He remembers those five minutes well. He remembers the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach after, as if he had betrayed them all by doing it: Lissa, Elena, Rose, everyone. He also remembers the bliss her felt during them, as he escaped everything. He didn’t have to feel the scars that covered his back from where her knife embedded in his skin. Elena’s hands could trail over it without him thinking of what was there. He felt sick thinking of it now.
This isn’t Elena. He needs to remember that, remember everything Rose ever said. ( Rose couldn’t kill Dimtri ; you’re just like her ). No, he could not stab a stake through her heart, and he could only hope that they would save her. He’d had enough black clouds of death rain down on him. Please. ( That would mean they’d be looking for them ; he doesn’t think they are. They probably think he’s already turned. They’ve been waiting for it, after all. Since he was nine years old ).
“I would rather die than spend forever with you.” Adding the you is harsh, but he’s hoping you tug on what little might be left of Elena. What little actually cared for him and wanted to be with him. He wants to remember her like that. It’s a fate worse than death. He wants to remember the girl with the warm brown eyes, not rimmed with red. He wants to remember the girl whose laugh sounded like a song and loved with her entire being. He doesn’t want to think of her as a cold-blooded monster that would turn him without caring what he wanted.
“You think this is reasonable? Holding me hostage?” Act strong to be strong. Act strong to stop from shaking. It’s something else Tasha taught him, and it was the only thing keeping him from throwing up. He doesn’t know how Tasha did it, stood against her own brother, her own blood. ( to protect him, he knows. He blames himself for it every day ). Elena isn’t blood, but she could have been something similar. “You just said you wanted f o r e v e r. What’s stopping you?” Provoke the beast, bad idea. There was no one here to save him this time.
He remembers Spokane even better, and if he tries hard enough, he sees that Elena. Not the Elena that he knows and loves, the Elena that held him, Rose, Mia, Eddie, and Mason captive. That Elena. He needs to see that Elena and pretend that they didn’t kill her. Rose didn’t kill her after all; it was a mistake and they were caught up in the fuss, and they made an error. Mason’s death racked them all and Mia just sprayed her and she went on her merry way until she kidnapped him again. ( It was pretend ; but everything involving him and Elena was, right? )
His entire body tenses as she leans in, afraid of what comes next. She has all the power in this situation, and he’s never been good with that. Never been good at allowing that to happen, and he’s completely at her mercy. She could snap his neck in any given second, and as her hand moves through his hair, he can’t ignore the red any longer. He can’t ignore the red in her eyes or the red that will ultimately end up all over her hands because that’s inevitable. If not him, then someone else because that’s what Strigoi do.
“That’s a question to ask yourself, isn’t it?” she holds all the power, and his eyes move to something else because he can’t look at her eyes any more, and he certainly can’t look at her lips. They’re so close, and if he looks, he’ll see the fangs and the sick smile that crosses her face as she revels in this. This isn’t Elena. Maybe he’ll convince himself of it soon.
❝ if i was anyone else, you’d be dead already. or one of us. ❞
if you were anyone else, you’d be dead already.
there is no room for weakness in this body, but he is special. it has invoked a certain degree of reasonableness. tolerance. christian has always been special. for reasons an elena who is softer than this one could list for hours- reasons that seem distant now. not that such distance has done anything to dull her memory. she can still remember exactly how she felt. she can still remember. ❝ you’d resent me. even as a strigoi- for taking you away from your life. from your friends. family. maybe even from our beloved teen queen. god knows she will. ❞ she can still remember the way christian feels about truth, how he used to talk about it the way she used to talk about love.
i would rather die than spend forever with you. she can almost pinpoint exactly where it would hurt other elena, can almost taste the sting of it in her mouth. elena smiles at the irony; by the end of the night she’ll have been nothing but honest, but he won’t believe her. he might never believe it again just because she said it. there’s something appealing about stealing an i love you from lissa, even if she can’t hold it right. even if she can’t feel it. it sits right there between her fingers- like his throat. it pulses beneath her hands- like his blood. it’d be no farther away if she took a step back, but she prefers to stay close. ❝ i do. if i could find who did this to me, i’d kill them. ❞
she resents having her choices ripped from her. she resents having the story ripped from her. she resents. this is a story and she is a story and this is forever and she can’t hate it, exactly, but feeling empty about it is almost the same thing, she supposes. wasn’t that how christian had punished lissa? not with hate, but with the true opposite of love: indifference. it’s not good enough, it’ll never be good enough- but she has not given up. she is still wrestling for pen. she is still wrestling. she is still. it’s that aforementioned resentment that keeps her close without being the kind of close that is second nature to her now. the problem is, she could always see through his lies- and it is not much harder to see through her own. he looks away and she is desolate.
or: an elena who can still be desolate is desolate. she can not be desolate. she hungers for that desolation, for the sheer appetite of it. she.. hungers. there is so much to feel in a world that can not reach her, that can not rip her apart, and she can see all of it. she just can’t touch it. not the way she can touch him. ❝ brave christian. how’d you get so brave? i always wanted to know that. ❞
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