AN: I don't actually know what this is, this just came out after listening to the song Arsonist's Lullabye by Hozier.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
He teaches her, part of their deal. She controls the bloodlust and the strength, the heightened emotions. He teaches her all of that, all of the things she needs to control. But when they're a few hours away from Mystic Falls, he unleashes something in her. Something he rarely indulges in nowadays. It's a side he's rarely shared with anyone. She compliments it.
When she points a house that's abandoned, and he teaches her how to properly burn it down.
In their hotel, he tells her his long history with fire. When he was a child, he would sit for hours. Just to watch the flames. He hums an unfamiliar melody in the silence. Flames were one of the few constants over the centuries, he admits.
He finds an odd joy in teaching her his extensive knowledge of fire, but when he sees the look he's seen in his eyes so often stare back at him from hers, he feels nothing but victory.
He teaches her how to burn objects, and buildings. He teaches her what to do to burn people. For information, for revenge. He's never let divulged this information to anyone before.
She finds comfort in the flames now, fire is safe. Fire is good. It's water that killed her. It's the memory of water that wakes her up in the night. She can't breathe. Her lungs are full of water. She coughs for a few minutes until he makes his way to her room. Sometimes they share a room, he falls asleep so easily on couches and in chairs that it astounds her. He doesn't say anything other than the soft and low humming murmur of the song he always soothes her with. She wonders if she uses it for himself like he uses it for her. He hummed it as he taught.
She loses track of time, but she now knows almost everything he knows. She knows how different things smell as they burn, how ashes feel in her hands, stuck under her nails, between her toes.
She doesn't turn off her emotions exactly, but neither she or Elijah govern themselves with their emotions in their time together. He reminds her that all she has is her demons, her fire and the place she wants to reach. Love does not take anything away. It did not calm inner demons, it did not slow the burn of the fire. He reminds her every so often, that she shouldn't tame her demons, but always keep them controlled.
She spends time with him, she doesn't find herself wanting to leave the Original who always wears a suit, her once ally. He doesn't call them allies, she sees him as a mentor more than anything. She doesn't want to leave the man who understands her new need for ash and flame, the one who taught her arsonist lullabies. He reworked them, singing them just loudly enough for her to hear, as they would watch a blaze.
There were limits he had, that he warned her of. He would not burn good literature, innocents or their belongings. There were some places he would not burn, and she respected that. He also expected her to not burn there, either. Just because she's not letting her emotions rule her doesn't mean she doesn't understand that somethings are sacred; and some things always would be.
She goes where he does, and when someone thinks they can use her as leverage against him, he laughs.
Oh, they try. They try to take her, kidnap her. Even when she's not in his range of sight. They have trackers on each other's phones. Even if they didn't, he'd still find her.
The first time it happens, he finds ashes and a grinning Elena. She hums the first song he ever hummed to her. The first arsonist lullabye.
The next time, he gets rid of the chains binding her, not breathing in the vervain that's polluting the air. He gets her out, into his car before he knocks out the humans. When she has blood, some human and some of his, he asks in a gentle voice if she wants to do do the burning. She tells him she just wants to watch. He takes their daylight rings and they watch from the car, what the sunlight does.
The first time they had ever burned a vampire, he had worried it might upset her. Her birth mother died by fire. Fire is what kept her from running as his brother killed others, and then her. She should have an aversion to fire, but she doesn't count those memories when she thinks of fire. She just thinks of Elijah. The Original Arsonist.
She's not sure why she does it. Maybe it's the fact she can't ever seem to pull herself out of his orbit, maybe it's the genuine smile on his lips. But she kisses him as fire surrounds them. He kisses her back, and she wonders why she's never kissed him before. Or considered a relationship with Elijah before. Their demons aren't tamed by each other's presence, but they do play nicely together. Their fire, their ambitions and dreams burn so brightly together it almost hurts her vampire eyes.
He doesn't mind the new development, she's the first one who understands his need for fire and ash, the smell of smoke.
They burn together, for the rest of their lives.
finis