It would be the merciful thing, but it won’t be allowed as long as Lucien as hold of all of them.
He doesn’t want them dead. He wants to have them, to use them, to make them do whatever he wants them to do. Lucien uses their love for each other against them. If you don’t do this, your brother’s arm gets broken and then let you listen to the scream when you don’t obey and he does just that. And it’s not one bone but two that he breaks then, and there’s no telling what it is that Ethan didn’t do this time.
Lucien got tired of it, and he had the means to up the lesson, make it more powerful. He should have known that it was going to happen. Ethan knows Lucien told him something about lessons to be learned, but he never—didn’t imagine this. Couldn’t have imagined this, funny how that keeps happening.
Hope. Hope is so impossible to grasp hold of, reason for living is equally impossible to hold on to, and he doesn’t know how he is still living except that he is, except Lucien won’t let him die, except he doesn’t want to die knowing his brothers and her and others could be out there alive still. It’s impossible for him to abandon them or abandon her, and he wouldn’t— wouldn’t unless he thought he had to like he’s going to think he has to, because the alternative is too much to think of.
He knows it. Ethan knows she always faces reality head first and doesn’t hide from it. She always faces up to it directly, and he doesn’t know how she manages to do so, how she manages to get hope in the darkest of moments, the most painful times that they could possibly ever manage. She is still—There’s still hope in her somehow, and he believes it, but he doubts himself so much. He doubts who he is and what he is capable of and who he will be when all is said and done.
He doesn’t doubt for one second that Lucien can turn him into what he wants.
Lucien already knows how to bring out that rage, bring out the animal better than anything else ever has now. He doesn’t even have to try, but when he does try it’s maddening. It’s a mad dog, attacking the bars that keep him locked in a cell with no thought, no plan, no idea of what he’s doing. There’s just the attacking again and again and again.
And he has no doubts at all Lucien could train him, break him and remold him and shape him into this thing if he wanted to.
Part of is genetics, part of it is the scientific experiment they all were before they were even born, part of it is what Lucien can and will do to get what he wants and understanding so well how to do it. He doesn’t have a lot of faith in himself when Elena is thrown in but he’d stood tall, strong against what his father had wanted him to do. Ethan had resisted, and he should have known that would come at a price, at a price that he would never want to pay and a price that someone else would have to pay because of him.
There are so many differences, and Ethan hopes that his mother teaching them and raising them will give them the strength to not become what Lucien wants them to become. However, when this—when it comes to this? When it comes to her life being thrown in front of him like she’s meat? That’s what the werewolf will see her as, that’s all she’ll be to it and that is a huge part of him, and to think that is all she will be, it tears him apart to think of it to think of what she’ll be to the monster, to the animal. His claws and his teeth will tear her apart, this beautiful, fighting, compassionate, challenging woman that changed his life and chose to believe in him and love him
will be torn apart
piece by piece
by him.
No, it’s not an easy burden to live with, and he has avoided it and run from it so long and from what he was afraid of that he couldn’t- there’s no more running. There wouldn’t have been any more running after discovering the truth about his father and what his father did to them and what he wanted for Elena, doppleganger. He was the only one who knew- the only one that knew what that meant, that knew that all the pieces could easily fall into place when Adam was explaining it, and he left without looking back.
And he came to her because- because it was right, and he should have known then.
Ethan should have known at that point, at his visceral reaction to all of it but especially to knowing what their father wanted for him, for Elena, for all of his brothers, and it made him sick, sick with it.
But he should have known that night when he showed up at her doorstep in the rain how he really felt about her.
There had been so many tangled emotions leading up to that point in little moments between them like when she mentioned having been in love and how that person was in Chicago now too, like when she fell on top of him at the park, like when he was lying in bed beside her as she told him about her life and listened to him without judgment as he talked about his own and about things he hadn’t talked about with anyone else, like all of those times and so many more than he can count.
He loves her, and he should have realized it one of those other times instead of right now in this dark cell right only hours before he’s going to have to kill her.
She is familiar. His hands on her face, following the lines of her face and down to her neck and tangling in the strands of her hair. He has certainty as he slides his hands over hers, and he didn’t think he’d reach certainty again. He closes his eyes as he rests against her forehead. It’s the best thing he has felt, and he holds on to it, he holds on to it with all his might, losing himself, losing this cell, only feeling and knowing her in this moment.
He smiles a bit, painfully as she whispers I know to him, and it takes hold of his heart, filling it. She knows now. It’s better than never, better than her dying and never knowing, but she knows he loves her and he knows she loves him too. Even if it was the worst timing that it possibly could have. He’d rather it come at least the once than not at all.
It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what’ll be left later if she’s dea- if he’s killed her. What does it matter? What does it matter what comes of his wrists which heal? They’re werewolves. Lucien set them up with the highest possible healing fucking mechanisms, and he doesn’t want them, why keep a monster alive? And he only stops when her voice reaches through to him, not for his sake but for hers. “It doesn’t matter,” he says when she says he’s hurting himself. He can hurt himself all he wants but he can’t stop it.
He can’t hurt himself enough to stop it, and he would if he could, if there was some way to knock himself out to break all his limbs that might slow the werewolf down. They’re attached, and he has to- to find a way.
“But—the drain, he has the drain there to- he said,” Ethan closes his eyes, and he wouldn’t put it past Lucien to lie but he also wouldn’t put it past Lucien to tell the truth. There’s no telling which it is, but he knows. He can feel it, can hear her breathing and her heart beating from her and everything coming to life around him. It means time is running out. And he closes his eyes, expression breaking, crumpling. “That’s- this- it would do it.”
His heart is thudding heavily in his chest, and he can’t hear it, can’t hear through it. If Lucien wants him to lose his mind, he picked out the perfect way for it to happen in a snap without anything else needed, knowing what he is and what he does and the power he has is what’s ripped her apart and taken her from him. It’s him.
It’ll be him, his fault, his claws, his monster that’s done it.
There’s no way he won’t- no way it wouldn’t break him beyond repair to have been the one that killed her.
Ethan looks up at her when her hands rest on the shackles again. His hands are shaking as he turns them, and he wants to touch her but he won’t trust himself with it. He looks at her hands instead, stopping—stopping the digging as soon as her hands rest over his, and he keeps his eyes shut at the onslaught of panic and tears takes over him.
“I’m not- I’m doing it because I have to. I can’t-“ The fire captures up the words, and he sobs, tears slipping down his face as he tries to work the chain with shaking hands and arms, tense and moving and not stopping. “I can’t be what kills you. I can’t kill you. Don’t let me kill you. I can’t- I can’t- I can’t, Elena- I- I’ve got to die instead and if you want to die after that I understand but I can’t-“ his voice is trembling, and he’s shaking and having trouble catching his breath. “I’ll tear you apart.”
He needs to kill himself.
The other option isn’t an—an option. It’s not except there is no option but the one thing he would never ever ever be willing to do.
He hears the howl too, and he stares upward though there’s nothing to see, but his whole body is tense, and he moves as far from her as he can even if it won’t make any difference at all. The whole of it- the moon- it’s there, and he can feel the transformation taking hold and he’s screaming because he is fighting something that’s impossible to fight because he can’t be what kills her, tears her apart, makes her bleed, hurts her ever.
“I’m so sorry.”
It’s the last thing that Ethan manages to sob out in his own voice, filled with pain and fear and horror all at once.
It only prolongs the transformation, it only makes it longer and hurt more than it ever has before every muscle, every part of himself fighting against the need to turn but there’s nothing- there is no way he can stop it or control his body, and the shift isn’t quick at all. It takes over.
His hands sliding into claws, claws that are already lashing out toward her without thought.
Because Ethan is gone.
All of his love for her is gone, twisted up and shoved away into a tiny, tiny locked chest within the animal.
And all is left is the monster, the cuffs and chains sink into the werewolf, angering it but keeping it from reaching the full length of the cell except for the claws. It’ll break out of it soon, the more it pulls, the more it smells the blood and the meat of the young girl in its cell too.
no subject
He doesn’t want them dead. He wants to have them, to use them, to make them do whatever he wants them to do. Lucien uses their love for each other against them. If you don’t do this, your brother’s arm gets broken and then let you listen to the scream when you don’t obey and he does just that. And it’s not one bone but two that he breaks then, and there’s no telling what it is that Ethan didn’t do this time.
Lucien got tired of it, and he had the means to up the lesson, make it more powerful. He should have known that it was going to happen. Ethan knows Lucien told him something about lessons to be learned, but he never—didn’t imagine this. Couldn’t have imagined this, funny how that keeps happening.
Hope. Hope is so impossible to grasp hold of, reason for living is equally impossible to hold on to, and he doesn’t know how he is still living except that he is, except Lucien won’t let him die, except he doesn’t want to die knowing his brothers and her and others could be out there alive still. It’s impossible for him to abandon them or abandon her, and he wouldn’t— wouldn’t unless he thought he had to like he’s going to think he has to, because the alternative is too much to think of.
He knows it. Ethan knows she always faces reality head first and doesn’t hide from it. She always faces up to it directly, and he doesn’t know how she manages to do so, how she manages to get hope in the darkest of moments, the most painful times that they could possibly ever manage. She is still—There’s still hope in her somehow, and he believes it, but he doubts himself so much. He doubts who he is and what he is capable of and who he will be when all is said and done.
He doesn’t doubt for one second that Lucien can turn him into what he wants.
Lucien already knows how to bring out that rage, bring out the animal better than anything else ever has now. He doesn’t even have to try, but when he does try it’s maddening. It’s a mad dog, attacking the bars that keep him locked in a cell with no thought, no plan, no idea of what he’s doing. There’s just the attacking again and again and again.
And he has no doubts at all Lucien could train him, break him and remold him and shape him into this thing if he wanted to.
Part of is genetics, part of it is the scientific experiment they all were before they were even born, part of it is what Lucien can and will do to get what he wants and understanding so well how to do it. He doesn’t have a lot of faith in himself when Elena is thrown in but he’d stood tall, strong against what his father had wanted him to do. Ethan had resisted, and he should have known that would come at a price, at a price that he would never want to pay and a price that someone else would have to pay because of him.
There are so many differences, and Ethan hopes that his mother teaching them and raising them will give them the strength to not become what Lucien wants them to become. However, when this—when it comes to this? When it comes to her life being thrown in front of him like she’s meat? That’s what the werewolf will see her as, that’s all she’ll be to it and that is a huge part of him, and to think that is all she will be, it tears him apart to think of it to think of what she’ll be to the monster, to the animal. His claws and his teeth will tear her apart, this beautiful, fighting, compassionate, challenging woman that changed his life and chose to believe in him and love him
will be torn apart
piece by piece
by him.
No, it’s not an easy burden to live with, and he has avoided it and run from it so long and from what he was afraid of that he couldn’t- there’s no more running. There wouldn’t have been any more running after discovering the truth about his father and what his father did to them and what he wanted for Elena, doppleganger. He was the only one who knew- the only one that knew what that meant, that knew that all the pieces could easily fall into place when Adam was explaining it, and he left without looking back.
And he came to her because- because it was right, and he should have known then.
Ethan should have known at that point, at his visceral reaction to all of it but especially to knowing what their father wanted for him, for Elena, for all of his brothers, and it made him sick, sick with it.
But he should have known that night when he showed up at her doorstep in the rain how he really felt about her.
There had been so many tangled emotions leading up to that point in little moments between them like when she mentioned having been in love and how that person was in Chicago now too, like when she fell on top of him at the park, like when he was lying in bed beside her as she told him about her life and listened to him without judgment as he talked about his own and about things he hadn’t talked about with anyone else, like all of those times and so many more than he can count.
He loves her, and he should have realized it one of those other times instead of right now in this dark cell right only hours before he’s going to have to kill her.
She is familiar. His hands on her face, following the lines of her face and down to her neck and tangling in the strands of her hair. He has certainty as he slides his hands over hers, and he didn’t think he’d reach certainty again. He closes his eyes as he rests against her forehead. It’s the best thing he has felt, and he holds on to it, he holds on to it with all his might, losing himself, losing this cell, only feeling and knowing her in this moment.
He smiles a bit, painfully as she whispers I know to him, and it takes hold of his heart, filling it. She knows now. It’s better than never, better than her dying and never knowing, but she knows he loves her and he knows she loves him too. Even if it was the worst timing that it possibly could have. He’d rather it come at least the once than not at all.
It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what’ll be left later if she’s dea- if he’s killed her. What does it matter? What does it matter what comes of his wrists which heal? They’re werewolves. Lucien set them up with the highest possible healing fucking mechanisms, and he doesn’t want them, why keep a monster alive? And he only stops when her voice reaches through to him, not for his sake but for hers. “It doesn’t matter,” he says when she says he’s hurting himself. He can hurt himself all he wants but he can’t stop it.
He can’t hurt himself enough to stop it, and he would if he could, if there was some way to knock himself out to break all his limbs that might slow the werewolf down. They’re attached, and he has to- to find a way.
“But—the drain, he has the drain there to- he said,” Ethan closes his eyes, and he wouldn’t put it past Lucien to lie but he also wouldn’t put it past Lucien to tell the truth. There’s no telling which it is, but he knows. He can feel it, can hear her breathing and her heart beating from her and everything coming to life around him. It means time is running out. And he closes his eyes, expression breaking, crumpling. “That’s- this- it would do it.”
His heart is thudding heavily in his chest, and he can’t hear it, can’t hear through it. If Lucien wants him to lose his mind, he picked out the perfect way for it to happen in a snap without anything else needed, knowing what he is and what he does and the power he has is what’s ripped her apart and taken her from him. It’s him.
It’ll be him, his fault, his claws, his monster that’s done it.
There’s no way he won’t- no way it wouldn’t break him beyond repair to have been the one that killed her.
Ethan looks up at her when her hands rest on the shackles again. His hands are shaking as he turns them, and he wants to touch her but he won’t trust himself with it. He looks at her hands instead, stopping—stopping the digging as soon as her hands rest over his, and he keeps his eyes shut at the onslaught of panic and tears takes over him.
“I’m not- I’m doing it because I have to. I can’t-“ The fire captures up the words, and he sobs, tears slipping down his face as he tries to work the chain with shaking hands and arms, tense and moving and not stopping. “I can’t be what kills you. I can’t kill you. Don’t let me kill you. I can’t- I can’t- I can’t, Elena- I- I’ve got to die instead and if you want to die after that I understand but I can’t-“ his voice is trembling, and he’s shaking and having trouble catching his breath. “I’ll tear you apart.”
He needs to kill himself.
The other option isn’t an—an option. It’s not except there is no option but the one thing he would never ever ever be willing to do.
He hears the howl too, and he stares upward though there’s nothing to see, but his whole body is tense, and he moves as far from her as he can even if it won’t make any difference at all. The whole of it- the moon- it’s there, and he can feel the transformation taking hold and he’s screaming because he is fighting something that’s impossible to fight because he can’t be what kills her, tears her apart, makes her bleed, hurts her ever.
“I’m so sorry.”
It’s the last thing that Ethan manages to sob out in his own voice, filled with pain and fear and horror all at once.
It only prolongs the transformation, it only makes it longer and hurt more than it ever has before every muscle, every part of himself fighting against the need to turn but there’s nothing- there is no way he can stop it or control his body, and the shift isn’t quick at all. It takes over.
His hands sliding into claws, claws that are already lashing out toward her without thought.
Because Ethan is gone.
All of his love for her is gone, twisted up and shoved away into a tiny, tiny locked chest within the animal.
And all is left is the monster, the cuffs and chains sink into the werewolf, angering it but keeping it from reaching the full length of the cell except for the claws. It’ll break out of it soon, the more it pulls, the more it smells the blood and the meat of the young girl in its cell too.
That’s it
That
Is
It
it’s hungry, always, always hungry