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

sixteen

*A/N* Not really any trigger warnings for this, just very mild violence I guess. I'm sorry this took so long and I apologize for the probable cringe, writer's block was super real for this one lmao.

Rebekah and Klaus relaxed their posture and retracted their fangs but stayed firmly between their parents and Elijah. It was acting as a bubble, a wall, a veil, between the treasure that they had come to rescue and the ones that had taken him from them. As Mikael stepped forward and attempted to circle closer to his prisoner, the veil moved with him, effectively blocking his and Elijah's views of each other and keeping up an impenetrable blockade to forever separate the two. No further harm would come to their beloved brother as long as they all would live and even after that, they would ensure it.

"Look at all of this, Elijah," Mikael taunted, "all that they've done, all for you."

"They wouldn't have bothered if they knew," Esther slipped in, her voice cruel and manipulative as ever.

At this comment, Elijah, froze, going completely stiff in Kol's and Freya's arms, his eyes were squeezed shut and his hands shook slightly. They couldn't know, if they found out they would leave, leave him here, go far away and never come back. It was selfish, but he didn't want that to happen, he wanted to be with them, he wanted them all to be happy again. He didn't want them to figure it out, he didn't want to be reminded of everything. He wanted to forget.

"I could show them," their mother continued, and Elijah could feel her magic starting to swell as his own cowered away.

"Leave him alone," Rebekah seethed, her eyes momentarily going dark.

"Oh, come on, darling," Esther said, putting on a fake pout before her sadistic, crazed smile shone through, "just a little bit."

With a single, sweeping motion of her hand, the bodies of her children fell to the ground, even Finn's and Marcel's. Completely unconscious and locked away in a thousand-year-long spiral of memories. The mind of Elijah was a complex one, all of her spells, all of her husband's meddling, was hardly a match for the pristine white corridors that stretched on for ages within their son's head. She couldn't get in, but she also knew that Elijah couldn't get out.

In Elijah's Mind

They had been awake one second, and the next, just out like a light. Out of all the scenes they had been picturing, a blindingly white marble hallway lined with doors was not one of them. It was unnerving, how spotless everything was, like it had never been traveled or touched by another being before, not even breathed on or looked at.

As they all slowly woke up, they stood and looked around at their surroundings and each other. There were long hallways in every direction, it was like a maze, a labyrinth, it stretched on for as far as the eye could see, endless. "What in the bloody hell is all this?" Rebekah asked, turning to face the rest of her family.

Everyone shrugged, all eyes turning to Elijah, searching for some sort of explanation. "M-My head," he stuttered out, voice still small and wavering, so different from how it used to be, "m-memories."