Disclaimer: I don't own Elsword.
BY MY BLOOD
Being corrupted by the dark el is much more comfortable than it sounds. There's no pain, for one. There's also no stress. You stop caring about mostly everything. You're disconnected.
In a way, Elesis is still "Elesis".
She remembers the motions, ingrained in muscle memory. This is when you laugh, this is when you ruffle his hair, this is when you get angry if you want to be "Elesis". She knows how, she just doesn't want to do it anymore. It's tiring.
In a way, she's not "Elesis".
The actual process of corruption is not painful; what comes after is what is painful. Not physically. Mentally.
Anger, resentment, bitterness, hatred; the dark el runs on negativity. And so, like a virus, after it enters the host, it builds on those dark energies, makes it swell and grow until Elesis swears she'll choke on it all. (But it's impossible to choke on her own self.) It takes over, moves her arms, wrenches at her blood until she can't help but kill kill kill. The screams of the enemy are bubbles of air in murky water and their pain becomes an interlude of clarity. Then the symphony clamors again, corruption its conductor, its performance a song of insanity. She tells herself not to listen, but when it plays in her flesh, coagulates her blood, how can she not?
Elesis is/was the captain of the Red Knights. She is/was cheerful. She loves/loved her brother. She loved and loves to fight.
It's not about the killing, she reminds herself, as she hacks apart yet another demon. She decapitates it with ruthless efficiency gained through relentless practice. One slice to the right to declaw. A thrust to crack the shell. Another thrust to stir the intestines. A low kick to splinter the knee, and a well placed upward slash to cut off a leg and split the torso open diagonally. The blood sprays upward, missing her completely. She frowns. On the next one, a large demon that towers over the rest, she goes straight for the aorta. It's a literal blood bath.
It's not about the killing. She doesn't enjoy the killing, she repeats. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Roll all the repetitions together so it becomes her lifeline, her binoculars so she doesn't lose sight of the shore even when the ocean threatens to swallow her.
And it seems to work, in a twisted sense, because it's not about the killing. Even now, when that's all she does, it's still not about the killing. She never fights to kill.
She fights to fight. The killing is just a side consequence.
And likewise, she kills to kill, to quiet the darkness. The fighting is just a side consequence. (But it's not the fighting she craves.)
Elesis walks through the wasteland in a straight path, cutting all that blocks her way with an unbidden sense of glee. There is still one alive here.
She sees it as the sun kisses the peaks stacked against the horizon. The song in her head dulls as she thinks back on similar mountains she once gazed at as a child in Ruben. Her father's hand on her shoulder, Elsword's hand in hers, and the shouting of sparring knights in training. It was the last round of the day, and as they finished up, Elesis' father told her and Elsword that this would be them someday.
Elesis nodded and looked beyond them all, already wanting something more.
She'd found it in the currents of battle, and now she'd lost it again, in the tides of bloodthirst. (She'd wanted to feel, and now she feels unnecessarily.)
A wet, pitiful sound burbles from below. It's the one still alive.
Elesis blinks, and the next she knows there is a gruesome artwork completed beneath her hands.
Pristine white shoes in the corner of her eye. She looks up and Ain is there.
And she can't bear it.
She can't face his contempt, his judgement, or his gaze, which is nearly a mirror of her own
As she runs away, Elesis takes comfort in the fact that at least her heart is still her own.
When the dark el consumes her thoughts, she isn't Elesis anymore. She's just a beast, a monster out for blood.
When the dark el consumes her thoughts, she is still Elesis, because all the hate and bloodthirst are hers, just magnified. And underneath it all, Elesis' heart turns blacker, but it stays true to her: she hates what she's become.
A/N: As I plan this, Ain starts being less and less important...
There was something else I needed to say but I forgot what it was.
I'm trying to work on describing but the literally the only thing described here was Ain's shoes.
And I realized when writing this that fluff-writing isn't for me, but I'll still try it out someday. Like tomorrow. Or now. Actually, now that I think about it, I might have written fluff before? My first fanfic might've been fluff. Idk bc I don't really think of it as fluff.
Cough cough. It's called ERBLUHEN EMOTION and you can ACCESS IT by GOING TO MY PROFILE PAGE and maybe READing ALL THE OTHER FICS I WROTE. Cough. (Shameless self-promotion)
And I finally found that the ship name for Elesis and Ain is Eleain. Hooray!
Something that would make me happy would be someone else writing for this ship. They're good together, they fit! Write for them! Please!
And as always, thanks a lot for reading!
(I swear my notes are longer than the actual fics)