After the Fire, But Before the Flood
Chapter 10
Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.
Summary: In a post-apocalyptic world, Elena and Klaus learn to symbiote. With sex.
Spoilers: Everything through season 2.
Rating: R
Warnings: Explicit sexual situations, character death, violence
A/N: If the scene starts with italics, it's a flashback. If it's normal text, it's taking place in the present (even though it's all written in present tense). Hence, this chapter starts in the past.
Caroline presses her hand, and Elena can't help but squeeze back.
She takes a stumbling step forward—another half-step and she'll be close enough for Caroline to sweep her away. Elena remembers a few years ago, when she was the one sweeping Caroline away, taking her dancing, slipping her drinks.
Before she can take that final step, something catches Caroline and Tyler's attention inside the house.
Elena understands what neither is saying.
Klaus is awake.
Elena drops Caroline's hand and backs toward the house.
When Caroline fixes her eyes on her, all Elena can do is shake her head. "I can't," she mouths. "Not tonight."
"I'll find you." Caroline's lips tremble like an anemone. "I'll find you."
Elena nods sharply. "Meet me at the border. I'll—I'll get away."
And then Tyler puts his hand on Caroline's arm. Danger present, he devotes all of his attention to her.
They retreat into the shadows. Nonetheless, Elena keeps her eyes on where she thinks they are until she passes through the doorway of the house.
She slams into him as she clears the threshold.
He's already up and dressed, she discovers with some dismay. How long had he been awake…?
"It's not safe to take a midnight stroll, my lovely," he drawls as he leans forward to sip the nighttime scents from her skin.
"I couldn't sleep."
He quirks an eyebrow. "I could probably assist you in that matter…"
Elena swallows his words, rolls up onto her tiptoes and flutters kisses against his lips.
Klaus doesn't bring her back to the bedroom. Rather, he guides her toward the front of the house as he tugs her cotton sleep shirt over her head.
They wind up back in the kitchen, where he lifts her up onto the counter in front of the back window.
A chill runs up her back as the sensation that someone is watching her from the shadows works its way to the front of her mind.
Klaus dips his fingers past the hem of her pajama pants, and even though it's not quite enough, the rough, even stroke of his fingers against her clit pulls her into the same trap she falls into afresh every night.
Wanton in her desire, she hooks her legs around his waist and drags him as close as she can.
He's in the mood to play along tonight, to let her push and pull him as she pleases.
This could be the last time, she grasps as he curls a second finger inside of her. The realization kindles an urgent need to savor the heat of his flesh under her fingers, the texture of his hair against her cheek, the way his lip quivers and his eyes alight with fascination as he pumps her and her fingers clutch and spasm at his arms.
"You're wearing too many clothes," she husks.
He stands back, awash in silver moonlight, and strips the shirt from his back, the jeans from his pale, narrow hips.
A year ago, Elena thought she knew what the look he gives her meant. It had been all about him, his curse, his desire. Now, Elena understands it might have been about her after all.
Klaus prowls toward her and snatches her into his arms inhumanly fast. The force of it snaps her head back, but she forgets the pain as he twists her pajama pasts past her ankle and angles himself between her legs.
"Tell me you want me," he rasps when he first eases inside of her.
Her breath hitches when he sets the rhythm in a slow, steady rock that makes her legs quake and her ribs creak. "I want you," she sighs.
Klaus's ab muscles roll as his thrusts grow a little harder, a little more jouncing, with each passing stroke.
"You thought of us, like this, even before our little reunion, didn't you, Elena?"
She bites her lip to quell the groan his words seem to call up from deep inside of her.
"When you were all safe and warm in your bed, you thought," he pauses and withdraws, almost completely, before slamming into her to the hilt, "of what it might be like, to let me in."
"Yes."
"And I fancy you care about me."
She casts her gaze up into his almost feral one. The question writhes uncomfortably within her, as it always does. "You know I do."
The answers seem to satisfy him, because he doesn't say anything more.
His fingers dig into her thigh and leave bruises like a lake of amethysts against her too-pale flesh as he works himself inside of her. He comes, finally, purring her name and kissing her sweaty shoulders.
Afterward, when he is pulling on his pants and she is searching in the dark for her shirt, he pauses to tell her, "You know, there's no future for you, except for me." He shoots the window a meaningful look.
He brushes past her without another word, and leaves her alone with her horror.
Klaus rises and starts the car early the next morning without a word regarding the previous night.
She follows him outside.
The silence stretches almost too thin as Elena situates herself in the car's low sport seat. They drive through the dust and the sun, and if she sometimes glances back to look for something on the horizon, Klaus doesn't seem to care.
Outside of town, Klaus stops at an abandoned gas station and fills the tank.
"Where are we going?" she asks when he slides back into the driver's seat, hands smelling like gasoline.
"Not so very far. No need to fret." He drums his fingers against the steering wheel before searching his pockets for his sunglasses.
Elena pulls them from the center consul, where he left them two days ago, and hands them to him.
Their fingers touch as he takes the glasses from her. "Thank you." He holds her eyes a fraction longer than necessary.
His attitude is so casual, so light, that Elena begins to hope she has read more into his words than was ever there. After all, she thinks, this is Klaus. He's prone toward dramatic statements.
They drive for hours, passing beaches situated hundreds of miles inland, crumbling mesas and fresh mountains. The sun cuts a red lancet across the yellowing sky as it plummets westward.
Klaus pulls over in the twilight wilderness. After some time, Elena realizes that he has picked the site of a wind-worn ghost town for the night's rest.
"What's special about this?" she asks, indicating the long line of pueblo houses that seem to crumble each time the wind changes direction. An odd, sulphorous odor seems to ooze from the buildings.
"I knew a witch who lived in this area once. I'm hoping she can give me a bit of… advice."
"The town's deserted. Why would she stick around?"
"No, not deserted, Elena. Mummified. You wouldn't be able to see it in the dark, but the entire area is covered in a film of volcanic ash. The whole town suffocated in their sleep."
She shivers, remembering the mountains they had driven past and seeing them now for what they really were.
"So you think this witch survived?" she presses.
"I dare say that was the word in Guadalajara." He doesn't elaborate further, and she doesn't ask him to. Anya Turner's face is still too fresh in her mind.
He doesn't offer her his arm as they stroll down the silent streets, instead trudging a few feet ahead of her. He holds his hand up for her to stop a few times, and leaves her to wait on the street while he disappears into one of the buildings. Each time, he comes out with a fine layer of white film coating his hair and annoyance crinkling his eyes.
"Well," he ventures at length, "I suppose it's the Ferrari for you tonight."
"What?"
"The houses aren't safe for you to wait in, so I'm going to leave you in the car." He smirks and she finds herself relaxes, despite herself. "I trust you won't wreck it?" He dangles the keys in front of her.
"Of course not." Elena holds her hand out and waits for Klaus to give them to her; she knows better than to try taking anything from him he's not ready to relinquish.
He leaves her sitting in the driver's seat, the lights dimmed and the ignition off so as not to attract any attention.
For a while, she leans back in the chair and shuts her eyes.
A clap of lightning wakes her. Thunder rolls through the empty planes a moment later, and then thick sheets of rain hammer the car. She surmises that, even with hybrid keen hearing, the rain would block all other sounds out.
Elena decides, at that point, without too much thought. She sticks the keys in the ignition and pulls onto the road.
The ghost town and Klaus slip into the distance, and then out of sight altogether as she heads North.
The rain pounds the ground flat and washes all traces of her car—her tracks, the smell of the exhaust, the sound of the motor humming—into the wild.
Elena drives until dawn, when the car runs out of gas and the rain lightens to a hazy mist. It sputters just as she pulls past the Arizona boarder and gets out to walk.
She doesn't walk long until she finds another car, sitting alone against the skyline. Elena approaches it warily, aware that it is just as likely to hold danger as it is to hold her future.
Caroline bursts from the car and bolts to her side. "Are you here alone?"
"Yes. I left him last night."
Tyler rolls down the window and promptly spots the Ferrari. "That's his?" He whistles through his teeth. "We need to get out of here yesterday if you stole that."
She gets into the back of their car and lets herself hope, just this once, for the future.
Together, the three of them leave the boarder, leave Klaus, and never look back.
It's odd, at first, because, try as they might to continue fitting the puzzle back together where they left off, too many pieces have been lost or damaged in the mean time.
Yet all the same, Caroline is still Caroline—clingy, neurotic, and so, so kindhearted—and Tyler is still Tyler—aggressive, defensive, and surprisingly sweet-tempered.
They don't dare pull over, but there is so much to say, so much to catch up on—
"So we were in Malibu—it was Malibu, wasn't it, Tyler?"
"Yeah, Malibu."
"—And all the houses were empty—"
"The ones that were left. Tsunami got all the ones too close to the ocean."
"—and we found a bunch that didn't even have invitation barriers on them, so we could just walk in and hang there." Caroline smiles like she still relishes the memory. "Elena, you should have seen the closets in some of these houses."
"Caroline practically wouldn't let us leave," Tyler confirms with an affectionate smirk.
They spend two days driving, never stopping except for when they find a gas station that still has any gas. Sometimes they pass through towns where the people are still staggering on, and while Tyler and Elena are inclined to drive the fastest through those, Caroline usually turns her hungry eyes on them in pretty much the same way as a puppy-dog. At dusk on the third night, they end up pulling over in one of those towns so she can get a bite to eat.
Caroline disappears as soon as she is out of the car, without a word about when she'll be back, and it's all Elena can do to yell, "Be careful!" after her and hope she hears.
"Is this common?" she asks Tyler as they lean against the side of the car and wait.
"Yeah," he admits, rubbing the back of his head self-consciously. "But usually I go with her, you know? I get kinda nervous when she's out there by herself."
"Why? Caroline's been taking care of herself for years."
"She gets careless when she goes this long without feeding." He trails off, leaving her to fill in the blanks.
"Then you're only here because I am." She hugs herself as the déjà vu unfurls in her gut. "It's my fault she hasn't fed. We have to find her."
"No. Like you said—Caroline's been taking care of herself for years. She's a vampire. You're only human. If there is something going on, it's best you stay away and we wait for Caroline to meet back up with us."
"I don't think I'm worth everything that's happened because of me."
He smiles, just the smallest crook of his lips, like he's telling her a secret she should already know. "Don't you know, Elena? You're worth everything that's happened— seeing you again—Caroline's been happier in the last five days than I've seen her since before the sacrifice." He turns toward her, his back to the woods and the town beyond it and Caroline herself, and tucks a piece of hair behind her ear. "Elena, you're worth it." He pauses, and Elena thinks he's going to tease her for the tears she feels gathering in her eyes, but when he opens his mouth, a clot of red blood oozes from his lips.
Slowly, her eyes trail down to catch on the scarlet stain spreading like a flower over Tyler's t-shirt, before he crumples into a heap on the ground.
"Hello, my dear." Klaus stands less than a foot away from her as he flicks Tyler's blood from his fingers. "Long time no see."
Amid the horrors of those months, Caroline somehow finds happiness.
Tyler Lockwood tries his hand at another go with her, and this time there's no Matt standing in the way.
Elena barely pays attention when Caroline, giddy and kissed properly for the first time since she was turned, announces that she's with Tyler. "As in with with."
"What about Matt?" Elena asks more out of habit than anything else—the rest of her focus goes to the map she has in one hand and the text she's about to send Elijah in the next. She glances up at Caroline when she doesn't immediately respond.
"Matt—Matt doesn't have anything to do with me and Tyler." She bites her lip. "He's better off not getting involved."
Elena sets her phone down. "Do you still care about Matt?"
"Is it bad if I do?"
StefanDamonStefan strobes through her mind.
"No," she answers carefully. "Not if you're certain you can put aside your feelings for Matt if you choose to be with Tyler."
Caroline gives her a real, slow smile, and it's probably the sweetest look Elena's ever seen on the other girl's face. "I still care about Matt. But I love Tyler, you know?"
Elena doesn't know. She loves too many.
She thinks about that conversation the day Matt dies.
The Grill catches fire, along with most of downtown, and Matt refuses to abandon the building while there are people still inside. Never mind that he is just a human boy, that there is nothing he can do. He goes anyway, and he dies.
It's only later, when Tyler pulls Caroline's from Matt's unrecognizable remains that they notice—Jeremy, alive and coughing, even though his clothes are burned to cinders. Gray ash dulls the blue shimmer of the ring on his finger.
"Bonnie," he coughs as he sits up. "Where's Bonnie?"
They put it all together later, as they huddle together in Caroline's house.
Jeremy sits with his head in his hands, thumping his foot against the floor. He looks about ready to explode.
"Go over it again," Damon orders, voice tight, when Jeremy's fidgeting begins to bother him.
"We were eating dinner at the Grill. A man walked in who I didn't recognize, and came to our table. He—he wanted Bonnie to go with him, but when he touched her arm she saw something—"
"What?"
"I don't know. Something bad."
Alaric, who has been leaning against the door-jam, speaks for the first time. "What about the fire? How did that start?"
"I dunno, magic I guess." Jeremy moans in agony. "I was helpless. The fire started and I couldn't do anything to stop him. And now Bonnie's—"
Damon grabs Jeremy by the shoulders and cuts through his despair. "Bonnie's missing. Not dead. Missing."
In the silence that yawns between them, they can all hear Caroline sobbing in the next room. Tyler may be in there with her, but he doesn't seem to be doing much good.
Elena leaves the debriefing and heads toward the bedrooms situated at the back of the house.
Damon's voice wafts after her. "He must've been a witch. If he was after Bonnie for one of the Originals—"
She finds the door to Caroline's room ajar, Caroline curled toward the window, her knees tucked to her chest and her sheets wet with tears, and Tyler leaning over her, brushing the hair from her face. His whole body shakes, like he's trying to keep something caged that can't be contained for long.
"Leave her to me."
Tyler looks up at her.
Elena knows what she must look like. Her own dry-eyed sobs had ended hours ago; she had pulled it all together, as she's done more times than she can count, and the impassive face she presents to Tyler must disturb him.
He hesitates.
"Elena?" Caroline sits up and wipes her face with the back of her hand. "Is—is Bonnie really gone too?"
Elena creeps toward the bed, almost like she's afraid to make any sudden movements. "Yes."
"Do you think she's dead?"
Elena perches next to Caroline, wraps her arms around the other girl and tucks her against her breast. Caroline's curls have tangled in the salt of her tears; they feel like seaweed in her hands as she strokes her hair.
"No."
Tyler stands, gives them space.
Elena gestures with her chin for him to join the others in the living room.
Left alone with Caroline, she doesn't know what to say—but that's the thing. She doesn't need to say anything at all, because this is Matt, and this is Bonnie, and in so many ways, they're the only ones who feel both losses.
Damon comes in to check on them before he leaves. "I'll take care of Jeremy," he tells her before he slips out the door. Alaric and Tyler leave soon after.
When the house is quiet, and the only sound Elena can hear is her own breathing, she decides she cannot withhold from the inevitable any longer.
"I don't know what's going to happen," she confesses.
Caroline draws back to look at her. "What do you mean?"
"Caroline. I want you and Tyler to leave and never look back. Get out while you two still have a chance at some kind of happiness."
"You know I can't. My mom—"
"Get your mom to go with you."
Caroline clasps her hand between her own. "No, Elena. I belong here."
Elena frowns. "Just promise me—when things get bad—that you'll consider it?"
"You mean because they haven't already gotten bad," she mumbles.
"Fine. When things get worse. Just—promise me."
"Okay. Fine. I promise. Happy?"
"Not really."
The earthquake tears the town asunder not long after that.
It rains during Jeremy's funeral.
Caroline shows up, sans Tyler, and stands next to Elena when Damon shovels dirt into the grave.
"What are you going to do now, Elena?" Caroline asks her.
"I don't know."
"Will you live with Damon?"
"I don't know."
"Will you be okay?"
"I don't know."
Caroline looks away, toward town.
(Or what is left of it. The earthquake had left a huge fissure through the heart of the residential area. Elena only learns later that both Sheriff Forbes and Mrs. Lockwood were amongst the bodies now resting at the bottom of that crevice.)
"I don't really feel like talking, if that's okay," Elena finally tells her. After all: There's nothing to be said that hasn't already been said each time this has happened before.
"Yeah, Elena. Of course."
The sound of Damon working in the mud and the heat of the earth fills her ears. He's been oddly quiet through all of this, save for that steady chink of metal shovel against raw earth.
Caroline lingers a little longer, like there is something else she wants to say—knowing Caroline, there probably is—but she never gets around to it. She presses Elena's hand, and Elena can't help but squeeze back. She leaves without saying goodbye.
The day Damon lays Jeremy's body in the earth is the last time Elena sees Caroline.
Until.
"Hello, my dear. Long time no see."
Before Elena can deal with what has just happened, Caroline returns.
Caroline spots Tyler first—of course—screams, runs toward him—only to be tossed aside like a ragdoll by Klaus, who pins her to a tree on the periphery of Elena's night vision. He looks to Elena, and Elena knows that nothing will happen to Caroline if she's not looking right at him to witness his revenge.
Tyler gasps and wheezes on the ground like a beached fish—relief surges through Elena that he is even still alive.
She ducks down next to him to inspect the damage. She can't see very well in the dark, and she worries that touching him might disrupt the delicate balance of chance and luck keeping him alive.
"I've punctured his lungs," Klaus calls out helpfully. "They're collapsing as we speak. He'll smother to death soon."
Elena grasps Tyler's hand as she addresses Klaus. She refuses to look at Klaus, or at Caroline, lest he take her attention as a cue to kill his captive.
"What do I have to do to make this right?" she asks.
"Sorry, love, this isn't about making it right. Now, we've already had this conversation, remember? In Canada?"
She ignores the bait and presses, "Then what is it about?"
"I told you, precious girl, what I would do to any vampire who attempted to take you from me."
Out of the corner of her eye, she can see his hand tighten around Caroline's throat.
Caroline's whimper breaks her heart.
"What will you get out of killing my friends?"
"Satisfaction."
"And then what? We go back to la vive bohème?"
"Hardly."
A cloud moves, the moon comes out, and a beam of light illuminates a gleam of metal at Tyler's hip that Elena had completely missed before.
Before she has time to hesitate, she snatches the knife from Tyler's pocket and presses it against her abdomen. The cold of the steel pressing into her side is at once familiar and terrible. She's done this before. She can remember the time at her lakehouse, but she also seems to remember another time that she took a knife to herself, in an old, barebones room she half recognizes. Yes. Both times there had been a vampire there to heal her. There had been Stefan and then there had been Rose with long hair and an old dress—
"And what have we here?" Klaus laughs derisively. "Am I supposed to fall for this trick? I'm not my brother. There's no trick dagger you can use to save your friends."
"I'm not betting on whether or not you think I'll do it. We both know I have before and I will again."
Klaus holds Caroline by the scruff of the neck and pushes her in front of him. He settles his hands on her shoulders. "Then what are you betting on?"
Elena's seen this before—the moment just before the execution.
She drags the knife higher, so it sits under her left breast. If she plunges the knife in here, she will die before anyone can do a thing to save her. "I'm betting on you being unable to let me."
Klaus throws Caroline aside and stalks toward her. "Careful now, Elena. You're playing with fire."
"I'm not afraid of fire anymore."
Tyler's gasps sputter.
Caroline lurches to her feet to get to Tyler, but Klaus catches her again easily. In another moment, Tyler will die, and Caroline will follow very soon after. All to teach her a lesson.
He's played her hand for her, and there's really nothing more for her to do—the bite of the steel nips through her soft breast and works it's way between the bone of the ribcage.
Klaus crushes all the bones in her wrist when he catches the blade.
She screams, but the sound gets drowned as Klaus shoves his bloody palm against her mouth and forces her to drink.
In all her time with him, Elena has never seen him truly enraged—until now.
"Don't ever do that again, do you understand me, Elena?"
She tries to shove him away but he doesn't move. "I'll do whatever I have to do." She spits. "Now are you going to let Caroline heal Tyler before it's too late?"
"What if I say no?"
"I'm not going to live in this world without them in it."
The anger still stirs in his eyes.
She'll pay for this later, she knows.
"Caroline, is it?" he calls. "Be a dear and pick your werewolf friend off the ground."
Caroline flings herself at Tyler, rips into her wrist and fusses over him until he pushes her away to stare at the tableau Klaus and she must present.
Klaus links his hand with the one that had lately held the knife and tugs her toward the deep of the woods.
Elena gets one last look at Caroline and Tyler—just enough time to mouth the words, "Never look back" before Klaus sweeps her away.
In a new car the next day, Elena thinks about her time with Caroline and Tyler and wonders if it were all a mirage.
Klaus has barely spoken to her since she almost killed herself. She can't wrap her mind around what it means that he refuses to let her die. She doesn't really try to.
There are no road maps where they are heading, and no landmarks to tell her where they are.
"Where are we going?" she asks when the mirage settles into the distance, unattainable once more.
"Somewhere far, far away."
A/N: What a behemoth of a chapter. Thoughts? Questions? Please drop me a review!