What if Elain doesn’t withdraw from Lucien because she’s fragile but because she is overwhelmed.
Her magic is receptive. It comes through sensation, through atmosphere, through feelings that aren’t hers but settle into her bones anyway. So when the bond snaps into place, it doesn’t announce itself with heat or certainty. It opens a door. And what pours through Lucien isn’t confidence or desire, it’s shame. Guilt. The quiet, corrosive belief that he is unwanted, unchosen, tolerated at best.
She feels his humiliation (over Jesminda, his failure to save her. His displacement from Autumn. His fear of overstepping, of being rejected again, of being something imposed on her. His certainty that the bond itself is a violation.)
And Elain, who has always measured her worth by how comfortable she makes others absorbs that and translates it the only way she knows how:
What if every time Lucien enters a room, she feels him brace. Fold inward. What if she feels the way his guilt spikes when he looks at her, the way his shame whispers that he has no right to want anything from her at all. Not even kindness. Not even acknowledgment.
And what if she thinks all of that is because of her.
Because she is the reminder. The unwanted tie. The obligation he never asked for. The living proof that fate has once again trapped him in something painful. The human a handsome fae lord cringes away from.
Not because she doesn’t care but because she cares so much it hurts to breathe. Because if being near her makes his guilt flare, then the kindest thing she can do is step away. If her presence tightens something in his chest, then surely distance is mercy.
What if she avoids him not out of rejection but out of consideration.
She convinces herself that if she gives him space, he’ll feel relief. That if she doesn’t look at him, doesn’t speak to him, doesn’t accidentally hope, then maybe the shame will quiet. Maybe the bond will loosen. Maybe he can heal.
And the most tragic part?
Lucien, on the other side of that silence, feels exactly what he expects to feel: unwanted. Unwelcome. Like he’s already failed her.
Two people standing inches apart, both believing they are the source of the other’s pain. Both trying to be kind. Both bleeding quietly.
And Elain, sweet, observant Elain, never considers that what she’s feeling from him might not be rejection at all.
What if it’s self-loathing.
What if it’s longing twisted into guilt.
What if it’s love that believes it has no right to exist.
And what if, someday, the thing that finally breaks them open isn’t a declaration but a realization:
That all this time, she wasn’t too much for him.
She was the one thing he was afraid to want.
And he wasn’t repelled by her.
He was trying just like she was not to cause harm.
That’s not a misunderstanding trope. That’s a tragedy of empathy. And it fits Elain and Lucien perfectly.
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