elijah did not answer immediately. the faint tightening at the corner of his eyes betrayed irritation before he smoothed it away, head tilting a fraction as if indulging a familiar, tiresome refrain. "no," he said at last, voice calm but firm. "you persist in misnaming it because it suits your argument. what i attempted was not dominion, nor authorship of the world."
"the strix i once envisioned was never meant to permeate governments, wars, or ideologies. it was confined, deliberately so, to vampirism itself. refinement. restraint. a means of elevating our kind, not embedding ourselves into every artery of human existence." a brief pause. "and you know this, tristan. you always have."
a restrained exhale followed, not quite a sigh, as tristan once more invoked the old accusation. elijah’s eyes lifted heavenward for a fleeting second (a controlled equivalent of an eye-roll) before settling back on him. "the past is immutable," he said coolly. "no amount of repetition will allow me to rewrite it. nor will your insistence absolve you of the fact that you, too, would burn cities to ash to protect your sister." his tone hardened slightly. "even when that protection is neither wanted nor wise."
the mention of niklaus drew a visible change. elijah straightened, something steely entering his posture. "do not reduce my brother to a stray i tolerated out of convenience," he said sharply. "niklaus is not an affliction i happened upon. he is my blood. my history. my responsibility." above all his responsibility. because he failed him. "you might comprehend that distinction if you possessed even a trace of empathy."
"or if you had siblings with whom you shared hardship rather than parallel lives. your sister was shaped differently from you, tristan – by design." simply because upbringing, training and even education differed between boys and girls back then. "your bond was never forged in the same crucible.so do not presume equivalence where there is none."
elijah inclined his head slightly, the motion precise, final. "yes, i choose and i'm not afraid to make these choices." even though sometimes making certain choices is all that's left. "i do not have any need to be remembered by the entire world. this achievement was already reached when i was turned into a vampire. when i gave life to people like you." something he regrets whenever he has to spent time with tristan. "i only seek to be rembered by those i refurse to abandon and i'm sure this is certain. whereas you? how quickly will they find another leader to follow if something were to happen to you? how quickly will they move on and follow perhaps a different path? develop into something entirely differently than you had envisioned? it appears you think that you deem your work as some form of legacy; as though it were permanence," he added evenly. "as though structures endure simply because they were once magnificent." a brief pause followed. "consider alexander of macedon. an empire carved through brilliance, ambition, and undeniable force of will. and yet the moment he died, it fractured. his generals tore it apart in their hunger to possess what he left behind. borders shifted, loyalties dissolved, and what had been proclaimed eternal proved to be remarkably fragile. greatness that cannot survive its creator is not greatness at all. it is spectacle."
"that is the inevitable fate of empires built on singular vision and unchecked ambition. they do not live on; they collapse, and in their collapse, they poison everything beneath them." and the strix were poison to this society. "i have no interest in becoming another cautionary footnote. remembered not for wisdom, but for what unraveled the moment i was gone." || @lordofthestrix
