The Shortest Distance Between Two Points Is A Curve
by Sandrine Shaw
When Stefan returns to Mystic Falls, almost half a year after he's left, it's on Klaus's bidding, with Klaus right in tow, making sure that everyone knows that this is not a happy homecoming. It's punishment, pure and simple, except there's nothing pure about it and it's complicated and devious.
Let them see what you have become, Klaus whispers into Stefan's ear like a little devil perched on his shoulder. See how they look at you. They're disgusted with you.
He makes himself at home in the boarding house with an infuriating familiarity, as if he owns the place and everyone else is his guest, allowed to be here only on his good will.
Damon tries to send Elena away, but Elena will have none of it. "I'll handle it," he says with the insistent sort of intensity that he'd use if he was compelling her. "Go home and stay there as long as he's here."
"Forget it," she hisses back. "The last time I let either of you alone with him, Stefan disappeared for five months. I'm not gonna let that happen again. I'm staying."
Klaus watches the exchange with unconcealed amusement while Stefan remains as far away from either of them as possible, refusing to meet anyone's gaze. He looks as if he'd rather be anywhere but here, and Elena's decision to stick around is clearly making him more uncomfortable, not less. Elena feels her heart go out to him, but she refuses to budge. This is her home. These are her friends, her family, the people she loves. She's not going to abandon them for Klaus to wreak havoc on them all over again.
A sleek red sports car is parked on the school grounds when Elena's classes for the day are finished. Casually leaning against the passenger door, there's Klaus, wearing sunglasses and a tight grey t-shirt. Some of the girls giggle and flirt and make gooey eyes at him as they walk by, clearly thinking hot college boy and not evil vampire psychopathas they should. Elena sets her jaw and pretends to ignore him when he steps forward and blocks her path.
"Just the girl I was waiting for. Come on, sweetheart, I'll give you a lift home."
She grinds her teeth, forcing herself to uphold at least a veneer of politeness in public. "No, thank you. I'd rather walk."
His smile doesn't waver, but there's steel in his voice when he repeats his offer-slash-order. "I don't think so. Get in the car."
"Or what?" she snaps. "You'll kill my aunt and turn my boyfriend into a blood addict who can barely be in the same room with me? Oh, wait. You already did that."
She starts walking away from him, half-expecting him to reach out and grab her, but he doesn't make a move to stop her. Instead, he gets into the car and drives at walking pace next to her.
It's a long way to the boarding house, uncomfortably long by foot and impossibly long if you're wearing heels. She takes her shoes off at half-distance because her toes hurt too much and her soles feel sore and sticky.
"Feel free to get in the car anytime," Klaus taunts, amusement curling around his words. They both know how childish her little act of rebellion is, not unlike that time when he held out his hand to her and she refused to take it, but it's all she has.
She throws her shoes through the open passenger window onto the seat and keeps walking.
Elena knows that Damon is trying to help Stefan deal with his addiction, but she can't see any progress. Stefan still flinches away when she enters a room, he still keeps looking at her with a mixture of shame and hunger, and he still disappears for days and comes back with his mouth and clothes blood-stained. Knowing that there's nothing she can do, that her mere presence is in fact a source of Stefan's discomfort is the worst; it's frustrating and painful, and she sometimes finds herself regretting her decision to stay at the boarding house.
One afternoon, as she's bent over a chemistry book to get some homework done, Damon slips into what she's come to think of as her room during these last couple of weeks.
"I'm going to try something with Stefan. Can you stay out of the way for the rest of the day? Having you around would be sort of counter-productive, if you know what I mean." He offers her a grin, but it's a hollow gesture without any genuine amusement.
She gathers her stuff and leaves, but she's barely out of the door when she all but slams into Klaus. "In a rush, my dear?"
"None of your business," she snaps before she think better of it. The realization that she cannot possibly let Klaus go inside because he's hardly going to stand by and watch Damon help Stefan getting his bloodlust under control only hits her when Klaus turns away from her and reaches for the doorknob. Elena starts talking without really thinking about what she's saying, blindly fumbling for damage control. "I'm sorry, that was rude. I just-I needed to get out of there for a while. It feels like the walls are closing in on me. I'm headed to the grill. Do you want to come along?"
She cringes at her own words, the clumsily obvious way she's trying to lure Klaus away, and when he turns to look at her with his eyebrows raised, she can't quite bring herself to hold his questioning gaze.
"Never mind," she says. "That was stupid."
But his lips stretch into a slow smile. "Actually, why not? It's not like I have anything better to do."
Elena doesn't know whether to be relieved or terrified.
It's odd, sitting next to him at the bar, like old friends sharing an uncomfortable reunion or new acquaintances on an awkward first date. Neither is even remotely true, Elena tells herself, but it's what she assumes others see when they look at them.
Klaus compels the waitress when he orders drinks and Elena elbows him in the side and tells him, "Play nice" until he humors her and actually pays for his order with amused indulgence.
"So, Elena, tell me. How is it you're still alive and human? I distinctly remember that you were pretty dead after I drained you. You quite literally died in my arms. I think there was a song about that."
She presses her lips together and tells herself that it would be unwise to let him goad her into hitting him. "Damon had fed me his blood before the ritual and Bonnie did some kind of spell to prevent me from turning into a vampire." She makes it sound casual and easy, like Damon didn't almost lose her over it, like no-one died so that she could live.
But maybe some of her tension bleeds through the words, because Klaus watches her from the side with his eyes narrowed and his expression speculative. "I thought my dear brother might have supplied an easier way for you to stay alive."
"He did. Damon just didn't want to take the risk," she says shortly, refusing to elaborate and turning the question around instead. "Why wouldn't you let Elijah use it on Katherine?"
She's asking both out of genuine curiosity and because she's hoping to unsettle him, but he doesn't seem particularly surprised by her knowledge. "Ah, I see my brother chose to let you in on the sordid details of our past. A regular Scheherazade, isn't he, dear old Elijah?"
Klaus chuckles. "Did he tell you about sweet, nave Katerina, who didn't know what she was getting into when she came to us like a moth drawn to the flame, and how we turned her into the bitch she is now? Let me tell you a secret about Katerina, love: there was never anything sweet and nave about her. She spins her web of lies and flutters those big dark Petrova eyes until people fall over themselves to do what she wants."
He reaches out and cups Elena's face, forcing her to turn and look at him. His grip is hard enough to leave bruises and she tries to jerk away futilely. He doesn't let go of her until she gives up struggling. "It never worked on me."
I'm not Katherine, she wants to tell him, but he's not finished yet.
"Do you know why Stefan is here? Why I brought him back?"
When it becomes clear that it's not a rhetorical question and he's actually waiting for her to supply an answer, she shrugs. "I assumed it was some twisted form of punishment."
Klaus smiles. "Quite so. You see, your precious little boyfriend, he did everything I asked of him. He ripped out throats and annihilated entire villages. He followed me wherever I went, he killed whoever I told him to. But when we tracked down Katerina and I told him to rip her heart out, he wouldn't. Such a curious act of rebellion, don't you think?"
Elena feels physically sick, unable to stop imagining Stefan sinking his fangs into someone's neck and feeding until they're dead weight in his arms. It's not like she hadn't been aware of what he was capable of, or that she didn't know what he'd been up to when Klaus took him away, but it's different knowing and having Klaus tell her like that.
She reaches for the drink the waitress placed in front of her and downs it, trying to focus on the burn of the alcohol instead of the mental images in her head.
She wants to ask Klaus why he did this to Stefan, to her, to all of them, but she doubts he'll give her an answer that will satisfy her, so she turns her curiosity elsewhere instead. "What happened to her, then? To Katherine?"
"She took the opportunity to slip away. She's very good at survival, as you may have noticed already." He smiles almost fondly as he takes a sip of his drink. "When this world is ending, she'll probably be the last one standing. Katerina, and a bunch of cockroaches."
"And you," Elena can't resist adding, and Klaus laughs. It's a surprisingly pleasant sound, as if her suggestion genuinely amused him and the bitterness in it doesn't faze him at all.
"And me, of course."
There's something else that she's burning to ask, something she could never figure out how to ask Elijah, and Klaus seems in a good enough mood that she might actually get an answer out of him. "Katherine- Katerina. Was she like the first one?"
Elena doesn't know anything about the original Petrova if she even was a Petrova by name. She thinks her death must have been linked to the moonstone curse in some way, but she could be wrong. It's ancient history and it shouldn't matter, but there's a part of Elena that'll always be curious about those women who bore her face.
Perhaps she shouldn't have asked, though, because Klaus's expression becomes hard and his voice momentarily loses its trademark nonchalance. "No, she wasn't."
Even though she wants to, Elena doesn't dare to ask, "Am I anything like her?"and instead settles on an innocuous, "What was her name?"
"It hardly matters. She died a long time ago."
His features have already lost their edge and his tone is smooth, if firm enough to stop her from continuing her line of questioning.
"So, do you think Damon has finished whatever plan he was working on to help his dear baby brother sober up? Or were you going to sacrifice yourself and continue putting up a distraction for the rest of the night? Not that I would mind, dear. I'm just asking." Klaus gives her a deliberate once-over that makes her feel exposed and filthy.
She flushes crimson under his stare, and she's not sure if it's his insinuations or the fact that he knew all along what she was doing that's embarrassing her the most.
He slips off the bar stool and holds out his hand to her. This time, she takes it, calming the guilty voice in her head by rationalizing that she's had too much to drink and she's unsteady on her feet. Besides, it wouldn't pay to antagonize him any further, not tonight.
They make it back to the boarding house in silence. She feels irrationally guilty for playing him, even if she was mostly unsuccessful.
"I'm sorry," she bites out when they've reached the doorstep.
He turns to her with a smile and lifts her hand to his lips. When she freezes, his smile grows, but all he does is press a fleeting kiss to the back of her hand. "Never mind, love. No harm, no foul. I daresay getting to enjoy your company was worth it."
Elena doesn't know what to say. She doesn't want to lie and tell him she enjoyed their afternoon, but she didn't hate it as much she expected either. She swallows. "Thank you. For answering my questions."
She doesn't pull away her hand, waiting until he drops it when he opens the door. From inside, Damon's and Stefan's soft voices are carrying over. They sound calm, unagitated, and Elena dares to hope. It must be reflecting on her face, because she feels Klaus's eyes on her, watching her intently. She returns his gaze with a calmness she doesn't feel.
"Maria," he suddenly says, apropos of nothing and still they both know who he's talking about. "Her name was Maria. And since you were obviously going to ask no, you're nothing like her. That's why you're alive and she is dead."
Elena swallows. He makes it sound like that's a bad thing, and she absurdly feels the need to defend herself. "I'm not like Katherine either."
He looks at her for a long moment. "I know."
Elena is so used to her life being hit by one supernatural disaster after another that she's forgotten that there are dangers out there that have nothing to do with vampires and werewolves and witches; that just because their lives might not be normal doesn't mean normal threats can't harm them.
Later, she'll barely remember anything. She remembers the phone call, rushing out to drive to her house. She remembers the flames painting the sky orange and the smoke stinging her eyes. She remembers Damon's arms around her, holding her back when she tried to run towards the house.
She doesn't remember screaming at him and scratching him and trying to break free, but she remembers yelling Jeremy's name over and over again.
Then there's Stefan offering to go inside and get Jeremy, and Damon pulls him back as well and yells at him, "Don't be stupid, you'll burst into flames before you even make it up the stairs."
She remembers hating Damon right then more than she ever hated him before, even though looking back, she knows that he was right, that he wasn't doing anything but protect her and Stefan from dying a pointless death.
She doesn't know when Klaus turned up. If he followed them, or if he randomly came by, or if he smelled the fire in the air and got curious. If he took a look at her slumped, crying form in Damon's arms before making the choice to walk calmly through the flames like they were but an illusion.
All Elena remembers is that suddenly Damon was easing his hold of her and when she broke away and staggered forward, she saw Klaus putting Jeremy's body down in the grass.
She stumbled down next to her brother, who was coughing like he wanted to spit his lungs out, but he was alive, and she was hugging him to her chest and crying and laughing hysterically at the same time.
Her eyes flickered up to Klaus, who was standing a few feet away watching the scene with a blank expression. The left sleeve of his shirt had caught fire, and he slapped the flames away impatiently, like swatting an annoying insect. It's that absurd little detail in the midst of all the chaos and the echoes of fear and the overwhelming relief that she's memorized.
She doesn't remember mouthing a quiet thank youat Klaus. But he does.
Slowly, surely, things return to normal, or whatever passes for normal in Elena's life.
Stefan drinks blood bags instead of people. Damon's ever-present smirks and innuendo feel more genuine instead of perfunctory. Jeremy stopped coughing and starts to get annoyed by her constant fussing.
Klaus is still around: a looming, unremovable presence in the boarding house. She's growing used to it. She's stopped jumping when he suddenly appears in the room while she's curled up on the couch with a book or when she's in the kitchen rummaging around in the ever-empty fridge, and she's not sure if that's a good or a bad thing. Familiarity has been replacing fear, and Elena worries that it'll make her careless. Part of her is still waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Klaus to reveal some evil scheme that will send her life toppling over once more. Every day it doesn't happen, though, she finds herself growing a little less wary and a little more comfortable in his presence, and it scares the hell out of her.
That's why she corners him one day in his room, why she crosses her arms over her chest and asks the question that's been burning in her mind for weeks now. "Why are you still here? Is this some part of a secret nefarious plan, or do you just not have anything better to do than play house with us?"
She half-expects him to get angry at her presumptuousness to question his motives, but his response is glib and teasing.
"Are you saying you want me to get lost? You wound me, my dear." He makes a show of clutching his hand over his heart, chuckling when she rolls her eyes at him.
"I didn't say that. It's not that-" She stops herself when she realizes that it might sound too much like she genuinely wants him here. She doesn't. Just because she's getting used to him being here doesn't mean she's enjoying his company or has forgotten who he is and what he has done. Taking a deep breath, she presses on. "I just need to know what you want."
Klaus offers her a toothy grin, disarmingly charming and dangerous all at once.
"You, of course," he tells her with a shocking matter-of-factness, as if he was talking about the weather.
His words resonate low in her stomach, and she tells herself that it's only fear that's making her light-headed. Her head is swimming and her heart is beating in her throat, but she clings to every shred of rationality to keep her voice steady. "That doesn't explain why you're staying. You could have forced me to come to you any time, like you did with Stefan."
In a flash, he's behind her, his face brushing her hair as he leans over her shoulder, dangerously close to her carotid artery. She freezes and her breath stops for a second as she expects the sharp sting of his teeth. He doesn't make a move to bite her, though; he only leans close to whisper in her ear. "Sure. But where's the fun in that? It's so much more interesting like this."
And just like that, he's gone, only empty air around her and a room full of unanswered questions and answers she wasn't ready for.
For a while, she and Stefan try to make it work, but they quickly learn that there are things you cannot come back from. For Stefan, it's the blood and the killing. For Elena, it's kissing Damon. There's too much guilt piled up between them, an impenetrable wall of what ifs and wrong turns.
The irony is that now that Damon could make his move, he doesn't, and while Elena isn't sure if it's because he doesn't dare to or if he simply doesn't want to, she finds herself absurdly relieved by it. The awkwardness between them dissipates gradually, but even when Damon starts teasing her and flirting again, it's more like an old comfortable habit he's picking up instead of a genuine declaration of intent.
Where before(before the ritual, before Stefan left, before Damon almost died, before Klaus) she often felt like a marionette attached to strings, endlessly pulled back and forth between Stefan and Damon, it seems like the strings are cut now. Or maybe there's just no one holding them anymore.
It should make her feel free, but it doesn't. It feels like she's frozen in position, holding her breath and waiting for someone to pick up the strings and pull her in again.
It's already dark when she returns to the boarding house. Caroline is on the committee for organising senior prom and she somehow badgered Elena into helping her because, quote unquote, doing some normal teenage stuff for a change would do them both some good. And it's not like Elena doesn't see her point, even though it's a little hard to take color patterns of decorations seriously when your life resolves around keeping your friends alive and trying to stay on top of the latest vampire war. Still, Elena enjoyed losing herself in mindless little details for a few hours.
On her way home, though, she feels as if someone's watching her, the pricking, unmistakable weight of someone's eyes following her every motion. She hastens her steps, quicker and quicker until she almost breaks into a run. And then, suddenly, she grinds into a halt when it's blocking her way: a wolf, pale brown and huge, standing a good twenty feet away from her, watching her with glowing eyes.
Elena feels herself breaking into a cold sweat. She's rooted to the spot, torn between the desire to run and the knowledge that fast movements might get her killed.
It's not a full moon. Elena doesn't know if that makes the situation better or worse.
And then the wolf starts moving towards her, slowly but oh so surely closing the distance between them. Elena makes no conscious decision to back away; her body moves on its own accord, stepping backwards as the wolf comes closer. One step. Two. Three.
The wolf growls, and it sounds like a warning. Elena forces herself to stop, to stand perfectly still while the beast approaches until it halts right in front of her.
Elena's heart is beating like thunder. She can't remember the last time she felt fear this sharp and acute (except she can; she remembers fiery circles on the ground and teeth at her throat).
The wolf leans in and-
Nuzzles her bare calf. The fur is warm and coarse on her skin, and she can feel its breath brushing against her. It's instinct rather than conscious decision that makes her reach out and pet the creature. It growls again, except this time it sounds pleased instead of dangerous, and when it turns its head to lick at her hand, it seems more like an overlarge playful puppy than anything else. Her fear dissipating, Elena crouches down next to it.
"You just want to play, don't you? You scared me, big boy," she tells the wolf conversationally while letting her hand slide down its back. For a moment, she swears she sees something akin to amusement gleam in its eyes, almost as if it understood her words- and just like that, she suddenly knows.
"Klaus," she says flatly, resigned.
When the wolf flashes his teeth at her, it's almost like a grin.
"I should have known." She doesn't know why, but she's upset. Not because he tricked her, no. But she rather liked the idea of a tame wolf out there who'd let her pet him and would follow her home. Except, of course, she knows all too well that there's nothing tame about Klaus.
There's a gentle purring sound, and it takes her a moment to realise that it's coming from the creature that's now stretched out in the grass next to her, with her fingers still buried in his fur, absent-mindedly drawing gentle circles.
Just as she's about to snatch her hand away, he puts his face in her lap and closes his eyes contentedly, and she becomes acutely aware that she's never before seen Klaus so relaxed. Reluctant to break the moment, she continues petting the thick fur.
"I don't know what to do with you," she admits softly after a long stretch of silence. She isn't sure if the wolf understands the words, but something in the way he looks at her tells her he does.
She pushes herself off the ground and gets to her feet, holding her hand out to him. "Come on. Let's go home."
The wolf stays by her side until they reach the boarding house, and when he disappears into the woods after briefly nuzzling her hand again, she feels oddly bereft.
He's been watching her all morning, his unnervingly sharp blue-eyed gaze following her every movement until she's fidgeting under his stare. "Stop that," Elena says, trying to hide her apprehension behind a stern tone.
Smirking, he feigns innocence. "I have no idea what you mean, sweetheart."
"Why do you keep looking at me like that?"
"The better to see you, my dear," he deadpans, amusement written all over his features. He bares his teeth at her, more playful than anything else, and she can't help laughing. He may be the big bad wolf and no one knows better than her how bad he can get but at moments like this when he's relaxed and mischievous it's hard to imagine the sort of evil he's capable of.
"You're impossible," she tells him, and her voice is still vibrating with laughter.
His smile stretches and turns softer, an actual smile instead of the ever-present smirk, and despite her best intentions she finds herself returning it.
She visits Jenna's grave twice a week.
Every time she's there, she feels a little more guilty, a little more uncomfortable and defensive because Jenna is rotting in a coffin six feet under while Elena is playing house with the man who killed her. It was okay at the beginning, when Elena didn't have another choice. But she's only too well aware of the way her attitude towards Klaus's presence is changing: how rejection turned into acceptance and then steadily into habit and familiarity. How every day, she hates having him around a little less.
She misses Jenna so much, and she hates feeling like she's disrespecting her memory.
"I'm sorry," she whispers quietly through the haze of tears as she arranges the pale roses she brought.
There's a rustle of leaves behind her, and when she turns her head, she spots the familiar form of the wolf between the trees. The wave of hatred she feels is sudden and new, and she welcomes it because she can't help thinking that this is how she shouldfeel about Klaus.
"Go away," she yells. She doesn't want him here, not anywhere near Jenna's grave. Right this moment, she just wants him gone. From the graveyard, from this town, from her life.
The wolf doesn't move, as if he hadn't heard her. He just keeps looking at her with those piercing yellow eyes until Elena just can't take it anymore and the rage and the pain and the guilt become too much to bear.
"Go. Away!" She blindly grabs at a stone from the meadow and throws it at him. It hits him in the back and he jumps back with a howl. He bares his teeth at her and takes a couple of steps towards her with anger glowing in his eyes, and for a wild moment she thinks, That's it. He's gonna tear my throat out.
She looks him in the eyes and waits for an attack, her jaw stubbornly set and her hands clenched so tightly into fists that her nails leave bloody imprints on her palms.
His teeth look impossibly sharp and deadly, glistening with saliva.
He snarls viciously at her before he suddenly turns and sprints off into the distance. Elena releases the breath she didn't know she was holding. As the adrenaline ebbs away, the tears come back.
She stays out at the graveyard until the sky turns dark and the wind grows biting, and when she leaves she doesn't really feel any more at peace with herself than she did before.
At the boarding house, she seeks out Klaus in the library, hesitating at the door when he doesn't acknowledge her presence. She watches him quietly for a few moments before she gathers enough courage to speak.
"I'm sorry. For throwing the stone at you. That was out of line."
Another man, a better man, would tell her, No, it wasn't, you were grieving and I was intruding and I'm sorry about Jenna, but she harbors no illusions about Klaus, and it doesn't surprise her when he only shrugs and says, "Don't worry about it, sweetheart. It's not like you could actually harm me."
He doesn't even look at her when he speaks, and his tone is even and smoothly conversational. As if it didn't matter at all. As if he hadn't been ready to kill her for daring to attack him.
But as much as he's acting like nothing can ruffle his composure, she knows that he was angry that afternoon. She knows that the choice to go against his instincts and to not make her pay for her fit of rage was a deliberate one, and she tries very hard not to think about what that means.
"Oh, come on, Elena, you can't nottake me to the prom. Stefan won't ever be as good a dancer as I am. He just doesn't have the moves." Damon is just being Damon. Elena doesn't really think that he genuinely expects her to choose him as her prom date, but as always with him, it's better not to give him an inch or he'll take a mile and then some.
She rolls her eyes at him. "That's okay. I wasn't planning on taking Stefan either, so I'm not going to suffer much from his tragic lack of dancing skills."
Damon scoffs, acting as if she'd broken some sacred rule by rejecting not only one but both Salvatore brothers and personally offended him in the process. "That's ridiculous. You can't turn both of us down. Who are you going to take? Klaus?"
"I just might."
Catching Damon off-guard is not a feat easily achieved, and Elena takes devilish pleasure in the way shock flickers over his expression at her suggestion. She's only riling him up, of course. There's no way she's going to go to any sort of school ball with Klaus, let alone her prom.
"Oh, come on. You're kidding, right?" Damon asks, but he doesn't sound so sure and she enjoys herself a little too much.
"Maybe. Or maybe not." She shrugs and returns her attention to the book in her lap, nonchalantly dismissing him. It's only when she hears him leave and the door shut behind him that she allows herself to chuckle softly.
No sooner is Damon out of sight than the couch suddenly dips beside her and Klaus is right there next to her. She jumps at his unexpected presence, and the tome slides from her lap and falls down.
"So," Klaus starts, ominously. He stretches the moment out for maximum effect before breaking into a grin."I hear I'm your prom date. I must say, I'm very flattered, my love."
"Do you have to do that?" She stoops down to retrieve the book from the floor, scowling when she realizes that the pages are creased from the fall. "And I'm not going to prom with you. I'm going with Matt, actually. As friends."
She doesn't know why she tells him that, why she feels the need to explain. It's not like she ever genuinely considered going with him, and she knows that he's well aware that it was nothing more than a joke at Damon's expense. She doesn't owe him the truth any more than she owed Damon, but for some reason he has a talent for putting her on the defensive.
The smile playing around the corners of Klaus's mouth is taunting. "Poor confused little doppelganger. You're living in a house with three vampires and you choose to dance with the one human boy you're friends with. Doesn't it ever get boring living in denial about the normal life you think you want?"
His words hit a little too close to home, and once again she hates how easily he can read her. Sometimes, she wonders if it's her fault for wearing her heart on the sleeve or if he just had a lot of practice dealing with the Petrova women, if it's another subtle part of the doppelganger curse.
"Go to hell," she tells him, uncreatively.
He chuckles and saunters off leisurely, but for once she doesn't want to let him go like this.
"I'm going with Matt because I can go to prom with him and notchoose him as anything but my date for the night. Maybe you're right and he's the safe choice, but that's not because he's a human, it's because he's my friend. This is my prom night, and I'm only going to have one." She forestalls his protest before it comes, because she knows what he'll say. This is not the time to discuss her 'team mortality' stance. "Or maybe I'll have more, whatever. But there'll be only one that counts, and I want to enjoy it. I don't want to spend the entire night second-guessing myself and worrying if I made the wrong choice, so I'm not making a choice."
She sets her jaw and meets his gaze head on. For a moment, his expression is thoughtful, speculative. Then his lips twitch into a lopsided grin.
"Fair enough," he says, and this new-found compliance of his should have made her instantly wary, but she's too busy being relieved that he's letting her have this. Except then he adds, "Then go and have fun with Matt, sweetheart, but know that he'll never make you feel like this."
Before she can try to make sense of the statement, Klaus has crossed the room in a flash. One moment he's at the door, the next he's right in front of her, and his hand is under her chin tilting her head up. He doesn't give her any time to process what's happening before he kisses her, hard and demanding, all pent up passion and the promise of more to come. There's none of the tentativeness first kisses usually have, no cautious negotiation of boundaries, just the unyielding force of Klaus's desire. His tongue pries her mouth open, his blunt teeth scrape over her lips, and he won't let up until she's thoroughly out of breath.
When he breaks away, she finds herself blindly following his mouth with hers until a gentle but insistent finger against her lips stops her.
Klaus smiles again, that same old arrogant smirk, but Elena is glad to see that his eyes are a little unfocused and his tongue keeps darting out to wet his lips.
"You can dance with Matt all you want, my dear. You can talk about the choices you will or won't make. But the truth is, you're mine. And we both know it."
He stands and is out of the room before she has the chance to even think of a suitable reply.
"Go to hell," she repeats, breathlessly yelling the words after him and trusting that he'll hear them.
Late at night, when Elena can't sleep and her hand slides under the covers and between her legs, she absolutely does not think of Klaus.
Ever.
(It's one of the few things she allows herself to lie about. Even and especially to herself.)
Caroline made sure that everything about prom night is perfect: the decorations, the lighting, the music, the food. But secretly, Elena thinks, no one is more surprised than Caroline herself when for once no big supernatural hijinks wreak havoc on the party. It may have been the most normal, peaceful kind of party Elena attended since she was sixteen. For once, the world isn't ending. No one dies, and the only one who gets hurt is Thomas Winston who had too much of the spiked punch and broke his ankle falling down the stairs.
Elena enjoys herself. She laughs with her friends and sips her punch and lets Matt twirl her around on the dance floor like they're kids: innocent and carefree and playful. And if she feels a little lonely in Matt's arms among all the happy couples around them, then, well, no one ever has to know about it.
Except, maybe Matt knows her a little better than she expected after all this time.
"Do you wish you were here with someone else?" he asks her solemnly when they're slow-dancing to some love song from the 80's.
She contemplates the question and realizes that it's too complicated to answer truthfully, so she just tightens her arms around his neck and says, "Not really. I mean, I wanted this night to be..."
Her voice trails off. She can't think of a good way to finish that sentence.
"Normal?" he supplies for her, and she smiles.
"Yeah, that was the word I was looking for."
They dance in silence for a minute until Elena gathers enough courage to ask, "Do you? Wish you'd taken someone else, I mean."
"There's this girl. Danielle. She's a waitress at the grill. The redhead, I think you've seen her? I like her a lot. I think she likes me too. But she doesn't like parties much. Social gatherings are not really her thing."
Matt keeps talking about Danielle and Elena doesn't discourage him and she doesn't remark on the fact that Danielle sounds like the polar opposite of Caroline: down-to-earth and quiet and unselfconscious. Normal. Human.
Elena doesn't blame Matt. If anything, she's a little envious, but at the same time she realizes for the first time that she and Matt have never been more different than they are now.
Across the dance floor, Caroline kisses Tyler, and when Elena is watching them she feels a sharp tug of somethingat her heart, an uncomfortable mix of jealousy and regret and longing. It flares up like a spurt of flame, hot and searing and impossible to extinguish, staying with Elena all the way home where Matt drops her off with a hug and the soft press of lips to her forehead.
It's dark inside. Elena doesn't bother to reach for the light switch. She lets the door fall shut behind herself and unceremoniously drops her clutch and her jacket on the couch as she crosses the living room. She walks up the stairs in the dark, never missing one, and she feels like she's on autopilot, letting her feet carry her without giving her mind a chance to stop her.
The door to Klaus's room is shut but unlocked, and she enters without knocking. It would be pitch black inside if it weren't for the light of the waning moon falling through the windows. Klaus is stretched out on the bed, resting or contemplating world domination or doing whatever he does when he's not haunting her to push her buttons.
When she comes in, he looks up and smirks. "Back home already, love? Didn't Matt-"
Elena doesn't wait for whatever taunt is on his lips. She reaches behind herself and unzips her dress, letting it slide to the floor until it pools around her feet. In her underwear, she steps out of the dress and kicks off her heels as she crosses the room. She can't see much in the dim light, but she knows his night vision is perfect. She knows he can see her, can feel him watching her, and when his words momentarily die on his tongue, she can't help feeling a little triumphant at being able to catch him off-guard.
When he finds his voice again, it's a little rougher than usual, a bit deeper, even if his tone is deliberately conversational. "I must say, I didn't see this coming."
"I thought this was the objective of your little game."
"Naturally. I just expected to have to push a little more."
"I'm getting tired of being pushed. I think it's time I do some pushing of my own." She climbs into his lap and shivers when his hands settle on her hips.
One of his hands cradles her chin and tilts her head up until she meets his gaze. There's a trace of yellow in the pale blue of his eyes.
"You've done nothing but push back since the first moment I met you, Elena," he says. She can tell that he wants it to come out flippant, but there's an unfamiliar seriousness to this tone that gives the words the weight of an admission. She thinks it's the first time hes called her by her name and not by some stupid condescending pet name, and she marvels at how much more intimate it feels to hear 'Elena' rolling from his tongue instead of 'sweetheart' or 'my love'.
She's tempted to ask if that's a good or a bad thing, but she's tired of talking. She's tired of the push and pull, of the way he keeps playing her and she's always fighting back. She's tired of the guilt and the warring desires that pull her apart. She leans forward and kisses him, boldly and without hesitation, because if she's doing this than she might as well do it properly.
His lips open easily under her mouth and the slide of his tongue against hers is searing hot and deliciously playful. For a moment, he lets her have the upper hand and direct the kiss. His fingers curl against the stretch of naked skin above her panties, against the side of her neck. She leans into the touch and whimpers softly against his lips. And then, in a flash, his hold tightens and he spins them around so quickly that the vertigo makes her light-headed. His body stretches out on top of her, all hard lines and firm muscle, and she knows he could crush her like an insect if he wanted to. It should scare her, but it doesn't, it only makes the heat curl harder in her stomach, and the force of her longing hits her so hard that it almost takes her breath away.
His hands shred her underwear as if it's made of paper. She arches up against him as he pushes into her, her fingernails leaving scratches down his back that she knows will heal before they even have the chance to sting, and for a glorious long moment when it's nothing but the two of them moving together in the near dark of his bedroom she feels strangely, paradoxically free: free of her friends' expectations, free of her own guilt, free of the weight of her destiny, free of her conflicting hopes for the future.
It's all touch and feel and breathe and taste, and her mind stays blissfully blank.
"So, how about breakfast in bed."
She thinks fresh orange juice and croissants, and maybe one of those little chocolate muffins Caroline sometimes makes despite the fact that food means nothing to her now. It takes Elena a moment too long to realize that this is not what Klaus has in mind. She freezes and pulls away from him. "Forget it."
"Come on, love. It wouldn't hurt a bit. I promise to make it good for you."
The lopsided grin on his face is mischievous and dirtily suggestive.
The worst thing is, she knows he's telling the truth. Even that night of the ritual, his bite wasn't the painful sort of experience she's used to from the times Damon or Stefan fed from here. She's been wondering if it's a Klaus thing, or an original thing (Elijah never bit her, so she has no basis for comparison), or if biting someone without inflicting pain is the sort of trick any vampire can master after a couple of centuries of practice. But just because she knows that it might not hurt and that Klaus probably could even make it feel pleasant if he set his mind to it, it doesn't mean that she's going to let him put his fangs anywhere near her throat. Even if the idea secretly thrills her a little and makes her tingle with something that's not quite fear.
"I said no, Klaus." Her voice is strong and resolute and doesn't waver. Years of dealing with Damon has made her a master of sounding firm when she's anything but.
He shrugs, as if it means nothing to him either way. "Suit yourself."
Jeremy stages an intervention, and he brings Damon along because he seems under the impression that his presence will help get Elena to listen.
"He killed Jenna, Elena," Jeremy points out, as if that's newsto her. As if she hadn't been there to see it happening before her eyes. As if she wasn't struggling with the memories and the weight of the guilt ever since Klaus came back into her life and made himself at home.
Elena doesn't enjoy getting a lecture on this from Jeremy of all people. "Damon killed you, Jer. That evidently doesn't seem to stop you from hanging out with him."
Damon looks like he wants to protest, but Jeremy is quicker. "I'm not sleeping with him."
"Well, there was that one time when-" Damon trails off when both Jeremy's and Elena's heads snap around to him.
"You're not helping," Jeremy hisses at him, and Elena doesn't know whether to be outraged or amused. She kind of wants to ask for details but figures that if she wants her brother and Damon to stay out of her love life, she owes them the same courtesy, no matter how much the curiosity eats at her.
"Anyway, boys. That was fun. Let's not do it again."
She pushes herself up and turns to leave, but Damon is suddenly blocking her path. She crosses her arms and waits for him to step aside, but he doesn't move.
"Much as it pains me to say, Elena, Junior there is right. Klaus is dangerous. You know that better than anyone. You shouldn't even be in the same house with him, let alone in his bed."
It's not that Damon is wrong. It's just that Elena can't stand his condescending tone and his fucking hypocrisy. "Funny how you never had any moral qualms when it was about you being around me."
She receives one of the patented Damon Salvatore death glares in return, but she's mostly immune to them nowadays. She sighs. "Look, Damon, everyone I know is dangerous. You and Stefan, and Bonnie, and Tyler, and even Caroline. I'm aware of what you're capable of. I just trust you enough not to hurt me. And I trust Klaus not to hurt me. That doesn't mean that I've forgotten what he is and what he's done."
Ironically, speaking the words out loud suddenly makes Elena realize that they're true. She doestrust Klaus. Not unconditionally. She doesn't trust him not to continue plotting to become more powerful yet. She doesn't trust him not to go on killing sprees she isn't aware of. She doesn't trust him not to manipulate her and her friends until he gets his way.
But she trusts him not to hurt her on purpose. She trusts him to protect her if necessary. She trusts him to respect her boundaries, when it comes down to it.
Looking back, she doesn't know when it happened. If it was when he saved Jeremy (for her sake she's under no illusions that he cares one bit about her brother or any of her friends), or when he didn't attack her at the graveyard, or any of those small moments when he insinuated himself into her life as if he belonged. She didn't even notice that she trusted him until now when Damon forced her to defend herself, and she finds this realization as startling as it's perturbing.
Klaus doesn't ask her again to let him feed from her.
Not in so many words, that is.
But sometimes when she talks to him, his eyes dart down to her pulse point and his pupils dilate. Ever so often, he reaches out and lets his finger trail lightly down her artery until she shivers under his touch and half-unconsciously leans into it. Sometimes he lets his mouth trail down her neck purposefully, until she thinks that today is the day when he'll give in to his instincts and take without asking, and the anticipation thrills and terrifies her. But when she feels his teeth against her skin, they are blunt and the pressure is gentle, never breaking her skin and not leaving more than a pale hickey.
At first she thinks that it's just something he does intuitively, that he's drawn to her blood without meaning to. But then one night she finds herself arching up against him when his lips find that spot on her neck, and she catches the triumphant little smile twitching at his lips when he breaks away. He's doing it on purpose, she realizes. He's making her wantit, slowly and methodically.
She decides right there that she's not going to go down without a fight.
It turns into a game, after that, a playful battle of patience. He continues wearing her down, one touch at a time, while she makes a show of presenting her neck to him and giving herself tiny little cuts in the kitchen, licking the blood off when he's watching.
Eventually, something has to give. It turns out that both of them reach their breaking point at the same time.
One moment, she winces because she gave herself a paper cut while leafing through a book an honest accident, this time around and the next she finds herself slammed into the wall, all the air driven out of her as Klaus presses the length of his body against hers and seals their lips together roughly. His hands slide down her sides, lifting her up as if she weighed nothing, and she wraps her legs around his waist to support herself. As his lips trail down her neck, his fingers wiggle inside her pants, pulling her panties aside and pressing inside her. The angle is awkward, but his teasing touch drives her insane while his mouth continues worrying at the tender skin of her throat.
"Okay, fine. Do it already," she says. Or at least, it's what she wants to say. What actually comes out is a whimpered, breathless, "Please!"
She feels his canines elongating, feels them press against her skin, and if she wasn't so aroused and wild with need, she'd probably be scared. But the bite is as painless as he promised, as painless as she remembers, and when he begins to feed from her, it's as if every nerve ending in her body catches fire. He continues fucking her with his fingers, rubbing her clit with his thumb until the sensory overload drives her over the edge. She thrashes frantically against him, her nails clawing at his shoulders as she comes with a wordless cry.
Her legs slip from his waist and she slumps against him, only his arms around her holding her up. It takes her a moment to realize that his teeth have retreated and that his tongue is leisurely lapping against the punctured skin. The wound prickles softly, and she can't decide if it's unpleasant or not.
Elena feels sated. Light-headed. Content.
"I hate you," she says quietly, with conviction, when her breathing has calmed down enough for her to form words.
Klaus chuckles against her skin. "Come on, love. You can lie better than that."
She hides a smile and lets him support her weight for a little bit longer, and neither of them speaks for a long moment.
One day, she wanders into the grill and finds Stefan playing a game of pool with Klaus. It's not the weirdest scene she's seen in the last couple of years, but it still feels a little like stepping into the twilight zone. They both seem entirely too at ease for two people with their history. Elena watches as Klaus says something from the distance, she can't make out the words that makes Stefan smile.
If either of them notices her, they don't acknowledge it. She hangs around for a while before quietly slipping out of the door.
Later at the boarding house, when Klaus is still out doing whatever Klaus does when he's off alone, she confronts Stefan about it.
"I didn't know you guys were hanging out, Klaus and you. After everything." It sounds more accusatory than she means it. She's many things, but she's not a hypocrite. She's just surprised, that's all.
Stefan looks deeply uncomfortable, and Elena is almost sorry she mentioned it. "He's seen me at my worst, Elena. It's difficult to experience something like that together and not have some sort of connection afterwards."
He sounds like he's pleading with her to understand, and she's just about to tell him that it's okay, that he doesn't need to justify himself, when he adds, "That doesn't mean I approve, though."
The half-formed smile dies on her lips and her tone turns frosty. "I didn't ask you to."
Stefan doesn't need to justify himself, but neither does she, and she's so tired of being on the defensive all the time, with everyone, lately. Even if no one is quite as vocal as Damon and Jeremy about it, she can feel their disapproval so strongly that they might as well voice it.
Stefan reaches out to take her hands in his, and she almost almostpulls away. The only reason she doesn't is because there's still something oddly fragile about Stefan, and she doesn't have it in her heart to upset him deliberately.
"Hey, I know. I'm not going to give you a hard time about it. I think Damon is doing enough of that for both of us. It's really none of my business, but that doesn't mean I have to be happy about it."
"For what's worth it, I'd rather it's Klaus than Damon," he adds with a wry smile. "Though maybe that's a selfish thought."
Despite herself, she smiles. "Don't let Damon hear that."
Damon, true to form, chooses that moment to enter the room. "Don't let me hear what?"
Elena slips her hands from Stefan's grasp and schools her features into innocence as she turns to the elder Salvatore brother. "That Klaus is a much better pool player than you. Apparently, Stefan just can't win against him. And since Stefan regularly beat you"
Chuckling quietly at the outraged rant her statement provokes, Elena slips out of the room. As she turns to close the door behind herself, she meets Stefan's gaze across the room. He offers her a lopsided little grin before continuing to argue about Damon's pool skills or the lack thereof.
It almost feels like old times.
Elena still wants the same things she always wanted. She still wants to be human, to grow old, marry, have kids, live a normal life.
But then she looks at Matt and Danielle and she realizes that she can never be like that. Not anymore. It has surprisingly little to do with Klaus and whatever she feels or doesn't feel for him, and everything to do with what she's been through those past two years. There's no way to come back from learning just how to angle a stake that it pierces the heart, from disposing of bodies of friends and enemies alike, from looking at another woman who's wearing your face, from the prickling fear and spike of adrenaline when you're standing in front of someone powerful enough to tear you apart without breaking into a sweat.
She can't unknow what she does. Can't unlive her experiences. Can't change back into the person she was before the Salvatore brothers and with them all this crazy, deadly, mind-blowing world of vampires and werewolves and witches came into her life.
She's never going to be normal, and trying hard won't get her anywhere, it will only put those clueless few she dares to get close to into danger.
As she's curled up on the couch, contemplating the way her hopes for the future seem to be built on sand and fated to crumble, she suddenly feels a mouth brush against her ear.
"And what are you thinking about, sitting alone in the dark, lovely Elena? You look all doom and gloom."
She's not quite ready to discuss her thoughts with him, so she's as vague as she can be without lying. "Happy endings. I don't think there's one for me."
"Good," Klaus says, and she feels a brief, unreasonable stab of hurt before he continues. "I don't like endings, happy or otherwise."
He doesn't wait for her to reply, as if he knows that she has no reply ready, before he slips away and leaves her alone in the darkness of the room.
One day, she knows, Klaus will ask her and she'll say yes. Or, if he's in one of his more sadistic moods, he'll wait for her to ask him, because that seems to be a pattern in all their recent interaction: he may want something, but he has time on his side and is patient enough to wait until she wants it more. Either way, it'll all come down to that: his blood in her mouth, his teeth at her throat, the vast stretch of eternity ahead of her. The idea doesn't frighten her as much as it once did.
She thinks about white picket fences and normalcy and lets that dream go without much regret.
End.