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

three

*A/N* Welcome to chapter 3! It's much later the same day and we get another look at Elijah's view of things. Basically picture the scene in the Originals where Elijah gets captured and tortured by Esther in her new body and we find out about the Red Door and stuff. That's essentially what the setup looks like.

Elijah POV

My head throbbed horribly as I tried to get a bearing on my surroundings. I squinted around in the dark room as the world seemed to tip and sway sickeningly as colourful dots clouded my vision. As far as I could tell, the entire place was made out of stone, it was cold and damp with a distinct smell of rotting and mold, probably underground then. There wasn't a sliver of light to be seen, no windows or even a gap beneath a door or something, probably a carefully hidden room then as well. No doubt it was also spelled, hexed, and tripwired to kingdom come, especially if it was meant to cage an Original.

My wrists were painfully held by chains that pulled my arms up and out to the sides, keeping me upright even while unconscious. Yanking on them did nothing but make noise that likely alerted my captors to me being awake. I was well and truly trapped, not to mention that I had no idea how long I had been here before waking up and my siblings didn't know where I was. My siblings. Dread, cold and pure, rocked me to my core and settled in every fiber of my body. My siblings might have been taken, someone had been watching me and maybe now knew that we were hidden in the compound. And Hayley, Hayley would be in terrible danger, especially since my captors were clearly witches, who were still trying to sacrifice the baby.

Fear drowned out all reasoning voices in my mind and I started to violently pull on the chains, ready to bring the whole ceiling down if I had to. I had to get to them, I had to. I needed to protect them, I couldn't fail them again. But the chains didn't budge, clearly spelled heavily in some way or another to make them unbreakable. My breath caught in my throat as my heart beat frantically. Desperately, I tried to figure out the spells, sending out a probe of magic in a vain attempt to dismantle them. But repressed magic is weak magic, just as Esther had always said, and mine had been held back for far too long to be of any real use.

The clacking of high heels echoed closer and closer to me as I continued to struggle helplessly. There was a murmur of an ancient, Latin incantation before the stone wall ahead of me vanished into thin air. A supposed witch stepped into the room, calmly making her way towards me as I pulled my face and body language into a collected, stoic mask. "Hello, Elijah," her voice was cold and uncaring, in a tone that was dreadfully familiar as the wall reappeared behind her.

"Esther," I returned, coolly, determined to stay put together and hide my growing fear, "Where is Niklaus?"

She simply laughed, a bitter, sadistic sound paired with an equal smile. "I'm surprised you recognized me, but I suppose you were always the most observant," she mused, dragging the answer out as long as possible, "As for the others, they're safe, probably haven't even noticed what's happened yet."

I grit my teeth against a snide response, I didn't need to be in any more trouble than I was already. Thinking logically was the best way to get through this, getting riled up would do nothing in my favour. It was better that they not know, coming to get me would only create further conflict and endanger all of them even more. The rest of my family being back in the compound was the best possible scenario right now, aside from me not being captured to begin with obviously. "What is it that you want?" I demanded, tired of the useless small talk and trying to strike a deal of some sort, of course one that I could flip around later if need be.

"There was once a time when a mother could simply talk to her son without either of them needing something," Esther sighed, dramatically, going to stand by a small table on my left.

"I assume that was well before she kidnapped them to hold captive in her secret dungeons?" I returned with outright hostility laced in every syllable, though I kept my appearance tranquil.

Her chuckle rang through the air again, echoing around slightly against the walls. With her back still turned, she began crushing herbs in a bowl, the strong smell of sage and rosemary filled my senses. Holding her hands out flat over the table, she murmured a soft and quick incantation as the aura of her magic seemed to soak into my mind for a second. As soon as it had happened though, it was over, she turned to me, fingering a small, silver ring in her hand with a rounded sapphire in the center. A small shiver ran through my core as I immediately recognized it.

"It's a beautiful daylight ring, Elijah," she drawled, holding it out to the candlelight and examining it, "or... just a ring now I suppose, nothing magical about it currently. But I'm sure it would still be worth something at the pawn shop."

Setting my jaw, I refused to let my emotions show through. Even though I reasonably knew what this meant, I couldn't allow her to see my dilemma. If I had no daylight ring, it left me vulnerable to all kinds of horrible torture but also drastically limited my ability to escape this place. Without being stuck burning in the street until my mother came and dragged me back of course. The entire world was apparently intent on burning to the ground all around me today.

A war raged inside me as I tore myself apart from the inside out. A huge part of me wanted to be rescued, for my siblings to come and help me out of this predicament. But the other half crushed it ruthlessly, that was probably exactly what Esther wanted, to lure my family here by capturing me. That couldn't happen, if this was what it took, it was a sacrifice that I had to be willing to make. I had promised, after all. Not only them but also myself and I had upheld that promise for over a thousand years, today would not be my breaking point. I could not fail them now, not when they needed me most, not when some of them were so new and vulnerable.

"Maybe they'll simply forget you Elijah, move on and live full lives. It wouldn't be the first time you've left," she continued, absentmindedly twirling the ring between the pads of her fingers.

Those words sent daggers through my heart and I resisted the urge to physically flinch at them. They all thought that I had left, that I had abandoned them to Mikael's wrath. Again, I was torn down the middle with a part that desperately wanted to tell them, to tell them everything. They can't know, nobody can ever know, the other part whispered, effectively silencing the useless, hopeless dream of coming clean to my family. It was something unforgivable that I would carry alone to the eventual grave.

*A/N* Thanks for reading, school is really hard at the moment and my schedule is just packed so updates will probably be really slow but I promise to try my best!

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