Warning: Mentions of blood, death, and burying bodies in this chapter.
Break
Elena ran right into the kitchen, grabbing the first wooden thing she could find -a spoon- and stomping on it until it broke into a jagged point before hurtling back into the fray and stabbing the vampire Elijah had been wrestling with in the back, wood piercing all the way through to the front of his chest. He fell into a crumpled heap, but there was more to take his place.
A heck of a lot more.
"I thought I told you to run," Elijah growled intensely, one hand around the neck of a vampire, the other pulling a heart from another.
"I did run," Elena responded sassily, throwing the other end of her spoon at an oncoming vamp. "I ran into the kitchen, then I ran right back to you."
He said something that sounded an awful lot like, "What is it with me and stubborn women?" but she couldn't be sure.
Someone made a lunge for her, but Elijah instantly blocked the attack, but not before Elena punched the vampire in the face hard enough to break his nose. Elena gave the Original a look that clearly said, 'See, I can help,' but the sight of her reddened knuckles seemed to only make him angrier, his attacks on the oncoming vampires becoming more savage and frenzied. In what seemed like a blink of an eye to her but was actually several terror-inducing minutes, the only vampire left standing was Elijah, the rest in varying states of dessication on the ground. But the danger was far from over, and they both knew it.
Pulling a handkerchief from the confines of his trouser pocket, Elijah methodically wiped the blood from his hand, poppies of red blooming on the once-pristine fabric. "Stay here," he ordered, and this time Elena put up no resistance. Crossing the foyer, Elijah opened the door, letting in the night breeze. He stood there for several seconds, eyes shut tight, head cocked at a predatory angle. Then, his whole body seemed to tense all at once, gaze narrowing in on something she obviously couldn't see.
"Don't come after me," was all he said before he closed the door behind him.
Elena did, in her defense, give it a grand total of two minutes before opening the door a crack, enough to let a sliver of moonlight illuminate the tips of her sneakers and turning the foyer behind her into a chessboard of ruby and mercury. Elijah's tall frame was easily discernable by the gates, but the vampire he had pinned to them was utterly foreign to her, but it didn't take a genius to figure out who had sent all of them.
"You're going to answer my questions truthfully, and to the very best of your knowledge," Elijah compelled the vampire, who's face was already covered in blood, blond hair matted with it in places. Elijah had shown no mercy, it seemed. "And once you have done answering me, you will forget our entire conversation, will forget about the girl and only remember what I tell you to."
"I'll only remember what you tell me to," the man parroted weakly, a puppet having his strings pulled. Elena knew she shouldn't feel bad -him and his colleagues and just tried to kill her and Elijah, after all- but there was still that spark of pity rooted deep inside her: Elena knew what it was like to be compelled all to well, to have to surrender so completely to someone else. It was not a pleasant experience.
"Who sent you here?"
"Klaus."
Elijah rolled his eyes. "Obvious. You were left to guard the perimeter. Why?"
"The rest of them were new, untested. He trusted me to succeed if they failed."
"I see. What was Klaus' purpose in sending you?"
"He found out you had been to the campsite, wanted you to back off. He wanted me to give you this." The vampire handed him a piece of paper, but from this vantage it was just a white blob to her, no words or markings discernable.
Elijah pocketed it with a nod. "Thank you. Did he tell you I'd be alone, that there was no other occupant in this house?"
"Yes. He didn't mention anything about a girl, but I can smell her all over you. Guess the Original's found himself a girlfriend." He sneered mockingly. "How sweet."
The elder vampire gripped him by the throat, choking him with hardly any effort on his part, a dragon surveying an ant. And someone was about to get burned. "You'd do to watch your tongue, boy, lest you wish me to remove it. Now, one last piece of business, and then we're done: what is your name?"
"Kristopher."
"Now, Kristopher, you will not remember this conversation, and you will forget any and all assumptions you made about the young woman with me, who you will forget as soon as you leave here. You will only remember that I took care of your friends, in a most brutal and unforgiving fashion I might add. You will tell Niklaus that I do not want any part in his games, and the next time he sends children to do his dirty work, I will not be so generous as to leave any alive. Do you understand me?"
Kristopher nodded. "I understand."
"Good." Elijah stepped back, flicking imaginary lint from his cuffs. "Now, run along back to your master before I remove your head from your shoulders for daring to come near me and mine."
The blond sped off into the night, the only sign he'd been there at all the slight indentation in the grass.
Elena closed the door, going to the kitchen and pouring herself a glass of water. She'd drunk nearly all of it by the time Elijah came up beside her, every year of his long existence seeming to weigh down his face, to settle tiredly in the creases of his eyes and the corners of his mouth, down-turned with excruciating worry.
"Well, I guess I really should have signed those papers, shouldn't I?" Elena joked, just for something to say, just to get that hollow, bleak sadness surrounding him to vanish. She hadn't realized how accustomed she'd become to seeing Elijah sporting an easy smile in her presence until he looked as if he'd never smile again. She wanted to comfort him, but Elena didn't know how, didn't know what the right words were that could make this better for him. There weren't any, really. Nothing that didn't sound insincere or mindlessly placating.
His first words to her came as no surprise -a week ago they might have, but not now, not when she understood how he'd made it his life's mission to rectify every mistake of his families as if they were his own- and neither was the heartfelt regret he said them with: "I'm sorry."
"You have nothing to be sorry for."
"Elena, you were put in danger because of me, because of my tumultuous relationship with my brother. Any one of those vampires could have killed you if the urge struck them. This is not a safe environment for you; such acts of bloodshed should not be a common occurrence in your life."
I'm not safe to be around. He didn't have to say it, she could feel it coming off him in waves. God, what had the people in his life done to him for him to immediately assume that she would think less of him, when he'd see firsthand how she'd forgiven both Stefan and Damon for the things they'd done in the name of protecting her, even though it had usually gone against everything she'd ever asked of them? He'd saved her life tonight, and she needed hi to know that, needed him to know that no matter how bad things got, she wasn't going anywhere.
"Elijah, this is my choice," she reminded him with all the compassion she had the ability to muster, her hands reaching out to grip the sides of his face so that he'd have no choice but to take her seriously, "and if it wasn't for you, I'd be leapfrogging all over the place, subsisting on panic and despair and guilt, and that's no way to live. If anything, I'm the one that's sorry, okay? I'm the one that's sorry you had to go against your brother in the first place, that for a thousand years my bloodline had caused you nothing but trouble and heartache. At the end of the day, you did what you had to do to protect us both, and I can't fault you for that, nor would I ever hold it against you, even if you think I should. You're a vampire, and yes violence has a tendency to follow at your heels, but that does not and could not ever bother me. Because with you, it's not mindless: there's always a reason. Just like I know the reason why you compelled that vampire, because if you'd killed all of them them it would have looked suspicious, like you had something to hide from Klaus, am I right?"
He nodded, his own hands reaching around to curl around her wrists. "You are."
"So don't apologize for doing what you had to. It's not like I would have exactly let them live if they'd hurt you," Elena added, making to move away now that she'd convinced him he was being an idiot in thinking that he was to blame for any of this.
But it seemed Elijah had no intention of letting her go just yet, for his hold on her only tightened as his brown eyes warmed considerably as he let out a light chuckle.
"Feeling bloodthirsty are we, lovely Elena?"
Elena only shrugged a shoulder and leaned against his chest. "No one hurts my friends and gets away with it, even if you're a thousand years old and could squash them like grapes."
"You always come up with the most amusing metal images for me to ponder over," he said, shards of glass winking like stars from between his fingers are he brushed them through her hair. She hadn't even noticed the glass, too focused on Elijah and the ensuing conversation with Kristopher and all.
"Well, you can ponder with them upstairs while I get you cleaned up, since you can't sit around covered in blood: the couch is simply too nice to endure such cruelty."
Elijah let her lead him to the upstairs bathroom, but not before protesting, "We really should be packing."
"Klaus won't send anyone else, at least not for a little while. You're not the type to run from a fight, he knows it would take more than a stunt like this to rattle you, and it will look suspicious if that suddenly changes," Elena theorized, grabbing a few hand towels and wetting them under the tap, as well as some disinfectant for her own minor scrapes, before motioning for him to take a seat on the counter by the sink.
"When did you become such a mastermind?" Elijah teased as she swiped the dampened fabric over a wicked-looking gash on his forehead, and enough blood came away and flaked onto the cloth that she was eternally grateful for the wonder that was swift vampire healing.
"Probably around the same time I started hanging out with this incredibly smart, funny, kind, self-deprecating guy who likes the same books as me and can make the best lasagna known to man," she quipped cheekily in an effort to keep the atmosphere easy and casual, so that she didn't think about the blood on him or the bodies downstairs or the fact that they'd have to leave the house, this little slice of peace behind in a matter of hours.
"He sounds like a handful," Elijah remarked as she switched from his face to his hands, holding them tenderly even though the bruises had already healed to faded outlines.
"Oh, he is," Elena was quick to reply. "But so am I, so I guess we make quite the pair."
"That we do," the vampire conceded.
"I really don't want to leave here," Elena admitted, getting the last of the blood off and chucking the towel into the sink with a wet slap. Elijah frowned, tapping the toe of his shoe against her shin to draw her attention back to him as he murmured, "I'm not inclined to depart either."
That, bizarrely, seemed to make her feel a little better. "I know it's going to sound stupid and crazy," she began, taking a deep breath and letting it out in a steady exhale, "but ever since my parents died, it's been so hard for my house to feel like home. There's just so many memories there, I can turn any corner and BAM! Instant assault. Or sometimes, I'll wake up first thing in the morning and close my eyes and pretend I can hear my dad making breakfast in the kitchen or my mom getting ready for work. It's hard to completely relax sometimes, and now with Jenna gone too...being here was nice, like a fresh start. Obviously, it was your place, and still is, but it was nice to have that weight off me, even for a short time, to be able to walk into a room and admire it for what it is, not what it used to mean to me."
Elijah was good at being quiet. Around him, she had a tendency to let out all her thoughts at once, then immediately feel like she'd said too much, like she'd burdened him somehow. In truth, she'd often kept these kinds of thoughts hidden from people, especially Stefan, always trying to project the confident, put-together, happy teenager everyone wanted her to go back to being. Elijah didn't make her feel like she needed to pretend, and while some may find his silence disquieting, to Elena she viewed it as a sign that he really heard what she was saying, and figuring the best way to respond, what would be most beneficial to her and how she was feeling.
It was definitely different, but a nice different.
"As you know," Elijah picked up the other cloth, wiping it over her split knuckles from where she'd clocked that vampire, his gentle timbre matching the tempo of his ministrations, "I've lived all over the world, have houses in every country and getaways on almost every known island, and many that you don't. But I imagine, if my own home in Mystic Falls was still standing, I'd feel much the same way."
Pausing, he loosened the hair tie from around her wrist, then shook her hair slightly, making sure there weren't any shards of glass left, then pulled her hair into three sections. She let him, oddly comforted at the display of normalcy. Elena could picture doing this for his sister, Rebekah, when she was upset, as a way to calm her down or to cheer her up. "When I first learnt of my immortality, I sometimes wondered if I'd ever forget it all, if I would lose the sound of my mother cooking dinner or the way the fields would smell after it rained, of it would all fade into oblivion as new memories were made. But they haven't. Like you, I remember it all. Perhaps that is why the current state of my family bothers me so, because those happier times are still so tangible and concrete in my mind, whereas with Niklaus they are marred with pain and anguish and bitterness. He's forgotten what home is like, not just in the physical sense, but emotionally as well."
"I can't say I'll ever like him, or even that I'll ever forgive him," Elena whispered as he continued to work on her hair, deftly braising it with a skill to rival Caroline, who was well-known in Mystic Falls for her styling capabilities, "but for your sake, I hope there's still good left in him, and I'm sure if anyone can find it, it's you. You bring it out in people, Elijah, make people want to be better. I know you certainly have with me." Oh, God, had she really just said that out loud?
His eyes met hers in the mirror. "You're already perfect."
She blushed, looking away and focusing instead on the sink, on the tiny drops of water running down the sides and swirling into the bottom. "I'm not, and neither are any of my friendships, or my relationship with Jeremy. I was so selfish, so caught up with being with Stefan, learning about who I was and everything that came after, that I let our relationship slide. I can't remember the last time we hung out, just to enjoy the others' company. My last sleepover with Caroline and Bonnie was after John showed up, before Stefan took me up to the Lake House. Everyone's been so focused in saving my life that I've actually forgotten to live it, but I want that to change when I go back, to make sure I don't neglect the people that I care about most."
"I'm sure they understood, that they enjoyed seeing you happy, even if it was at the cost of other things. I doubt that they have treated you dissimilarly in the past when they too have been swept up in the arms of romance," he muttered, somewhat harshly, but she couldn't refute that there was a kernel of truth embedded in his words: everyone got like that when they were in love.
So Elena replied, "True, but none of them have had relationships that put so many other people in danger."
"Perhaps not," Elijah admitted carefully, "but Mystic Falls is a nexus of supernatural energy, marked by countless deaths and unnatural occurrences: magical creatures are always going to be drawn to it, with or without your presence, so really there isn't anything for you to feel guilty over," he said, tying off the end of her braid, letting it coil loosely around her shoulder.
He made it all sound so easy. Too easy, in fact, as if it would be okay to let go of this guilt she'd been carrying around for so long, yet it was something Elena knew she'd never be able to do.
Crossing her arms over her chest, she toyed with the elastic band, posing to the vampire stubbornly, "Wouldn't you, if you were in my shoes? If you had to see everyone you love get hurt, over and over and over again? If I can't blame myself, who else can I blame, Elijah? No one. And if I can't blame anyone, then I can't rationalize it, or simplify it, or label it with some sort of reasoning. Otherwise, I have to just chalk it up toe the fact that life sucks, and then there's no hope at all. This way, if I move myself out of the equation, I can at least imagine things will get better at some point."
"They will."
There was hardly any space between them, yet Elena felt like she was shouting across the ocean: he wasn't hearing her.
"Oh, yeah?" she scoffed disbelievingly. "So when Stefan comes home, its all going to be sunshine and rainbows, and I'll be able to get him off the human diet and back to drinking animal blood? And Klaus will never catch on to what I've done and come looking for me? And no one else will ever die because of what I am? Can you really guarantee me any if that, Elijah."
"No, I can't. But, quite frankly, I think you're being unreasonable and stubborn and really damn stupid." The muscles of his jaw ticked, letting her know just how pissed he was. It was almost thrilling, to see that composed exterior drop, to know that she rattled him enough to warrant such an un-Elijah-like response. She imagined she'd wouldn't be thinking so in a minute. "Yes, life is hard, Elena. Yes, people we love die. Yes, you are the doppelgänger, and that will follow you for the rest of your days, even if you become a vampire like Katerina did. Yet, despite all this, it was your choice to leave Mystic Falls: why can't you respect the choices your friends and family make?"
"Because they made the wrong ones! Because they shouldn't have to make these choices at all. That night, on Wickery Bridge, when my parents picked me up after I snuck out to that stupid party and we went into the river, my dad was still conscious when Stefan found him. And he...he refused to let him save him without saving me first. Every breath, every beat of my fragile, human heart is bought for with the life of my dad, and my mom, because they thought my life was worth more than there's, that they weren't important enough, that I deserved to live at their expense."
Elijah closed the distance between them, pulling her head against his chest. He seemed to do that a lot, reassure her physically when he didn't think words were enough get through to her. Who knew the Original could be such a hugger? "That is what it means to be a parent, Elena," he explained softly, his years of wisdom bleeding out and into her, and even though he himself had never had children, of course, he sounded like he knew what he was talking about. Maybe it was because he'd helped Klaus and Rebekah raise Marcel, or maybe because he'd raised Klaus and Rebekah and Kol, too. Or maybe he was just an empathetic person by nature.
"That is the unconditional love of family," he continued in that same tone, "to put someone else's needs above your own, to love without apology or regret. And believe me when I say that they did not regret their choice, their sacrifice, even if you think they should. You were, are, still their daughter, always and forever, and it wouldn't have mattered if Stefan had listened to your father or not: they would always put you first."
"But I didn't deserve it," Elena sobbed into his chest, ashamed to be crying in front of him once again but knowing the tears were justified. "I don't deserve it."
"It is not about deserve, Elena." He wiped the tears away, cupping the sides of her jaw and looking at her as if she was the most precious and stubborn thing in all the world. "It's about accepting death knowing that what you hold most dear will be alright when you're gone."
"I haven't been, though. Jeremy was drinking and doing drugs all last summer, he tried to become a vampire so he could turn off his emotions. Before Stefan, I could hardly get through each day," she confessed, staring down at her feet rather than meeting his gaze, "and at night I was in the car all over again, trying to get them but never being able to. I just feel like I've let everybody down, and I don't know how to fix any of this."
Her words seemed to land like a physical blow, to further chip away at his immaculate facade and find the beating heart underneath. "Every life is not yours to fix: sometimes people have to get there on their own. You may give them a nudge, a gentle shove, but in the end the decisions are not yours to make, you cannot force their feet to walk the path of goodness, of happiness, even if they'd be better off in the long run."
"You should take your own advice," Elena laughed drily, making sure the tap was turned off before positioning the towels over the claw-foot tub so they'd dry.
"I've thought about it," Elijah told her, tiredly, getting a head start on the packing by emptying out the cupboard by the mirror, as if he needed to keep a part of himself occupied while he said this. "Of course I have. There was a reason why I didn't follow him and Rebekah after we fled New Orleans, after all. But I've come to accept that this is just the way I am, that I've given up on giving up, even though the very definition of insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting a different outcome, a change. I may never live to see such a day, but I will try regardless, because I know if our roles were reversed, I'd want someone to try for me."
"I don't think you could ever not be good," Elena ruminated as she zipped up her own toiletries, "but I want you to know, I'd try if you weren't."
He took the zip lock from her outstretched finger, giving them a gratified squeeze. "Thank you, that means a great deal. Now, I think it's time we get you to bed: I have no idea where we're going, so I need to rectify that, as well as clean up downstairs. Are you going to be alright on your own?"
"I'll be fine; it was just a couple vampires," Elena said, resisting the urge to roll her eyes.
"Are you sure?" Elijah pushed regardless. "You're not just saying that because it's what you think I need to hear to go?"
She nodded confidently. "I'm sure."
"Very well." Effortlessly, Elijah picked her up, carrying her to her room and tugged the covers out from under the mound of pillows -one-handedly, which was pretty impressive- before depositing her on the bed and making sure she was comfortable.
Elena huffed as she turned onto her side, mock-glaring when he perched at the foot of her bed. "I could have walked that, you know."
"I know, but it's dark, and I couldn't be bothered to turn the lights off."
She clucked her tongue playfully, nudging him with her foot. "Lazy, lazy."
"I just killed twelve vampires, compelled another and calmed an emotionally distraught teenager: I have every right to be lazy."
"You got me there."
Elijah grinned, a flash of white in the dark. "And don't I know it."
"Goodnight, Elijah," she mumbled around a yawn, sinking further into her pillow and finally giving in to her body's demands.
His fingers ghosted over her cheek, there and then gone. "Goodnight, Elena. I'll be downstairs if you need me."
Elijah knelt on the marble floor, jacket and tie nowhere in sight, scrubbing with all his excessive vampire speed and strength, the smell of bleach assaulting his nostrils as he removed the last traces of blood from it's surface, the bodies that had littered it freshly buried in the woods bordering the property. Just because he'd be departing in the morning didn't mean he was going to leave the place in a state. Good flooring was hard to come by these days.
Dunking the sponge in the water, his mind ruminated on everything Elena had told him tonight. She was a complex character, certainly more layered than he'd previously realized. On the outside, she was like any other ordinary young woman raised in a small town, and yet she held herself to impossible standards, tried to protect everyone and see good when others wouldn't bother, himself included. And, even more bizarrely, she seemed to genuinely care about him, to like him and trust him enough with her secrets and inner-most thoughts, and therefore he trusted hers with his. He couldn't imagine what his siblings would say if they knew he'd revealed such intimate details about them to a stranger, a non-Mikaleson, and yet he also couldn't imagine not telling her. Elena seemed to draw it out if him so easily, to make him remember the light rather than concentrate on the dark, to reminisce over the beginning rather than despair over the ending.
The sponge went back in the bucket, turning the water pink, lapping over the sides.
He had half a mind to take her out of the country and leave all this business with his brother behind, perhaps work on locating his siblings, or just enjoy her company, as he so wished to do. Even when she was crying into his shirt as if she'd never stop, he'd rather be with her than continue on as he had been. Before Rose had contacted him, he'd been living in near-seclusion, deluding himself into believing he could stay out of all the supernatural drama he knew was brewing in Mystic Falls, that Klaus would not enlist him into his hunt for the doppelgänger once again.
Elena would tell him that running from a problem didn't solve anything, and she'd be right. All he could do now was try his utmost best to keep his promise to her and see where the rest took him.
Elijah didn't glance up when he heard her heartbeat, not even when she picked up the dry sponge beside him and finished cleaning up the mess he'd made. But he did when he heard her voice say, pitched low in respect to the late hour, "You don't have to do this alone, Elijah. We're a team, okay? Partners in crime. Or rather, stopping the crimes of our loved ones before they become people we no longer recognize."
"I was unaware that particular arrangement included cleaning up bloodstains at," he checked his watch, "five twenty four in the morning."
"You think I don't know how this goes?" Elena asked disbelievingly. "That I haven't had to do this for any of my friends, on multiple occasions? That I haven't had to pick up broken glass or shattered furniture or hide cracks in plaster before adults got suspicious? I could do this in my sleep, 'Lijah, which is what I know I should be doing right now, yet my brain decided five hours of sleep was sufficiently adequate after a night such as ours. Stupid brain."
No one had called him "'Lijah" in a very long time. He decided he liked hearing her say it far more than he'd expected himself to.
"Elena?"
The brunette looked up from her studious scrubbing, wiping the back of her hand against her forehead. "Yeah?"
"Please don't ever let any of this break you."
He didn't miss her beautific smile, nor the way she tried to mask it by submerging her sponge in the water. "I promise, but only if you swear the same," she wrangled him, scooting back on her bare legs -she was still in her T-shirt and pajama shorts- to get to a particularly gruesome spot.
"I promise."
Maybe he'd be able to keep this one, this time around.
Author's Note: Hello, dearest readers! So...I know Thai chapter was mainly dialogue, and for that I apologize if it made for a slow read: I swear, I didn't intend for it to be so weighty, and I was going to cut down on some of the stuff about her parents...but then I was like, 'This is my fic, if I wanna get deep, I'll go deep, and just warn you to being some scuba gear.' For someone who's emotions are so important to her -we all know what Elena's like without them (that is of course if you've watched season four)- we don't get to hear her explain them a lot, or the impact of her grief. Before making Elena and Elijah a romantic couple, I want them to have a strong foundation of trust, but also ease: I want them to feel comfortable taking about difficult things in their past, rather than have them know like, two things about each other, then go straight to the smoochies.
But...there will be smoochies. At some point.
Anyway, I really hope you're enjoyed this chapter. To anyone who receiver exam results this week, I hope everything went okay for you. If not, I hope this made you feel just a little bit better.
I wanna hear more from you, so please, if you've got the time, leave a review, even if it's just to say that it was okay or something.
I'm already at work on chapter ten, which starts of from the POV of a character we haven't had anything from yet...Wonder who it is?
Until next time!
All my love, Temperance Cain.