Fanfic: Harshness of the Seasons (4/10)
Title: Harshness of the Seasons
Rating: T
Author:
terapsina
Fandom: The Vampire Diaries
Pairing/Characters: Elijah/Elena, Elijah, Ayanna, Rebekah, Elena, Godric.
Word Count: 3'119
Parts: 4/10
Summary: AU To those who know the story of the making of vampires Elena will be remembered as the girl who was sacrificed for the plague they became. But in Elijah's memory she will always be the wife he loved and lost to his parents' desperation. All that he now has left is the wane hope that the body Ayanna preserved will one day wake as she promised. Elejah
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Death of Summer //Death of Summer//
Grieving Autumn // Eye of the Storm// // Heavy Rainfall// //PROMISING COLD//
*o0O0o*
*Harshness of the Seasons*
*Grieving Autumn: Promising Cold*
*o0O0o*
Elena lies peacefully as if in slumber, like she's dropped from exhaustion but at any moment she'll move to seek out the heat from Elijah's body and once she finds it smile. Cleaned of blood and wrapped in leather and fur, with her hair washed and braided by his inexperienced fingers… she looks asleep.
And if he keeps his eyes on just her face, if he ignores the chest that should be rising in sync with her breath - but isn't - and the paleness to her ever healthy sun kissed skin, he could almost fool himself into believing he might wake her with a throaty whisper by her ear. But his eyes miss nothing and so the only comfort is the mantra of Ayanna's promise chanting to an invisible rhythm within his head.
The child Elijah carefully holds pressed against his chest and over his rushing heartbeat moves lazily, all the while his son softly coos his content in that sweet as a singing bird's voice. He bites his tongue hard enough to taste blood, hides the building yells he wishes he could just release into the night continuing without end until his throat bleeds as well, but he will not frighten Godric, especially not now… not in these last moments.
"She looks like a dream, your mother! Don't you agree? She has the most beautiful smile, I wish you could remember it when you grow, it's somehow pleased and loving and never more so than when she directs it at us."
He stops, just breathes and presses the knuckles of his free hand into the point between eyebrows until his eyesight blackens and the painful memories blur. When he finally feels ready to continue without choking he trails at the steps of his last thought as thought the pause never existed.
"And she fights like a bear for her cubs when those she cares for are threatened, or if she deems it just I suppose. I wish that when you reach boyhood I could tell you the story of the time a wolf girl without her parents wondered into our village. She was threatened by a man twice her height raising his hand to strike. But Elena with nothing except her wits stepped between them with a fury as I've rarely seen since thundering in her gaze. The man has not looked her in the eye after then."
Elijah moves his stinging eyes away from Elena's stone still face to observe their son instead. Godric is sleepily grinning up at him, oblivious to the meaning of his father's words, but soothed by the voice that carries them none the less. He envies that innocence.
He wishes he could be unaware of Elena's stillness and ignorant of the person at his back, unknowing of the woman who waits patiently and gives him his moment of privacy for a farewell.
Closing his eyes to ward off the pain carried by the unstoppably flowing river of time Elijah leans forward to kiss his wife's brow, their boy presses between them like another connection they shared, among the innumerable different ones, a symbol of the most significant proof their intertwined hearts have created. Her skin feels cold across his lips, there is no hint of the familiar spark he doesn't realize he expects and he is not overwhelmed by the warm honeyed scent he had gotten to know so well. Instead, despite the water he cleansed her with and the flowers he pinned in her hair, she smells like dried blood and a burned grave.
Godric squirms in protest at his uncomfortable position between two bodies - one deadly, one dead - and Elijah relents stepping away.
"Your mother would have always stayed by you if she could. Soothed you. Sang to you. Loved you. And I've no doubt in her dreams she always will." His son's brown eyes are like a reflection of his wife's and while looking into them Elijah wills them to somehow, someday relay understanding. "So will I."
He promises yet again.
*-o0o-*
Her skin was pale and clammy, her hair stuck to her skin drenched in sweat, she was breathing laboriously in exhaustion and yet he had never seen her more beautiful. Not even during their wedding vows had she looked this radiant.
And all of it because of the nursing babe whose age he could still count in moments.
She was humming under her breath with a tender smile and yet her eyes seemed sad, his chest constricted at this small cruelty even on a day this magnificent. He very well imagined what she might feel missing from the occasion. And his thoughts were proven right with her quiet confession.
"I don't remember the words that go along with the melody anymore. I listened to this lullaby every night when I was little and I can't remember how it went."
Elijah did not answer, he knew no words that could ease this pain, but he sat by her side placing his left hand around her, carefully moved her to rest against him and hesitantly reached with his right one for his newborn son's head.
"I wish they could have met him. I wish they could have seen us together. I wish…no! Not today, I won't be sad today! Elijah? What name will we give him?"
He felt her head move under his chin as she looked up at him and his eyes flickered away from their son to connect with hers. There was a wistful star shining in them and he suddenly knew exactly the right words to ease his wife's pain.
"Godric has a brave, good sound to it."
At the sound of her father's name Elena's smile bloomed colorful like a summer flower and she grabbed his chin for a kiss. It was a simple touch of lips and yet it felt like yet another gift of love.
He held his new family in his hold and promised himself never to lose them. To always fight for them. To forever be there to ease the pain.
*-o0o-*
Compiling his will he finally turns away from the abyss of the spirit world towards the harsh eyes of the witch. Ayanna is standing by her gray mare, the horse is saddled for road with dried herbs and charms in the pack as well as food and blankets for the long roads ahead. She, like him and his family, is leaving now when their presence has created so much fear within their home.
They all know that staying would only bring more.
And Elijah studies her. Her unyielding presence is no more kind than it was when she met him in that burned circle, - How can he hand his son to a woman that hates the man her sister's magic created? How can he know she will think any differently of Godric? - and for the barest moment he listens to those words in the back of his mind screaming at him in Elena's voice. But if he wants his son safe and alive he must follow this road, even if it leads him to his love's hatred once she wakes. Even if once Godric learns words he only ever mentions his father in bitter scorn.
He must relinquish his claim on the only good he still has left of Elena.
He must, because Rebekah, the girl who wished to learn healing from Esther, savaged the throat of a man they had played with as kids. They had hunted with Willhart on occasion, had drank mead with him, fought raging fires that moved towards fields of crops with him, protected their home from the occasional fury of nature by his side. And yet even as he had struggled and cried, in the time it took her to drink him dry he had been nothing but a meal to her. No matter how much she sobbed in the arms of her brothers' of it later, there was no reigniting that life.
'Neither that one… nor Esther's.'
His mother had placed that same hunger in all of them and had paid for it. At first a whisper at the edge of their mind, it grew with every day, like flames it licked in their stomachs beseeching to consume.
Niklaus and Kol had been disappearing behind dark corners with a new maiden or a different man's wife to quench their appetite rather frequently. Elijah's only comfort was how all those women reappeared well enough, if a little pale, by the same brothers' satisfied looking sides. He care not guess if only blood was consumed.
And Elijah himself is no exception to the hunger. He has tried to control it, has tried smothering this weakness. But the savage thirst is there, always present, waiting for a nick in the shield of his control… and the grief only proved to have enhanced it. So Elijah had taken to hunting in the woods, miles out of the way of any man, but even that barely satisfies and he knows he will not be able to abstain of his friends and neighbors for long if he remains. The disgust at his urges does not seem to be an asset for despite its piercing claws he still seeks out the rushing beat of hearts with his too great hearing.
And as he listens to the small rapid sound coming from Godric's young chest he fears.
Imagines the fragility of his son's tiny bones and remembers the way he and his siblings pulled the old tree with its very roots from the ground. It had given way so easily, they had not summoned sweat and their hands had not bled, at least no longer than the time it took for a snowflake to melt on a bared palm.
'What could I do to a child if I held him too fiercely?'
The final reason, the one that decided they must leave had come with his brother's news of their mother's death. Elijah even now does not know if he wishes to weep from this loss or take satisfaction from it, does not know if he should forgive a dead woman or carry on the rage at her horrifying decision.
So as his family had readied to leave he entered the woods looking for another promise from the one person who might still care enough for Godric's life. For this one no boons were asked of him and yet he still knows he has sacrificed… everything.
While he walks towards the woman he used to recognize an aunt his feet struggle as though treading knee deep water. Ayanna waits, looking on with her wise, angry eyes. Elijah drops his gaze first, but past the catch in his throat and while already silently promising never again to do so, he pleads one final time.
"Take him with you Ayanna! Raise him! Teach him the things I no longer will have a chance to! And tell him… tell him of Elena! Do not permit him to grow without knowing of his mother's strength."
Her hands bend under his to grasp at the weight of his son and he tightens his hold in response without thought. His heart screeches and thunders and he almost, almost backs away. But then within the landscape of his mind he sees Godric's eyes as dead as Elena's, his skin as cold as his mothers, his blood as dead as his fathers. He lets go.
He lets go.
*o0O0o*
As he stands at the very edge of the trees, his back resting against a stump of one of the pines, he simply breathes. The air hurts as it travels down his throat, his chest swells with the smells of the rotting leaves and musty dirt and he almost vomits at the overwhelming odor.
He lets it out and that is almost worse, because there is nothing to distract him from his empty hands and no whisper of the paling scent of a young boy to catch in the web of his senses. He can no longer even hear his son in the distance. Ayanna has vanished into the twilight with all the life that had been left in him.
Now he finds himself feeling as alone as Elena must have all those years past.
*-o0o-*
The day she had become someone Elijah considered to be important was five cycles of seasons before her death. Although it took four of those summers until she reached the significance of what she came to mean to him, he had known her before even then. But of course he knew almost everyone from the surrounding villages. No one wished to live too far from the Caves after all.
But he'd only recognized her name and face then, had only met her a few times because of Finn's wife. On this day that changed.
He had been hunting a stag through the trees of the surrounding forest since mid noon of that day and despite the hours that had gone by he was not yet ready to give up. Then Elijah noticed a small stream not too large a distance in front of him and decided to set up in wait, ready in the likely case that the animal was as thirsty as him.
After hiding behind a fallen acorn and checking the direction of the wind he drew his bow and placed an arrow ready to fly, with his shoulder muscles tensing from strain he crouched low and stilled entirely.
But the trees around him were silent and no animals came to drink.
Then suddenly there came a loud rustling somewhere to the left of where his arrow was pointing and the sound of branches breaking, giving way for something that did not care if it alerted his presence to either prey or a stronger hunter. The only animals that behaved that way were bears for which he was not prepared for, so with carefully contained alarm he quickly changed his trajectory hoping he would not have need to face one.
As practiced countless times he drew the string more tightly and slowed his breathing for its release, the next instance someone ran into his sight and he almost shot the arrow at its unintended target. But before his hand could do the familiar motion his mind speedily took notice of the form of the aimed at victim.
The runner in question was doing so on two legs and had long, dark tresses of hair. It was a girl and by her height he'd have to place her as a child not much older than Rebekah's thirteen years.
Swallowing back the bile of that realization he jumped to his feet to catch the fleeing girl. He could hear her sobbing as he shortened the distance and was momentarily surprised at not having heard the cries before.
She was just within arms reach when she finally noticed him and screamed. His sudden appearance must have distracted as well as frightened her, for she immediately tripped, dropping on her knees to the ground with an audible grunt and then laid still.
Elijah finally had enough time to really notice her distraught appearance. Her hair was falling in every direction, leaves and small branches caught within them and singed on one side. It's the last part that really captured his notice and led him to become aware of the other signs, like the soot on her face and arms, the reddened skin of her right hand and the smoking parts of her dress.
She was running from a fire.
His eyes followed the direction she came from and tried remembering what lay behind the slight hill from which the smoke he only now saw was drifting away.
And suddenly he recognized the young sister of the woman Finn took for a wife. This then reminded him of the house built within the forest some distance from the rest of the village… right about where his eye was resting.
He knelt down and rolled the girl on her back. Her breathing was rapid and shallow and a little cough took what was left of it. But she grabbed his hand, clenching it so hard it was almost painful and opened her mouth as if to speak.
He leaned forward to hear better and finally looked into her eyes. They were wide and half glazed over, but it did not take away from their desperate strength.
"Save them! Please, save them!"
*-o0o-*
While the world begins to come into focus once more, thankfully distracting him from yet another memory, he hears a voice at his back. It is almost as sad as his own would be if he could manage to release even a single word.
And he knows that voice. He has held its owner as she wept at loss, since the time she learned how he has listened to the sound of it as she used it to laugh. There is no light in Rebekah's voice now however, she sounds tired and coarse as if she has screamed herself raw the way Elijah has not permitted himself to.
"I am sorry she turned her back on you, I will never do that!"
He knows to whom it is she is now speaking with of course. The brother they learned is only half theirs, the brother who Elijah has given promise to contain. More importantly he is the brother who is as much his family as Finn and Rebekah and Kol.
Instead of alone in the dark continuing to mourn those he has already lost he joins the siblings conversing by the grave of their mother. There is no way for them to repair his heart of course, there is nothing they might say or do that would make Elena's death or leaving Godric acceptable, but he still has the duty to look after them. He will protect them the way he failed to guard the two people he loved so much.
"Nor will I!"
Rebekah looks towards him and Elijah can't help to feel gladdened at the relief in her eyes. At least this he can still do successfully.
His sister was always the one he worried for most. He sees how freely she loves and so fears for the days when that strength will betray her, he is determined to push that event further away into the mists of future.
"We stick together as one!" She proclaims in certainty with her eyes shining fiercely and her voice holding no doubt. She promises with so much belief and determination that Elijah suddenly, proudly sees the woman behind his sister. "Always and forever."
His hands clasp those of his siblings and he echoes Rebekah's words.
He will always look after the family he has left. He will forever search for a way to wake his wife. He will never abandon the hope that one day, someday Elijah will have a chance to embrace Elena and Godric again. Even if it takes him fifty winters to do so, he will not give up. His heart belongs to them all.
'Always and Forever.'
*o0O0o*
// previous chapter// // next chapter//
*o0O0o*
A/N2: So? How was it? Did it make your chest constrict? Because I was aiming for that, I hope it lived up to that goal of mine. And how did you like Elijah's last promise? Was it cruel of me? To be fair as far as I see it Elijah doesn't really have the information to guess that he won't age, I mean werewolves age, why would he think his family's any different?
Anyway, next time you see an update you can be expecting five hundred years to have gone past. Elijah will act more like the ruthless guy we all know and adore, but he'll still have the goal to get Elena back, which... I admit might make him occasionally even more ruthless ;)
Rating: T
Author:
terapsina
Fandom: The Vampire Diaries
Pairing/Characters: Elijah/Elena, Elijah, Ayanna, Rebekah, Elena, Godric.
Word Count: 3'119
Parts: 4/10
Summary: AU To those who know the story of the making of vampires Elena will be remembered as the girl who was sacrificed for the plague they became. But in Elijah's memory she will always be the wife he loved and lost to his parents' desperation. All that he now has left is the wane hope that the body Ayanna preserved will one day wake as she promised. Elejah
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Death of Summer //Death of Summer//
Grieving Autumn // Eye of the Storm// // Heavy Rainfall// //PROMISING COLD//
*o0O0o*
*Harshness of the Seasons*
*Grieving Autumn: Promising Cold*
*o0O0o*
Elena lies peacefully as if in slumber, like she's dropped from exhaustion but at any moment she'll move to seek out the heat from Elijah's body and once she finds it smile. Cleaned of blood and wrapped in leather and fur, with her hair washed and braided by his inexperienced fingers… she looks asleep.
And if he keeps his eyes on just her face, if he ignores the chest that should be rising in sync with her breath - but isn't - and the paleness to her ever healthy sun kissed skin, he could almost fool himself into believing he might wake her with a throaty whisper by her ear. But his eyes miss nothing and so the only comfort is the mantra of Ayanna's promise chanting to an invisible rhythm within his head.
The child Elijah carefully holds pressed against his chest and over his rushing heartbeat moves lazily, all the while his son softly coos his content in that sweet as a singing bird's voice. He bites his tongue hard enough to taste blood, hides the building yells he wishes he could just release into the night continuing without end until his throat bleeds as well, but he will not frighten Godric, especially not now… not in these last moments.
"She looks like a dream, your mother! Don't you agree? She has the most beautiful smile, I wish you could remember it when you grow, it's somehow pleased and loving and never more so than when she directs it at us."
He stops, just breathes and presses the knuckles of his free hand into the point between eyebrows until his eyesight blackens and the painful memories blur. When he finally feels ready to continue without choking he trails at the steps of his last thought as thought the pause never existed.
"And she fights like a bear for her cubs when those she cares for are threatened, or if she deems it just I suppose. I wish that when you reach boyhood I could tell you the story of the time a wolf girl without her parents wondered into our village. She was threatened by a man twice her height raising his hand to strike. But Elena with nothing except her wits stepped between them with a fury as I've rarely seen since thundering in her gaze. The man has not looked her in the eye after then."
Elijah moves his stinging eyes away from Elena's stone still face to observe their son instead. Godric is sleepily grinning up at him, oblivious to the meaning of his father's words, but soothed by the voice that carries them none the less. He envies that innocence.
He wishes he could be unaware of Elena's stillness and ignorant of the person at his back, unknowing of the woman who waits patiently and gives him his moment of privacy for a farewell.
Closing his eyes to ward off the pain carried by the unstoppably flowing river of time Elijah leans forward to kiss his wife's brow, their boy presses between them like another connection they shared, among the innumerable different ones, a symbol of the most significant proof their intertwined hearts have created. Her skin feels cold across his lips, there is no hint of the familiar spark he doesn't realize he expects and he is not overwhelmed by the warm honeyed scent he had gotten to know so well. Instead, despite the water he cleansed her with and the flowers he pinned in her hair, she smells like dried blood and a burned grave.
Godric squirms in protest at his uncomfortable position between two bodies - one deadly, one dead - and Elijah relents stepping away.
"Your mother would have always stayed by you if she could. Soothed you. Sang to you. Loved you. And I've no doubt in her dreams she always will." His son's brown eyes are like a reflection of his wife's and while looking into them Elijah wills them to somehow, someday relay understanding. "So will I."
He promises yet again.
*-o0o-*
Her skin was pale and clammy, her hair stuck to her skin drenched in sweat, she was breathing laboriously in exhaustion and yet he had never seen her more beautiful. Not even during their wedding vows had she looked this radiant.
And all of it because of the nursing babe whose age he could still count in moments.
She was humming under her breath with a tender smile and yet her eyes seemed sad, his chest constricted at this small cruelty even on a day this magnificent. He very well imagined what she might feel missing from the occasion. And his thoughts were proven right with her quiet confession.
"I don't remember the words that go along with the melody anymore. I listened to this lullaby every night when I was little and I can't remember how it went."
Elijah did not answer, he knew no words that could ease this pain, but he sat by her side placing his left hand around her, carefully moved her to rest against him and hesitantly reached with his right one for his newborn son's head.
"I wish they could have met him. I wish they could have seen us together. I wish…no! Not today, I won't be sad today! Elijah? What name will we give him?"
He felt her head move under his chin as she looked up at him and his eyes flickered away from their son to connect with hers. There was a wistful star shining in them and he suddenly knew exactly the right words to ease his wife's pain.
"Godric has a brave, good sound to it."
At the sound of her father's name Elena's smile bloomed colorful like a summer flower and she grabbed his chin for a kiss. It was a simple touch of lips and yet it felt like yet another gift of love.
He held his new family in his hold and promised himself never to lose them. To always fight for them. To forever be there to ease the pain.
*-o0o-*
Compiling his will he finally turns away from the abyss of the spirit world towards the harsh eyes of the witch. Ayanna is standing by her gray mare, the horse is saddled for road with dried herbs and charms in the pack as well as food and blankets for the long roads ahead. She, like him and his family, is leaving now when their presence has created so much fear within their home.
They all know that staying would only bring more.
And Elijah studies her. Her unyielding presence is no more kind than it was when she met him in that burned circle, - How can he hand his son to a woman that hates the man her sister's magic created? How can he know she will think any differently of Godric? - and for the barest moment he listens to those words in the back of his mind screaming at him in Elena's voice. But if he wants his son safe and alive he must follow this road, even if it leads him to his love's hatred once she wakes. Even if once Godric learns words he only ever mentions his father in bitter scorn.
He must relinquish his claim on the only good he still has left of Elena.
He must, because Rebekah, the girl who wished to learn healing from Esther, savaged the throat of a man they had played with as kids. They had hunted with Willhart on occasion, had drank mead with him, fought raging fires that moved towards fields of crops with him, protected their home from the occasional fury of nature by his side. And yet even as he had struggled and cried, in the time it took her to drink him dry he had been nothing but a meal to her. No matter how much she sobbed in the arms of her brothers' of it later, there was no reigniting that life.
'Neither that one… nor Esther's.'
His mother had placed that same hunger in all of them and had paid for it. At first a whisper at the edge of their mind, it grew with every day, like flames it licked in their stomachs beseeching to consume.
Niklaus and Kol had been disappearing behind dark corners with a new maiden or a different man's wife to quench their appetite rather frequently. Elijah's only comfort was how all those women reappeared well enough, if a little pale, by the same brothers' satisfied looking sides. He care not guess if only blood was consumed.
And Elijah himself is no exception to the hunger. He has tried to control it, has tried smothering this weakness. But the savage thirst is there, always present, waiting for a nick in the shield of his control… and the grief only proved to have enhanced it. So Elijah had taken to hunting in the woods, miles out of the way of any man, but even that barely satisfies and he knows he will not be able to abstain of his friends and neighbors for long if he remains. The disgust at his urges does not seem to be an asset for despite its piercing claws he still seeks out the rushing beat of hearts with his too great hearing.
And as he listens to the small rapid sound coming from Godric's young chest he fears.
Imagines the fragility of his son's tiny bones and remembers the way he and his siblings pulled the old tree with its very roots from the ground. It had given way so easily, they had not summoned sweat and their hands had not bled, at least no longer than the time it took for a snowflake to melt on a bared palm.
'What could I do to a child if I held him too fiercely?'
The final reason, the one that decided they must leave had come with his brother's news of their mother's death. Elijah even now does not know if he wishes to weep from this loss or take satisfaction from it, does not know if he should forgive a dead woman or carry on the rage at her horrifying decision.
So as his family had readied to leave he entered the woods looking for another promise from the one person who might still care enough for Godric's life. For this one no boons were asked of him and yet he still knows he has sacrificed… everything.
While he walks towards the woman he used to recognize an aunt his feet struggle as though treading knee deep water. Ayanna waits, looking on with her wise, angry eyes. Elijah drops his gaze first, but past the catch in his throat and while already silently promising never again to do so, he pleads one final time.
"Take him with you Ayanna! Raise him! Teach him the things I no longer will have a chance to! And tell him… tell him of Elena! Do not permit him to grow without knowing of his mother's strength."
Her hands bend under his to grasp at the weight of his son and he tightens his hold in response without thought. His heart screeches and thunders and he almost, almost backs away. But then within the landscape of his mind he sees Godric's eyes as dead as Elena's, his skin as cold as his mothers, his blood as dead as his fathers. He lets go.
He lets go.
*o0O0o*
As he stands at the very edge of the trees, his back resting against a stump of one of the pines, he simply breathes. The air hurts as it travels down his throat, his chest swells with the smells of the rotting leaves and musty dirt and he almost vomits at the overwhelming odor.
He lets it out and that is almost worse, because there is nothing to distract him from his empty hands and no whisper of the paling scent of a young boy to catch in the web of his senses. He can no longer even hear his son in the distance. Ayanna has vanished into the twilight with all the life that had been left in him.
Now he finds himself feeling as alone as Elena must have all those years past.
*-o0o-*
The day she had become someone Elijah considered to be important was five cycles of seasons before her death. Although it took four of those summers until she reached the significance of what she came to mean to him, he had known her before even then. But of course he knew almost everyone from the surrounding villages. No one wished to live too far from the Caves after all.
But he'd only recognized her name and face then, had only met her a few times because of Finn's wife. On this day that changed.
He had been hunting a stag through the trees of the surrounding forest since mid noon of that day and despite the hours that had gone by he was not yet ready to give up. Then Elijah noticed a small stream not too large a distance in front of him and decided to set up in wait, ready in the likely case that the animal was as thirsty as him.
After hiding behind a fallen acorn and checking the direction of the wind he drew his bow and placed an arrow ready to fly, with his shoulder muscles tensing from strain he crouched low and stilled entirely.
But the trees around him were silent and no animals came to drink.
Then suddenly there came a loud rustling somewhere to the left of where his arrow was pointing and the sound of branches breaking, giving way for something that did not care if it alerted his presence to either prey or a stronger hunter. The only animals that behaved that way were bears for which he was not prepared for, so with carefully contained alarm he quickly changed his trajectory hoping he would not have need to face one.
As practiced countless times he drew the string more tightly and slowed his breathing for its release, the next instance someone ran into his sight and he almost shot the arrow at its unintended target. But before his hand could do the familiar motion his mind speedily took notice of the form of the aimed at victim.
The runner in question was doing so on two legs and had long, dark tresses of hair. It was a girl and by her height he'd have to place her as a child not much older than Rebekah's thirteen years.
Swallowing back the bile of that realization he jumped to his feet to catch the fleeing girl. He could hear her sobbing as he shortened the distance and was momentarily surprised at not having heard the cries before.
She was just within arms reach when she finally noticed him and screamed. His sudden appearance must have distracted as well as frightened her, for she immediately tripped, dropping on her knees to the ground with an audible grunt and then laid still.
Elijah finally had enough time to really notice her distraught appearance. Her hair was falling in every direction, leaves and small branches caught within them and singed on one side. It's the last part that really captured his notice and led him to become aware of the other signs, like the soot on her face and arms, the reddened skin of her right hand and the smoking parts of her dress.
She was running from a fire.
His eyes followed the direction she came from and tried remembering what lay behind the slight hill from which the smoke he only now saw was drifting away.
And suddenly he recognized the young sister of the woman Finn took for a wife. This then reminded him of the house built within the forest some distance from the rest of the village… right about where his eye was resting.
He knelt down and rolled the girl on her back. Her breathing was rapid and shallow and a little cough took what was left of it. But she grabbed his hand, clenching it so hard it was almost painful and opened her mouth as if to speak.
He leaned forward to hear better and finally looked into her eyes. They were wide and half glazed over, but it did not take away from their desperate strength.
"Save them! Please, save them!"
*-o0o-*
While the world begins to come into focus once more, thankfully distracting him from yet another memory, he hears a voice at his back. It is almost as sad as his own would be if he could manage to release even a single word.
And he knows that voice. He has held its owner as she wept at loss, since the time she learned how he has listened to the sound of it as she used it to laugh. There is no light in Rebekah's voice now however, she sounds tired and coarse as if she has screamed herself raw the way Elijah has not permitted himself to.
"I am sorry she turned her back on you, I will never do that!"
He knows to whom it is she is now speaking with of course. The brother they learned is only half theirs, the brother who Elijah has given promise to contain. More importantly he is the brother who is as much his family as Finn and Rebekah and Kol.
Instead of alone in the dark continuing to mourn those he has already lost he joins the siblings conversing by the grave of their mother. There is no way for them to repair his heart of course, there is nothing they might say or do that would make Elena's death or leaving Godric acceptable, but he still has the duty to look after them. He will protect them the way he failed to guard the two people he loved so much.
"Nor will I!"
Rebekah looks towards him and Elijah can't help to feel gladdened at the relief in her eyes. At least this he can still do successfully.
His sister was always the one he worried for most. He sees how freely she loves and so fears for the days when that strength will betray her, he is determined to push that event further away into the mists of future.
"We stick together as one!" She proclaims in certainty with her eyes shining fiercely and her voice holding no doubt. She promises with so much belief and determination that Elijah suddenly, proudly sees the woman behind his sister. "Always and forever."
His hands clasp those of his siblings and he echoes Rebekah's words.
He will always look after the family he has left. He will forever search for a way to wake his wife. He will never abandon the hope that one day, someday Elijah will have a chance to embrace Elena and Godric again. Even if it takes him fifty winters to do so, he will not give up. His heart belongs to them all.
'Always and Forever.'
*o0O0o*
// previous chapter// // next chapter//
*o0O0o*
A/N2: So? How was it? Did it make your chest constrict? Because I was aiming for that, I hope it lived up to that goal of mine. And how did you like Elijah's last promise? Was it cruel of me? To be fair as far as I see it Elijah doesn't really have the information to guess that he won't age, I mean werewolves age, why would he think his family's any different?
Anyway, next time you see an update you can be expecting five hundred years to have gone past. Elijah will act more like the ruthless guy we all know and adore, but he'll still have the goal to get Elena back, which... I admit might make him occasionally even more ruthless ;)