A/N: Hi! I'm still here in the Elejah trash bin, five years later, because this not happening, non-canon, hopelessly beautiful ship still hurts me.
This is my imagining of a missing scene from the TVD Finale in which Elijah returns to Mystic Falls for proof of what he believed he'd lost forever.

My past is
an armor
I cannot take off,
no matter
how many times
you tell me
the war
is over

Jessica Katoff

The long drive would consist mostly of him lying to himself.

His logical brain would tell him that there was nothing left for him in the town of his birth but bitter memories and the pain of his heart being ripped from its cage enough times to leave him hollow still – a thousand, five hundred, a few short years later. Enough to close him down in such a way that faith in his own feelings grew just beyond his grasp unlike anything else in the world.

Still, he chased them.

He was an Original vampire after all. Most conflicts were won without effort on his part, rarely having to exert enough energy to even break composure –

But this familiar battle, news of such rare occasion, marked and tracked by the heady weight of ancient binding spells, traveled through the mystical city of New Orleans like hellfire. He had caught only whispers from the self-proclaimed witches gossiping in the town square as he made pass, but the words stilled him on the concrete as if it took root in his veins.

The Doppleganger has awakened.

A relatively short time had passed since he'd regarded her as such, but while the label fell empty on his ears, the claim did not.

The last time they had crossed paths, she was not herself. Not just not human, but a shell of the girl too warm and wise for her years. He had known instantly both who she was and who she tried to be when he'd laid eyes on her then, all curled hair and brazen eyes.

The kiss was not a test for her, but for himself. What he found was not the combatant vigor that came from those who shared her face, but surprise and the tender reminder of lingering gazes, past promises – a fire all her own that he had granted himself a front row seat to watch grow within her as she was met with the constant trials of being birthed with leveraged blood.

The blame still weighed heavy on his shoulders. Blame and regret, so raw that his fingers would leave indentations in the leather of the steering wheel before the drive was over.

Never had he tried to hide from her that his family would come first, even before knowing the girl could pierce through his structure like still water. It was a trait they shared, she always a fierce protector of what was hers, and he not able but to admire the simmering ferocity with which she made it known when need arose.

He would begin to question his very foundation (something only to ever occur in her presence it seemed) while watching from the dark cover of night as his brother drained the life from her throat.

His promise to Elena would be broken that night only because Klaus had uttered the one that would save his life, and if he had ever held any right to claim a single fraction of her as his own, it would forever be the instance he shattered it between his fingers. He had saved her life but failed to stop her life from being taken from her.

The girl would adapt and never need saving again after that. He knew all too well.

Just like he knew what his brother was; what he was capable of, playing victim to the aftermath enough times already to draw him back to Mystic Falls and put an end to it that desperate night so long ago…

So much had changed since then.

He'd attempted to move on, following along dutifully, carrying the void to the bustling city and filling it with the façade of forced family. And on certain days, with the right company, he could even begin to convince himself it was working.

There was no suitable reason he could conjure for returning now.

It was his curse, it seemed, to share hers.

It doesn't take him long to find her.

He is parked just beyond the iron gate of Mystic Falls cemetery, not his first stop of the few he knew she frequented and would be drawn to upon her reawakening, but far from the last.

She is sat so comfortably against the stone pillar of a tomb that for a moment he had to blink his eyes away. A part of him knew returning to the town that bit back and destroyed would disturb any fraction of peace she found within it now, and playing the role a second time would take more from him than he had left.

Coming here was a mistake. He knew it. Knew it with every ounce of self restraint that begged for him to start the engine and go back to where he should be. Where he liked to believe he belonged. But word of the doppelganger's revival was spreading quickly, and while no threat had yet made itself known to him, warning her of the possibility would be his best attempt at an excuse for making the thousand mile trip.

A curse passed his lips as he reached for the handle, stepping out and automatically clasping the front button of his suit before closing the car door quietly enough to not disturb her. From her writing, he noticed, as he made his way across the grounds, taking the pathway that respectfully cut through the grave sites to far side of the cemetery where she rested.

Elena didn't seem to notice his approach, her pen bobbing along the page of the leather-bound diary tucked tight against her knees, the first clue that she had changed at all since their last meeting. She faced four headstones that shared her last name and again he found himself swallowing sand.

Thick oak trees scattered along the back of the meadow and he stopped a few yards away, resting a shoulder against one and studying her for a moment.

Her hair was straight again, chocolate locks hanging long across her shoulders and resting in the crooks of her arms, the afternoon sun trailing through the treetops and warming her olive skin.

Whatever she was spilling onto paper swept a ghost of sadness to her features, leaving him to silently chide himself for the relief he felt at it. It was much lovelier than the blankness he'd met when she had called him out for being just another – idiot, he believed she put it, for falling victim to the Petrova ways again, and again, and again. Any other challenger would have lost their head, but this flaw was one that he called himself on one too many times to argue it with her.

A flaw that led him straight to where he stood.

It struck him then that even a young vampire should have sensed his presence by now and something within him shifted with the thought, releasing its iron grip on his chest.

A heartbeat for composure.

He cleared his throat.

Her eyes rose from her work and he knew the exact moment she spotted him amongst the trees.

She grew deathly still.

This too was new, not the startled flinch that would usually come from one so used to being in fear of the unknown, but instead an unwavering look of weathered uncertainty, as if she didn't know what to think of him sharing the sacred space with her.

"Elena," he nodded in greeting, gaze fixed on the light caught by her eyes as they rounded. A familiar look that would once peak out at him through the sliver of a cracked door before it would open fully to him. One he believed he would never see again.

In a single swift motion, her spine straightened against the stone behind her and she pushed off the ground onto her feet. It was her turn to surprise him by closing the space between them without so much as a pause for consideration, curling her arms up around his shoulders and pulling him into an embrace, so tight that when she stilled he could feel the soft hum of her heart against his sternum.

It took an unnerving moment to react to the onslaught of sensations that had him releasing a breath of relief he hadn't realized he was holding into her hair. He used it to breathe her in, one hand rising to rest behind her neck and the other wrapping loosely around the small of her back. She was warm and pliable beneath his palms, softer than he remembered, yet her hold on him was sure and unyielding and Elena.

Human. Awake. Alive.

"I-I can't believe you're here."

The words ghosted across his collar and he could not remember the last time someone had bested him so easily. Something similar would escape him if the right words were there for him to grasp.

The silence stretched, and with it her form grew tense. She slowly released him, seeming to come to her senses, and shifted back enough so that he could see her face.

Whatever troubled her weighed heavy on her brow.

"Do you know?"

There was only one place that look could have come from, and it was the delicate reluctance of shared casualties. They had both lost a part of their history.

"About Katherine?" The stage name was bitter on his tongue but he would call her by nothing else.

Elena nodded softly at him.

And he had known, unintentionally informed by an underhanded comment from a bubbling Klaus who had learned of her fate during one of his secret visits to the town he watched over from afar.

It made sense now why his demons had always held a soft spot for her.

What staggered him though was the lack of gall that had once claimed Elena's features when broaching the topic of the hateful vampire that took so much from her. She had been right about Katherine then, with barely contained disgust and blatant disappointment in him, but all he received now was a mixture of remorse and something edging trepidation.

Elijah shifted a step back, his hand falling from her side and feeling cold.

"I said my goodbyes a while ago. My hope for her proved to be nothing more than just that." A bite of shame overcame him and he bit down at it.

Elena's eyes fell away but he did not miss the small, sad nod of agreement.

"It's not your fault though Elijah. She got under your skin just like she did everyone else."

He did what he could to conceal himself from the way her words, meant to sooth, laced around his name and spread venom in his veins. There was no way she could know how right she was. How her bloodline clashed against his own like a disease he could never seem to be rid of.

"It was a mistake I swore to myself I'd never make again."

Suddenly he was back in the Lockwood mansion with her, meaning only to share necessary details of a wilting and uprooted family tree, but instead entrusting her with a part of his past that he promised he would never revisit. He'd cared once. He wouldn't slip up again. And of course she would call his bluff, even before the purely instinctual fear of him had ever fully left her eyes.

"I remember," she said, a fondness touching them now that let him know she was right there with him. "But I can't be the one to say what you want to hear. I think you know that."

She was herself again, the queen of second chances, and showed him mercy now as naturally as she breathed simply by remaining where she stood. The damning judgment a piece of him sought after for attempting the same for her predecessor would not be found here in the warm eyes that carefully searched his now.

"So why did you really come back, Elijah?"

And there it was, his name again, and a quick exhale escaped him as if the answer should have been written all over his face. As if he could fool her with a well worded deception if he tried. And though his hands found his pants pockets in a last ditch effort to conceal what he could, he had neither the desire nor willpower to lie to her, now or ever again.

"You," he said simply, watching her face as it flickered.

What he did not expect was how easily she would come to accept his answer, something too resolute and sentient settling in her eyes when they stilled on his.

"Walk with me." Her voice was steady, although it was a request more than a command, but it was a startling reminder of how easily she could turn him back on himself, forcing him to thoroughly consider each of his moves as if they were at war and an impenetrable wall towered between them.

His stood unmoving until she reached a hand out to him.

"Please."

There is so much bestowed upon him that he is walking in silence at her side, holding on to her words as they tumble from her as steadily as he'd found her pouring them onto paper.

Her thin fingers curled into his sleeve just above the crook of his elbow. Dry grass crunched beneath their shoes and her heartbeat ebbed and flowed between the steady sound like a winding stream as she informed him of the steps that led her to the ones they're taking now, connecting the dots for him to follow.

Jeremy Gilbert had proven resilient, and Elijah decided right then that he would forever be indebted to the Bennett lineage if for nothing more than the look on her face as she told him so. Stefan Salvatore had fallen, but he had to admit it was in a manner that suited him well, always the more honorable of the pair of brothers. The reason for his martyrdom was nothing short of noble. Family above all. Though, he honestly wouldn't have minded much if the roles had been reversed.

"And what of Damon?" He asked after a moment of deliberation, knowing well the feeling of losing a brother, though his honest interest was piqued more by his absence. Before Elijah had left town, the Salvatores swarmed around her like buzzing gnats that returned no matter how many times they were swatted away.

"He's handling it in his own way. In the liquor cabinet with Ric," she sent him a mirthless smile but he saw through to the struggle behind it, waited as it slowly fell from her lips. "It's just… hard I guess, trying to find the right words to say to him. I can't help but feel…" she trailed off, searching the ground and her heart.

"That's what matters," he offered easily where she could not. "You suffer too, yet you still try." He stopped them, reaching across to adjust her hand more securely around his arm. "Do not allow this loss to take anything more away from you than it already has, Elena."

It was as close to begging as he would come.

For a moment, she blinked a deliberate look to where they touched.

"Where did you go Elijah? After Pennsylvania?"

Elena's eyes refused to meet his and he was left to wonder why until he spotted the soft hues of pink rising on her cheek, proving at least a portion of their last meeting was as potent to her memory as it was his own. He let his hand fall and they were moving again.

"To New Orleans with my family," he told her, catching the hint of surprise it evoked just as it lifted her brow.

"I've got to be honest with you, that's not what I expected at all."

Elijah breathed a sigh toward the tree tops.

"I am bound it seems to follow just close enough to keep them together, but far enough not to tear them apart myself."

His eyebrow was still quirked at his own revelation when she finally looked up at him through thinned eyes, a keen grin teasing her mouth.

"That's not what surprised me. It was the New Orleans part that caught me off guard. It's so festive and wild, and you're so…"

He forced a scoff.

"I'd advise you choose your next words carefully or you may just break an old man's heart."

Elena nudged his side with a forgiving elbow, her girlish laugh fond to his ear like a long lost favorite melody.

"No, I mean you're more like me when it comes to that sort of thing. New Orleans would be fun for a little while, but sometimes I'd need to be able to step away from it all... An escape from the commotion."

"Right here seemed as good a place as any."

It was his turn to send her look back at her, granting himself the gift of watching tender awareness as it crept slow across her features, very nearly distracting him from what it did to her heart.

When it settled, she tucked her shoulder against him and with her wordless agreement, he knew exactly why it was the Salvatores orbited this girl as if she were the sun and they were desperate for its energy. She would divide and disperse her peace amongst those she cared for even if it meant having none left for herself.

He was no gnat, yet he would never be so selfish as to feel worthy.

They would talk until the sun hung low in the sky, lighter things, Hope, the way they always seemed to find themselves within the forest.

His offer to drive her the short distance back to the boardinghouse was one she accepted with a torn smile. He could sense why long before she spoke again.

For a while, they sat in comfortable silence, her fingers absently fidgeting with the page corners of her diary, eyes unfocused out the window. His would watch her more than the road. There was poetry there, in the way the last rays of the fading sun played on her skin and traced her features, falling away from view yet holding on to her in a way he never could.

"I missed days like today." She admitted just as the roads began to grow familiar to him, drawing him from imagined fates much different than the one they shared. "Everything's been so hectic since I woke up… So much is different now."

His destiny lay out before him with the confirmation of that he had already known to be true. It was his undertaking it seemed to provide her with something near to comfort only to rip it away from her time and time again.

"I have a confession to make... about why I really came back..."

"Don't." She turned to face him and the faint glistening of her eyes stopped him cold. "Please don't."

He clenched his jaw and cursed himself.

"Elena…"

"I know what it means to be human." She spoke low, a tremor in her voice that held no clear origin, until simmering resolve steeled her gaze. "I know you're here to warn me. But there are always going to be risks because of who I am and I can't focus on them anymore Elijah. I was given a second chance and I am not going to waste a minute of it worrying about how long it's going to last. It wouldn't be fair."

He held enough composure to keep his expression unmoving, but only just. There were so many new facets to her now, unearthed and hammered out by the fight for her life, that he suddenly hated the road for dividing his attention. He'd never seen such beauty in all his years.

So much of her he'd missed and would again the moment he left her side.

"It is all I ever wanted for you," he gave, knowing he was slipping but unable to find it in himself to care.

Her eyes held strong but her face twisted as she turned something over in her mind.

"I know." Her decision seemed to set with the slowness of her motions as she pressed down the lock on her diary, flipping it to the back of its binding. Tucked along the crease of the spine, as if it held a rightful place to rest there, was his letter to her from days long past. As pressed and unblemished as the day he'd left it for her to find on her window-seat. She ran a finger along its outer edging. "I think I knew the moment you offered me the elixir." Something apologetic took her tone. "You never once gave up on me Elijah. Not even when I deserved it. Thank you for that."

He starred unapologetically now, parked safely in the long driveway of the boardinghouse.

She had lied to him then, back when she was stolen from herself, but now –

Never had he experienced anything so genuine in his long life. It overtook him in a way that should have made him feel immature, vulnerable even, but he had never been more certain about anything in his life. She held a power unknown to him, its true potential lost even on those who shared her face, but unlike them, she would not use it to hurt and bruise and break.

Not on purpose.

"Anyone who does is a fool." He spoke as if the words were laid in stone somewhere ancient and holy, unquestionable and immovable, before exiting his side of the car. He had to, using the short reprieve to remember where she ended and he began as he walked around to open her door for her.

Elena breathed a long sigh before stepping out, giving sound to the same sense of finality that ached in his rib cage.

"I take it you're going to have your hands full very soon," he mused nodding toward the new Salvatore Boarding School sign that hung over the entryway, telling himself it was an observation more than a desperately sought after means of stretching time. It was odd, imagining the manor buzzing with bright young faces, lightening the darker memories that clung to the place like sentient specters.

"Amazing isn't it?" She said softly, her attention following his. "But I'm not staying. Not for long at least. It's time for me to go back to school myself."

"Oh really? What have you decided to study?"

"Medicine," she replied, and it was as if the symbiont circle that was her life clicked together before his eyes. Puzzle pieces of a fragmented existence that battled the universe and came out whole.

"It suites you." He said, eyes locking over hers, and all at once the ire in his blood calmed. Never again would he make himself regret the actions that led them to where they now stood, at the precipice of a life he had wanted for her from the very moment he saw past her face and found his heart. Though the world would try to punish him time and time again for his mistakes, he decided this time he would be better for it.

Elena's hand reached up to tuck stray strands of hair behind her ear and she swallowed at something hesitant as it passed through her eyes.

Before it was fully gone, she was in his arms.

"Don't be a stranger okay?"

He would trap her whispered words behind closed eyes and hold onto them for as long as he could. They moved him and stilled him more so than her embrace, though they both lay victim to the tremble of her heart.

In a different world, one where he held no need to chase destruction and she for peace, he could imagine himself getting used to the feeling.

He would settle instead for tucking his chin to press a parting kiss against her hairline.

"Never that Elena. Never that."