A/N: This was an absolute blast to write. I basically loved every moment of writing it, to be honest, even when it was being difficult. The title doesn't come from any song (which feels kind of weird, to be honest) but "Girls' Night" just makes the most sense. :D Many thanks to LJ's Jedi_of_Urth for for beta-reading this for me.

Girl's Night – 1/2

()()()()

Elena's newfound belief that she could be happy disappeared much faster than it had developed.

After setting things right with Bonnie, Caroline, Jeremy, Matt, and Alaric, she'd slipped into a false sense of security, a naïve sense that her transition into being a vampire was going to be smooth sailing from there on out. After all, hadn't she been so happy those first few hours with Elijah? Hadn't she taken to blood bags fairly well? Hadn't she kept all the traits that had made her so...human? She had a great, uplifting feeling that her worst days were behind her.

It hadn't lasted.

Elena had been home from Denver for two weeks when Damon and Stefan Salvatore had quietly disappeared. They'd left the Friday school let out for holiday break. Their departure had been the pebble that sent cracks branching out and crumbling the naïve peace she'd believed she'd made. Elena had known they were going to leave, had known they would only be in Mystic Falls for a short while after she'd returned from Denver. When Stefan had told her of their plans, she'd known it would be best if she didn't try to see them again (and she hadn't). Yet Elena had somehow compartmentalized it, let herself believe it wasn't really true, that if she didn't dwell on it, it wouldn't happen.

But it had happened. Damon and Stefan had left with nary a final word to anyone except Alaric and Liz Forbes. The boarding house, now locked up, was eerily silent. Alaric was now standing in for both the Gilberts and the Salvatores on the Founders' Council. Damon's liquor stash had been left at Alaric's apartment as a "Farewell, dick" (those had been the actual words on the note; Alaric had taken a picture) gift.

And just like that it was as if all the progress she'd made over the past few weeks had slipped away, a reality turned distant dream. When it rained in Elena Gilbert's life, it poured.

Elena had cried for the better part of two days and her newfound family had left her to grieve in peace. They might not have shared her care for the brothers (Finn and Elijah were fairly neutral on the matter; Kol in particular downright despised them, Rebekah would have been happy to see Damon drawn and quartered, and Klaus was still not over Stefan's rejection of his offer of friendship), but none of them could begrudge Elena her feelings, especially given the history Elena and the Salvatores had shared. They also weren't entirely sure how to help her through it. Years spent on the run, locked in coffins, or obsessing over breaking curses didn't lend themselves well to comforting a teenage girl with out-of-control emotions who had just lost two of the people she cared about most.

Caught in a spiral of guilt, anger, loneliness, sadness, and self-pity, Elena shied away from those closest to her. It hadn't been hard to fall back into that old behavior given the perfect storm of circumstances. Immediately after school (and before any of them had realized Damon and Stefan had left) Caroline and Bonnie had taken off for a few days to help Abby. The very next day, an extremely angry Elijah had been called away on what Klaus had delicately described as "unavoidable business." Had she still been human (well, none of it would have happened), she would have eventually been okay once she'd snapped into dealing-Elena; but now? It was all horribly overwhelming.

It left Elijah at a loss when he realized how serious her condition was; he wasn't jealous per se, but he knew it would be a long time before Elena could let go of the Salvatore brothers completely, at least in her heart. It also made him feel as though he might have pressed her too far, too fast. She'd not been a vampire for even an hour before he'd made his desire for her known. She'd had so many things to deal with, relationships with her family and friends to set right - yet he'd been selfish with her.

He wasn't sure how to comfort her in this matter - he knew that she understood the Salvatores' decision to leave Mystic Falls was for the best (just as he did), but it wouldn't lessen the feeling of abandonment a newly-turned vampire would feel after losing two men she'd loved and cared for deeply. The fact that he'd had to leave her the day after Damon and Stefan left was something that had deeply upset him. He violently cursed his people in Salzburg; he and his partner in the venture had given them such explicit instructions and there had still been problems. Had he not set it right immediately, he'd have stood to lose something very precious to many.

He hadn't had much of an idea what to do until he'd arrived home and had been immediately pulled aside into a sitting room by his sister.

Elena, he'd found out from Rebekah, had been keeping to herself and had hardly come out of her room. She was drinking the least amount of blood she could get by with and she cried all night long. Kol, Finn, and Klaus were wary of going near her - crying women who weren't Rebekah terrified them (and even with her they were uneasy). "I'm actually worried about her," Rebekah said. "And you leaving didn't help." Her gaze was accusing.

"You know that I didn't want to leave," he said tiredly. "Had it been for any other reason-"

"You'd have never gone, I know." Rebekah said grudgingly, recalling the ire with which he'd (finally) taken the phone call that had prompted him away. Then softer, "It's taken care of, then?"

He nodded. "Ulric will be able to handle the rest for the time being. He'll let me know if any more problems arise."

"Go and see her, please," Rebekah begged.

He was up the stairs before she'd even finished her plea. After all, before his sister had pulled him aside he'd intended to go to Elena immediately.

()()()()

Elena was in her room, sitting at her window, diary in her lap. She looked ragged and worn down. There was an air of immeasurable sadness about her, as if the burdens she felt were seconds away from consuming her completely. He couldn't help but notice, however, that even in her grief she was beautiful.

When she saw him, a weak but genuine smile graced her face; that was something at least.

He spotted a bowl of ice sitting on her dresser, a blood bag chilling atop it. (It was one of many little tricks Kol had taught her during their time in Denver.) He picked the bag up and walking over to where she sat, handed it to her before pulling up a chair. "Please," he implored.

Elena closed her diary and set it aside. She bit into the bag and closed her eyes in appreciation as the blood hit the back of her throat. Her complexion started to return to its usual olive hue and her whole posture changed; she looked far more relaxed.

"I am so sorry for leaving," he said quietly as he studied her, noting the damage four days of turmoil had wrought.

"Klaus said it was something you couldn't ignore. Business." Elena's voice was equally quiet.

He nodded. "I hated to leave you, but I'd given my word. Had it been for any other reason I never would have left."

Elena nodded her understanding; she knew what his word meant. "Is it going to be okay? Whatever you needed to take care of?"

"Yes. It's in exceptionally capable hands."

"Can I ask what it was?"

Elijah smiled. "I have a friend who resides in Salzburg; he and I are anonymous sponsors of several medical clinics for the poor around Austria and Germany."

"Is he a vampire, too?"

He nodded. "One of the few I ever bothered to turn."

That little tidbit interested her; he'd rarely spoken of his life before he met her, save the time when he'd explained the history behind the sun and the moon curse, and she'd never really thought about if he'd turned many others in his long life.

"And you two just got bored one day and decided to sponsor the medical field?" That seemed a little too…well, clean for Elijah. She'd seen him rip out hearts and literally hit a man's head off, after all.

Elijah smirked. "When I first met him in Germany, sickness was prevalent. Ulric was alone in trying to tend to those who could not tend themselves. Then the sickness took him. His only concern with dying was that there would be no one to care for those most in need of it." Elijah sighed. "It was after a particularly dark point in my life and yet here was one simple man, unconcerned for himself and wanting to help others. It…it fascinated me and so I turned him. I had a ring made for him and he continued his work."

"He sounds like a real saint," Elena remarked.

Elijah outright laughed. "I assure you, Ulric is far from sainthood. He's deeply ambitious as well as extremely manipulative. He's so charming and gifted with words that I do believe he could convince the sky it was orange if he put his mind to it." He laughed again, genuinely amused.

"But you two are friends?"

"We share a few commonalities," Elijah allowed with a smile.

"When was all of this?" Elena asked. With how long he'd lived, it was hard for her to pin down. Her European history wasn't as polished as her US History.

"Back in 1527," he answered. It had been the decade after Klaus had run off Kol for the third time, prompting Elijah to strike out on his own.

"And how long have you two been doing this?"

"Nearly two hundred years."

"What went wrong?"

"There was an issue with permits and renewals, as well as the licensing of a few doctors we ensure are employed at the clinics. We had to do some persuading." He gave that wry smile of his that let her know that some of the persuading had led to several people having very bad days.

Elena nodded; it had been about helping people - which she understood all too well. But then something about the way he'd worded it sent up a flare in her mind – something that didn't ring quite right. "The doctors you mentioned - they're vampires, aren't they?"

Elijah smirked again, pleased with her deduction. "Yes. One of them is actually Ulric's son. It's tricky sometimes, rotating them in and out of locations. Sooner or later humans start noticing they don't age. We have to make sure enough time passes that they won't be recognized by anyone when we relocate them."

Elena could hardly believe what she was hearing. "What do the two of you get out of it?" Again, it all seemed too pure for vampires.

Elijah arched a brow, encouraging her to think it out. "Blood," she said finally, looking down at the empty blood bag beside her and realizing many of the bags she'd been drinking from had had foreign labels on them. "It's how you get your blood supply."

"Part of it, at least. My family and Ulric's are old enough that we don't need much. A few pints a week is more than sufficient and with the number of clinics we operate, there's never a true shortage." Elijah shrugged.

"What did you guys do before blood bags?" Elena asked. She'd researched the history of blood donation one day out of sheer boredom.

"We lived in the area," Elijah said in explanation. "Sometimes we fed under the guise of visiting relatives, other times blood was let into bottles and the bottles were delivered to our residences. The bags are much more convenient." He tilted his head in consideration. "The system we have in place works well. We get the sustenance we need and the surrounding areas receive the medical care they need. Our doctors are also able to help with some of the more extreme cases," he added pointedly.

Maybe it meant her morals were truly torn to shreds (and really, she had to admit, they'd been frayed long before she'd become a vampire), but Elena thought it made sense in a practical sort of way. The more she thought about it, the more okay with it she was. It was easier to accept when Elijah was speaking about it so matter-of-factly. She could understand why it had been so urgent for him to leave. Which started it all over again...

"How long until you have to leave again?" she asked quietly, realizing her moment of calm was quickly fading.

Sensing her impending breakdown, Elijah shifted and pulled her gently from the window seat and into his arms, blanket and all. "I don't plan to leave you anytime soon," he assured her.

She desperately tried to relax in his arms. "I'm sorry," she whispered. She could feel her emotions stirring, everything she'd tried to keep in check rising up in an overwhelming tempest.

"You have nothing to sorry for. You're hurting; no one blames you for it."

"I was doing so well!" she cried in frustration. "I was getting better!"

"You were running on an extended emotional high, Elena, which isn't uncommon for us when we first turn. You had to come down eventually. I'm very sorry that it took such a heavy blow for it to happen."

"It hurts so much," she whispered. "The sadness is unbearable. Then I get so angry with myself because I should understand that leaving is what they needed to do. And then somehow I get even angrier at myself because I shouldn't expect to be perfect at this!" She was crying now, shaking in his arms. "Everything is just-" she paused, frustrated. "It's too much. Elijah, I feel everything and it hurts so much."

He rocked her slightly, letting her cry and release her pain. She calmed down after nearly a half an hour, which was actually quite astonishing, given some of the fits Rebekah and Kol had had back in their earliest days.

"I'm so sorry," he said again. He cursed his contacts' incompetence for what had to have been the millionth time.

Elena shook her head. "I can't expect you to be glued to my side day in and day out. I can't trap you here, it's not fair to you."

"Being with you is the farthest thing from a trap there is." He brushed her hair away from her face - tucking the errant, slightly curly strands behind her ears.

"What would you be doing if I wasn't here?"

"I would be dead," he said bluntly. "We would both be dead." She turned her head away. "Elena, look at me." She did so slowly, self-recrimination in her eyes. "There is no place I would rather be than by your side."

"You really mean that," she said in wonderment.

"I do." He continued to hold her, feeling her relax into him as her troubled mind began to settle down after running full-throttle and then some. She started yawning deeply; she hadn't slept well and she'd learned that even vampires - especially young ones like herself and Caroline, needed sleep.

"I'd like to lay down now," she said with another great yawn.

He stood, lifting her as he did so. He made to carry her over to her bed but she shook her head. "Can I sleep in your room?"

"Of course," he said, turning towards the bathroom that connected their rooms.

When he gently laid her down on his bed she instantly curled up. "Stay with me? Until I'm asleep?"

He went through his usual ritual of shedding his coat and tie, unbuttoning his sleeves and the top few buttons of his shirt. He toed his shoes off and joined her. She shifted to be closer to him and he held her until she drifted off to sleep.

His heart ached for her and he wanted nothing more than to ease her pain.

()()()()

"How is she?" his sister prompted as he joined his sister out in the garden. Despite the frosty weather, the garden, in its starkness, was still quite beautiful.

"You've grown to care for her," Elijah said simply. It was quite a turn from when he'd had to attack her just to keep Elena safe.

Rebekah looked uncomfortable. "Elena's not that bad. And she did save my life."

"And?" Elijah prompted, knowing there was more.

"I feel sorry for her, alright?" Rebekah snapped. "She doesn't deserve the misery she's going through; the Salvatores just aren't worth that kind of energy." Her voice grew quiet. "Elena and I were nearly friends once. Maybe this time we'll get it right, now that her old boyfriends and Klaus have stopped fighting." She shook her head; Rebekah never liked appearing vulnerable. "You never answered my question. How is she?"

"I've talked with her and calmed her down a bit. She asked me when I was leaving again and I told her not for a long time. Yet I worry that I smother her," Elijah said. Elena was fast asleep and he'd showered and changed after an excruciatingly long flight. He worried that Elena's being with him was too much for her in addition to everything else she was going through.

Rebekah rolled her eyes. "If you smothered her she probably wouldn't have spent the nights you were gone in your room, in your bed." She shook her head. Men. "I don't know how to help her. I never had much time for making friends when I was on the run with Nik. And growing up I had brothers who were determined to keep me from having fun with anyone who wasn't them." She added pointedly.

Elijah smiled slightly at the memory. They'd all been so protective of their younger sister. "Has she talked with Bonnie or Caroline at least?" he asked. "Her brother?"

"She's been a recluse," Rebekah said, going out of her way to step on a leaf that looked particularly crunchy – a habit she hadn't out-grown in a thousand years. "I had to leave the blood bags outside your door! And you know she'd never bother her brother with something as trivial as this."

"Then perhaps we could call her friends over," Elijah said. "They are her family; being with them should do her good."

Rebekah shrugged, clearly out of her element. "I can't see how it would hurt."

Elijah knew Elena's behavior was amplified from what it would have been as a human. She was going back into what he suspected was her default coping mechanism - keeping to herself so as not to be a burden on anyone else. He figured she'd stay that way until she could put up a convincing front of being "fine." Such behavior could cause a problem when she sometimes didn't see how it hurt those around her that she wouldn't confide in them. More importantly, she didn't see the damage she did herself in keeping all her feelings inside. Selflessness to the point of selfishness, he thought wryly.

()()()()

Elijah tried to convince himself that 7:00pm was a perfectly respectable hour to go knocking on a vampire-hunting Sheriff's door, asking to speak with her 18-year-old vampire daughter.

He respected Liz Forbes. From his observations, she knew her duty well, and had only ever bent it in order to keep her daughter safe and eventually to keep her daughter's friends' supernatural status a secret. He admired that devotion to family. She was capable and devoted to her hometown, even as she sometimes felt disenchanted with its obsession with the past.

She greeted him quickly, stepping out onto her porch with a cautious air. She was still dressed in her uniform and was clutching a napkin in one hand as she held a gun in her other. "Mr. Mikaelson," she greeted stiffly.

"Sheriff Forbes," he said genially. "I was hoping that Miss Forbes would be available for a few moments."

Her eyes narrowed slightly; he was sure her reaction had something to do with Klaus and his obsession with the young woman. "She's with a friend right now."

"Miss Bennett, I hope. It would make my task easier."

Liz's grip on her gun tightened. "What task?"

Elijah kept his tone even; the woman had every reason to not trust him. It had to be unnerving for her to have spent a lifetime dedicated to keeping a town safe from vampires, only to have the oldest vampires in existence establish a residency in the area. Not to mention that Klaus had nearly killed her daughter to prove a point only to later show up to save her. "I assure you, I mean them no harm. I've come to ask them to help Elena Gilbert."

Liz's gaze softened and she holstered her gun. "How is she?"

"She is struggling," he admitted. "She's come very far, very fast; but the adjustment to this life is a difficult one. The departure of the Salvatores has not been easy on her, either."

"What did those two do this time?" came Caroline's voice. "Tell me they haven't actually come back to make her feel even worse."

Caroline stood at the door, Bonnie right beside her. The pair of them looked concerned.

Elijah shook his head. "No," he said. "They are gone. I'm afraid however, that Elena is not taking their absence well. It's been something of a blow in addition to the recent changes in her life. According to Rebekah, she's been keeping to her room and barely eating."

Bonnie nodded sadly. "It's like when her parents died, all over again."

"Has she been avoiding you?" Elijah asked.

"We just got back into town tonight," Caroline said. "Bonnie's mother..."

"Abby called a few days ago. She needed my help; I had to go," Bonnie said. "Caroline came along because we thought that you-"

"I had business," Elijah explained, easily pushing away the small tendril of guilt that had creeped up at the mention of Bonnie's newly-vampire mother. "It was unavoidable, I'm afraid. I myself returned just today. Rebekah has been looking after her, but she is not very experienced in these matters, having grown up around five brothers."

"What exactly are you wanting, Mr. Mikaelson?" Sheriff Forbes interrupted.

"I believe that Elena may benefit from the ritual that is called girls' night," he said. "Or is it called a slumber party?"

"The terms are pretty interchangeable," Bonnie clarified. "Along with sleepover."

"Yes, well, from what I understand, girls gather for the night while eating ice cream and watching mindless drivel in the name of support and sisterhood." He tilted his head. "Am I anywhere in the ballpark?"

Caroline snorted. "Close, but not quite."

Bonnie nodded her agreement. "There's so much more than you give it credit for."

Even Liz wore a slight smirk. "I wouldn't worry too much. These girls are experts when it comes to this sort of thing."

"We'll take care of everything," Caroline affirmed. He could see the wheels already turning in her head; she was the most organized, efficient young woman he'd met in decades.

"My gratitude," Elijah acknowledged. "I will leave you to your meal. I apologize for the interruption."

"Thanks. And could you do me a favor?" Liz asked as she went inside and made to close the door.

Elijah arched a brow.

"Tell your brother Klaus to stop calling my daughter."

He smirked. His brother, ever the obsessed stalker. "I will."

He left and made his way back home, hopeful that Elena's mood would soon be lifted.

()()()()

TBC