A.N.: Hi everyone, thank you so much for the reviews – I just wish you'd log in so I could respond and say thanks individually!
Dangerous Beauty
31
Recovery
Giulia was alive, and watching television; he had not hurt her.
But he was certain that at the very least, he had not behaved like a gentleman. Delirium would do that to you.
He found her downstairs, curled up in a blanket, Firenze purring in her lap – thank the gods he had not hurt her cat! – dark shadows smudged under her eyes. There was a tang of lemon on the air, lavender soft and fragrant, and melodic, eerie music played as the television flickered brightly, the soft lamplight chasing away the dark. Outside, night had fallen; he could see the stars in their thousands, an anvil to the chest as he was thrown back to one of his oldest memories, stumbling out of his home.
He turned back to Giulia, pausing at the door to watch her. She nibbled absently at a chicken drumstick – the honey, lemon and lavender roasted chicken that was sticky to the touch and evoked always memories of Lucrezia basking in the sun. Beyond her, on the television-screen a whale soared through stars, a city without nature fastened to its back.
She was watching Doctor Who. She was mad for the eleventh. And he remembered this episode. Very old, and very kind, and the very last of his kind, Amy Pond murmured in his ear. The Smilers and Winders, the star-whale, Liz Ten and the quirky, passionate, childlike and wise, kind Doctor.
First her friend's transformation, and his ensuing illness, it was no wonder she had looked exhausted last night. And there was a nagging worry as his memories of his fever eluded him. Not those of his past, which made his hands shake, caught in the torrent of his emotions those memories always stirred up and therefore, were best left in the past, but of his behaviour while he had been delusional.
He just…wanted to know what he had done. He had one niggling suspicion that made him blush, and he frowned at the scent of Giulia's vervain nail-polish sharp and unpleasantly tangy on the air. He did remember waking to a familiar stinging sensation, the sheets ruined from the sun slowly charring him – for a moment, he had not cared, lulled by Giulia's soft, warm body curled up beside him. Until he realised her fingernails were also burning him – there was an acrid tang of fingernail polish on the air he'd pressed her fingertip between thumb and forefinger and drawn them back, sizzling. A fresh application. And her sheets ruined from slow charring. He vaguely recollected, now, taking off his ring, confused where it had come from, why he wore it.
Elijah vaguely recollected some things, and yet others stood out even through the mire of fever. With the shroud of delusion lifted, he recalled things differently. And he lingered in the doorway, frozen with shame. But he was spurred on by curiosity; he needed to know how much she had seen, his eyes lingering on that lemon-lavender chicken she was picking clean while she watched the television, Firenze purring in her lap.
"That's a new recipe," he said softly, after clearing his throat uncomfortably, and he pushed his hair back from his face in a nervous habit before sidling into the room. Giulia glanced over, eyes illuminated by the television, and they flicked over him. He had put on a pair of pyjama-bottoms, and her eyes lingered on the scar at his hip.
"I woke with the inexplicable urge to try it," she said softly, licking her lips, her eyes tracing his tattoo, caressing his scars. In one of his memories, he could still taste that chicken, smell the wildflowers Alexandre had gifted Lucrezia. He had relived the most traumatic moments of his life – the moments that had fashioned him, created the man who stood before Giulia, more than the ensuing centuries ever had. Gyda's books on the Enlightenment held their sway, but they had only brought him back to himself, compounded the values he had admired long before he was turned into a vampire. Much as he had been influenced by the times he had lived through, he had refused to be changed by them. He was at his core the man he had always been – a hard-worker, dedicated to his family, a fierce lover to enigmatic women, courageous always, ferocious when necessity dictated and gentle otherwise.
He watched Giulia, nibbling delicately on the chicken-drumstick, swaying slightly as the heady memory of Lucrezia in the garden teased at his mind. He pushed it away; he was with Giulia. But she was watching him, and he was no fool; she had seen.
"How much did you see?" he asked quietly.
Giulia sighed softly, and looked him straight in the eye, admitting, "I managed to free myself from your mind when your family sailed from the colony." He breathed a heavy sigh. Had he lingered longer in the fever he was certain she would have seen more of his life with Lucrezia, those earliest, formative years when his family had learned how to survive. When he had healed, fallen in love, and learned just how dark and terrifying – and exquisite – the world could be.
"You painted your fingernails," Elijah said quietly. She extended a hand, observing her elegant fingers.
"I hadn't realised the vervain in my anklet had disintegrated," she said ruminatively, glancing down at her ankle.
"You…you saw all of it?" he asked. "Even…"
"Yes," she whispered, amusement glittering in her eyes. She gave him the daintiest, most delicious little smirk. "Even… It was an intriguing experience." Elijah blushed.
"I don't know how to apologise," he said hoarsely.
Giulia frowned. "You don't need to."
"I –"
"I'm quite aware of what we were doing – even if you weren't," Giulia said, raising a challenging eyebrow at him. She patted the sofa beside her.
"You are not angry or upset," Elijah frowned, not understanding. That he had taken her while he was delusional, that she knew he had believed he was making love to another woman, had been drawn inside his mind while he fucked her, had…felt what he had while he was with Lucrezia, believing wholeheartedly Giulia was her. He wanted to go and hide under the duvet, cringing. Giulia fashioned her response carefully.
"Damon held on to Katherine for a hundred and fifty years, and he was more obsessed than in love with her," she said softly, a slight frown on her face. "If there's anything I recognise it's how deeply vampire emotions run; and you were genuinely in love with Lucrezia. I felt it. It's okay that you've still not recovered from her; she didn't just die. She disappeared. You've had no closure."
"I accepted long ago that I would never see Lucrezia again," Elijah said softly.
"That doesn't stop you from being in love with someone," Giulia mused. "My father was still in love with my mother until the day he died, probably after." Elijah smiled sadly. She rarely spoke of her father, but when she did it was clear to Elijah in her tone of voice, her expression, that she had respected and admired her father, had gotten along well with him, coveted his friendship and advice. As brilliant and mature as Giulia was, it was easy to forget she was still only a teenager. In any other time this would have made little difference; human lifetimes were now so extended that being teenaged was young. And nine months ago Giulia had had a father, a tiny family, she had had a resource for advice and experience that she respected.
Elijah sighed. "I'm not still in love with Lucrezia." Giulia raised an eyebrow.
"A thousand years of memories and your deaths and fucking her are the most excruciating and glorious memories that fought to the surface when you had no control over your own mind," she said thoughtfully. Elijah stifled a smirk.
"I miss her; I will not deny that," he sighed, finally sinking onto the sofa. "And I will love Lucrezia, always. But for my own survival I cannot remain in love with her… You miss out on so much while holding on to someone you know you can never have." Giulia nodded gently, understanding in her tired eyes.
"I know that too well."
"Did your father never wish to remarry?"
"He was such a private person, and my mother was the one," Giulia said sadly. "I don't think it would ever have occurred to him."
"He might have given you brothers and sisters," Elijah murmured. The eldest child in a large family, father to a now-decimated but once-sprawling family of his own, over the centuries as his siblings had drifted farther afield and been hunted down by Elijah, he had come to learn the true loneliness of only-children. Giulia could not miss what she had never had, but Gyda appreciated how full and wonderful her childhood had been with her brothers and sister. And now she was alone. Just as he was now the last of them. He missed his brothers and sisters. He missed Gyda.
"I don't think my dad would've ever risked that," Giulia said, and her tone changed. If Elijah had learned one thing from his time with Giulia, it was that she was afraid of childbirth and pregnancy. She changed the channel on the television if anything regarding childbirth flitted on the screen, shuddering, and any talk of pregnancy made her uncomfortable; she couldn't understand it, felt the entire process unnatural and terrifying. It stemmed, naturally, from her mother's death in childbirth, and the part Giulia herself believed she had played in it. There was no reasoning with her that it could not possibly have been her fault; that women had been dying in childbirth for millennia. Giulia sighed, watching the television, and the star-whale who came to Earth because it couldn't stand children crying. She murmured hollowly, "I'm never having children."
"Don't say that," Elijah said softly. He remembered telling Giulia that he wanted her to have everything, and he meant it. "As broken as I am from the loss of my children, I could never…never imagine not having had them in my life. Not watching Gyda grow up, learn who she is."
"You lived apart for centuries, you rarely saw her," Giulia said thoughtfully. "But you still want to kill Klaus for her."
"While we were apart, I knew Gyda was living her own life, enjoying it, learning, growing. She was falling in love and making friends, having adventures," Elijah said, with a gentle smile, which slowly faded. "That is what…children are supposed to do. Leave their parents to create their own world. Niklaus took that from her."
"How do you know she has been hunted by Klaus?"
"She did not meet me in the Nineteen-Seventies," Elijah said mournfully.
Giulia's eyes glinted with recognition. "You went to New York to meet her."
"For the first time in decades. With trains and aircraft and steam-ships it is far easier to travel; we saw more of each other in the last few decades than in the previous three centuries," Elijah said fondly. Without Niklaus and Rebekah's whims and tantrums to cater to and clean up, he was free. Free to enjoy his one pure indulgence; his daughter. Every time he saw her, she was a little different, flavoured by the times they were living in but always intrinsically herself. She had grown. "Gyda was my first transatlantic phone-call, decades ago… We had decided upon New York as our meeting-place. But she never showed up."
"And that's where you ran into Willem," Giulia guessed. Willem fleeing at the sight of him was awful enough; he was heartbroken that Gyda had not met him. And he had stayed in Manhattan, building a community, hoping that one day she would return. He disliked using witchcraft to track her, the way Esther had tracked them all. They never got away with any secrets – and if Gyda was having a grand adventure with a new love, he did not want to ruin it. It would have been so easy for them to become excruciatingly co-dependent, to have spent the last millennium only with each other, too afraid to be without each other; but they had set each other free.
He had set Gyda free to have her own life; she reluctantly left him to become his siblings' keeper. Over time Gyda had become not just his friend but his confidante, he told her everything he was too afraid even to admit to himself, and though she had the body of a teenager, her mind was ancient. And she had lived through too much not to be compassionate. She had her secrets, as every daughter did from her father, and she had had many of her own lives throughout the ages; he had met some of her husbands, the children she had raised – but she hated endings. She had watched one family die; she would never again watch another wither to sickness and time. Her siblings had died of plague; her aunts and uncles had devolved into monsters she did not recognise. And so she kept away.
"I think perhaps we should find a new topic of conversation," Elijah suggested on a heavy sigh. "Your mother and my daughter; two people to put us in a grand mood." Giulia's features were expressive. She licked her lips thoughtfully, cuddling and fussing over Firenze.
"I know the names of all your children, and you've told me about Gyda," she said, rubbing her chin over Firenze's head as he purred and writhed in her arms. "But you never talk about Lucrezia's children."
"I haven't seen them since the eleventh century, when we fled Marseille," Elijah said softly. "They went with Willem. But they are alive still."
"They are?!"
"Gyda met Lucrezia's son in the court of the Sun King when the palace of Versailles was still a royal hunting-lodge," Elijah said, not surprised. Lucrezia's son had loved above all things exquisite women with charming manners and a secret lust for the unexpected, the dangerous. "They have remained close ever since. And her daughter, Gisela…I have seen only once myself in all the ensuing centuries. At a performance of Turandot at the Royal Opera House in London. She was watching the opera, and I was watching her. She wept during 'Nessun Dorma'."
"I should think so; it's glorious… Gisela," Giulia said softly. "I suppose if the name was good enough for Charlemagne's daughter…"
Elijah frowned at her. "That's what Lucrezia said."
"We are eerily similar," Giulia said, frowning. "Almost as if I were seeing an older version of myself. Or my mother." Elijah hummed softly. He glanced at Giulia.
"You do not…you are not anxious I am…"
"With me because I look like her?" Giulia asked, looking surprised. "I don't think that. That's a stupid reason to stay with anybody, and of all the things you are, stupid is not one." Elijah chuckled softly to himself.
"I'm glad you think so, at least," he said softly. "I sometimes feel that in a thousand years, I have learned nothing from my experiences." He gave a world-weary sigh and stretched out on the sofa, head resting on her stomach.
"Niklaus believed Mikael killed Rollo," Giulia said, gazing at the television. Head resting on her stomach, lulled by her heartbeat, Elijah gave a noncommittal grunt. "What do you think?"
Elijah sighed, watching Amy free the star-whale from torture. "Father never truly cared for Niklaus; he was certainly no reason for Father to kill his friend."
"Niklaus was fathered by Rollo," Giulia murmured. "Do you think Willem was?"
"I think it very possible," Elijah admitted, after a long pause. He glanced up at Giulia. "If Willem was Rollo's son by blood, he would have inherited his werewolf gene. He fought beside us; I know he killed. And yet I never saw any trace that he was a werewolf."
"Your mother created vampires," Giulia said, her voice dripping with irony, "I'm sure she could manage to help conceal or control Willem's shift. She gave Rollo a ring to protect him from it."
"And yet he did not suffer as Niklaus did after we turned," Elijah said.
"Maybe he did," Giulia said. "His personality was different; after what your parents did to you, he took himself off."
"He often did," Elijah said. "Even before, he liked solitude." Giulia frowned into the distance.
"When dogs or wolves are weak or sick, they take themselves away as a defence against the rest of the pack; they would have been turned on otherwise," Giulia said softly. "Perhaps after you turned, that aspect of his werewolf nature came to the front, protecting him from you."
"Why should he need protection from us?"
"Because he was different," Giulia said. "But if he was a werewolf long before your mother turned you into vampires, I imagine he would have had a stronger perception of his own identity. Niklaus triggered those conflicting instincts after becoming a vampire. Perhaps Willem took himself off not just because he was different but because he recognised the conflicting instincts made him a danger to you – rather than risk hurting you like Niklaus did Gyda, he left."
"Why do you think the instincts conflicted?"
"I saw Niklaus in your memories before Esther subdued the werewolf traits," Giulia mused. "He looked like his mind was at war with itself, and being physically incapable of controlling the shift was an extension of that. And I've talked to Caroline and Tyler. Their instincts are very different; they couldn't be combined cohesively."
"You think because Willem killed before we were turned into vampires, he had a firm idea of who he was, and that prevented the same madness," Elijah frowned.
"He may have already been a werewolf. That curse is so strong it was triggered even after Klaus was created a vampire, after death," Giulia said. "Maybe Willem's identity as a werewolf was so strong he could ignore the vampire traits – Klaus would have had no idea which was which. Willem may have had the advantage of being able to see through that confusion, recognising the instincts that had kept him alive as a werewolf."
Elijah glanced up at Giulia as she threaded her fingers absently through his hair, gently massaging his scalp, wondering where her mind had gone as she quietened, watching the television.
"Can I take you somewhere tomorrow?" she asked, a little while later, and Elijah nodded. The episode ended, and Giulia turned off the television. "Would you play for me?" Elijah smiled, kissed her stomach and crawled off the sofa, stretching his fingers. She did have a beautiful piano. And he loved to play for her. Lifting the lid, he sat, wondering where she intended to take him.
The woods were alive. Rustling leaves, tiny birds, crickets and other insects singing in the sighing underbrush as a breeze swept the perfume of wildflowers and herbs up from the sun-warmed earth. It had rained while he suffered through his fever, and as he inhaled the fresh scent of wet greenery with each step, he closed his eyes, and could believe he was home, smiling in the gentle sun as a delicate spring-rain watered his crops, studiously pulling weeds as his children played in the rain. The echoes of their laughter seemed to reverberate from the dewy leaves, the fragrant spring blossoms, the grassy, life-giving forest he had wandered a thousand years ago, and Giulia guided them to the cobweb of natural caverns his sons used to play in.
"You know this place," Giulia observed, seeing his gentle smile.
"I do; beneath lies a network of caves my sons used to play in with Henrik and boys from the Natives' village," he said softly. "The Natives used to take refuge here from the savagery of the full-moon. Mother said…there must be a balance."
"Your family didn't come here?"
"We had Mother, Isak and Kol," Elijah said, with an enigmatic shrug.
"Kol as well?" Elijah chuckled fondly.
"Kol is much older than he looks," he said, smiling. "He learned from my mother how to extend his life with magic, long before we were turned into vampires. He was born the same winter as Isak."
"What happened to his parents?" Elijah glanced at Giulia, pushing memories away; they had been leaking into his dreams more easily than they had in decades, the venom crumbling the foundations of the walls he had put up for his own survival. The blood bright against the spring snows, the fire raging where the granary had been set alight, dead slaves everywhere, men strung up – worst was the women. The raiders, the Jarl's enemies, had not killed them; they had made sport of the women, even the young girls. Mother had sensed it; she had healed her sister, half-dead, evidence all around her of the magic she had channelled in her pain and fury, bodies bearing unmistakable marks of being mutilated by Dark magic. His aunt was brutalised despite it.
A witch could only channel so much magic before it took its toll, Mother had always told them, something she had told them as defence against any other witch they came across, and Elijah had never forgotten it. Push witches too far, magic would kick back. The backlash from defending herself against two men had left her vulnerable to a dozen more.
"Today, the media would call it gang-rape," he said. Usually he was more subtle, kept things closer to the vest; the werewolf bite had broken down his defences and he had drawn Giulia in. She had witnessed his time as he had experienced it, there was no apologising for the way things were, no explaining it away. Raids and rape and torture had been the every-day during a very brutal time when survival in a harsh time was hard. "Long before my father took his place, the old jarl's enemies attacked a nearby village where my aunt lived. Kol was a result. My aunt never survived the attack, combined with Kol's birth and her magic. The trauma combined wreaked havoc on her, made her unstable and dangerous…. Kol never knew her as is mother; Esther raised him. As far as we were concerned, he was our brother. Mother…had to keep Dagmaer away from Kol, for fear she would hurt him as she tried just after he was born… They both knew Kol had tremendous magic; Mother believed Dagmaer thought she could use his magic to…heal herself. Dagmaer died the winter before Freyja died."
"Do you miss her?"
"It was a long time ago," Elijah said. She raised an eyebrow, not taking any of it. He sighed. "She was attacked when I was still just a child. As I grew older and learned what had happened to her, for my mother's sake, I felt great sorrow for the woman Dagmaer might have been. The sister my mother had lost. But she frightened even my father, and knowing she had tried to kill Kol made me always defensive toward her."
"You grew up in a brutal world," Giulia sighed softly, looking indescribably sad. And it was sad. Dagmaer's fate had devastated his mother. Elijah had vague recollections of the sharp-eyed, beautiful woman dancing naked with his mother during their celebrations, elegant and always smiling. That was before. After her body had healed, Dagmaer's mind had remained broken, and it had taken its toll on her beauty, her health. Made her deranged and wicked. Out of Mother's earshot, Father had confessed he was surprised Dagmaer had lived as long as she had, so broken. Today, doctors would have diagnosed Dagmaer with a severe psychotic break and tried to help her. Mother had tried her best; but she had a growing family, a farm to run and other villagers seeking her aid to look after.
"I did," Elijah agreed. Giulia sighed, shaking her head as she gazed at him. She stepped forward, fingers curling around his neck, and kissed him tenderly.
"What was that for?" he asked, with a soft smile, wanting another.
"I think you're doing okay," she said quietly, her voice earnest. Elijah cleared his throat uncomfortably.
"The last time I suffered the werewolf-bite I was not half so calm when I recovered," he said, holding her eye. He leaned in for another kiss, sighing and melting into it, relieved. He was worrying things would alter between them because of what he had showed her of Lucrezia – of what he had done to her while believing he was really with Lucrezia. She'd smirked, telling him it had been the best kind of threesome they could ever have: he'd fooled around with the other woman a thousand years ago; she'd had him to herself. "I believe I have you to thank for that."
"I didn't do anything."
"You're here," he said quietly. Her eyes were sad when she smiled; she cradled his cheek in her hand, thumb stroking his cheekbone, and stole a kiss.
"Come on," she whispered, then smiled and wandered away.
"Where are you taking me?" Elijah asked, smiling as he followed. He'd follow her anywhere – the view made him trip over his own feet, a perfectly plump backside and a beautiful little waist. An hourglass, he sighed, knowing she wore no bra beneath her pretty black top with the dainty white blossoms printed on it, a cascade of sunny yellow and red roses tumbling over one shoulder, the v-neckline very low. She rarely wore a bra around him, and he stirred, thinking of that delicate little piercing. Gods, he loved that, he loved that tiny surprise, the hint that beneath the classical, intense beauty there was something stronger, more dangerous, tempting. He loved the way she purred and writhed while he suckled and tugged it. He stifled a growl, trying to remain focused. She had brought him here for a reason – not a rendezvous.
"Last year, I was researching an essay on the Underground Railroad through Mystic Falls," Giulia explained, glancing over her shoulder. For herself, Giulia had brought a dazzling LED flashlight; she showed him a new way into the caves, a thousand years shifting the natural structure, and they made their way through the tunnels, his sons' laughter and the Natives' songs echoing off the dank stone as shards of light dappled off the walls.
It was the caves, the quiet, and his recent exposure to memories he had long since bricked away that made him pause the deeper they ventured into the tunnels, caught shivering in memory, details plaguing him like they hadn't for centuries. Having Torvi by one of the falls, the afternoon he was sure Gyda had come into being, the setting so perfect as the sun set on a rare hot, lazy day; teaching his sons to use a sword and spear; chasing and playing with Annika until she screamed with delight, throwing her up in the air and catching her, receiving her kisses; roughhousing with his brothers after a long day; Alrik's flushed cheeks as Mother healed his finger, crushed.
He glanced up in the darkness, blind to Giulia; all he saw was his boys, jostling each other as Alrik worked his small chisel and a hammer against the rock.
She felt him leave, rather than saw. She knew he could see perfectly in the dank catacombs, but bright as her LED flashlight was she could see nothing beyond that glow. Suddenly, he was gone, drawn by some memory he hadn't shared with her the other night. She had seen the most debilitating memories, the ones he either feared or were hurt by the most in a thousand years of lifetimes, but they were merely glimpses. He had lived so much more. And something about the caves had triggered recognition.
An echo made the hairs at the back of her neck prickle upright, and she eyed the cave roof, assessing. Not a rockslide, which would be uncomfortable. She frowned beyond the glow of light, and called, "Elijah?" Something had happened up ahead. Whatever it was, Elijah was a thousand years old; any supernatural boogeyman, he could handle. When she received no answer, she sighed, stepping carefully on the uneven ground.
Her heart jumped to her throat, only the flash of a half-inch of white collar above his suit-jacket collar warning her before she bumped into Elijah, and she backed up a pace, jaw dropping as Elijah moaned softly.
He had been pinioned in place in the centre of the passage. No fewer than six lances had speared his body at odd, inescapable angles. She could only describe them as lances – hewn spears at least six inches in diameter, jutting from crevices in the rock. One had struck almost clean through his heart. She clamped the flashlight between her teeth and, feeling very much like Indiana Jones, assessed the lances, the rest of the passage, and ducked between two of the trees sticking out of Elijah's body. The lances were rough-hewn – and looked very old, still dusty; she looked around, and the flashlight illuminated great drifts of dust and debris and cobwebs that had been dislodged by this – this Home Alone-esqueanti-vampire security-system. She had walked these caves a hundred times; nothing like this had ever happened – she didn't even know these were here.
She grabbed the one speared through his heart – Ermengildo Zegna this time, she thought; Elijah needed to perhaps dress down while he was plotting vengeance on his brother, he was going through a wince-worthy tailor's bill all too easily. And ironically he had been lanced through the heart the afternoon he'd ruined an Armani suit. A Salvatore responsible each time. She grimaced guiltily, wrestling the spear from his heart, frowning as she realised that a soft hissing noise was coming from him – specifically, from the places where he was stuck like a suckling-pig. The spears, though ancient, had been steeped in vervain, and she noticed guiltily that Elijah's face had been burned by more of it. Another anti-vampire boobie-trap.
Oops.
As soon as she removed the spear, Elijah seemed to stir. She had trouble with the others, lodged at such peculiar angles, the ends of the spears still deep inside the crevices of rock – she had to twist and manipulate them and even cause Elijah more pain by moving him, at least until the next two spears were removed from his body – she gently guided him to the side to free another, and the last two she had to shove back where they had come from, quickly moving Elijah out of the way. By the fourth she removed, he was conscious, silently helping her efforts. But there was a coppery tang on the air, and though his face had healed the scent of vervain and burnt flesh made her sniff and sneeze delicately, trying not to think about the centuries-old dust and mites and whatever else had died in those crevices she was inhaling. Elijah at last came free, and Giulia helped him stumble out of the way – he grasped her hand and kept her from going too deeply into the passage from the spears.
"There may be more," he warned. Giulia frowned.
"That's never happened before," she said wonderingly, gazing at the spears dangling eerily from the rocks. Definitely Indiana Jones, she thought.
"I'm sure it has not," Elijah said quietly, glancing at her. "Those were very ancient booby-traps. Only a vampire could have triggered them… A gift from my old neighbours, I believe." That he implied the Natives had left the booby-trap behind compounded Giulia's already pretty solid belief that what she wanted to show him had been left by the Native tribe his family had once known. "You did well to dislodge them."
"Mm. I thought I might have to get the cordless handheld-saw in my trunk."
"Why do you have a saw in your trunk?"
"You never know," Giulia said, quirking an eyebrow, and Elijah smiled softly. She helped prop him up against the cavern wall. "Your suit's ruined. I have to talk to you about Fruit-of-the-Loom." He chuckled softly. "Are you healing? There are a couple blood-bags in my car."
"No, thank you," Elijah said quietly. He had never consumed blood in her company. Had never even accidentally nibbled; but then, Giulia knew one of his defining qualities was his self-restraint. Not giving in to what he desired… She hadn't given him any choice but to indulge in her; her mortality was certain and she refused to give in to any fear of it. She wanted to revel in every moment. And that meant having him as many times as she could.
It was curious, though. Even his most traumatic memories never showed his reaction to drinking blood. "You've never asked if you could…"
"I never confuse the two," Elijah said, his eyes gloriously dark as he gave her a sad smile.
"Fucking and feeding?" she smirked, undoing his jacket buttons and sighing at the mess within; his dusty forget-me-not shirt was soaked with blood, torn, singed. His jacket was too dark for her to tell. She surprised a laugh out of him.
"I would no sooner take a casserole to bed than feed from you…" he murmured, and Giulia glanced at him from the corner of her eye. She knew he was a foodie, he did not merely eat to survive, he relished food. Food from the earth. Blood, to him, was a necessary evil. "I think my attitude toward blood is more like…a diabetic's to insulin. Necessary for my survival, and ultimately a pain." The modern attitude of vampires toward feeding hadn't originated from him, then. They had never actually addressed that Elijah was indeed a vampire, that he required blood for survival. Giulia knew he was, so did Elijah, but he had neither hidden the fact from Giulia, nor did he rub it in her face. He did not drink blood from Baccarat crystal rather than bourbon, or chew on her – nor did he invite a sorority to the house to get drunk, play Twister and have a blood-orgy.
Elijah's mentality toward his vampirism was very revealing, his likening it to necessary medicine. He watched her carefully, then said, "You've never offered."
"I'm not a snack," Giulia chided him playfully, then she pulled a face, her tone dry, saucy. "Well, except in bed. And on the piano."
"Anywhere I can have you," Elijah corrected, drawing her to him with a hand on her waist. He nuzzled her nose delicately, stealing tiny kisses. She drifted away dreamily, smiling.
"Later," she whispered, snatching a fiery kiss from him that had to set his blood on fire. It did; she felt it. Smirking to herself, she stepped away again – her smile faded as she watched his face crease into a distracted frown, eyes darting into the darkness. She licked her lips. "Earlier…you remembered something."
"I did," Elijah said, giving nothing away. Giulia watched him. Once bitten, he was shy about darting off again. Much as he knew he would survive any injury, it didn't stop them hurting. He seemed more annoyed at being speared by ancient Native American booby-traps than anything else, but hesitant enough not to go darting away again.
"Are you okay to continue? I need you to see it," Giulia said, and Elijah nodded after a huge sigh, rolling his shoulders, glancing down at his ruined shirt, clicking his tongue at his blood-soaked tie. "It's important."
"Please allow me to go first," he said softly, and Giulia didn't argue; the only thing she wanted to be speared by was him. Whether there were no others, or as Giulia guessed, they had been triggered over the centuries, besides one burst of dried vervain deeper into the passage, they did not come across any other anti-vampire booby-traps. Elijah believed that those who had set the traps would have believed that anyone who could survive to see what was beyond them, deserved to see it.
They were nearly at the cave she wanted to show him when Elijah stopped so suddenly she almost bounced off him. He steadied her gently, but turned distractedly to the wall, sinking to a crouch. His fingers glowed in the dark, and Giulia shone the flashlight on the wall as he traced his fingertips over a mark carved into the rock. The look on his face was close to reverence, and in the flashlight his eyes glittered with tears that did not fall, emotion filling his face in a way he rarely let show. The last couple of days had been a tidal-wave of visceral responses from a man who kept everything so tidily under the surface. And Giulia loved this side of him as much as she loved the enigmatic side. She loved the puzzle, the challenge – but his vulnerability was heart-breaking.
Giulia lowered the beam of the flashlight, feeling like she and the light were intruding on a very private moment. She saw his lips tremble, watched him sigh as a tear slipped free, glittering down his cheek as he traced his fingertips over an ancient glyph carved into the stone.
"One afternoon after a long harvest, my sons and Henrik had to drag my son Alrik to the jarlshall. Mother healed his crushed thumb; they'd jostled Alrik while he used a chisel and hammer to engrave their names into the stone," Elijah said, his voice soft and full of emotion. He sniffed, cleared his throat. There was a soft sound almost like a laugh. "He always hated learning runes. Never thought he'd have any use for them." He glanced over his shoulder, his eyes bright, and offered her his hand; she took it, squatting down beside him, and he turned the light onto the glyphs carved crudely into the stone. Time had worn them down, but the impressions were still there, unnatural angles in the rough-hewn rock. He told her the fuþark, the runic alphabet his mother had taught him as a child, using the letters his second son Alrik had carved into the wall. There was Björn's name, Alrik, Gunnar and Olle, Henrik's name as well, and Elijah's fingers lingered over the carved runes of his name. Nearly every awful thing that had happened to his family – his human family – had stemmed from Henrik's death. Not his fault; but it had happened.
"Alrik had a chisel," Giulia said softly, smiling. "Was he your apprentice?"
"In carpentry?" Elijah smiled, nodding. "He marvelled at the idea a tree could be made into something so beautiful as one of my ships."
"You still built them, after you moved here?"
"We were farmers, but we had also come from a village that relied on its fishing," he said softly. "The ocean gave life. Especially in the early days of our settlement. So we needed boats; and I was the best carpenter in our village. I was never a witch but Mother said my magic was in woodwork."
"That I agree with," Giulia said drily, surprising a deep chuckle and a grin from Elijah. He reached out and pinched her ass playfully. She swatted his hand away, overbalancing. He leaned over, giving her a kiss on the cheek, then turned back to the wall. Giulia got the sense he could stay there all day, just staring at those ancient letters, names of brothers long dead. Viking graffiti, she thought, and she remembered a quote from Doctor Who.
"People fall out of the world sometimes, but they – they always leave traces, little things you can't quite account for: faces in photographs; luggage; half-eaten meals…rings. Nothing is ever forgotten, not completely, and, if something can be remembered, it can come back."
Not really. But the sentiment was sweet; and those runes were proof that once, Elijah's sons had lived. They were long gone, but once upon a time they had been here, brothers having fun together, carving graffiti into the wall.
Elijah sighed, turning to Giulia. "Thank you for bringing me here." She tipped his chin with her fingertips, pressing a kiss to his lips, and he cradled her face in his hands, keeping her there for a lingering moment. "But this isn't what you wanted to show me, is it?"
"Truthfully, I never even knew this was here," she said sadly. It would have driven her mad. He straightened, offering his hand to her, and she noticed his hand shook as he threaded his fingers with hers, walking away. He didn't look back, and Giulia thought it took him all the strength he had; he didn't want to break the way she didn't think he remembered doing while he was ill. At one point, he had sobbed in her arms. But he didn't remember that; and she wasn't going to tell him.
In no time at all, Giulia was squeezing through the crevice into a cave no-one could have found if they didn't already know where it is. Giulia had been smoking a joint the day she had found it, the smoke had been sucked into the cave, and she'd followed. No booby-traps set off when Elijah followed her, uncaring of his already-ruined suit. She paused as the rocky crevice widened to a narrow passage; beyond, the cave would open out. Elijah gave her a thoughtful frown, bemused; why had she stopped? She glanced into the cave, then back at Elijah, catching him with a hand on his stomach to stop him.
Her expression was the most solemn he had possibly ever seen it, and…oddly apologetic. Whatever she knew was beyond was meant for him, he knew. She knew something he did not, and it was that apologetic tint to her deeply saddened expression that made him hesitant. Did he want to see what was beyond? These were the Natives' caves, a place precious to them for the safety they offered from the savagery of the full-moon – and escape from their enemies. These tunnels had been used as an escape and a means to ambush attackers long before runaway slaves had used them for shelter.
Giulia waited at the mouth of the cave. This was something she was certain he would appreciate having discovered in private. She had seen the markings a year ago, confused and entranced by them, wanting to know the key to deciphering them.
It got so quiet the only thing she could hear was the steady tick-tick of her usually quite silent watch, and the sound of her shoes on the rough stone floor when she fidgeted.
She had been thinking of this cave since she had lived Elijah's memories. She had realised what the cipher was a few months ago, but until now the context had evaded her. Now she knew. And Elijah would understand it better than anyone.
His footsteps drew her out of her own thoughts about Klaus and Willem and Esther and werewolves and jewellery and she glanced up. Wordlessly, Elijah led the way back out of the tunnels. She had to shield her eyes from the blazing sunlight, even shielded by cavern entrance and the trees, too used to the darkness. Standing in his ruined suit in the sunshine, Elijah had never looked worse. It wasn't the blood-soaked shirt, the torn suit jacket… It was the look on his face. Earlier she had thought he had been showing more emotion than he ever had since his illness from the werewolf-venom; the look on his face now eclipsed anything.
Pure white-hot rage. So strong he couldn't even speak.
She knew some of his tells: that tiny muscle that ticked in his jaw; clenching and unclenching his fists unconsciously. He was very still in his agitation. But his dark eyes showed a mind racing. Finally, he turned to her, white-lipped, aghast.
"How did you know?" he asked simply. Giulia withdrew something from her pocket, and Elijah's eyes homed on it. He sighed softly. "I took that from Elena. I hid it away."
"I know. I took it from your hiding-place," Giulia said unconcernedly. Elena's – Rebekah's – Esther's pewter pendant glinted in her fingers. "Last September when Stefan gave Elena this pendant, I realised where I'd seen the pattern before… When I learned it had belonged to your mother, I realised what the paintings meant."
"And the conclusion you came to?" Elijah asked curtly. Giulia sighed.
"Niklaus killed Rollo… He killed your mother."
Elijah gave an odd sort of nod, his expression closing off the way she was used to. But his lips trembled again, and his eyes had watered. He was fighting for control; she wouldn't affect the outcome by approaching him. He had to break down or pull himself together on his own. He raised a hand to his eyes, pressing hard, and after a moment gasped and let his hand fall, sniffing.
"A thousand years ago I heard it from his lover's lips that Niklaus had killed our mother," he said softly, glancing at Giulia, who stared at him, honestly surprised. She was learning too much, putting too much together that perhaps Elijah wasn't, had access to more and wasn't sharing what she knew could help him… But he had a thousand years of history – his own, and with the various members of his family, none of whom she had met and if his brother had his way for the next thousand years as he had the last, she never would. His eyes sparkled with tears, but he pushed them back. "For a thousand years I pushed the thought away as a lie."
"Why would she make up a lie like that?"
"Aurore was mentally unstable," Elijah said, his voice now without a tremor of emotion. "Capricious and spoiled, she did what she wanted for her own amusement, to watch others be punished. She was delighted by causing arguments… But she knew the truth all along. Niklaus…told her." Giulia raised a foot against the tree behind her, leaning, and sighed. The Natives' paintings inside that cave had told stories. The creation of vampires. And the deaths of a werewolf and the witch who created the vampires, at the hands of a monster not bound to any moon or harmed by the sun. Over a thousand years ago, the Natives had learned the truth of Esther's and Rollo's deaths – their murders.
They had not been killed at the hands of Mikael, a man whose children had spent a thousand years fleeing him, a powerful witch's Viking warlord husband. He had not killed Rollo for vengeance, for being his wife's lover; he had not killed Esther for giving birth to a bastard.
Niklaus had murdered them.
Worse, in Giulia's mind; he had pinned it on Mikael, the man who had raised him, and turned Mikael's other children against him. For a thousand years Elijah and his siblings, Gyda, had lived in fear of the vampire who hunted vampires, who had scoured the earth trying to track them down.
Now Elijah realised the truth about why.
Mikael had been blamed for a murder he had not committed – his own children had been manipulated into believing he was to blame for the death of their mother.
From Mikael's perspective, it was heart-breaking. He had lost his best-friend, his wife, and all of his children – one to death, the others, to his wife's murderer.
Because of one asshole.
They stayed out in the woods for a long time. At a certain point, Elijah did break down.
He had to reassess a thousand years of his own history.
To be lied to and manipulated and treated so abominably as Klaus had treated Elijah, treated all of them, it was mortifyingto learn the truth. Everything he'd thought was concrete had shifted underfoot, knocking him breathless. He collapsed onto the ground, and Giulia held him while he sobbed silently, clutching at her.
They left the woods, Elijah's ruined suit-jacket slung over his shoulder as he draped his arm around hers; she had an arm around his waist and dipped a hand to gently squeeze his ass. He curled her toward him, pressing a kiss to her temple, and they wandered back to her car, where she found a change of clothing for him, and he drew her into the backseat, testing her flexibility and letting Elijah work off some of his frustration and helplessness.
She'd never be able to look at the backseat without thinking of them together there – talk about creative.
A.N.: Always end on a high note, eh?!
