[ 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

[eluding]

It’s what got to them. They had grown comfortable, complacent.

Bad things don’t always happen to people at those events. Sometimes they’re just fun, and the event got right into the middle of it with everyone having a good time, an enjoyable time together. Then it crashed forward with a swift interruption, and there was no preparing for it. They were split up, and they didn’t even know until they got to the dinner that every single one of them was taken and none were left behind to escape this torment.

There’s a strong chance that they all would have still been taken even if they had been prepared, even if they’d had some warning. Lucien has way of being able to sense someone’s movements and figuring out where they would be, capturing them before they could get away. It’s no use thinking of regrets, thinking of how things could change if they were prepared. It happened as it did, and now they all have to figure out how to live with what pieces are left.

They are all broken, and they are all scarred terribly so. Death isn’t the worst that could happen to someone. Living can be more difficult. Living in a hell can be far more difficult, but Logan has to hope that that hell will go away, that they will be able to create a safe place for healing. He hasn’t thought far enough ahead yet to think of what they might need to do that. Right now, it’s dealing with one moment at a time, still shocked that he is even alive at all.

It half feels like walking around as a ghost almost except he knows he did not die. It was…just incredibly close, and he is only relieved to be here with his brothers, because he would hate to make any of them lose someone after all that they all went through. Somehow, miraculously, they all lived. They all went through hell but they all lived, and he is determined for that to mean something but for now it is focusing on one thing and the next without worrying about the rest.

There’s no time to worry about the rest, and he knows the first order of business is for them all to get as much rest as they possibly can… before they figure out what’s going on in Chicago, if they should go back or… or what.

It’s not like they’d be worth it in a fight against the Society right now with all their scars, all their brokenness. They’d get themselves killed, and as much as Logan is for fighting and taking a stand, he knows it might… not be the smartest thing. It doesn’t mean they shouldn’t contact people who likely think they are dead, but that will come in a few days once they’ve rested, slept for hours on end.

They got the rooms for one night, but he’ll increase it to another night before he even thinks about moving all of them to somewhere else.

The dinner was a terrible example of what they all would go through. Ethan is fairly good at controlling himself. It’s difficult- more difficult when people he loves are upset or hurt. However, he doesn’t react in a volatile manner when he can help it. It’s maybe one of the few good things that the avoidance has given him as he never exactly face anything immediately as it happens. It gives him the chance to clamp down on any reaction that he could have, but that dinner drove even him to react with that violence, that volatile nature that is in any werewolf even if he was likely the last Hale to be killed.

Lucien had fun playing with them that first night, and he has no idea he learned even more about them then during that dinner. They knew who could be used to rile who up and how it could be used. He learned how to ignite the fire in each and every one of them and how to get them to a point where they were more than willing to cooperate if it was someone else on the line. He figured out who had the most effect on who.

And Ethan hates, hate that it was all used against each other. He hates the love they have for each other was tainted and used in the way that it was. Ethan hates everything about those days, about not seeing anyone, about the night that will never, ever leave him. The idea of shifting again is literally panic inducing to the point that if he let himself think about it, he’d probably try tearing himself out of his own skin again.

If he lingers on it, he won’t know- won’t be able to live still even knowing he didn’t do it, even knowing he didn’t go through with it.

Knowing the possibility is there, knowing that if they aren’t kept away strongly enough, he could rip someone apart, rip Elena apart, rip anyone apart. It’s a big risk. It’s a huge risk. What right does he have to live with all he could do to someone? And he’ll have moments- moments of hopelessness in the future, moments where he’s ready to do it again, ready to end it all because he can’t.

Because that night will live with him forever, what he could do and nearly did and thought he did will always live with him, with the both of him and it will always make him sick to see blood, to think about ever putting anything in his mouth again because of what he last thought was inside of himself in his stomach, because of what he thought he ate last time.

He can shake with it, with the sickness and the rage and the fear and the grief that is still so easy to reach for even though she is alive and in front of him and convincing him piece by piece that she is still here. That his worst nightmare did not come to pass even though it was seconds away from happening. He wonders—wonders if it always would have been a test.

If it wasn’t going to be a test unless… unless she lived until when she did.

Maybe they were waiting for him to transform fully before they pulled her out of there or maybe they were waiting to see how far it would go, waiting to see if she would or could survive that long.

Ethan knows that there isn’t much that could make anyone last as long as he did against a transformation into the werewolf when the full moon is out. He’s never lasted that long before, and when he was a kid, he used to fight against it all the time, because he hated it and it terrified him every time especially after what he saw on the tape. The tape that he still has in his bedroom if they ever go back to their bedrooms like some kind of reminder of what he is and why he- why he can’t ever stop running.

His fingers are still curled in on his hands, but they stop shaking after a few seconds with her hands covering over them. It’s just- just like that night. How she’d rest her hands on the shackles,, and it was all that could stop him from tearing at his own skin. It is sinking in though, slowly, so slowly, and he’s not going to want to sleep in case he wakes up in that cell gain, still covered in her blood.

“It was… all a lie. It was a lie,” Ethan says, and he didn’t even consider the fact she might still be alive. He remembers her screaming, remembers her right there, remembers her Ethan, don’t. Before it all went black, he remembers those flashes and they stay with him too, but she’s in front of him, hands over his, making them stop shaking.

He would never want to hurt anyone. His brothers wouldn’t either. Their mother raised them differently, whatever might be inside of them.

Ethan smiles back at her, tears burning in his eyes. “Something we have in common,” he says, and he kisses that tearful smile because he can’t yet use his hands, but he- he-the sight of it pushes through him warmly like need, like wanting, like love. It’s all at once.

Logan breathes in when Connor’s hand rests against his shoulder, and he heads out through the door to give them space and time. It’s just good—it’s a relief to see some life in him, but it’s obvious they need this moment to themselves.

He feels the need to thank her even knowing she is Elena, knowing she fights for everyone she loves and never gives up on them. It’s such a powerful thing that she gives to the people that she loves and he wants her to know how important it is to him too, how much it means to him that she did. Even if it means nothing to the rest of the world and she wasn’t able to get to him until just now, it means everything to him. “Okay,” he says hoarsely, breathing through- through the fire in his chest. “I know… you will, you’re Elena but- I’ll always fight for you too.”

Even if it means, it means coming back to her, fighting against the nothingness to come back when a part of him didn’t want to in case none of it was true. The tight hold is a comfort though, and he knows she is holding on as tightly as she can, which is all he would ever ask for her. She may not hold on as strongly physically, but her non-physical hold is one of the strongest around.

He keeps close to her as the tears slip down though her eyes are closed. He kisses her tears away gently, gently. God, he doesn’t know how he manages gentleness, but he needs to-

It’s her. And he loves her and it overwhelms him more than the fear.
His hands cup her face before one slides behind her head as she buries her face against his neck. Ethan’s chin rests on top of her head, and he stays there, holding her tight around her waist with his other arm, protectively there though what’s hurting is inside now.

Ethan closes his eyes as she kisses him ,and he kiss her back, intensifying it for a moment before he rests back, slipping his hand through her hair as she peppers kisses along his cheek and neck. “I love you too” he says, voice cracking though he means it more than anything else in the world. He loves her, he loves her, and he never, ever meant to nearly tear her apart.

He never ever- he never would hurt her, and he- there are no words for the relief and the love that has practically overwhelmed him.

It’s over. The night is over. The torture is over. They are alive and together impossibly so. They’re here, and he tightens his hold on her, resting his face against her.

He looks over too when there’s a knock at the door though he doesn’t- couldn’t push himself up from the mattress. It takes a moment for it to register, his brother. It takes a moment before he finds… finds his way back to awareness beyond Elena and her being live.

There’s a sharp intake of breath at the sight of him, thinner and haggard and… Ethan keeps his gaze on his brother, shaking nearly with the- with the waiting for the answer to come. Adam’s here. Adam’s here, and it takes him a moment to process the fact that he wasn’t here and why he wasn’t here. His thoughts haven’t been working, and it’s all—all catching up to him.

And the answer comes and he rests his head back, hand sliding over his face. “Thank God,” he says, and it’s slightly cracked too before he shuts his eyes, remembering the joy that he’d felt when his father had gone down. the only emotion- the first emotion he’d felt since lying in the blood, the very first thing that reached him…

Even before Elena

And that’s sickening too but he can’t be bothered to care at the moment.

He’s dead, and he looks over at Adrien again, and he nods, eyes burning. “T- thanks.” For letting them know. God, they needed to know, and it’s over. “It’s over.” Nearly disbelieving, nearly afraid to believe it, but it's over.

Lucien is dead.