Protection Is A Privilege (Closed Para)
Jeremy tried to make it look like he wasn’t listening, but he caught every word, and letting it sink in, that someone like Rebekah was actually breakable…it was something he never thought he’d understand. He stopped walking, and even he didn’t know why. Maybe it was curiosity or maybe he did care more than he let on, but whatever it was made him turn around and face her, his crossbow at his side.
“Prove it,” he said simple, meeting her eyes with a stone gaze. “Prove you have some semblance of humanity left inside you, and that you deserve this cure.”
Rebekah let out a small sigh of relief when he stopped walking. She didn’t know why she was happy he was actually listening to her, she simply was. She gave him a confused look at his request. “Prove it?” she questioned. It was definitely a strange request. How do you prove humanity to someone? The better question was, how was she supposed to prove it? She hadn’t been human in such a long time, what did he expect from her. She sighed and breathed in a sigh. “Fine… how do you want me to prove it?”
Protection Is A Privilege (Closed Para)
Jeremy rolled his eyes and kept shoveling dirt onto the corpse in the ground, making a mental note to remind his sister to stop putting him on guard with Rebekah.
“No. I don’t. I don’t care enough to want you dead. I just don’t want to be here with you. You’re selfish, you’re petty and you only care about yourself,” he spat, shoving the last handful of dirt into the ground.
He moved to toss the shovel onto the ground and stepped into her space, meeting her eyes defiantly.
“Would you honestly be here if you weren’t gaining something from this? No. You wouldn’t. Which is exactly why I don’t want you to have the cure. Because you still don’t know what it is to be human. You have no idea how hard it is, so until you learn, cure or not, you’ll never have any kind of humanity.”
He stepped away from her with one last look and started back through the woods, picking up his crossbow from where he’d left it.
She knew it shouldn’t have hurt when he said those words, but it did. She knew it was evident in her eyes, as stony as her face remained. “Right then, a century of living and I’m summed up in three words by a seventeen year old boy.” she said, trying to spit the words out but not having the energy to do so. Klaus was right, she was fragile. Fragile enough for those words to actually hurt her. She didn’t move, didn’t even flinch as he approached her, staring into her eyes with defiance in his gaze. He was right… She didn’t know how to be human anymore. After a century of living, the years had slowly shed away the human Rebekah that once scoured caves with Niklaus and helped her mother make bread for supper. She shook her head and follow him as he walked away from him. “You’re right, I don’t know how to be human.” she told him, honestly. “But your wrong. I know how hard it is. I’ve seen it over and over again. Do you know how hard it is watching it? You don’t because you have humanity. You get to have kids and love and die at your own accord, I don’t have that choice.” she told him honestly. She had no idea why she was telling him this. It wasn’t like he cared. “I get to keep breathing and drinking blood. That’s it for me. That’s all there ever will be unless I’m human.”
Protection Is A Privilege (Closed Para)
The blonde’s words made him roll his eyes and stop digging to look up at her. The one thing he never understood about Rebekah was the way she claimed she was human, but kept holding on to the vampire side of her life. It made absolutely no sense. But then again, they were in Mystic Falls and little to nothing usually made sense.
“My sister and her boyfriends, god knows which she’s dating this week, are the ones who plot your death. I have no opinion on it either way. So give me a break. I’m not a baby, and you don’t have to be here. Don’t like it, go home. Without the cure.”
He sighed and turned back to the pile of dirt, resolved that he was never going to understand her reasoning behind anything.
Rebekah stopped digging and narrowed her eyes at him, puncturing the ground with her shovel so that it stood upright. “So as I’m standing right here, you don’t want to take that stake in your back pocket and drive it through my heart?” she asked him, taking a step forward so that she was closer to him. She rolled her eyes at him and gave him a incredulous look. “I’m over a century old, to me you’re a fetus. And unfortunately, I do have to be here. My brother instructed me specifically to help you until this problem was fixed. Problem,” she gestured to the hole where the dead vampire lay. “Still not fixed. And as if I’d risk losing the cure.” she told him with a roll of her eyes. “At least you’re less annoying that your sister.”
Protection Is A Privilege (Closed Para)
The words hit him hard, and Jeremy went quiet for a moment. He would have thought even Rebekah would know not to hit those buttons. But she did, and now it was awkwardly silent, the hunter refusing to speak for awhile. Once the hole was deep enough, Jeremy climbed out, tossing it onto the pile of dirt without one look at the blonde, waiting for her to climb out before he dragged the body over and pushed it in with his foot. Once the body fell in with a thud, Jeremy turned back to Rebekah with a hurt expression, stepping close to her.
“You know, I would have thought you of all people would understand the loss of people close to you. Being the most human and all.”
He stepped away from her and grabbed his shovel, sticking it into the pile of dirt as he started to fill the hole back up.
Rebekah noticed the sudden tension in the air. Seemed she struck a nerve. She pursed her lips and threw out a last scoop of dirt before she threw the shovel out and climbed out of the hole. Jeremy wasn’t speaking to her, that much was clear. He ignored her as he drug the body to the hole and kicked it in, her watching the entire time. When he turned back around, she furrowed her eyebrows at his hurt expression. When he stepped to her and spoke, she didn’t move. No one had gotten this close to her in quite awhile, but the tone and his words, yes, she was all to familiar with the venom. She was suddenly flung into images of her family. Of Finn and Esther and Mikael. Even Henrik, poor little Henrik, crossed her vision. Even Alex…
She watched him pick up the shovel once more, trying hard not to show the emotion she was swarming with. “Since when do you, your sister, or you friends care about who I’ve lost? You plot mine and my siblings deaths without blinking an eye.” she told him. “You don’t understand loss, Gilbert, you deal with it. Go have a nice chat with my brother’s about humanity and see how they take it.” she told him, begrudgingly walking over to her shovel to help. “This is why I hate babysitting.”
Laugh at the girl who loved too easily.
Protection Is A Privilege (Closed Para)
Jeremy shrugged, unaffected by her mild tantrum. He knew she wasn’t used to doing absolutely anything, but it didn’t stop the satisfaction of watching her actually work. He took his own shovel in his hands and shoved it in the ground, his arms tensing and flexing as he tossed the dirt to the side. This was insane. All of this for a cure to being a vampire. It sounded like a horror movie when he thought about it, but it was real. As real as anything could be. And that was the worst part.
“Never thought I’d actually be burying a dead body,” he mumbled, reaching up to wipe the sweat from his brow.
Rebekah begrudgingly dug the hole, repeating the motion of picking up dirt and tossing it into the growing pile. She looked up at Jeremy as they worked. He wasn’t the worst looking of the lot to babysit. She could have been stuck with the Bennett witch, or worst, Caroline. She guessed this arrangement was better than any other. She paused at his words, looking at him with her eyebrows furrowed. “You haven’t before?” she asked him, standing up straight to give him a questioning look. “Hm… shocker. From what I’ve heard of you and your sisters reputations I would have thought digging graves had become a bit of a hobby.” She shrugged, resuming. “Guess I heard wrong.”
She sighed, focusing her eyes on her work. “I’ve dug a few graves. Seems its a necessary skill for vampires to have. Burying their kill. You should learn that, Little Gilbert. Or should I just call you Hunter now?”
Protection Is A Privilege (Closed Para)
Jeremy looked down at the already decomposing body, leaning down to hook his hands under the shoulders as he started to drag him. He grunted with his efforts, glaring up at Rebekah once more. He knew of a place on the other side of the cemetary, where not many people went because of the poison ivy and wild animals.
“Oh good, I wouldn’t want your manicure to go to waste,” he said sarcastically.
He continued dragging the body bitterly, not bothering to look up at Rebekah until he reached the spot he had in mind.
“Here. No one crosses the vines over there,” he explained. “So no one will find it here.”
Thankfully they were close to the cemetary, which left shovels lying around all the time, and Jeremy stepped away from the blonde, grabbing two from an unused plot before he marched back over and held it out to her.
“I dragged him, the least you can do is help me dig.”
Rebekah watched as Jeremy picked up the body. She stepped back to allow him to pass, only raising an eyebrow as he glared at her. “My manicure is probably worth more than your car.” she told him with ice in her tone. She followed him begrudgingly, her eyes alert as she scoured the forest around them. Who knew if their dead friend had other friends as well? When they came to the cemetery, Rebekah couldn’t help but feel unnerved as the dead lay around her. “Who’d come here anyway?” she muttered, turning her head away from the tombstones.
She raised an eyebrow at him as he picked up two shovels and brought them back, holding out one to her. “You’re not serious.” she said, eyeing him and the shovel. “You’d think saving you from getting your throat ripped out would be enough to get me out of manual labor.” she muttered bitterly, taking the shovel from him and walking over to an unearthed piece of land, sticking her shovel in the earth.
Protection Is A Privilege (Closed Para)
Jeremy brushed past her with a roll of his eyes, his crossbow resting at his side. The last thing he wanted to do was thank her, but despite what he wanted to believe, she had saved his life. He propped his bow up against a tree, leaning down to rifle through the vampires pockets in an attempt to figure out who he was.
“Thank you,” he mumbled, avoiding her eyes.
He knew admitting she had saved his life would only inflate her ego, so he didn’t bother, instead standing when he came up with nothing from the dead vampire.
“Where do we bury him? We can’t exactly dig up a plot in the cemetary.”
She clenched her jaw as he brushed past her. The nerve of him. She stuffed her hands in her pockets, a very human action as she didn’t get cold. She titled her head at him, her ears catching the mumbled words of gratitude that rolled off of his lips. “Better. Not the Elena Gilbert thank you I was expecting, but I guess there is a reason they call you the little Gilbert.” She knew full well she was teasing. It was her entertainment for the night seeing as she was stuck with him for the next few hours dealing with a dead vampire she could care less about. “What on Earth are you doing?” she asked him as she watched him rifle through the dead man’s pockets.
Rebekah sighed and looked around the forest a bit, trying to think of a location to bury the body. “Somewhere deeper in the woods, we’re too close to town. With all the deaths in this town, another body in the ground won’t make a difference.”
Protection Is A Privilege (Closed Para)
Half convinced he could reach the stake in his pocket, Jeremy started to move his hand toward the inside of his jacket, lightheadedness starting to set in. Then suddenly the hand was gone and he fell to the ground, gasping and coughing for air. He looked to the right and gritted his teeth in frustration, slamming his palm against the ground.
“Dammit Rebekah I had him!” he exclaimed angrily.
He pushed himself to his feet, brushing the dirt and leaves away before he kneeled down and picked up his crossbow, looking over every inch to make sure it hadn’t been damaged. Once he was sure it was safe and sound, he stood, glaring back at Rebekah.
“I can handle myself out here you know.”
Rebekah rolled her eyes at him as he stood, crossing her arms over her chest. Typical. What was it about men and wanting to do everything themselves. She looked down to the dead body, pushing it with her boot slightly as she sighed and turned to look at the boy.
“I’m sure. The sound of him crushing your throat was very convincing.” she told him. “Stop pouting, we have to bury the body.”
She watched him gaze at him crossbow for a second, rolling her eyes once more. Her eyes caught onto his tattooed hand as it gripped the weapon. In the moonlight, it looked so much more distinct, so much more menacing. As if it weren’t already, the Hunter’s Mark meant nothing but bad tidings for her kind and she had the lovely emotional scars to prove it.
“I might hate your sister, but at least she has the common courtesy to say “thank you” when someone saves their life.”
