"I knew it" Cassie felt victorious for beating out a confession from Elijah. But the man looked broken, for he did not know any ulterior motives, he had truly give up and he thought he would die at the hands of these two. "I got the famous, noble Elijah to confess he is nothing more than a monster"
"What else do you want me to say, Cassandra?" He asked, attempting to shrug his shoulders "you've got me"
"How about an apology?" She growled "for treating my like nothing more than the dirt you scrape from your shoe when in reality we were the same"
Elijah exhaled, he gritted his teeth as he pushed out a small "I'm sorry" but it didn't sound like he meant it, but he really did, how bad did he treat her for her to rebel like this? In light of his red door flinging open, Elijah's Demons escaped and he realised that the man he used to be was exactly like the woman who she is right now. All she needed was a little help.
"What should we do with him now?" Lucien walked up beside her "you've gotten what you wanted?"
"I have a few things in mind" she stepped back, turning to Lucien and kissing him, her eyes were open as she looked at Elijah whilst she did. Though Lucien's eyes were shut, she took the perfect opportunity to finish what she started.
Her hand reached into his chest and pulled out his heart, she felt his soft lips harden as he opened his eyes and fell to his knees. Cassandra kicked him down, knowing she only had a short amount of time before he would awake again.
"Don't say anything" she lectured Elijah, running behind him and unlocking his chains, the metal fell harshly to the floor with a thud and Elijah stretched out his arms "just help me get him downstairs and locked away"
She was going to take him into the caves, however it was much too far away for now, the cells downstairs were perfectly close and good for a temporary lock away.
"fine. But afterwards, I want an explanation" he demanded, trying to get his energy back, Elijah walked forward and lifted Lucien's arms as Cassandra took his legs.
"Ugh, okay" the two dragged Lucien's body downstairs very sneakily, pulling him upright and pretending that he was a little tipsy when someone enquired, luckily, the witches never showed.
"Is that man okay?" Someone approached them as Cassie's hand slipped and almost dropped him to the floor, luckily she caught him and stood him back up.
"Yep" Cassie quickly straightened her back and made Lucien look as alive as possible, his jacket buttoned up to mask the blood. "He has a bit of a drinking problem, I've told him to stop but as soon as he gets a whiff of the stuff, he..." Cassie made the motion, pretending to drink "we're just taking him to his room"
They carried on until they reached the stairs, and then the cell where they threw him in and locked the doors. Cassie took some chains as well and reinforced the iron doors and drenched the bars with vervain and wolves-bane, one of those would definitely burn him.
As soon as both were satisfied with Lucien's security, Elijah took the top of Cassandra's arm and dragged her out of the basement and back up to her room where the sage still burnt. He didn't want Lucien eavesdropping on their conversation and he definitely didn't want anyone else from hearing it.
He pushed her into her room and locked the door behind him as he walked in. "Was it all so necessary?" Elijah asked "the torment, the chains, the pain you inflicted"
"Come on Elijah, you know in a business like ours you have to make it believable, either that or he would have killed us all there and then" she snapped back, already having thought of her reply when he demanded his explanation. "What does it matter? We have Lucien downstairs, locked away, I was able to get into his thoughts and I saw everything, We know how to kill him, thanks to me, now stop it with your..."
"With my what?"
"Disapproving looks, disappointed thoughts, proving yourself wrong as you thought I could be someone worth saving, that I could be saved from what I truly am" she listed, her voice gruff as she finally let everything go "did you not listen to a word I said to you when you were tied up? Did it not run through your thick skull that the only time I find it acceptable to tell the truth was when you were half beaten and tied up, so I won't threaten you, so I won't get punished with a kick to the head?"
Elijah tried to speak, to intervene and tell her that she was wrong "what you said was the truth?" He asked
"Of course it was the truth" she admitted "what you don't understand is that I've suffered too! You're all caught up in a world where your family feels sorry for themselves because they were the ones hard done to, you were the ones hunted by your parents, but the thing was, you had each other" Cassie carried on with what she would have said to him if Lucien wasn't stood there "what about me? I was alone, I was targeted by a group, betrayed by my own sister and shunned by my own parents, I was alone, I had nobody going through the same as me, I was a monster that couldn't stop myself from feeding on others"
Now that she was going deep into her emotions, Elijah saw everything and he couldn't help but feel immensely guilty about what him and his family have treated her. Because the truth was- and he knew it- he still had strong feelings for her, I mean, who wouldn't? They had unfinished business, they had a history and for some reason, Elijah never got his closure, he never got over her.
"And all you do is make me feel bad about myself because of it; when the truth is, no matter how badly you treat me, I'll always come back to you, it's like I have Stockholm syndrome" she calmed her tone a little bit as she dug deeper into her mind, opening old wounds "even if Freya wouldn't have tortured me into going to rescue you, I still would have done it, and whether it be days, months, years, centuries or millenniums, if you would have come down to my cell and asked for my help, I would have always said yes"
She just needed to shut up, she needed to give Elijah the silence to let him think everything over, because right now she was blatantly saying how Elijah felt. He really should have thought everything out, but he just needed her to stop talking, he needed to stop feeling bad he needed to be with her. She did deserve to be saved, and by the looks of the flood of emotions falling from her mouth, she did have the capability to be saved, she was nothing like what Elijah had portrayed her to be.
"The only reason I've been acting awfully is because I heard you all talk about how if I don't die during this, you'll kill me yourself" she admitted hearing it, which broke Elijah's heart, he didn't mean it, really he didn't, he just couldn't deal with Rebekah at that moment "when the truth is, the people in that cell beat me and abused me until I changed, I was in there for so long that I forgot the sound of your voice, I used to listen to someone tell me stories from the outside, I thought he sounded like you, I realise now he sounded nothing like you"
She carried on, uninterrupted, Elijah couldn't think of the words to say to her, this all was just so sudden, he couldn't understand any of it. Why now?
Elijah walked forward, taking her into his arms and pressing his mouth on hers in a very tense and heated kiss. And as history is doomed to repeat itself, Cassandra pushed him away "I- I can't"
Elijah stepped back and took a few seconds to compose himself before tilting his head and asking her why.
"You were the first person I allowed myself to love, I hid in the shadows out of hopes that you'd leave so you'd never know who I truly was, that you'd always have a clean memory of me" she sighed "but I did say goodbye to you, when you were asleep" Cassandra smiled at the memory of that moment, before everything went mad. "You looked at peace, it made me want to just throw caution to the wind and tell you everything and hope you'd understand, then we could ride off in the sunset, but fantasies like that never work"
"I was so stupid, I still am, why could I ever convince myself that someone like you, could like some one like me, and so I try to reconnect with who I once was, the monster in me, when the truth is that if you would have met me before I was, I'm sure you would have liked me" Cassandra didn't have enough confidence in herself to actually believe that someone would actually like her for who she was "maybe if there was a way you could, and then you could decide"
"Cassandra" Elijah went to tell her all of the thing he wanted to, but her reply was very appropriate.
"Take some time, Elijah, weigh it up, if you want to be with me then come and find me tomorrow or the next day, just think about what everyone else will say, think about having to handle me on a regular basis" she nodded, wiping her eyes "if you decide against it, then all you have to do is say, don't make decisions so rashly"