Rhythm of the Heart

Violet eyes. People seemed fearful of those eyes, because they didn't know why they were such a colour. They didn't know the reason, so they immediately try to dispel of the source of madness. But some things don't die as easily as expected, some things might fight back— some things might just come back.

Mystic Falls, Virginia, 1862

Astra Dumia Latona Casca hummed quietly to herself as she gently stroked her fingers over the smooth stone of the necklace she wore, an archaic smile touching her lips as she looked out the window of the carriage. Trees passed her view slowly, the sounds of the horse's hooves ringing in her ears over her own humming. The interior of the carriage was lush and calming, leaving a warm feeling for the occupants inside. As Astra thought of her companion, she could not help but to glance over to him, her smile widening ever so slightly.

"You seem pleased, Miss Casca," The man said with a teasing lilt to his tone, "What could have you in such good spirits?" Astra smiled ever wider as she turned to look out the window again, crossing one leg over the other.

"That, Mr Salvatore, I shall keep with myself," She replied back softly, glancing to him in the corner of her eye. She watched as the dark haired man leaned forward from his seat opposite of her and adjusted her skirt to cover her raised ankle once more.

"We don't need any further of a scandal, now, Miss."

"Thank you, Sir."

Astra looked into his blue eyes, her stomach tightening from the look that he held in his eyes. Her own violet-blue eyes gazed back at him, her leg rising slightly to brush her ankle along his hand. But before the man could show any reaction to her movement, the carriage jerked to a stop, causing the two to separate quickly, as was routine. The door opened and the dark haired male stepped out first, before he waited as Astra shuffled toward the door, taking the hand that he offered as he assisted her to the ground.

"Thank you, Mr Salvatore."

"Of course, Ms Casca." The formalities were all a part of the game they played, both for themselves and for the people that watched them along the streets. After all, they were the talk of the town ever since they had been discovered as a courting couple. That was all that the people wanted to discuss, Damon Salvatore taking a bride? Could it be?

Astra smiled when she saw Damon's younger brother walk down the path from their family home, a boyish smile on his face. "Stefan, I feel that it's been too long since we've spoken." Stefan gave a shy smile as he dipped to a slight bow at the waist, watching as Astra curtsied in return.

"It truly is a pleasure, Miss Casca."

"I hope you're not trying to steal my fiancée's affection, little brother," Damon teased as he walked up to Astra's side. Stefan smiled and shook his head.

"Never," He said playfully. He then turned his full attention to his brother, the sounds of the carriage riding away filling the background. "Father is waiting inside, he wishes to see you before he leaves, Damon."

"Of course, you will be alright on your own?" Damon asked as he turned to look at the beautiful woman standing with him. She glanced up to him with a lilt to her mysterious violet eyes, her lips carefully touched with a smile.

"Indeed, you go and see your father. Would you accompany to the back gardens, Stefan?" Astra asked as she looked to the younger brother once she had addressed her fiancé. Stefan smiled and nodded, before they both looked to Damon.

"I will return shortly, love," Damon said calmly, taking Astra's hand within his own and bringing it to his lips to kiss her knuckles lightly, holding her eyes as he did so. "Keep her safe for me, little brother." Damon clapped Stefan on the back as he passed him, heading up the steps to the large home. Astra watched him until he had disappeared behind the large doors, before she turned her smile to Stefan, accepting his offered arm as he escorted her around the home to the back garden.

She smiled and spoke pleasantly with Stefan, her thick skirts ruffling around her and giving background noise to their words. He told her of Damon's life before she had come, just as he did ever time they were alone. Stefan seemed just as glad that she was with his brother as she was. The loneliness of Damon had been hard on Stefan as well when he was constantly trying to help his older sibling, who did not wish to be helped in the first place.

"So, Stefan, tell me how you have been. It has been quite a while since we last spoke. Is there any maiden that you wish to sweep off her feet?" Astra teased, gaining a shy laugh from the male as he looked to the ground, causing her to smile. She was always pleased to be in Stefan presence, he brought about a sense of relief from the world with his young and shy acts. The first time they had met he had stammered over himself foolishly, only saved when Damon had returned to the room after leaving to make sure that there was a room for her for the night. The storm that she and Damon were caught in soaked her to the bone and Stefan was not prepared in the least for a drenched woman to be standing inside the front door of his home, shivering and wet and trying to calm him down.

"Not as of yet, Miss Casca."

"Oh, such a pity, you do look so dashing in your new suit," She complemented; delighted at the small bush she drew from him at her words. What a walk this would be.

~†~

Roman Empire, 77 A.D.

Pulling her dress up so that she didn't trip over the flowing white material, Astraea laughed joyously as she ran down the numerous steps that led to the baths. Her elder sister chuckled from behind her, her young baby girl perched on her hip as she followed more slowly.

"Sister, you will trip if you continue to rush as such, come now, walk with me. This one is old and needs assistance." Carina smiled softly at the childish antics of her twenty three year old sister. Astraea stopped carefully, her sandals catching the sand on the floor and scratching the stone slightly. Carina held her arm out and let her younger sister walk up to her free side, allowing her to hold onto her sister for support.

"You are only in your thirty-third summer, sister, not so old as mother and father," Astraea's smile caused Carina to laugh scandalously, her baby girl giggling at her hip.

"Hush, young one, or chance they hear you. Now, you continue to the baths, I shall join you shortly. Callista has caught the summer heat and I fear for her, so young."

"Of course," Astraea agreed quietly, placing a kiss upon the elder's cheek gently. Departing from the others company, Astraea continued on down the corridor more slowly this time. Her long hair curled in small rings down her back, tied with a strap of leather that her mother had gotten at the market a couple of days before. Turning the last corner to make her way past the libraries, heading toward the baths that were located at the far end of the hall, she smiled to a young girl and her mother that passed her by.

An arm wrapped around her side as she was passing one of the vast arches decorating the hall, causing her to gasp in shock as she was pulled from the main hall. An elegant finger decorated with a thick gold ring placed to her lips when she moved to shout, catching her off guard as she looked into light brown eyes that glowed with amusement.

"I beg forgiveness if I startled you."

Astraea smiled softly as she stepped away from him, still feeling touch of his finger to her lips in her mind. "Elijah, that was a most unpleasant trick," she said quietly, her hands clasping behind her back. The white gown that had once been smooth along her shoulders was slightly wrinkled from movement and touch.

"Again, forgive me, Lady Casca."

"Of course, Elijah," She agreed carefully, still smiling calmly. "Are you coming from the libraries?"

"I am, and I presume that you head toward the baths?" Astraea said nothing more, only smiled and darted out from the arch space that he had pulled her in. "Do you run from me, young one?"

"I am not a young one any longer, Elijah; I am almost as old as you are." A look came to the man's eyes that told of a secret that she was unaware of, but neither said anything further on the subject. "Come, escort me to the doors, would you?" She asked respectfully, holding her hand out to him. Elijah took her hand in his own, before placing it on his other arm so that he could escort her to the baths without people assuming it was unlawful in any way.

"I have heard rumours," Elijah started casually, gaining a curious look from the woman as she looked up toward his face. But he kept his eyes forward on the hall before then. "About the son of an Egyptian scholar-"

"I do not intend to marry, Elijah," Astraea interrupted, slipping her hand from his arm and stepping away from him again. Her long skirts shuffled the ground, her strange violet eyes catching his brown ones. Elijah tipped his head to the side slightly as he looked into those eyes, his long light brown hair falling into his face for a moment.

"Was he not a man chosen by your parents, Astraea?" Elijah asked in fake curiosity, knowing full well all of the information about her reluctant engagement. A defiant look grew in her eyes then, her hands gathering her skirts as they fisted in anger.

"I will not marry a man that merely wishes power at his fingertips. I will only marry such who I love, and he is not it!" Astraea yelled, gaining the attention of a few people who passed by them. But they continued on, leaving the pair to their own. "A pig who thinks that he is worthy because he can write? He cannot even speak our tongue, and I have not finished my lessons on Egyptian yet-"

"What of your health?" Elijah asked quietly, turning his head to look away from her a moment. The silence that followed his question was long and painful to bear, and when he looked up to Astraea again, her cheeks had gone pale, her violet eyes wide and fearful. She shook her head slowly, her lips tightening into a thin line, her shakes growing faster until her hair was swinging around her face.

"No one is supposed to know, who else knows of it!" She cried out, her hands raising to her hair as she began to panic. Elijah stepped forward and carefully manoeuvred her into another archway, looking around to make sure that the hall was empty.

"Calm yourself, please," Elijah said calmly, his hands carefully removing her fingers from her hair. It had pulled from the leather strap, leaving the band to fall uselessly to the floor. "I, and I alone, know of your secret, lady. I will not tell a sole, I swear it to the gods." Astraea turned her body away from him as she leant against the cool stone of the wall.

"And to whom am I to trust now? If you know my secret there will always be others," Astraea whispered, her voice broken and weak. Elijah slipped a single digit beneath her chin and lifted her face so that he could look into her eyes. Tears collected just at the edge, ready to fall.

"Trust me, Astraea, when I tell you that I will never tell your secret, and I will protect it from the ears and eyes of others. Trust me." Astraea looked up to Elijah fully, one of the tears tipping over the edge and falling down her cheek in one swift stream of water and salt. The seriousness—the possessiveness—on his face shocked her more than she wished to admit, considering they had known one another for many a season. And although she had grown and changed since he had first appeared in her life, Elijah had remained his young and dashing self.

Astraea had changed from dressing as a young lady to that of a woman, showing her curves and tan skin, the sun bleached brightness of her hair offered to the eyes of many. Her dresses no longer covered all inches of her form to protect modesty, but instead it only consisted of a skirt with two long fold of thick cloth that crossed up over her chest to cover her breasts, leaving her back and much of her stomach bare.

But Elijah continued to wear the same style of toga as always, accompanied with a rich violet cape that draped off of one shoulder, exposing the pale skin on one well muscles arm. It was more of a surprise when she saw him in a new outfit than when he showed up as suddenly as he had minutes before.

"Elijah," Astraea said carefully, placing a hand on his chest and pushing him back gently, feeling the soft material of his outfit beneath her fingers. "I must part with you now, for my sister must be waiting for me, wondering where I have gone." Moving to walk past him, Elijah only stopped her briefly to lean down and place a chaste kiss on her forehead, before he allowed her to slip from his reach and hurry down the hall.

~*~*~ᵻ~*~*~

Mystic Falls, Virginia, 2012

Astra looked at the truck that Elijah had left in with a mixture of worry and curiosity. It would only take at least a half-hour to sort things out with Rose and Trevor, and get the doppelganger—and adding on the two hour drive from where they were staying and back—it would only take a maximum of five to five and a half hours. But it had been a whole day since he had left and his truck was still sitting in the drive of the old and abandoned manor.

Looking up at the darkening sky, she turned away from the truck and made her way up toward the house. The gravel of the path crunched beneath the leather boots she wore, the only sound that disrupted the forest. The animals could easily tell that there was a predator nearby and had hidden inside their burrows and trees. Taking in a deep breath of the forest air, the smell of blood and mould emanated from the house.

Her sharp violet eyes caught the sight of several sets of foot prints left on the deck steps, dirt fallen from the tracks of their shoes. Shaking her head in anger, she walked up the steps of the house at a faster pace and grasped the rusting handle of the door, pushing it open easily. It was a good thing that the house was abandoned, or she would have had to wait to be invited in. Stepping over the threshold without a moment of hesitation, she looked around at the still lit room. The many lights were still lit above the stairs, making the world outside of the windows look more ominous than it was. At least to her.

Closing the door behind her, something drew her attention from the corner of her eye. Looking over to the back of the room, a short and startled scream tore from her throat as she backed a step away in shock. The sight of Elijah so lifeless and blue always turned her stomach. Her heart began to beat furiously in her chest, causing her to take pause as she placed her hand over the organ in shock. It always astounded her that she could still feel a pulse when so many considered their race to be 'dead'.

Pushing her thoughts aside, she stepped up to Elijah and inspected the wood that had been driven through his chest carefully. It looked like a pole for a coat rack or something. Looking on either side of the door and spotting the torn wood on the floor to her right, she knew right away that that was exactly where the makeshift weapon had come from. Taking a grip of the thick wood, Astra gave a hard pull on the weapon to dislodge it from the Original's chest.

Inch by inch the wood tip first pulled from where it had been imbedded in the door behind Elijah, before the sickening sound of ripping flesh caused her to give one last harsh tug. The pole came free, also setting Elijah free from the door. His cold corpse fell forward against her, but she held him up easily. Dropping the coat rack weapon to the old hardwood floors, and hefted the man onto her shoulder and walked further into the house, seeking out some kind of furniture.

Three rooms later, and Astra had laid Elijah out on a couch, after removing the white sheet that covered it, and left him in search of the rotting smell of a flesh and coppery blood. It didn't take long to find the decapitated body of a man that had once been Trevor, a large pool of blood left on the floor around his headless neck. Nudging the head with the toe of her boot to roll the face up toward her, she pulled her lip back in a disgusted sneer at the terrified look etched on his face.

Moving away from the awful smell, she stepped back through the halls of the abandoned manor slowly. She wasn't sure how long Elijah had been pinned to the door, but she knew that it took him a while to 'come back to life' so to speak. Jogging up the stairs, she was able to locate a bedroom, but there were no clean clothes inside that she could find. She had been hoping to find a suit, but there seemed to only be women's clothing left behind.

"Someone left in a hurry," she whispered to herself, opening a drawer filled with undergarments in one of the dressers. Sighing quietly, she made her way back down to the room that Elijah lay in, turning off the lights along the way. It would do no one any good to draw attention to an abandoned house. It was bad enough that Elijah had to drive there. She had decided to go on foot.

Pulling off the white sheet that covered the matching chair to the couch Elijah lay on, Astra fell down into the old cushion with a heavy sigh. Glancing over to Elijah's blue and veined face, she felt a twitch to drive the man through that had killed him. Looking over to the window that sat on the far wall, she could see that the moon was nearing the end of its cycle. Which means that the werewolves would soon be coming out to play.

A sudden beat caused her to look over to Elijah's still form, listening carefully. A second beat soon followed, before a third and a forth. They gradually grew steady as his colour returned to the state that she was used to, the veins disappeared back beneath the surface. Remaining where she was seated, she didn't want a repeat of the first time that she had been there when he died. He wasn't very trusting when he was first revived and drove his arm through her chest, luckily missing her heart in his disoriented state.

"Welcome back," she said quietly, though her voice still echoed in the nearly empty room. The dark haired male carefully pulled himself up into a sitting position, swinging his legs off the couch to sit properly. "Care to explain?"

"There was a complication," Elijah said steadily, touching at the bloody hole in his shirt, though the flesh wound had already mended itself. "But the doppelganger is indeed in Mystic Falls." His dark eyes looked to her after he had finished examining himself. "And the Salvatore's are with her." A furious inhale was his only response, watching as red began to bleed slowly into her vision.

"If what they say is true, and she is in fact the exact double of Katerina, I am sure they had both become infatuated with her already," She mumbled out.

"Katerina is there as well," Elijah said curtly, gaining the last of Astra's attention. She raised a sculpted blond eyebrow to him in question, drawing a cynical smirk from the Original. "But you can't kill her, not yet. She is locked inside the tomb beneath the ruins of the Church, as she should have been all those years ago, and she has the moonstone."

"Oh, hell."

Astra watched as Elijah stood from the couch, looking toward the window. She didn't say another word, only waiting for him to declare what was to happen next.

"Come, we must prepare," Elijah finally stated as he held his hand out to help her up. She gave a small look of confusion before she accepted his hand and let him pull her from the chair and to her feet. Before she could question what he meant, he continued. "We are going to Mystic Falls…and pay our new friends a visit." The near excitement in Elijah's voice caused Astra to shake her head in disbelief, a shocked laugh breaking free when Elijah pulled on her arm and twirled her once to bring her in front of him so that she could guide them to the front door.

"Where are you planning on staying once we reach Mystic Falls?" Astra asked as she closed the passenger door of Elijah's truck, glancing over to the Original as he shifted the truck into drive.

"I will get in touch with our Warlocks, have them find an apartment in the town," Elijah began, turning the vehicle toward the driveway. "We will be staying at your old house." Astra looked over to Elijah with wide violet eyes, slightly irked when he didn't react at all.

"How exactly do you plan on just waltzing in on everyone's lives?" Astra asked quietly, dropping the subject of her old home. She went back once before, but the Salvatore brothers hadn't been in Mystic Falls at the time. She always kept a human there to keep things in order and Elijah knew it and now he was taking advantage of it. "You always go in with style, no need to drop that habit yet, hm?"

Elijah hummed pleasantly as he took a right, causing Astra's body to tip in his direction because of the momentum. "I will decide on that tonight. I will have Ms. Belle pack our things while I tie up some loose ends, but as for you…I need you to go and two find wedding rings." Astra accidently kicked the dash in shock as she was crossing her legs, hearing the crack of the hard plastic that covered the interior of the truck. Elijah looked over to her with an amused darkness in his gaze, causing her to glare.

"That's your cover? A married couple?"

"Am I that horrid, Astraea?" Elijah teased quietly, one corner of his lips quirking up in a smirk. The truck stayed flawlessly in their lane, not once wavering as his gaze moved away from the road to her. "You are so against 'marrying' me?"

Astra faked thoughtfulness, leaning her head back against the headrest of the seat. Elijah took a second sharp turn to the right on the abandoned road and Astra threw her arms out to try and keep herself still when she began to tip to the left again, this time hitting shoulders with Elijah. He took advantage of her closeness and laced his fingers through hers in mock romanticism.

"Come now, love, it is only for public appearance," Elijah finished, looking back to the road. But his hand still held hers possessively. "Although, I am sure you would wish to get back at Damon Salvatore for his love affair with Katarina, no?" Astra's hand clenched his tightly, enough force in the grip to shatter the bones of a human.

"Any type of preference in ring?" Astra asked grudgingly, glancing over to him with a mischievous glint to her already mysterious eyes. Elijah only hummed in approval to her agreeing, glancing back to the road as he felt Astra's death grip loosen gradually. He didn't see the sly smirk that touched her lips as she spoke again, "And I expect you to propose to me, whether this is legitimate or not."

Elijah turned to look at her with a quick whip of his head, causing the other vampire to laugh.

"Come on, Elijah, if Damon Salvatore can get down on one knee and propose, so can you."

The remainder of the ride was silent, the two left to sit for the three hour long drive to Mystic Falls. Astra forgot all about Elijah's fingers laced with her own, leaning against the window as she watched the darkness that passed them by, her thoughts drifting elsewhere. It had been a long time since she had been in Mystic Falls, an even longer time since she had seen either of the Salvatore brothers. She didn't know what was going to happen when they finally arrived in the town, when she would meet up with Damon and Stefan again, if she was going to have to kill either of them should they try to stand in Elijah's way. They wouldn't be the first people that she has killed.

But she hoped that that time never came, because, truthfully, she didn't know if she would be able to. She had been so close to both of them, almost married one of them and found the other to replace the siblings that she had lost all those years prior. The only ones that she had killed in the past when they stood in Elijah's way were people she didn't know, someone that she was merely ordered to take out because they were a risk to plans that had been carefully laid out.

"I won't make you kill him."

Astra looked over to Elijah, wondering if he had been nosing around inside her mind again. But, then again, when you spend over a thousand years with someone, you tend to learn their ways.

"Really?"

"If there comes a time that either of the Salvatore's are to die," Elijah began, looking to her in the darkness of the truck cab. "I will dispatch of them myself."

Not all chapters will be this insanely long; they will be divided between the past and the present! Just so that everyone knows! Hope that you all liked the first chapter and I really hope that you all continue to read on, it improves, I promise! The beginning of a story can always be the most boring, especially when reading a very long book. And this story is long. Editing this A/N I just finished publishing chapter 40, so…