Tear You Apart
by Sandrine Shaw
"I'm here to make a deal," the doppelganger says, and for a moment Klaus isn't sure which one she is. She looks like Elena, and yet she doesn't. She carries herself differently, and her voice is cool and firm. He's seen Elena desperate and brimming with helpless anger, heard her plead and bargain, watched her carry the weight of the world on her slim shoulders, but she's never been this fearless and matter-of-fact, like she doesn't even care that she's putting her life on the line by coming here.
There's a split second when he thinks it might be Katerina after all, but he's known Katerina for a long time and even though she has become quite skilled at playing Elena, there's always something wild and untamed about her that's uniquely her: a hunger for life she's almost desperately clinging to, a relentless driving force even after everything she's been though, making her throw everyone and everything under the bus for survival.
The girl in front of him looks at him with dead eyes, and even though he is a stranger to fear, he can't help feeling unnerved. The smile he puts on is a little forced. "Why would I make a deal with you, love? You killed my brother. Have you forgotten that I swore to destroy you for it?"
Elena shrugs, nonchalantly, like his threats don't faze her at all. "I think you know that it wouldn't be in your best interest to kill me right now, otherwise I'd be dead already."
She stands her ground when he steps closer, looking at him unsmiling, unafraid, un- unfeeling, and he suddenly understands.
"Well, well, well, look at that. It seems like getting rid of that pesky humanity has made our lovely doppelganger willing to throw her morals over board and make a deal with the devil." He reaches out to brush an errand strand of hair from her face, smiling when she doesn't so much as flinch away from his touch.
"I know you think you have the monopoly on evil, Klaus, but you're hardly the devil. I'm willing to do whatever it takes."
It's intriguing to see her stand her ground like that, more than a little impressive, and the need to push her boundaries and see what exactly she means when she says 'whatever it takes' is heady and sweet, like blood on his tongue.
He kisses her because he can. Because she's thrown a challenge at him and he enjoys rising to it. Because he's grown tired of chasing after Caroline like a besotted teenage boy. Because he still dreams of Tatia, and it's entirely too easy to forget that the doppelgangers are their own persons rather than carbon copies of the girl he used to love centuries upon centuries ago. Because this is saintly, uptight Elena Gilbert, and he wants to rip her morals and tender feelings apart until they lie in shreds and all that's left is her anger and her hatred and her desperation.
For any of those reasons, for all of them. It doesn't matter.
He kisses her, and he can't even tell whether he's surprised when she kisses back, when she claws at his shirt and bites at his lips, draws blood from his skin in deep scratches that sting before they close.
It's hard to read her face now. She used to be an open book, wearing her heart on her sleeve and her emotions in those deep dark Petrova eyes for everyone to see if they only cared to look (and he did, has done since Tatia, even if it stopped mattering to him what he saw). There's nothing there now, and he can't tell whether she's only using her body as another pawn to negotiate a deal with him or if she genuinely wants this because the bold new her delights in breaking all the rules.
Her reasons are of as little importance to him as his own. It's been centuries since he's last had one of the doppelgangers, and he's curious to see how this one compares, even if she's barely herself right now.
He makes her bleed, makes her scream, makes her come for him in ways that he knows will make anything the Salvatore brothers will ever do seem dull and unoriginal, makes her shudder apart and ruin her for everyone else.
It's different than it used to be with Tatia (both of them human and ridiculously, stupidly in love), different than those few times he took Katerina to bed (her: desperate and trying to seduce him into falling for her, him: already plotting her sacrifice in the ritual). There's a unique pleasure of fucking someone who you know that hates you, when the sex is not about coming together or giving in or those sticky sweet feelings that will eventually leave someone brokenhearted and alone.
After he teases a final orgasm from her with his mouth and his fingers, he sinks his fangs into her carotid artery and drinks, and Elena goes soft and pliant against him. There's a part of him that's itching to drain her dry and rip her heart out, in the most violent and final way spurning her silly hopes to make a deal with someone whose brother she set on fire. What's stopping him, more than the idea that a quick death is more than she deserves or the knowledge that her Petrova blood might eventually become useful to him again, is that she wouldn't care. He could kill her right now, easily, could kill every last person she loves in front of her, could burn the world down, and she'd not feel an ounce of pain and terror. Where's the fun in that?
His teeth slip from her flesh with a slick sound, the bloodied skin starting to knit itself together right before his eyes.
"Was that a 'yes' or a 'no' to the deal?" she asks. It sounds almost like something Katerina would say, but Katerina would make it a self-satisfied, cocky little quip where Elena genuinely seems to expect an answer.
He's getting fed up with her indifference already.
The smile he offers her is feral, even more so when he slides his tongue over his teeth to licks off her blood. "You'll find that you made a mistake in coming to see me, sweetheart."
Elena rolls her eyes. "I've lost everything, Klaus. There's nothing you can do to me to hurt me anymore."
"Really?" He chuckles, slipping his finger under her chin to turn her head towards him. "Look at me."
She does, and for a moment he watches something that's almost fear flash through her eyes when she realizes that she's made a mistake, a split second before he catches her gaze with his own and her pupils become fixed and wide.
"I want you," he begins, every word enunciated as clearly and significantly as if he's making a speech, "to flip that convenient little switch back on. You will feel everything. All the pain and the fear and the guilt. Everyone you ever lost. Everyone you're going to lose. Every mistake you've ever made. Every time someone got hurt because of you. You'll remember it all and you'll feel it, and no matter how much time passes, it's not going to get any easier, and you're not going to switch your humanity off again even if you want to. And you will want to."
Elena's eyes are brimming with tears when he's done, quiet sobs shaking her body, and she's frantically trying to cover her nakedness. It seems like humanity brought self-consciousness in its wake.
"I hate you," she says with all the sincerity and the desperation in her voice that he's been missing before.
"Oh, I know you do, love." This time, when his hand comes up to caress her hair, she stumbles backwards before he can even touch her, like a fearful little deer facing a wolf. That's more like it, he thinks. "I told you I'd make you pay for Kol's death. Consider this a first step."
He allows her to duck past him and gather her torn clothes. He picks up her panties from the floor next to fireplace and holds them out for her with a raised eyebrow, delighted when she snatches it from his hand like he was poisonous.
"Now," he says pleasantly, not bothering with his own clothes, comfortable in his nudity. "About that deal you wanted to make."
End.