Don't Look

Part Four of "What's At Stake" will be up soon, but this one-off wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it.  Not really a story.  Maybe a character study, a watercolor in words, whatever.  I asked the question, "What if Elijah had been in love with the original Petrova?"  This is what answered.

I'd really love some feedback so please do feel free to comment, on this and on the other story.

Disclaimer:  I don't own 'em.  Bummer.
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“Don’t look,” she had said.


But of course he had. The blanket she had strung up for privacy showed full well the shape of her body, if not her features, when she changed behind that ersatz screen, backlit by the flickering glow from the fireplace. Even in silhouette, Irina Petrova was a remarkably beautiful girl. Long, silky hair the color of mahogany, large dark eyes, delicate features drawing down into a pointed chin… He had been powerless against the feelings she awakened in him, feelings that he had long since thought himself incapable of.

He had watched her struggle through the rutted mud, the meandering path too crude to be called a road. He’d seen her shepherd her orphaned siblings from vendor to vendor in a doomed effort to procure some means of labor that would provide sustenance for them all. He had observed her increasing desperation as the littlest one, a dark-haired girl whose face palely echoed that of her sister, cried for the bread held out of reach by the stingy baker.

He had seen those dark eyes fill with gratitude as he had handed coin over to the hirsute woman and given bread and sweets to each of them in turn. He’d watched that gratitude war with suspicion and no small amount of fear when he had insisted they return with him to his small house to shelter. He had caught the sound of her tears when she thought herself alone; he knew not whether she wept for her lost parents, for her present circumstance or for the uncertain future, but her cries wrenched his hostage heart as nothing had for so very many lifetimes.

He had gazed at her under hooded lids as she relaxed by increments in his house and in his presence, blossoming as she cared for the children and set about building a life for them in their makeshift home. He had seen the fear flash bright through her eyes when he had revealed his true nature to her, and had closed his own eyes in profound relief when that fear had given way to the dawning light of acceptance. He had felt her yield and had watched the passion fever her skin and the love flood her eyes as she moved, strong yet pliant, underneath him in the night.

And he had gaped in horror as the shaman raised his knife, poised to strike as she lay prone upon the altar. He had stared in horror and impotent rage, throwing himself against the mystical barrier that kept his kind outside the circle, only to be torn away by arms stronger than his own just before that final, fatal, downward plunge.

“Don’t look,” Klaus had told him, and had pulled him away into the night, as the ritual climaxed and the Curse spread its hold over all of them.

********************

He returned from his latest mission to a summons from Klaus, to attend him directly upon his return. He made his way to Klaus’s suite without delay and without stopping to wonder at the strange energy pervading the household. He raised his hand to give a perfunctory knock, but the door opened before he could do so. His Irina exited the chamber, sliding her gaze over him in a sultry, appraising sweep before gathering the rich velvet of her gown and dancing down the corridor, pausing at the end for a moment to turn and give him dark, knowing smile before haring off to some entertainment or other.

“Doppelganger.” The word echoed dully in his shock-numbed mind as Klaus explained a provision of the Curse that would allow, after so many centuries, for it to be broken. Katerina, this one was named. Mistress to a man of lesser means, Klaus had appropriated her when he’d discovered her true purpose. A purpose of which she remained ignorant, pleased as she was to receive the gowns and jewels and privileges afforded the plaything of so wealthy and powerful a nobleman.

He observed her, sometimes covertly and sometimes in the open. He saw the games she played, the way she spun inferences and half-truths to split friendships asunder and turn circumstances to her advantage; he noted her wanton behavior and the wicked games she played with his men, who were too afraid of him and of Klaus to give the little bitch the treatment her cruel amusements deserved. He watched and waited and secretly yearned, for if only there were some small sign, he would risk everything to save her, but all of his hidden hopes went unanswered – there was nothing of Irina in this one. Don’t look.

He took a cruel and profound delight in her terror when finally the truth lay bare, the truth of what Klaus was and of what the future held for her. He happily threw her into the turret room and locked her in there, unmoved as stone by her desperate pleas, her desperate promises, if only he would help her. On the rare occasions when he saw to her feeding and maintenance himself, he taunted her, painting pictures in her mind of the horrors that awaited, once Klaus had readied everything for the sacrifice. He let her cries for mercy, and her curses when none came, fall upon deaf ears, and he rebuilt the hole in the wall around his heart that her appearance had opened.

Her escape then, facilitated as it was by betrayal from one of his own men, enraged him, all out of proportion to the crime itself. He chased her over the countryside, his search mislead and tarried by treachery from within the search party. When at last he drew near, he learned the terrible truth: wily, treacherous Katerina had brought about her own death and Turned, rendering herself unusable as a sacrifice and an eternal thorn in his side for as long as she should continue to exist.

But, he thought, should she indeed continue, she would be forever harried by pursuit and the threat of imminent demise. Were she to slip away from them now, on the heels of her escape, she would know nothing for centuries but a life of fear and running. No peace, no settling down, no anything save the day to day scrabbling of a hand-to-mouth existence too stark and desperate to be called a life. He had only to fail in his mission to find her.

Don’t look.

So when she rode west, he turned instead to the east. Over mountain, over rivers, until he came to her homeland. There he found her childhood home, and there he took an unholy pleasure in slaughtering every last one of her family. Parents, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces… no one bearing the name of Petrova, either by blood or by marriage, escaped his wholesale slaughter.

There would never again be another Petrova doppelganger to shred his heart as Katerina had done.

***********************

He stands on the balcony and looks down at the girl. “I have a doppelganger,” Rose had said. Surely not. It has to be Katerina, playing one of her endless games. He speeds down the stairs, grips her shoulders, drinks in the scent of her blood, and her fear. Human. Somehow, somewhere, one had lived and had kept the Petrova line going, and here now stood the next in the line.

The long centuries have schooled him too well and too harshly to allow any outward reaction. Inside, though, a trembling starts. He has to get out of here, has to get her out of here. Take her someplace where he can think. The part of his soul that trembles cries out for him to end her right then, right there, as he had thought the line ended five centuries past; end her before the quaking deepens and lays to waste the fortress he has erected against the pain. But the logical, more ruthless part of him knows that she represents a singular opportunity to free himself from Klaus’s shadow once and for all. She is not a person. She is an object, an item to be used to his advantage. He sees nothing else, for he well remembers the harsh lesson of Katerina: don’t look.

When the attack comes, he is distracted, and careless. And when he wakes from his brief death, she is gone.

It takes days for him to find the girl – Elena. He has time to reconsider his course. The plan to snatch her and squirrel her away somewhere is considered and discarded. Too much attention would be drawn by her absence. And it would put him for too long in too close a proximity to her. He watches, and waits, and would have kept his distance had it not been for the girl sending up a beacon for any vampire to come and take her to Klaus. To the slaughter.

Having assured himself that the threat is dispatched, he leaves her in the care of the others. But her actions cause a crack in his defenses, a crack that widens as he waits and watches and plans. She appears to have no thought to her own safety, in fact she actively courts capture. What reason could she have other than to protect those around her, the people whom Klaus would dispatch should he learn of her existence and come to claim her? He struggles with himself, but he has to know.

He surprises her, terrifies her. Fear not for her own sake, but for the aunt and the brother there in the house with her, unaware of the predator in their midst. An idle threat to harm them if she raises the alarm, and she quiets, hearing him out. He promises, if only she’ll see to herself and stop playing the martyr, that he will protect the ones she loves. He makes no such vow on her own behalf; she recognizes the fact, and accepts it. He can see it in her eyes. She accepts that she has to die. She will do so with grace as long as those she loves remain unharmed.

And that, more than anything, makes him determined that she shall not die. Though he can’t yet make that promise to her, he makes it to himself: he will find another way, once Klaus comes, to defeat him. Even if it means his own demise as well. For though he never wanted to look, he sees it. He sees her. And for that reason, he will make his own heart the battlefield on which he faces the man who was once his friend, and is now his greatest enemy.

Elena’s friends and family, though, they are not so accepting. They argue, and threaten, and once she is out of the way and they have the opportunity, they strike. But he is not so easily killed. Lest everything fall apart, lest she be ripped from him before he can prepare for the showdown with Klaus, he must leave with her, take her from them. They will only cause more harm than good, in the end. He hurries to her. Though they’ve tried to murder him, he leaves her friends and family unharmed. He has given her his word.

She is afraid of him, still, and of what he might yet do, though she is his only focus. She threatens to harm herself, to Turn as her predecessor once did. He doesn’t believe her. He knows she is not Katerina.

But he has misjudged her. He cries out in horror as she drives the knife into her own abdomen. Frantic, he throws himself at the threshold, just as he did at the barrier that stood between him and Irina, but it holds, just as it did so long ago. He pleads with her to let him heal her, but first she makes him repeat his promise, the promise not to harm those she loves. Another desperate try at the threshold, and he gives his word. He holds his arms out to her, and she falls into them. He pulls her into his arms – oh God, finally! – and cradles her head against his shoulder as relief pours in, relief that he’s not too late this time, that this time he can save her.

And she plunges the dagger into his heart.

He holds her still, even as death steals over him once more. A last breath leaves his body; his legs weaken and he starts to crumple, releasing her as he falls to the ground. He stares at her as his vision starts to grey, the betrayal sharper than any dagger, all the deeper and more painful for the fact that he never saw it coming. As Stefan rushes to Elena, he can feel himself falling away; from her, from the pain, from the betrayal, from the bone-deep loneliness and the awful certainty that he will somehow be resurrected and forced to feel it all again. He closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see anything more.

Don’t look.