A/N: For some reason I wanted Elena/Elijah without the switch. This happened.
There's Nothing Worth Saving Right Now
()()()
The thing Elena's found with the switch is that it's not so much that she has no emotion - it's that she doesn't care. Anger, happiness, sadness, lust, desire, hunger, jealousy, hatred - she feels it all. She just doesn't let it rule her life; she just doesn't care.
She feels free. She feels amazing. Elena Gilbert without a care in the world is incredible.
Elijah without a care in the world? Perfection. Destruction. Royalty.
()()()
The parallel is so obvious it's comical.
Her brother, her last link to her humanity, dead. Off the switch goes (and she eventually stakes the two for it, and runs the third out of town) and it's a brand new day.
His sister, made mortal and then aged to a thousand years, dead. He shuts it off (buries a drained Klaus in cement in a new high rise three states over) and he makes himself the monster he always knew he was.
()()()
Her back arches up sharply before his hands pin her down. His tongue strokes a path up her slit and she bites back a moan.
He pauses, lifts his head, and smirks. "You know my rules, my lovely Elena. You are to keep nothing from me."
"So stop stalling before I find someone who knows what he's doing."
She strung to the bedposts mere minutes later - and there's no way she's getting free of her bindings until he feels she's been sufficiently reprimanded for her insolence.
She screams in pleasure until she passes out.
He waits for her to come around - he's in no rush, this sort of game is second nature to him.
Rinse.
Repeat.
()()()
It's her turn to pick their meal.
The couple is young, obviously in love.
She tastes delicious. Against the other alley wall, Elijah has the young man pinned, drawing his meal out. ("A king who plays with his food.")
When he's finished, he turns to her, and licks the blood off her lips.
She finds the man's wallet, looks at his address, and steals the keys.
They fuck on the bed in the dead couple's house.
()()()
He begs her. Over and over he begs her. She takes her time, savors the power. (She's had so little of it in her life.) The magically reinforced restraints ensure that he won't be going anywhere.
She likes to leave him bound and hard while she pleasures herself in front of him. She likes to taunt him, call out his brother's name as her toes curl and her body shakes. She likes to watch him fight against his restraints, enjoy the filthy words that spill forth from his mouth as she spills on her fingers.
Other times she's grateful for the missing need to breathe. It's fun to make him beg that way, too.
()()()
Tyler and Caroline find them in Milan, and Elijah compels the pair of them to stay around for a while.
She enjoys the horror on their faces when they see that dinner has nothing to do with fois gras or bisque, or their entertainment little to do with catching a show.
By the time they're done with the couple (weeks later) they're every bit as broken as Elena and Elijah have been.
When Tyler and Caroline ask "Why?" Elena and Elijah shrug.
"Because we can," Elena says.
The three vials of Klaus's blood on Caroline's pillow the night before the two of them are allowed to leave... a moment of weakness.
()()()
They broker deals with lesser supernatural beings. Many who take Elena to be a weakness on Elijah's part lose their heads. Those who call her his whore lose their hearts, and their blood isn't worthy to grace their tongues - it's washed away like common filth.
()()()
"He had me before he ever knew you," Katherine says to her one day in Boston.
Elena smirks and enjoys Katherine's apprehension at her. "Yet I'm the one he found worthy of keeping."
"Damon and Stefan not enough?"
Elena smiles this time. Oh yes, she loves the fear that Katherine can't hide. "I drove stakes right through their hearts." She moves in for the kill. "I'm the last one they ever loved, too. They died, permanently, loving me."
Katherine flees. Elena lets her.
()()()
Her nails rake down his back as he moves in her. He smiles, moves her leg to a punishing angle, and bites her breast, hard.
()()()
She loses track of how many decades they've spent together, maybe it's even been a few centuries. Regimes rise and fall (some from their own plotting) and deftly as ever, Elena and Elijah move the pieces exactly where they want them.
Humanity has no place in their lives, an Original king and the doppelgänger pawn who made herself a queen.
