Bottom of the Deep Blue Sea
It starts one rainy day when clouds butt heads at ridiculously high speeds in the sky and resulting thunder cracks the sky open for lightening to create fissures on the skin of heaven in merry blue. She shivers in the downpour, huddled beneath a tree, drenched to the bone.
She's too scared to stand proudly and shake her fist at the heavens, to threaten the god who dares to make it rain. She's not supposed to be here, in this part of the garden, outside her golden cage.
The rain falls on her face and takes the tears away with it. No trace of salt remains on her cheeks to betray the fear that is choking her heart.
It wasn't supposed to end like this, was it?
But everything is coming to an end, and she knows her uncle won't change his mind or listen to her apprehensions.
She's as good as sold.
Tomorrow that Klaus Mikaelson will be here with his crazy, leery eyes and fastidious brother by his side. Tomorrow, she'll be painted in gold and clad in black silk and left in her bed chamber to wait for Lord Mikaelson.
Tomorrow.
She despises tomorrow, more than she hates her uncle, that bastard Mikaelson and the very fate that decreed that she be born in the royal house of flame wielders. These are turbulent times when every royal house is making moves to strengthen their claim to the throne.
The throne which once belonged to her father.
The throne she is set to inherit.
The throne that is never going to be hers.
The feeling of being utterly helpless is the strongest she's ever felt in her brief life. It's not new, for she has always been left at the whims of cruel, mercurial fate, but never before today has fate dealt her such a hand.
She can hear the servants at a distance, calling out her name, trying to find her, knowing that she can't escape this place, that her uncle's witch—Mikaelson's mother—didn't make a mistake when she bound her to this palace and it's gardens.
She knows she has no one to blame for her misfortunes but herself. She's not strong like the rest of her family. She can't even produce the smallest of flames. She's just a useless invalid being catered to because she somehow managed to take birth in the ruling royal house of Ardiena.
The voices are getting closer, and she doesn't know what to do.
Accepting her fate is out of question. It will be a cold day in hell when she lets herself be painted gold for a man.
Is this the end?
Does it have to be, a silken voice murmurs in her ears. She turns around hastily but there is no one, just the constant downpour of rain.
She knows she heard the voice, but who uttered those words?
Oh, I live in the shadows, little princess, the amused whisper makes the hair at the nape of her neck rise.
'Who's there?' she asks, eyes scanning her surroundings, but nothing moves in the rain, not even the leaves on the braches overhead. There is an unnatural stillness that is scaring her, but she's not yet terrified enough to willingly run back into her golden cage.
Don't you know me, princess? You, who once swore that you would follow me to the ends of the earth? Has reincarnation erased me from your heart? The voice sibilates, the tone so forlorn and aching that her heart suddenly feels too big to be contained in her chest and an uncomfortable sensation starts building in her throat.
Is she finally losing it?
The rain has stopped. That cruel god in his high heavens has decided to play nice, now that he knows that she will be completely losing her mental faculties soon.
Is this what your promise was worth? Mere years of punishment by my side and then nothing? The voice hisses in her head. Is this the worth of love you swore upon?
Her vision blurs. She touches her cheek and finds it wet. Tears are falling continuously from her eyes. Whom are they falling for?
She starts sobbing, still bewildered why she feels this way.
She cries and cries, her wails loud and keening. They find her sitting in mud beside a peach tree, cold, wet and hysterical. She's not even aware when they pick her up and carry her back to the palace.
All she hears is a phantom voice and all she smells is salt from the sea.
She cries for the blue eyes she suddenly can't seem to get out of her head…
She refuses to marry Mikaelson. Her uncle threatens, cajoles, and begs, even hits her hard across her face, but she doesn't budge from her decision. In the end, it's the dagger pressed against her wrist and the drop of blood that wells when she presses it in her skin that convinces her uncle to let the matter of marriage rest.
Dead princess Elena means no leverage in the royal court where other royal families are already marshalling support to present their candidates to her for marriage.
Mikaelson demands recompense of a broken promise. She tells him to go fuck himself in the arse in the letter she sends through one of her uncle's messengers.
The throne of Ardiena is empty.
People in the streets whisper that Her Royal Highness, Princess Elena has gone crazy.
She does nothing but sit beneath that peach tree in the garden and stare at a distance. She hasn't heard that voice since that day.
Blue eyes no longer haunt her dreams.
She feels empty.
She doesn't like it.
People start disappearing.
At first, it's the commoners. One from a family here, another from a family there. But soon the people going missing are the scions of the ruling houses. They turn up dead, displayed always on the steps of her castle, their chests empty and their hearts lying innocently beside their bodies.
The whispers of her involvement in dark arts start making rounds.
They say she sacrificed the royals and stole their ability to wield flames. She scoffs when she sees them, commoners and royals alike, giving her a wide berth and lowering their eyes as soon as she comes in the view.
There is unrest in the kingdom. It's all your doing, her uncle screams at her.
She chooses to ignore him and retreat to her room.
She has almost forgotten how it sounded, that voice in her ears, in her head. She doesn't know why it makes her sad.
She looks at her hands, at the soft skin and the blue veins that she can see. Her hands would've been scarred and her veins invisible, had she wielded fire.
She must have done something very despicable in her past life to be punished like this in the current one.
You fell in love with me, the voice croons sadly. You weren't supposed to fall for me…
She smiles. 'Why?' she questions as she lies down in her bed and pulls the covers up to her chin.
Just because…
The heirs to royal houses keep dying. The claimants to the throne disappear and end up on the stairs of her home.
She no longer cares.
The kingdom erupts in chaos.
She spends her days in her garden, barefoot and talking to herself.
Only Mikaelson brothers remain, and her uncle out of all those who had once desired to sit on the Ardienian throne.
She dances in her ballroom. No music plays. He hums the tune in her head.
Mikaelsons crush the rebellions rising throughout the length and breadth of the kingdom. Thousands are butchered, more than twice of those numbers are imprisoned.
Her uncle gives her an ultimatum. Marry Klaus or else.
She chooses the other part.
She is escorted to the royal court where a smug Klaus Mikaelson sits on the gleaming throne—the new king of Ardiena. But it's his quiet brother standing beside him, dignified and cold, who draws her eye.
She's again given the choice to marry him or be sacrificed to the great god of the oceans who keeps the wrath of the seas away from the lands of the flame wielders.
She chooses death with a smile.
The dignified Mikaelson brother dips his head slightly to acknowledge her courage. His eyes are triumphant.
Now she knows who left all those nasty presents on her stairs.
Klaus won't stay on the throne for much longer.
She laughs when she realizes that the mad Mikaelson has been nursing a viper all along.
She wonders whose hubris has resulted in her punishment akin to Andromeda. Is it hers, or this land's?
She doesn't care one way or the other.
The voice in her head tells her that it's going to be okay…
When they push her from the cliff, there is a moment of panic, but soon she's falling and the waves crashing against the face of the cliff leap higher, eager to meet her. She falls for an eternity, it seems, before her body plunges in the icy depths of the water.
You are here at last, someone whispers against her lips.
She opens her eyes, and he is there, pressed against her body, holding her, so near, so familiar and yet a stranger.
Say my name, he pleads. No one remembers it anymore, but you…
But she doesn't. She tries to think. He hasn't told her his name, she's sure of it.
'I don't know,' she says.
He looks at her with such profound sorrow. Her chest is burning. She needs to breathe. She tries to move upwards, to the surface, but he holds her fast against his body at the bottom of the sea.
I'm sorry, he says as she thrashes. You are not her.
'But I am,' she cries. 'I'm Elena.'
You are not my Elena.
He twists and breaks her neck.
She dies instantly…
At the bottom of a distant sea that no one remembers about, she opens her eyes and sees him chained to the rock beside her.
'Damon,' she croaks. Her voice is rough because of disuse and her throat hurts.
'Elena…'
Flames cover her body as her chains melt away due to heat. She swims over to the rock she hates more than anything in her life. Even more so than the father whom the world refers to as God.
Her hands break his chains, and blast that rock into pieces before the water starts extinguishing her flames. The water fills her lungs and she can no longer breathe.
The fire flickers at her fingers and dies.
Here it comes again, she thinks, the cycle of eternal drowning, but before unconsciousness claims her, she feels his arms close around her.
He bundles her in his arms and shoots upwards.
He comes out of the water like a bullet and the frigid air feels pleasant on her skin. Her teeth chatter and she shakes in his arms, too afraid to open her eyes.
What if all this is just a dream?
She feels him descend and the smell of sand assails her nose.
'Won't you open your eyes, Elena?' he asks as he kisses her closed eyelids.
Have they really escaped their prison?
Are they really free?
He lays her down, and the grains of sand against her skin feel like softest of silks. He kisses the throat he broke to have her by his side. He kisses the lips whose taste he can no longer remember.
He tears the wet rags off her body, his cold hands roaming her flesh.
It's new and yet so old, his touch. She remembers it and yet she doesn't.
Throughout his exploration of her curves and hidden places, she keeps her eyes squeezed shut. He enters her in a sharp, sudden thrust and she is reminded of a time that appears more like a dream, blurred around the edges and vaguely familiar—images of him and her, entwined beneath a deep, dark sky where he wears the shadows and she the stars.
He rolls them over and she feels his chest beneath her body. His heart is beating furiously.
'Open your eyes, Elena,' he says.
She shakes her head and hides her face in his chest.
'Won't you let me see your eyes?' he coaxes softly.
She is torn. She has yet to see his face, to reaffirm that he is the same man of her memories.
'Don't you trust me?'
She trusts him like she trusts herself. Even more so. She trusts him to kill her so that her soul ends up in the punishing cycle of birth and reincarnation. She trusts him to break her throat so that she can return to her original body. She trusts him to do all of it over and over again till she manages to break her chains that bind her at the bottom of the sea, till she manages to free herself so that she can free him.
She trusts him for all of those things, but she doesn't trust her eyes. She doesn't trust her head.
She's not sure whether she is alive or just a step away from death, drowning in that wretched sea, dreaming of being free.
'Open your eyes and I promise I won't disappear. I promise we won't be at the bottom of the deep blue sea.'
He smells of brimstone and ozone and sea and feels colder than the glaciers of her father's heavenly home.
Her nails dig in his flesh as her lashes flutter to reveal rings of fire surrounding her pupils.
'Hello, Elena…'
He still looks the same. She kisses his pink lips and his pale angular cheeks and his blue eyes. She can't stop herself from running her fingers in his hair, the color of everlasting night.
He's still inside her and she feels overwhelmed. Can't they stay like this forever?
She will find a way to keep him in her.
His lips curve in a smirk.
It has been millenniums since she last saw him smile.
She sits up, his cock ensconced in her warmth. She vaguely remembers that she often used to tease him by not moving.
So, she sits still and watches him—the passion that burns in his eyes, the love that softens the sharp features of his face.
She moves up and down tentatively. He groans.
They have forgotten so much about each other.
They'll have to learn again, but she's not worried.
They have a lifetime.
In the end, he thrusts up with a growl and she pushes him in the sand by the heel of her hands. It's violent and animalistic the way they come together. His horns gleam dark in the light of the fading sun and she cuts her finger on the edge of one, her flame wings unfurl from her back and he scorches the skin of his palm when he reaches up to grab one.
When they lie on that sandy beach, utterly spent and too languorous to move, he whispers it against her skin, his avowal of love.
She presses her answer on his unsuspecting lips…
It starts one rainy day when the Devil spies a Phoenix shivering beneath a peach tree in rain, her wings of flames sputtering in and out of existence. Her hair is the color of rich earth and it hangs limply down her back, her face is delicately beautiful, her eyes remind him of hellfire and she smells like brimstones.
He can't help but appear in front of her. He's never before wanted to possess innocence just to stare at it.
It starts one rainy day when a Phoenix stares into the deep blue eyes of a man rumored to be the Devil. He is perfection given life. His blue eyes are reminiscent of the sky she loves and his pale cheeks, the moon she often stares at.
She can't help wanting to decipher the shadows in his eyes.
She's a being of flames and shadows hold a special place in her heart.
It starts one rainy day when God chains the Devil and a Phoenix at the bottom of the deep blue sea…
A weird one shot that was inspired by the song "Bottom of the deep blue sea" by MISSIO.