the Big Easy
~~~~~
"Natasha," Elliot greeted her best friend.
Elliot was at a rest stop, leaning against a pay phone with the phone held against her ear. It was pitch black, being in the middle of nowhere not helping that situation. She was constantly scanning the area to see if anyone was around her, her usual paranoia settling in.
"Who is this?"
"Ouch," Elliot chuckled, "And here I thought you would recognize the voice of your best friend."
"Elliot?" Natasha exclaimed. "Where have you been? Everyone has been worried sick about you!"
Elliot pulled the phone away from her ear as her friend yelled. The loud sound made her already terrible headache worse. Once she heard the line was silent, she put it back against her ear. "I sent a message saying I was fine," She shrugged, even though Natasha couldn't see her.
"You also said not to look for you, which is suspicious as hell, Elliot! You can't say something like that and then ditch your phone! Bucky is worried sick about you and so am I!"
Elliot groaned from the loud noises, "Can we quit it with the yelling please?" She mumbled. Her tone came out more sarcastic than she wanted it to.
"I won't quit until you tell me where you are!" Natasha snapped back at her friend.
The brunette sighed, "I can't tell you that," Elliot bit her lip as guilt began to settle in the pit of her stomach, "I just—I can't be around anybody I care about right now."
"And why the hell not?"
"I'll end up hurting one of you. I don't have control anymore," Elliot sighed, closing her eyes, "And if I hurt one of you, I couldn't live with myself..." A tear slipped from her eye but she brushed it away.
"Ell—"
Natasha was never given a chance to respond before the time on the payphone ran out and all each women could hear was the dial tone.
Elliot stared at the place where she could insert more coins to have more time. She debated whether she should do so but quickly decided against it. Instead, she slammed the phone back into the holding slot with a defeated sigh. She then leaned against the payphone, contemplating what she should do next.
With her original plan down the drain, she didn't know what her other options were. Seeing as she couldn't be around the people she cared about, she decided that the best thing for everybody was for her to put as much distance as she could between herself and the ones she loved. Then once she figured out a way to stop what was happening to her, she would return to Mystic Falls.
It seemed like a good plan at the time.
~~~~~
Over the next week, Elliot had been on a little road trip of her own.
She had left the North part of the United States. Everybody she cared about was either in Virginia or Ohio or New York—at least she was pretty sure that her brother was back in that city. She wasn't exactly sure given the time between the present and when she had talked to him last.
Everything felt like a blur.
She had been to state after state. City after city. Town after town. In each one, she would spend time to herself, trying to find a solution to her issue. Then when her efforts ultimately failed, she made her way to a bar to drink away her sorrows.
And each time, she ended up picking the shiftiest of bars.
She would spend a few hours drinking away her problems. Elliot would down beer after beer before switching to something stronger. Then, just like clockwork, her control would slowly slip from her and she would end up making the occupants of the bars confess their sins before she would kill them, slowly and painfully, only letting those who were innocent walk free.
Elliot got a rush from the kills she would make.
But then the guilt would set in.
She would quickly cover up her tracks before moving onto her next destination, which always led to the same cycle happening with her upping her kill count.
Nearing the seventh day of the week, Elliot had landed herself in New Orleans.
It was one of the cities that the woman had always wanted to visit but never got a chance to. She heard that it was beautiful and frankly, she needed a bit of beauty in the darkness that her life was at the moment.
But she would soon learn that New Orleans was just about the worst city she could've gone to.
~~~~~
As soon as Elliot had sped into the city, the urges she had felt elsewhere increased drastically.
Everything that Esther had done was amplified, making her have to resist killing the first human, at least what she thought was a human. Instead of submitting to her urges, she continued on her way through the city.
After Elliot had parked her bike on the side of the street, making sure it was out of the way, she began walking through the French Quarter, which was quite possibly the worst place for her to be.
While she walked, her hand was tightly clenched into a fist and she bit the inside of her cheek, hoping that it would help her from picking any unnecessary fights and causing more bloodshed.
Because that was the last thing she needed to do.
Elliot had taken notice of the way people carried themselves in town.
She noticed a similarity between many people she walked past—a lapis lazuli ring on their finger. One that looked exactly like the ones she had seen in Mystic Falls. She had then quickly put the dots together, figuring that she had just landed herself in a city infested with vampires.
Her luck was abysmal.
She also noticed how the word 'magic' was flaunted around like it meant nothing or everything, depending on the way that someone was to view it. The tourists seemed to eat it up, so did the locals. It screamed cover up to anyone who actually paid attention...and Elliot did.
So the town was crawling with vampires and had witches wandering around everywhere.
Lovely.
The brunette entered a little bar called Rousseau's.
She had decided that anywhere would be better than being out on the streets where vampires seemed to be left and right, taunting her.
And it was a temptation that she didn't want to give into.
Elliot had entered the bar and immediately fell in love with the atmosphere—for the most part, at least.
She had sat down on the edge of the bar, trying to distance herself from everyone else in there as much as she could. Once she had sat down, her eyes darted around, once again landing on the familiar rings and she picked up the familiar witch-like auras that were around some of the people.
She clenched her hand into a fist, reigning in her urges for the time being. Exhaustion followed soon after, fighting against thousand year old magic was not something she had been constructed to by Hydra.
"Hi," Elliot looked up to see a friendly looking blonde, "What can I get you?"
"Cider," She decided to switch it up a bit, "Please."
When the lady came back and set the drink in front of her, she struck up a conversation with Elliot. Something Elliot didn't necessarily want her to do—or anyone to do for that matter.
"So what brings you to the Big Easy?" The blonde asked while she dried off a glass.
"Well," Elliot's eyes flickered to the nametag, "Camille—"
"Cami, actually."
"Pity," Elliot commented, "Your name is rather pretty."
Her comment made Cami smile, "It's a grandma's name. Besides, drunk men always try to hit on me in French.
Elliot chuckled. The conversation was lighthearted and that was something that the super soldier was definitely enjoying.
"At least your parents didn't name you, planning for you to be a boy," Elliot joked back, making Cami laugh, "But to answer your previous question, I didn't plan to come here," She paused and took a sip of her drink, "I got myself into a little issue back home."
"Hmm," Cami hummed, "You're making it sound like a common occurrence."
Elliot sighed, "Sort of it. It's kind of a long story. But the short one is that I have a very long history of getting myself into difficult situations," She finished off her drink.
"And I'm guessing you always get out of them."
Elliot just flashed her a smile.
Cami briefly disappeared to serve another person who came to the bar before heading back over to where Elliot was.
"So what trouble are you in?"
"I got into this guy. Super hot, bad temper, accent," Elliot waved her hand, "He has a history of his own getting into situations of his own—worse than mine as I learned. I got swept up into one and got used as a pawn against him. I didn't want to keep looking over my shoulder, so I left."
"Wow," Cami whistled, "Paranoid with abundant daddy issues."
Elliot snorted, "Understatement of the year."
"Sorry," Cami quickly apologized, realizing what she said, "I'm a bartender with a grad degree in psychology," She chuckled, "Total cliché."
"It's cute," Elliot complimented, giving her a smile. She then placed a twenty on the counter—way more than her actual drink cost and slid off of the barstool, "It was nice talking to you. See you around."
"I didn't catch you name!" Cami called after her.
Elliot turned around, "Elliot."
She then exited the bar, oblivious to the stare one vampire had on her.
~~~~~
She had managed to find a different spot of New Orleans that was sparsely populated.
She walked there, which was the worst decision of her life due to all the vampires and other supernaturals that were wandering the streets, but she thought the fresh air would be good for her.
And it was.
So much so, that she had settled herself in a nice little open area of grass. She wouldn't necessarily qualify it as a field, seeing it was heavily covered in trees. But neither a forest because there weren't that many.
Either way, she had sat down , her back resting against the trunk of a tree, her knees tucked up to her chest as she processed through all the things she could do.
Elliot didn't understand magic much. Why would she? She never had a purpose to learn any. Hell, she didn't know it existed until she moved to Mystic Falls.
Magic was basically science.
That much she knew.
She had science practically forced down her throat by Hydra. They had claimed "it would make her seamlessly fit in." They hadn't been wrong about that. She had been through many occasions where she had needed it—not that she had enjoyed any of those moments.
But she also didn't enjoy the particular situation she was in now either.
However, she also had her powers, which seemed like an incredibly screwed up version of magic that witches had.
But she couldn't link it all together no matter how she tried.
Her simplest solution was to get another witch to help her; however, witches "served nature," meaning she doubted that they would want to help someone like her—someone who had mercilessly killed countless people.
In a witches mind, she was no better than a vampire.
Elliot also didn't trust witches. Not one bit. That meant that she wasn't going to put her life in the hands of one. She would rather try to figure it out herself than do that.
Her next option had been to contact Klaus' brother, Kol.
From what she had heard, he had tapped into magic before he had been turned into a vampire. Then after he turned and lost it, he spent most the year he hadn't been daggered with different covens and troupes. Rebekah had also told her that her brother had invented dark objects, which were based on dark magic, which was what Esther had used on her.
Surely, he would have known something.
But she didn't have a phone. She didn't have his number. And she doubted that he would even want to help her.
So that left her with herself to figure it all out.
The top things she knew for sure:
-Magic had to be bound to somethin
-The spell couldn't last forever
-Loopholes exited everywhere
From what she had seen in Mystic Falls, every spell had been bound to something. Standing by and watching from the sidelines had allowed her to see all of what had happened. It wasn't like it was going to benefit her much because she assumed a witch would have to be the one to unbind the spell.
That ruled that out.
Spells obviously would reach an end eventually, especially a spell cast on someone. Elliot had originally thought it would end with the death of the witch that cast it but that was apparently wrong as well.
That ruled that out.
Lastly, there were loopholes. Nature always made sure that they exited. The ways to make sure nothing was truly immortal, the weaknesses each species had, etc. That meant that there had to be a loophole to the spell that was cast on her
That was what she was currently thinking about.
What was nature's "fuck you" to Esther and her dark magic?
...
Death.
The spell was inside her mind, rewiring into the way that she once had been many years ago, only amplifying it to make it worse.
But if she weren't alive, then the spell would have nothing to work off of, right?
Death is the end of it all.
There would be nothing for it to alter. Nothing for it to chance. No host to control to kill vampires and humans alike. There would be nothing.
Elliot's head tilted back and she laughed.
"I can either kill myself or kill everyone I care about," Elliot found it ironic and utterly hilarious, "Esther you conniving little bitch."
She could either ensure the survival of herself or everyone else.
Her mind drifted back to her older brother. One option would either end with her killing him or the other which would leave him alone without her.
She had never wanted to leave him. The two had promised to always be there for the other. Yet, here she was, thinking about the possibility of leaving his life without even a single "goodbye." But on the other hand, she had promised herself that she would never hurt him. And if she went on like this, she would eventually lose all control, go full Executioner, and up not only hurting him but killing him.
Elliot had two choices.
And the choice between the two seemed simple.
~~~~~
a/n: hello lovelies:) i went mia for a bit with this story. had some major writers block and still do. hope this chapter does justice.
also, i read some of the previous chapters I wrote and they seem so rushed and bad or is that just me being over critical...idk.
i made an new gif banner btw.
i don't know where i want to end this story tbh. any ideas?
please don't be a silent reader. vote and comment.
love you lots<333