His 'wing' is situated at the back of the mansion, with a view of the grounds and trees beyond. That view is an opaque black now and only their reflections can be seen in the windowpanes. He leads her into a beautifully furnished suite which immediately reminds her of the motel rooms she has just seen in her dreams. Everything seems impersonal. He gestures towards a lovers couch but she's too full of nervous energy to sit.
"What happened?"
Elena's mind freezes for a moment, lost on where to begin. She licks her lips and forces herself to speak. "Your mother wants to perform a spell tonight and I've agreed to help her. I've just participated."
He frowns, moving forward. "What are you talking about?"
Elena inhales, telling herself to be concise. "You were right to be suspicious. She hasn't forgiven Klaus. She wants to stop him. The spell that she'll do tonight will help us towards doing that."
His anxiety is less now, he seems curious but alert. "And what spell is it?"
"She wants to link all of you together. She needed a drop of my blood to do it."
"And what will linking us together accomplish?" He says it pleasantly but there is a steel lurking underneath that exterior. She must approach carefully.
"Whatever happens to one of you happens to all." She moves forward before he can speak and grips his arm. Her eyes are large and dark and she speaks as soft as someone breaking news of bereavement. "She wants to turn you all human."
He blinks once and then becomes very, very still. At that moment she has no idea what he is feeling or what he might do. He could lose control or remain frozen like this forever. When his mouth twitches she feels a flush of relief. Finally he smiles.
"This is a joke."
"No, she's serious. She says that on the next full moon she will perform the ritual. That way Klaus will be possible to kill."
"Mortal?" He says, as if the word is some bemusing, nonexistent thing that she is teasing him with. He stares deeper into her eyes and the smile slowly drips off his face. "God, you're serious aren't you?"
Elena nods and pushes him down onto the couch and sits beside him. He's compliant in her hands, his shock total. For a time she says nothing, just lets him think until the words have sunk in. She keeps an eye on the time, aware that Esther is working to a timeframe. She leans forward, trying to peer at his lowered face.
"Are you all right?"
"No." He looks at her and she's never seen him look so lost. He's always the picture of composure. "Even if she can do this there must be a catch."
Elena feels a flush of heat prickle her skin and smiles, shaking her head. "There isn't."
He squints at her and his eyes darken. "You're lying."
Her eyelashes flutter, her dry mouth parts. "I'm not, I…just haven't told you everything. You're not going to like it."
He straightens, as if preparing himself for a blow. "Say it."
"You can't tell the others. The spell is in the champagne that you'll drink. If the others know that it's part of a plan to turn them human they'll never drink it."
He nods stiffly and looks at her intensely. "Why tell me? You could have let us consume the champagne and I would be none the wiser."
"I…I didn't want to keep you in the dark. We're friends, aren't we?" Even now, after everything she has witnessed, she is still unsure.
He smiles dryly and says nothing. His sharp eyes take in her appearance again and he becomes thoughtful. "Your heart is pounding but I'm not sure if it's because you're lying or from something else."
This time its Elena's time to frown at him. "Are you going to listen to my heart every time we talk?"
He averts his gaze. "No but now is the exception. You're asking me to trust my mother and become mortal, all the while keeping the others in the dark. I don't need to listen to someone's heart to know if they're withholding something."
"God…" Elena exhales loudly and gets to her feet. She is withholding part of the truth. If he learns that his mother planned to have them all killed he will never agree. She looks back at him, scowling in confliction. He gets to his feet and his expression is much softer. He brushes a hand down her arm and speaks calmly.
"I'm sorry. I do consider you to be my friend. To tell you the truth you're the first true friend I've had in years. I trust you and I hope that I still have yours. But I do not want to venture into this without all the facts. I will not, do not, blame you for wanting Klaus to die at any cost but I need to know the truth. Does my mother wish us ill?"
Elena stares up into his calm eyes but there is a tension in the way that he holds himself, in the repeated caress of his thumb against her gloved arm. Unable to deny the truth under his scrutiny she relents.
"She did but I talked her out of it."
"She wanted all of us dead? Not just Klaus?"
Elena nods and stares pleadingly into his eyes. "She feels responsible for what happened. She – she felt everything that you all did, the pain and death. But she's reconsidered Elijah."
"Why?" His voice is low but he's angry, she can see it burning in his eyes. Angry and disappointed. "She's probably planned this all along."
"Because deep down I don't think she wanted to. Look, I'm not your mother and this will have to be something you discuss with her. But I know this will work."
He stares intensely at her, still unconvinced. "How can you be so sure?"
"Because I've seen it. I just saw those dreams that Bonnie has been having and so did Esther. In the future, maybe not even a month from now, you'll be human again."
He gazes at her fixedly, searching for a scrap of duplicity but she regards him sincerely. He exhales and weakly leans back against the wall.
"You mean it…" He stares into the middle distance with a deep scowl and she hedges forward to touch his arm.
"Don't you want to be human again? Like before?" She knows it's a hard, complicated issue but that it what it boils down to.
"I spent thirty four years as a man and a thousand as a vampire. Those years are like a dream to me now; I have faint images and feelings but it's unreal. With every passing year my time as that man just got further and further away. I had a certain way of living – rules and ideals - that I still try to uphold but human nature compared to what I am now is alien…" he shakes his head, eyes still fixed in the middle distance. He talks aloud and she wonders if he's even aware of her presence when he suddenly looks at her in bewilderment. "Do I want to be human? The question is can I be?"
She has to confess she hadn't thought of how much of a change it would be for him. He's spent so much time as a vampire that any connections to his mortal life must be almost, if not completely, severed.
"Maybe you shouldn't try to reclaim something that's long gone. You'll be human but with all your years if experience. You'll be different, that's all."
For the first time since they entered the room a smile grows over his face and he gazes at her with an intense look of admiration. "Wise for one so young."
"Not so wise or so young." She smiles and cocks her head. "So will you do it?"
His expression grows troubled. "I don't want to deceive them. It shouldn't be my choice to take their immortality away from them. They have a right to know."
"I know how much they mean to you but right now this is the only option we've got to take out Klaus. You said you worked for years towards this end."
"But at such a cost?"
"Is it a cost?" She steps back, aware of the time. "They'll be human, not dead."
He smirks sardonically as he leans off the wall. "Kol will inform you that they're the same thing." He stares at the clock. "How long do I have?"
"Ten minutes."
He nods and turns away from her. "I'll meet you downstairs. I need to think."
"OK." She heads toward the door and catches a final glimpse of him staring at his twisted reflection in the dark window before swinging the doors closed.
As a maître d' passes her she swipes a glass off the tray and takes a long drink. The champagne will go straight to her head but she welcomes it. Anything to take the edge off the gnawing anticipation.
"One of those nights?"
Elena turns to Stefan who's holding his own glass. It's a long time before she weakly smiles in greeting. She has more pressing matters to deal with then her complicated relationship with Stefan tonight.
"Something like that…" She looks up at the staircase, waiting for either Elijah or his mother to appear. The other siblings she spots easily, her eyes drawn to them like fillings to a magnet. Stefan follows her line of sight and frowns but does not press her for an answer. Instead he speaks low, his head bowed.
"I'm sorry Elena. What I did to you on Wickery Bridge was unforgivable. I should never have threatened you."
He had forced her to drink his blood and then almost drove them off a bridge. Threatened is putting it simply. For all the ineptitude of his words she knows he's being sincere. It's the first time in months she's seen a sign of the old Stefan but it's too late for apologies or reconciliations. Maybe it's the futures that could await her that's firming her resolve but she does not want to build bridges, not in a romantic sense. She loved him, he was her first but she's moving on. All she can do is hope that he will do the same and recover what was lost to him.
"I know how much you want Klaus…dealt with." She looks around the guests quickly. "Well you might just get your wish. If we're successful maybe you'll find some peace. I hope…No, that's all I can say. I have to go." She smiles briefly and walks away, leaving him to stare after her.
Stefan looks into his glass and smiles humourlessly before throwing the alcohol back into his mouth. He wanders around, looking for a sign of Klaus but he seems to have absconded. Who he does find is Elijah who is standing outside.
A curl of blue smoke drifts upwards before being pulled apart by the wind.
"Never took you for a smoker."
Elijah doesn't turn as he comes to his side. He stares at the cigarette in his hand with a small smile. "I gave up…oh must have been 1898 or so. Like all addicts I was always on the look out for substitutes…"
"Is that what we are, addicts?"
Elijah shrugs. "We are predatory, craving creatures but I don't need to tell you that." He looks at him out of the corner of his eye for a second. Even briefly it's a heavy, hard gaze.
"You care about her, don't you?"
Elijah lips quirk and averts his eyes. That smile says it all and will be his only answer. "You're no longer consuming human blood." It's not a question.
"How can you tell?"
"It's obvious; to someone like me at least. I was the first to do it myself and then passed on that knowledge to others."
"Lexi?"
For the first time Elijah turns to him fully with a wide smile. "Alexandra! I invited her here tonight but she has not yet arrived. I'm hoping she's just fashionably late. She's not one to miss a party…I was her mentor." There is a far off look in his eye, remembering far off times.
Stefan shifts uncomfortably. "You don't know…Lexi is dead."
The nostalgic expression falls from Elijah's face like a stone. He sighs and flicks his cigarette to the ground where he grinds it under his shoe. "How did she die?"
Stefan opens his mouth to answer but then stalls. Damon killed Lexi. But he can't make himself say it. Elijah looks at him sharply but before he can speak someone behind them clears their throat. It's Finn.
"Mother is about to make her toast. Better not miss it…" He walks back in and Stefan takes this opportunity to follow him inside.
"Nothing is truly immortal," Elijah mutters, watching the dying embers turn into ash at his feet before heading back in for the toast.
Esther stands on the staircase, smiling down at her guests. She raises a flute filled with pink champagne.
"Cheers."
Elijah watches his siblings sip or gulp down their drinks. Klaus even turns to him and lifts his up in a toast before drinking. Elijah stares down into the glass where bubbles rise and burst. He could throw it aside and prevent the link from even being formed. Tell his family the truth. Or he could say nothing and sentence them to a life of mortality and a death that they will no longer be able to escape. He looks up at the young woman before him. She is paused in anticipation, eyes trailing from the glass in his hand to his eyes.
"Would it change things between us?" He asks unbidden, surprising the both of them.
She deliberates for a moment, eyes flicking between his before nodding. "Yes." That simple word that could mean anything propels the glass to his lips and he drinks before he has time to change his mind.
There, he thinks, it's done.
The two weeks that follow crawl by and for everyone initiated into the plan they feel every second. Bonnie spends her time talking – and learning – with Esther as they both get prepared for the ritual ahead. Elijah spends more and more time with Elena and less and les time with his family.
"I can barely look them in the eye. The only person I can confide in is Finn."
"How has he taken the change of plan?" They're seated in his kitchen, a mug of tea before her and glass of scotch for him. He's started the day early, as he has for the last week.
"He was not pleased at first but he's coming around." He smiles. "You have Abigail Bennett to thank for that. He seems to have taken a shine to her."
"So he doesn't mind becoming human?"
"He told me that he wanted to die and he still gets his wish. It will just take another forty or so years to happen."
"Have you spoken to your mother?"
He smiles, a dark curling thing, and downs his drink. "Yes. She confessed to wanting us dead but assured me that she has changed her mind. She even apologised. I was angry, extremely angry but I can see her reasoning. She looked at us and saw monsters, beasts that she had created that went on to sire more monsters. She feels responsible but she shouldn't, not on that regard. She did not make us kill and torment or dam off our humanity, we did that. We're monstrous." He stares off into the distance, morose in reflection.
Elena says nothing on this. She will not excuse the things he has done or justify them but only takes comfort in the fact he is shamed and regretful. Maybe he has to focus on the negatives of his immortality to make his upcoming change more bearable.
"Are you nervous about being mortal?"
The glass heading towards his mouth stills. "It still seems unreal. I try to envision it – getting old and everything else that befalls mortals - but it's still difficult to grapple. But," he adds with stress, "I'm trying not to see it in terms of a regression. As you said it will be different. I have always cherished humanity where I have seen it flourish. It would be hypocritical of me to discredit it now." He looks into space before gulping down the alcohol.
"It seems unreal but I've seen it, it's a reality."
He stares at her quizzically. "Those dreams, I'd like to hear more about them."
Her mouth parts and she fussily tucks her hair behind her ears. Her mind flashes to the motel room, to Elijah pulling a dress over her head and kissing her throat. "Uh, well, I only saw snippets. In one of the dreams I think we were travelling. You got into a bar fight and was hurt."
"A bar fight?" He says incredulously.
She nods, amused at his snobbish disgust. "You were wearing plaid."
He scoffs and gets to his feet. "Now I know it's a fantasy." He drains the last dregs of scotch before washing his glass. "And the other future? I confess I find it interesting that there appears to be two. Throws some doubt onto the solidity of human, plaid wearing future me."
It's a doubt she has to concede to. "I guess it shows us that the future is not fixed. It could go one way or the other."
"And in this other future was I human?" He turns to her, calmly leaning against the draining board.
She opens her mouth to give an affirmative but then stills. She tries to remember what he had looked like, if he was aged, but the recollection is faint. She actually has no idea if he's human or not in that timeline. Along with this doubt comes another, sly and startling. She has no idea if she was human either.
For all she knows in fourteen years time she could be a vampire herself.
note: the ritual next...
Can I just say a huge thank you to everyone who reads this story and particularly those leaving reviews. It means so much to me and it does give me that extra push to write. So thank you :)