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

thirty-four

It was like a reflection in a river, almost discernible, but not quite, warped and twisted too far beyond recognition to be taken as reality. And for a moment, it would seem like it couldn't possibly be real, as if you could reach your hand right through and the illusion would shatter into shimmering fragments of light on the rippling surface. Occasionally, the two worlds would mix and the reflection would pull me under into the cold, dark depths that awaited below. The river would drag me away, further and further from the banks as I fought helplessly against the relentless current.

Sometimes, I wondered if he ever thought about me the way that I did about him, or if he felt anything at all besides bloodlust, or if he ever wanted anything from life other than to feed on innocents without a care in the world. Perhaps it was lonely, trapped in the same, endless corridors all alone, century after century, or maybe he knew them all like the back of his hand after so long. I wondered if he could see through my eyes when I was in control the way that I could see through his, or what my presence felt like in his mind when I would take back the reins. There were a lot of things I had never told him, questions I had never asked, in a thousand years, I had never really talked to him. It was scary, to realize how little you knew your own head, and sometimes I wondered if he ever felt the same, if the river could run in reverse.

~~~~~

The Beast led me into the bloodied sitting room, but no chess board was waiting on the coffee table this time. There was no magic to break, no puzzles to solve, no games to play, no trail to follow. It was just us, the two sides of the same coin, the two halves that took up the same head. We were jagged around the edges, uneven and unequal in so many ways, but you couldn't deny that we fit. And perhaps that was why my role never changed in life, why I was always drawn into the same circles. Just the same pawn for a different king. Because it was the same with Mikael, and it was the same with Niklaus, the same when Rebekah had a plan for revenge, the same when Kol was angry, and the same when Marcel wanted a war. I always took up the same place, always got caught in the middle. I was the wall that kept them all from harm, being driven further and further into the line of fire until I was pushed too far, until the pawn reached the end of the board, cornered with no where else to go. That was when the barriers were broken, when the pawn switched places and knew no more boundaries, when I had to give up my control. The Beast had many faces, the queen could be strong and ruthless, the knight could be brave and agile, the bishop could be determined and precise, but no matter how far it traveled or how valiantly it fought, the pawn could never be king.

I was snapped out of my thoughts when the Beast gestured for me to take a seat across from it, grinning madly as its empty eyes cataloged my every movement. "It's nice to see you again so soon, Elijah," it rasped, leaning forward and fixing me with a crooked, Cheshire cat smile.

My throat closed up around any reply that I could think to utter, my mouth suddenly dry and my hands starting to shake again. I was only able to simply nod as he regarded me. I could never quite meet his eyes, there was something so deeply unsettling about seeing the emptiness there, no feeling, and no love, and no regrets, and no remorse. It was like looking at the absence of everything that he had taken, seeing the gaping, infinite holes that were left behind from all the people that he had stolen from the world. It was somehow so much worse than there being nothing, it was the lack of it all, it was everything that had once been something and somebody, and now it was gone. When I looked into his eyes, it was death that looked back at me, the void left behind that the world could never fill again.

"Do the rest know that you're here?" it finally asked after a long pause, relaxing back into the bloodstained couch and cocking its head to the side.

"No," I managed to answer, shaking my head as I kept my gaze on the floor, "I was only trying to feed."

"I see," it hissed, blank eyes moving to roam the smeared, red handprints on the walls. It seemed to contemplate silently for a moment before standing, "Come," it said, moving toward the door without looking behind to see if I would follow, it knew that I had no choice, "walk with me."