Hello, loves, I'm back!
(Btw, this has also been cross-posted on AO3)
I recommend listening to Paris Paloma's The Fruits while reading to this, but to each their own. (Of course, I own that song in no way, shape or form.)
I think I've shaped Elena into my own mould here, but it also seems relatively true to her character when she is in crisis, so I'm not really sure. This is also such a different vibe to my normal writing. Thoughts would be appreciated!
Based on the August 2023 prompt challenge (but written in November, because why not?)
Prompt: Fallen angel
For if i'm going down, i guess i'll take you with me
It has only been a month, and Elena dreams in monochrome. Grey everywhere, nothing lighter, nothing darker, barely a single variation of a shade – just the horrific colour Rebekah had turned, veins crawling up her skin.
Watching the vampire die before her hadn't been cathartic, like it would have if things were the other way around. It had taken her hours to be sure that the coast was clear, even though Rebekah's body had burst into flames within seconds. It had been another hour before she had found an exit, and the cuts and scrapes littering her hands and arms had stung badly.
Then she had made it home, only to find the house empty, and suddenly it was like the cuts weren't even there.
The first place she had went was the Boarding House, but it had been eerily empty. She'd never liked it. Gaudy furnishings and dark corners. It felt worse, somehow, being empty.
She had consoled herself with the knowledge than when she found Stefan or Damon, they would return some life to the hallways.
Her next stop had been Caroline's house, but it had been empty too. There was a note on the door, scrawled in Liz's familiar handwriting, that read she would be at the Station if she was needed, due to a family emergency.
Elena found it strange, and told herself that she would call later when things were settled – when she knew what was going on, but ignored it, and headed to Bonnie's house. Bonnie had been there, but Abby was holding her, and it set off alarm bells immediately.
Bonnie had startled at her appearance, and had jumped up. Abby had let her, and Elena's friend led her into her bedroom to tell her what had happened.
Klaus was dead.
So was Elijah, and the rest of their family.
(She had already known that. She had seen Rebekah die. It had hurt something inside of her.)
But things hadn't stopped there.
First Stefan, then Damon. Then other vampires in the town – all dropping dead, veins scrawling over their bodies and skins greying with shadow. And Caroline.
Esther had died, too, Bonnie had told her. A result of having chanelled so much power in what was already a body being powered solely by spirits' strength.
There were so many dead, so many graves to dig, and Elena didn't remember the rest of the conversation.
It hadn't taken long for everything to change, only two weeks, and her new life to click into place.
Bonnie checked in with her regularly at the start, and Jeremy did, too. Alaric tried, but he was looking after her brother, the only person in her life she could honestly say she wanted to leave her alone.
It is too much. If he stays around her, he would die, like everyone else.
She just can't find the strength to say so, and she ignores him instead.
It's not a good thing, but it works with a chilling ease and she can feel her heart chip away into pieces.
There is some strange comfort in having Bonnie by her side. Even if she doesn't talk, Bonnie tries. It works for a week, and then Elena stops pretending to listen.
She lives in the Boarding House now, unable to go home because Jeremy and Alaric are there, and there is nowhere else left.
Bonnie offers to stay with her. Elena says harsh things because she realises that it is better if Bonnie doesn't surround herself with a doppelganger.
It works, and she is truly isolated for the first time in her life.
She doesn't have the strength to retrieve the bodies of her friends. To go to their funerals. She supposes that she should be thankful, because back when Bonnie had still been speaking to her, she had said that she'd buried Stefan and Damon in their family's crypt.
Buried may be the wrong word. But they are there, nonetheless.
She can't go to Caroline's funeral – the story is that she had an aneurism. When she hears it, Elena screams into a pillow for hours.
Realises that she can scream into the empty halls of the house because nobody lives there anymore.
Not even her.
She doesn't go to Tyler's funeral, either.
She screams again.
Jeremy tries to stop by sometimes. Each time, Elena ignores him, and eventually texts Alaric and asks him to keep her brother far away from her.
She can't let him die too. Anyone but him.
(Everyone but him has already passed, though.)
Alaric seems to agree with her, sending her a text that says as such, and Jeremy doesn't stop by, anymore.
She sleeps in Stefan's bed one night, Damon's the next. It feels wrong, she feels like Katherine. She doesn't care.
(Katherine will be dead now, too.
Apparently, vampires are dead everywhere, according to a text from Alaric.)
Another week passes.
It has now been over a month, and she has taken to wearing old clothes that she finds around the house. It works in a morbid way – wearing Stefan's clothes and drinking Damon's alcohol whilst rotating which bed she sleeps in.
They had lost their smell after the first two weeks.
She ignores it.
Elena ignores a lot of things now, the continuous echoing of her footsteps in the hallways, the screams that sound around the abandoned rooms.
Sometimes, she thinks that she sees shadows in the corner of her vision.
She ignores those, too.
She is a doppelganger, after all. She doesn't die – she is death.
One night she passes out in a bed that never belonged to either Stefan or Damon, and she learns that her dreams are less horrific when she does so.
She wakes up in the morning, not rested, but not paralysed in fear. She makes it a point to never sleep in a bed that wasn't theirs again.
When she does sleep, Elena can't stop the way that her dreams are painted with blood. The same blood that is dripping from her own hands like some macabre murder scene, even during the day.
And that is what she is – a murderer.
Part of her wants to end it, but the other part knows that she is the doppelganger, she will never really die. Even if she does, another her will be born in five hundred years, because there will be some person from her bloodline out there.
Katherine's child hadn't been known to Klaus, so how should she expect to know about a distant relative?
She hopes that this other-her, the one that isn't even alive yet, will fare better without vampires.
(She ignores the way that it is only her mind telling her she should want to die.
Because she doesn't, and she will do anything to stay alive, even live through this misery. So she does.)
She is drifting aimlessly when she ends up in the library one day. Her mind is foggy, and she thinks that she hears the sound of glass crashing from her hand, as she drops a glass. She doesn't mind the way the glass cus into her bare feet, or the way that the liquid pools around her feet.
She wonders if the burning feeling is from the alcohol seeping into the cuts that the glass made or from her heart finally letting the rest of her feel what it has kept to itself.
She finds a book, just poking around at random, and Bonnie's face flashes through her mind when she realises it is a Grimoire.
She reads it because she has nothing better to do.
She doesn't question why either of the Salvatores have a Grimoire, she will never know what it is like to live hundreds of years now.
Even if she had never wanted to.
She had never wanted to end up like this, so it's become agonisingly obvious that she doesn't get what she wants.
There is a page that is dog-eared, and she turns to it curiously.
If Elena had still been holding the glass, it would have slipped from her hand again. It might've splashed onto the page, obscuring the ink, and she is so thankful that she had been thoughtless enough to drop it earlier.
The page – hell, the book – must have belonged to Damon. She can see his messy scrawl in the margins, mostly question marks, but the centre of the page is a resurrection spell.
Another page is dog-eared, and she flips to it with something sparking back to life in her chest. This page is an unsealing spell.
It clicks in her mind that he had obtained this while searching for Katherine. And he had thought of everything, hadn't he? If she had been dead, he had a way. If she had been trapped, he had a way.
She feels sadness curl in her heart when she remembers that Katherine never needed either of these to begin with.
But her mind is whirring, and it almost hurts, because she hasn't been this cold sober in days.
(Or is it weeks? Months? She doesn't remember how long it has been anymore.)
She devours the first page, uncertain what she hopes to do, because she has cut Bonnie from her life – for the girl's own safety, she reminds herself, ignoring the cutting in her heart.
But she knows that for the first time in ages, she has a chance at fixing something instead of destroying it. Maybe this time, she won't kill, but create.
She isn't a witch, but she will find a way.
No cost is too much. Her life is forfeit.
Elena will do anything.
She has always been prepared to do anything. And now, finally, there is no one to scold her or stop her or remind her of the dangers that she poses to herself.
She sleeps with the Grimoire.
Her nightmares grow worse, and she revels in it.
~*•°•*~
Elena feels different, now. Not like she ever has before. For the first time in what feels like so long, the veil of death has lifted from her eyes, and she is left bare to the world.
In the mornings, as she lies around in Stefan or Damon's beds, she wonders what she could possibly do now, where she could go from here. It doesn't seem like there is any way to go on.
So she doesn't.
She thinks that if she had ever intended to, she wouldn't have started sleeping in their beds.
Surrounded by Stefan and Damon, she sometimes thinks that they are there. That if she just talks for long enough, and begs for long enough, they will come back. They never do.
(Sometimes, she regrets the way she had cared about both of them.
Other times, she regrets that she had never acted on her feelings properly.)
It is for that reason that she ends up destroying the living room. It is a ghastly place, she has always thought so, and she wasn't exactly conscious while she broke the lamps and smashed the glass. She thinks that it was induced by rage, because she didn't understand Damon's Grimoire and she keeps reminding herself that she has cut all ties with Bonnie, so there is no way that she can hope to understand it.
After she destroys their living room, there is a crushing guilt weighing on her soul. This isn't her house. It has never been her house. It is theirs, and she is only living there because she has nowhere else to go. Because the idea of leaving this place kills her inside, slowly, and painfully.
She considers that she should stop wearing their clothes, stop stealing their things. She doesn't, because she wouldn't dare. She can't return their things, because they can't use them anymore.
But she has given Stefan the necklace back. He is dead, but it was his longer than it was hers, and she felt a pressure on her lungs every time it rested on her neck. It's like it tries to strangle her every time she wears it.
She wonders if Rebekah is doing it to her from the Other Side. That thought disturbs her, just the thought of the woman. She doesn't want to remember the Mikaelsons. She also doesn't want a reminder of Rebekah specifically, anymore, not after she had watched the girl burst into flames.
Without that necklace, she finds herself unsure of who she is staring at when she looks in the mirror.
She looks like Katherine. She looks like herself. She looks like other doppelgangers, too. However many there have been.
She has never realised how heavily she'd started to rely on that necklace, since meeting Katherine.
When she passes the mirrors in the house, she wonders if there is anything she can do to make herself look different. The only thing she can think of is grow older. Grow old, even.
Here in this house of hers. Not hers, but she has claimed it, anyway.
She tries to ignore the mirrors. It works, at first.
But then she starts seeing her reflection in other surfaces, like the windows. So, she draws the curtains and just leaves all the lights on all the time.
The power will cut out eventually, but that is a problem for later. Right now, she needs to avoid seeing herself.
On the rare occasion that she eats actual food, usually while re-reading the Grimoire, she sees her reflection in the cutlery. Eventually, she switches to foods that she can eat with her hands.
But then she starts to see her reflection in the plates.
She switches to paper plates, or kitchen paper, and then she runs out. She isn't going to go into town to get more, so she just avoids it.
She eats sometimes, but she isn't sure if she can call it eating. More like picking at her food.
Elena becomes more alert to the surfaces she can see her reflection in. She grows to hate the marble countertops, and questions why the Salvatores needed such pretty reflective surfaces in the first place. They lived on blood, they didn't need such fancy surfaces to prepare food on.
(She covers them with blankets that she finds around the Boarding House. Towels, too. It isn't enough.)
On occasion, she finds herself tempted to look in the mirrors. Not because she has forgotten her face – she couldn't if she tried, and she has tried, really, she has tried so hard – but because she wants to see if she is changing.
She isn't. She looks exactly the same.
Elena becomes desperate, if that is even a good enough word. The Grimoire lies forgotten in the library, but not for long, because she returns to it nightly. She is desperate for a lot of things.
Most of all, she wants to find one single detail that differentiates her from the others.
She doesn't want to be Katherine, even if she is living in Stefan and Damon's shadows.
She doesn't want to be like the others, but since she doesn't know what they were like, she can't hope to maintain that kind of attitude.
She wonders what the future-her will be like. If she will be like Elena, or Katherine, or the others, or someone completely new. She hopes that she will be knew.
The next her cannot rely on what she sees in the mirror. She will have to be different.
Elena thinks she is becoming obsessed with the idea of the doppelgangers. But she is becoming equally obsessed with herself. There has to be a difference between her and Katherine. Just one.
She thinks, one day, that she stares in the mirror since before the sun rises until after it sets and the moon is already shining through the windows, through a crack she hadn't noticed in the curtains, ready to illuminate this face of hers. This face that has caused so much pain, and so much misery.
(She breaks the mirrors.
Every single one of them.
The face that stares back at her is distorted, and it isn't Katherine or any of her other doubles.)
~*•°•*~
Months pass in blurs.
Some days, she is doing nothing but reading, leaving the alcohol and trying to focus her mind on one thing for the first time in she forgets how long.
(She had broken all the clocks in the house the first time she'd realised that she didn't know what the day was. She thinks that had been within the first two months – it was definitely after she had driven Bonnie away. She had burned the calendars. Broken her phone. Now, all she has is the day and the night outside. It is simpler, somehow.)
Other days, she spends only screaming into the empty hallways of the Boarding House.
It is one of the few ways that she can feel anything, anymore.
It is on those days that the shadowy figures in the corners of the building grow slightly clearer.
Elena tries not to focus on them. If something is haunting her, she doesn't want to know what it is. She is death, she doesn't want any more reminders of the people she has killed.
It was her blood, after all.
Even if she had regretted the choice the moment she'd made it.
Then there are the days that she leaves the house. She doesn't do it much, only once every while when it feels like the Boarding House is turning into a crypt. She doesn't want to die there, she doesn't want to live there, she just wants to exist there. But it feels like her tomb sometimes, so she has to leave.
She takes the Grimoire everywhere she goes, now. And because she doesn't want to run into anyone in town, she just walks through the woods. She blacks out at some point – doesn't know when, can't really conceive time anymore – and when she comes to, she can see a familiar large building far off in the distance.
Elena frowns, and clutches the Grimoire closer to her chest. She approaches it like it still houses a predator that is long-dead.
The building grows bigger as she walks closer, of course, but it is still daunting to witness.
Sometimes, she thinks that she is going insane. Between her inability to perceive time anymore, and the way her spatial awareness is apparently depleting by the second, it wouldn't surprise her.
She doesn't really care if she is, though. Perhaps it will be a form of escape from this relentless purgatory – this half-existance that she can't seem to find the strength to end because of the Grimoire she sleeps with.
Again, she knows that she isn't a witch.
She still doesn't care.
Her blood is something, and even if she has to drain every drop of it, she is going to figure out a way to bring something back.
(But if death is permanent, then she'll also scrape her way back into this world after she succeeds.)
She doesn't know who it will be. If she has to pick between Caroline and Tyler, or Stefan and Damon.
That would kill her before the blood loss would.
The only solace she has is the knowledge of the Other Side. It is something, and it is going to be her answer.
She keeps walking forward, a renewed determination, and stands at the entrance of the Mikaelson Mansion.
It has been abandoned, of course, because who in their right mind would enter it?
(She does, of course.
She is no longer in her right mind.)
The halls are empty and the foyer is still half-decorated from that blasted ball.
It cuts at Elena – the memory of dancing, of lying to Elijah, and killing him because of it.
She wonders, for a second, why it is still decorated. She would have assumed that the minute the night was over, things would have been restored to however Klaus wanted them.
Then again, Klaus is – was – paranoid, and nobody trusted their mother. Maybe they had bigger things to worry about.
They were right, of course.
Elena takes her time to explore. She doesn't know why, it's almost like she's being compelled to do so. Ridiculous, of course, because vampires don't exist anymore.
However, when she pushes open a door and finds a variety of half-painted canvases inside, she thinks that she can actually feel something cold breathing down her neck.
The room itself is screaming at her to leave, and she holds the Grimoire tighter to her chest like it can protect her.
(When she does so, there is a flicker of a shadow in the corner.)
She runs away in fear.
The next room she goes to looks to be a dressing room, and she summarises that it was once Rebekah's. She wonders if in another life they could have been friends. She hadn't deserved the dagger – Elena had always known that.
They hadn't trusted her, though, so she had allowed paranoia to take over.
She is struck with the realisation that maybe, just maybe, she and Klaus had something in common.
The same cold feeling floods over her as it had in the art room.
She begins to wonder if it had belonged to Klaus, and her chest aches for her to return. She wants to see his humanity. Torture herself some more.
Almost like Rebekah is in the room with her and reading her mind, sunlight crests through one of the tall windows, and Elena flees the building to return to her crypt.
She goes back to the house the next night, not knowing why, but this time she is sure that there is some force pulling her there.
It is insistent, and desperate, almost clawing.
She wonders if it is some spirit on the other side.
(Wonders if it is one of the Mikaelsons.)
Considers that it is probably something alive in this world.
(Wonders if there is a Mikaelson that survived Esther's attempts to rid the world of her family.)
This time, she finds herself in a study. Thick leather books line the walls, and she knows that this belonged to Elijah. She sits down and spends time in this room, not certain why. All she does know is that the shadow flickering in the corner of this room doesn't seem to want to hurt her.
Not like the shadows in Klaus' studio and Rebekah's dressing room.
She stays there until the sun rises again, leaves, and comes back the next night.
Elena wonders if perhaps she has gone insane, or passed through that stage entirely. Only someone without their mind would willingly return to the building that once housed people who had tried to kill her.
Ones she had helped to kill.
This time, the tug is insistent, and it pulls her into a bedroom. There is a shadow in this room, and it is more pronounced, more urgent. It leads her to a bookshelf, and her grip on her Grimoire tightens as she realises that this case is filled with so much magical knowledge.
She reaches for one on instinct, then feels a bout of illness pass through her, and retracts her hand.
Elena's brows furrow, and she tries again, on the shelf below. She feels ill again, but less so.
The next shelf below she feels almost nothing at all.
Elena reaches for a Grimoire on the right, puts it back after a chill vibrates through her body. On the left, and she feels nothing, so she suspects that she is right.
She keeps her Grimoire clutched to her chest with one hand, and uses the other to flip through the pages of this new one. The first half makes her feel so ill that she has to rush into an adjacent bathroom to heave over the toilet. The shadow follows her, and it almost seems human for a second. Annoyed.
Nothing comes up, but she stays there heaving for longer than is probably safe.
It occurs to her that she has probably been living on alcohol and very little food for far too long. She wonders if she should look for food here. It is probably outdated, but she doesn't care.
Elena returns to the mysterious Grimoire, of course, and flips through it from the back this time.
She doesn't need to feel sick to know what page this force wants her to find.
She takes her Grimoire and places it on the floor, comparing the pages. They are the same spell – resurrection.
Only this new Grimoire hasn't got Damon's messy, unknowing scrawl filling out the edges. Instead, it is written in a delicate hand, with care. This is Kol Mikaelson's room, she is sure of it, even if she doesn't know why.
She wonders if he had been a witch when he was alive, too.
This Grimoire is easier to decipher, because there are no question marks like Damon's has.
Instead, she is able to find all of the answers to Damon's questions and more. As well as another useful page – even if this force urges her to simply turn the page back once – which tells her all about something called a Nexus Vorti.
A surge of spectacular power.
Elena takes this Grimoire when she leaves. She thinks that that shadow figure is annoyed with her, but it doesn't appear again, so she takes that to mean that they are allowing it.
(She thinks that shadow may be Kol Mikaelson, but she doesn't entertain the thought for very long.
Because that would mean that the shadows in the Boarding House could be Stefan and Damon just watching her.
The shadows in the studio, the dressing room, and the study could be Klaus and Rebekah and Elijah.
She refuses to believe it.)
Elena returns the very next day, as well.
Nothing is calling her any longer, but there is one more Mikaelson sibling. The house becomes eerily silent, but it is unlike the Boarding House, and she finds it fascinating. There is an aching sensation of loneliness and isolation – solitude. It reminds her of how she feels every day in her crypt. The shadow, when she creeps into an empty bedroom with practically no furnishings, is the most pronounced of them all, and it seems more like a silouhette if she is being honest, so she speaks to it.
She knows then that she is losing her mind.
"I feel like I'm trapped in the Boarding House."
This shadow stays, similar to the one in the study.
She sleeps in that room when the sun rises.
~*•°•*~
Elena doesn't know when she began to turn nocturnal.
For a moment, she smiles while eating in the Mikaelson Mansion's kitchen, at the thought that she is turning into a vampire of fiction.
The smile drops when she remembers that she is the reason there are no vampires anymore.
She also doesn't know when she had began existing in this place rather than the Boarding House.
All she does know is that the shadows here are more pronounced than the ones that flicker in and out of her vision when she stays at the Salvatores', and every time she sees them, they hurt. They scare her. In different ways, but they still do.
She revels in the pain.
(The only one that doesn't hurt is the one that she suspects to be Finn. She knows she is going mad, because she remembers how Jeremy had been able to see ghosts, and he had actually been able to talk to them and see them. All she can see is shadows.
Still though, she likes Finn.)
She also wonders, because the shadows are so different, whether or not the shadows in the Boarding House are even there to begin with. She can see the shadows here with absolute certainty, she knows that they are there. The Boarding House ghosts flicker in and out of her vision like something trying to get her attention and failing.
She concludes that the shadows at the Boarding House had not, been there, figments of her imagination, and she swears that she will not go back to her crypt. She will not succumb to it, even if Stefan and Damon had lived there.
(Even if – when – she brings them back, she doesn't think she will ever be able to set foot in the building again.)
Her two Grimoires sit open in front of her, as she tries to figure out a way to do this spell. If – and she wants to doubt it but she knows that she really shouldn't – Kol Mikaelson is indeed communicating with her and leading her to his Grimoires in a desperate bid to get her to bring him back, she knows that it will kill her to do so. Whether the power it takes – she still doesn't know how she hopes to pull this feat off by herself – or him simply being hungry if she is actually able to bring him back.
She needs this spell, just not for him. But to do that, she needs to find a Nexus Vorti.
That night, when she sleeps in Finn's room – even if it wasn't ever his, that is what Elena calls it now – she dreams of something strange.
It is not monochrome, and her hands are not dripping in blood. Her lungs are not filling with water and she is not sitting grieving over gravestones of the long-dead.
Instead, there is a coffin. Glass lid. Beautiful girl inside.
She wakes up and doesn't know how, but that girl is the answer.
Another thing that she doesn't know how is that this girl is in New Orleans.
~*•°•*~
Elena is not exactly conscious when she books a plane ticket or makes her way to the airport – she thinks that she hitchhiked, but she can't remember. She also thinks that whoever she was with on her way to the airport was looking at her with dangerous eyes. It's this face, of course, and she wants to return to the Boarding House. Maybe the Mansion.
She longs to scream into the emptiness.
Her pain claws at her insides, and only holding the Grimoires closer is able to help.
She thinks that she has been seeing a shadow lingering behind her, remaining a distance away, but she isn't sure who it could be. Klaus and Rebekah are out, for obvious reasons. Before any of this had happened, though, she could have said the same about both Kol and Finn. That would have left only Elijah.
She has a feeling that she is wrong.
She wants it to be Finn. She knows it is probably Kol.
Part of her wonders what they are both like. She had only interacted with Finn once, and he had been so set on death. She knew the feeling. Kol, on the other hand, she had never actually met. He had broken Matt's hand, though, so she had a bad feeling about him.
He may be helping her now, but she knows it is because he wants her to bring him back. She has no such intentions.
She wants her friends back.
If that makes her like Katherine, then Katherine she will be.
(Even if the thought itself crawls and slithers around inside of her.)
The plane ride passes in a blur, as does the taxi ride that takes her into the city. There are no words for the dead air that surrounds this place, and she has the sinking feeling that this place had once been crawling with vampires. She had killed them.
It is a ridiculous thought that she wishes so desperately for every vampire to have ever died to just come back.
Even the murderous ones.
The world feels so much emptier.
She books herself into a hotel, somewhere called the Palace Royale, and that night she tosses and turns. She cannot seem to stay asleep, and the dreams of a coffin and another looming kind of presence turn threatening for the first time ever.
It is as though her proximity has risen the violence of this girl. Whoever she is.
Eventually – Elena thinks that it is some point at two in the morning – she decides that she has had enough and grabs the pillow, shoves her face into it, and just screams.
It is restricting, because she has to muffle the noise instead of feeling it leave her throat and bleed into the world around her. This pillow keeps it inside of her – leaving only to rush back in like some kind of horrific whirlpool – but it does leave her for a second, so she continues.
She keeps screaming until her voice begins to crack and her throat grows dry.
Elena lifts her face from the pillow, feeling achingly empty. The corner of the room flickers, shadows hovering, and she can see three.
She wonders which ones they are.
Her voice is hoarse when she speaks, "Are you really there?"
Of course there is no reply.
She is able to fall asleep eventually, but only when one of the shadows hovers beside the bed, as though they know what it is like to ache so much that even sleep will not help you.
The other two are resigned to the corner of the room.
But they do not leave, even when she falls asleep.
When she does wake again, and fragments of frightening dreams return to her in almost unintelligible scatters of images, she does not notice how the number of shadows has multiplied for a very long moment. What had once been a single shadow – Kol, she is sure of it now – and had then been joined by another – Finn – and then another – Elijah – has now gained two new members.
She does not want to question why Klaus or Rebekah are now following her, too.
It is not like she will get an answer.
Eventually, there is the flash of a house, and Elena hurries to leave the room, shoving the two Grimoires carefully in her backpack. There is no way to describe the feeling that rushes through her veins, because it leads her to the house she had seen.
She cannot explain it. She cannot explain a lot of things.
The five shadows follow her. It is the first time one of them ever seems to communicate properly with her.
It is early morning, sunrays reflecting everywhere as it rises, and a shadow seems frantic when it jumps in front of her, stopping her from approaching the house.
She knows it is Kol. He is the only one who has openly interacted with her before.
(Tried to, at least.)
Elena's eyes narrow, a surprising emotion being pulled from inside of her, "What are you doing?"
He cannot respond. Something cold rushes through her and she doubles over, searching for the disappeared Mikaelson. Her hand rubs at the cold spot it had left right in her midsection, even though she knows he had simply walked through her.
"I am going in." She somehow grits out.
The shadow is back. Kol is back.
For a moment, just a second, the air crackles and she can see him. He looks angry, and she still can't hear him, but the harsh movements of his lips reminds her of Damon whenever he tried to warn her away from a dangerous idea.
He is gone just as quickly, shadow seeming fainter than it had been a second ago.
Her gaze flickers to the house, the air crackles again, and the gate swings open.
She ignores Kol, and approaches the home. Several times as she walks, he tries to pass through her again and dissuade her, but it doesn't seem to have the same effect.
Her hand hesitates when she reaches the doorknob, not knowing what she will find inside. Her head turns briefly, and five shadows are standing at the foot of the steps leading up to the doors.
Kol is pacing restlessly, and she imagines that he is screaming at her.
Beside him is Finn, and his head shakes once, almost imperceptibly.
She moves on.
People need to stop telling her what to do.
(Even if she knows it is very likely to hurt her.
Maybe even kill her.
Like she killed them.)
Elijah is in the middle, stoic, but she can imagine the displeased slant to his eyes because he is standing even taller than usual.
Rebekah and Klaus are off to the side.
They are watching her, but they seem not to care. They stand somewhat rigid, though, so perhaps Elena is wrong.
Her eyes firmly rest on them when she twists the handle and the door swings open. The taller one – Klaus – deflates in his shoulders slightly. She doesn't understand why.
There are crashes from inside, and she enters only to find bodies everywhere.
Next thing she knows, she is in the corner of the room trying to control the harsh breaths cutting her lungs. The last time she had seen bodies like this, they had been her friends-
Finn is crouched beside her. He cannot do anything.
He is there, regardless.
It takes a moment for her to calm down, and then when she does, the images assault her brain again.
Coffin… Upstairs… Locked door… The door looks different from the others – older.
Elena is guided up to the room by an unknown force – it is probably the girl in the coffin, but she is still unknown to her.
The handle falls off of the door and it swings open when she recognises which one it is. Elena hesitates for a split second, and then decides to stride into the room to get it over with.
The girl looks exactly like she should.
(Privately, Elena thinks that she is prettier than the visions.
Prettier than she has any right to be.
As pretty as Rebekah.)
Elena frowns when her hand reaches out to touch the glass lid without her meaning to, and then the pain that shoots through her body makes her scream out.
Kol is there again.
He cannot do anything.
(It feels like it had when Klaus had killed her.)
Elena is in a half-world, half conscious, nothing quite right around her when the lid flies off of the coffin and lands across the room.
She blacks out very quickly, but not before she hears a muttered thank you, and gentle arms hoisting her up from the floor.
~*•°•*~
Elena wakes up back in the bed in the Palace Royale Hotel, and delicious smells waft over to greet her.
A girl – the girl – is sitting on a chair munching on something and looking contemplatively down at a book, as though trying to grasp the words.
Elena sits up, and the girl – woman, she is older than Elena had initially thought – does not even flinch.
"What is the meaning of… hangry?" She looks up, with blue eyes, "I seem to have a lot to catch up on."
Elena's mouth is dry, and the woman stands up as she takes a glass of water from a table positively decked out with all kinds of food, before handing it to her.
She waits patiently, and then answers Elena before she speaks.
"My name is Freya." Her head cocks to the side, "Your name is Elena, yes?"
The way she says her name sounds like Elijah.
"Oh-"
She had been right.
This woman was a Mikaelson.
She looked, sounded, acted just like them.
Freya frowns a bit as Elena tenses, but then smiles like she understands. Elena hopes to hell that she doesn't.
She will kill her, otherwise.
(She might be stuck in a predicament of not wanting to live, but she also does not want to die.
She doesn't understand it. But she doesn't want to die. Just wants something to take her pain away.)
"I am not going to harm you." Her voice is sweet like honey, running through Elena's ears, "But it is imperative that we discuss what has happened."
"What I've done." Her mouth feels dry like sandpaper.
Freya frowns, eyebrows pinching in confusion, "I know how easy it is to fall prey to a witch such as Esther." The contempt with which she says Esther's name is enough to make that clear, make Elena truly believe her, "I, too, suffered greatly due to a choice she made. I hold you no more at fault than a girl who had everything taken from her and merely wished for it to be over." Her head cocks to the side, bare smile playing on her mouth, "And you were that girl, were you not? I think you still are."
Elena thinks it is the first time she has ever been seen.
Freya sits down on the edge of the bed, and Elena has to fight her initial instinct to back away and corner herself against the headboard. Freya's bare smile slips a bit, "It is good to meet you."
Freya has her hand held out like she wants to shake Elena's hand, but when she hesitantly offers it, Freya places a delicate kiss on the back instead. Elena swallows for a reason that she doesn't understand, and this witch's smile is almost teasing, mischevious.
She thinks that, in the corner of the room, she can feel someone's jealousy, because a shadow leaves the room, abandoning the remenants of a foul-feeling emotion.
She's just uncertain why Rebekah had acted like that.
Freya recaptures her attention just as quickly, and another shadow disappears.
She wonders if they can see each other, if Klaus had gone to get Rebekah or he had left for another reason.
"What happened when I blacked out?" Elena blurts out, and Freya's lips purse in what reminds her of apology.
"I channelled your blood." The corner of the room flickers, and this time, she cannot see Kol, but she can hear him.
"She did what?"
He is gone the next second, but the three words had been burning and dripping with molten lava. She shivers, and the way he'd sounded had frightened her.
Her eyes dart over to the corner, and another shadow leaves.
She wonders why Kol is bothered by the traces of fear on her face.
Freya frowns, and glances herself, but turns back with eyes gleaming thoughtfully. She doesn't bring it up.
"You are the doppelganger." She explains, like Elena doesn't already understand it, "Your blood is-"
(Klaus re-enters the room.)
"I know what my blood does." She sounds bitter.
(Leaves again.)
Freya hums, "I took a glance at your grimoires." Elena tenses, something coiling in her soul, "I'm afraid that a spell like that won't work." Her heart falls in her own chest, "You see, they were not the ones to be killed. Your friends, I mean. No, they died as a consequence. They died because my siblings were murdered."
Elena's throat feels tight, "What are you saying?"
"You're a smart girl, Elena." She thinks she could grow addicted to the way that Freya says her name. It has been so long since she'd heard it, and Freya says it so right that she wants to crawl into the woman's arms and call it home, "But if they have already passed, then even the Other Side may not be a strong enough place to pull them back from. Regardless, to even attempt their resurrections, we will need to bring my siblings back first."
"We?"
Freya smiles, almost indulgent, "You have come this far, even with my guidance. I'd be glad to work on this with you."
"How much of my blood do you need?"
Freya smiles, and Elena thinks that she doesn't intend for it to look so threatening.
"You are willing to do this?"
The nod that Elena gives is strange, and halting.
(She thinks that even if she can't bring her friends back, she will bring back the Mikaelsons.
Someone. Anyone. Even them.)
"Then I may just need all of it."
Elena's throat is tight, her mind flashing back to Klaus' ritual.
"Your family really likes my blood, huh?"
Again, Freya's smile is indulgent, "Do not worry. I can bring you back from death."
(Does she want that?
Does she want to survive?
She is a Petrova.
A doppelganger.
The answer is easy.
Yes.)
"Good."
She thinks that she understands Katherine, now.
~*•°•*~
Elena and Freya return to Mystic Falls.
Freya explains that it is because this was the site of the Mikaelsons' creation, and then of their deaths, which will make it so much easier to bring them back. Elena wants to question Freya's slightly manic desperation to bring them back, even if they are her siblings, especially since she didn't think there was another sibling. A descendant, she had considered. Not a sibling.
She remembers when Elijah had told her about he and Klaus being brothers. Remembers that he had talked about a sibling of theirs dying from plague. She thinks that he wasn't lying to her, that he had believed that to be the case, and the sudden hatred for Esther that ebbs in her chest is as surprising as it is pleasing, because it warms her soul with its heat.
They stand out in the woods, on the site that Freya says they had been turned.
Five shadows flicker around them.
They are all so eager.
Even Finn.
Freya gives Elena a small knife, instructs her to cut her hand into a kind of chalice that she then places on a stone monument. Elena has never seen it before, it isn't engraved, she wonders what it is there for.
Wonders if someone knew that something incredible had happened there, and needed to mark it despite not knowing what.
She understands the feeling. She gets the strange sensation when she gets close to the Quarry, where Klaus had killed her for his ritual.
She glances at his shadow, knows that it is him, and he is looking at her already. And for just a second, she questions if it is worth it.
She digs the knife into her palm and lets her blood flow like it was always intended to.
Just not intended to bring them back.
Oh well. What's done is done.
(And this is done, now.)
Freya almost looks like she is glowing as she begins to chant, and there is a determination in the way her jaw is set, a desperation in her eyes. She looks beautiful, and Elena is surprised by the sudden thought but cannot disagree in any way.
The wind starts to whip around her, almost like it is taking some physical kind of shape on. But nothing happens, even as Freya's chanting increases like she needs more strength, like she is getting somewhere. Nothing happens.
And then she feels it.
Her blood is no longer in her body, but she can feel Freya draining its magic – and it hits her that her blood is magic. She is some kind of supernatural phenomenon, not intended to have this blood, but it is hers. She may be a copy of a person, even a copy of a copy, perhaps a copy of a copy of a copy. But this is her blood, anyway. And Freya is using it.
She is letting her.
Her Grimoires are placed carefully on the ground beside the monument, and Freya had only taken one look. She had only needed one look and her determination had forged the spell into her memory.
For a moment, Elena wonders whether or not she has been engraved into Freya's memory.
It is her that she had summoned to New Orleans, her that she had drained the magic from in order to wake up from whatever sleep she had been in.
It is her blood that she needs.
"Are you alright?"
But she has a feeling that Freya doesn't just care for her blood. Unlike everyone else in her life.
She wonders if Freya had known Katherine.
(She feels a strange surge of jealousy at the idea.)
"I'm fine."
Freya eyes her for a moment longer than necessary, but nods, and returns to her chants.
A moment passes, and Freya clears her throat, nodding at the chalice. Elena digs her knife into her palm again, and this time, Freya takes it from her, chanting all the while. Her blood doesn't stop flowing.
Elena looks over the witch's shoulder, and sees four restless shadows. She frowns, eyes searching for the fifth. She cannot find them. Returning her gaze back, she can see Finn and Elijah standing closest together. She can also see Rebekah hovering with Kol. Klaus is the only one that is gone.
Freya's chanting increases, and sweat beads at her brow. Elena has an urge to ask if she is alright, but her face is screwed in such an intense concentration that she decides against it. She is starting to feel faint, anyway.
She decides to look for Klaus again, unease inching into her bones.
The likelihood that he is going to kill her the minute he can is beyond words. She had helped his mother kill him. She had helped his mother and the spell had killed Esther because of the immense power.
She wonders if Esther is watching this on the Other Side.
Feels her lips curl up in satisfaction at the idea that she is, even further at the thought that she is screaming at her because of what she is doing.
Again, Freya's chanting increases. Elena eyes her blood in the chalice, the way it is simply sitting there. It is not even bubbling. It's like nothing is happening to it at all.
But her blood is still dripping into the cup, never-ending. Black spots dance in her vision, but just as she starts to sway, Freya's hand shoots out to clutch her wrist – the one attached to her bleeding hand – and suddenly, energy shoots through her body.
She frowns, as Freya pushes her hand away from the chalice, and summarises that Freya has all the blood she had needed.
Doesn't understand, because Freya had said that she would most likely need all of it. But by the frown engraved into Freya's face, pulling at her mouth and creasing her forehead, she doesn't understand it either. Elena holds her bloody hand to her stomach, pressing it tightly so that it slows down bleeding, but its steady flow isn't anywhere near the way her blood had been gushing into the chalice a moment ago, so she hopes that she will be alright.
She still can't see Klaus, and the four shadows don't look any more solid quite yet.
She wonders what Freya is doing, why she is so intense because nothing is happening.
Her skin feels like it is on fire all of a sudden, and Freya's chanting is so loud that she is almost shouting.
"That's my girl."
A voice by her ear, and her eyes widen so much that she thinks they are going to fall out.
Her body jolts, and then hands are on her waist, steadying her.
(Holding her in place.)
She can feel Klaus' mouth by her ear, feel the way she is held against him so tightly it's like he's trying to mould them together into one being. Absorb her, even.
"Don't run after all your hard work." She can feel the way his chest rumbles as he speaks he is so close to her, "Wait a minute more. I'm sure they'd love to talk to you. As would I."
Again she jolts.
His hands tighten, a clear warning, but they don't hurt, which confuses her.
Is he saving her death? Going to torture her for centuries like he had planned to do with Katherine? She shivers at the thought, but he just chuckles like he can hear her thoughts.
"You're not going anywhere until this is finished, Elena." She can't remember the last time he had used her name. Had he ever? "You're going to fix what you broke first. Then we'll decide what to do with you."
Kol's shadow is the next one to flicker, in and out of her concentration as well as the world itself. She blinks, and he is standing there.
His eyes find hers and he grins, something slow and predatory. His eyes are dark.
"Wonderful work, Darling."
Next is Finn. He is solid in seconds, and he tips his head as though saying thank you. His eyes are just as intense as Kol's – perhaps even more so. She shivers again at the thought, and Klaus chuckles, resting his chin on her head like he really is trying to cage her in.
Freya's voice wobbles, and Elena's eyes dart to her so quickly in concern, but then she is even steadier than she had been before. It lets her relax, and for some reason, she can feel Klaus' jaw tighten and his grip almost turn painful.
Like he's stopping himself.
Rebekah is next. She doesn't acknowledge Elena. She is looking away on purpose. Elena wonders why.
Elijah is last, in all his suited glory, and he smiles. It is slightly bittersweet, and she wonders if he is angry with her for lying about his mother's intentions. Who is she kidding? Of course he is angry.
But then-
"I'm impressed, Elena." He drawls, and the way her name sounds almost banishes coherent thought from her mind, "Both at your first deceit and then at this." She flinches a bit, and something flickers in his gaze, "But let bygones be bygones. Thank you."
Freya has stopped chanting by now, of course, but she is stealing heavy breaths as she leans against the monument. Again, Elena wants to ask if she is alright. But she is smiling – she also isn't bleeding, which has to be a good sign.
Klaus removes his chin from her head, letting his nose brush against the shell of her ear, and then his mouth is there the next moment, "I think we're due for a chat, love." He takes her chin, and turns her face towards him. His eyes are so dark that she loses concentration for a moment, "Take a seat, won't you?"
It hits her then, as she slowly lowers herself onto the ground with the monument at her back.
With no vampires, she hasn't been taking Vervain.
First time cross-posting on AO3 (also first time on AO3), and I'm lowkey panicking.
I'm not sure if I'm coming back to this fic, or to posting / updating any of my stories quite yet, because apparently college is chaotic, and mental health is something that I need to consider - who knew? - but I really wanted to get this little one-shot out there. Hope you're all doing great!
Again, hope it was enjoyed xx
- SecretMidnightRose