#like a murderfluff bonding activity

[averseunhinged]

it's wip wednesday! hooray. my actual ongoing wip are all kind of at a point of almost doneness where i should stop sharing snippets from them, so here is a thing from the archives. no idea when i might finish this, because of all the other things.

technically, it's a soulmates au, but doesn't really get into all that until like ten pages later.

The young woman who opened the door was none of the three he expected.

"Hi," she said hesitantly, elongating the word. "Can I help you?"

"The answer to your question is entirely dependent on whether you're planning on using that," Elijah pointedly looked down at the crossbow held nonchalantly in her hand.

"Oh!" she yelped and easily swung the heavy weapon up behind her back. "That's nothing. It's...a prop! Made of Styrofoam. My friend's a drama major. No big deal."

He heard a sigh from further inside the room and the approach of bare feet in sandals. A slim, pale hand appeared from behind the door and opened it wider.

"Well, you tried," Caroline Forbes said with an exhausted tilt to her inflection. "Points for thinking fast and coming up with a solid, truth-based lie. Would've been better to avoid flashing medieval weaponry around in the hallway in the first place, but you did stick the landing." She focused her attention back on him. "I thought that sounded like a Mikaelson. Hello, Elijah."

"Miss Forbes."

"Well, at least you know each other. I'm Ivy," the other girl cheerfully introduced herself and held out her hand for him to shake.

"Did you not learn your lesson the last time?" Caroline pushed Ivy's hand down and scooted the other girl back into the room. "Don't try to make friends with supposed friends of friends who turn up out of nowhere!"

"I'm already dead, what else could happen?"

"You could always be more dead, or about a trillion other awful things. Do you want to get shot in the head? I've been shot in the head. It sucks. There. The benefit of my experience. No need to do your own research."

"I give you my word no harm will come to your," Elijah paused and then questioned, "sireling?"

"Adopted. Her sire's an idiot, but he's an idiot I inherited, and unfortunately, I'm attached to him now." She sighed and looked over her shoulder. At what, he wasn't sure. "Okay, I'm kind of on a time crunch, so you should come in. No," she commanded, pointing one stern finger at him, "shenanigans. I will be super upset if you do any heart-ripping."

Elijah solemnly traced an X on his chest and said, with gravity, "Cross my heart and hope to die."

"Oh great. More hilarious jokes." Caroline stepped back and waved him in. "You all have the worst sense of humor. Like it's seriously terrible."

Whitmore was one of the oldest universities in the American South, and a wealthy one at that. Judging by its size and appointments, Caroline's dormitory room looked as though it had originally been a common room. There was typical evidence of young women--cosmetics and jewelry, warring perfumes, several brassieres hanging over the back of a chair--but there were also stacks of old, rough-bound books and an open train case smelling strongly of a witch's tools of the trade. Spread across one of the single beds and the surrounding floor area was an incongruous array of weapons.

The other girl, Ivy, was on the floor, peering at a rectangular, carved box. "Stilettos of Suffering?" she read from the small, engraved plate on it, confused.

"Not shoes, obviously, and not cute. They're like icepick knives with a curse attached, so don't open it. Witches," Caroline shook her head and sketched out an exasperated gesture. "They say we're nasty pieces of work, but I've never wanted to liquify someone's internal organs with a single poke."

With all his family had gone through over the past year, Elijah had to agree. "Vampires do tend to be a bit more direct."

"So," Caroline said cheerfully, taking the stilettos away from Ivy and placing them back in an old footlocker with respectful precision, "I don't know what you need, but Elena had a psychotic break on witch LSD and made the incredibly constructive decision to have her memory erased and Bonnie's dead. Sort of. Maybe." She toed off her sandals next to one of the clear beds and shook a pair of black trousers out of their precise, folded square. "It's complicated. Damon's unavailable, plus he sucks, and Stefan just won the award for biggest jerk ever, and he didn’t even have his humanity off this time. Oh, and there's this stupid Traveler barrier around Mystic Falls. You stop being a vampire and then die the way you died if you cross it. So, probably don't do that. Or do, if you want to. I don't know what's in your life right now. That's between you and Jesus." She squinted at him and tilted her head. "Or maybe Thor, I guess? Because Vikings."

Elijah hummed. "I'm not in correspondence with either one, and my to do list has far too many items left undone, at present, for a suicide attempt."

"You and me both, buddy."

"And as fascinatingly convoluted as that sounds," he began, placidly watching as she tugged on snug jeans under her pretty, pink sundress, bouncing a little bit from their tight fit, "I've already located my quarry."

She froze at his congenial tone, slowly removing her hands from underneath her dress, where she had finished fastening her jeans, and looked at him in quick-dawning denial.

"Oh no," Caroline insisted, shaking her head, her thick ponytail and the late summer humidity ringlets framing her face bouncing from the force of it. "No, no, no. I have my own idiot to rescue from his poor decision-making skills. I don't have time to get sucked back into your idiot's bad choices."

"From what I understand, Miss Forbes, my idiot just so happens to be your idiot as well, and perhaps even more in need of rescue."