Work Text:
Autumn, 1001 AD
She found Finn late on the fourth day of her new life, huddled against a tree as the last dregs of day dipped beneath the horizon with blood clinging to his chin and staining his shirt.
“Finn?” She whispered, knowing he heard. If she could hear the flutter of owl wings a half mile away he could hear her voice plain as day.
Still, he made no response, choosing — or perhaps not choosing — to stare vacantly at the blood staining his hands.
She had watched those hands do marvellous things. Finn had a particular talent for making things grow, or he did… before.
“Finn,” she sank to her knees at his side, dropping a hand to his shoulder.
The motion brought him from his stupor to some semblance of awareness. Enough that he was able to meet her eyes for a second before his gaze locked on the corner of her mouth.
“Are they dead?” He croaked.
She brought a thumb up to catch a single drop of blood she managed to miss and shook her head.
“I didn’t kill them.” She wanted nothing more than to pop her thumb into her mouth, but she refrained, cleaning her hand instead with the dying blades of grass at her feet.
“How?” His face contorted in the fight to reign in his emotions. “How do you do this? How do you give in to this hunger and not kill them?”
Her eyes darted beyond his shoulder into the shadow of the woods where she could just make out the delicate curve of a woman’s shoe.
“I wish I had the answers for you Finn,” she rubbed her thumb along his collarbone. “I wish I could help you, but I only know what has worked for me. It hasn’t worked for Kol or Rebekah.”
She swallowed and chewed her bottom lip.
“I think you and Kol will struggle the most with this,” she shook her head, blinking at the bloodstains on his shirt. “The others didn’t lose what you did.”
“You lost just as much,” he scoffed, shaking his head. The derision was short lived when he again caught sight of the blood on his hands and started wiping frantically at the dirt.
“Nobody will ever comprehend the full depth of what I lost that night,” her eyes narrowed, “but you and Kol come close. We are all broken, Finn. It will take us time to heal, and I doubt we will ever be whole.”
She grasped his wrists and lifted them, pulling a length of cloth from her bag to wipe the worst of the red away.
He watched her in silence, watched her remove the stain of his sins from his body if not his soul.
“How do you do it?” Tears glittered in his eyes.
She sighed and folded the cloth.
“Control isn’t easy,” she whispered, bunching the material in her hands, “but I’ll tell you what I do.”
She thought of the young man, too close when her thirst beckoned, she felt the force of his life leave his body through the hole’s she cut with her teeth, heard the sound of his heart slowing, listened to the choked gasp.
“I listen… as well as I can when the haze is upon me,” she amended at his incredulous look. “I listen to their heart beat slow, and then I do the hardest thing of all. I stop.”
“How do you stop?” He croaked around the lump in his throat.
“By imagining it is someone I could never hurt,” she drew back her shoulders, thoughts flickering to long blonde hair, “even if I know that person could defend themselves against me, it helps me stop.”
A guttural cry echoed through the forest surrounding them, followed by a series of snapping sounds. She knew deep in her soul, felt it in her blood, that the snapping was the distinct sound of bones being broken up into a million pieces.
“What in Odin’s name is that?” Finn clambered to his feet.
She ignored his outstretched hand, suddenly unable to breathe, unable to think beyond a single word. The name pounded in her head, echoing so loudly she was shocked he couldn’t hear.
“We must go,” he insisted, pulling her to her feet rather than wait out the fear clenching around her heart in a vice grip. “I know those sounds, I have listened to the distant screams every full moon as descended into the caves.”
“It’s not a full moon,” she breathed, shaking her head as Finn tried to pull her along. In a heartbeat she ripped her arm from his grip and took off at a run, following the sounds of screaming through the woods until she collided with Elijah’s broad back.
She stumbled to a halt, dropping to her knees with the momentum while Elijah and she both stared, transfixed by the sight before them. The grip on her heart tightened further as the organ threatened to shatter into a million pieces with each rip of primal pain that left his throat.
“Nik.”