manof_myword | [OOC] My Elijah....

Significant Ponts

I’ve always said he was the second son, so am ecstatic they finally confirmed that on The Originals. He has all the traits of a second son, especially in the being in the shadows in a lot of ways. He wasn’t his father’s heir, he was the spare, as it were, but he was okay with that. It’s where some of the quiet comes from, though that’s heightened by the others’ boisterousness. Finn has the entitlement, Klaus and Kol have the attention-seeking, Elijah has the need to take care of everyone. That need is pretty much bolstered by Finn’s absolute lack of caring for his siblings. Before we got more of Finn on The Originals, he’d always just been sort of dull in my head. Trying to act like he’s their father, being bossing and putting down rules and so no one much was upset when Klaus decided to keep him daggered. But now it’s like…he doesn’t even really care. And it’s not like Kol who wants so desperately to be included in the circle—he doesn’t like them any more than they like him.

Elijah looked up to him as a boy, though, because he was his big brother and Mikael was scary. But then Klaus came along, and Elijah was pretty much lost from day one. Klaus was his—his to take care of, his to protect—and Esther’s dampening of his powers, making Klaus weaker than the others, just heightened Elijah’s instincts. The biggest regret of his life is that he didn’t kill Mikael the first time he hurt Klaus; the second is that he didn’t do it when Rebekah was going to. He didn’t want her marked by that, but he wishes he’d done it. His third is that he helped, at all, to bind Klaus when Esther cursed him but he was terrified of what Mikael would do to Klaus if he didn’t. There was no habit of disobedience, then, and they were all terrified of Mikael and with Esther on his side and seeing what was done to Ansel? Elijah was pretty sure if he didn’t help, Mikael would do the same to Klaus. But not a day goes by that he doesn’t regret it.

He loves Rebekah. He loves Kol. He loved Henrik. But Klaus is...the center of his world. (I mean, lbr—he says “no one hurts my family and lives,” but, uh, Matt and Jer are just fine. ) No matter what Klaus does, he forgives him, even when he wants to sacrifice one girl Elijah loves and has the next girl he loves drowned. He hates what he’s become, but he can’t hate him, and he can’t help seeing what Klaus has become as a product of Mikael’s abuse and Elijah’s weakness in not stopping it. He takes the weight of the world on his shoulders and bears Klaus’s guilt as his own.

There’s a TFLN that I’ve always thought of as a Miles/Bass (Revolution) one, but it fits Elijah about Klaus while they were apart in the 20th century, and he thought Klaus had dumped Kol and Rebekah at the bottom of the ocean: “I love you and miss you, which in no way diminishes how much I hate the person you’ve turned out to be, but I still love and miss you.”

Seriously – Kol says it was always the three of them—Elijah, Klaus and Rebekah—but there is NO evidence that Elijah did anything to think about waking Rebekah up any of the times Klaus daggered her. He loves her, yes—but it’s always been Klaus. He pushed Marcel away, breaking a young boy’s heart, for Klaus. He daggered Kol, for Klaus. He hunted a girl he loved, for Klaus. He broke his word to Elena, for Klaus. He was ready to walk away from Hayley, for Klaus. Not letting Klaus kill Rebekah? Was as much about Klaus as Rebekah—because Klaus would never recover from that, in the end. One of the biggest sources of pain in his life, after what Klaus has become, is that Klaus can’t SEE how much Elijah loves him, can’t see that he would do anything for him, can’t see that when he tells him “no,” or “I won’t let you,” it really is as much (if not more) for Klaus than anyone else, because he knows the things that Klaus regrets when he’s done with his tantrums.
- Of course, he'll resort to violence with Klaus--despite telling him how much he laments letting Mikael do the same. Klaus's ability to fight back now, even defeat him, seems to absolve him of guilt, since violence is sometimes the only thing that gets through to his little brother. He'd never raise his hand to Rebekah, though, no matter what she does. However, while he longs for what is left of his family to be whole, he also has shown, time and again, that what he told his father about Klaus rings true: I will always choose him.

Moving on from Klaus, if we can

Like the birth order, Originals confirmed my headcanon as Elijah as a musician. It was always the way he touches things, the precision but delicacy. Music is often controlled expression of deep emotion, all the things that Elijah bottles up, he can bring out on the piano, the violin, the guitar. He loves it, and the music is and was one of his favorite things about New Orleans. He’s learned to play most instruments over time, but the piano and violin are his favorites. Low-key him likes the guitar, but it’s doubtful anyone gets to see much of that side of him.

His love of books is almost as deep, as evidenced by their library. He loves learning and retains information exceptionally well, as evidenced by his Trivial Pursuit skills. A thousand years is a long time, and Elijah has a very keen and strategic mind—he likes using it. He knows a lot about a lot of things, even magic that he cannot use because of that insatiable curiosity.

As a side note, when I play him in book-verse!AU, where they are all so old they don’t remember being human, he has a tendency to get lost in libraries, reading, and loses track of time. Rebekah makes sure the servants remind him to eat. But book!him, after so many thousands of years, isn’t quite…right. He also has a tendency to shift into a cat. It’s a thing.

He loves puzzles and mysteries that challenge him—he likes them more when the lives of people he loves aren’t on the line, but nevertheless. Don’t try to beat him at chess, obviously, though he wishes someone would come along who could.

He has a bad habit of falling for doppelgangers. He’s really glad he hasn’t had to kill Elena. Even if, y’know, she helped kill Kol.

He’s got a fetish for touching things. Some of it is the straightening bit—everything really needs to be nice and neat and pristine and under control and if it’s neat and tidy and he’s neat and tidy then the monster doesn’t show (and he swears to god if people keep setting the table wrong he is going to kill them)—but beyond the straightening, he really likes to touch. Like a lot. Back to that delicate precision and he does not like to be rushed with the touching. Ahem.

He hates breaking his word. Klaus is about the only one he’ll do it for. But be careful—he is very precise in his words. Be careful and listen, because the deal you think you’re making is probably not the deal you just made.

He’s not big on the killing of innocents. He’s not really overly bothered by it, either, unless he’s invested in them somehow. (see: Dead girl on the coffee table, staining rug, while he and Klaus are passive aggressive at each other).

Never think that his manners mean he won’t kill you where you stand, or driven a pencil into your throat, if he gets the urge. Show a little respect.

People like to tell him that he’s no fun and has no sense of humor. He likes to think that he just has an adult sense of humor, because, really. He finds a lot of things amusing. Somehow people never seem to know what to do when he makes a joke, though. It’s perplexing. Their “wtf do we do with that?” expressions, though? Amusing.

He feels things as strongly as every other vampire. It’s not like he didn’t get the heightened emotions thing nor has he turned them off. He’s just gotten fairly good at hiding them. Except when looking at doppelgangers. Or Hayley. A lot of it comes out when he plays music, but since he usually does that alone...

He’s lonely. A lot of it is self-imposed, in his refusal to let people in. He knows Hayley was right about that—he doesn’t open up, doesn’t bring down the walls, so his isolation is at least partly his fault. However, a lot of it is Klaus-imposed, who wants all his devotion, but gives no emotional succor in return. But Elijah still tries reaching out, looking for that gentler connection, too:

Look, he just wants to be loved, too, ok?

And maybe stop having to kill everyone and go to a good concert or have time to read. It’s not that he objects to the killing, per se, so much as it is getting a little tedious. They could just kill everyone and be done with it, but then Klaus won’t have anyone to rule, and he’ll be cranky about that and then Elijah won’t get to listen to or play music or read in anything remotely like peace for the next century, so.

He wants Hayley to be happy, truly, more than he wants her for himself. However, Klaus’s “let’s kill Jackson” plan? Is a little more tempting than he’s ever going to admit.

He’s embraced their aristocratic lifestyle these past centuries, it’s true, but he hasn’t forgotten where they came from. He remembers the simpler life, one where fancy things didn’t exist, and you were dirty at the end of the day from working hard. He remembers dirt under his fingers and a sword in his hand, and playing in the forest when they could get away from Mikael, and sometimes…he really misses that.

My ships for him:
Right now I’m on a Hayley/Elijah kick that I don’t see ending soon. However, all of these are pure love, as well:

Klaus/Elijah (Always and forever)
Rebekah/Elijah (Tho it rarely plays out long-term w/o Klaus. For obvious reasons.)
Katherine/Elijah (Just...yes)
Elena/Elijah (She's good for him...)
Damon/Elijah (It's hot?)
Alaric/Elijah (they commiserate over keeping Damon and Klaus in line)
Damon/Elijah/Alaric (and that’s the only threesome I’ll list, but basically—take any pairing and add another and I’m happy. One of the fics I’m most proud of is Klaus/Elijah/Rebekah (Not AT ALL SFW).

Cross-canon, he and Jack Harkness get along shockingly well.
To be continued, as I think of more things, but this is already tl;dr. I am totally open to any questions!