Rebecca

title| a mighty heart is lying still

summary| The fact that she’s dead doesn’t hit her until her new impulses have made her tear into a woman’s neck.

A/N| Another plot bunny that wouldn’t go away. Hope you enjoy. ♥
 

—-


blood rushes down her throat.

snap goes her neck.


—-


She wakes at nightfall and the fact that she’s dead doesn’t hit her until her new impulses have made her tear into a woman’s neck.

The blood is making every sense exhilarate and if her heart could beat again it would sound like a thousand horses.

The fact that she has just killed, drank the woman dry, doesn’t hit her until her craving is full. Then she drops from her blood high, takes one look at the woman, and screams.

Everything between then and being curled up in corner of her room is blurred and dark. She’s covering her face with her arms, rocking back and forth, trying to forget the taste of blood. (She can’t.)

The only thing that wakes her out of her hysterics is the presence of someone else next to her. She panics, desperately kicking and scratching the hands trying to touch her, trying to take her. She shrieks at them, shoving and pushing and trying to get them away. A voice, strong and familiar, stops her. “Elena!”

She freezes when she realizes who said it, where it came from. Elijah. Her eyes are wide and she’s visibly shaking, but then he’s gripping her shoulders and it brings a calming effect.

Her face crumples and any words she tries to say come out as cries. “I- I-“

He pulls her into him, hushes her, whispers soothing words in her hair in a language she doesn’t recognize. Reality starts to slip back in, and she sees over his shoulder that her room is practically shredded into pieces. Pillows and sheets and blankets are ripped beyond repair, her curtains in a similar state. Bloody hand-prints litter her broken possessions and she is now aware of the the wet, sticky liquid on her hands.

She spots her teddy bear, it’s head torn clean off, a victim of her blind fear. The sight causes her to sob into Elijah’s shoulder, clinging to him and burying her face in his coat. The mix of blood and tears are staining it, neither of them care.

He holds her until daybreak.


—-


Rebekah is the one that killed her.

She’s willing to let it go, because vengeance isn’t in her nature.

Then she finds out Alaric was killed in an attempt to stop her.

She waits until her back is turned, then she rips Rebekah’s heart out. (Backstabber, even in death.)

She brings it to Elijah, lets it fall onto the floor between them. His eyes look wounded but he says nothing.


—-


He was supposed to leave Mystic Falls, but ends up staying with her, teaching her how to control her blood lust, how to drink from a human without killing. It takes her a long time to be able to talk about blood without feeling nauseous.

He teaches her how to fight back, how to harm without completely breaking.

Sometimes, when he’s knocked her down after a rough lesson, he helps her up and his fingers linger on her skin longer than they need to. She pretends not to notice.

(Her skin tingles once his touch has left it. Elena pretends not to notice that either.)


—-


She hasn’t heard from Stefan or Damon since her death. No calls, no texts, not a word.

She thinks it should probably hurt, but she only feels a tinge of relief. For them, for her.

Maybe they can be happy now.


—-


One day, she leaves Mystic Falls. No packing, no announcements, no goodbyes. She just gets in her car and drives.

She finds some hotel on the edge of nowhere and doesn’t think about how long she’ll stay, if she’ll go back, just curls up in the small bed and sleeps. In her dreams she is dirty, broken, beautiful, free. She dreams of him too, but she won’t let herself remember that later.

When she wakes up, Elijah’s there, has brought her breakfast. She’s not nearly as surprised as she should be. She guesses that part of her was expecting it. (Maybe wishing for it.) She just groggily sits up, still half asleep, and asks if he brought any blood.

She plans on only drinking the blood, but then she sees how he’s looking at her (hopeful), so she nibbles on the pancakes, sips the orange juice, and tries to make conversation. The first thing she brings up is the ocean, how much she’s always wanted to go. It makes him smile so she keeps talking, rambling on about shells, the shore, the sand.

They promise to go there someday without saying the words.


—-


She continues to run away, finding a new place to hide until Elijah finds her a day later. She stays there a week before taking off again, a month if she likes the spot. Any longer and the place would start to feel like home, and she isn’t ready for that yet.

He always finds her, always. She’ll wake up and he’ll be there, reading a book or cooking or just looking out the window, like he’d been there the whole time. She plays along, treating him like he was, asking him ordinary questions and not showing any shock when he appears.

They don’t speak about it, what she’s doing, what they’re doing. If this is some sort of game or chase, when she’ll stop and settle, if she’ll stop and settle. It’s not like they don’t have the rest of eternity to discuss it. She forgets about that sometimes. When she remembers, she spends the night crying into her pillow, grabbing fists of the sheets beneath her. Elijah eventually starts laying down next to her, resting his hand on her back and rubbing circles into her skin until the sobs slow and she lets him hold her. More often than not, he sleeps there with her. Then they wake up. She pretends it was a dream (nightmare), he plays along.

She thinks she could stay in one place if she wanted, let herself be happy. But if there’s one thing she’s learned, it’s that happiness doesn’t last, and she’s not ready to be built up just to be crushed down again.

She runs and he follows.


—-


Years pass, places change but they stay the same. She still runs and he still follows.

She misses Jeremy, Caroline, Bonnie. But she thinks they might be better off without her.

Running has made her tired, and she longs for a place to call home. But she knows she’s still not ready, so she keeps at it, knowing he’s right behind her.


—-


One night, after maintaining a habit of slipping in and out of the shadows, of taking blood and healing and compelling, sending her latest snack on their way, something in her snaps and she wants to destroy. She finds a man, breaks his bones, tears into his flesh to get to the crimson liquid flowing underneath. It’s the second time she’s killed.

She finds her way to her next place of rest, compels the motel owner to forget about her bloodstained clothes. She goes to her room, slips into the shower, starts sobbing before she can turn the water on. She curls into a ball and stays there until Elijah finds her. He turns the shower on and washes the blood out of her hair. It hasn’t been a day yet, and that’s when she realizes that he must be finding her sooner and just giving her space before showing up. It’s something she’s grateful for, something she knows only he would understand.

Before she sleeps, she thinks about how little credit she gave Stefan and Caroline, for trying and mostly succeeding to drink from animals, even though they taste like dirt compared to humans. She’s only killed two, but two is still too many.

Elena vows to never kill another human.


—-


Once, on one of the bad nights where she cries and Elijah holds her, instead of falling asleep after the tears are gone, she tips her head up and kisses him.

It’s soft, only a brush of lips, barely lasts a few seconds, but she swears her dead heart picks up.

When she pulls back, he looks at her with a blend of curiosity and hesitance. She knows he’s letting her decide what happens next.

She sighs and tucks her head into his chest, letting herself drift off. It’s something she wants, but not now. She doesn’t want to make a promise if she isn’t sure she can keep it.

She knows they’ll pretend to forget about this in the morning, so she holds onto him a little tighter.


—-


They touch every inch of the United States, staying in snow, in sun, in rain.

She knows she’ll eventually stop running, she thinks he knows too.

But she’s not ready. She hasn’t found home.

She runs and he follows.


—-


Sometimes she thinks about all the questions she wants to ask him. Why he’s still here, why he still follows, why he cares at all after everything she’s done.

If he wanted her to keep kissing him that night. If he still wants to kiss her.

But she recognizes how risky those questions are, and she isn’t sure if she’s ready to hear the answers.

She’s starting to notice how little she’s ready for.


—-


When she finds an abandoned house by the ocean as her next destination, part of her knows this is it, this is the end of the road, but she pushes that thought to the back of her mind and prepares to only stay a week, maybe a month.

When Elijah arrives the next day, she takes one look at him and knows he’s holding back a smile. He knows too.

A week passes and she makes no sign of leaving. She’s starting to come to terms with the idea of stopping here, of maybe being happy again. But she still doesn’t feel ready, like something’s missing.

A month passes, she’s still here, and then she realizes what that something is.

She and Elijah are standing by a window, the moon is shining over the sea. She decides to break the silence, letting one of her many questions pass her lips

“The night you found me, after I died, after I.. You, you were speaking a different language.”

He nods and doesn’t look away from the window.

“What language was that?”

He smiles. “Norwegian.”

“Could you say something in it?” she asks, the corners of her mouth tilting upward.

He looks to the right, his eyes focusing on a nearby chair. After a moment, he looks up at her, their eyes connect and she feels like she couldn’t look away, even if she wanted to. (She feels like that around him more and more, stuck in a trance.)

“Jeg vil alltid elske deg.” The words roll off his tongue, and they sound so perfect on him, like she had never heard him speak English at all. She could tell by his eyes, his tone, that he meant whatever he said. She wishes she understood Norwegian, wishes she could speak it back. Maybe he could teach her.

“And what does that mean?”

His smile turns more gentle and he looks away. “Just a promise.”

She thinks of promises she wasn’t ready to make, of how complete she feels, just standing here and smiling with him. And then she makes the connection, of what she has and what she needs, what she always needed. Home. Family. She’s ready.

She steps closer to him and he’s looking at her again. She feels almost numb under his gaze, and it takes all her strength and courage to grasp the back of his neck, pull him down, and press her lips to his.

He stiffens for an instant, and then he’s kissing her, his hands holding her hips and her fingers dancing across his back.

She can feel him holding back (a perfect gentleman to the end), so she squeezes his arm. It’s okay, I won’t regret this. And then he opens up, pulling her in and kissing a line down her jaw.

They fall onto her bed, shedding clothes and pressing cool kisses to any exposed skin. It’s slow and soft, something she hadn’t thought she would want. She had thought it would remind her too much of what Stefan was, of what Damon wanted to be, but their spirits don’t follow her, and she only thinks of him.

The waves of the ocean rise up outside, crashing to the shore while he repeats his earlier words into her skin, over and over until she memorizes them. She says them back, and he kisses her with an absolute love and affection. She digs her nails into his back and says the promise, again, again.

In the aftermath, they lie together, tangled in sheets. His fingers are playing with her hair and hers are tracing stories on his chest.

“Will we pretend to forget this tomorrow?” Her voice breaks at the last word, but she doesn’t cry, just looks up at him and waits.

His fingers stop at her temple and he looks down at her. “Is that what you want?”

She pauses, lets the air go silent, only the ocean in the background, it’s waves making a beautiful poem that carries into the house. She presses her thumb into his hip bone. No, I want to remember.

He smiles and presses a kiss to her forehead, his fingers combing through the new tangles in her hair.

She wonders when they began to work like this, communicating without ever speaking.

She falls asleep before she finds the answer.


—-


She wakes up in his arms, the sun peaking up over the ocean. His breathing and the waves are mixing together, making a hymn. She lays there and listens, knows for certain now that this is her home. But she feels the need to run one last time, let him find her again. She slides out of bed and leaves through the back door.

She doesn’t make it farther than the beach (doesn’t want to), finds a warm spot on the sand, curls up there and listens. Her ear is muffled by the sand, and she’s close to the water, hears it crash and roll. It makes the sea almost sound like thunder.

She lets the storm of waves lull her to back sleep.


—-


fin.