After the Fire, But Before the Flood
Chapter 14
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, the vaguest of season 3.
Rating: R
Warnings: Explicit sexual situations, character death, violence, bloodplay
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.
Also, a note on the non-canonical in this fic: I planned/plotted most of this out last summer, when I first started writing it. I made some assumptions back then that were necessary to the plot I'd constructed, but that I more or less knew were going to get Jossed once TVD came back for season 3. Unsurprisingly, I was right about this, so there are a few details (like Bonnie still being able to channel the 100 dead witches) which are very relevant to my story but just aren't canon anymore. Alas.
It's always questions with him. Elena, don't you want to know? Aren't you interested in whom I found today, sweetheart?
All too suddenly she has the terrible notion that he could simply compel her to tell him what she knows.
And then the question—Why hadn't he compelled her yet? If he suspected, why hadn't he forced an answer from her? Or, worse, What if he already had? Whatever the answer, she kicks herself for leaving her bag with the vervain reserves in the car they abandoned along the highway.
After the realization, she keeps her eyes sharp as they travel, on the lookout for fresh vervain. But even if she found some, where to keep it? The least hint of vervain around her neck or her wrist and Klaus would be on her. The smallest trace of it in her blood and—she shudders, imagining the scene, his mouth burning as he spat a red spray onto the floor.
Eventually she hits upon the idea of keeping it behind her watch-face.
She collects tools from different houses, cuts deep scratches into the watch her parents gave her for her sixteenth birthday trying to pry the face loose.
For days she sits with the watch open, not daring too breathe too hard lest she interfere with the delicate web of cogs and gears within the watch. She memorizes the pattern of it, imagining where the vervain would fit in without destroying the aching tic-toc of the watch—
When she finally gets a hold of the coveted vervain sprig, her hands shake and her arms feel too tired to hold the hairpins she uses to tuck the plant amid the watch's machinery. She lets out a deep sigh when she places the face back on to the watch and hears the reassuring tick.
The clasp has just clicked into place around her too-thin wrist when the watch stops.
For a moment, Elena considers whether she should get rid of the watch now, be done with this plan and hope for the best—
Impossible. She must carry on, and hope Klaus never notices that her watch doesn't work.
She doesn't hear him come in.
The first sign she has of him is his mouth against the arch of her neck, the press of his chest against her back as he spreads possessive hands around the curvature of her hips. His eyes find hers in the mirror—for a second, they glow like a night predator's in the candlelight.
The moon, she realizes, is full tonight.
He has never stayed with her these nights, instead choosing to let the moon sway him into the wolf's madness. What is different about tonight, she cannot say.
She turns in his arms and from there it is only the feel of his lips mashing against hers, only the rough slide of his hand as he slips past the hem of her shirt.
They make it to the bed— He falls back when she pushes at him (as though her strength could move him), but he grabs at her almost immediately, frenzied until she settles astride him.
Elena can feel him through the denim of his jeans. She grinds down into him, reveling in the impatient rise of his hips against hers with each slow circle of her hips.
What strikes her as unusual is his silence—no words, no nasty pictures painted by the whisper of his mouth against her skin—just the low rumble emanating from his chest, the lengthening of his canines and incisors, the yellowing of his eyes.
She must have frozen atop him, staring down at the monster's visage like a damselfly caught in the web, because he snarls, flips her over forcefully enough for her head to crack against the mattress, and tears her clothes from her body. He plunges into her in one swift movement. Everything about the tryst sings speed, desperation, like he can't bury himself deep enough within her.
Elena feels like she will break from the smack of his bones, like she will rip in half from this animal driving himself within her. She digs her fingers into his back and holds on, opens herself to him as much as she can, because, even now, if this is what it takes for him, if this is what he needs, then she wants him to have it.
The moon passes, sinks below the horizon to be replaced by the weak and watery sun.
They remain in bed, though, and Klaus seems only too happy to spend his time exploring each particular of her body instead of rising to face another fruitless day.
Midmorning, Elena lies curled against his side. She's almost asleep, hopeless though that endeavor should have been from the deep-muscle bruises pooling together under her skin.
Klaus is beside her, an arm thrown casually around her shoulders as he stares at the ceiling. He's redolent, a lazy predator after his hunger has been met, she thinks. This is more his usual self – the scheming, frightening sociopath, rather than the unbidden wolf and his consuming appetite.
She's just about asleep, taking in big, calm breaths, when Klaus asks her, in lieu of nothing but the machinations of his mind, "I suppose your little friend is just coming out of the transition now."
"What?"
"Your friend the werewolf. He's probably waking up in some forest clearing as we speak—would the girl be there as well?"
"You mean Tyler and Caroline," she tells him, voice flat.
He makes a noncommittal noise deep in his throat.
"What's your point?"
"Oh, nothing, sweetheart, just having a bit of a think about where we are today. You and me, and then the rest of my family, your friends—excepting the vampire and the wolf—either dead or out there in the big lonely word." He runs a hand down her arm. "It all makes me wonder—who else may have survived? Certainly neither of the Salvatores." He smiles as he says it, though she knows it's all for the thought of Damon's death, and not for Stefan's. "But I seem to recall you had a brother—and a witchy friend as well, if memory serves—how did they withstand your little apocalypse?" He's half a heartbeat from asking the wrong question.
Elena turns in his arms until she is straddling his body. "How do you think?" She doesn't bother waiting for his response, doesn't want him to continue this line of questioning—it's all too dangerous. "It doesn't really matter anyway," she continues as she slinks down to the sweet, tight juncture of his hips. He's half-hard already—he always is, at least as far as she can tell. "I have you now," she declares, allowing his possession of her to settle inside of him before taking him into her mouth and making him forget that she ever had anyone else at all.
Klaus strolls into the room one day, and from the scowl on his face, Elena already knows the outcome of the day.
"Elena," he calls, voice tight with agitation, and, like always, the simmering rage.
"I'm here." She rises slowly from the shadows. Does she look like Katherine emerging from the tomb? All sharp bones and visceral hunger? Or did Katherine look like her, wearing her hair straight for a party she was invited to?
Klaus's lips press into a hard, white line at the sight of her. He prowls toward her, casting his eyes up the length of her legs until settling his gaze on her face.
She's so tired. Standing only makes her want to wilt back into her chair and try to sleep. And yet with Klaus, there is always this performance, and she must make her way through the ambient flames each and every day.
He touches a hand to her face, and she wonders where this particular interview will go. He traces the over-exposed arch of her cheekbone as he tells her, "I just want to right things, just a bit. Make things easier for us—" The hand skirts down her neck, to settle over the dull thump of her heart. "If I could only find the witch—" His hand clenches around her rib cage, and all the air knocks from her lungs.
Klaus will let up in just a second, he'll let go, he'll let her breathe—
The pressure just keeps building. Her lungs pump like a torn organ bellow. No air comes.
Black spots dance across her vision, and she hears more than sees Klaus as he tips her chin so she must look directly in his eyes.
"Elena—" The tone is familiar, because she's heard it too many times, been the victim of failed compulsion too often. "Are you hiding anything from me?"
Her watch's silence fills the space her breathing should have filled.
She wants to speak, but her mouth gapes open like a fish slowly suffocating on the beach's sands.
Klaus seems to get his answer and finally allows her to breathe.
She wants to pant, to gasp greedily at the air until she feels steady again, but then that would tip him off. Elena literally takes in only enough air to answer, her voice steady and dead of free-will, "No."
The answer seems to satisfy.
She presumes he must have stepped out of the compulsion, because the next moment he is placing his hands back on her abdomen, telling her to breathe, to exhale, to breathe again, as though this weren't his doing.
And yet… she has overcome.
She sleeps most days, and the days blend into nights in a rhythm she cannot break.
"Elena—Elena, wake up."
The hand shaking her awake pulls away, and she is tempted to curl back into a ball and keep sleeping. She thinks she could sleep forever.
"Come on now, sweetheart, don't make me tell you twice."
"What's going on?"
"We're off to see a witch. Hurry now, I don't want her to run before we get there."
Typical.
Ten minutes later she follows Klaus out the door, the previous night's curls still in her hair. He pulls her close, so he can run with her. No matter how many times he does this, she cannot help but look back upon the first time they did this—the silent woods, the wind whipping at their faces as he brought her to a very different witch.
She wishes she could still keep track of where they were—somewhere on the North American continent, she thinks, but she's stopped paying attention and without the familiar landmarks, has been unable to figure it out since. Klaus, she's sure, must know, must keep a careful record in his map book—yet the answer seems too unimportant next to her hunger, next to the all-consuming necessity of yielding Klaus her body and her blood.
They stop at a house on the edge of a cliff. Inside, candlelight flickers against the windows, even though it is only midday.
Klaus takes her by the hand and leads her forward—the tableau of a boyfriend introducing the girl to his family.
Elena wishes she had never met his family.
The witch opens the door before he can knock. She's tall, fierce eyed, and, from the twist of her lip when she spots Elena, a little jealous. Beneath all of that, though, is the same wasting hunger, the one Elena knows so well, that is eating her alive. Her voice is strong and firm, though, as she calls out to them. "I've been expecting you, Klaus. Surprised it took you so long to show up."
"I had a bit of difficulty tracking you down, if you must know—" His eyes slide to where Elena stands at his side. "And I've been a bit preoccupied."
The witch juts her chin in her direction. "I thought the doppelganger was dead."
Klaus shrugs. "Most people make that mistake." He shifts next to her, and Elena cannot tell anymore whether she is more frightened for the witch who has looked upon her too closely, or for herself, the focus of his jealous eye. "Can we come in, Sylvie?"
"Could I say no even if I wanted to?" She lingers a beat. "Well, come on in."
Half of his lips rise into a smirk as he strolls through the door. He pauses when he senses Elena isn't following him. "Don't worry, my dear," he tells her, amusement thick in his voice, as he gestures for her to take her place by his side. "Sylvie doesn't usually bite." He winks at the darkly beautiful witch and they share a slow and easy sort of smile.
Elena wanders in after him. She doesn't like the way Sylvie looks at her, likes the witch's familiar intimacy with Klaus even less, and likes the frank desire in Klaus's interactions with the witch least of all.
"You're here to ask about a spell, is that right, Klaus?" Sylvie asks as she waltzes into the back of her house. Beaded oil lamps cast flickering shadows along the walls, and smoky incense hangs heavy in the air. Elena chooses a seat at the far end of the kitchen table to watch them.
"After a fashion," he agrees as he fingers a lapis lazuli stone sitting on a shelf. "I'd like to locate a witch."
Sylvie pauses mid-motion as she settles into a kitchen chair near Klaus, the moment so brief Elena would have missed it if her attention weren't focused on the other woman already. "Do you have anything belonging to her? A personal item, an object that she spelled?"
Klaus's eyes slide over to where Elena sits. She can feel his gaze on her as he replies, "I'm looking for more than just the witch's location. Really, that's just a by-point."
The witch frowns. "So where do I figure in to all of this? These days, with the natural balance skewed beyond recognition, even finding her with a personal item would be tricky…"
They wait for him to elaborate, but, typically, he lets them both dangle while he peruses Sylvie's shelves.
Finally, he leaves the shelf to pace the circumference of the room. "I wanted to talk to you about my plans, Sylvie-love. There was a witch in my sister's army—a witch that was stronger than all of the rest—stronger by a magnitude. I have a theory—and stop me if I'm wrong—I have a theory that an experienced, clever witch like you might be able to channel such a one."
Sylvie's eyes catch the candle light and a slow smile spreads over her face. "Ambitious," she murmurs as she steps over to Klaus and puts a hand on his arm. "But why the need for that much power?"
"The world burned apart while I was looking elsewhere. I want things the way they were."
"For a spell that big, channeling the witch will kill her."
"You could do it though?"
Sylvie pauses and Elena holds her breath. "I could," she says at length. "But to tap into another witch, I'd need her bodily presence. And for that, we'd need to locate her, which we can't do without any leads. Unless you have anything to offer me— something she spelled, with a strong bit of magic attached to it—" She holds up her hands and rubs her fingers together. "Nada."
He smiles almost sweetly. "Conveniently, I have the solution here." Klaus turns away from the shelves and meanders toward Elena. He brushes the hair from her neck and spreads his fingers against the ridged edges of his bite-scar. "You remarked earlier that you believed the doppelganger to be dead. You were, of course, correct. She was dead, I drained her, and the witch I am looking for cast the spell to resurrect her."
Elena feels the blood drain from her face as she stares up at him, caught in his inhuman stare.
"What do you say, Elena?" He caresses the syllables of her name as he strokes a hand up the length of her neck. "Shall we see what we shall see?"
A/N: Thank you for everyone's patience during the unofficial hiatus two month hiatus that I took. I needed the time to sort through RL issues during the time and didn't feel as though I could devote the level of attention and dedication that this fic needed while I was distracted.
As always, if you enjoyed the fic, have questions or critiques, please send me a review.