Tumgik
#bob like *insert grimace emoji*
vidalinav · 3 years
Text
Love is Bright Red, Hope is Dark Blue SNEAK PEAK
So, it seems that sneak peaks keep me accountable, because every time I posted one I finished the fic, and if that’s not some voodoo magic I don’t know what is. 
However, this hopefully will be the last fic I post before ACOSF. I’m aware that many of you will probably be logged off by the time I post, but honestly who even remembers this fic series. I’m perfectly okay with shouting to the void. I’m going to abandon every fic I said I was going to write and keep them on the back burner. This will be the first completed work I’ve ever had and I’m determined and... also very bored! (insert little emoji with the fists up) 
So, I’m going in. 
Nesta’s Love is Quiet/Cassian’s Love is Warm Masterlist
~
The picture of Nesta hangs on the living room wall. She moves and its eyes follow. She blinks and it awakens. The other her stares. Her expression a collage of painted lashes, crimson dusted skin, a rose that is cradled in her hands. This Nesta, praying to some unknown deity who never answers.  
She looks innocent. Far too innocent for the amount of horrors she’s seen... and she’s alone.
A singularity. An outlier.
The image lies off center in the middle of the wall, yet the other pictures crawl up the space like tangling vines suffocating the life out of her. Life is not painted in her eyebrows, or the color of her hair, or the red of her lips, or her pale neck. Rather, it is what is around her. The pictures that are filled with laughter and smiles and heart-wrenching happiness.
They must have taken it from her, she thinks. Poor girl.
But Nesta shakes her head. No, she never had it. It was always the others who laughed, who yelled, who joked those jokes of theirs. She might have been placed here, forced to fit, squeezed into the place they could find room for, but at the end of the day, she is merely a pretty painting tacked in Feyre’s living room wall. Beautiful… but not alive. Cold, and alone, and red with the stain of blood.
Is this what Feyre sees when Nesta skidders through her memories? If it is, she is even more certain of their foolish want to love her.
“I painted it the day you left. I think it came out beautifully, don’t you think?”
I think I look dead inside; she wants to say, turning to Feyre who leans against a table, all starry skies and none of the bleak, burning black holes.
Dead.
Dead and buried.
Feyre grimaces, taking a breath as if she’ll recite poetry in the hall. What other words will spew from the depths of her throat and croak out in sounds and syllables?
Are words even enough to describe memories turned to dust and rose-colored wounds freshly healed?
The fiery anger blooms out of Nesta’s lungs. Its laid dormant for far too long, all those winter days in the mountains trapped under frost. But, Nesta can’t respond, doesn’t know what she’d say to her little sister who means so much to her, but at the same time makes her heart ache as if it bleeds from where’s she’s stabbed her in the chest.
Nesta opens her mouth to speak...
Elain strolls in.
“Dinner’s almost ready,” She grins, grasping her forearm, pulling Nesta towards the dining room in glee. “I thought I’d show you what I made to celebrate.”
Nesta shudders at the thought, at the feeling of her sisters at her side and behind her. Huddling around her as if they mean to keep her close. Nesta thinks it feels like a prison. “Celebrate what?”
Elain looks at her oddly, “You being back—and Cassian, of course… Your health.” She adds, her brows furrowing in concern. Nesta doesn’t know what that look means.
Tell me, she wants to scream.
Elain swallows, the dandelion charm at her throat bobbing. “When Cassian carried you in, you looked so… small. Feyre and I were worried that you’d—”
“We had complete faith that you’d be safe and well again,” Feyre smiles, the mirth never reaching her eyes.
An odd phrase, Nesta thinks, for she’s never been safe or well.
Nesta squints to the table and Elain perhaps noticing the shift, moves quickly to the image of steaming casserole and piping hot buns. Dessert already sits in each corner and she wonders who exactly they’re all feeding if this is the amount of food they waste.
“The roast is still in the oven.” Her favorite.
“You’re favorite,” Elain mumbles softly—shyly, “I thought since we missed your birthday, we could celebrate now.”
That word again.
Celebrate…
Don’t they know that she rejoices in being away from them? That she finds solace in the quiet day by day. There is no obligation of sterile complacency, of beauty she can never live up to. She doesn’t need to be a good sister, a caring sister, a sister who reaches both hands out in compassion. In Windhaven, beyond Velaris, she is just Nesta. She is no one.
Nesta resists rolling her eyes or saying something snarky just because she can, just because she knows it’ll hurt. Instead, she touches the plate on the table, a fine porcelain made of blue glass. It reminds her of the chandelier she has at home, blinking and twisting like an unhindered star.
She doesn’t want to celebrate her birthday.
Feyre pulls out a chair, the noise screeching against the floor and Nesta can’t stop the harsh look she sends her way.
If they missed it, she did too.
But at her cold demeaner, Elain is quick to lure her to a seat, proclaiming that Nesta will sit beside her all evening. Perhaps, they’ll exchange stories. I want to hear everything, she pleads. Will Nesta tell her the weather then? The bitter frosts, the buried cemeteries, the avalanches that never came crashing down like she wanted. It was all too perfect, all too according to plan.
Nesta will not let them have the satisfaction.
Elain smiles crookedly, some noise that sounds both like a laugh and a cry barreling out of her lips.
Nesta half-wonders what about her now seems fragile to her little sister when she had treaded precariously past death and disinterest and yet nothing could persuade them a year ago that she wasn’t well enough— okay enough.
Nesta only looks to the stairs. The sound of rustling feet stampeding above. She can feel him even now, wants to call for him even if she abhors the thought.
Her sisters are… different when Cassian is around. More watchful, more cautious. Not as eager to touch her or to offer an array of activities that don’t at all sound pleasing to her ears. He is her guard somehow, even though he offers nothing but laughs and soft, easy smiles.
But he ambles down the stairs as if she calls him. Perhaps she does, in that hollow part of her body she still doesn’t understand. The part that whispers his name, echoes his feelings, reminds her that she is not alone.  
“Sit,” She urges lowly, moving the utensils that Elain sets down to another place setting. Cassian raises a brow but sits beside her.
His hand rests on the table and Nesta wants to know what it would seem like to these… people—her family if she placed her palm in his so openly. She clenches her fist to stop the reaching, turning her gaze away from his golden skin.
“Oh,” Elain says, noting the seat beside her taken.  
To be continued….
~
Tagged and those who will be tagged from Cassian’s Love is Warm and those who said they wanted to be tagged on everything: (let me know if this changes)
@dreaming-of-bohemian-nights , @missing-merlin, @strangeenemy, @saltydreamcollector, @midnightbluhm, @my-fan-side, @queenofillea1, @tswaney17, @gloriousinlove, @ekaterinakostrova, @thebluemartini, @anishake, @lord-douglas-the-third, @soitsgorgeous, @lolasjournal @duskandstarlight, @arinbelle, @nestaarcher0n, @allilal @mis-lil-red
~
I hate confrontation like my life depends on it, but I don’t know how to start the healing process for the sisters without some, so maybe you’ll get an outburst or two from Nesta and maybe Cassian. But ultimately it’s going to end not like the healing is complete, but rather that the healing is able to take place, ripping off band aids here. It’s going to be long and emotional. 
I read the previous chapters and omg I get so mad when I read it. It’s like physically impossible to read Nesta’s voice without being stark, ugly mad, but it is easier to write that way. Also, Feyre is about to be annoying in this but it has to happen to come full circle. But at least Cassian and Nesta will be uber cute and established! I have a day out in Velaris date for them.
If y’all have followed this story and have some burning desire to see something, let me know! It will be the last chance to do so. Because again, I’m determined to finish and I’ll NEVER write for this fic again. NEVER. But I will not write smut (unfortunately I suck at that and I try to avoid anything I suck at)
Actually let me set a date: it’s going to be posted on Wednesday by 11:59pm central time. Yell at me if it’s not lol. This will be my reaching 1000 followers gift.  
64 notes · View notes