"Sometimes you remind me of her," he says more to himself than the girl sitting in the chair, blood slowly filling another bag. "She was selfless too. She cared too much about absolutely everything, and seeing others in peril could bring her to tears."
His voice is low, and the girl is struggling to make out his words. Klaus is sure she can't even make out half of them, but she seems to understand the point of it. "Who was she?" she asks.
Klaus stops pacing, stops packing, and just looks at her. "They didn't tell you, did they?" he asks before shaking his head. "Of course they didn't. You're compassionate like her, too. They were probably afraid you might understand."
Elena stops fighting then and Klaus finds her stillness, broken only by shallow breaths, is more disturbing than watching her fight him. When she was fighting, he could so easily see that she is no one other than Elena Gilbert.
Klaus doesn't understand why he sends the nurse away for the moment before pulling up a chair to sit facing her, and neither does he understand what makes him speak about her. He hasn't truly spoken of Tatia in hundreds of years. "Tatia was the only thing I ever wanted when I was human—the only thing I ever had, however briefly—she was never afraid of me; rather she was angry on my behalf, for she was the only person outside my family who knew how Mikael treated me. She was gentle and kind and she smiled all the time…that's the worst part about the doppelganger curse—watching her smile be directed anywhere but at me when I used to be the only one that could make her smile."
Elena's head tilts just slightly as she takes in this information and Klaus can see the question she doesn't ask in her expression. Klaus can't find it in him to tell her that Tatia died just as she will now—for her blood.
And then Elena's looking at him pleadingly and something in him breaks. "You could be her, you know," he whispers. He ignores the fear in her eyes as he looks directly into them. "I want you to pretend to be Tatia, just for a moment."
Elena (Tatia) blinks at him then and her expression clears before she smiles at him. That smile, so like what he remembers from when he was human, shocks him to the core. And then her words, "What did you used to tell me when you were hurt, Niklaus?" she asks slowly, as if trying out the words for the first time, unsure if they work together.
Klaus looks at Tatia (Elena) then, shocked by the question. "It's not near so bad as it seems, Tatia. With you beside me, I can get through anything," he recites words spoken many times before, many years ago.
Tatia (Elena) nods then, softness in her weakened features, "And I'll always be beside you, Niklaus, but we both know this isn't right."
Tatia (Elena) tries to reach up and touch him, but the rope binding her wrist to the chair prevents it. That simple truth brings Klaus back to reality.
He calls the nurse back into the room. He looks straight at Tatia (Elena). "I could ask her to stop this and we could leave. We could go away, just like we planned to do."
Tatia (Elena) isn't smiling at him anymore. His eyes jump to hers and he sees the fight in them. Elena's breaking free of the compulsion. Just for a moment, he recalls. Those were his words. He moves to sit on the far side of the room, far away from Elena (Tatia).
Her eyes close and her head rests to the side. She's still for a moment before she wakes. She looks around confused, as if she hasn't been here for twenty minuets already.
The nurse is telling her not to move, but Klaus is fixated on the look of confusion on her face. It strikes him suddenly, how little pleasure he is now getting from watching her die slowly like this, and when he answers her question, there is this hint of sadness in his voice that he cannot seem to hide.