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Lying In State

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They didn’t know. They didn’t suspect. Because, really, how could they? They did not know this part of her, this dark chrysalis suspended inside her. So, she was free to come to him and free to go to him.

She almost didn’t recognize herself. Almost. But then, when she was there, in the dark, the heavy door closed to a constricting, delicious, suffocating claustrophobia, the air of the cell as cold as a tomb, she understood it perfectly. With one trembling hand tracing the lines, the shape of his face and body. Following here, slipping under there. Her fingertips ghosting the flesh turned stone, she saw herself, saw as though she were a spider in a high corner of the cell looking down through numerous eyes. And she let herself be urged and dared and she would draw off the leather brogue, the silk sock, and run her hungry mouth along the frozen arch, between the toes. She would bite into the stiffened palms remembering that brief moment when he'd held her, when she had fallen into his arms and betrayed him. That moment fed her.

She knew that inside her doppelganger heart, her blood was flowing like a river to his sea, flowing ocean-wards towards him. If she closed her eyes and let her thumb brush his lips she could imagine her hearts blood running, streaming, pouring down his throat. And she would shiver, the electric current of the thought of it stiffening her back and trembling her shoulders towards him. And she would bend low, prima ballerina in a nightmare production, hover over him - her slain prince; let her breasts brush against him.

He was beautiful. Even in this death, he was beautiful. And in death, he was still so very powerful. She could feel it vibrating through his body, quivering under the grayed skin. The power of being one of the first. The essence of aeons holding him as tenderly, as fiercely as a lover would hold him. She was coaxing her own bravery. She would lean down and snake her arms around him and hold him fast against her body, burying her face in his neck, inhaling him. He reeked of dark power and the smell intoxicated her. It smelled of safety.

She hadn’t felt safe for a long time. Not since that moment in the hospital, when they had told her about the accident. When they had to explain it over and over until finally she turned her face away and they had left her blanketed in shock and grief. Her head pillowed on the new-found fear and loneliness. He could make her feel safe. He would make her invulnerable in immortality. He deserved her and she wanted to be worthy of that.

She was slowly convincing herself that the Salvatore brothers and Katherine had been the means to this end.

Her end.

She knew, she knew full well, that he wasn’t really destroyed. She had come to think of him as lying in state. And she the sole mourner. In her mind she was draped in black veil, she wanted him in an ebony coffin, wood shined to mirrored brilliance. She wanted to climb inside, tuck herself beside him, lay her head on his chest and then pull the dagger from his heart.

Not yet. Not yet. In a pose of supplication, squatting beside him. She rose up and let her knees fall to the dirt floor, one on either side of him, straddling his hips, her hands reaching for him. She needed to be ready. She needed to offer herself to him, to placate the murderous deed she had done him. She wanted him to open his eyes and recognize her heart rising, blood like sap, towards him.