Dying at this point would be the merciful thing to do, an escape from the torture.
Lucien doesn't want the most merciful course of action. Not that she has any real idea what he does want beyond his army and the ceremony. Maybe that's all. Maybe he's so terrifyingly laser-focused on those things that everything else, literally everyone else, is nothing but an expendable obstacle that can either be removed or used to his advantage. She's still going to hope someone comes and finds them. She's still going to hope maybe Damon wasn't taken along with them and he can find a way.
Elena doesn't know what she's hoping for, except she cannot accept that it is all hopeless.
She might feel differently sooner than she thinks, but for now, she has to believe that there's something that can be done, even if she can't see it at the moment. She wracked her brain for any possible exit strategy, she tried striking up every deal she could think of that might be worth their while, there isn't anything she hasn't tried, since there is honestly very little Elena won't do to save those she loves if she can help it.
The thought that there's nothing to be done, that she's once again powerless to stop the chaos and the destruction from reigning down on them, it's almost paralyzing. It's almost too much for her to process so she doesn't. Elena doesn't stop and linger on all the painstaking ways in which she knows they are doomed.
Elena doesn't reject the reality of their circumstance. She's always been aware that vampires are vampires and werewolves are werewolves, she's just always seen them as people, too. Elena doesn't doubt him even if Ethan is doubting himself, and she's warred with a similar predicament involving morality and the nature of from a very long time ago, before she ended up here. From the moment she was pitted as Katherine's opposite, some symbolic quest to redemption juxtaposed perfectly by the doppelganger that came before her who spelled everyone's ruin.
She cannot ignore nature, but she cannot ignore the process of nurture, either.
Elena and Katherine may not have been polar opposites, but she never was going to become Katherine. They have the genetic code. They have the Petrova fire. They even have the survival instinct ingrained in them so deeply that's all they seem to know to do, manifesting in very different ways. Katherine's self-preservation is strictly for herself. Elena's preservation is strictly for others. They are both not above manipulation. They are both capable of reprehensible things. They are both capable of love, as well.
The difference lies in how they define the word, and how their experiences have shaped the way they see the world, see themselves, and see those around them. Ethan and his brothers were raised in a loving way. The part of them that was human was nurtured from a very young age. There may be the werewolf inside of him but that doesn't mean Ethan isn't still there too, and it's Ethan she's going to be fighting for.
There's no tearing away his nature, the way she can't change the fact she was born the doppelganger, and how terrible it must seem to both of them when it can cause so much destruction and pain and death. She's caused so much of it by just existing, that she can't help but wonder sometimes if she's just a monster, too.
It's not an easy burden to live with.
They'd all thought there was a chance. They'd all thought there was a possibility they could come out of it the other side, maybe not unscathed, but triumphant. If they hadn't believed that, they wouldn't have charged forward with all they had. The witches on their side, the objects they'd gone to the ends of the earths for, the secrets they kept, the enemies they took down as they piled up, and there were always many. She made decisions she wasn't proud of, and she did things she wouldn't have ever done if she hadn't been pushed to the extreme, but everything she did, she did with the belief that it would get them somewhere.
It wasn't that she ever thought the fight would be easy, but she did think that it was possible. She has expectations and she needs to believe things can be a certain way while also knowing there is a darker side to anything. There is a darker side to anyone, including her. She is not above this, and she never has been.
She just thought it was possible to overcome this.
Elena has to believe this, because something supernatural and deadly is always going to come after her, it seems, and she has to survive it but she cannot survive it alone. She cannot lose anyone else that she loves to this. She can't end up here, again and again, with the exact same results, and still end up Elena.
There isn't any reason to hope.
There isn't any logical reason to keep going after what they've been through, but she places it aside to reach him instead. She'll always want to reach him. She'll always want it to mean something, and it does mean something, that in the possibly darkest of moments she still reaches out and he can still feel it. The darkness remains but so does he.
The illusions and dreams and hopes she'd hold on to as tightly as she possibly could are all falling, piece by piece. The curtain is being pulled and she's seeing things for what they really are. She's seeing the ugly. She's seeing the brutal, hopeless thing for what it is. And in spite of all of it, despite the fact that all the things she believed to be true are now lies, the softness of his hands on her face, the tenderness of her own hands on his, that's still there.
It's still left when not much else is, when she could easily lose herself in that dark place filled with the guilt that comes with surviving, and Elena can do nothing but hold on to it. It's a comfort, as hard as they've fallen, and she can let herself be as hurt and as broken and as hopeless as she wants to be as long as it's in the darkest corner.
Her hands slip over his face, and over, her own face close to his. She can only faintly make it out in the darkness, the lines of his bones and the brown of his eyes, but that's as much as she needs. Elena can feel the moment his hands find their certainty, and her own hands never lost theirs, slipping further up his face until she's cradling the side of it. Her forehead rests against his, fingers curling into his hair, always gently.
It is the best thing she has felt since she was taken, too. Elena only brings him closer, deepening the kiss along with him, loving along with him, that soaring reminder that they still can. They can still love. They can still hope even when it's hopeless.
"I know," she whispers at him, her hands remaining on his face. Maybe she did before this moment or maybe she didn't, but she knows it now, and she lets it fill her when the rest is threatening to drown instead. Her lips rest against the side of his face, grazing the side of his warm skin softly before she holds him in place.
She is horrified to see what's left of his wrists and his hands. She is horrified to think of what could be left later, and she -- as much as she is able to face what is true now she can't stop herself from stopping him, in turn. "You're hurting yourself," she says, and it sounds almost as hopeless and helpelss as everything else that has ever been said. The fact that he's stopped, it's only a small comfort, because she knows what he's thinking and she's been there.
She knows what it's like to feel she has to die, and it hurts to know he's there now, too, and because of her and why she was brought here.
"I don't know. I don't know how his mind works but he needs me alive." The drain would -- it would hold all her blood she's sure, but up until that moment, it's not certain whether or not she is needed alive. She's getting restless with the urge to move, to run, to do something as opposed to just standing here but there's nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. "He's playing games with you, he wants you losing your mind. Ethan, it has to be possible."
She doesn't look away from him, not as he lies back on the wall, not as he can't catch his breath. She can't seem to catch her own for all her efforts, and it's only until she sees him trying to dig into his own skin again she moves forward again, unwilling to let go of the shackles if that means he'll keep digging.
Elena can't --
He won't do this to himself.
"I know what you're doing," she says at last, when she trusts herself to speak. "And I know you're doing it to protect me, but I can't let you. I'm not going to let you kill yourself, Ethan."
She won't.
He's not killing himself in front of her. She's not giving up on him.
She gasps softly, looking up at the hatch as a howl pierces through the quiet, distantly from up above them. She swallows thickly, looking down at her wrist but there's no watch there, only the tell-tale sign that she used to wear one. They didn't want them knowing what time of day it was, or even what day it was, and that makes sense now, too.
Elena stands there, incapable of moving, and she doesn't demand that he fight this.
She is no longer the naive girl that demands love owes her a damn thing, that love is stronger than compulsion, that it could be stronger than a transformation where he loses all semblance of himself. She's no longer that girl, long since hardened by what's been done and what they've seen. It doesn't mean she believes in his love any less. It doesn't mean she believes in him any less.
It doesn't mean she's giving up.
It simply means she knows it's not up to him once the moon hangs low enough.
Love always wakes the dragon.
Time is running out and she can't let him die, and he can't kill her, and
no subject
Lucien doesn't want the most merciful course of action. Not that she has any real idea what he does want beyond his army and the ceremony. Maybe that's all. Maybe he's so terrifyingly laser-focused on those things that everything else, literally everyone else, is nothing but an expendable obstacle that can either be removed or used to his advantage. She's still going to hope someone comes and finds them. She's still going to hope maybe Damon wasn't taken along with them and he can find a way.
Elena doesn't know what she's hoping for, except she cannot accept that it is all hopeless.
She might feel differently sooner than she thinks, but for now, she has to believe that there's something that can be done, even if she can't see it at the moment. She wracked her brain for any possible exit strategy, she tried striking up every deal she could think of that might be worth their while, there isn't anything she hasn't tried, since there is honestly very little Elena won't do to save those she loves if she can help it.
The thought that there's nothing to be done, that she's once again powerless to stop the chaos and the destruction from reigning down on them, it's almost paralyzing. It's almost too much for her to process so she doesn't. Elena doesn't stop and linger on all the painstaking ways in which she knows they are doomed.
Elena doesn't reject the reality of their circumstance. She's always been aware that vampires are vampires and werewolves are werewolves, she's just always seen them as people, too. Elena doesn't doubt him even if Ethan is doubting himself, and she's warred with a similar predicament involving morality and the nature of from a very long time ago, before she ended up here. From the moment she was pitted as Katherine's opposite, some symbolic quest to redemption juxtaposed perfectly by the doppelganger that came before her who spelled everyone's ruin.
She cannot ignore nature, but she cannot ignore the process of nurture, either.
Elena and Katherine may not have been polar opposites, but she never was going to become Katherine. They have the genetic code. They have the Petrova fire. They even have the survival instinct ingrained in them so deeply that's all they seem to know to do, manifesting in very different ways. Katherine's self-preservation is strictly for herself. Elena's preservation is strictly for others. They are both not above manipulation. They are both
capable of reprehensible things. They are both capable of love, as well.
The difference lies in how they define the word, and how their experiences have shaped the way they see the world, see themselves, and see those around them. Ethan and his brothers were raised in a loving way. The part of them that was human was nurtured from a very young age. There may be the werewolf inside of him but that doesn't mean Ethan isn't still there too, and it's Ethan she's going to be fighting for.
There's no tearing away his nature, the way she can't change the fact she was born the doppelganger, and how terrible it must seem to both of them when it can cause so much destruction and pain and death. She's caused so much of it by just existing, that she can't help but wonder sometimes if she's just a monster, too.
It's not an easy burden to live with.
They'd all thought there was a chance. They'd all thought there was a possibility they could come out of it the other side, maybe not unscathed, but triumphant. If they hadn't believed that, they wouldn't have charged forward with all they had. The witches on their side, the objects they'd gone to the ends of the earths for, the secrets they kept, the enemies they took down as they piled up, and there were always many. She made decisions she wasn't proud of, and she did things she wouldn't have ever done if she hadn't been pushed to the extreme, but everything she did, she did with the belief that it would get them somewhere.
It wasn't that she ever thought the fight would be easy, but she did think that it was possible. She has expectations and she needs to believe things can be a certain way while also knowing there is a darker side to anything. There is a darker side to anyone, including her. She is not above this, and she never has been.
She just thought it was possible to overcome this.
Elena has to believe this, because something supernatural and deadly is always going to come after her, it seems, and she has to survive it but she cannot survive it alone. She cannot lose anyone else that she loves to this. She can't end up here, again and again, with the exact same results, and still end up Elena.
There isn't any reason to hope.
There isn't any logical reason to keep going after what they've been through, but she places it aside to reach him instead. She'll always want to reach him. She'll always want it to mean something, and it does mean something, that in the possibly darkest of moments she still reaches out and he can still feel it. The darkness remains but so does he.
The illusions and dreams and hopes she'd hold on to as tightly as she possibly could are all falling, piece by piece. The curtain is being pulled and she's seeing things for what they really are. She's seeing the ugly. She's seeing the brutal, hopeless thing for what it is. And in spite of all of it, despite the fact that all the things she believed to be true are now lies, the softness of his hands on her face, the tenderness of her own hands on his, that's still there.
It's still left when not much else is, when she could easily lose herself in that dark place filled with the guilt that comes with surviving, and Elena can do nothing but hold on to it. It's a comfort, as hard as they've fallen, and she can let herself be as hurt and as broken and as hopeless as she wants to be as long as it's in the darkest corner.
Her hands slip over his face, and over, her own face close to his. She can only faintly make it out in the darkness, the lines of his bones and the brown of his eyes, but that's as much as she needs. Elena can feel the moment his hands find their certainty, and her own hands never lost theirs, slipping further up his face until she's cradling the side of it. Her forehead rests against his, fingers curling into his hair, always gently.
It is the best thing she has felt since she was taken, too. Elena only brings him closer, deepening the kiss along with him, loving along with him, that soaring reminder that they still can. They can still love. They can still hope even when it's hopeless.
"I know," she whispers at him, her hands remaining on his face. Maybe she did before this moment or maybe she didn't, but she knows it now, and she lets it fill her when the rest is threatening to drown instead. Her lips rest against the side of his face, grazing the side of his warm skin softly before she holds him in place.
She is horrified to see what's left of his wrists and his hands. She is horrified to think of what could be left later, and she -- as much as she is able to face what is true now she can't stop herself from stopping him, in turn. "You're hurting yourself," she says, and it sounds almost as hopeless and helpelss as everything else that has ever been said. The fact that he's stopped, it's only a small comfort, because she knows what he's thinking and she's been there.
She knows what it's like to feel she has to die, and it hurts to know he's there now, too, and because of her and why she was brought here.
"I don't know. I don't know how his mind works but he needs me alive." The drain would -- it would hold all her blood she's sure, but up until that moment, it's not certain whether or not she is needed alive. She's getting restless with the urge to move, to run, to do something as opposed to just standing here but there's nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. "He's playing games with you, he wants you losing your mind. Ethan, it has to be possible."
She doesn't look away from him, not as he lies back on the wall, not as he can't catch his breath. She can't seem to catch her own for all her efforts, and it's only until she sees him trying to dig into his own skin again she moves forward again, unwilling to let go of the shackles if that means he'll keep digging.
Elena can't --
He won't do this to himself.
"I know what you're doing," she says at last, when she trusts herself to speak. "And I know you're doing it to protect me, but I can't let you. I'm not going to let you kill yourself, Ethan."
She won't.
He's not killing himself in front of her. She's not giving up on him.
She gasps softly, looking up at the hatch as a howl pierces through the quiet, distantly from up above them. She swallows thickly, looking down at her wrist but there's no watch there, only the tell-tale sign that she used to wear one. They didn't want them knowing what time of day it was, or even what day it was, and that makes sense now, too.
Elena stands there, incapable of moving, and she doesn't demand that he fight this.
She is no longer the naive girl that demands love owes her a damn thing, that love is stronger than compulsion, that it could be stronger than a transformation where he loses all semblance of himself. She's no longer that girl, long since hardened by what's been done and what they've seen. It doesn't mean she believes in his love any less. It doesn't mean she believes in him any less.
It doesn't mean she's giving up.
It simply means she knows it's not up to him once the moon hangs low enough.
Love always wakes the dragon.
Time is running out and she can't let him die, and he can't kill her, and
time
just
runs
out.