Fairytales didn't usually begin or end with the knight in shining armor staking his princess.
But then again, fairytales didn't usually begin or end with two princess, either.
Rebekah decided that they defied both these cultural mores, she and Elena and together they created a whole new fairytale.
Eventually she forgave her. Elena managed to persuade her brother to let her out of that dusty coffin and once she was out she was set on ripping out Elena's throat. Alas she was Nik's precious doppelganger and revenge would have to wait and wait and wait until eventually it never came. She was angry with Elena. Furious, and hurt, and worst of all, she felt betrayed. As soon as she let her walls come down her whole world came crashing down with them.
Rebekah had never been staked by a human before, or by a crying one no less, so that her last thought as she sank to the ground with tears sliding down her cheeks was how truly odd Elena was. How truly odd, and silly, and pathetic all of it was. Nik was going to turn this human girl into a living blood bag to use at his disposal to create more hybrids, more creatures like him, more bastards of magic and nature, and here she was trying to defend herself and she was actually crying when she staked an Original vampire because she felt guilty about it. How profoundly peculiar was that?
A question that echoed in Rebekah's mind for the last few moments it was awake. And when she awoke came the answer: very. It was very, profoundly peculiar, and even a touch pitiable. She was prone to pity the girl now due to the fact that remaining on her brother's side of things was, at that time, far too difficult for her. She could forgive him many things and had forgiven him many things in the past but this, what Elena had told her just a short while before she'd been staked, this was too much.
And so the Princess Rebekah shut herself willingly away in a tall white tower and hid from everyone and everything including her brother because she was ever so sad, and being thus sad, found herself incapable of carrying on a life among anyone else.
Make that three traditions defied, then––for Bekah decided that fairytale princesses did not normally willingly imprison themselves, whether metaphorically or otherwise.
And so it came to be that Elena Gilbert, being the way Elena Gilbert was, felt compelled to redeem herself in Rebekah's eyes and sought her out. She anticipated that it would be a difficult task and she was right, but she had also anticipated that she had done it once and she could do it again, and she was right about that too, for you see, Rebekah, as Niklaus would vouch, could often be ever so predictable when she liked somebody. 'Look, I didn't want to do it, but I had to,' Elena would plead with her. 'I'm so sorry. I meant it then and I mean it now, so if you'd just give me another chance I'd like to be your friend. When was the last time you had just a normal, human friend?' to which Bekah would reply, 'Oh, Elena Gilbert, you are anything but normal.'
But she could be predictable, and she could be easily swayed when she liked someone, and so she gave Elena a second chance and it came to be that Elena was able to scale the walls of Rebekah's fortified white tower and in time, meet her within it.
So Princess Elena and Princess Rebekah fell in love, and lived happily ever after? Certainly not. Remember, they were defying convention.
Once Nik found out that his sister had affections for his precious little blood bag, the situation complicated and the fairytale found itself with a classic villain. Niklaus was unsettled about Bekah, who knew him so well, suddenly allying with Elena. He tried to hunt her down, to put her away again where she could never be found and he could never be persuaded to release her again until he was sure Elena was either dead or close to it, perhaps hundreds of years later when he would think of how to win her back. For you see, Niklaus was a jealous man, and he felt that his sister was his, that she belonged to him, and now that his doppelganger was cavorting with her that ownership felt threatened.
Rebekah assumed as much and had to skirt around the country, hiding here and there for weeks at a time before stopping back in Mystic Falls to steal a night with her princess and then leaving again before her brother could catch her. For Elena this was nothing new, as she had loved those at a distance before in both Stefan and Damon, those pretty little demon boys whose affections she now no longer desired, as she had Rebekah's. She found it ironic that she and Stefan had now shared a lover, which perhaps made it all the sweeter to dangle it in front of his stony pouting face every chance she got. She would never forget nor forgive Stefan for the pain he caused her and though she is the hero of this story she allows herself some indulgence in petty revenge from time to time. After all, before she was a hero, she was just a girl.
A girl. A girl is how she feels when she is with Rebekah, in a way that transcends any experience she has had before with any man, or any one other than her princess. A girlish innocence pervades her spirit, her soul, and alights within her the feelings of strength and courage that neither Stefan nor Damon could give her. When she and Rebekah hide away in their tall white spire, they feel like girls, like teenage girls whisked up in the tumult of a passionate youthful love free from werewolves and vampires and witches hunting them and protecting them and circling their lives. 'I feel free with her,' Elena airily explained to a moping Damon, 'and safe.' And Damon would say, 'Didn't I make you feel safe?' and Elena would say, 'Yes, but with you it was complicated, and with her it's simple. Simple, and complete, and free.'
But Damon's jealousy did not stop and neither did Niklaus's. To that end the fairytale heroes have not vanquished the villains in the hopes of a more tranquil life. They are princesses in the midst of a great war to which they and their entire world is party, and they know this but are not afraid. Good may not always win and Bekah may be away for months on end but this is not a typical fairytale and may not have a typical ending.
Infrequent text messages, phone calls, and midnight trysts was the stuff of their legend.
The distance was suffocating but it was not enough to eclipse the joy and they knew as long as the other was still breathing, each of the princesses would survive.
They were in love, that was all, and let that be the beginning and the end of their sort-of fairytale.