Who: Elijah Mikaelson elijahm & Elle Bishop ellectric What: Testing the waters. When: Thursday, May 14, just after dark Where: Copperstone Apartments Rating: Audience Discretion is Advised Warnings: Discussion of death, threats of violence, homicidal immortals, all the fun things which come from being a part of the vampiric Mikaelson world! Status: Closed/Completed GDoc
~*~
Hope was a happy, healthy child. She was loved by creatures who were among the most powerful in their world. Her family was considered to be one of the most dangerous ever to grace the surface of her planet. No one who bore her ill will was tolerated to live. Every precaution was being taken to ensure she was protected from any enemy or threat. Elijah Mikaelson knew all of these things to the very core of his thousand-year-old being. He knew, intrinsically, Hope was safe in Test City.
The knowing did not comfort him in the slightest as he went to Klaus's apartment to let himself in to confront the newest member to their race---and his brother's latest mistake.
Elijah took out his handkerchief to wipe his hands while he studied her. He had moved so fast, it was possible she hadn't heard him enter. She didn't seem prepared to fight him. There was a slackness to her muscles which indicated she'd become comfortable. It could have been a ruse though he had no doubts of his own skills in combat. Entire packs of werewolves had fallen beneath his rage before; Elijah was hardly going to be frightened by one fledgling vampire.
"I'm here to explain your new situation."
He made the announcement as if he were offering up the state of affairs at his restaurant. Calm, cool, and collected were his major descriptors in all situations. Elijah was not the one who lost himself to his emotions. He was a bastion of reason in a family filled to the brim with passionate insanity. The Mikaelsons thrived because he, Elijah, kept them going with his rationale. All of eternity meant nothing if the family resorted to living worse than beasts, slaughtering and savaging everything in sight.
Tucking his handkerchief back into his pocket, he stated, "I am Elijah. Klaus is my younger brother. He, as you likely well know, is the original hybrid. This means nothing to me in terms of my affection for him. He is my brother. I will kill for him and, if it were possible, I would die for him. He sired a child with Hayley Marshall. Ms. Marshall is off-limits to you. Forever. If she wishes to speak to you? That is her decision. You are never to seek her out. I will know if you do. The child they share is named Hope. She is the future of my family. You are never to seek her out either. I will destroy you if you violate either of these rules. You are also not to embarrass my family with your behavior. Again, I realize you likely think you've been granted eternal life courtesy of my brother's very potent blood. This is a mistaken idea. You live because I allow it. If you behave badly? I will tear out your heart with my bare hand and end you for eternity. That is your fate if you are lucky. Do not cross me. You will not like the consequences. Have I made myself perfectly clear?"
~*~
Elle stared at him, almost blankly the entire time he spoke to her. She wasn’t even sure she’d heard all of the words. She wasn’t who she’d been in life, there was currently not even a hint of that woman...just this hollow shell who had taken her place. He would end her. That was all she focused on. Finally someone with some sense.
“Please.” Elle said. “That’s all I want.” Her voice was barely above a whisper and her blue eyes that were once so enigmatic had lost their luster and now just looked haunted. She hadn’t asked to be made a vampire. She hadn’t known what would happen.
The bloodlust was controlled easily enough by electrocuting herself. But it didn’t help her mental state. It was if she were living in a nightmare. She hadn’t even fed since that first time, so she was weaker and more pale, but she didn’t care. Even if she could live off blood bags like that other blonde vampire Klaus was so fond of, she didn’t want this to be her life.
How could she live like this?
Elijah’s solution was a simple one, but Elle couldn’t see it ending any other way. She didn’t want to leave Gabriel, but surely he’d understand. He’d realize that she was never meant to be this...thing. And the few short weeks they had together here, it was more than they ever should have had.
She’d tried to be so strong in front of Gabriel, to not let him see her cry. Elijah wasn’t going to get the same courtesy. She couldn’t help it. He seemed so controlled in his emotions, so strong. He was far from the weak and sniveling girl in front of him now. She wondered how he could be so calm, how he could talk about ending her as if he were just talking about the weather.
If only she could be so...controlled. Maybe she wouldn’t feel like it was all hopeless now. She was tormented and torn because leaving Gabriel was the last thing she wanted. If anyone had ever loved her in the whole world, it was him. She wanted to be the girl he saw when he looked at her. But she didn’t see how it was possible when she was this...vampire thing.
“I don’t want to live this way.”
~*~
Of course Klaus would find the only broken, suicidal woman in their new world to make immortal. It absolutely went according to his nature. He couldn't ever do things the easy way. So many who would want eternity and he picked one who only wanted to end. Elijah barely restrained himself from putting her out of his misery. Only the thought of how it could potentially affect Klaus stilled his hands. His brother had chosen this young woman for some reason. It might have been out of sheer inebriation, but Elijah doubted it.
Klaus was too complicated to be explained away as a drunkard.
"Well, you must. The alternative? Is a very unpleasant death. I can't change you back. This is the life you'll live from here until the end of you or time, whichever comes first."
Elijah gave a Gallic shrug. He wasn't certain which would come first. He'd thought on it many times. In his estimation, it was far more likely the world would end before the Mikaelsons did. They were all too bloody stubborn to die off amenably before Armageddon itself came. He had thought of ending his own life on occasion. There was a way for him to die. Klaus had it in his possession: the white oak stake. All he'd have to do would be fall on it like the good little soldier he'd been accused of being.
A noble death for a noble man.
It would have been fitting.
"Are you hungry? In pain? You look famished. I can take you hunting if you like or we can go to the hospital to simply get what amounts to vampiric take out. I'm fine with either option. I'm sure you don't actually want me to tear your heart out of your chest. It's quite painful even if it is rather quick."
Elijah should know. He'd done it far more than once in his thousand years of life.
~*~
How could she accept this life? It all seemed so hopeless. Immortality was not something she thought she’d ever have, and so she had no idea how to deal with it. She wasn’t sure if she actually wanted him to kill her, but it was the way she was feeling at the moment. How could she ever start to repair herself when now she was...this thing? Elle didn’t know.
Elijah seemed to think it wasn’t the end of the world though, maybe that gave her some hope. Elle wasn’t terribly rational, even as a human. All of that was Bob’s fault. He damaged his little girl in ways she could never hope to recover from. Terrible parents, it kind of seemed to be a theme around here.
Elle had to try and be strong. It just wasn’t going to come easily to her. Perhaps she would adapt, but she was feeling everything so much more intensely now.
“I don’t...want to hurt anyone.” She said quietly. Elle wanted so badly to be the girl that Gabriel saw, the one he wanted her to be. And she couldn’t be hunting people for their blood if she wanted to achieve that.
“How do you live with it?” She asked him, curiously. Maybe he could offer her some insight into how she could go on like this.
~*~
'I don't have a choice.'
Elijah bit back the immediate response he wanted to give her in favor of trying to come up with something more constructive. She wasn't asking him how he existed. She was asking him how a vampire could live without being a monster. There really wasn't any way to do it, but flights of fancy never hurt anyone. The Salvatores excluded, naturally, since they were a self-destructive mess all unto themselves.
Many vampires existed in the world who got on without any real hitch to their lives. They held jobs. Some had hobbies they shared with humans who had no idea they were in the presence of a supernatural being. He'd known a bartender who'd been tending bar for two hundred years uninterrupted until Klaus had come along to muck it all up for her. She had been a mess to clean up. Elijah was grateful this woman was less difficult to deal with all around. It was true she had an odd scent to her, but who knew what that meant?
Test City was filled to the brim with oddly-scented beings. Elijah had met a "Super" who could turn herself invisible, an alien fighter who was little more than an animal, and a woman from an alternate reality who seemed absolutely beside herself in their world. He had seen very, very strange couples at the tables at Bello. Managing a restaurant might not have been his first choice of employment, but it was incredibly insightful. He'd learned a lot from nothing more than listening, looking, and leaving people to their own devices.
Clearing his throat, he answered, "I have obligations. If you're asking what is the simplest way to survive? The answer is compulsion. You have the ability to convince someone to willingly let you drink their blood and then forget it ever happened. You can simply erase the wounds with a drop of your own blood when you're done. As long as you don't take too much? You'll leave no body trail behind you and your prey will have nothing more than a bit of a sore head from the experience. If you want to get more complicated? Blood banks are expensive, but very feasible. Money becomes something you take for granted when you have forever to earn it in or you can simply convince someone to give it to you."
Elijah didn't know what answer would comfort her more. All he knew was he didn't want to have to dispose of her body if he didn't have to at this juncture.
~*~
His answer was less than satisfying, but Elle didn’t know what she was really asking. She supposed what she needed to do was figure out how to make peace with what had happened to her. He’d said there was no reversing it. The alternative was death, and as much as part of her wanted that, another part of her could not do that to Gabriel.
She didn’t want to let him down, to be weak and show that she could not be who he wanted her to be. She couldn’t just give up her life, because that meant giving up him. She was more than unwilling to do that. And thus, she had to find a way to live with this.
Elijah made it seem like it were possible, giving her some small glimmer of hope. That would have to be enough. She was still reluctant to hunt though. She was new to this, and what if she lost control and couldn’t stop? No, there were enough blood on her hands. She would try the blood bags, as it seemed the safer option. She’d all but decided that with Gabriel the other night.
She nodded slowly, accepting Elijah’s words. “I just don’t think hunting is the best option right now.” Maybe she just wanted to hold on to that part of her that still felt human. She could convince herself that she wasn’t a monster, she just had a strange dietary habit of drinking blood from a bag.
“Thank you.” She said sincerely. Though, Elijah had initially threatened her, he’d also made her feel somewhat better about all of this.
~*~
Hunting was rarely the best option for newborns. Elijah hated training them to avoid a kill. He'd rarely made a vampire as a result of his distaste for taking care of them once they were created. It usually fell to him anyway given his siblings' lack of concern for what havoc their offspring could wreak on the world, but at least he wasn't deliberately setting himself up for a headache. These young vampires such as Elle were the result of someone else's mistake; Elijah was only there to smooth things back into place as usual.
He liked being the one who kept their lives tidy. There was a certain soothing quality to straightening out all the wrinkles in life. Eternity could get very, very wrinkled, but Elijah was created wrinkle-free for all his siblings knew. His mother had known differently, likely his father as well, yet the topic had never been discussed with the rest of the Mikaelsons. Everyone was aware someone had to be stable. Someone had to be the rock everyone else could stand on in the midst of the storms which passed through their eternity.
Elijah would see to it this young woman had someone she could lean on, too.
"You're welcome. Here," he offered, "Look into my eyes. I'm going to teach you how to compel though it won't work on me. You'll be annoyed perhaps with the trick, but it's better you feel it from me first than from my petulant brother. Klaus can be a brat when he's of a mind to be. I'll teach you how it feels. All you'll have to do is focus on the feeling and sending that same feeling out to your victim. You'll have yourself a yummy meal whenever you want it with no pain involved and hopefully no death. I don't expect you to use this for now. I only want you to practice it. We'll stock your fridge from the stores at the hospital. Better to learn before you need to than need to learn when you've no time to do it."
Unfortunately, Elijah had learned that lesson from his family too many times to count.
He hoped eternity was kinder to Elle than it had been to many others. She seemed oddly sweet. It was a pity she might not last.