her how he suffered after Jesminda’s death. He tells her about the Summer Court faerie who was brought to Spring with shredded wings. He tells her how it brought back memories and that still, after all this time, it affected him so badly he’d been unable to stay. He tells her that her panic attacks are natural, not something to be ashamed of, she went through a horrible ordeal, it’s understandable that she wouldn’t be completely fine afterwards. Elain squeezes his hand and tells him that perhaps he should tell himself that too.

-Elain understanding Lucien’s behaviour in the Spring Court, why he didn’t do even more to help Feyre, as everyone seems to accuse him of. Elain understanding because she too, sat back and watched her sister struggle when she should have helped, when she should have done more. Elain understanding that sometimes all you can do is survive yourself. Elain not blaming Lucien for what happened in Spring, simply understanding, as no-one else has.

-Elain bringing Lucien out into her garden because, as it happens, someone who spent most of his life in Spring, knows all about the different plants that she’s trying to grow here in Prythian. He realises most of them are from the human realm because she isn’t sure how to grow other things. He makes contact with a friend in the Spring Court and has them send buckets of seeds to her. He explains them all to her, how to grow them, and spends an afternoon being teased by Elain about getting dirt all over his pretty courtier’s hands. Lucien shoves his pretty courtier’s hands up to his elbows in the dirt to prove a point and Elain laughs and laughs and laughs when he pulls them out again and spatters her pretty little nose with mud.

-Elain understanding Lucien’s quiet strength and endurance and slowly teaching him to be proud of it. She knows what it is like to fight each day for just a little bit of light to keep growing towards, even when the world has never been so dark. Lucien and Elain understanding what people so often dismiss about them - that they are gentle souls in a cruel world that has tried its utmost, through death and grief and poverty and abuse, to make them hard and cold. The strength that it takes to resist that. The strength that is so often overlooked by others. The strength that they see in each other because their hearts are alike in this way, and so many others.

-Lucien overhearing Feyre and Nesta talking about how Elain had always wanted to visit the continent to see the fields of flowers that grow over there. Lucien taking her aside one day and telling her everything that he can remember of his trip there. Not the firebird and the curse and the preparations for war. The little things, the things that he found beauty in, the quiet, unassuming things that caught his eye and captured his heart. He tells her all about them because he knows that she will find joy in them too.

-Lucien, who, after all his years as an emissary, knows someone in almost every court, arranging for he and Elain to visit the ones that she wants to see. As it happens, Elain wants to see all of them. He smiles, tells her how he spent his time as a youth, hopping from court to court against his father’s wishes, befriending the people there, learning all the secret, beautiful spots that they tend to keep hidden from outsiders. Elain travelling and seeing the world and letting it fill her with hope once more. Lucien finding hope himself, in the bright gleam of her eyes.

-Elain seeing Lucien’s scars and not flinching from any of them. Not the one on his face, or the metal eye that replaced the one he lost. Not the ones on his back from the whipping he endured from Amarantha. Not the countless others he’s amassed over the years through death and war and suffering. Not the ones on his soul, that bear witness to the deepest wounds in him. She touches them softly, in a way he hasn’t truly been touched in centuries. She reminds him what gentleness is. She reminds him that these marks are proof that he survived. She reminds him that it’s over now, that he’s done with getting scars, that it’s time to heal from them at last.

-Lucien helping Elain deal with the nightmares and the flashbacks and the blank, horrifyingly empty periods where she fears she may never feel anything real again. Lucien holding her hand through them, holding her, comforting her. Lucien tentatively suggesting that they use the bond to help her, give her something to hold onto. Elain agrees and the two cautiously begin to explore their connection, how it can anchor them to one another, how it can help, how it can guide lost souls back to one another.

-Lucien admitting that the bond is new and weird to him, too. They spend an afternoon out in Elain’s garden, gently tugging on it between them, starting to understand how it works and what it does. ‘A bridge between souls’ indeed. Elain thanks him for trying to use it to help her after everything happened, when Madja instructed him to.

-Elain thanking him for being patient, all those weeks when it was silent and empty - and she was too. Lucien tells her quietly he knew it wasn’t empty, that was just what she was feeling at the time…He understands that too, understands that it was far worse for her than it was for him. Elain looking into his eye and knowing that he understands that part of her, that silence, that emptiness, that hopelessness where once there was so much joy and thrill for life. Elain looks at him and knows that it’s possible to survive it. Because he did. Elain finding hope in Lucien.

-Lucien making it clear that he does not, and never did, think that she belongs to him because she is his mate. He explains his confession in Hybern, how rare mating bonds are, the shock that flooded him when he found out, the words that simply blurted out of him, even if he could have reacted a little better, given the circumstances, he apologises if he alarmed her.

-(Feyre snorts with laughter when she overhears this and pats Lucien on the shoulder, telling him that the first time Rhys felt the bond snap into place between them he jumped so hard he nearly fell off a balcony, winnowed into nothingness leaving her standing there utterly baffled, flew back home, collapsed onto the House of Wind, and blurted out the words ‘she’s my mate’ to the cousin he hadn’t seen for fifty years who probably wasn’t sure if he was dead or alive. On the whole, she thinks Lucien dealt with the situation rather well.)

-Lucien finally getting that quiet leisure time he’d been craving and using it to read. Elain sits with him, sometimes she simply sews and they sit in peaceful silence together. Sometimes she reads as well. Sometimes she curls up under a blanket and has Lucien read to her until she falls asleep. She says, vaguely, that there’s something soothing about his voice, it makes her feel safe. Lucien tells her (in a ridiculous, overly formal and sincere courtier’s tone) that he would read until his throat was raw if she asked him to. Elain giggles. Lucien feels his heart swell in response to the sound.

-The two of them keep getting invited to all these fancy functions between the High Lords and the human representatives and Elain has taken to attending them with him as he can tell her who everyone is, how the various social circles work, where the networks and alliances lie. Elain takes to this world like a duck to water and assures Lucien she had plenty of practice and being nice and making small talk in the human world, she’s got this under control. And so she does. She’s as natural as he is and it’s not long before Lucien is insisting to Rhys that Elain go with him on any diplomatic missions, or that they just let her loose in a room full of their enemies for half an hour. She’ll have them eating out of her hand in half that time. Rhys taking Lucien’s suggestions on board and the two of them finding a greater purpose in the Night Court.

-Elain revealing herself to have a witty, fiery side to her too (’I hope they all burn in hell’ / ‘Don’t you touch my sister’ Ahem) which shocks the heck out of Lucien to his sheer and utter delight. Elain wandering around these parties, and, after making small talk with these puffed up, stuffy courtiers for an hour she finds the need to vent to someone about their flaws and failings. Which she does to Lucien in an undertone while he laughs into his wine so hard he cries. Lucien embellishes the things she’s already noticed with various stories and titbits of information he’s heard himself and the two of them are both grinning like idiots by the end of the night and neither of them can look that one courtier from the Dawn Court in the eye.

-Lucien and Elain understanding one another and the things that they’ve both done and been through because they find that they mirror each other and that helps them to understand.

-Lucien and Elain looking at each other and finding a similar hope in their mate’s that they can survive darkness and still hope and dream and love and live through it all because they both possess that same quiet strength.

-Lucien and Elain not underestimating or dismissing each other the way almost everyone else does.

-Lucien and Elain helping one another to heal from the scars that they both have and realising that they are what the other needs in order to help them do this.

-Lucien and Elain finding joy and purpose and hope in one another and teaching each other how to live again.

-Lucien and Elain not just being together because of a mating bond but because it makes sense; because they are what the other needs - gentleness and comfort, and light to guide them out of the darkness they’ve both been trapped in too long.

-Lucien and Elain slowly falling in love, gently, quietly, with that same unassuming strength that’s drawn them through life together.

-Lucien and Elain finding a kindred spirit who has been through hell and back and still come out gentle and soft when it would have been so easy to be cruel and harsh.

-Lucien and Elain giving their relationship time to grow, time to learn about each other, time to get to know each other, time to be with each other now there isn’t a war going on that pulls them away.

-Lucien and Elain choosing one another in spite of their mating bond, as Feyre and Rhys chose each other in spite of theirs. Finally realising what it means to be someone’s first choice and never settling for anything less again.

-Lucien and Elain finally getting what they deserve in life. Each other.

-Lucien and Elain. Lucien and Elain. Lucien and Elain. That is all.

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