This really was a challenge. I was hesistant to write it at first because it's such a heavy subject and it should be treated with decency.
Major trigger warning, definitely only meant for a mature audience. Graphic depictions of violence following.
She'd turned it off at some point.
It had been a rational decision, really.
At first she'd tried to fight, to hold on but after some time she realized two things: he was stronger than her, there was nothing she could do – and: if she wanted to stay strong she needed to separate herself from the situation. The second realization wasn't really as much as a realization as a matter of fact. Before she'd taken the final step and switched off her humanity her mind had already insinuated the human equivalent – she found herself watching the scene from above, feeling nothing, neither physically nor emotionally.
It had only been one small step from there.
Now all she could think about was how she would get herself out of this alive.
The pain, the feeling of skin against skin, the shoving, the other things were filed under the category: vampire healing will take care of it.
His face was filed under the category: destroy. She watched it carefully, her gaze empty yet sharp.
She calculated things, how long it would still take, which of his movements might open room for attack, how exactly his eyeballs would look, pierced with toothpicks. Whether a vampire would dissolve in a tank of vervein-water.
She was lost in thought, remembering the sound of breaking bones and the account of a middle-school-friend of hers who had once broken her ankle when suddenly he was ripped off of her in a movement that was too fast even for her vampire vision.
She sat up and her eyes found Klaus crashing him against the wall, his hybrid face contorted and twisted in a way that she had never seen before. As if he was a monster originating from scary fairy tails people told their children in the middle ages, the real ones, not the polished Disney version. She decided that it was an apposite description, as she watched Klaus rip off his ear.
Calmly, she dressed herself in what was left of her clothes and rose to her feet.
Klaus hand reached into his torso and slowly, agonizingly, pulled out an organ that she couldn't identify. Mesmerized, she watched.
She pondered for a bit. When she turned her humanity back on (and she would, she'd sworn to herself that this was only a situational decision) – would she feel guilty if she took part in the torture session? Would it make things worse?
She knew herself. It would.
This was a rational decision to be made and she knew exactly what would happen. She wouldn't even be able to feel sorry for herself if she killed him. She'd lock herself in a ping-pong-game of guilt and dread, shame and self-hatred. She would already have to deal with the fact that the psychologically necessary basic feeling of safety would be destroyed. (She'd thought she'd left all that behind her when she became a vampire. Wrong.) She definitely shouldn't add to the burden weighing on her shoulders.
But here she was, yet able to experience some sort of justice.
So she sat down again and proceeded in watching, reveling in the distorted crying and screaming that was leaving his throat as if it was being wrung out of him as Klaus took hold of his large intestine and pulled it out like giant worm resting in his insides.
Finally, she heard the sound of crashing bones and it was like a symphony in her ears, blending with the sounds coming from his mouth and the feral growl erupting from Klaus' (definitely not human).
It was like thirst being quenched and slowly, from moment to moment she was feeling better, more at peace. Too bad they didn't have any vervein, too bad it was night.
When Klaus made him eat his own eyeballs she felt a change in her mind.
This chapter was closed. She needed to move on to the next step.
She rose to her feet and walked up to them, softly touching Klaus' arm.
He froze instantly and then turned his head towards her, slowly, terror painting his expression as if her sight was something he'd tried to evade.
"Bite him," she said. "And leave him to die."
He licked his lips, his eyes vacant and then, in one inhumanly fast motion he buried his fangs in his neck, almost splitting him in half with the force that he was moving with.
He only drank a little, spitting it out as soon as she heard the thump of a body hitting the floor.
She looked down at him, mutilated and only remotely resembling the man who's face had carved itself into her brain, eternally.
Klaus still evaded her gaze.
"Could you get me somewhere I could shower?" she asked and he didn't turn, just nodded and started heading for the door. She followed.
She would shower, feed, rest and then get herself to a place, to people who could take care of her as soon as she turned it on again.
"How did you find me?" she asked, sitting down in the passenger seat of his car.
He kept his gaze fixed on the road as he started driving. After some time, he answered.
"I'm always keeping tabs of anyone of priority to me."
She stared out the window, watching the lights of the city fly by. He drove insanely fast, so fast that it would have scared her with her emotions on, even as a vampire.
"So you're stalking me."
He didn't say anything, keeping his eyes fixed on the road. They were burning and she watched him for a while, leaning back into the seat.
When they arrived at his place he quickly handed her a set of clothes (Rebekah's, she presumed) and she headed straight into the shower.
Outside she heard things crashing.
She would scrub herself bloody when she turned it on again, she'd already had a taste of the urge, the repulsion, the nausea back before she'd turned it off. Right now she just showered normally, thoroughly but non-neurotic. She'd have enough of that sooner or later.
When she returned to the living room she saw that he had wrecked half of it. Now he was sitting on the couch, a glass filled with alcohol in his hand, motionless.
She filled herself her own glass and sat down beside him.
"You know it's me that got raped, not you, right?" she asked him, matter-of-factly.
He flinched and as if he was waking up from some sort of coma he turned to look at her, unadulterated terror and rage in his eyes. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again.
Fascinated, she watched as he composed himself and his face turned to stone, his jaw clenched tightly.
"Right," he said. "I apologize."
She shook her head, taking a sip of her drink. "There's nothing to apologize for. You saved me. And you gave me justice."
She saw emotions crossing his eyes, disbelief, pain and an utter sense of brokenness.
"However," she said. "You can't deal with me if I turn it on again. I'll go find Elena and Stefan for that."
He frowned, his eyes still watery, but then he nodded, the gesture holding a sense of finality.
"Just do me a favor and don't slaughter a village of innocent people about this. You could stick to rapists." She said it almost jokingly, but both of them knew that she was serious.
"Fine," he said, his words sharp, and took a huge slug of his drink.
"Now you should go shower, you're basically drenched in blood. I need to feed. Plus, I need a bed to sleep in." She didn't even ask if she could stay, it was a silent certainty hanging between them.
He nodded.
They didn't speak anymore that night.
He brought her a whole bottle of blood and led her to the guest bedroom.
When she woke up in the middle of the night she could hear him mumbling dark confessions in all kinds of different languages and eerie noises (roars, growls and some she couldn't even put a name on) in his sleep through the bedroom wall.
She was glad that she was a vampire, for a reason that she had never been glad before.
There was a sense of primal safety left – she could turn away and switch it off whenever she needed.
Maybe this could serve as the thing to pull herself out with, when she would face the gaping black hole she was stuck in again.