Chapter Text
Amelia must have dozed off at one point, because the sound of Trevor’s panicked voice caused her body to jolt up on the couch, eyes wide open.
“He's here! This was a mistake.”
The brunette vampire was flying down the staircase into the room, eyes wide in fear. On her lap, she could feel Elena steering awake too. The teenager lifted her head and blinked drowsily, taking a moment to realize where she was. When she finally did, the expression of barely suppressed fear and caution was instantly back on her face.
“No, I told you I would get us out of this,” Rose said in an attempt to calm down her visibly distraught companion. “You have to trust me.”
Trevor shook his head, the uncontrollable shaking of his body a clear sign that he was slipping more and more into panic mode, not that Amelia could blame him.
“No! He wants me dead, Rose!”
Well, he wasn’t wrong about that. Elijah unfortunately would not forgive him for betraying Klaus. Rose was lucky that her betrayal was only tied to her loyalty towards her friend, something Elijah did respect. She would survive. Though not for long, if Jules had anything to say about it.
“He wants her more.” Rose pointed at Elena , who instantly tensed up. Amelia reached out to grab her niece’s hand, squeezing it in comfort and reassurance.
She would get out of this. Stefan and Damon were already on the way to save her. Amelia desperately hoped they would have enough plot armor still to stake Elijah like they did in the show.
“I can't do this. You give her to him, he'll have mercy on you but I need to get out of here.”
Rose walked over to him and grabbed his hand. “Hey! What are we?”
Trevor’s hitched breath slowed down into a steady rhythm as he forced himself to calm down, drawing strength from Rose’s touch.
“We're family, forever.”
This was a truly touching scene, and Amelia felt bad for what was going to happen soon. Not that she could stop it. It was too late now for them to resume running.
From her peripheral vision, she could see a sympathetic look flashing across Elena’s face as she too was watching the two vampires sharing what would be their last moment together.
Then, a single, loud knock against a door in the distance caused all four of them to freeze on the spot. Elena’s breath quickened, Rose’s shoulders went tense and poor Trevor looked like he was about to faint from all the anxiety rushing through him. And Amelia? She was trying her dampest to keep up her composed act. On the inside, however, she was freaking out and screaming in fear.
An Original. She was about to meet a freaking Original, and the scariest of them all at that. Truthfully, Klaus had nothing compared to his elder brother when it came to scaring the shit out of people.
The fear Klaus liked to invoke in people was instant and direct, much like a rabid dog running rampant. It left you horrified and scared for your life, but it was something you expected. Elijah’s however was much more passive, calm. It was creeping up on you quietly, soaking into your very bones while leaving you in a sense of false security before letting you feel true terror of the likes you’ve never felt before. It didn’t take much to create a lasting effect. A simple knock against the door could be more effectively scary than a loudly screamed series of creative threats that promised nothing but torture and murder.
“Stay here with them and don't make a sound,” Rose urged her friend before leaving to answer the door.
The tension in the room however, did not dissipate. On the contrary - it seemed to grow thicker with every second passing by. Trevor had resorted to nervously pace up and down the perimeter in front of the staircase, while Elena was wringing her hands and Amelia’s eyes were fixed on the door frame atop the staircase through which the Original would appear any moment now. His conversation with Rose wouldn’t last long.
Any moment now…
Just a few seconds later, someone did in fact appear in the door frame - only it wasn’t Elijah.
The boy seemed to be around Jeremy’s age, his chocolate brown, tousled curls adding to his adolescent appearance. His eyes drifted across his surroundings in a mixture of curiosity and plain distaste as he casually strolled down the staircase, entirely unbothered by everyone else present in the room.
“This place is depressing, man. Reminds me of the shit hole my old man used to rent because all the money we had went into his drug and booze supply.”
Amelia couldn’t say she remembered him from the show. At all. Who was the boy and how did he end up here? This certainly didn’t go according to the script.
Next to her, she could see Elena furrowing her brows in confusion as she watched the boy skeptically examining the broken chandelier on the ground.
“Are you…Elijah?”
Amelia couldn’t blame her niece for the healthy dose of skepticism in her voice. After witnessing Rose and Trevor’s terrified reactions to the arrival of the Original, she certainly must have expected more than just a harmless looking teenage boy.
Even Trevor seemed confused as he stared at the surprise visit as if he’d just seen an alien. Or a monstrous, three-headed dog called Fluffy.
Wrong universe, Amelia .
The boy scoffed at her question, his face distorting into a grimace. “I can’t decide if I should feel honored or insulted that you’re confusing me with Mr. Stick In The Ass. But to answer your question, Jane Doe Junior, I’m Alex. Please don’t call me Alexander. That’s a name reserved for grandpas, not matter what Mr. Stick In The Ass has to say about it. Nothing against the dude, but he’s old as dir-“
“Alexander.”
From one moment to the next, the air in the room grew thick enough to cut through it as all four of them whipped their heads in the direction the cold, authoritative voice had come from.
There, on top of the staircase, overlooking the room like a king on a throne, stood a man dressed in a dark suit.
Elijah .
Even without ever having watched the show before, Amelia would be a fool to dismiss the aura of danger clinging to him like a second skin. In real life, he was possibly even more scary than he’d ever been on screen. More imposing. Ancient. Predatory.
And so shamelessly, forbiddingly attractive.
Alright, Amelia. I know it’s been a hot minute since the last time you’ve been with a guy, much less an actual man , but for the love of God, get your libido under control before he catches you drooling all over him like some hormonal teenage girl!
Well, she wasn’t actually drooling, but she’d be lying if she denied the fact that much less appropriate and G-rated thoughts were gradually overwriting her fear of him the longer she stared at the Original.
Something was very clearly wrong with her head. She decided to blame it on her head trauma.
And just as if he could somehow feel her gaze on him, the Original’s dark, intense eyes settled on her. Amelia didn’t even have the chance to so much as draw another breath into her lungs before he was suddenly standing right in front of her, close enough for her nose to catch the earthy, masculine notes of his eau de cologne.
God, this man was going to be the death of her. In the most literal sense.
Amelia didn’t blink. She didn’t flinch, didn’t even dare to so much as breathe, as she watched him slowly reaching out to her, their eyes still locked together over the minuscule distance between them. For one agonizingly long moment, she was almost certain that he was going to decapitate her like he’d done with Trevor on screen, even though a tiny voice somewhere in the back of her mind told her his hand was moving too slow for that. Or maybe he would snap her neck, quick and painlessly. A lot cleaner, too. She imagined he wouldn’t risk staining his however many thousand dollar-worthy custom tailored suit, if avoidable.
Her hand, that was still holding onto Elena’s like a lifeline, squeezed the latter’s one last time; a silent goodbye.
However, death never came to claim her, and neither did pain. Instead of snapping her neck or decapitating her, the Original’s hand settled on her cheek, cupping it with such soft, careful gentleness, as if he was afraid she’d break underneath his touch.
Amelia parted her lips in an expression of confusion and utter surprise, his touch making her feel all sorts of things she should not be feeling in the presence of a thousand year old, extremely deadly and dangerous man.
“Impossible.”
His voice, oh God. She would never tire of sound of it, the deep timbre in combination with his particular accent and the eloquent, educated vocabulary that she knew he possessed causing her stomach to clench in desire and her heart to skip several beats.
Well, it was safe to say that Amelia had a very real thing for well educated, antiquated gentlemen.
The gentleman in question continued to look at her with a heated intensity and longing mixed with a sense of disbelief, his thumb moving from her cheek to brush her blonde hair out of the way, which in turn, granted him a very good look at her now exposed neck.
The softness in his eyes dissipated almost instantly, making room for something darker, more dangerous as they fell on the two punctured wounds on the left side of her neck.
She could tell that he fought hard to reign in the rage simmering underneath the surface of his trained Poker Face as his eyes met hers once again.
“Who did this to you, my dear?”
His voice was gentle and soft enough, but it would be hard to miss the cold, dangerously calm undertone. It caused a shiver to run down her spine.
At first, Amelia was too stumped to answer, her hazy brain somehow failing to register the question as being directed at her. In her mind, Elijah calling her “my dear” and being concerned for her well-being did not make an inch of sense. She was very clearly hallucinating. Her head trauma must be even more severe than initially thought.
It was Elena, the miraculous human doppelganger, he should be all over. Not her. Yet he hadn’t acknowledged her niece’s presence at all so far. They were massively diverging from the original script and Amelia couldn’t for the life of her figure out why.
“I…don’t know,” she finally managed to press out after multiple seconds of utter silence. It wasn’t a lie; she truly didn’t know. Her money was on Trevor, but it could have just as well been Rose.
Elijah’s eyes narrowed slightly in displeasure at her reply, or rather the lack of it, his thumb that was still lingering on her neck gently tracing over her bite mark, causing a sharp pain to surge through the spot.
Amelia winced, earning an apologetic look from the Original who immediately retracted his hand from her neck entirely. The moment he released her from his touch, Amelia found herself immediately craving to feel his skin on hers again - and the pleasant tingles it sent through her entire body. She felt so strangely exposed without it, so terribly…empty.
“I can heal you. If you wish for me to do so.”
It was a question concealed as a statement. He wanted to know if she would allow him to feed her his blood in order to alleviate her pain and heal her.
Amelia shook her head. “No, thank you. I’m fine.”
She didn’t exactly fancy the idea of drinking his blood. After all, she wasn’t a vampire. Besides, blood sharing was way too intimate of an act to be doing it in front of a crowd, much less her niece.
He seemed disappointed, but nodded his head in understanding. He wouldn’t force her to drink it. It was her choice.
You should be taking notes here, Damon.
“One last piece of business and we're done here,” he announced, giving her a small, affectionate smile while he gently brushed his knuckles over the elegantly curved bridge of her nose. “You look positively exhausted, my dear. Alexander will accompany both of you to the car. I will follow once I’m finished here and then we shall return to Mystic Falls. I imagine you’d rest easier in your own bed rather than a stranger one’s.”
Amelia’s eyes grew wide in surprise. Whatever she had expected to be happening now, it certainly wasn’t this. Just when she thought Elijah couldn’t surprise and confuse her any more than he already did, he proved her wrong.
“You…you’re bringing us back? Elena included?”
A solemn expression settled on his face. “You should have never gotten dragged into this in the first place, sweetheart, and as for the doppelganger, what I require from her can only be achieved at her place of birth anyhow.”
The sacrifice ritual.
He wanted to use her niece to draw out Klaus, wait until he was at his weakest after the ritual was completed and then kill him. All because he believed the rest of his siblings to be lost at sea, or rather, under.
Before she could stop herself, the words were already blurring out of her mouth.
“He didn’t dispose of the coffins.”
The Original blinked at her, looking positively flummoxed. “Excuse me?”
“Your brother, Klaus,” she specified. “He didn’t dump your siblings in the ocean. He lied to you. They never left his side.”
Noticing how utterly confused he still was about her confession, she held out both of her hands in his direction. “Look into my head. That’s where you’ll find all the answers to your questions.”
And those that you’d never wanted to know .
Amelia watched with tense shoulders and bated breath as Elijah continued to observe her sceptically. Then, very slowly, he reached out and grabbed her offered hand, pressing it flat against his chest, where she could feel his heart beating in a steady rhythm. His thumb circled the pulse on her wrist, giving her one last chance to change her remind and pull away. When she didn’t, he closed his eyes and then he dove into the depths of her mind.