Chapter Text
The First
He didn’t notice when he died.
It was that sudden. He never did find out what caused it. Maybe an aneurysm or cancer he never knew he had.
For years, Benji thought that his new life was a nightmarish coma dream. One where he was stuck as the frail, sickly son of a cruel slave owner in the Antebellum South. Doctors bombarded his helpless body with treatments that only made him weaker. Nothing his mother Lily did could stop his father from screaming at Benji. As if he could just try harder and become perfectly healthy like his brothers.
“Walk Benjimin!” His father roared, face bright red with rage. His flying spit caking Benji’s already tear-soaked face. “Walk! Damn you!”
Benji tried to shy back into Mary-Anne’s skirts. Her firm, dark hands were the only thing keeping his thin form upright. He could feel her tears as they silently fell down her face into his dark hair. His pale legs peeking out from his navy shorts already ached just from being forced vertical. They had no hope of supporting his weight.
Mary-Anne knew this. She wouldn’t let him go.
Right?
Benji wailed as she was ordered to do just that, and pain shot through his body like electricity.
What else could this be, but some awful, hellish dream his mind had cooked up in a hospital bed somewhere?
This couldn’t be his new life.
It just couldn’t be.
The Second:
Benji forced himself forward as he made his way down the hall to his father’s study. He used one hand on the wall for support, and the other on his cane. There was no one to help him around anymore.
He hadn’t minded when Mary-Anne and the others all fled the plantation. As much as his father had raged over the Union winning the war, Benji was grateful for it. The Union could come and burn the whole town to the ground for all he cared. He’d never wanted to be involved in such horrific things anyway. It had taken almost a decade for him to even believe that he’d somehow been sent back in time to the South before the Civil War in the first place. But eventually he’d been forced to accept it, when he never woke up in that hospital bed like he’d expected.
Now, he just prayed that Mary-Anne and her family were safe somewhere out there and would be allowed happiness on their own terms. Slavery may have been officially ended on paper, but the world still had a long way to go before everyone could truly live freely.
Yes, Benji had survived the loss of the woman who’d practically been his mother. Because at least he knew that there was hope of better life out there for her. It was the night prior that broke him. When Guiseppe Salvatore had come home to tell Benji that Confederate soldiers had fired on the church and killed all those inside.
Including Katherine and his brothers.
Then Guiseppe had left him. He’d sobbed until the sun was high. Eventually he was forced to pull himself from his bed to relieve himself. That had been the easy part. As he did every day, he'd gulped down one of the medicine vials Katherine had given him and sighed as the blessed respite came over his body. The coppery taste or thick texture didn’t even bother him after what had happened. He’d stumbled over to his piano, but didn’t play. Tears ran like rain down his face as his fingers hovered over the keys, but he couldn’t bring himself to push them down.
It had been Damon who’d gotten Benji lessons to begin with. It was him who’d told him to keep playing, no matter what their father said.
Guiseppe had been no where to be seen as time for lunch passed and so did dinner. The immediate relief of the medicine began to fade, and the aches started to seep back in as the hunger worsened. Benji’s muscles began to fail again.
Damon and Stefan had taken to running the house up until their death, along with Katherine’s maidservant Emily. Who Benji had more than once asked if she was there on her own volition, and still struggled to believe her when she assured him, she was. It wasn’t like Giuseppe to allow such progressive things, and the stubborn old man didn’t care to listen to what anyone had to say about it. But when Emily continued to seem content in her position, Benji was forced to let the matter go.
Most of the rooms had been shut down for ease of cleaning, and all the meals were prepared by Emily herself. It had been Stefan who’d taken to helping Benji around after Mary-Anne was freed. Then Damon when he’d returned. Also Katherine, whenever she wanted him to play a song and no one else was around to do it for her. Benji honestly appreciated that Emily didn’t try to help him walk often, though she did insist on helping him with other things. She was the only person in the house he was taller than, and he didn’t want to crush her under his weight. Though Katherine only had an inch on him, which she forced him to acknowledge anytime it was brought up in conversation.
Honestly, Katherine had been the most helpful of them all. She somehow knew all the right spots to support him at, and on good days was strong enough to hold him up with just an arm around his own. How she did such a thing he couldn’t understand. But he didn’t question it.
After night fell, Benji had heard a loud crash. Despite himself, he’d panicked thinking that something might’ve happened to his father. Most days, he hated Guiseppe. But he was all Benji had left now. That's why he stumbled out of his room and made his way towards the noise as best he could. His mind lost in a million memories on the journey. As he finally approuched Guiseppe's study, part of him wanted to call out, but a larger part of him warned to stay quiet.
When he reached his father’s door, he couldn’t help the gasp that escaped him. Crouched over Guiseppe’s prone form, surrounded by the broken debris of a bookshelf, was a terrifyingly familiar man. At the sound, his head whipped around and Benji stumbled back.
A yelp escaped him as he lost his balance and fell back against the wall. His head rang as pain spread across it. Different than the pain he was used to.
Sharper.
He reached up and pulled his hand away bloody.
“Benji?” Stefan’s voice spoke from the door.
Benji squinted, trying to make out shapes in the shadows in front of him. “Stefan?” he asked in a voice that sounded younger than his sixteen years.
“Benji, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But I can’t stop. I’m sorry.”
Benji never got a proper look at his older brother before a sharp pain exploded on the side of his neck. Regardless of agony in limbs, his weak body thrashed and tried to fight, but it was no use. His body went as limp as a fish and his vison dimmed. All that remained was darkness.
Until he woke up craving blood.
The Third:
“No, Elijah please. Please don’t,” Benji begged. He struggled against Elijah’s hold on his forearms. Pure desperation filled him as he fought with all his strength. He kept his blue eyes closed tight and his head stubbornly down.
But it was hopeless.
Why hadn’t he taken vervain?
Why had he been so foolish as to trust Elijah so fully?
Why did Elijah have to do this after he’d spent so long at Benji’s side?
If he was going to do such a cruel thing, couldn’t he have done it before they’d spent a lifetime together?
Before he’d become Benji’s whole world?
“Look at me,” Elijah ordered. The force in his voice was impossible to ignore.
Benji’s eyes pried themselves open and he let out a sob. He went limp, held up only by Elijah’s firm grip. Hazel eyes reflected his pain, but Elijah’s conviction was unshakable.
“Please don’t take them,” Benji pleaded. “I’ll do anything. Anything ‘Lijah. Please. Please. Don’t take them.”
“Quiet,” Elijah whispered.
Benji complied, the tears falling harder now that he couldn’t do anything but stare at the man he loved.
“Be calm, Benjamin.” Elijah ordered. “And stay still until I’m done.”
He released Benji, who stood obediently in front of him, waiting for the compulsion he could do nothing about. A forced sense of calm blanketed his former panic. Elijah took a deep breath. One hand came to push Benji’s hair out of his eyes, trailing down his face to follow the path the tears had carved into his skin. He looked over Benji, as if seeing him for the last time.
Then their eyes met again. The voice that had once been so soothing to Benji murmured like a promise of love, rather than a death sentence.
“You will not reveal anything about me, our relationship, or anything related to it to anyone. Nor anything you learned about me and my family in the time we were together,” Elijah said. “Do you understand?”
“I understand,” Benji confirmed. He felt as if he were watching himself speak outside of his own body.
“You will not try to find me or Klaus. You will do nothing to interfere with any of our business. Nor put yourself in harms way because of it. Do you understand, Benjamin?”
He nodded. “I understand.”
“Good.”
A well-known hand weaved into Benji’s short hair, against his scalp. Elijah leaned down to press a lingering kiss to Benji’s blank forehead. His breath warm as he spoke his last farewell.
“Goodbye. My love.” Elijah sighed against Benji’s skin, gripping Benji’s hair as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to leave. “My bard. My heart.”
With that, Elijah was gone.
And Benji collapsed. Relief flooded him along with the agony of the loss. All of it swirling like a hornet’s nest inside of him. Sobs broke their way to the surface as if they’d just been waiting to come out this entire time, and now needed to do it all at once.
Elijah hadn’t taken his memories. Benji could still remember the feeling of his touch and the way he smiled when Benji played his favorite songs. Benji could still remember them walking the streets of Paris and dancing under the fading light in New Orleans. Memories of Elijah reading in the afternoon sun while Benji played the piano had not been stolen from him.
The heartbreak was not taken from him. It was still very much there. As it should be.
He wouldn’t have it any other way.
That was until he found himself dialing Damon’s number. Benji was desperate to talk about it. Nothing about Elijah. Nothing that would give them away. He’d just needed to talk to his brother. The pain inside was boiling over at a rapid rate. He needed some release.
Any.
Even though he knew Damon wasn’t himself right now. He couldn’t believe his oldest brother was that far gone. He simply couldn’t.
Only when Damon answered the phone, Benji’s mouth didn’t move. As if Elijah were still there compelling him, his whole body calmed, and he instead made an awkward excuse for calling in a perfectly controlled voice.
As soon as he hung up his sobs returned even worse than before. Each breath disappeared into the next. His vison blurred. Pain overtook him from the inside out. Emotions as a vampire were heightened beyond belief. Even more so when turned young like Benji was.
It was too much. There was nothing he could do.
It was too much.
So Benji turned it off.
Just as everyone had always promised, everything vanished. The storm calmed and he looked over their apartment with chilling blue eyes. Ideally, he would bring the whole place down.
But they had neighbors. Neighbors who knew they were in a relationship and making a lot of noise after what must’ve sounded like a fight was certainly revealing something about their relationship.
His lip curled. He walked over to his piano. The first gift Elijah had ever given him. It was over sixty years old now. One of a kind. Up until now, his most prized possession.
What good was the piano anyway?
In a slow methodical fashion, Benji began to break it away. Piece by piece he quietly destroyed his Grand Piano until all that was left was a pile of rubbish on the floor.
It had only ever brought him pain anyway.
He smiled as he left their apartment behind. Lying to himself was easier when he didn’t feel anything at all.