The air between us was thick with unspoken words, a tension that wrapped around my heart like a vice. Elias's warmth surrounded me, his body solid now, but there was something... off. Something in the way he looked at me, as if he were carrying a burden far heavier than I could understand. His touch, though gentle, seemed filled with hesitation. His eyes, once filled with nothing but passion and love for me, now flickered with something darker.
I could feel it, the shift in him. And as much as I wanted to ignore it, to pretend like everything was finally perfect, I knew there was something he had to tell me—something he was holding back.
"Elias," I whispered, my voice soft yet firm, trying to catch his gaze. "What's going on? What's wrong? You're not yourself. Not completely."
He stiffened at my words, his eyes flickering to the side, not meeting mine. For a moment, he seemed lost in thought, the weight of something ancient and sorrowful pressing down on him. I could see the struggle in his face, the way his jaw clenched as if he were trying to hold something in, something terrible.
"I'm not the person you think I am," Elias finally said, his voice strained, his hand slowly slipping away from mine. It felt like a physical loss, a cold distance forming between us, even though he was right there in front of me.
I shook my head, my heart pounding. "What do you mean?"
He stepped back, turning away from me for a moment, his back to me. For the first time since I met him—since he had come back to me—he looked vulnerable. There was something broken in the way his shoulders slumped, something that made me ache for him even more.
"I wasn't always... this." He paused, as if gathering strength. "I wasn't always Elias."
The words hit me like a shockwave, but I didn't say anything. I just waited, the silence between us stretching long, my heart thundering in my chest as I tried to process what he was telling me.
Finally, he spoke again, his voice heavy with regret. "I was... once something else. Something... far different than I am now."
I took a step toward him, reaching out a hand, but he held up his own, a silent plea for me to wait.
"I wasn't born human, and I wasn't... created the way you think. I was a being—a force that existed before time. A fallen angel, cast out for my disobedience."
His words made my blood run cold. I could barely breathe, the air thickening with the weight of his revelation. "A fallen angel?" I whispered, barely able to believe what I was hearing. "But... you were so human. You looked so... real."
Elias's eyes hardened, a sharp, painful edge in them that made my stomach churn. "I was cursed. I was punished, turned into something... less." He turned to face me, his expression dark and filled with sorrow. "I was imprisoned in that doll—just a vessel, a shell, stripped of everything that made me who I was. My wings. My power. My freedom. I was nothing but an empty soul, lost in that cursed object for centuries."
I could feel the weight of his words settle deep within me. My mind couldn't fully grasp the enormity of what he was saying, but I felt it—every word he spoke, every emotion that trembled in his voice. I had been in love with a ghost, yes, but a ghost who had once been an angel, fallen from grace and doomed to suffer for eternity.
"But why? What did you do to deserve this? What could you have possibly done?" I asked, my voice shaking. My hands clenched into fists, as though trying to hold on to the last sliver of my reality, trying to anchor myself to something I understood.
Elias ran a hand through his hair, his gaze dark and haunted. "I loved too deeply. I defied the laws of the heavens. I... I loved a human once. And when I was cast down for my disobedience, I was left with nothing—no wings, no powers. Just... the emptiness of my choices. The punishment wasn't just physical. It was spiritual. I was torn away from everything I knew, and for centuries, I wandered as nothing but a shadow, a fragment of what I once was."
He took a step toward me, his voice low, raw. "And then, I found you. When I possessed that doll, I thought it was just another form of punishment, just another prison. But... you gave me something I hadn't had in so long. Hope. A chance to remember what it was like to feel alive, to feel human again."
I felt my heart break for him, for everything he had endured. His punishment had not only taken his powers and his wings, but had shattered the very essence of who he had been. Elias was a being of light, torn apart and reduced to a hollow existence, forced to live as something broken.
I reached for him, my hand trembling. He didn't pull away this time.
"Elias, I—I don't care," I whispered, my voice thick with emotion. "I don't care what you were. I love you. I've always loved you. This—" I gestured between us, to the warmth, the feeling of his presence becoming more real with each passing moment, "—this is real. You're real."
A sad smile tugged at the corner of his lips. "But you don't understand. I'm not... whole yet. I'm not the person you think I am. I'm still broken, still carrying the weight of my past. I... I didn't deserve your love."
"Don't say that," I said, my voice sharp, almost pleading. "You deserve every bit of it. You've suffered enough."
He looked at me, and for a moment, there was a flicker of the man I had fallen in love with—a light that shone through the cracks in his brokenness. He stepped forward, taking my hands in his, his touch warm and gentle, his eyes filled with something softer than I had ever seen.
"I don't deserve you," he whispered, his voice barely audible. "But I want to be better. I want to be the man you think I am. I'll do anything to be the man you need me to be. For you."
And in that moment, I understood. I understood that Elias wasn't just a man, or even an angel. He was someone who had been lost, broken, and punished, but now he was fighting to be whole again. Fighting for redemption, fighting for love.
And I would stand by him. I would help him find his way back to himself.
"Together," I whispered, the word filling the space between us like a promise.
Elias's eyes softened, and he nodded, his grip tightening around my hands.
"Together," he agreed, and for the first time in a long while, I saw hope in his eyes.
But deep down, I knew the road ahead wouldn't be easy. There would be battles to fight, darkness to face, and consequences to bear. But whatever came, we would face it together—because love, real love, could heal even the most broken of souls. Even a fallen angel's.