imagine being elijah mikaelson like. you have a father who cannot emit warmth. you have a mother who looks the other way. you have a baby brother who you know is different in the way he is sensitive and wondrous and too kind for a boy. he is punished for that kindness. sometimes you protect him and sometimes you watch, it will be you on the other end of your father’s fist otherwise. you have a baby sister just as soft handed as your brother, until she’s trying to slit your father’s throat in his sleep. and you say you’re horrified by this but really you’re horrified you did not do it for her, do it sooner. you’re a big brother, you have a job, you have not done that job, you will never succeed in completing that job. you’re grown up and your youngest sibling dies and the brother you watched paint flowers, hands stained red from crushed berries, is now covered in blood and crying apologies. you’re a big brother and you did not protect the youngest, and you did not protect your brother from his guilt and grief, and you cannot protect him, any of them, from what comes next. your father and the sword you only ever felt the blunt end of in training tears through flesh like it’s butter. your home is a graveyard. they wake up, and your home is the underworld. you all come back as something you can’t recognize. something so horrid there isn’t even a name for it. your brother is different, and this difference cannot coexist with your father. you’re a big brother and you help hold your baby brother down as he screams like you’ve never heard before, like something not human. you will hear that sound in your mind for the rest of your life. you will see his eyes, sky blue, glossed over, a look that begs and thinks help will arrive. you look away. you will see those eyes harden, dull, wither for the rest of your life, never as bright as they were before. you will attach yourself to him as he gets worse, as he looks more and more like the father he shouldn’t, as he turns into everything he feared and hated. you know this is something you could have prevented, if you loved your father a little less, if you held on to your protectiveness and anger a little more. you will find yourself guilty and sentence yourself to life, then death, because you had one job as a big brother.