Elena Gilbert (youliedtome) wrote in wariscoming, @ 2014-08-23 11:19:00 |
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Entry tags: | elena gilbert, enjolras |
WHO: Elena and the Lost Boys(and OPEN if someone wants to find her)
WHEN: Evening/night
WHERE: NEVERLAND
WHAT: Elena goes to look for firewood and stumbles into something else entirely
RATING: High for peril, violence and character death. Beware the triggers!
STATUS: Narrative, complete
She knew she shouldn't have left the group but she was too used to danger to sense when it should be avoided at all costs. In Mystic Falls, danger had been the norm and Elena had long since accepted that. Still, this place, that she and the others had found themselves in, held a different kind of danger and it wasn't one that Elena knew how to deal with.
She wasn't a vampire any more, she was vulnerable, but she just kept forgetting that fact. First she had gone to jump down from a tree branch, which was definitely too high for a human, and nearly snapped her neck and now she had got herself lost while gathering wood for the camp fire and found herself wandering around in the quickly darkening forest.
She could feel the panic slowly trickling in, cold through her veins, as she searched, first this way then that, for the camp they'd made by the river. But she couldn't even find the damn river, let alone the camp, and without her vampire hearing or sight, she knew she didn't stand much chance of getting back before dark - if at all. The more she wandered, the more lost she was getting herself. For all she knew, with every step she took, she could be getting further and further from the others.
Besides that, and the fact that she had no idea what kind of creatures lurked out in this forest at night, waiting for their next unsuspecting meal, Elena couldn't shake the sensation that someone was watching her. Now and then, she would swing around suddenly, stopping in her path, but the trees were always still, dark and silent, stubbornly keeping their secrets. However, Elena was sure she heard the odd snap of twigs from time to time, as though someone was walking lightly in the undergrowth, always a few meters behind her, always just out of sight.
She had tried walking slowly, stopping often to catch her stalker out, and she had tried running - neither had worked. She would start to think that it was just her mind playing tricks on her then, just at that moment, there would be a rustle of leaves nearby, which would set all the hairs on the back of her neck on end and renew her paranoia.
Elena wasn't sure how much time had passed since she'd left the camp. It felt like hours, but she had a feeling it hadn't really been that long. Time seemed to work differently here, or maybe that was just her perception of it. Either way, her legs were getting tired and her feet were sore. She wasn't sure she could carry on much longer - she had grown unaccustomed to being this weak.
Finally, letting out a small sound, somewhere between a sob and a sigh, Elena stopped beside a fallen log and slumped down onto the forest seat, feeling the horrible pangs of defeat. What was the point in continuing? She didn't even know if she was heading in the right direction. She wasn't sure what she should do, but the only thing she could think of was sitting out the night then starting to search again when morning came. The forest was growing blacker and blacker by the second, so much so that she was struggling to see the trees just a few meters around her in every direction.
The thought crossed her mind of starting her own fire, to keep warm by for the night, but she had dropped her pile of wood a long time before and she had the horrible feeling that having a camp fire would just attract the things she could imagine stalking the forest at night. She had no safety in numbers or vampire speed. She would fight, if it came to it, but she had no idea what she'd even be fighting and that put her at an immediate disadvantage. No, she thought the best thing to do was to lay down by her log, as far out of the way as possible, and try to sleep the night away as quickly and fearlessly as possible.
Elena was just prodding around the edges of the log with a stick, to make sure there wasn't anything lurking in the nooks and crevices which would like to make her a meal as soon as she lay down, when she heard the definite sound of a footstep in the trees beside her. She tried not to stiffen or give any indication that she'd heard the sound at all, carrying on with her prodding and examining, but all of her senses were on high alert as she strained to hear anything else to clue her in as to who or what it was that had been following her.
There was a long period of silence, in which the only sounds were the ones Elena herself was making, and then, when she'd started to lose focus on the forest and turn back to the task at hand, there was the sharp snap of a twig, which made Elena let out a subconscious little gasp. Strangely, the noise didn't come from behind her or to the side, where she thought she'd heard the footstep; it was above her, in the branches of the tree which overhung her log.
Instinctively, Elena looked up. The canopy of leaves overhead was pitch black, just like the rest of the forest around her, but then, out of the darkness, a shape appeared, dropping towards her at an alarming speed. Elena screamed - she couldn't help herself. She lifted her arms up to protect her face as she felt the impact of the thing hitting her and forcing her down to the ground. She rolled, her hair flying around her face and making her even more blind than the darkness of the forest had rendered her, but she could hear the thing that had hit her rolling too - the momentum having carried both of them to the ground. Her leg thudded into the trunk of a tree, stopping her, and she quickly put her hands out to the damp earthy ground, scrabbling to push herself up to her feet. She could hear the sounds of movement all around her now and, as she rose, she could see shapes forming in the darkness.
The shapes looked human and she could make out the outlines of hair and clothes and weapons through the gloom. They were people - lots of them - wearing dark clothes and hoods which made them blend almost seamlessly into the trees. Elena realized that the thing that had pushed her to the ground must have been one of them, jumping from a tree branch over head. Bracing herself against the tree behind her, her chin setting into a hard line, Elena glared through the darkness at the people slowly closing in on her.
"What do you want?" she called, her voice nowhere near as steady or strong as she had hoped it would be. One of the people, a boy, Elena thought, taller than her and slim, stepped out of the ranks formed by the others. From what Elena could see of his face, he had pointed features and small eyes which peered out from beneath his hood.
"It's simple, really," he said, his voice sounding youthful to match his face but laced with the danger of a threat made far too easily. "We want the heart of the truest believer." Elena's brow wrinkled. The heart of the truest believer?
"What do you mean?"
"What I say," the boy replied, a horrible smile turning up the corners of his mouth. "We want the heart of the truest believer and you're going to help us."
"I have friends," Elena countered quickly. "They'll be looking for me."
"We know where your friends are." There was a titter of laughter from the boys - they were all boys, Elena realised, perhaps teenagers, but all not much older than kids - which tailed off when the leader started speaking again. "Do you think we haven't been watching you since you arrived here?" The menace in the boy's words was obvious and Elena couldn't help but dig her nails into the bark of the tree behind her to keep herself from outwardly showing her fear.
"So you'll know that I don't have a clue what you're talking about then?" Elena countered, leaving the boy's question as a rhetorical one. The boy scoffed and smirked, his head tilting to the side a little as though he were sizing her up, the way a fox looks at a rabbit it's about to eat.
"You don't need to know what we're talking about. We just need your help, that's all." The statement sounded innocent enough, but Elena was smart enough to guess otherwise.
"What help could you possibly need from me?"
The boy smiled, stepping back away from Elena to slowly begin pacing back and forth in front of her, keeping her pinned against the tree. "There's a girl in your group - dark hair, nice body, motherly... Belle, you call her. We want to talk to her and we want you to bring her to us." Elena felt cold. If these boys wanted Belle, that certainly couldn't be a good thing, especially with all the talk of hearts.
"And what makes you think she'll listen to anything I say?"
"You're her friend," the boy replied, stopping his pacing to turn and give Elena another cool, deadly smile. "We've seen you talking to her." Elena realised that the boy hadn't been lying when he'd said the group had been being watched.
"And what if I won't help you?" Elena knew it was a bold move - she was cornered and there were a lot more of them than there was of her, but she was trying to channel someone who wouldn't be afraid in this situation and the only person she could think of was Damon, who definitely wouldn't be pandering to a bunch of kids. The boy gave a soft, short laugh, looking around at his companions, before turning back to Elena, his face becoming stony and grave.
"Then you're of no use to us."
Everything happened at once then. In a flurry of movement, more boys dropped out of the trees while the ones who had been surrounding their leader surged forward, towards Elena. In the split second before she resolved to move, she could see the glint of metal reflecting in what little light could penetrate the leaves overhead. She realised, with a thrill of fear, that all of the boys were armed, and they were coming straight at her.
Calling on all of her experience at dealing with vampires, werewolves and magic, remembering all the time she had run for her life, Elena turned, skirted around the tree and began sprinting. She didn't know where she was going and, more than once, she stumbled and knocked into unseen things - hard and jagged things which made her limbs smart with pain at the point of impact - but the sound of the boys behind her, in close pursuit, made her push on through the pain and the darkness. She was not going to die today - not here, not so far away from Damon and her friends, not like this.
But the sounds of heavy, running footfalls were coming closer with every moment. The boys obviously knew this forest a lot better than she did and they were gaining on her. At that moment, Elena would have done anything to be a vampire again, but she wasn't and her human body wouldn't carry her any faster than she was going.
Elena became vaguely aware that she could hear a rushing sound in the distance and, with an unexpected jolt of joy, she realised that it was the river. If she could hear the river, it must mean that she was getting close to the camp. Unfortunately, though, the boys seemed to have made the same connection, as a shout went up, probably from the leader, to "Fire". There was a whistle of wind which Elena heard as much as felt as something sailed through the air past her ear. She jumped, shocked, and stumbled a little, but quickly righted herself and carried on running, heading towards the sound of the river.
The trees were thinning around her now, the blackness of the thick forest lightening to a perceptive gloom as the sound of rushing water drew ever closer. The boys seemed to have dropped back a little and Elena hoped for a moment that they were giving up. Just as she was thinking that, another two or three objects flew past her, narrowly missing her as she wove through the obstacle course of branches and ferns. One struck a tree trunk in front of her and Elena was horrified to see, as she ran past, that it was an arrow. They were firing arrows at her!
All of a sudden, Elena burst out of the trees onto the moonlit shore of the river. She paused, looking up and down the bank, for something, anything, familiar, which would lead her towards the camp instead of further away from it. She thought the landscape to the left looked promising so, without even taking a breath, she started off in that direction. She could hear the sound of feet on the ground behind her, where the earthy dampness of the forest floor gave way to rocks and pebbles beside the river, skidding to a halt and turning as hungry eyes searched for their prey. Elena could see a curve in the river just up ahead. She knew, once she rounded that corner, she would be out of sight, if only for a minute or two, but she was pretty sure the camp wasn't far now and those few moments might be all she needed to reach safety.
She never reached the curve, however. She was stopped, mid-step, by the thud of arrow hitting flesh and cloth, followed by a sharp pain in her chest which quickly spread through her body until she could feel it even in the very tips of her toes. Her legs froze and she tumbled heavily to the ground, her head banging sharply against a stone which jutted out of the riverbank at an angle. She rolled, the shaft of the arrow, which had jutted from her back, snapping painfully, with a horrible crunch, under the weight of her as she came to rest, looking up at the sky. The world around her began to swim and she could feel the wet, stickiness of blood trickling from her forehead and soaking the fabric of her shirt around the place where the tip was poking out, mocking her with it's sharp, glinting point.
"She's dead." The voice was quite close and calm, which seemed ridiculous to Elena at that moment. "If the arrow doesn't do it, the dreamshade will."
"What are we going to do now?" another voice piped up. "I thought we wanted her to bring us the girl?" Elena could just about see people moving at the very edge of her field of vision now, although she couldn't call out to them, or even move. She could feel her body beginning to convulse, the murkiness of her vision growing darker with every second.
"It doesn't matter," the first voice replied. Elena thought that was the voice of the boy who had spoken earlier, in the forest, but she wasn't completely sure. "We'll get to all of them in time. Besides, she wasn't the truest believer - we knew that from the start. It was pointless keeping her alive." There was a general mumble of agreement to the last statement and the sound of movement as the boys started to move away again, into the forest and out of Elena's line of sight. Even if they had stayed, however, Elena probably wouldn't have been aware. The rushing sound of the river had grown louder so that it sounded as though it was inside her head itself. The gloomy light of the night around her had faded until she was lying in dark like the darkness of the forest or the blackness of Damon's hair.
Damon. He would be so sad. She knew how it had felt to lose him and she was angry at herself for putting him through the same thing. If only she'd had the chance to say goodbye. She wondered if there was an Other Side here in this world, but then she remembered that she was human here so she wouldn't have gone there anyway.
It was unfair, she thought, that it all had to end like this. She had lived through so much, survived so much, coped with everything Mystic Falls had to throw at her and now she was dying, miles from home, killed by little boys. It stunk of injustice. But, she thought, with her last conscious thought, life wasn't fair, was it?