Title: Hold Me Tonight, Hold Me Forever
Disclaimer: If you recognize it, I don't own it.
Summary: Promises are broken, hearts are mended, lives are turned upside down...Sometimes things don't have to make sense to feel right. Elijah/Elena post-sacrifice. Warning: Major character death.
A/N: Yeah, so…another Elijah/Elena fic. The summary is terrible, and I'm not ditching Delena, but I can't help but explore the possibilities of the Elijah/Elena pairing (especially since I know Delena will eventually get their fair share of screentime in the future). Plus, everyone's response to my other E/E fic was pretty awesome, and I just had to give in, so thank you.
This might be a one-shot, but a multi-chapter fic is on the table. I can't say definitively since I don't know how long my E/E muse will last considering I thought I was NOT going to write another E/E fic after my first one and then here I am today with another story already…Reviews might push me one way or another though ;)
Elena burst into the boarding house, with tears streaming down her cheek. Her blurry vision didn't stop her from seeing the man she had been looking for though.
"You!" Elena screamed, she pointed accusatorily at Elijah. He frowned slightly. He hated when women cried. It never ended well.
"Lovely seeing you as well," he greeted, putting his book aside and standing up. She ignored his comment and stumbled towards him.
"You promised me!" she yelled at him. She tripped over a chair in trying to reach him and he immediately sped over to steady her, quickly grabbing her arm to break her fall. She looked at him with a glare and quickly shoved his arm away from her. She was obviously not happy, and she had obviously not slept. Her eyes were bloodshot and if he recalled correctly, her clothes are still the same from the day before.
"Elena," he starts calmly.
"You promised me!" Her hands were flailing wildly and he looked at her with curious interest at her distress. It had been a day since the sacrifice, and unfortunately, Stefan decided to stand in front of Elena when Klaus had threatened her. Silly, young vampire. If he had only kept to the plan.
Elena had not contacted him since the sacrifice or visited her own boarding house, and he assumed she was distraught over his passing, moping about and not willing to talk to anyone. He supposed she had been eating Chunky Monkey ice cream, watching tasteless movies or whatever human girls did in the event of a tragic occurrence.
But then again, Elena Gilbert was always surprising him.
"He wasn't supposed to be there. I explicitly told him to stay away from you and he deliberately disregarded my warning."
"Are you kidding me? Are you seriously blaming Stefan?" The look on her face is not one of disbelief, but anger.
"If he had heeded my advice, he would be still alive," Elijah said simply. She shook her head vigorously.
"I can't believe I trusted you. I can't believe I actually thought you were a man of your word."
"I am a man of my word," he says defensively, "Your precious vampire boyfriend obviously was not."
"All you cared about was getting revenge on Klaus. You never cared who died in the process," she fumed.
"You knew my intentions from the beginning."
"The deal was to keep everyone safe. No one was supposed to die," Elena hissed.
"No one would have if they listened to me. The deal never included keeping track of insubordinate vampires," Elijah pointed out, still extremely composed.
"This is your fault. You let him die."
"Do you humans listen to yourselves?" he asked, a little bewildered. But he saw the deadly look in her eyes and he decided to try another route. "I thought I could keep my promise," he said. "I apologize for not being able to save Stefan."
"Save it," she spat, her anger boiling over, "You don't mean any of it. You never even liked Stefan." He took a small step back and paused. She always did have a knack for reading him well.
"But you did. And for letting you down, I am sorry." Elena looked up into his eyes and on any other day, she could probably see the honesty in his words, but right now, her wide range of emotions was altering her understanding of what was real and what was just impossible.
He takes her pause as a sign of resignation.
"Come. Sit down." His voice is soothing and she didn't want soothing right now. Stefan was dead and she wanted violence and irrationality and hate.
"No." She shook her head stubbornly, with her tears still silently trickling down her cheeks and splattering onto the floor.
"Elena, it's done. You knew that casualties were possible."
"My own casualty."
"You made the deal because you knew that everyone else could die." Bringing up death just brought another round of tears for her. It had nothing to do with the fact that he was right.
"Just shut up!" she groaned, hitting his chest with all of her strength. He recoiled slightly in shock at the force in her tiny body. Elena needed to take out her anger on someone and he was the only person in the house at the moment.
"Elena," he warned, grabbing her wrists swiftly. She struggled in his grasp. Her whole body grows rigid, red with anger and burning with rage. She just wanted him to feel the pain and hurt she was in.
"Let me go!"
"Not until you calm down."
"No. Just stop, okay? It doesn't make any sense. Nothing makes any sense. Please stop making sense of it," she begged. She continued to resist his power over her, thrashing about violently as his serene gaze tried to hold her steady. Her eyes were everywhere except on him and she was fully sobbing now.
"Stefan would not have wanted you to torture yourself like this," Elijah stated.
"Stefan's not here anymore," she snapped heatedly. There's a long silence as the words linger in the air.
"You're right. Stefan's not here…" he responded quietly, his tone gentler than she had ever heard it. He watched her as she let the words sink in and he let go of her arms as she calmed down. She stepped back and looked silently at the ground. Her tears of anger soon turn into tears of despair and acceptance.
"Stefan's gone," she cried softly, as she fell to the floor with her head in her hands. Never had she felt so utterly useless and pathetic. She never considered herself the dependent type, but without Stefan, she literally thought the world was crashing down around her. The fact that he had died didn't concern her as much as the fact that he had died for her.
He kneeled besides her, not even bothering to adjust his suit jacket.
"You could've done something," she insisted softly.
"You and I both know my answer to that," he softened at her.
"You could've saved him," she whispered. But even though she was saying these words, she was starting to see the hopelessness of the situation. Stefan was gone, and she couldn't blame anyone for it. She couldn't hold onto her anger for Elijah forever because the grief and pain were so unrelenting. She was just so damn devastated and tired.
Elijah didn't know what to say anymore, so he got up and hesitantly offered his hand to her to lead her to the couch. Elijah was never good at compassion when it came to humans, but Petrova doppelgangers seemed to be the exception.
She wordlessly took his hand and he easily pulled her up. She didn't resist him this time but as they sat next to each other, she didn't look at him.
"He's dead, he's dead, he's dead," she repeated to herself over and over again. A new wave of tears filled her eyes and she covered her eyes with her hands.
"You're safe though," he told her quietly. She nodded mutely and rested her head into the crook of his neck. The unexpected action yielded some sympathy he didn't even know was in him, and he hesitantly placed a hand on her back.
"I'm sorry, Elena," he told her, as he felt the stickiness of her dry tears against his neck.
She didn't say anything for a few minutes, and he was prepared for another onslaught of words, fists and tears, but it didn't come.
"I know," she breathed, sighing heavily. She closed her eyes and shifted her head to his chest before letting that once elusive sleep overcome her.
He could've easily thrown her off of him, but she finally looked at ease and peaceful.
So he just stayed in that position for the rest of that night.
A/N2: Thanks for reading and reviews are always appreciated!