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

Final Notes (Part One)

*A/N* Okay, this is really, really the very last chapters for this book, no new story or plot, just a compilation of all my favourite bits from each chapter in chronological order and my own little takes on them. I will be providing trigger warnings for some of them so look out for those and just scroll past if you need to keep yourself safe. Please let me know if you have any recommendations about things you would like me to include in this chapter and if there were any moments that I missed. Other than that, this is just a last, sentimental parting gift and may or may not also be me trying to make people re-read this work because I need attention.

"You Don't Know What I'd Do For You (Love You Like Oxygen)"
*A/N* The title for this book was inspired by a verse from the song "Habits" by Genevieve Stokes. I thought that the message resonated really well with how I wanted to portray Elijah, that his family was the pinnacle of his very existence, the perfect centre that his world revolved around, the one thing he would fold, and give in, and bend over backwards for every time. And, in the end, he couldn't bear to live without it.

"You were the golden child once too." - Elijah to Klaus, chapter one

"I never thought my features to be redeemable, much less liked any of them, until I saw them in you." - Elijah to Klaus, chapter one
*A/N* I found this sentiment to be really powerful and revealing when put under the lens of Elijah being unable to see his family's faults and thinking that they could do no wrong.

"It's not your fault, brother, none of it was. Nobody blames you."
"I do." - Freya and Elijah, chapter one

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. - Elijah POV, chapter three

They all deserved something that I could never give them, that I could never offer. To me, they were all worthy of saving. No matter how many wrongs they had done, no matter how horrible and wicked they became, I could never bring myself to love them any less. - Elijah POV, chapter five
*A/N* I really like this line because of how it expresses the intricate web of abusive and dysfunctional relationships of all kinds while also playing to that parental side of Elijah.

My mind's walls were high, rooted deep in place and set in stone, the gates locked and sturdy, nobody got in... and nobody got out. - Elijah POV, chapter five

The tension was getting to everybody, tempers were high and every added second only made them flare up all the more. Klaus was a hair away from bursting out of the car and slaughtering all the people loitering around in the streets. - Narrator POV, chapter six
*A/N* Our favourite little psycho at his finest, Esther is pretending not to be proud.

Without a single doubt in her mind, no matter who it might be in that barn, she would ensure their complete and absolute destruction. - Rebekah POV, chapter six
*A/N* I know everyone likes to talk about Klaus for this stuff, and I get it, but I feel like Rebekah would be the type to skin you alive and then file shards of your skull into a set of acrylic nails so that she could pluck out your eyes and thread them onto a necklace in front of your weeping mother. Just saying.

His head was filled with memories of the person who taught him how to play music, who held him during thunderstorms, who caught him when he fell out of trees. A warm, loving boy with deep brown eyes and slightly curly hair, with big, strong, safe arms that held their family together for a thousand years. Who loved all his siblings more than the moon, and the stars, and the sun combined, more than every beautiful thing in the whole world, more than his own happiness, safety, and sanity. Who drew pictures with Klaus, and danced with Rebekah, and taught Marcel to write, and even read books with Finn, and now made Hope giggle and coo endlessly. And now that person was gone. - Kol POV, chapter six