#perhaps I'll edit in something witty later

[ladynestaarcheron]

Like Pristine Glass - Chapter Four

ao3 - ff.net - masterpost

(tagging these cuties: @humanexile @skychild29 @rhysandsdarlingfeyre @candid-confetti @rhysandsrightknee​ @missing-merlin​ @azriels-forgotten-shadow​ @books-and-cocos​)

hello everyone!! chapter four is ready!! thank you all so much for your kind words on the previous chapters. i read every reblog and they all mean so much to me. i hope you all enjoy this one! we get a bit more insight into nesta’s past in illyria. i think you’ll be able to see what direction it’s going in.

October 19 - 4 years after

When Cassian arrives back in Velaris, Elain has already made up her mind to go and she wants to be prepared. So she pounces on him first.

“How is she?” she asks him when he returns. “Is she very angry? Is she in good health? What about the children? What are their names? How old are they?”

“Give him a minute, Elain,” Rhys says gently, but she ignores him. She has not spoken to her brother-in-law for three days, in solidarity with her elder sister.

“What did she say?” Elain presses.

Cassian’s voice is weak in a way Elain has never heard before. “She’s...all right. They’re all all right.”

He sits down on one of the big armchairs, letting his wings rest.

“Just all right?” Elain says, sitting down on the couch next to him. “There must be something else. Is she working at that bookstore, then?”

“Elain,” Mor says. “Maybe we can ask him later, after he’s rested and eaten.”

Elain bites her lip. Lashing out is against all laws of propriety and her nature besides, but she’s felt bottled up with anger and pain for the past three days, and she has no outlet.

Luckily Cassian spares her the struggle. “It’s fine. I understand. Yes, she works at a bookstore. The children are three,” and here his voice cracks along with Elain’s heart. “Two boys and a girl.”

“What are their names?” Feyre says softly, sitting down next to Elain. She puts her hand on her knee, to share comfort along with their pain.

“The girl is called Ava. Avery. And Nicky...Nicholas. And Ollie.”

Elain’s eyes start to blur with tears when he says the girl’s name, and she lets out a sob when he says the last one.

Feyre is crying too. “Ollison,” she says, gasping. “Oh, Nesta.”

After their father. Elain had not realized....

But of course. Of course she had been hiding that as well.

“I want to see her,” she says, blurting out the words.

“I know,” he says. He doesn’t meet her eyes. “I’m sure you both want to. But...she has a life. And I’ve already upheaved enough.”

“What does that mean?” Feyre says.

“I asked about you,” he says, and he does look at Feyre when he speaks to her. “She...doesn’t want you to visit just yet.”

Elain feels her heart clench.

“She doesn’t want to see us? She said that?” Feyre’s voice sounds as despaired as Elain feels.

“Not just yet,” he says, and his tone is apologetic, guilty. “It’s a shock, I think. I sprung up on her. She didn’t know I was coming. And now you two...I think she’ll feel attacked. I’m sorry.”

Feyre nods slowly, but Elain can’t believe what she’s hearing.

“I’m going.”

Now Cassian turns to her.

“Elain...”

“No. I don’t care. I’m going. She’s my sister and I want to see her. She can be upset but she can’t keep me out forever. We’ll talk. She can be angry. But we’ll talk and it’ll be fine.” She sounds desperate, she knows, but she is. “I’m going.”

“She doesn’t want that right now,” Cassian says wearily.

“She’ll manage,” Elain says, and it’s not a snap, but it’s very close. She sees Mor and Rhys exchange a glance.

Elain stands up. “I’m going. I have to. You should understand that.” She stares Cassian in the eye. “If you had waited a second longer, I would have gone with you three days ago.”

He nods reluctantly. “I understand, but she said she didn’t want you to come.”

“I don’t care,” she says firmly. Nesta is hurt. But she can’t just cut Elain out forever. She can’t, because what is Elain supposed to do without her big sister forever?

She knows Nesta. She’s never going to forgive her enough to invite her herself unless Elain pushes a bit. And Elain pushing...well, that isn’t Amren or Rhys pushing. From her it comes only with love. Nesta knows that. She has to.

And perhaps Cassian does, because he looks over at Azriel who says, “I’ll take you.”

“Thank you,” she says, but she’s not looking at him. She’s looking at Amren, who hasn’t said anything since Cassian came back and is now pointedly staring outside.

“All right, then,” she says, settling back down. She musters a smile. “Tell us what our niece and nephews are like.”

Her smile turns effortless when Cassian’s face turns brilliant, younger, lighter. “Oh,” he says, and his voice is that of a different male as he tells them.

---

October 23 - 1 year after

Montesere had no charms. The land was flat and boring, at least in the region Nesta was in. The people didn’t smile, either--or perhaps just not at her, perhaps out of fear. Though for some reason, Nesta felt it was more suspicion.

She had enough to spend a few weeks in a nice inn, and decided to find a less-than-nice one in order to save money, but she drew the line at sharing a room. Itchy sheets and lukewarm water she could handle, but she wasn’t anywhere near the vicinity of trust or peace of mind  required to live with a stranger, even for a few days.

She couldn’t even live with her sisters. Or...anyone.

She had originally planned to wait until she reached Gilameyva to send a letter, but wandering around a pawnshop, she found herself struck with a wave of homesickness. No, that couldn’t be what it was--Prythian was not her home, and she did not miss living South of the Wall. She only missed being human.

And her sisters too, she supposed. She guessed she missed them. Which was odd, because she didn’t think she had missed them all her time in Illyria.

That was the difference. She had been kept in Illyria, she had chosen to cross the sea.

So as she sold an old locket she never liked, she bought some paper and ink and asked the male at the desk where she could send post.

That night, after a quiet dinner alone in her room, she sat by the small side table and stared at the paper before her.

She could feel her cheeks redden. Guilt or shame or something else, she didn’t know. But she didn’t know what to write.

She didn’t want to address her note. She didn’t even want to address her leaving.

Coward, she thought to herself, and made up her mind:

Dear Elain and Feyre,

I’m well. I’ve made it to Montesere. It’s boring landscape. The sea is lovely, though. I can hear it from my room late at night when it’s quiet.

I won’t be staying here for long. I’d like to head farther South.

Here she paused. The sea is lovely...small talk. Ridiculous. These were her sisters. Sure, she had never truly opened up to them, but she had come close, a few times. And they deserved more than this, didn’t they? So she continued:

I know you must be worried. You needn’t be. I’m all right.

I’m sorry if my leaving hurt you. I was drowning. I hope you can understand.

That part was more for Feyre. Because she would understand, wouldn’t she? Being locked up?

Nesta read her letter over a few more times. There wasn’t a lot written, but she couldn’t think of anything to say, so she just signed it Love always, Nesta.

That would have to do for now.

---

October 19 - 4 years after

Even though Cassian left yesterday, Nesta can still feel his presence in her home. And she knows that even though she hadn’t seen him for four years, nothing between them had changed...and yet, everything is different.

It’s the same because he’s still there, under her skin and in the back of her mind, his presence haunting her like ghosts of her past and taunts of her future all at once. And it isn’t because--well--she’s got her children to think of, doesn’t she? And the fact that he never wrote her back.

After their talk, she did not dare ask why he had not read her letters, too scared to learn the reason. Mercifully, he did not ask why she hadn’t written after they were born or why she did not come back to Prythian.

She’s not ready to have that conversation, but it had loomed over the course of his stay.

He left yesterday, with promises to return in three days.

She tells all this to Miri at work, in hushed tones, hidden between the shelves of the non-fiction section.

“And were they sad to see him go?” she asks.

“I think they were a bit upset at first, but we told them he’d come back with gifts before the weekend,” Nesta says.

“And you?” Miri says gently.

“And I what?”

“Were you sad?”

Nesta pauses her re-shelving. “I was...not sad,” she says, voice soft. “I know he’ll be back. And I wouldn’t miss him anyway.”

“Nesta, it’s all right,” Miri says. “You can tell me what you feel.”

“It’s been too long to miss him,” Nesta lies. “I don’t want to open all that up again, anyway.”

But watching him with the children, Nesta couldn’t help thinking of what could have been. How co-parenting for the past three years might have worked. She loves having the last word, making all the decisions herself, all the pride going to her. But what would it have been like to have someone to share the burden of Ollie’s chronic coughing with as a newborn? Someone to take on the role of child-rearer alongside her. Not a friend helping her out, but someone who lived with her, whom the children equated with her.

Zeyn would have done that, she thinks, and shoves the thought away.

She knows she’s being ridiculous, anyway. She left Prythian because Cassian could not be her future. She was not his priority and in the end he wasn’t hers. They weren’t enough for each other and they couldn’t make it work. Of course her children ended up being the most immeasurable happiness she ever could have received, but she did not plan or want a pregnancy four years ago, certainly not with Cassian.

Nostalgia is rose-colored, she guesses.

“Have you told anyone else?” Miri says.

“Just Amorette,” Nesta says. “She’s coming over tonight after the children go to bed.”

“Good.” Miri nods, and doesn’t mention Zeyn, for which Nesta is grateful.

Amorette is Nesta’s closest friend in Gilameyva, a healer who treated Nesta during her pregnancy and then delivered her children.

She has barely had time to see her these past three days, much less talk and try to sort herself aloud, and that’s another thing she’s upset about.

She hides enough from Amorette, Adil, Miri, and Zeyn without her past creeping into their lives. She feels guilty and dishonest, especially when Zeyn grins broadly at her and asks her when she’s going to let him come over for dinner.

“Or did you think I hadn’t noticed you’d been keeping me out?” he teases.

Nesta ignores the twist of her insides. “Now’s not a good time,” she says, focusing on the piles of books in front of her.

“I know what it is,” Zeyn says, and his voice isn’t joking. It’s soft, and he comes up behind her to wrap her in a hug.

“You’re worried about Chokecherry, aren’t you?” he says.

Nesta’s glad he’s behind her, head buried in her neck, so he can’t see her flinch when she hears his concern and feels his kiss.

“Yes,” she says, swallowing the vile feeling. “It’s money I need, Zeyn.”

Shutting him out, lying to him about shutting him out, and even lying to him about money now that she knows it is no longer a concern might not have bothered her when she first came North of the Wall. But now she’s almost normal, happy in her home, and this isn’t who she is. Especially not where Zeyn is concerned.

“I’ll help you,” he says, his voice slightly muffled against her shoulder. “You know that...we’ll all help you. We won’t let anything happen to you.”

“I know,” Nesta says. Because she knows he believes that and for now that’s enough. She doesn’t need to think about how she knows it isn’t true.

Cassian lives in the skies, but she’s always associated him more with the ocean: relentless, ever-moving, ever-pushing forward, useless to fight against. And she knows she’s going to drown.

---

October 1 - Year of

He had gone again, to another camp. Whether or not it was the same one he had been to last time she did not know, but he had said he might be a bit longer this time. She didn’t want to waste anytime. She left the house shortly after he did.

She glared at the chocolate bar still waiting on the kitchen table. He was so infuriating sometimes.

Nesta didn’t quite know where she was going, but her feet lead her to the bar. She supposed it was hopeless to go inside.

Her head was, as always, pounding. The pain in her blood and bones would not clear. She needed a drink. She needed a distraction. She needed...a job.

She started as the thought hit her. A job. With a paycheck. She could afford passage to Gilameyva. She could support herself. She could leave.

But where was she going to find one? She knew the barmale wouldn’t hire her, out of fear of Cassian’s retribution. There were the shops...she was good with numbers. She could bookkeep, she was sure.

But there was no point of even asking. The shopkeepers were all scared of her. She saw a help wanted sign inside on of the clothing stores and stepped inside, and a hush fell over the place. No one met her eyes, and when the salesgirl approached her to ask if she needed help, Nesta could smell her anxiety.

(Another thing she hated about herself--smelling emotions was beyond bizarre. It felt unnatural. And it made it that much harder to keep her own secrets.)

So not a store. Or at least, not one here. There were some smaller shops, pressed deeper into the mountains, she thought. She had seen people with bags she hadn’t recognized coming from the wrong directions. So maybe there.

She had to. She couldn’t stay here. Not with him. She’d die first.

---

October 19 - 4 years after

Her first glimpse of Sugar Valley is not what she expected. A quiet berry-township with no discernible nightlife. Not even a bar, as far as she can tell.

“I can’t believe Netsa’s been living here,” Azriel says, mostly to himself.

“I know,” Elain says. “It’s so...small.”

“All the berry-towns are,” he says.

“No, I don’t mean the size. I mean...a small town. Small people. Small lives. Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” she says hurriedly. “It’s just...it reminds me a bit of where we grew up, and I always thought Nesta would change the world. Move to the Continent and make a name for herself.”

Azriel smiles. “She has moved to the Continent and made a name for herself.” His voice is almost teasing, and Elain allows herself a moment to enjoy the warmth that spreads through her. He only takes that tone with her.

“I guess I mean if I had to guess which of my sisters would be ruling a country, it would have been Nesta.”

Azriel doesn’t answer for a few seconds, and at first she thinks it’s because he’s upset. He is, after all, loyal to his High Lady. But then he says, “I don’t think she would like that.”

Elain frowns. “Well, you barely know Nesta at all.” She doesn’t mean to sound so sharp.

But Azriel doesn’t take offense, and his tone is as gentle as ever. “I don’t mean that you don’t care for her,” he says. “I only mean...she did choose this. She chose Sugar Valley. So...she must like a small town.”

Elain tugs at her hair. “Perhaps,” she says, quietly.

She hates to think there are parts of Nesta others have noticed that she hasn’t. She suddenly feels a strong possessive feeling. She has never had to share Nesta before. She had been all hers, then she had been no one’s, now she belongs to three small children Elain has never met and Gilameyvan fae and maybe Cassian and who knows who else?

But Elain doesn’t like the jealousy inside her. It’s not like her.

“Why are you so anxious?” Azriel asks her.

“Why am I so anxious?” She looks at him in disbelief, but he waits patiently for a reply. She sighs. “Because I don’t know if I’ll recognize her. Maybe I lost her. Maybe she’s too different.”

Azriel takes a step closer. She shivers.

“You’re both different,” he says. “People change. But you’ll still move in sync. She loved you too much to have lost that.”

She smiles slightly at him. “Let’s hope so,” she says.

He takes an abrupt step back. “Are you sure you don’t want me to escort you farther,” he says, his tone more formal, showing less emotion.

He does that, still. When they get too close, too comfortable.

“No, thank you,” she says.

Nesta doesn’t want her and Feyre to visit, Cassian said. She doesn’t know what her reaction to Azriel at her door would be, but she’s certain nothing good.

“I’ll wait here, then,” he says.

“Thank you,” she says, and she smiles at him again before turning in the direction Cassian had instructed her to.

The town really is quite small, and before long, she reaches a collection of houses that all have the same general look: white or grey or blue, with red roofs. Some two-stories, some bungalows, all relatively small. Elain doubts anyone has more than what they need...but perhaps they like it that way.

Nesta’s lawn is mostly neat, with more wild bloodroot than proper grass. She has her own sugarberry tree. There are some toys scattered here and there.

And she keeps a rose bush by her porch. That makes Elain smile. A rosebush demands care; it can’t be left to grow wild. It looks well-kept, and she loves the idea of Nesta taking care of it.

She supposes Nesta takes care of lots of things she never used to before.

With the white door in front of her, Elain figures there’s no point in dawdling. So she knocks.

Nesta must know it’s her before she opens the door, because Elain only has to wait a moment before she appears before her, shutting it quickly behind her.

Elain sucks in a breath. Nesta. Alive, breathing, beautiful. And angry.

“What are you doing here?” she hisses, brilliant grey eyes storming.

“Nesta,” she says, for she cannot bring herself to say anything else. “Oh, Nesta!” And she throws herself on her sister, squeezing her tightly in a hug.

“Elain--”

But Elain isn’t interested in hearing her protests. It’s been too long since she felt her warm curves (now more rounded than they once were), breathed in her distinct floral scent. “Oh, Nesta, you’re all right!”

“Get off of me,” Nesta says, but she does not push her away.

Excellent. Despite her fuming, her pain, she is happy to see her too.

“I have missed you every single day,” she says, determined not to cry as she does so. “Every second.” She breaks away to look into Nesta’s eyes.

As usual, they betray nothing.

Elain isn’t bothered, though. She knows how deeply Nesta feels; she simply hides it all. Elain has known this her whole life. Others think her cold, distant, but Elain knows how brightly Nesta burns and she has always felt the fire.

“And I am so sorry,” she says, slowly, meaning each word, staring her right in the eye.

At this Nesta looks away. “Elain....”

“We don’t have to talk about it now,” she says briskly. Nesta doesn’t want to address it now, and that’s fine. They have forever to talk. They’re together now, and that’s what matters. That has to be what matters. “I want to meet my niece and nephews.” She smiles.

Nesta’s eyes dart back to Elain’s and narrow. “That’s what this is about?”

Elain’s smile does not waver. Her sister is terrifying, she knows, but she has no reason to fear. This is Nesta, who has taken care of her her entire life. “Of course not. I would come for you regardless. But since you have them...” Elain trails off.

She has grown strong. She is not so afraid anymore, of herself, of the world Feyre brought them into. Of being alone. She wants to show Nesta.

Nesta breathes deeply. “I told...I said I don’t want them meeting any of you...just yet,” she adds rather hastily, when she sees the hurt in Elain’s eyes.

“You’re punishing us?” she asks, devastated.

“Elain, please. Don’t be so dramatic. I don’t want to overwhelm them.”

“I know it will take time to forgive me, and Feyre too, but please. Please, Nesta, we love you so much, you know that. Just let me see them. I’ll help you. I’ll move here.”

“You are not moving to Sugar Valley.”

“Well, I doubt you’ll move back to the Night Court just yet.”

Nesta lets out a sound of disbelief. “Do you think!”

“So I will stay here,” Elain says. She knows Nesta is hurt, and she has every right to be, but this cannot be unforgivable. Nesta has loved her too much, all her life, to cut her out completely, when she is standing before her and begging.

“Elain,” she says, moving closer a bit, and lowering her voice. “I have a life here. A home. Do you understand that?”

Elain does not wince at her tone. She can read her sister better than anything. “I know,” she says. “I want to be part of it. I want to be in your life. All your lives.”

Nesta bites her tongue, and that makes Elain’s heart sink.

Because all the venom from her sister was towards Cassian, she knew. Because her sister would not have let herself do anything to potentially sabotage her children’s future, and Elain presented her with an outlet for some of it. But biting her tongue...to hide what she wanted to throw at Elain. Venom Elain deserved.

Even in her righteous anger, Nesta still protected her sister. Even from herself.

“I love you, Nesta,” she says, ever patient. “Please let me in.”

She reaches out a hand and takes Nesta’s in her own. She rubs her thumb over the back, like Nesta would do years ago, when they were young and came to their older sister, frightened of storms or darkness.

“Elain. I said no.” And she takes her hand back, folding her arms. Her eyes dull, tired more than anything else.

Elain’s face falls with her heart again. This she did not expect. Nesta does not always let her in, but she lets her be by her side, always.

Was it too much? Is she to be exiled from her elder sister’s life forever? Not for the first time, Elain curses herself for agreeing with Feyre’s miserably executed, if well-intentioned, plan.

“I don’t understand,” she says, and her voice is a whisper in an attempt to hide the pain.

“You don’t have children,” Nesta says, and she is almost gentle as she replies.

With a jerk backwards, Elain realizes something.

Out of the three of them, she is the only one who thinks of herself as sister first.

Feyre is a mate. Nesta is a mother. Elain is a sister.

To two females who have their own lives.

This is not about you, she tells herself.

“How long do I have to wait,” she says, stumbling over the words and fighting to keep her voice even.

Nesta sighs, and Elain feels guilty and a burden and sorry, so sorry. Sorry she let her leave, sorry she didn’t get over her hurt and read the letters, sorry she did not chase after her, and sorry she came.

“You don’t want me here,” she says, her voice broken.

Perhaps she is not strong. Perhaps nothing has changed for her.

“Just some time, Elain,” Nesta is saying. “Are you...do you have a place to stay? I can....”

But Elain does not listen. Because she has failed and everything is wrong and sometimes you can feed your soil and sow your seeds but it does not matter because there is no rain.

This cannot be irreversible. This cannot be forever. Because forever means something now, and it cannot exist without Nesta.

She may not be strong. But she knows who is. One of the strongest people she knows. Someone she is lucky to love as much as she loves Nesta.

“I’m coming back tomorrow,” she says, determined. And she pulls Nesta in for another hug before turning on her heel and leaving.

She perhaps is not as resilient as Nesta or steadfast as Feyre, but she loves them. Forever. And that might not be as impressive a strength, but it’s what she has, and she will not give up. On either of her sisters. They will be together again. Because she is a sister.

And, she realizes, she is an aunt.

And that’s a new and wonderful thing to think of herself as.

---

Chapter Five