You Don't Know What I'd Do For You (Love you like oxygen)

thirteen

*A/N* Hello! This is a nice, quick chapter to make up for all the late ones, I hope you like it! We are getting down to the good part of the story so I am really excited and let's all just pray that I can pull it off. Even though I didn't really like Finn in the shows, I wanted to explore his and Elijah's relationship a bit because I think it's really interesting. So, in this chapter we will be doing that, enjoy!

Finn POV

It was something that I hadn't felt for a long time, a magical connection, a mental link. There wasn't a sound, the message didn't have a voice, I just... felt it. The words reverberated through my mind in an echo, "The pain is all for you." "The pain is all for you..." "The pain..." "...all for you." "...all for you..." I couldn't really explain how I knew, but I just did. It was Elijah. It just felt like him.

Suddenly spurred into a panic, I sped my way down the corridors. Witches dodged out of my way as I blazed a path directly to where I knew my brother was being held. I had been avoiding the room, ignoring how my father constantly came and went from the basement. Blocking out the noise that surfaced from down the stairs, just pretending it all away. I couldn't accept it, couldn't acknowledge it. If I did, then it would all be real. My little brother, the one I had promised Freya I would protect with my life, would really be being held captive in a cell because of my actions. And I couldn't face that, so I just pretended that it wasn't there.

I arrived at the guarded room in seconds, flashing in front of the guards, my heart beating loud in my ears. "Let me in," I practically growled with a fury that I didn't know I could possess.

Without a word the witches let the wall drop and I rushed passed them and into the room. I didn't spare them another second of thought as the wall reappeared behind me, they weren't what was important. The scent of blood immediately hit me, vampire blood, and I didn't have to go far to find the source, just a few steps in and I could already see Elijah, strung up practically in the middle of the room, hanging limply by his wrists from chains. He was collapsed, kneeling on the ground, head bent forward, held up only by the restraints, apparently unconscious.

His shirt was torn and bloodied, exposing the dirty, barely healed skin beneath. The dark red liquid oozed out all over, staining the fabric, leaving trails over his skin, matting in his hair, and dripping on the stone floor. I could hear his faintly beating heart that stuttered and faltered continuously, hear the rattling of broken ribs and a punctured lung and see his body heave and convulse with effort at every breath. Esther had once described a state like this, "eternal fading," she had said, forever stuck, alive and conscious but still steadily losing footing. Dying, but doomed to never die or be dead.

Making my way forward, I knelt down in front of him, going to take his face in my hands to try and wake him. I was almost scared to touch him, scared that he would break and fall apart and be unrecoverable. As soon as I laid a finger against him, Elijah jerked awake violently but immediately froze as soon as he did. "Elijah?" I whispered, "Come on, wake up... it's me... Finn."

At this, he stiffened and bristled, moving away from me as much as he could. "What do you want?" he said, voice low and tense.

"I- just... the-," I stuttered out, lost for words, I wasn't surprised that he was acting like this but it hurt all the same.

The link, I prompted myself, "The uh... the link. Was that... was that you? The magic?" I asked, questions now popping up in my head that might have occurred to me before had I not been so focused on getting to my brother.

How had the link come from Elijah? One of the witches maybe? No, they surely wouldn't help him, and besides, they weren't allowed past the threshold of this room. So then how? Because Elijah couldn't use magic, never had been able to even as a human. But even if it were to have developed later on, he wouldn't have kept it through his transition to being a vampire.

"What are you doing here, Finn," Elijah sighed, pulling me out of my thoughts.

"I... I don't know," I admitted.

What was I doing here? I hadn't so much as talked to Elijah for years and suddenly I was panic-struck at the thought of him being hurt? Really? It's not like it was a surprise, I could pretend all I wanted that it wasn't happening but I reasonably knew what was going on. I had known what would happen when they captured Elijah and I had helped them regardless.

He chuckled weakly, pulling himself up slightly and shifting his weight around on his knees. "Don't start to regret your actions once you see their consequences, brother," he huffed, clearly repressing winces and grimaces as he put weight on his many injuries, "You chose your path, as I've chosen mine."

Always the diplomat, I thought to myself. Elijah just wouldn't be Elijah if he wasn't perfectly poised and mannered, even in his dying moments sitting in his own tomb. I sighed, "We all have to choose a side, Elijah, and I won't be siding with Nik."

"And I won't fault you for that, but don't come to me with pity once you see what your side is capable of," he paused, breathing deeply, still not looking at me, "As terrible as Niklaus might be, he would never do what Mikael has done," he finished in almost a whisper.

I shook my head, "You don't know Esther and Mikael the way that I do," I muttered, angrily, "they weren't always like this."

"I could say the same to you about Niklaus and the rest of our siblings," Elijah answered smoothly.

I grit my teeth together in an effort to rein myself in. "We both know that that's not fair," I ground out.

"It's perfectly fair, Finn. You weren't there for them, that was a choice you made. You chose not to be there for them and they know it. Don't act as if I turned them against you, you did it all yourself."

At that, I lost my cool. "You act like I'm the only one, Elijah! Don't forget, you left too!" I shouted, wheeling on him and jerking him up by the tattered collar of his shirt.

I practically dropped him in shock. His face was covered in dark bruises and bleeding gashes just like the rest of him, that wasn't what surprised me. It wasn't even the blood trails on his cheeks like tear stains paired with the pinky-red, barely healed, cloudy eyes. No, it was his teeth, hardy visible and only for a second as he instantly clamped his mouth shut. But there were very clearly two, large, bloody gaps where his eye teeth would be. Right where his fangs- no. No. Mikael wouldn't have- he wouldn't possibly be that cruel, that sadistic, not to his own son.

"Elijah..." I choked out, frozen in place.

"Careful, brother, you almost sound concerned," he ground out, each word fully hostile, yanking himself out of my grip.

Normally I would have responded to the provocation but I couldn't bring myself to do anything. I was still staring at my brother, mouth half open, a single tear slowly tracing its way down the side of my face. "Did... did Mikael-" I had to cut myself off, I'd witnessed torture before but never something like this and never something so blatantly cruel as defanging.

Before he could respond, the wall behind me evaporated, a witch standing in the doorway. "Esther needs you, someone's gotten through the magic," she said curtly.

Dread ran through me in a cold wave. The witches had spent weeks on those spells. Hiding the barn, setting up the boundaries, all the little tripwires and trigger hairs that would alert us if anyone came even within viewing range of this place. Whoever was here had been looking for a long time and there were really only a few people who would be that dedicated to get to Elijah.

Looking at my brother's face, I knew that he was thinking the same thing. Somehow, someway, against all possible odds, our siblings had arrived. And little did they know, they were running directly into their death trap.

*A/N* Thank you so much for reading, either next chapter or the one after we'll finally get the rescue so just hang tight and I will update as soon as I can!

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