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eluding ] i'm sorry about the blood in your mouth. i wish it was mine.
Elena was stupid.
She was stupid and forgetful and selfish to think for even a moment things could be different here. That she could go to college and make a life for herself and so could everyone else. To think for a moment it wouldn't be like this and they wouldn't end up here.
Here, in the darkness where the screams echo down every taunting hallway, bones cracking under the weight of an iron fist.
It wouldn't matter as much if it was only hers, but it's never only hers.
Is it? (She was so stupid.)
She doesn't know how many days it's been since she was captured, but it's felt interminable. Elena is being dragged down into a basement, a man flanking either of her side. The scuffle can be heard from a mile away. She would be much more compliant if she was assured everyone else's lives would be spared, but her compliance isn't necessary anymore. She's always known her choice: between her and her family, it would always be the latter. Somewhere in between Where's Jeremy? and Go to hell she's picked up and unceremoniously thrown into one of the cells below.
She lands on her knees, palms flattening over the harsh floor. She grunts at the landing, wincing as the side of her stomach throbs in protest.
The cell itself is poorly lit, and all she can hear is the faint rustling of chains. Her shoulders stiffen and a tremble is effectively stifled.
She knows she's not alone. "Who's there?"
She was stupid and forgetful and selfish to think for even a moment things could be different here. That she could go to college and make a life for herself and so could everyone else. To think for a moment it wouldn't be like this and they wouldn't end up here.
Here, in the darkness where the screams echo down every taunting hallway, bones cracking under the weight of an iron fist.
It wouldn't matter as much if it was only hers, but it's never only hers.
Is it? (She was so stupid.)
She doesn't know how many days it's been since she was captured, but it's felt interminable. Elena is being dragged down into a basement, a man flanking either of her side. The scuffle can be heard from a mile away. She would be much more compliant if she was assured everyone else's lives would be spared, but her compliance isn't necessary anymore. She's always known her choice: between her and her family, it would always be the latter. Somewhere in between Where's Jeremy? and Go to hell she's picked up and unceremoniously thrown into one of the cells below.
She lands on her knees, palms flattening over the harsh floor. She grunts at the landing, wincing as the side of her stomach throbs in protest.
The cell itself is poorly lit, and all she can hear is the faint rustling of chains. Her shoulders stiffen and a tremble is effectively stifled.
She knows she's not alone. "Who's there?"
no subject
She doesn't know where Damon is either, and Ethan is honestly the first person that she has had contact with since it all began. It's the not knowing that's killing her. It's having no bargaining chip whatsoever, because he's winning. Lucien (she could never think of him as Ethan's father) is winning, and he holds all the cards, and why would he let her family go when he can have them all at his disposal?
She should've seen it coming from the start. She shouldn't have let her guard down, not for an instant. Elena feels so stupid and she's always known better, always known better, so why should this time have been any different?
It's the story of her life.
It's who she is and how it leaves nothing untouched. It creates destruction and loss wherever she goes. There isn't any escaping it. Whether she's here or she's in Mystic Falls, it ends the same, and she wonders if that's the whole point. If there even is a point to be found. She can't reach any of it, not when the guilt threatens to drown her instead.
Lucien wants them to suffer.
The sadistic levels he reaches are unlike anything she's ever seen before. The ceremony could be over and done with but he wants to draw it out as long as he can. He wants them broken by the time the moment arrives, and she's terrified he'll get his wish, that much more resistant to giving in so easily and yet --
She swallows past the bile threatening to rise up her throat, fingers digging slightly into the skin on his cheeks as he says her name again. She brings him closer, her chin resting briefly against the top of his head as she looks around, as if she'll find anything worth helping them. There's nothing.
"It's me," she whispers, blinking away the burning in her eyes. It stings, threatens to blur her vision whole, threatens to make her feel weak and she doesn't think she can afford that, either. She draws back long enough again to look at his face. She can make out the shape of it, the brightness of his eyes in spite of the dimness, and it makes her chest hurt.
"I'm not dead. We're not dying," she says, the firmness in her voice leaving no room for doubt, even if it all -- it all seems hopeless but it can't be. It isn't something she's willing to accept, not now, not ever. Everything that's happened, it couldn't have been meaningless. "Okay? We're not dying."
It couldn't have been for nothing.
All the fighting, all the hoping, all the preparing. They're not simply marionettes being lead by cable wires. She's not leaving him here to die and she's not letting anyone else get hurt in the crossfire, either. The alternative isn't something she's going to contemplate.
(And yet.)
Elena grows quiet at the steps.
They're distant until they're not, until she can see the shoes as they inch closer. Her grip on Ethan tightens reflexively, protectively as if that changes anything, as if she's ever been able to keep anyone safe. Elena lifts her head, blinking through the darkness, the constant, harsh pounding of her heart giving it all away.
no subject
They're told nothing, and it's part of it, isn't it? Keep them separated, confused. It leads to madness more than anything Lucien can touch them with, and he would know that. As someone who has never loved (couldn't have ever loved), he somehow knows how to use that love against all of them to splinter their minds into pieces, and he can't-
It's his father that has done all of this to all of them. The reason that he exists at all is the reason they are all here, and he needs to know where everyone else is. He needs to know every single thing that has been done to everyone he loves so he can pull it on himself, so he can feel it himself, and so he can rip something apart for it, so he can rip himself apart for it that's what he really wants...
so he can use it to destroy himself before he becomes what his father wants him to become, because he can't.
He can't become someone that does this to people. He can't- He can't- It's what he wants, and he cannot.
Ethan lifts his head as she brings her head up to him, resting her chin on his forehead. He closes his eyes briefly, but it's her. It's her, and he lifts his hands up to slide over hers, shaking.
"It's you," he repeats in a low, hoarse voice, pulling it into him as it slides in like a knife into his throat, into his chest like a blade of knife. He can't breathe through it, and he swallows back the feeling in his throat. It all hurts. It all has hurt over and over, but he hasn't given in.
He's good. No matter what he's done to him, Ethan hasn't given in. The blood spilled, the bones broken and rehealed, it didn't matter. He wouldn't give in. He wouldn't-- wouldn't- he stayed strong despite the type that he was the one to run, to avoid always, nonstop again and again. Ethan didn't avoid, knew he couldn't, knew he had to take a stand.
And he did, he said no, he said hurt me and break me and make me bleed and scream all you want, I will not. I won't. You can't make me a monster too. You won't make me a monster too. You won't make me do what you want, you are not the ruler of me.
Ethan looks at her through the darkness, the bare light there when she says that she is not dead, they will not die. How- and he lets out a laugh that is empty and broken in its sound, shaking his head as the pain strangles his throat. How can she still have hope? He doesn't understand it. He doesn't understand if she's hoping because she needs to... and not because it's real.
"We're not," he says, and he says it because... because he knows she needs it, and he can do so little after all this, after how he is shaking. His hand slides around his arm, and he forces himself to find the strength to hold on to her arm.
And he... lets out a helpless sob. The steps are happening, and he hears them, but it's not until she tightens her hold over him, her hold over him. It's not- He should be protecting her. It should be him protecting her, and he- he can't- It should be him, and it's why he lets out a sob, strangled in the sound of his throat.
Before he pushes his head up to glare in the sound of those foot steps. He is so familiar, so familiar with the sound of it that he doesn't wonder who it is.
It's Lucien. It's his father.
"What a beautiful reunion," he says calmly, taking a drink from his wine as he looks at them both. The sounds of it enter his head, ticking away, bounding way into a melody of its own. Lucien tilts his head to the side, and he can see through the darkness at them. "You're welcome. I believed that you two might have missed each other especially with how you continued to scream her name, Ethan."
Nothing but red.
Ethan shoves past the pain and the weakness and the rest as he lifts his head, and he glares at the man that made him, terrified all at once, terrified more than ever before because it's not just him. It's Elena too. "Leave her out of this, please." And he nearly chokes on it, nearly hates himself for begging.
no subject
It pierces at something inside of her, and while she keeps her hands on the side of his face, her own expression nearly crumbles as it reaches her. The mournful sound rushing past her ears until it's all she can hear. She doesn't know if it's hope or sheer delusion at this point.
The greatest secret of all is Elena is a fatalist where it really matters, and she should've never forgotten that to start with. There's a hatch in the high, high ceiling but it's sealed shut, and impossible to reach. The hopelessness wants to seep in through the cracks and Elena can't allow it, not when he sounds the way he sounds and looks the way he looks.
She hasn't been tortured much as of yet, aside from taking her blood and setting it in bags, but the real torture for her has been listening to what has been done to everyone else. To the broken bones and the broken screams and not able to do anything but pound against the door.
Nothing could be more torturous to her than that, whatever they could've done to her own body, and Elena doesn't doubt their own strength or bravery. They aren't so easily broken down, and they've fought against it as it's all they can do, it's all she knows how to do.
We're not, he says, and her eyes close against him, lips briefly resting at his temple since she doesn't know that he believes it, that she believes it anymore either, but she holds on tighter as if that means something. As if she can hold on to anything and anyone in the end.
"Just hold on," she whispers. There has to be a way. There were people aside from them that were looking into the Society, that know they were aware of it as well, and they could be searching for them. It's not much, but it's a thought Elena had when she was trying to grasp at straws. Once the ceremony begins, there's no turning back, but --
It's not about her surviving this time.
She just wants everyone else to.
It's her blood that needs to be spilled, ultimately.
Her palm splays over the side of his face as she brings him over, glancing upward but there aren't any windows.
She grows cold at Lucien's words, but Elena isn't one to cower, and she refuses to react to them. It's what he wants and Elena never wants to give him what he wants, even as her face grows visibly pale at the mention of Ethan screaming her name. Her eyes tear themselves away from Ethan to look at the bars of the cell.
There's no where to run and the solid realization of it has her heart picking up its speed, beating painfully against the bars of her ribcage as it fighting to make its way out.
It isn't as if she's devoid of fear.
Fear is certainly coursing through her veins strongly along with plenty of other emotions, namely hate and apprehension. The dread sinks into and pools at her stomach, balling it tightly into a knot. In spite of this, her back straights like a rod, her jaw sets stubbornly, and her eyes darken with purpose.
They practically glower with the hate and revulsion that she feels for him, her eyes, jaw still locked tightly enough she feels the strain of it at her teeth. "What more do you want?" she asks, breathing through what feels like fire swarming her chest.
He has everything he needs for the ceremony.
He's had plenty of fun at their expense. What is the point he's trying to make before it all comes to a head? Elena had been comforted by the belief he'd needed her alive. As long as she was a bargaining chip of some kind, there was something to bargain, and she could just as easily plunge a knife into her stomach the way she did with Elijah.
Elena wouldn't think twice before she did it, and it's Ethan's reaction that reminds her how there is nothing she will not do so as long as there was something she could barter with.
Now she's not so sure.
no subject
It's helpless how it comes out of him though. He doesn't know-- there-- they are probably alive ,but he doesn't know that that is a comfort anymore. After everything he has went through, after all these hours, it's no comfort to know they are still out there too, suffering again and again day in and day out. His brothers. People he loves and cares about, and he knows even if she wasn't physically touched, the worse torture of all this--
It's not knowing. It's hearing the screams and not being able to get to them. It's knowing someone you love so much is feeling more pain than you would ever want them to feel.
Everything-- all of it still hurts, and it's not so much the physical pain of it anymore, and he knows there are scars on him though he is healing. The healing too (as fast as it is) it's Lucien's. Every pat of him is Lucien's, and he hates it, he hates himself, he wants to tear himself apart until there's nothing but Ethan left... knowing even if he could, he couldn't survive that way. His body is not his own.
That has been made fantastically, terrifyingly clear to him, and he knows it, thudding in his chest like this constant reminder that none of his body is his own.
He doesn't know how she's doing it. Delusion or real hope, he doesn't know. He doesn't know, but he knows she needs to believe it, and it's all he can give to her after everything that has happened. It's the very least he can give to her, and he'll believe it too, because without it, it means believing he becomes what his father wants for him, for his brothers, and he can't- he would rather be dead. He should be dead instead of that.
His hands slip up against her face, and they're warm but they are shaking and they are weak and uncertain, because he doesn't trust his own body if it is not his own. His hands slip through her hair, and he closes his eyes at the-- the feeling like a fire in his head and his chest.
I'm so, so sorry.
"I won't leave you alone," Ethan says finally when he can manage words, and he has gathered all the strength inside of him, all the Ethan that is still there even if he is there in pieces. He reaches his hands up to slide around her face this time, and he looks at her through that darkness. "I won't leave you."
She doesn't have to tell him to hold on. He will be there, now that he knows she is alive too. There's no part of him that could ever abandon her, and it is nothing that he has to try at, nothing that is impossible for him to do.
It's natural.
If she's alive (and she has to stay alive that- there is no other alternative for him), he will survive. He will live. He will hold on as Ethan, and he won' let his grip on sanity lessen, he won't let his grip on hope and on fighting and on a fire that barely exists inside of him go.
He breathes in as her palm presses against his face, and his hand slides over hers, taking it in his own as he looks at her, so much tangled in his chest, always tangled there. An I love you he should have given her before they were ever shoved in a situation like this one.
his father knew it, his father would use her name against him to make him scream, to make him--
Ethan glares from his spot, hands still on Elena, but he knows-- he knows who has the power in this situation, and it's not him and it's not Elena even if her bravery, her fight is ... breaking him. His heart cracks open, and he tries to keep himself from shaking. It's his fucking father.
He shoves himself up to his feet though the chains remain around his wrists still, shackled there. And he's shaking as he does so, wincing as he does so, resting back against the wall behind him, pain flooding through him.
"There's no need to use such a rude tone," Lucien says, tapping his finer tips on the bars and the sound echoes into the cell as he shoots her a look. Such fire, Elena. If you were a witch, he would take you in a heartbeat, less than a heartbeat. Never enough birds in cages to play with but this will do, this purpose will do, and he wonders how long she'll keep that fire tonight. "I know you've both been quite busy. You likely didn't know what day it was today."
Ethan keeps his hand on Elena until his own fury gets too much, and his hands become fists at his sides, tightening and shaking. His nails press into the skin of his palm and start to bleed. "Get on with it," he says, the fire and hatred coming out in his voice.
"You've only got a few hours until the full moon. I thought you'd appreciate the company, boy."
Less than a second later, Ethan has sprinted forward with all his strength and speed at the bars that he can't reach. Panic and rage enter him in equal measure beyond words as soon as he realizes, and he screams, growls at him all at once. It's nearly inhuman the sound and as soon as he realizes what sound he's making, the fact that he probably knocked Elena down in his desperation to get to his father, he'll feel terrible.
But he can't-
he can't-
not her not her not her not her not her
"This is what happens when you disobey me," Lucien says plainly, unmoved by Ethan's shoving himself at the bar, his fists flailing at the metal there, shackles digging deep into his skin.
"You can't. You have to take her out of here- You have to get her out of here you can't do this to her! You can't do this! You can't." And he's screaming, practically trying to escape his own skin, his own bones, fire running like a wildfire over his chest and his eyes and the whole of himself. Lava shoving through him, burning deep in the pit of himself.
And Lucien laughs from his position.
He laughs.
His father laughs.
this is what he wants.
this is what
ethan was made for
because he stopped running, because he said no instead of caving
elena elena please don't please no no not her not her he can' hican't ican't
It's not hit him yet, not fully, it hasn't, it can't as he tries desperately to reach the bars but ends up on the floor of the cell instead fighting against something that can't be fought againtinsteadhe
he ca
he n
he can't
"I wouldn't tell me what I can or can't do."
Echoing in his head.
no subject
Not the sounds, not the grief, not the fear that he's feeling.
She's been agonizing through it all, wondering how he'd be fairing, how all of them would be fairing. They've learned well by now that death is nothing if not the most merciful of their options, and if surviving wasn't so ingrained in her she would see that maybe their not being a way out of this for everyone else isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Elena, from the moment she was apprehended, knew she was going to die. There wasn't any way around it. Once the ceremony has been concluded, in either world, the doppelganger has to die. It's called a sacrifice for a reason, and she's nothing if not too willing to be what is sacrificed so as long as everyone else is spared.
There isn't any option of sparing them.
Not when the people involved are his sons. Not when it's someone as twisted as Lucien who has so many agendas she can't keep them straight. It's more than just restoring his full power. It's more than just gaining back his immortality. He wants his army. He wants his witches. He wants to break them just to prove he can.
The tears well up in her eyes again once he holds her face, and she feels the warmth in his hands, the trembling in them as he holds them. Her grip on his own face tightens, as if a reminder he needn't be so cautious. She isn't scared of him, and while he may not trust himself at the moment, she does.
"I know you won't," she says, her voice thick with the tears that won't fall. Her face finally crumples because she sees it. The pieces. What's left of him. The once lively man filled with energy and restlessness is now in pieces and it hurts. "I know you won't leave me. I trust you."
She doesn't look away from him, as painful as it is, her palm sliding further up his cheek until it's resting at his neck. Her fingertips are directly against his pulse line, the reminder he's still alive, and as long as they're alive it can't be hopeless. It can't be, and she brings him over to her, her forehead resting against the side of his face.
The emotions tangled up in his chest are the same ones that are tangled up in hers, tightening it until she doesn't think she can breathe. It shouldn't have ended like this, it shouldn't have been like this at all, and she doesn't know how to change it.
She doesn't know how to go back.
"I'm not leaving you, either."
Elena is literally incapable of doing so.
There's no way to know where everyone else is. If they're alive or if they aren't. If their brothers -- she doesn't allow herself to finish that thought or she'll finish breaking. There's no way of knowing anymore, but he is before her and she knows that as long as he's breathing, in whatever condition he finds himself, Elena will not leave him.
You've only got a few hours until the full moon.
Her heart stops.
Her heart actually stops for several beats when he says it. It stops right in her chest before it all but stumbles out of her, as if it's dropped onto the floor, and the rest of what is said between Ethan and Lucien is drowned out by the palpable quickening of her heartbeat once it's rammed back into her, full throttle.
Elena stumbles when Ethan races towards the bars.
The shock hasn't worn off, not by a longshot, and she doesn't try getting back up. At least, not at first. She backs up against the wall instead as it slowly dawns on her why she was brought here. The full moon. That means Ethan -- Ethan is going to turn into a werewolf while they're both in the cell.
She feels sick to her stomach along with the horror that rams into her all at once. The panic she's been fighting off so successfully bubbles up to the surface helplessly, and she should've known she wouldn't be allowed to see any of them if it wasn't for a price.
That's the lesson everyone learns in this godforsaken universe, isn't it?
Elena shakes her head, her eyes burning, her chest flaming with it. "N-no."
Her eyes drop to the ground as she tries wrapping her head around it, wrapping her head around the thought of anyone sick enough to do something like this, and to their own son, no less. But he doesn't think of them as sons, does he?
They're projects.
Disposable ones, at that.
The evidence of it only fuels her anger and hatred further.
"I hope you rot in hell, you sick bastard," she practically spats out, unable to hold her tongue in spite of what she knows they will not be changing, for all their protests and all their fighting against each and every challenge that's been posed on them, as if they're lab rats trapped in a maze.
Her hands curl over the bars, gripping them tightly as her eyes flash with hatred. It is all-consuming. Not even the thought of Klaus could bring forth such a visceral reaction anymore.
"You can't do this. You need me alive, at least until it's all over. You don't know how much blood you require for the ceremony. You don't know how it works because it's never been done before. You wouldn't risk it," she says, forcing the panic to stay out of her voice in csae it's not true, but everything about what was written in the books was vague.
A doppelganger had never existed before in this universe.
The blood of the doppelganger must be drained.
There's no word on how much of her blood he needs.
This has to be another test.
It has to be unless he's found a loophole he isn't being forthcoming about and she needs to believe there isn't any because the thought of her -- the thought Ethan being forced to rip her to shreds is not something she can stomach.
Please, no.
Anything but this.
Anything but this.
no subject
His walls, which there never were many really beyond what he would run behind and hide behind, have been unceremoniously torn down one after the other after the other until they were lying crumbled at his feet instead of around him. There's no strength, no energy to run anymore, and it is impossible to run from something that is Inside of you, that made you, that has you in a cage.
It's everywhere.
Inside, outside, touching him, in his head, screaming at him all the time, but it's his screams.
Ethan never wanted her to die. He had hope. He had so much hope that the ceremony wouldn't happen, that she wouldn't die, that she would be saved, because it is not right-- it is not right for his father to kill the one person he loves the most outside of his family. It is not fair, and it is not right for a second that he do so.
It can't be--
It can't be how it ended, and he wouldn't let himself think about it as terrified as he was. He wouldn't let himself think that there was an ending where any of them died, where she died as she was 'meant' to do so, a sacrifice. Fuck all those words and ceremonies and bullshit, she is so much more than the fucking doppleganger.
And fuck Klaus and fuck his father and fuck everyone that has ever reduced her to a blood bag and used her and abused her in any fucking way, because she is so much more than someone that reminds them of their former girlfriends or someone to be compared or someone who should be sacrificed for their own desires of more power.
She is a person. She is an amazing and wonderful fighter who changes the people around her for the better, makes their lives better, and fuck.
Fuck, he wouldn't let himself think for a second that it was a possibility, because he wouldn't have been able to live with it.
Ethan is strengthened by her tightening her hold on him, hearing what she doesn't say out loud that she trusts him, that there is no need for uncertainty. His hands slip back into her hair as he looks at her, removing the uncertainty from his motions for this brief moment.
I know you won't, she says, and he can see her face crumple in what little light there is, and i breaks-- breaks something further in him, because he- they shouldn't be here at all, and he wants her safe, them safe, and far away from this. Back to the nights they shared, the movie nights and the times when they were sick and had to shove each other in their beds and not this.
I trust you, she says, and his face nearly crumples but instead because it is Elena and he can hear the certainty in her voice. Instead of his face crumpling, he leans forward, hands till on her face, and he kisses her with everything that he has, everything that is Ethan while Ethan is still around, because there aren't any guarantees.
There are no guarantees that she will be allowed to live.
There are no guarantees that he will be allowed to remain himself, and he pours everything, months of tangled up feelings that he never allowed himself to examine and untangle that would have been too late- it's too late.
He pulls back breath shaky as he feels her hand reach, find his pulse, and he nods against her. Ethan is still alive too. They're both still alive. His hands remain against her face, keeping her close to him.
Ethan nods, voice a mess, a tangle of emotions. "I know you wouldn't. You never would," he says even if he'd understand. He knows she wouldn't. She's a fighter, a survivor, and she wouldn't abandon him here to be on his own here. He never would, and she never would.
It's that loyalty. Their core characteristics that connected them when their outward ones seemed so wildly different on the surface level.
They won't leave each other, and it's a comfort.
...it was a comfort.
Until Lucien takes that too.
The whole of it rushes down on him in waves, and he doesn't recognize himself or find himself in his hatred and his panic and his pain. The panic is pushing forward above all else. It's what he wants, but there is literally nothing that has ever been more terrifying to Ethan than this, than having anyone be on the other side of that violent force within him, the animal and monster that is more a part of him than he is when the moon is out in full.
...and at other times it feels like,, like it would be too loud if he ever stopped running, stopped moving for too long.
It bred his restlessness. His terror bred his restlessness, his refusal to face anything of his own, to have anything real, and now it's-- now it's manifesting in the worst possible way. It's not just anyone that would be on the other side of it. It's elena.
It's elena with no way- no where to go, no- there's no escape, and it's squeezing down on his chest like two boulders smashed together.
He's pounding, fighting against the bars that he can't even reach because of the shackles digging into his flesh, and it's-- the pain is nothing that he feels,, because it's nothing in comparison to the pain that he feels at the thought of ever hurting her even a little bit. Even a little bit. Not- not not ripping no-
Ethan can't. He can't-
This can't be happening.
This isn't happening. He needs to die. He needs to be killed. He needs to not be alive, and he can't reach and he's breaking his bones in the attempt, already- already it's loud. already it's loud in his head, and it wants to tear him apart ,tear Lucien apart, taer himself apart but never her. Why her? He can't.
There's nothing but rage. Once the rage leaves, it'll be panic instead.
Lucien who is by the bar only smirks at Elena. "This is hell, and the only one who looks like she's rotting is you, filth," he says, ignoring Ethan who is practically incoherent at the moment still.
Well, not completely ignoring, he turns to look down at him. "Pathetic," he says cleanly, crisply like he is talking about a dog. Not his sons, no. Never his sons. He has no need for people but for an army, he would enjoy having one of those, someone to stick their necks out so he won't have to. Someone else to get their hands dirty.
And now he has several someones that he spent years cultivating and engineering to be exactly what he needed before that bitch took off with them.
Ethan only calms down at what Elena says. She's right. She has to be right. If she's right, it means he won't do this. There's nothing more important than the ceremony to him, and it would waste all of it.
Her protests are... useless but smart almost. Huh. "I think we are both aware that I have more than enough blood at this point," Lucien says as he finishes his glass of wine, crashes the head of it against the nearest wall, and digs the broken glass into her finger where her hand is gripping hold of that bar. "What I don't already have, I am absolutely certain I'll get tonight." He lights a nearby candle which provides enough light so that he can gesture at the floor of the cell which has a drain in the center of it.
"Isn't that right, Ethan?" Lucien smiles politely to them both. "Have a good evening, I look forward to the symphony."
And with that, he turns...and leaves.
And the world comes crashing down on them.
Ethan has a very physical reaction, physical need to-- it's dry heaving because he hasn't eaten and he hasn't had much to drink, and he's not-- He's not. Ohgodohgodohgod. "No, no, no, this can't- this can't- I can't," he- it's not quite settling in yet.
It's not quite settled into his head yet, what it means.
no subject
Not when Elena doesn't know how long they'll allow her to be here. Not when she doesn't know if it's the last time she could see him before the ceremony begins. The relief that she feels at seeing him, it's momentary clouded her thoughts, or she'd have wondered from the start what the catch was. Why she was being brought to Ethan if what they wanted was to torture them as much as possible.
In retrospect it would all seem far too obvious, now that they've had more than their share of glimpses into Lucien's psychosis.
For now, she's just -- she's so relieved she gets to see him. The not knowing has been gnawing at her from the inside out. They've been all but quarantined in separate places scattered throughout the castle. Elena was starting to think if she didn't die in the ceremony she'd just as well lose her mind before it could even happen. She'd never -- she had never been confronted with this kind of evil. Even Klaus loved his family, despite his twisted, sick way of showing it. He was capable of his own brand of love.
Lucien doesn't love anyone or anything.
He is utterly void of humanity and he has absolutely nothing to love, and nothing makes him more dangerous than these two facts. There isn't anything he won't do to them, now that he's collected them as some kind of toy factory. He's testing the limits, seeing how far he can push before they break, before he does decide to break them completely and mold them to whatever his intentions dictate.
And she hates that this is Ethan's father. That this is their father and this is the whole reason he wanted to have them like they're puppets or soldiers instead of people. He is so much more than what he was 'made' for and she hates that Lucien has made him doubt it, for even a second. That he's torn away at all those things that make him who he is so that there's nothing left but that hunger.
She knows he's been starving them. Angering them. Forcing them to hear as the other is brutally dealt with, over and over, and taking that into consideration -- she doesn't know what she hopes for anymore. Whatever makes it stop for them. Whatever is best, even if it means they all die here. Elena would never pretend to know she has any idea what she's doing anymore. She lost that ability the moment they were taken, and she's acted on sheer instinct which is always to protect and save the people she loves at no matter the cost.
If she has to be a bad guy along with the others to make that happens, she would be more than willing to do so but there's nothing.
There's nothing to negotiate with. There's nothing to fight against anymore. They're in their cages, and they're just waiting for the moment where it can all be over. There's no plan, much less a back-up plan. She doesn't know where to begin, or how it could end other than the worst case scenario they'd envisioned, the one they'd tried to stop from happening at all costs and it still ended up being true.
Because that's their lot in life and there is no safe.
It's all she's ever wanted for them, too. She's wanted them safe and whole and happy, away from this whole mess. There's just no going back to what it used to be like, before their knowledge of Lucien, before the confirmation that what she is spells the exact same disaster that it did back home. Her life is no more important than everyone else's, and Elena was determined to not lose anyone else at the cost of hers though there is always collateral damage.
It's inescapable, and she pushes that aside too, keeping her hands on his face as she wills him to believe it. Elena trusts him, and she believes in him, whatever happens tonight. That's not going to change. She knows who Ethan is and what he'd want.
She isn't expecting him to lean forward but there's no hesitation on her end. No sooner he has moved forward she's kissing him back, tightening her grip on his face as she brings him closer, deepening the kiss against him. The tears stinging at her eyes in spite of herself as she gives it her all without leaving anything for herself, without leaving anything behind. All those things they never said. All those things she should've realized sooner and she didn't, and it's too late.
It always seems to be.
There have never been any guarantees, and Elenea breaks off in a gasp, keeping her hands on his face once he pulls back, too. She looks at him, swallowing back thickly the tightness locking up in her throat, pinching it painfully. "I wouldn't," she repeats, shaking her head almost stubbornly, and her voice is quiet now but no less certain. "Whatever happens, you have to know that."
There are so many stark differences on the surface it was hard to see at first, the core similarities that would later tie them together so strongly. The loyalty and their need to protect their loved ones only two of many, and Elena had always caught glimpses of it here and there at first, but she'd never understood how deep it ran until later. If there's something she does know, it's that Ethan doesn't leave.
It should've been allowed to remain a comfort.
She should've known better but she's been so stupid and foolish and selfish.
Elena doesn't know how she remains motionless on the floor when the whole of her wants to lunge forward and fight it with everything that she has. The horrified panic starts crawling up her chest until it threatens to seize the whole of her, and it cannot end this way. She grips the bars of the cell that much tighter, shaking them as if her strength has ever been competition for anything that's come her way.
She isn't half as strong as they are. She isn't half as fast.
She could just as easily be crushed under the weight of them and it doesn't matter how much inner strength she does have. She keeps clashing against them as if they'll budge because no, this cannot be happening. This cannot be happening and he can't do something like this and Ethan will not.
He would not.
Elena has never been confronted with the violent side of him. Elena has never seen him in his werewolf form, even, when the moon isn't full and she knows that's a very deliberate choice on Ethan's behalf. This is the sickest thing anyone could ever do to him and the rage swells in her chest until she thinks she might possibly choke on it.
"Ethan," she whispers helplessly when she sees the shackles dig into his flesh.
The urge to pummel him into oblivion is so strong when he smirks. The rage makes her shake quietly in place, and if she was alone she could even possibly manage enough snark to remind him those with glass houses shouldn't throw stones. The only filth here in her mind is him, but she can't bring herself to say anything in the face of what he's just revealed.
There's the horrifying realization still sinking down and down and down until she all but caves under the weight of it.
Elena yelps when the broken glass digs into her finger, jerking her hand away from the bars. The blood drips to the floor. Just one drop of it, and she immediately brings her finger to her mouth to suck on it so it's not -- the blood would only be temptation right now and he knows that. The fury and the indignation are only momentarily replaced by confusion at what he says. "What are you talking about ... "
Her voice trails off. She didn't think she could be more horrified except somehow he's managed to outdo himself. Elena stares in sheer mortification at the drain, realizing she's standing just directly below it. She takes several steps back, nearly stumbling along the way, her back once again meeting the stone wall.
She lets out a breath that's almost a cry, but not quiet, watching him leave in disbelief.
Her legs feel like they will give out on her at any second, and it's a miracle she remains standing. Lucien's form keeps retreating and the drain is still below them and Ethan's heaving in place and this is the nightmare. Lucien was right, of course, this is the real hell and they're the only ones living it and she kicks at the bars uselessly, not caring if she's bruising herself in the process.
"No! Wait. There has to be something you want more. Please," Elena calls out after him but it's useless. She rests her forehead against the metal shutting her eyes closed as if that alone will block out the rest, as if the gesture will make this not true but none of the nightmares she could ever dream up for herself would be quite this horrible.
The silence is deafening once the hatch above them closes and they're left alone.
There's no relief or comfort in the fact anymore.
Not now when they both know and the clock is ticking. She doesn't even know how many hours.
There's no telling, and she can't --
This can't.
"Ethan," she says again, dropping to her knees a few feet away from him. His reaction is painful, but her own is -- is difficult to conceal as she can't stop herself from shaking.
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This is the last time. Could be the last time. They’re all at the end of their ropes, and there’s no telling what the future holds. Even if his walls hadn’t been torn down, he would still not be holding anything back. What’s the point of holding anything back when it’s all Ethan and it’s Ethan that he wants to hold on to so badly, that he needs to hold on to more than the louder, stronger force inside of him that always has been inside of him.
He should have known too. Ethan has seen enough, recognized the sound of the footsteps, but he thought Lucien needed Elena still if she was still alive, didn’t realize he’d been systematically draining her like a fucking blood bag.
This whole time. It wouldn’t have occurred to him, and it’s likely good that it hasn’t yet. They don’t want to think like him.
There’s only that relief though, and he’s- he’s grateful for it honestly even later knowing the truth, Ethan is grateful they have these few moments that aren’t tainted by what it means. If he’d known, he wouldn’t have embraced this moment like he has, wouldn’t have embraced her as fully as he is at this point out of sheer relief and this—this need to see her that is finally being met now that she is here in front of him and physically in one piece relatively. She’s not dead as he thought she was, as Lucien toyed with him.
His father is not human. His father is nothing but a monster, the worst kind of monster that he could never imagine in his entire life.
There has never been love in his life, and Ethan refuses to believe otherwise at the same time—at the same time he knows someone could not utilize people who do love in this way, use their love as a weapon without understanding intimately how it can be used, which takes understanding the love itself. At one point, he had humanity. He had to have. Hundreds of years ago, he must have had humanity or he would lash out blindly like the animals on the full moon who have never been human do without thought or need beyond hunger.
It is his father, their father. It’s their reason for being at all, and it’s all because of what eh wants them to be. It doesn’t matter who they are to him, to Lucien, because that is not why they were made. They were made to be the perfect army, and it’s what he wants from them. It’s what their bodies have been built for. All of it, it points to this one thing again and again and again.
They have nothing. It’s why hopelessness has taken over. It’s been days, and no one has seen each other, and they have fought as hard as they could, but it didn’t make a difference. They didn’t break the surface, didn’t push through the bars at all. There was nothing they could do. No matter how hard they fought.
No matter the stands they took, and Ethan finally did take his stand again and again, and this—the results are what happens tonight. That’s what happens when you fight back against Lucien.
Why wouldn’t you give in? Whatever it made of you?
As long as the people you loved were spared of torture, of being ripped apart by your own hands, why wouldn’t you spare them of that? When you have no other choices as it is? When there’s nothing else you can do and no hope to change things on your own?
The answer will be simple.
It’s all they have all ever wanted for each other, and it comes naturally wanting it for her, for Elena, because he loves and cares for her. It’s not that he thinks her life is worth more than others, but his father made him and she didn’t ask to be in this universe. It’s his father. If his father didn’t exist, if Ethan and his brothers didn’t exist, none of this would be happening at all.
The worst possible conclusion has happened despite how they fought against it, how they believed for such a long time they might have a chance.
Ethan closes his eyes, focusing on her hands on his face as his hands slide against her face and into her hair. He can believe it miraculously so. It hits him then through everything else he’s feeling that she trusts him, and he believes her in that moment. If he didn’t believe her, he wouldn’t kiss her, but the kissing is natural.
The need, the all of it pushes through him, and he pulls her into him and kisses her intensely. There’s need and want and love and pain and concern all wrapped up into that one kiss… desperation too. The intensity of it would floor him if he had time to think about it, but it’s intense on both sides, and his eyes burn helplessly so as he cradles the back of her head and deepens that kiss.
Until she has to pull back, and he breathes out, breaking off with a gasp too. His forehead rests against her forehead, painfully. His hand remains against her face too, tangled up in her hair until they fall resting against her shoulders instead. “I do know that, Elena,” he says, and there’s a pained smile on his face at the stubborn shake of her head. “I’m certain of it.”
If nothing else, he is certain of the fact that she will never leave him as long as she has the choice not to. She will be right here if she can be, and God, how they’ll both wish that wasn’t true so soon, so fucking soon, and he should have known.
Ethan’s fighting against it but he can’t reach anything, can’t do anything. The metal digs into his wrists, but he can’t feel it at all. He is completely unaware that it is happening, and it wouldn’t stop him from pulling on them, wouldn’t stop him from breaking his own wrists if he could to get out of them and get out. He can’t though, and he barely hears that whisper. It’s the pain of it that alerts him, but there’s still panic and rage flooding through his head again and again, and he yanks harder, ignoring the pain shooting up his arms. It’s just—it’s no use. These were built to hold him like he was built to be a certain amount of strong and fast and all… the rest.
This is exactly what his father can and will do to him, and he hasn’t let it settled in yet.
There’s still the fighting. The incoherent rage. The all of it shoving him forward, as he yanks at them again and again, and they’re bleeding- his wrists are bleeding and it’s making it worse, and he can’t. He collapses on the floor there, rage making him shake too as he glares daggers up at Lucien, staring in hatred and nothing but rage.
It’s not until he hurts her that Ethan is on his feet again, screaming out something incoherent, something that makes no sense. Leave her alone, and it makes Lucien laugh, knowing… knowing that it’s not him that will be touching her, spilling her blood next, and Ethan knows it too.
It’s what makes him sick, what has him dry heaving so he’s on the floor when his father points out the drain, the drain that will catch Elena’s blood, and he can’t- it makes it worse. The panic is sliding over him, and he can’t do this. He can’t live, he needs to be ripped out of his own skin. Someone needs to kill him. He needs to die before this happens.
Elena never would have seen him in the wolf form. The only times that he has ever shifted were when he felt he had to, when he was trying to protect someone that he loves… those—that was the only time that he ever would, because he hates being a werewolf, hated everything about the animal part of himself, and he never, ever wanted to let the monster out near anyone. It’s what he is terrified of, and it’s that terror that is rocking through him.
He doesn’t know how she’s so brave and amazing and beautiful and he loves her, and s’e's up there, to talk, to fight against his father. And he loves her even more, impossibly so, at the same time that he learns that he will be the one to kill her.
It should be him up there. He should be there beside her fighting too, but he was—has never been as brave as she is, as much of a fighter as hse is. And he hates himself a little more that he’s not standing by her side right now being half as strong as she is, but he is so terrified and he can’t push himself up from the ground that he’s on. The pavement that’s under him, he can’t push himself back up from it.
There’s nothing Lucien wants more than to break them down and remake them, rebuild them. No matter who is taken out in the process, and he is shaking and heaving, and tears burn at his eyes as his hands slide over his own skin, trying to figure out how he can kill himself.
If it’s even possible to do so with these shackles on his wrists and this-
He’s going to be sick but he can’t be sick, he can’t be sick because there’s nothing in his stomach to be sick with.
fuck.
The silence has never been more deafening. He can hear her forehead hit the metal, hear her drop to her knees but he doesn’t raise his head up. She’s shaking. He’s shaking too, the whole of him is shaking, and he lets out a pained sound when she says his name, the whole of him… shaking. “Why—why are you trying to comfort me? I’m going to kill you.” And it’s a sob finally, his hands slipped up against his ace, blood on his arms as he shakes his head, pulling his hands away again.
It’s all shaking as he cries, lifting his head up again so he can look at her. “I’m so sorry.” It screams through him, the strength and the whole of it, all of it panic and despair and his hands slide across his skin looking for a way to rip himself apart because that's all he wants right now for her to be safe from him.
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The only real guarantee there seems to be is there isn't any future to hold anything for them anymore. There aren't any choices. There's only the one and it isn't a choice. She'll fight it to the very end because it's all she knows how to do, but Elena would be lying if she said she didn't see it the way the others did. She shouldn't never lost sight of that, not from the moment Damon's only friend was brutally murdered outside of his apartment without any sort of regard for his life or the life of the person he loved.
This is what they do. They are as expendable as any disposable thing. Even she as a doppelganger only has her limited use, and they'll be done with as Lucien sees fit because he has that power now. Elena shudders at the thought, at the constant reminder, at the darkness of these walls and the vastness of what it holds.
It is good that it hasn't occurred to them, that they haven't started thinking and feeling in such a twisted manner.
It means he hasn't won yet, in spite of what will happen later when the truth is revealed. It means there's still some of Ethan left, still some of Elena left, and days of what's been inflicted on them hasn't been able to change that. Shouldn't be able to change that and Elena wouldn't want him to doubt himself, even while helplessly understanding why he would. She meant what she said, however. She is not scared of him and she trusts him.
That was true before this ever happened, and it's true in this dungeon now, and not even the werewolf would be able to change that. It's Ethan she trusts.
None of them could've ever imagined it.
They prepared for it as best as they could, in spite of the circumstances and the odds stacked heavily against them. They steeled themselves for what they thought could be the very worst of the possibilities. They researched and they trained and they kept vigilant. They did nearly everything right and it didn't seem to matter, either. Elena could've never imagined the kind of monster their father is. Elena could've never imagined that it was all so painfully, closely linked the way it was, couldn't have imagined the very friends she made that fateful September would be the very friends she'd be thrown alongside this terrible disaster.
It's terrifying to think that he was once human, but it's true that he must've loved at some point. It's true that he must have understood what humanity is like, what love is like, or he wouldn't be so good at twisting it so fully, at exploiting it the way he does, understanding what makes them tic, what makes them yield, what makes them fight that much harder. It's like everything about this is a whole chessboard and he's playing with the bloody pieces, knowing exactly where he needs to further the pawns along to get to the queen.
Elena thought she understood monsters.
She thought she understood the darkness inside of people but nothing Katherine did, hell, nothing Damon did could ever hold a candle to this kind of sadism. It makes all the more sense now; why Ethan's mother would run with them, why she would've been so terrified to be caught, why she would've wanted it all kept from Alek, why she tried so hard to keep Adam from leaving and seeing it for himself. But how could anyone imagine this kind of evil, this kind of darkness?
There isn't a name for it.
Elena stands her ground. It's what she knows to do until there's nothing left. She stands her ground and she fights and she thinks after tonight she'll learn her lesson, too. Her whole life the past few years has been nothing but endless fighting and surviving, and maybe she wouldn't feel so bitterly toward it if it hadn't turned out to be so meaningless. It's never saved people. It's never changed the course of what is destined. It's never kept people safe.
It's never stopped them from being hurt, physically and mentally.
What else is there but to give in?
Ethan didn't ask for any of this, either. He didn't ask to be made and certainly not with this purpose in mind. He didn't ask to have that violence imposed on him, much less did he ask for the father he has. It's not his fault, the way it isn't hers, and she couldn't fathom him not existing as it is. She understands the feeling. Hasn't she thought it before so many times?
If she didn't exist, if she wasn't a doppelganger -- how much could've been spared?
And even the darkly spun thoughts of their own hopelessness don't change the fact they are here and this is happening.
He looks so hurt. It pains her to see him, to try and imagine what was done to him out of some twisted form of lesson. Elena winces inwardly at the sight of his wrists, at the look on his face, but she doesn't look away. She keeps her hands on his face, her touch gentle, aware that he hasn't -- he hasn't been touched in any gentle way in what feels like a very long time and neither has she.
It hurts to know it as her fingers slip down his cheeks softly and he closes his eyes.
It's simple, in the end, really. It's very simple, and Elena's looking at him until she's not, until her eyes close along with him and she's pulled in. She's still on her knees as they dig into the ground, and she's mindless of that when she leans into him, hands curving further over his neck until the tips of her fingers dig into the back of it. She would be floored if she had the time to think of it as well but there's no time to think. She isn't thinking.
There's just the feeling.
Several of them, unfurling in her chest as she brings him closer, matching the intensity, the desperation with her own. The love breaks through all the rest, but there's unmistakable urgency in her movements, in the way her mouth remains crushed against his like if she moves away something might cave in.
Her face nearly crumples again when his forehead rests against hers. She wants to say it's not hopeless. She wants to say they'll find a way. She wants to say it doesn't end here, but she can't find the voice to say any of it. She slips her arms around his neck to hug him tightly instead, fresh, hot tears slipping down her cheeks. "I love you, Ethan," she says, and she doesn't know if he's certain of that, too, and it feels too late either way, but she says it.
She loves him and she's sorry.
There is nothing else she has anymore.
Elena's breath gets stuck in her throat, aware that her calling out isn't something he registers, not with the threat hanging above them, not with his father on the other side of the bars, but it's a helpless thing.
"Ethan, stop," she says, flinching as she sees him yank at the shackles. She doesn't know how he hasn't dug to the bone yet, and she shakes her head again as her eyes burn with unformed tears once more. She looks down at the drain and -- her eyes dart toward it and back up at the hatch and toward the drain once more as if there's going to be some way she can use it to escape instead.
She turns to Lucien in disbelief at his laughter. Her mouth parts open, the air barely trickling in. All she can feel is how fire hot her cheeks are, how her fists tremble when she hands her balls so tightly her nails dig into the skin.
Elena's not letting him die.
And it's terrible that she doesn't understand the full extent of why he was always running until now. It's terrible and painful all at once, and she can't stop the way her heart starts pounding loudly, violently against her chest until it's all she can hear, until she's almost swaying against the strength of every beat. "Don't say that," she whispers, and she kneels down before him again, a hand reaching out to him but freezing in place when he sobs, aware of... aware of how terrified he'd be of himself right now, but she's not. "Don't say that. It has to be a test. Ethan, it has to be, and we'll get through it."
I'm so sorry.
The words cut through her. How many times has she said it before? How many times has she felt it so deeply? Elena shakes her head, blinking back the tears at the pained sound he makes. Somehow, the cell seems that much smaller, that much darker, that much more constrained. The air thicker, palpable as she tries to keep breathing.
It's all she can do now.
"It's not your fault. Ethan, none of this is your fault," she says, a hand curling over the shackle as if that'll get him to stop, stop trying to rip himself apart. She kicks at the drain and grabs at the bars of the cell again, shaking them as if that'll do anything, as if she has ever been able to save them from anything.
She falls back on the floor, sitting across from him, her back against the bars.
She is not just waiting it out until the full moon is out.
She's just not.
no subject
Escape hardly seems like a possibility at all, and it hasn’t for him until Elena showed up again and then—then maybe. Maybe those other people after the Society, maybe they find out about it, maybe they can get through, maybe the Society itself, but that’s a bad alternative too at least it would spare them of Lucien even if they would mostly end up dead. Death doesn’t seem like a bad alternative anymore, not after all this time, all of them in their cages, screaming and fighting and surviving and pushing their body past every limit.
They are expendable. They are his father’s toys and things, which he’ll throw away when he’s done breaking them or use until they can’t be used anymore. Their selves, who they are gets lost in the pain and in what he will want for each and every one of them. There’s no room for it here, for them here.
Somehow they haven’t started thinking like Lucien yet, and he feels- fears it is only a matter of time before his brain shifts, switches.
It’s the point of all of it, not to make him like Lucien but to make him a soldier, a toy to be used and turned into something that thinks and does what Lucien wants him to think and do instead of what he’d actually do. It’s about the remolding process, and Ethan can’t help doubting himself in the face of all this information, in the face of what Lucien is and how good he is at tearing people apart, that’s—it’s inside of him. This monster is inside of him, and it is a part of him.
It is an incredibly strong part of him that he can’t tear away from himself. If he could, he’d trust himself, he’d trust his own hands, eh’d trust who he is and that he is more than his purpose.
They couldn’t have known, and Adam tried to explain it to them again and again. They all wanted to fight. They all thought they could fight. Adam thought… they could fight, and it was why he ended up in Chicago, what his oldest brother wanted was to destroy Lucien. They were all happy to help as if it could be so easy, and they all anticipated blood and pain, but none of them anticipated this. There was no way to know that the girl they befriended was the same girl that their father wanted to kill, sacrifice.
It’s absolutely terrifying to think of Lucien’s once humanity, because he thinks of himself and thinks of his own capability and wonders how long until he loses all of his own and becomes like his father. How much does it take before it happens? What’s the point where it all shifts over? Is it time or is it suffering? Is it some endless combination of the two? How… long?
There’s no understanding this.
There’s no anticipating the strength and the weight of all of this. Ethan loves his mother. He loves her so much, but he can’t count how many times he has half hated her through all of this, how many times he wishes so much else had been done differently. She gave them themselves, and she saved them… saved them only to what? Become monsters now? It’s so ingrained inside of them and it’s-
There’s no names for any of it.
Elena does stand her ground always, and it’s something he has admired and loved in her from the very start. It draw him to her as she challenged him, as she didn’t let him be complacent in what he’d do or say when it made no sense, when it wasn’t really who he was. She shouldn’t have to feel like all that fighting, all that standing has been useless, pointless.
Meaningless.
It’s meant something to him. Even now, it means something to him. Maybe it means everything to him right now, he doesn’t know, but it speaks to him. She has always spoken to him, reached to him when nothing else could or would or does, and it’s reaching to him now that she is hoping…. Even when there’s no reason too.
No one asked for any of this, and he can’t imagine her not existing either. It’s nothing he can contemplate in his head, doesn’t hav any idea who he’d be, what he’d be without her in his life. What it would have meant ifs he wasn’t here, he honestly can’t contemplate even a little bit.
She looks so hurt too, and it breaks him to see the look on her face in that dim lighting. His heart hurts, aches with it, and he doesn’t look away either can’t- can’t think to look away because he hasn’t seen her. HE didn’t think he would see her again. His hands finally find their certainty, and they’re sliding across her face and into her hair equally gently. It’s not hard at all to recall that gentleness with her both in his own motions and in hers.
Even if it’s like water, like a glass of water after walking in the dessert for so long.
They haven’t been touched with gentleness, with softness, and his hands cradle her face with that gentleness, with all the love that he feels for her and that he has felt for her for much longer than today. The intensity of it nearly knocks him back, but it is the best thing he’s felt despite the pain also thudding through his chest- it’s the best thing he’s felt since he was taken.
There’s only feeling and reacting and nothing else.
Desperation pushes through all other feelings, and he’s deepened the kiss, intensified it until all he feels is the love in his chest that would burst but there’s somehow room for it. He doesn’t know how there’s room for it but there is, and it swells and pushes through his chest, and tears slip down his face.
His forehead rests against hers, and he can feel her face crumple against his hand as he keeps her close to him. She doesn’t have to say any of those things to him. Elena has always had so much hope for everyone around her, and she doesn’t have to say it right now. Hope or not, he will be there for her. And it hits, aching, pressing in on his chest.
“I love you too,” he says, and he is so certain of it. It’s not too late. It’s not too late, because it is good to finally say it out loud while they still can, and his eyes are shut as he keeps her close to him and he knows it’s true. He loves her. He loves her, and it’s a relief, it’s amazing to finally say it even if it took them too long to get to this place where they could realize it and say it.
She doesn’t need anything else.
They don’t need hope. If she’s alive, he will live.
He can’t hear her. Even if he could, it’d be so hard to stop because of the rage that is pushing him forward. He needs to get to him, to Lucien. The strength of his pulling has created cracks against the walls behind him, that’s how strong he is, how strong he has always been but he’s never used it, never used the entirety of that strength except to save people, to help people.
Now it’s pure rage and his pulling apart his own wrists in an attempt to get free and get his hands around his father’s neck.
It probably has dug into the bone, but he can’t—the pain of it is nothing in comparison to the pain of knowing why she’s here with him, the pain of knowing what he is going to do to her. He can’t live with that, but he can live with metal digging into his bone, tearing off his skin, bleeding down his arms but it’s no use. And he stops when she tells him too, somehow. Because she reaches beyond his rage.
He stops, staring at the floor underneath him.
He needs to die to stop this from happening. He needs to die. He can’t live with this. He can’t live with this.
The animal is coming. They have hours, but his senses always pick up more and more as the full moon approaches, and he can hear her heart beating wildly from his spot and he can hear his own. Screaming in his ear, in his head again and again and again. Ethan looks up at her before he backs away when she kneels in front of him, and he is terrified, he is terrified and there’s- there’s no way out. There’s no way to save her unless he dies. “A test o- of what? I’m going to kill you. I’m going to kill you, and I can’t- There has to be a way- a- a something, there has to be something, I can’t- I don’t want to hurt you. I can’t hurt you.“
His face crumples painfully as his head duck down, back against the wall, and he swallows thickly with the weight of it lying over his back and pressing down into him. The tightening of it in his throat, it’s-it drives it through him like a spike until it settles into his gut, and the whole of him is shaking with the panic, can’t catch his breath.
If he could, the chains… if he could get them around his neck… maybe then he- he could… he could kill himself but he knows before he has even tried there’s not enough slack on it to get it around his neck enough, but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to try- won’t stil try, won’t still get him-
His fingers slide over himself, and he’s trying to dig into his skin when her hands are there on his shackles, and he pushes through the shaky breath in his chest, in his throat. He coughs and wants—needs to be torn apart, and it’s all he can think of until her hands rest on the shackles, and he’s looking at her hands instead, her beautiful hands that he will- that he will tear apart.
He’ll make her bleed like so many other people have, and he can’t-
Even killing himself in front of her would be—it’d be traumatic but he’d prefer it to being the one to rip her apart with his own claws.
“I need- there- I have to die,” Ethan says through that panicky feeling in his head as he tries to get enough slack on the chain but he can’t… can’t get enough of it. “There has to be something that ca- can kill me.”
There has to be because he won’t be responsible for ripping her apart. He loves her. He loves her so much, and how can he be what tears her apart? How can nothing he feels- how can it get lost completely in the animal?
How can none of be left?
How can he tear her apart?
Why can't he tear himself apart instead?
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.
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
no subject
Lucien excels at zeroing in on a weakness. It's why Elena herself hasn't been physically hurt as much as she could've, after he and the rest saw it didn't matter what was done to her, she'd martyr herself till kingdom come if she had to. It was hurting anyone she loved about that was the real torture. It was remaining intact herself while everyone around her was made to suffer, with the silent understanding it was her reluctance and lack of compliance to blame.
The more they played on that, the less difficult she became, and her Achilles Heel was quickly spotted and she starts to play the game accordingly.
(Elena long ago learned the consequences of selfishness. They want her to think more of herself, to put herself first, and everyone forgets that when she did, her parents got killed and she held the proverbial blade.)
It's the same with everyone else, for no one has remained unscathed from this. If someone in particular could be used as a weakness for someone else, they would be without question. They'd put brothers in adjacent rooms, and the moment questions weren't answered or cooperation was refused, they'd make them sorry. The horrible part of it all is the physical torture is nothing in comparison to the mind games that have been played.
Oh, Ethan. Elena doesn't always face reality. Elena's constructed the reality she could live with and she's held on to her ideals and her beliefs as if they are the only ideals and beliefs that could be. There's a lot she's hid from, there's a lot she's refused to examine. She isn't any more brave than he is, and if there's anything that's kept her going it isn't courage. It's the sheer incapability she has of losing anyone else she cares about, the paralyzing fear that she'd be the only one left standing, and she'd have to keep going because it's all she does.
It's what she knows.
She survives and she holds on as if life depends on it. (So as long as that life is never hers.)
And that's the biggest irony of all, really. That's the stupidest thing she's ever heard and known. She was the most ordinary girl living the most ordinary life. Her importance in the scheme of the world was largely inconsequential. Then her parents died and the gates flew wide open, inviting the misery in. She learned the truth, because she'd wanted it, and Elena never believes she's just a girl anymore.
If that was true, none of this would happen, much less keep happening. People wouldn't keep dying. Her blood wouldn't be needed, and it's ironic, you know, she'd dreamt of adventure and maybe even a hint of danger. She blames the part of herself that wanted to be a novelist some day, inspired by great, fantastical worlds so she could escape from a mundane life she felt she was chained to.
Isn't that the most horrible joke of all?
People die around you, she'd said to Damon, hatefully, spitefully.
It wasn't only Damon she was accusing, and that's the most hateful thing of all.
And now they're here, now she's here, and it's a world away and it doesn't seem to make a difference. She doesn't need to be told that monsters exist. She's been well aware of that for years now. She'll never accept Ethan is a monster. She'll see the claws and she'll see the teeth and it won't be Ethan to her. It's what the werewolf will make him and she will not see it any other way, will not accept any other truth in her heart, and maybe that's what makes her so brave and stupid, Damon would say.
She'll always die for them and living is so much harder.
Living leads to these dark corners where it's pain and it's on the edge of loss and all those reminders of how easy it is to get hurt, how easy it is to lose more people and more people, until the whole of you just becomes pieces of ghosts you used to know.
Elena remembers that night he came to her. The way the rain soaked his jacket and the heavy cloaked look in his eye and the certainty that whatever he wanted to say to her would change their lives forever. She'd never admitted it to anyone else before. Irony pokes its head again since she admitted it to him because she thought the danger was a world away. She thought it wouldn't haunt her in this world, that such a curse didn't exist, because the Rift doesn't make hybrids, and she should've realized differently.
She's not meant for more than this.
And maybe she should've realized it, too. She should've realized it when he made her smile easily when no one else could quite manage it, and she should've realized it when saying the name Stefan in front of him was so hard, and she should've realized it when she'd look over at him sometimes, catch herself looking for longer than she was supposed to, when she felt attracted to him and it felt wrong, because it would always be stefan she said once upon a time and she didn't understand that that wasn't true.
She should've realized it but Elena doesn't always face the truth, see? She wanted to keep fulfilling the role she always had but the more she grew up and the more she understood, the farther away she was from that girl. The one that refused to believe compulsion was stronger, the one that said it would always be Stefan, the one that was supposed to die on the bridge with her parents and never did but still felt alone.
All those moments that could've served as a lightbulb have come and passed them.
The moment that's left is this one. The dark cell and the rustling of the chains and the look in his eyes as his hands follow her face. Elena loves him. It's something that's so simple and undeniable to her, and it's so terrible that it's realized until just now but it's evident and obvious to her, something as certain as the cold of the room and the soft of their breathing. Whatever happens, she knows her truth and his, and she doesn't have to think about the rest, at least not just yet.
Elena smiles back at him, the painful quality found in her own expression, and she brings him back to place one last kiss against his mouth. They both know now and it's better than never, always better than never. She doesn't care about the timing. She doesn't care how long it took. She cares about the smile on his face and the warmth of his hands and his forehead against hers, and how, brief as it may be, the night doesn't feel as hopeless.
"Of course it matters," she says to him, unwilling to believe anything else. He's not a monster and of course it matters. It always matters. Elena isn't going to let him believe the crap Lucien's been drilling into his head because it's not true. A monster doesn't hold her like he did. A monster doesn't feel like he did. It wouldn't be keeping a monster alive. It would be keeping Ethan alive and that will always matter.
If not to him, then to her.
"I know what he said," Elena says, the tears rushing to her eyes. She holds them there as she looks around again, frantically this time. She doesn't have to ask him to know how quickly it's approaching. She can gauge by his reactions at just how close they are and Elena can't -- she won't let herself belief it until it's finally happening. "I know what he said but he has to be wrong. He has to be. It doesn't end like this, do you hear me?"
He can't risk the doppelganger being dead and he can't -- maybe they tried their luck too many times by defying him but he wants his arm. Ethan with his mind broken past repair is not useful to him and Elena has to grasp on to what reason she's able to so that she can make herself believe that it's -- they aren't just going to leave her here until he's torn her apart.
Elena slips her hands over his when she sees them shake. Her thumb covers the surface of his hand lightly. She trusts him with it. She does. The moon isn't out and it's Ethan here with her and she trusts that. Ethan would never do anything to hurt her. It's the resounding thought in her head, along with the terrible reminder that it all ends in violence and death if she's involved, that it's all she seems to be created for.
All she knows is Ethan can't die.
No one else is dying to spare her life. No one.
"Yes, you can. You can, Ethan. I just need you to hold on a bit longer," Elena says, wincing at the sight of his arms, specifically the part of his arms that are working at the shackles. She shakes her head, ignoring the wetness in her cheeks, the violent pounding in her chest. She doesn't step back. "You won't. You won't kill me. Listen to me. Listen to me very carefully. Ethan, just fight it, okay? You fight it for as long as you can."
There's defeaning silence at his declaration.
I'll tear you apart.
Her chest clenches painfully at the words, and how they sound coming from him, and the shakiness travels all the way to her lungs, to her throat, taking hold of everything even as she stubbornly shakes her head. "You won't," she says, and -- he won't. It won't be Ethan. It's not Ethan. Her mouth parts open and she takes several steps back at the howling, moving back to the bars to kick and flail at them but they never budge.
She backs away as far as she possibly can, backing up agains the wall opposite where he transforms. Her lungs freeze, and she stares in horrified fascination, unable to tear her gaze away as the claws come out, as he slowly and painfully turns. She expels a panicked breath, backing up as far as she will go, her hands flattened against the stone wall.
"N-no," she says, moving back, always far back. "Ethan, don't --"
His screaming is soon met with her own when he lashes out. The claws successfully latch on to the skin at her arm, piercing into the flesh there. She kicks at him with her feet but he's too strong for her to fend off. The screaming shifts into howling, and she cries out against him, pushing away with every ounce of strength she has.
She hits the floor with a rough thud, the scent of blood spreading out the area. Pain shoots up her arm and she promptly ignores it, screaming at someone to open the gate.
Elena gasps in a breath and crawls as far away from him as she can and -- there is the certainty that she will die. This isn't a test and Ethan was right and the werewolf will tear her apart. It keeps pulling at the chains and she can see how they'll soon break off of the wall, as if he might just bring the whole wall down with him.
She backs away again, never quite able to avoid the claws when they reach for her.
And there it is. The sound as the metal snaps, mixing with the hungry growls of the beast.
The werewolf breaks free of the chains and lunges at her, all bare teeth and claws, monstrous in its design. Elena screams again and closes her eyes, bracing herself for the violent collision, and it never comes. A pair of arms snake around her waist and with inhuman speed lift her off the ground.
When she opens her eyes again, she's being hauled out of the cell.
The iron cell door close again before the werewolf can follow, and her eyes remain wide and terrified as it throws itself against the bars, as if trying to reach them. "Ethan," she whispers, her face twisting painfully at the sight of him, the sight of him she knows he never wanted her to see. Her heart is still pounding painfully fast in her chest, and she can barely feel the blood trickling down her arm.
It's staining the man's suit and it reminds her she's not alone. She'd fight him off but she doesn't have the strength to, at the moment, and he doesn't seem concerned with doing anything but keeping her distanced from the werewolf.
"What are you doing?" she asks the suited man in abject horror. He doesn't answer her so she asks again as he begins to carry her away. Elena's eyes remain on the cell, on the man that stays directly outside of it with a bag of blood, as if waiting. She draws in an unsteady breath and jerks against him again. "It was a test, wasn't it? You can't do this. You need to -- he needs to know I'm alive. Let me go -- "
The man ignores her, as if she hasn't spoken, moving up the stairs with his arm still securely fastened around her waist. She kicks a little but that only makes his grip tighten around her. She starts to scream again but a piece of white cloth is placed directly over her face.
The smell of chloroform fills her and it isn't long before her vision starts to blur.
Her head lolls to the side as the man continues on his way up, on step after another. She can barely lift her head to look back at the basement below before blackness swallows her whole.
And there's nothing.
1/2
It’s not about caring. It’s about what he wants and how he can make it happen. There’s a sick sort of fascination in his eyes. Sometimes it is half anger and half glee while he’s tearing into someone, destroying them, watching as they scream uselessly for something to change when it never does. It won’t change because Lucien holds every single card, and Ethan has started to understand that in his days here.
He doesn’t know why he thought to fight back, continues to think to fight back except the only thing more terrifying than what is already going on is the idea that he could become anything like him if he were to give in.
It’s fear (as always) that drives him. It drives him to fight. It drives him to take a stand and to push back and to refuse to cower and to fold, because he needs to remain Ethan and Ethan always needs to be nothing like his father. Any alternative is literally the most terrifying thing he can think of (outside of what he’ll be made to do in a few hours) that somehow it hasn’t- he hasn’t thought of it as a possibility.
He wasn’t even thinking about the full moon, about the fact he would need to transform soon. Ethan thought plenty about the monster , the werewolf inside of him, but he barely thought about how he’d be forced to shift when the full moon came out. The sad thing is the few times that he did think about it, he thought it might be a reprieve from the torture, a reprieve from his own mind, and he never once fucking considered his father would throw a person in here with him… more than just any person but someone he loves, more than just someone he loves but Elena.
His father threw Elena in with him.
Ethan doesn’t know when Lucien realized that Elena was a good subject to torment him with. He knows the man followed them all around and likely saw how close they were. His brothers were—they were used frequently too, but he also knew his father couldn’t kill them, whatever else happened. Not until the ceremony, he could hurt them all, but it wasn’t until that night that he would have the power to kill any of them permanently.
It wasn’t much, because they are all starting to learn there is something much worse than death. There is being trapped. There is being tortured. There is being broken and remade. There is destroying people you love. There is becoming like Lucien, the worst fate of all, and he can almost imagine it.
Days into all of this, he can almost imagine it. He can almost imagine becoming something like his father instead of like himself. The monster that is always back in th edges of his mind, he feels it now without being able to avoid it or escape it because it is right there, and he knows-
Knows how it feels when it takes over without the full moon out, without him shifting into the werewolf because Lucien brings out that rage and that violence that is always around in any werewolf whether they have shifted at that time or not. It’s so many emotions that he has never stopped long enough to feel, and he knows what it feels like to be in his own skin (what he thought was his own skin) and feel nothing but rage and wanting to rip something- someone apart.
Even if it was only Lucien that he’s ever wanted to tear apart so far, it’s more than he has ever wanted as himself before, more than he has ever felt when in his own body. If he had a weapon, he would have torn him apart, not just an easy murder either. It would have been slow. He wanted it to be slow in those moments, and it is that thing that his father wants to cultivate.
Erase Ethan, break Ethan, take the pieces he wants to use and make what he wants from it, take the pieces and do what he wants with it.
It’s not that Ethan doesn’t know there are things she doesn’t really face. If Elena ever did, she would be stuck in bed some days, all day long, and he doesn’t think there is anything wrong with that. Elena just pushes forward, every single day, one after the other, and she doesn’t face everything, but she has always faced more than he has whether that’s just one day to the next or in people around her. She demands more of people, and it’s enough for him to admire even knowing there is a lot that she must not face, that she can’t face.
Ethan never thinks she is anything but human, doesn’t put her up on any pedestal, but he loves her for that humanity, for the mistakes, for what she refuses to face along with all that she does face every day. She is sometimes very grumpy and childish when she lets herself be, she has trouble seeing things fully sometimes unless someone speaks up, she doesn’t think to have things for herself as much as she thinks about what those around her need and should have, and she has a hard time letting go even when it’s important for her to do so. But he loves all these things about her like he loves the rest of her, everything in her that makes him admire her as a person without blinding him to the fact that she is a person.
A wonderful, amazing, challenging, headstrong, heartstrong (yes, that word was made up just now to describe her), beautiful, funny, talented, relentless, young woman.
Who came into his life and changed it forever, he will always admire her for that and there’s no need to put her up on any pedestal but he can do that seeing her exactly as she is, knowing she’s wrong sometimes and that’s okay too.
They should have both realized it much sooner than they did.
He should have realized it when she got through to him and reached to him when very little else could or did. He should have realized it at how it felt when he’d look over at her even when she wasn’t the one talking, the focus of the attention of the room…just to check in on her. They both had their reasons for not figuring it out earlier.
But now they are here in this moment with this reason, and they know the truth now, better late than never at all, better now than before either of them is lost for always. His hands slip through her hair as he closes his eyes there, remembering this, this kiss, this moment where they both know with absolute certainty. Despite how much it hurts to look at her and the pain in her expression, he doesn’t look away.
“Not if I’m going to kill you, Elena,” Ethan says as he looks up and over at her, breathing- not able to breathe through the panic that descends on him. He shuts his eyes tightly. He doesn’t want to live now if it means that she dies because he is alive, because of that monster that is a part of him that will rip her apart- not just kill her easily, no. It’s never easily.
It would be slow, and he’s sick—sick with it.
Ethan shuts his eyes tightly, and he wants to believe it. He wants nothing more than to hold her but he doesn’t trust any part of himself long enough to get to her. And what right would he have taking those last moments with her when he was the one that would shut it all off, kill her where she stands, tear her into pieces and he can picture it so perfectly, too perfectly. “I hear you,” he says in a quiet, thin voice if only because he’d go mad right here if he didn’t believe it wouldn’t- it couldn’t-
He doesn’t know what he has planned, doesn’t know what he’d do, but he has no doubts his father could mold even a broken mind into whatever he wanted it to be. It’s not reassuring though so he doesn’t think about it. He thinks about how he wouldn’t risk it, wouldn’t try it until it was too late, thinks about all of that instead.
Tears burn at his eyes when he sees and feels her thumb slipping over his hands which don’t shake anymore though bile rises up in his throat at the thought- the thought that she is reaching out to him, comforting him, reassuring him ,and knowing. Knowing he can feel it, sense it, everywhere, her heart beat, her breathing, his senses come to life vividly, intensely.
He looks across the darkness at her, shaking his head when she says that he can, and he breathes through the fire, the need, the hunger and violence building in his chest. Ethan nods.
“I will. I’ll hold on,” Ethan says, not feeling the pain in his arms, the blood that drips down them, he can’t feel any of it in his panic and horror and in the fight to keep himself here. He can’t- can’t reach for her, but he knows she is near and it gives him the strength to push it back further, and he listens to her and like before when nothing else could get through to him, it does. He is listening to her, and he nods,jaw locking tightly. “I’ll fight it. I’ll fight it with ev- everything I can.”
Everything he is even if it’s just going to hold off the inevitable.
He doesn’t know how to do anything else, knowing not fighting it means that much more quickly, she’ll be ripped to pieces.
Ethan shakes his head again when she says that he won’t. It’s part of him, and he has been trying to deny it for so long and he should have- he should have known. He should have known but he’s always been so stupid when it comes to this. “I’m sorry,” it’s all he can say through gritted teeth in a forced, quiet whisper as he fights against this body that he is trapped in.
He fights with all his strength, all his will, all he has and the pain is unlike anything I thas ever been before, like his veins are on Fire, and he can hear the howling meaning- meaning the other werewolves have already shifted, are already there, but he can’t- it screams through him and it’s him that is screaming, heart beating wildly, limb by limb becoming something not him- not human-not even close.
And he's horrified and terrified as he fights every second of this violation of everything he ever was. He's horrified and terrified that she is right there so close to the violence, and it's not okay. It's not fucking- not fucking okay that she'll be on the other side of it.
Only faintly-
Only very faintly he can hear her
Ethan, don’t-
It’s the last thing that he hears before his claws dig in, and Ethan- Ethan can’t be there anymore physically or mentally or the rest of it, blood being spilled, and the werewolf takes over. The screams that were there becomes the howl instead from him, and the werewolf is angry- the werewolf is hungry, the werewolf is fighting without stopping, shoving and pulling and yanking at the chains behind it.
It wants her, wants her blood, wants to tear her apart until the heart stops beating, fresh, live-
But she’s taken.
The door slams open, and the werewolf lunges at the door, at the bars, at the walls of the cell in anger and rage, howling and growling like the trapped animal that it is. There’s a carcass of a deer tossed in, there’s blood tossed in too, and the werewolf doesn’t know why, doesn’t think of whys. It hungers, and it tears it apart, the carcass, the all of it- it tears it apart until it’s gone.
Blood stains the wall and the dark fur of the beast as it eats and howls with the monsters kept in cages
It eats what’s living
And howls alone
And that’s how the night finishes for the monster in the cage.
2/2
There's this insistent feeling, thudding in the back of his head along with his heart beat which almost sounds too quiet in the near silence that surrounds him.
This feeling he needs to- there's something. There's something that has happened, and he aches with it, screams with it, howls with it in the back of his head. It wasn't only his screams at all. It was....
It was hers, and he shoots up to a sitting position. The strength of the movement sending a wave of pain through him that he ignores. His heart beating at a hundred miles per minute.
"No, no- that's not-"
It couldn't have happened. It didn't happen. Elena's not dead. He didn't kill her. Please, please, please, make it a nightmare, make it not real, but he kissed her and that- that was real.
He searches through his head, tries tries to piece it all back together as he pushes himself up in the cell, slipping slightly, and he hasn't even thought of what he might be slipping in. It hasn't occurred to him, because he is still in shock, pale and shaking and sweating. He's covered in it too but he hasn't thought about it yet.
He paces back and forth and back and forth with his shaking hands and fingers sliding through his hair as he pieces it together, one by one, bit by bit, the very last moments, why she was in the cell with him, what it-
What it meant, it can't have meant it. It can't have meant it, but he remembers- a flash of his claw digging into her arm and her screaming as he lashed out. There was no time. The- the- ohgod the shackles. The shackles are broken and off the wall, and they aren't on-
They're not on his mangled wrists anymore.
"No, please-"
And it hits him like someone has shoved a sword in him, his hand resting against the wall to keep him up right, shock and grief and guilt and pain all at once like he has never felt before, nearly doubled over from it.
That's when he notices the blood on his hands, and he jumps back as if jolted, as if something's struck him, and he lands roughly on his back in something that's-- it's not quite the ground. He turns his head back horrified to see what it is but unable to not look, moving almost against his own will without thinking about it until he sees-
"No! Elena, I-"
you killed her
The blood stained all across the floors and the wall, staining the drain that was supposed to catch it all... horror and shock hit him and his reaction is instantaneous. Ethan doubles over in pain and sickness as it rises up in his throat and he vomits, pukes everything out of his stomach and it only takes him a second to realize--
you killed her
to realize-
she's dead
and this is her
blood
to realize what he is puking up is more blood, which twists his stomach in a fire, making him sicker, making him puke further at the sight and the horrific realization that crashes down on top of him, hands, the whole of him shaking where he's lying until there's nothing left, nothing-
"Can't be, you can't be- I can't have-" His voice is hoarse and strained and almost crazed, the sound of it, and nothing like his own, what it used to be.
But it's there, the realization, the knowing, the thing he is trying to fight himself not to know but he knows anyway because it is splattered everywhere, all over the cell and all over him and inside of him- and he lets out a sound that's not human but pure pain and grief.
No more blood inside of him. It's all been coughed, hacked out underneath him, tearing at himself with shaking fingers and hands that are too weak to do more than scratch at his skin, tear it back but not- and ignoring the fire in his wrists and his arms as he sobs and screams incoherently, trying to make it not be true notbetrue don't let it be true please, his stomach on fire, the taste of blood in his mouth, her-
He didn't think he could puke anymore, but he does bile and blood as he lashes out weakly at nothing- there's nothing.
And he's lying in her blood with it dripping from his mouth, and tears are burning in his eyes as he stares at it feeling hate for it and hate for himself and hateandhtanteandhate and so- he- he's so sorry elena, please, i and how much did it hurt? how LONG was he ripping her to pieces before it was finally- how much did she scream? how much did it hurt? why did she have to die that way alone? why couldn't he have killed himself right then and there, and he can't- he can't- he-
somewhere in the sobs and the screaming, he stops.
he just stops.
his brain shuts down. turns off without warning. one moment it had been breaking into pieces and then it's gone, can't take it, can't take anything, can't hear, can't speak, can't move.
ethan shuts down, and he lies there on the bottom of the cell, unmoving.
done.
They come in later and tell him the ceremony will begin tonight.
And he doesn't move.