[ for eluding ] i'm sorry about the blood in your mouth. i wish it was mine.

[badever]

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?"

Comments

[badever]

Dying at this point would be the merciful thing to do, an escape from the torture.

Lucien doesn't want the most merciful course of action. Not that she has any real idea what he does want beyond his army and the ceremony. Maybe that's all. Maybe he's so terrifyingly laser-focused on those things that everything else, literally everyone else, is nothing but an expendable obstacle that can either be removed or used to his advantage. She's still going to hope someone comes and finds them. She's still going to hope maybe Damon wasn't taken along with them and he can find a way.

Elena doesn't know what she's hoping for, except she cannot accept that it is all hopeless.

She might feel differently sooner than she thinks, but for now, she has to believe that there's something that can be done, even if she can't see it at the moment. She wracked her brain for any possible exit strategy, she tried striking up every deal she could think of that might be worth their while, there isn't anything she hasn't tried, since there is honestly very little Elena won't do to save those she loves if she can help it.

The thought that there's nothing to be done, that she's once again powerless to stop the chaos and the destruction from reigning down on them, it's almost paralyzing. It's almost too much for her to process so she doesn't. Elena doesn't stop and linger on all the painstaking ways in which she knows they are doomed.

Elena doesn't reject the reality of their circumstance. She's always been aware that vampires are vampires and werewolves are werewolves, she's just always seen them as people, too. Elena doesn't doubt him even if Ethan is doubting himself, and she's warred with a similar predicament involving morality and the nature of from a very long time ago, before she ended up here. From the moment she was pitted as Katherine's opposite, some symbolic quest to redemption juxtaposed perfectly by the doppelganger that came before her who spelled everyone's ruin.

She cannot ignore nature, but she cannot ignore the process of nurture, either.

Elena and Katherine may not have been polar opposites, but she never was going to become Katherine. They have the genetic code. They have the Petrova fire. They even have the survival instinct ingrained in them so deeply that's all they seem to know to do, manifesting in very different ways. Katherine's self-preservation is strictly for herself. Elena's preservation is strictly for others. They are both not above manipulation. They are both
capable of reprehensible things. They are both capable of love, as well.

The difference lies in how they define the word, and how their experiences have shaped the way they see the world, see themselves, and see those around them. Ethan and his brothers were raised in a loving way. The part of them that was human was nurtured from a very young age. There may be the werewolf inside of him but that doesn't mean Ethan isn't still there too, and it's Ethan she's going to be fighting for.

There's no tearing away his nature, the way she can't change the fact she was born the doppelganger, and how terrible it must seem to both of them when it can cause so much destruction and pain and death. She's caused so much of it by just existing, that she can't help but wonder sometimes if she's just a monster, too.

It's not an easy burden to live with.

They'd all thought there was a chance. They'd all thought there was a possibility they could come out of it the other side, maybe not unscathed, but triumphant. If they hadn't believed that, they wouldn't have charged forward with all they had. The witches on their side, the objects they'd gone to the ends of the earths for, the secrets they kept, the enemies they took down as they piled up, and there were always many. She made decisions she wasn't proud of, and she did things she wouldn't have ever done if she hadn't been pushed to the extreme, but everything she did, she did with the belief that it would get them somewhere.

It wasn't that she ever thought the fight would be easy, but she did think that it was possible. She has expectations and she needs to believe things can be a certain way while also knowing there is a darker side to anything. There is a darker side to anyone, including her. She is not above this, and she never has been.

She just thought it was possible to overcome this.

Elena has to believe this, because something supernatural and deadly is always going to come after her, it seems, and she has to survive it but she cannot survive it alone. She cannot lose anyone else that she loves to this. She can't end up here, again and again, with the exact same results, and still end up Elena.

There isn't any reason to hope.

There isn't any logical reason to keep going after what they've been through, but she places it aside to reach him instead. She'll always want to reach him. She'll always want it to mean something, and it does mean something, that in the possibly darkest of moments she still reaches out and he can still feel it. The darkness remains but so does he.

The illusions and dreams and hopes she'd hold on to as tightly as she possibly could are all falling, piece by piece. The curtain is being pulled and she's seeing things for what they really are. She's seeing the ugly. She's seeing the brutal, hopeless thing for what it is. And in spite of all of it, despite the fact that all the things she believed to be true are now lies, the softness of his hands on her face, the tenderness of her own hands on his, that's still there.

It's still left when not much else is, when she could easily lose herself in that dark place filled with the guilt that comes with surviving, and Elena can do nothing but hold on to it. It's a comfort, as hard as they've fallen, and she can let herself be as hurt and as broken and as hopeless as she wants to be as long as it's in the darkest corner.

Her hands slip over his face, and over, her own face close to his. She can only faintly make it out in the darkness, the lines of his bones and the brown of his eyes, but that's as much as she needs. Elena can feel the moment his hands find their certainty, and her own hands never lost theirs, slipping further up his face until she's cradling the side of it. Her forehead rests against his, fingers curling into his hair, always gently.

It is the best thing she has felt since she was taken, too. Elena only brings him closer, deepening the kiss along with him, loving along with him, that soaring reminder that they still can. They can still love. They can still hope even when it's hopeless.

"I know," she whispers at him, her hands remaining on his face. Maybe she did before this moment or maybe she didn't, but she knows it now, and she lets it fill her when the rest is threatening to drown instead. Her lips rest against the side of his face, grazing the side of his warm skin softly before she holds him in place.

She is horrified to see what's left of his wrists and his hands. She is horrified to think of what could be left later, and she -- as much as she is able to face what is true now she can't stop herself from stopping him, in turn. "You're hurting yourself," she says, and it sounds almost as hopeless and helpelss as everything else that has ever been said. The fact that he's stopped, it's only a small comfort, because she knows what he's thinking and she's been there.

She knows what it's like to feel she has to die, and it hurts to know he's there now, too, and because of her and why she was brought here.

"I don't know. I don't know how his mind works but he needs me alive." The drain would -- it would hold all her blood she's sure, but up until that moment, it's not certain whether or not she is needed alive. She's getting restless with the urge to move, to run, to do something as opposed to just standing here but there's nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. "He's playing games with you, he wants you losing your mind. Ethan, it has to be possible."

She doesn't look away from him, not as he lies back on the wall, not as he can't catch his breath. She can't seem to catch her own for all her efforts, and it's only until she sees him trying to dig into his own skin again she moves forward again, unwilling to let go of the shackles if that means he'll keep digging.

Elena can't --

He won't do this to himself.

"I know what you're doing," she says at last, when she trusts herself to speak. "And I know you're doing it to protect me, but I can't let you. I'm not going to let you kill yourself, Ethan."

She won't.

He's not killing himself in front of her. She's not giving up on him.

She gasps softly, looking up at the hatch as a howl pierces through the quiet, distantly from up above them. She swallows thickly, looking down at her wrist but there's no watch there, only the tell-tale sign that she used to wear one. They didn't want them knowing what time of day it was, or even what day it was, and that makes sense now, too.

Elena stands there, incapable of moving, and she doesn't demand that he fight this.

She is no longer the naive girl that demands love owes her a damn thing, that love is stronger than compulsion, that it could be stronger than a transformation where he loses all semblance of himself. She's no longer that girl, long since hardened by what's been done and what they've seen. It doesn't mean she believes in his love any less. It doesn't mean she believes in him any less.

It doesn't mean she's giving up.

It simply means she knows it's not up to him once the moon hangs low enough.

Love always wakes the dragon.

Time is running out and she can't let him die, and he can't kill her, and

time

just

runs

out.

[eluding]

It would be the merciful thing, but it won’t be allowed as long as Lucien as hold of all of them.

He doesn’t want them dead. He wants to have them, to use them, to make them do whatever he wants them to do. Lucien uses their love for each other against them. If you don’t do this, your brother’s arm gets broken and then let you listen to the scream when you don’t obey and he does just that. And it’s not one bone but two that he breaks then, and there’s no telling what it is that Ethan didn’t do this time.

Lucien got tired of it, and he had the means to up the lesson, make it more powerful. He should have known that it was going to happen. Ethan knows Lucien told him something about lessons to be learned, but he never—didn’t imagine this. Couldn’t have imagined this, funny how that keeps happening.

Hope. Hope is so impossible to grasp hold of, reason for living is equally impossible to hold on to, and he doesn’t know how he is still living except that he is, except Lucien won’t let him die, except he doesn’t want to die knowing his brothers and her and others could be out there alive still. It’s impossible for him to abandon them or abandon her, and he wouldn’t— wouldn’t unless he thought he had to like he’s going to think he has to, because the alternative is too much to think of.

He knows it. Ethan knows she always faces reality head first and doesn’t hide from it. She always faces up to it directly, and he doesn’t know how she manages to do so, how she manages to get hope in the darkest of moments, the most painful times that they could possibly ever manage. She is still—There’s still hope in her somehow, and he believes it, but he doubts himself so much. He doubts who he is and what he is capable of and who he will be when all is said and done.

He doesn’t doubt for one second that Lucien can turn him into what he wants.

Lucien already knows how to bring out that rage, bring out the animal better than anything else ever has now. He doesn’t even have to try, but when he does try it’s maddening. It’s a mad dog, attacking the bars that keep him locked in a cell with no thought, no plan, no idea of what he’s doing. There’s just the attacking again and again and again.

And he has no doubts at all Lucien could train him, break him and remold him and shape him into this thing if he wanted to.

Part of is genetics, part of it is the scientific experiment they all were before they were even born, part of it is what Lucien can and will do to get what he wants and understanding so well how to do it. He doesn’t have a lot of faith in himself when Elena is thrown in but he’d stood tall, strong against what his father had wanted him to do. Ethan had resisted, and he should have known that would come at a price, at a price that he would never want to pay and a price that someone else would have to pay because of him.

There are so many differences, and Ethan hopes that his mother teaching them and raising them will give them the strength to not become what Lucien wants them to become. However, when this—when it comes to this? When it comes to her life being thrown in front of him like she’s meat? That’s what the werewolf will see her as, that’s all she’ll be to it and that is a huge part of him, and to think that is all she will be, it tears him apart to think of it to think of what she’ll be to the monster, to the animal. His claws and his teeth will tear her apart, this beautiful, fighting, compassionate, challenging woman that changed his life and chose to believe in him and love him

will be torn apart

piece by piece

by him.

No, it’s not an easy burden to live with, and he has avoided it and run from it so long and from what he was afraid of that he couldn’t- there’s no more running. There wouldn’t have been any more running after discovering the truth about his father and what his father did to them and what he wanted for Elena, doppleganger. He was the only one who knew- the only one that knew what that meant, that knew that all the pieces could easily fall into place when Adam was explaining it, and he left without looking back.

And he came to her because- because it was right, and he should have known then.

Ethan should have known at that point, at his visceral reaction to all of it but especially to knowing what their father wanted for him, for Elena, for all of his brothers, and it made him sick, sick with it.

But he should have known that night when he showed up at her doorstep in the rain how he really felt about her.

There had been so many tangled emotions leading up to that point in little moments between them like when she mentioned having been in love and how that person was in Chicago now too, like when she fell on top of him at the park, like when he was lying in bed beside her as she told him about her life and listened to him without judgment as he talked about his own and about things he hadn’t talked about with anyone else, like all of those times and so many more than he can count.

He loves her, and he should have realized it one of those other times instead of right now in this dark cell right only hours before he’s going to have to kill her.

She is familiar. His hands on her face, following the lines of her face and down to her neck and tangling in the strands of her hair. He has certainty as he slides his hands over hers, and he didn’t think he’d reach certainty again. He closes his eyes as he rests against her forehead. It’s the best thing he has felt, and he holds on to it, he holds on to it with all his might, losing himself, losing this cell, only feeling and knowing her in this moment.

He smiles a bit, painfully as she whispers I know to him, and it takes hold of his heart, filling it. She knows now. It’s better than never, better than her dying and never knowing, but she knows he loves her and he knows she loves him too. Even if it was the worst timing that it possibly could have. He’d rather it come at least the once than not at all.

It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what’ll be left later if she’s dea- if he’s killed her. What does it matter? What does it matter what comes of his wrists which heal? They’re werewolves. Lucien set them up with the highest possible healing fucking mechanisms, and he doesn’t want them, why keep a monster alive? And he only stops when her voice reaches through to him, not for his sake but for hers. “It doesn’t matter,” he says when she says he’s hurting himself. He can hurt himself all he wants but he can’t stop it.

He can’t hurt himself enough to stop it, and he would if he could, if there was some way to knock himself out to break all his limbs that might slow the werewolf down. They’re attached, and he has to- to find a way.

“But—the drain, he has the drain there to- he said,” Ethan closes his eyes, and he wouldn’t put it past Lucien to lie but he also wouldn’t put it past Lucien to tell the truth. There’s no telling which it is, but he knows. He can feel it, can hear her breathing and her heart beating from her and everything coming to life around him. It means time is running out. And he closes his eyes, expression breaking, crumpling. “That’s- this- it would do it.”

His heart is thudding heavily in his chest, and he can’t hear it, can’t hear through it. If Lucien wants him to lose his mind, he picked out the perfect way for it to happen in a snap without anything else needed, knowing what he is and what he does and the power he has is what’s ripped her apart and taken her from him. It’s him.

It’ll be him, his fault, his claws, his monster that’s done it.

There’s no way he won’t- no way it wouldn’t break him beyond repair to have been the one that killed her.

Ethan looks up at her when her hands rest on the shackles again. His hands are shaking as he turns them, and he wants to touch her but he won’t trust himself with it. He looks at her hands instead, stopping—stopping the digging as soon as her hands rest over his, and he keeps his eyes shut at the onslaught of panic and tears takes over him.

“I’m not- I’m doing it because I have to. I can’t-“ The fire captures up the words, and he sobs, tears slipping down his face as he tries to work the chain with shaking hands and arms, tense and moving and not stopping. “I can’t be what kills you. I can’t kill you. Don’t let me kill you. I can’t- I can’t- I can’t, Elena- I- I’ve got to die instead and if you want to die after that I understand but I can’t-“ his voice is trembling, and he’s shaking and having trouble catching his breath. “I’ll tear you apart.”

He needs to kill himself.

The other option isn’t an—an option. It’s not except there is no option but the one thing he would never ever ever be willing to do.

He hears the howl too, and he stares upward though there’s nothing to see, but his whole body is tense, and he moves as far from her as he can even if it won’t make any difference at all. The whole of it- the moon- it’s there, and he can feel the transformation taking hold and he’s screaming because he is fighting something that’s impossible to fight because he can’t be what kills her, tears her apart, makes her bleed, hurts her ever.

“I’m so sorry.”

It’s the last thing that Ethan manages to sob out in his own voice, filled with pain and fear and horror all at once.

It only prolongs the transformation, it only makes it longer and hurt more than it ever has before every muscle, every part of himself fighting against the need to turn but there’s nothing- there is no way he can stop it or control his body, and the shift isn’t quick at all. It takes over.

His hands sliding into claws, claws that are already lashing out toward her without thought.

Because Ethan is gone.

All of his love for her is gone, twisted up and shoved away into a tiny, tiny locked chest within the animal.

And all is left is the monster, the cuffs and chains sink into the werewolf, angering it but keeping it from reaching the full length of the cell except for the claws. It’ll break out of it soon, the more it pulls, the more it smells the blood and the meat of the young girl in its cell too.

That’s it

That

Is

It

it’s hungry, always, always hungry

[badever]

It's not about what is merciful in the least.

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

[eluding]

No, it’s never about that for Lucien, because he doesn’t care about anyone else.

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

[eluding]

When he wakes up on the floor of the cell, he doesn't know where he is at first. He is cold, and his arms feel like they are on fire even when he's not trying to move them, and he doesn't know why. Something metal sticks into his chest, and it's one of the shackles that used to be around his wrists. His face rests against the floor underneath him that is cold... and sticky and smells... strange.

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.