Take Everything ('Cause There's Nothing Left to Take)
Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.
Summary: Elena wonders why she's the only one who realizes there's something off about Tyler. Elena/Tyler!Klaus
Spoilers: Everything through season 3
Rating: R
Warnings: Explicit sexual situations, violence, bloodplay, language
A/N: Finally had the time to finish this plot bunny, which started niggling me literally as soon as the finale first aired. For anyone wondering about After the Fire, But Before the Flood, it hasn't been set aside, no worries :)
She's not around when the whole Tyler-is-alive! thing goes down. Elena's too wrapped up in that whole part where Jeremy cuts his hand open right in front of her, and Damon urges her to drink it, and she becomes a vampire before she even thinks to stop herself—so she misses it.
Caroline comes round the next day to fill her in, as Bonnie spells Elena her daywalking ring and gives her the speech—"The witch who spells the ring has the power to take it away" speech—and Caroline barely even rolls her eyes—"Really, Bonnie? Do you say that to everyone, or just the people you're supposed to trust the most?" – before remembering the reason for her visit and rushing into what she really came over to say.
"Tyler's alive."
Elena frowns as she fits her ring onto her middle finger. "What do you mean he's alive?" Speaking makes her throat ache, like there's a lump so large she will choke and she needs to drink something to push it away.
"He came to me last night. He's alive—"
"Yeah, but how? Alaric staked Klaus—Damon's sure of it."
Caroline huffs and crosses her arms. "I don't know. But does it matter?—" She starts to pace around the room, gesturing wildly. "He's alive and he's okay, Elena."
Bonnie clears her throat. "He seemed alright?"
Caroline smiles the smile that won her Miss Mystic Falls and laughs. "Yeah, I don't know how, he just is. Maybe because he's a hybrid he's not affected by the bloodlines?"
Elena turns the lapis lazuli around on her finger and examines it in the sunlight. She doesn't have an answer, so she says instead, "I'm happy everything turned out alright for you, Caroline." She means it.
No one says anything about how things turned out for her that night.
She goes for a walk with Stefan, that afternoon, to talk to him about their future. She's just told him that he's the one, is just relishing the feel of being wrapped up in his arms, when she spots Caroline and Tyler across the street, looking like they're having a very similar moment themselves.
Except when Tyler spots her, he freezes.
There're too many people, too many vehicles, nearby, and Elena is too far away, to hear what he says clearly, but she can guess from the way that Caroline also turns to look at her that this is the first time he's heard that she turned.
To her surprise, he keeps looking at her. Something about his expression unsettles her— she can't shake the feeling that there's something terrible about the way his eyes bore into hers as he stares her down across the field of traffic.
Stefan pulls back from the embrace to kiss her, and Elena breaks away from Tyler's gaze to kiss him back. When she glances across the street again, they're gone.
When the question of feeding comes up, Damon and Stefan each pitch a different philosophy at her. Damon insists she needs to learn to handle human blood—"If Vampire Barbie can do it, you won't have a problem, Elena" – but Stefan counters by reminding her, "You never wanted this, Elena. It's not a solution, but if you can get used to drinking animal blood, you'll never have to know what it's like to take a human life."
She hears them both, but her thirst clouds her ability to understand what they are saying to her.
In the end, Stefan gets his way, because even as confused about the two brothers as she is—especially because she is as confused about the brothers as she is, what with all of Damon's compulsion wearing off—she trusts Stefan's judgment.
So she's sincerely shocked by how much she hates his judgment when she takes her first bite of rabbit.
It does nothing to quench her thirst, only leaves a vile and nauseating aftertaste in her mouth.
Because Stefan's watching, though, Elena pretends that the flavor soothes her burning throat and leaves her feeling full, if not satisfied.
"It'll get easier, I promise," Stefan tells her as he walks her up the steps to her house.
"I know. One day at a time though," she replies dutifully. Her words sound dull even to her, though, and she doubts Stefan really believes her.
As they reach the door, Stefan turns to ask her, "Do you want me to spend the night?" He's not trying to be pushy; he knows she's worried about losing control, especially while left alone with Jeremy. But he also wants to trust her.
"No, I… I think I'm okay. I'm just gonna get some sleep."
He nods, kisses her good night. "I'll see you again tomorrow," he promises her before disappearing into the still darkness.
Elena waits until he's been gone a few minutes before easing back out through the front door.
She doesn't have any set destination in mind, and so she ends up at the Grill without really trying to.
As she walks through the door, the smoky aroma of cooked meats and the burning scent of liquor assault her senses. Her stomach lurches and growls, and she remembers last year, when Caroline first turned, how she clutched a bowl of chips and informed her, "I can't seem to stop eating. Stefan says it helps with the cravings." She also remembers what Caroline admitted to her later—"God, I feel like such an alcoholic. I wish something other than drinking took the bite off my hunger—Oh, but not in a punny way."
Elena sits down at the bar and compels the bartender to server her a glass of scotch neat, then a burger and fries for good measure.
When the bartender sets the scotch down in front of her, she gulps it in one go then orders another. Slowly, the alcohol loosens muscles she didn't even realize were tense and dulls the ache of her teeth pushing at her gums as it works its way through her body.
"What's the occasion?" a familiar voice asks as she tips the second glass back.
Elena turns toward the voice. "Tyler?" She hadn't even realized he was sitting next to her, she was so focused on negating her hunger.
"In the flesh." His gaze settles on her. Something about it seems regretful, but she cannot quite say how.
"Caroline told me—she'd told me you'd survived." Impulsively, Elena squeezes his hand. "I'm so glad."
Tyler's eyes flick to where their hands are still joined before returning to her face. "Things were looking pretty grim for a little while in there."
"What happened? How did you…?"
He shrugs. "One minute I was experiencing the most searing pain I've ever had to endure, and the next thing I knew it was morning and I was still alive. I must've blacked out during the night."
She nods.
A waiter places her meal in front of her, and she cannot keep herself from digging into it.
"How is vampirism treating you?"
"It's not what I wanted, but I'm adjusting."
He eyes her as she gulps at her third scotch. "Adjusting. Right."
Elena shoves the glass away and looks at the water ring around her glass. "At least I'm not hurting anyone."
Tyler frowns, his dark brows knitting into an unfamiliar expression. "You mean you're not hunting?"
"No, I'm not hunting people. I'm on the Stefan diet."
He laughs. "We'll see how long you last, before the hunger overpowers your scruples."
Elena frowns. Something about his cadence seems wrong, like he's not talking with his own mouth—but the alcohol clouds her thoughts, and she can't place what's wrong.
She looks up to study him, and he's looking at her again. The weight of his gaze—like he knows her too well— in ways Tyler shouldn't know her— pulls something familiar inside of her. The knowledge is there, and all she has to do is settle her finger on it—
"I'm sorry," she tells him, glancing at her cell phone. "I didn't realize how late it is. I need to go home or Jeremy'll worry."
"Until next time, Elena."
She hurries outside, before she's forced to acknowledge that something is terribly, terribly wrong.
Elena and Stefan go hunting at least every afternoon, if not also in the early dawn hours. The game Elena catches is never enough to satiate her hunger— instead, she has to go through each moment with Jeremy or Bonnie or out in Mystic Falls imagining what it would be like to rip into a jugular, to feel the hot, wet gush of blood as she drank it all down, drank it like she was dying of thirst—
The only thing that ever dulls the sharp pangs in her stomach is liquor. Lots of liquor.
Stefan doesn't approve—he would prefer for her to drink coffee or limit herself, insists that if she drinks too much, she'll just end up losing control even worse and someone will end up dead.
We'll see how long you last.
Elena doesn't want to hurt anyone. Really. But she wants to have fun.
She wants to go out every night—and not just in Mystic Falls. She begs Stefan to take her to the cities, to take her to Richmond or D.C., and when he refuses, she gets Damon to take her to Atlanta and she spends the weekend tanning and sipping mojitos by the hotel pool during the day and whiles away the long hot nights table-dancing and bottle-drinking at the clubs that they compel their way into for free.
There're a million reasons to love Damon, to revel in the five-minutes they've stolen away from Mystic Falls—but at the end of the weekend, she's still Stefan's girl, and they both know it, so he drives her home and gives her a wicked sort of smirk and his look promises her a future that's more tempting than ever and increasingly difficult to turn away.
Stefan's furious with her when they return, of course.
She quiets him with a kiss, with murmured assurances and her long arms wrapped around his tense shoulders.
He acquiesces, eventually, and they stumble upstairs into his bedroom with her legs tangled around his waist and half their clothes strewn over the house.
The hunger makes her into a wild thing. When Stefan takes her to bed, she tears at his remaining clothing, demands that he fuck her hard, harder. She bites him because she cannot bite anyone live, and still it is not enough. Impatient energy swells in her chest as she rides him, and when it's over and her legs spasm against his hips she just wants more.
We'll see how long you last.
The words are always there, at the back of her mind, and she can't ever seem to forget them.
She goes to Caroline's house one night—she's been left to her own devices as the Salvatores bicker over her, and she thinks that Caroline might be able to help her deal with the urges.
It's late—past 2 am—so she goes around the back of the house to Caroline's bedroom in an effort to avoid waking the Sheriff.
The lights are still on in Caroline's bedroom, so Elena figures she must still be up.
As she creeps closer to the window, she notices that the curtains aren't quite closed. She's just about to tap on the glass when she sees Tyler, unclothed, moving atop Caroline, her long legs braced high against his ribcage as he thrusts into her.
Elena knows she should look away. Caroline would be mortified if she knew she was out here, watching Tyler fuck her, unable to look away—
Out of the blue, Tyler flips them over, so Caroline's on top, and he's leaning against her headboard, facing the window. He looks away from Caroline's face—and looks right at her.
Elena stands frozen, hand still raised to tap the window, Tyler staring her down as he works himself against Caroline's body.
The moment lasts maybe five seconds before Elena darts away.
That night, as Stefan makes love to her, she cannot get the memory of Tyler's dark eyes boring into her out of her head. Except—when she finally admits to herself that she wishes it were Tyler making love to her—fucking her—instead of Stefan, she can only think, no, that's not right. The fantasy she's been replaying again and again isn't about Tyler at all.
She overhears Stefan and Caroline talking about her one day as she walks into the Grill.
They're huddled in a booth together, Stefan cupping a cup of coffee and Caroline swirling a straw through her iced tea, and neither seem aware that she can hear them now.
"Well, I think it's great. Elena needs to have more fun," Caroline declares.
"I just don't understand where this is coming from," Stefan insists. "Elena's never been so—wild."
"No, she's never been this wild around you. Before her parents died, Elena partied harder than—than—than Tyler." Caroline's affection for the boy in question seeps into her voice. "She's just having a hard time."
"I'm just worried. What if this is the part of her that gets… heightened?"
She can practically hear Caroline shrug. "So what if it is?"
Stefan doesn't respond.
Elena's heard enough. She turns on her heel and decides to rummage through Damon's liquor cabinet instead.
She goes wandering through the woods one night, away from town, doing everything she can to distract herself from her empty stomach. She stays clear of Wickery Bridge, instead choosing to pick her way through the dense woods. Eventually, she ends up at the caves that run beneath the old Lockwood property.
The last time she was down there, Rebekah threatened to set her on fire. How stupid she had been, to bet that Rebekah would wait until she could kill her with her bare hands.
Elena's just about to turn home, when she hears someone approaching
Tyler emerges from the woods just as Elena darts behind a rock. He carries someone in his arms—a man, she thinks—though she can't tell who it is before he disappears into the mouth of the cave.
In the still dark, she waits for Tyler to come back out. She doesn't know why, but she knows it's important that he doesn't see her here.
Clouds skate across the moon as she waits, casting strange shadows across the woods.
If Elena hadn't been a vampire, if she hadn't been the doppelganger, she might've been afraid.
Finally, she catches a glimpse of Tyler's pale face as he exits the caves.
He walks past her, maybe thirty feet away, without noticing her.
Elena slowly counts to herself—when she reaches a thousand and Tyler doesn't come back, she sneaks into the cave to investigate.
The moon can only reach the front of the cave, and soon Elena is plunged into a darkness so complete that she has trouble picking her way through the cave, even with her vampiric senses. She fumbles for her phone and turns on the flashlight application as she hunts through the cave, not entirely certain what she's searching for. It reminds her of her younger years, in a way, when she and Caroline would go over to Tyler's house for Founder's Parties and hunt through his father's desk drawers for stray flasks.
To her disappointment—and suspicion—she finds nothing of interest in the cave. She can't go into the interior room with the cave drawings anymore—but then, neither can Tyler—so she doesn't bother to give it more than a cursory glance. And yet, when she can't find anything anywhere else, something compels her to linger at the doorway, to feel along the edge of the barrier spell with her palms, as though she could find a way in if she searched hard enough.
Of course, she finds nothing. In a way, Elena thinks she would have been less anxious about what she had witnessed if Tyler had simply been stashing bodies. She cringes, though, because somehow even murder has become innocent in her eyes.
Matt's working the bar that night. He gives her a sympathetic smile when he spots her and waves her over to where he's working.
Out of everyone, Matt is the one person who treats her exactly the way he did before the accident.
"How are you doing, Elena? Really?"
"Well, I'm still on the strictly non-human diet, so I guess that's a plus." She doesn't need to tell him the rest. The way he sets a glass of whiskey down in front of her lets her know he understands all too well what's really going on.
"You're the best, Matt," she murmurs as she cradles the glass against her fingers.
"It's the least I can do, Elena." It's the closest they ever come to talking about what she did for him.
Elena's thankful that he never wants to go into it more.
She goes through her first drink quickly and orders a second, which she nurses for a while as she contemplates what she's going to say.
Finally, she blurts out, "Have you noticed anything weird going on with Tyler lately?"
Matt pauses in the middle of wiping dry a clean glass. "Now why do you say that?"
"I just… feel like something is going on with him." She's not ready to say, I think I saw him stash a body.
"The only weird thing I've noticed is the fact that they're still in town."
"Who? Caroline and Tyler?"
"Yeah…" Matt draws the word out like she's being dense.
"Why wouldn't they be?"
Matt glances around before lowering his voice so only she can hear. "Tyler called me the night we drove off the bridge."
"So?"
"He called to say goodbye, Elena. Alaric told the Council about him and Caroline, and they were supposed to leave town that night."
"But nothing's happened. The Council hasn't done anything."
Matt purses his lips and nods. "Exactly. So now I gotta wonder—what haven't we been told?"
Elena corners Caroline the next day as they change books at their lockers.
"Hey, Caroline, I heard something about you and the Council. Is everything okay?"
"What?" Caroline's eyes go wide, and Elena isn't sure if she's acting or sincere.
"You know, with Alaric. You and Tyler were going to leave town…?"
It's not the most subtle, but by second period she's also a little smashed, so she gives herself points for trying.
"No we weren't." She's clutching her books to her chest, the way she does when she's genuinely annoyed—and being sincere.
And yet, even with Caroline telling her this… her instincts tell her to trust Matt.
She waits at the cave entrance again, that night, and the next, and the next after that. It's a full week, before she sees anything else there.
To be honest, she has no idea what to make of it when she spies Bonnie walk into the cave on the seventh night.
Elena steals forward to eavesdrop, and catches a glimpse of Tyler and Bonnie in the midst of a heated discussion, their lips moving but their voices muted by whatever privacy spell Bonnie has clearly cast around the cave entrance.
Suspicion settles like wet mud in Elena's stomach as she peers into the cave while deciding whether to follow them in, only to find a salt-barrier already in place to block her entrance.
She waits for them to come back out, but they never do. Part of her conjectures that there must be another exit that she doesn't know about, that she's missed while she was standing vigil. Her stomach lurches, and the sensation is so distracting she stalks back into town to finish the last of Alaric's stash before she does something rash.
The next time she goes out there, she fucks up.
She goes down to the caves again, and this time, she finds the other entrance, and what she finds in the dark of the cave shakes her. She picks her way back to the cavern, the one with the barrier spell on it, and when she peers inside of it, she finds a familiar oak coffin, the lid carelessly left open—and inside of it, Klaus, eyes white and open against a sunken, ash-black face, and staring straight at her.
She runs from the cave and stumbles upon a couple camping out in the woods for the night before her nerves have time to settle.
From the sound of it, they're hardly stargazing.
Elena hardly has to focus to be able to smell the sweat on their skin, the musk of their arousal as their bodies grind into each other. All that blood, blooming right at the surface of their skin, pumping slick and hot through their veins as their heart-rates rocket ever higher.
The actions are no sooner thought than done. She has the tent ripped open and their necks snapped before they even have time to pull apart.
It would make a gruesome tableau, their heads connected to their shoulders at odd angles, his body sprawled over hers in a hot wet slump of flesh, if she had the presence of mind to study it before she snatched the first body up.
Elena hauls the man up under the arms and presses him to her as she fastens her teeth over his shoulder and moans as the first spurt of thick human blood scalds the roof of her mouth. It tastes better than anything she's ever had before—feels better than anything she's ever done before as well, and for the first time since she turned, the world stops spinning and she doesn't feel like clawing herself open just to make everything stop.
She finishes the man, and picks up the woman, spreading one red-stained hand over her victim's hips as she clutches her with the other around the ribcage. This one's blood is already cooling—she wishes she had thought of that before she killed them, but she'd remember next time—but the taste, the taste was still—
"Are you going to share?"
The words startle her, and she curses when she loses a mouthful of blood as she turns to find Tyler standing at the edge of the scene.
He watches her, and she can't read his expression in the moonlight. His eyes are so very dark, and at that moment he looks less human than he ever has before.
Wordlessly, Elena offers him the girl's wrist.
Tyler presses it to his lips, and then his teeth are out, piercing the cooling flesh as he sucks at the wound.
Elena is fascinated by his mouth, wonders what it would be like to have that mouth on her instead, to have him bite her, taste her. Unbidden, she thinks of another bite, almost a year ago now, and she wants nothing more than to forget the inquiry after that.
She tries to go back to feeding, but the bloodlust is passing, and she's beginning to find that the sticky mess on her hands scares the hell out of her.
Without realizing it, she relinquishes the girl to Tyler and steps back, as far away as she can get from the bodies without leaving their campsite.
Tyler looks up at her. "Alright there?"
"No, not really." Her voice shakes. "I just—I just—" Murdered two people.
"You just did what vampires do. It's the natural way of things."
"It's wrong." Elena wants to flee, to curl up on herself and disappear, but she forces herself to keep her eyes on the dead couple at her feet.
Unceremoniously, he drops the woman on top of her lover and steps toward her. "There is no wrong for those like us, Elena."
She can't agree with him, but she can't disagree either.
They don't say anything else to each other for a long time, after that, but he stays and helps her clean up her mess, and at the end of the night he catches her under her chin and forces her to look him in the eye as he tells her, "Your secret is safe with me, Elena. But remember: you can never be anyone other than what you are."
The word vampire hangs between them like a ghost.
Elena ends up at the Grill the following Tuesday night, downing a line of tequila shots and vodka shooters, and with no intention of stopping. If she stops, she knows she'll see the campers' faces fluttering against her eyelids, and she can't bear the thought of it.
Damon keeps up and she lets herself love him for it, relief spilling into her chest because he gets her in a way Stefan never has—
"This is just like Atlanta, you know that?" she tells him cheerfully as she pulls him onto the dance floor.
"Which time?"
She squeezes her eyes. "The first time." Before.
He smirks, that beautiful tug of his lips that exposes his dimples. "Except your five minutes just turned into eternity."
Elena giggles and rubs her hips against him. She loves the way he looks at her, the power she has over him—she can't say if it' the vampirism or the alcohol that makes her feel this way—both have been constants these past weeks.
Out of the corner of her eyes, she sees Caroline and Tyler walk into the bar.
She drags Damon over to where Caroline and Tyler are standing and immediately suggest a round of shots.
Caroline likes the idea—she always likes Elena's ideas—and before long Elena is drunker than she's been since turning—which is impressive.
"Easy, there," Damon tells her as he steadies her. "Don't want to lose your lunch." His phone rings as he speaks, and when he answers, she can tell from his tone that it's Stefan on the line. Damon hangs up after a few terse words. "I gotta go, Elena. Are you good here?"
"Is something wrong?"
"Stefan just wants to chew me out for bringing you here. I'll be back soon." He winks at her and slips out the bar.
Elena turns back and continues drinking and dancing and laughing with Caroline, so drunk even Tyler's bizarre behavior doesn't bother her.
Caroline gets distracted by a classmate, and soon it's just Tyler and Elena.
He holds out his hand to her. "Shall we have this dance?"
Elena stares at his hand.
The gesture—so innocent, so universal—disturbs her in some cosmic, soul-crushing way.
She knows then, of course.
"Klaus."
Klaus's eyebrows shoot up his forehead in an expression of feigned confusion that only looks comical on Tyler's sharp face.
"Klaus. You're Klaus."
The façade falls away, and he claps, measured and steady. "Brava. What gave me away?"
She doesn't have an answer, other than, for reasons that make her skin crawl, she knows him too well. There's nothing more intimate than the relationship between yourself and your killer.
Elena cringes as the dead gape of the female camper's mouth flashes in her mind's eye.
"Well," he continues when she doesn't say anything, "I must say I'm somewhat impressed—you must admit, I do do a splendid Tyler."
"What happened to him?"
"Oh, he'll be fine, once I get my body back."
Clarity pushes the alcoholic haze from her thoughts. "It's a body-swapping spell—the same kind that you used on Alaric last year." The details push themselves together at a maddening pace. Bonnie had done this—she was sure of it—and if she had to make a bet, she would say it was done the night she was turned, because of Alaric… Because of the bloodlines.
He smiles, and it's the damnedest thing, seeing that suave Old World smile spread over Tyler's features. "It seems Caroline's preoccupied for the time. What do you say we take a walk?"
Klaus leads her back to the caves.
Personally, Elena is starting to hate them. She's tired of men leading her here, tired of getting reeled into all these Original hijinks.
He tells her everything there—how Bonnie had done it to save his bloodline, how he'd compelled the Founder's Council and even Caroline to forget about her and Tyler's vampirism so he could stay in town while Bonnie figured out how to restore the charred remains of his own body—everything.
"Why are you telling me this?" she mumbles when she's heard enough.
"I kept your secret, my dear. It's only honorable that you'll keep mine."
Honor. Does she have that anymore? Elijah once praised it in her, but she doesn't know if she's even the same girl she was last year—before Klaus.
That girl wouldn't agree to his terms, but Elena does.
It's not long after that that Klaus kisses her.
And God help her, she kisses him back.
A/N: Thank you everyone for reading! Please leave a review and let me know what you thought!