All Bad Fortune is to be Conquered by Endurance
Rating: PG-13/T
Genre: Hurt/Comfort/Drama/Angst
Summary: For the hc_bingo February Amnesty Challenge, prompts "Head Trauma, Hypothermia, Captivity and Rape/Non-con". At the peak of the conflict between the settlers and the wolves, captives are taken.
Author's Note: These prompts just lined up so perfectly. Could not have asked for a better card. :D
Disclaimer: I don't own the Vampire Diaries. It belongs to L.J. Smith/The CW. The title comes from a quote from Virgil.
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When Elijah was three and Finn was a little over a year, the conflict with the wolves and the settlers reached its peak in the winter.
They were pulled out of their beds at night, Elijah screeching in alarm and Finn howling with terror. There are shouts and screams around the village, as well as clangs of metal and strange noises that Elijah had come to associate with blood and soft tissues being ripped apart.
In the midst of everything, he was attuned to the sound of his mother's voice. He couldn't hear what she was saying, but she sounded angry, alarmed. His father wasn't there: He and some of the other men of the village were spying on the wolves. Elijah actually wasn't supposed to know that, but he'd overheard when his parents didn't know that he was listening in on them.
As they yanked him along, roughly, something smashed into Elijah's head. It felt like solid metal, but he was sleepy and didn't know up from down and therefore had no way of discerning what exactly it was that had struck him. All he knew was that his ears were ringing and there was a strange, not-quite-there pain that was blossoming in his skull as he was carried, hurried along.
He knew they were in the forest itself because the sound of the wind in the trees was present all around them. The paths in the village were pretty clean of branches, as they hindered one's ability to walk, but he could hear them crackling and snapping under the feet of their kidnappers.
The woods were dangerous, father had told him so. The woods had snakes, bears, and most importantly, wolves. You never wanted to get caught by those wolves. Especially the really, really big ones that lived on the other side of the forest, the ones they hid from in the caves every month.
They walked for maybe an hour, not that his perception of time was fine-tuned: A minute felt like an hour and an hour felt like eternity, and it was just one big endless walk with him too tired to move, listening to his baby brother's screams die to whimpers and Esther's voice piping up only on occasion.
The first time, her voice was uncharacteristically cold. "Give me my children."
"Shut it."
"I can carry them."
"Like hell, witch. As long as we have them, you're not going anywhere." Esther was mostly quiet after that, though she would occasionally call out to Finn to try and soothe him or to Elijah simply to hear his voice.
When eternity had ended, they were in a village. It was surprisingly empty and quiet. Elijah, his brother and mother were led to a smaller shack, it didn't really look like a house, and more or less shoved inside. There was a pallet on the ground, and the men holding Elijah and Finn dumped them unceremoniously on it. Esther rushed to their side, drawing them to her chest and kissing their heads.
"If you even think of trying anything," The man who'd been carrying Elijah warned, "You'll regret it. I promise you. If not your boys, then your husband. Or maybe anyone in the village that we can find. Care to have bodies on your conscience, witch?"
Esther glared at him and didn't answer.
"I'll take that as a no."
They left, and latched the door behind them.
Elijah, meanwhile, was starting to feel the pain of that hit he'd received to the head when they'd carried him out of the house. Fear and panic had silenced it somewhat during their travel through the forest, but now with the reassurance of his mother's arms around him, his body was allowing the pain to break through.
Esther seemed to not have noticed for the moment, so shaken was she and trying to stop Finn from screaming. He was a big boy now and a big brother, and he desperately didn't want to start wailing, but the pain was really, really bad, worse than any scraped knee or cut. It was the kind of pain that radiated from his head to his neck and his face and back and all over his tiny body, and finally his quiet whimpers broke down into cries.
"Mama!" He croaked, and he sounded a bit whiny as he did it. "Mama!"
"Elijah, I-" Esther fell suddenly silent when she saw the dark blood on the side of his head, and Elijah had never seen his mother paler. "Oh, my baby," She whispered, and her voice shook a bit. She gently convinced Finn to unlatch from her and rest on the pallet while she inspected his brother's wound. When her fingers probed too close to the broken, agitated skin, Elijah cried out. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," She whispered.
"Don't touch it!" Elijah moaned.
"I have to, sweetheart." There wasn't much here that Esther could do, as she lacked her usual means of healing. In the end, all she could manage was to rip off a strip of her skirt and wrap it around his head. "Elijah, can you see like you usually do? Do things not look as clear as they should? Or brighter than they should?"
Elijah tried to focus. "No, mama. I see fine."
"Do you feel sick?"
"…A little." That man had jostled him quite a bit as he'd carried him through the woods. Esther gently tipped his chin so that he was looking her in the eyes, and she must not have liked what she'd seen, because she frowned and sighed, carefully pulling him into an embrace again. "Mama, why're we here?"
Esther didn't respond.
"Cold!" Finn had a grip on a number of short, sweet words already. "Cold, mama!" The shack was cold. Freezing. It was the second month of the year, and there was no place for a fire in the shack nor were there the means to actually make one. If they'd had a few branches, Esther could have used her magic to start one.
"I know, Finn." Esther sighed, bit her lip. Elijah would not know until he was much older that his mother was a human woman; for now, she was an all-knowing goddess who had all of the answers to every conundrum in one form or another. Her silence simply meant that she was trying to think of a good one, and any of his questions that were left unanswered were done so for a reason.
Esther gently motioned for Elijah and Finn to move off of the pallet, and once they had, she arranged the old straw and the thin blanket on it until it was sunken in. She picked up Finn and laid him in the indent, pulling Elijah to lie down beside him and then draping the blanket over them. "Tuck in together, nice and tight." Once they were huddled together, Esther laid down beside them and almost on top of them, allowing her sons to absorb what heat they could from her body. "Go to sleep."
A curl of her hair was hanging down, brushing Elijah's cheek, and the familiar scent of home and mother and safety lulled him to sleep.
He wasn't certain how long he had slept. All Elijah knew was that when he woke up the dim shack was too bright, spinning, and his stomach was roiling unpleasantly. It was still cold, very much so, but his bodily functions were malfunctioning and he couldn't really tell. Elijah managed to disentangle himself from his brother and mother (the latter of whom stirred almost immediately) and scramble off of the pallet before he began to wretch violently.
"Elijah?"
He couldn't hear. He hit the corner of the room and began to vomit, tiny body quaking. He couldn't hear, but Esther immediately rose from the pallet and came to kneel beside him, her hand stroking his back soothingly.
A minute or two later, Elijah's stomach was empty and his head ached with a vengeance. If his mother hadn't been supporting him, he probably would have fallen over. The toddler managed to turn towards his mother before collapsing onto her lap. He was hot and cold, and her embrace was comforting and overwhelming all at once.
"Mama?" Finn piped up from the pallet. "'lijah?"
"Half a minute, Finn." Esther responded.
Now that he could see her hands clearly, Elijah could see that his mother's fingers had a strange, bluish tint to them. "Mama, what's wrong with your hands?" He mumbled into her arm.
"Shh," Esther cooed, brushing her lips over his forehead. "It's all right, sweetheart. Don't worry about it."
But how could Elijah relax? At the tender age of three, he could still tell when something was wrong. And his mother's shivering body was a very strong indicator that there was something wrong with her, because Esther was a proud woman that never trembled, never shook, never shivered- at least not like this.
"But mama-"
"Are you better now, Elijah? Do you still feel sick?" Esther cut in before he could press the subject.
"A little."
"Will you be sick again?"
"I dunno."
"Would you like to lie down again?" Elijah nodded woozily, and Esther slowly, cautiously lifted him into her arms and carried him back over to the pallet, setting him down gingerly next to Finn, who observed with confusion and discontent.
"Mama," He stretched out his arms to Esther, who pulled him onto her lap as she went right on comforting Elijah, stroking his hair and trying to discern if this injury of his was an emergency or if they could manage for the time being.
"I wanna go home." Elijah mumbled, and Esther's expression was pained.
"I know."
"Can we go home?"
She sighed. "Not right now."
"Why not?"
"Try to sleep, Elijah. If you sleep, you won't feel sick." Elijah thought about pressing the subject a little further, but he did want to sleep and forget about the pain for a time. Esther pulled Finn to her chest and wrapped her free arm around Elijah, bringing them close. Elijah stared at the ceiling through a veil of blonde hair until he drifted off to sleep again.
When he awoke again, he was being jostled violently.
"Get up."
Elijah snapped to it quickly, because that was the voice of the stranger, the one who'd snapped at his mother and called her a witch on their way to the village. Esther was already sitting up, right in front of her children and blocking them almost completely from the man's view.
"What's going on?"
"Come. Now." The man grabbed and then tugged Esther's arm sharply, and if Elijah had been able to see her eyes, he would have noticed a flicker of fear run through them.
"Why?"
WHACK.
Finn started to bawl again when the stranger cuffed their mother roughly across the head. "You think you're in a position to be asking questions? Move it!" Esther stared at him blankly, but then slowly rose, adjusting her grip on Finn and holding Elijah close to her side. "The brats stay."
Esther opened her mouth to debate, hesitated, and then closed her mouth and did not argue. If Elijah were old enough to understand what it meant, he would have seen the comprehension in his mother's eyes. And if he'd had any knowledge, even slightly, as to what was about to happen he would have very well understood why Esther would not want her boys, her babies with her.
She placed them on the pallet, and then knelt down in front of them. "Elijah," She said softly, fingers sliding with an unusual clumsiness through his hair. "I will be back soon. Watch your brother. Keep him warm. Don't let him panic. Can you do that?"
Elijah nodded, eyes wide. "Yes, mama. Where are you going?" Esther shot a convulsive, dreadful look over her shoulder at the stranger before turning back.
"With him."
She kissed both of them on the head, hugged them tightly, and then rose once more and followed after the man.
Finn howled and cried for a good ten minutes following her departure, and Elijah tried to rock him, comfort him the same way he'd seen his mother do. But he was not Esther and he knew it. Elijah knew all too well that there was nothing more comforting than their mother.
"Finn," He tried to reason, beg, because the crying was really starting to make his head pound even harder than before. "Finn, stop crying. Mama'll be back."
"Hurts!" Finn squawked. "Hurts!"
"What hurts?"
Elijah caught on quickly, though. It was, like with their mother, Finn's fingers that were the issues: They had that same blue tinge to them, and were cold. Elijah's own fingers were a little stiff and painful as well, and maybe he could see a bit of a strange coloring to them. Back home, Esther always made them cover their hands when they went outside into the cold, and had them hold their hands over the fire when they returned indoors to warm them up.
But they were indoors, and it was freezing. They didn't really have anything to cover their hands with, and there was no fire. So Elijah rubbed his little brother's fingers and blew on them the way Mikael did whenever he came indoors. Finn whined and pulled and cried, it was probably quite uncomfortable, but it was better than nothing and Elijah promised his mother that he would try to keep Finn warm.
The minutes ticked by, and with every one that passed, Elijah grew more and more restless. Where was mother? Where had that man taken her? Why had he taken her? Why had he taken them from their home in the first place?
Finn's cries had died down into whimpers. "Mama. Mama." He would murmur every few minutes, as though by repeating the word Esther would return sooner.
Elijah fell in and out of sleep, head bowing and then suddenly snapping back up when he realized that he was dozing. Sleep wasn't safe unless Esther was there, because Esther was their mother and she wouldn't let anything happen to them. In her absence, Elijah had to be the one that stayed awake and made sure that Finn was safe.
The sky went from hazy light (winter was still going strong) to pitch darkness. Finn was asleep and managed to stay so for a good, long while. Elijah's eyes fluttered open and closed periodically, and he had to shift a little every now and then to make sure that he didn't drift off. The only concept he really had of time was that part of the day and part of the night had passed, and he couldn't imagine what would prompt the men to take his mother for so long-
The door abruptly unlatched, startling Elijah into full alertness. It flew open, and Esther was more or less shoved into the shack. He almost cried out when Esther failed to catch her balance and fell to the ground on her hands and knees.
"Good times, witch." The man remarked with a reviling smirk. "Bet your husband's never done that to you."
Amidst his surprise and confusion Elijah recognized that 'husband' was a word that, when in relation to Esther, referred to his father, but he had no context for the sentence to help him understand what the man was trying to say.
"Mama!" He hadn't spoken in a while, and so his voice came out as a scratchy whisper. Perhaps it was better- Finn had stirred at the opening of the door and the sound of the man's voice, but hadn't awoken. And Elijah knew that his brother would start wailing again if he were to see his mother's face.
Esther's left eye was badly bruised, along with her cheek. Her lips were bloody, and it looked like the lower one had been torn. There were dark splotches all over her clothing, which was very much askew. The greatest concentration of blood was on the skirt of her dress, a bit below her stomach.
Esther did not look Elijah in the eye as she got to her feet and limped over to the pallet. He saw her grit her teeth in pain, and she seemed to be favoring her right leg. "Mama? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, Elijah. Are you all right? You and Finn?"
"Yes mama, but-" Esther gently embraced him, tucking his head into her shoulder.
"Good boy, Elijah. Good work looking after your brother."
She smelled strange. A bit like blood, but there were a few other scents that he couldn't identify. And Elijah might have asked what they were, might have taken some note of them and asked further after where Esther had been and what that man had wanted with her; he might have.
But when she pulled back, Elijah saw in his mother's eyes a strange, foreign look that he'd never seen before. It had fear and pain, disgust. There was something strangely fragile about Esther, and it inspired a dark fear in Elijah because he had never seen his mother in any state but strong and dignified.
"Have you slept, dear?" Esther asked, a tremulous element to her voice as she stroked his hair. "You look tired."
"I am, mama."
"Then sleep, sweetheart. I'll lie with you."
She lay down beside him, pulling on his shoulders so that he would lie back too. All he could think about was how bad her eye looked, of the way that her arms and hands and legs would twitch oddly every few seconds and she seemed to tense when her arm made contact with him.
What had happened to his mother?
Elijah hesitated, but then edged forward and curled his fingers into Esther's hair, pulling through it in the same way that she did for him. He did this several times, patting head and hair lightly. Somehow, it seemed that she needed this now. "Feel better, mama?"
Esther made a strange choked noise that sounded a bit like a chuckle and a sob all in one. "Yes, Elijah. Thank you."
There was silence for a time, and try as he might, as tired as he was, Elijah simply could not sleep. His mother's unusual countenance was concerning him. She was sniffing a bit more than before, and if the cold didn't have a tendency to bother one's nose, he might have sworn that she was trying very hard not to cry.
After a time, Elijah felt compelled to sleep. "Mama," He whispered, "Are they the wolf-people papa talked about?"
Esther picked her head up, and he flinched a little at just how bad her eye looked. "Why do you ask that, dear?" Her voice was a rough croak.
"Papa said that they lived on the other side of the woods. And they look like wolves. Kind of."
Esther looked a bit sad that he had figured that out, but her Elijah was too shrewd: She couldn't lie to him. Not now. "They are."
"Are they going to kill us?"
"No." Esther assured quickly. As it was, the only understanding that Elijah had of death was that you went to sleep and didn't wake up. And that you could make someone go to sleep and never wake up by making them bleed too much or cutting their head off. She wished to God that Elijah didn't have to know that, but what was done was done. "No, darling. They're just…"
Elijah was just a bit over three years-old. He did not understand much of war beyond 'when two groups of people are really angry with one another, they fight and hurt each other'. The concept of hostage-taking might be a bit much for him to absorb. On top of that, Esther would have had to explain that the wolves were at least threatening to kill them if they didn't get what they wanted out of Mikael and the others.
"They're just keeping us here for a while."
"Why?"
"It's difficult to explain." She shut her good eye and thought for a moment. "Do you recall when Martin took your toy horse from you, and said that he wouldn't give it back until you returned his sti- his 'sword'?"
"Yes."
"That's what the wolf-men are doing. They're keeping us here until your papa gives them something."
"What do they want?"
"I'm not sure."
More silence after that.
Time blended together, and in between longing for food (they hadn't been given anything since being locked in the shack) and warmth and to go home, Elijah wished that he had something to preoccupy his time with: Other children, toys, a stick, a rock, a leaf, something. But his mother still had that odd look in her eyes, and he felt that it wasn't the time to trouble her with something like that.
So he spent his time wondering what the wolf-men could possibly want from Mikael. Elijah being so young, the politics of adulthood escaped him and all he could think of was that they might have wanted toys or food, or maybe trees? He could recall two men in the village arguing about firewood once. Mikael had had to step in and resolve that, and Elijah had been in awe of the way he'd silenced the fiercely shouting men without raising his voice above room-level.
But that led to a new realization that Elijah really, really missed his father, whose lap he sat on whenever Mikael allowed it and who showed him how to use a stick like a sword when he was playing with his friends. His father didn't like the wolf-men, so would he be angry that he and Finn and Esther were in their village? Did he even know where they were at all?
Esther was asleep. Finn was lying next to her, but his eyes were open. There was a little sunlight now, and Elijah thought that it might be in the same position it was during midday, but the sun wasn't good for much if you couldn't go outside. So he crawled closer to Esther and brought his head to rest on her side, not lying down but not quite sitting up either.
He fell into that half-asleep half-awake state, more asleep than awake, and had a barely-there dream about Mikael walking around the village, calling their names and wondering where they'd gone, and Elijah wanted to tell him to look at the ground so that he could follow the footprints- no, paw prints- out of the village and to the wolf-men-
The dream shattered so easily that Elijah forgot it before he was even fully awake again.
The door had swung open again. His mother had told him that it was rude to enter someone's house without knocking, but then Elijah remembered that this wasn't their house, so the wolf-men didn't need to knock.
"Get up."
Esther had snapped awake at the sound as well, and this time she had a distinctly dark, cold look in her eyes as she regarded him. "Why?"
"Up now. All of you!" Elijah heaved a sigh of relief that the man hadn't struck Esther for her question this time. He looked discontented with her all the same, but merely turned and walked away from the still open door.
"Is he letting us go, mama?"
"Shh, Elijah." Esther shushed him quickly, pulling Finn up into her arms and freeing one to reach down and seize Elijah's tiny hand in her own.
The man and three others led them from the village, which was every bit as lifeless as when they'd first arrived. Elijah had to assume that there were either very few people living there, or that they were all hiding. The reason why they would want to do so eluded him.
They walked through the forest, and it seemed much larger and lighter than he recalled from their first trip through it. But then, the sun was only just beginning to set, and before they had traveled at night. What's more, Elijah was walking rather than being hauled along like a moderately heavy sack.
"Mama, where are we going?" Elijah inquired again, and Esther squeezed his hand but didn't respond. Finn would occasionally fuss against her shoulder, but overall seemed far too exhausted from previous events to care too much about what was going on around him.
The walk took a while. The only scale Elijah had for the passing time was that when they'd left the sun was out, and when they finally broke free from the depth of the forest and began to see the fireplace smoke from houses it was almost pitch black. With the darkness he couldn't quite tell, but maybe, because the smell was familiar and some of the trees looked familiar and-
They were home.
And, unmistakable alongside a group of other men, he could see his father standing up ahead to greet them.
"Papa!"
Elijah released his mother's hand, darted forward and collided with his father's legs, as Mikael had been moving forward to meet them. He scooped Elijah into his arms, and then freed one to embrace Esther and Finn tightly.
"Are you all right?" His voice was tense, almost panicked. This was not, in fact, uncommon: Elijah had heard this voice before, whenever he'd ventured to do something dangerous that could have caused him harm.
"We're okay, papa!" He chirped. But Mikael pulled back from the embrace when his wife failed to respond and looked her in the eyes.
"Esther…?"
Esther's lips quivered.
"Not in front of the children." She whispered breathlessly. Mikael suddenly went white as snow, and his arms started to shake.
"They didn't-"
"Not in front of the children!"
Elijah was gob smacked: Esther never snapped at Mikael like that. They began to walk back to the house, and the looks on his parents' faces scared him. The silence spoke volumes in a language he couldn't understand.
"How long were we gone, papa?" Elijah asked as they entered the house and Mikael set him down.
"About four days." It was then that Ayanna emerged from another room, and Elijah ran to greet her.
"Ayanna!" The witch smiled as Elijah embraced her legs, kneeling down to return the hug.
"I am so thankful you three are all right."
"Ayanna," Elijah blinked and turned to face his mother. Her tone had grown considerably shakier since they'd returned home. "Would you please look after the boys for a few minutes? Mikael and I… We need to talk."
Ayanna watched her friend silently for a moment. Then, suddenly, her eyes widened slightly in the same kind of understanding that Mikael had had. Her expression darkened ever so slightly, and she nodded slowly.
"I will."
Mikael and Esther disappeared into their room. Ayanna set Elijah and Finn down at the table, first working quickly to rid their fingers of that now dark blue tint. Elijah had barely realized that he couldn't quite move his fingers until Ayanna asked him to. After that, she helped them eat a bit, some warm soup that both warmed them and sated the hunger that they had never managed to forget about.
"What's mama and papa doing?" Elijah asked.
"Hush now, Elijah." Ayanna said as she took the empty bowls away. "It's long past time for bed. Go on now." Finn had already fallen asleep. Ayanna had brought him into their room a short time ago and then waited for Elijah to finish his soup.
Elijah could feel his stirring three year-old's discontent, that question "why" always at the back of his throat bubbling up and demanding voice, but unlike many three year-olds, Elijah seemed to know instinctively when it was a good time to not ask questions. And so he hopped off the bench and went for his and Finn's bedroom, unexpectedly grateful for his bed.
But as he walked by his parents' room, Elijah hesitated when a noise caught his attention.
He knew that prying was wrong, that one of the number one rules in this house was not to prod into his parents' business. But when he peered in through the crack of the door, that sound that had sounded so much like sniffling, feminine sniffling, his mother's voice, was then attached to her face. Esther was crying, her face buried into Mikael's shoulder as he held her, and they both looked so strangely detached otherwise-
Elijah pulled away from the door, unnerved, and went to bed.
About eight months following their return to the village, Elijah and Finn had a new baby brother, Niklaus. Finn was oblivious, but Elijah very much noticed that his father did not grin in that strange and silly way that he had when Finn was born, a look Elijah was told also was present after his own birth. His father was solemn, his mother was solemn, Ayanna was solemn and it seemed like only he and Finn were happy to greet their new brother.
-End
…I had to toy with the Esther-was-raped theory, even though the dialogue in the show indicates that Klaus's conception was consensual (But hey, you never know: I don't know how willing she or Mikael would have been to mention rape, and Elijah may have drawn some incorrect conclusions).
Normally I wouldn't have gotten this done so quickly (4000+ words usually stretches over a pretty fair span of time), but I wanted to finish it before "All My Children" could air and debunk my theory directly or indirectly and kill my enthusiasm.