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Elijah didn’t sleep much. He didn’t need it, and he could never relax enough to let sleep take him properly. He didn’t toss and turn, but he was always a heartbeat away from waking, never truly surrendering or drifting away to that warm, deep, dark place where he could dream and truly rest.
That changed, like so many things, after Elena.
Often he woke in the night, only to watch her sleep and drift away on the peaceful near silence punctuated only by shallow breath and a barely audible heartbeat in the dark. He would sleep, waking with a start to find her either having moved in the night or wide awake and watching him with a bright, soft smile that melted swiftly into giggles that touched him like sunlight. Sometimes, however, sleep couldn’t find him again. If it wasn’t worry for Niklaus, it was concern for Elias and Lindy, or fretting over Alaric and Nina...and sometimes, it was his own guilty conscience, desperate for certainty.
He wanted his heart to be free. He wanted to forget her...he wanted to be certain, in his own soul, that it was not the ghost of his Katerina that drove him into Elena’s bed. She deserved that, she deserved better than to be a stand in. He wanted those words he had slipped into her mind, quietly and without her notice, to be real.
It was four in the morning one day, and that question had driven him out of sleep again, driven him to lay on his side to watch Elena sleep instead. It was not a luxury Katherine granted him often, and he was never quite sure she was truly asleep in his presence. There was openness in sleep that he was certain was abhorrent to her, a level of trust, vulnerability...
One Elena promptly showed by snuffling in her sleep.
( Read more... )
That changed, like so many things, after Elena.
Often he woke in the night, only to watch her sleep and drift away on the peaceful near silence punctuated only by shallow breath and a barely audible heartbeat in the dark. He would sleep, waking with a start to find her either having moved in the night or wide awake and watching him with a bright, soft smile that melted swiftly into giggles that touched him like sunlight. Sometimes, however, sleep couldn’t find him again. If it wasn’t worry for Niklaus, it was concern for Elias and Lindy, or fretting over Alaric and Nina...and sometimes, it was his own guilty conscience, desperate for certainty.
He wanted his heart to be free. He wanted to forget her...he wanted to be certain, in his own soul, that it was not the ghost of his Katerina that drove him into Elena’s bed. She deserved that, she deserved better than to be a stand in. He wanted those words he had slipped into her mind, quietly and without her notice, to be real.
It was four in the morning one day, and that question had driven him out of sleep again, driven him to lay on his side to watch Elena sleep instead. It was not a luxury Katherine granted him often, and he was never quite sure she was truly asleep in his presence. There was openness in sleep that he was certain was abhorrent to her, a level of trust, vulnerability...
One Elena promptly showed by snuffling in her sleep.
( Read more... )
