Fairytale Ending

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.

Summary: Klaus takes his girl and his hybrid and gets out of that one pony town.

Spoilers: Through 3x05, The Reckoning

Rating: R

Warnings: Suicidal ideation/suicide attempt/hostage situation/explicit violence/gratuitous angst/dubious consent

When I was little, your mom used to tell me bedtime stories. Stories about vampires. I never thought that what she said could be true.

They bring her to one of the cemeteries.

(Cities of the Dead, Klaus's voice whispers across her mind)

A handful of other witches are already waiting for them when they arrive, and there's a palpable tension in the air.

One of them, a pretty, dark-haired girl with delicate features, steps forward. "Agnes, this isn't the way, you have to stop this."

"Do you want to take our rightful place in the Quarter back or not, Sophie?"

"You know I do, but there are other ways! We can't just—"

"Stand down." Agnes isn't even looking at Sophie when she speaks, instead inspecting a long blade that gleams silver in the moonlight. "Bring me the girl."

No no no no no no no no no

The words throb through Elena's body with each urgent pump of blood. It's all too clear what Agnes has brought her here for. Another sacrifice.

She won't go through with this. Not for nothing, not again. When the big male witch grabs her, she struggles desperately to dig her heels into the ground, to force her body back, away from that sacrificial knife. It's no use. He twists her arms behind her back and shoves her forward, toward that dark and unwanted ending.

Somehow, it doesn't have the same ring of fate to it as all of this had had before, by the light of the pale spring moon. Perhaps Klaus is right about destiny after all, she thinks, just before her mind goes blank with panic.

"What is that rule again about doing magic?" calls a smooth voice from atop one of the mausoleums. Elena jerks in the witch's grasp, searching desperately for the figure she hopes to see—and there he is. Marcel, a cluster of what must be his vampire followers behind him, his gaze cold and imperious as it sweeps over the scene. For just a moment, they lock eyes, before he turns his attention back to the witches. To Agnes. "Oh yeah," he continues, "You can't do magic. So I have to ask myself, what was that twenty minutes ago? And why does this look like the prelude to another transgression?" He jumps down from the mausoleum.

Instantly, the witch holding her hostage drops one of her arms in order to fire an attack against him.

Too fast to think about it, Elena reaches back with her free arm, grasps the dagger, and plunges it into the witch's chest, up and under the ribcage. It's the same motion she would use to stake a vampire. The same horrible motion she used to dagger Elijah. His blood slides hot over her fingers, but she doesn't let hesitation slow herfor even an instant before she is pushing that body away from her. To hesitate would be to die.

She takes off at a staggering run.

Behind her, she can hear the chaos unfolding, the screams billowing into the night air like a plume of winter smoke.

She runs.

At the front door, a pair of hands grab her around the shoulder and spin her. "Where the bloody hell have you been?" Klaus growls.

She reels in his grip. Relief at seeing him (Agnes could never get at her so long as Klaus is with her) wars with her fury that he has left her defenseless in this maelstrom of a city, stuck here indefinitely with no clear idea of what is going on. Nearly sacrificed and no idea why. And the feel of that dagger in her hands, the shock of it as she drove it home—She twists, trying to free herself. "Let go of me, Klaus."

He ignores her of course, instead dragging her toward the front door.

Overcome, emotions ragged, she rears back and slaps him, as hard as she can. Doesn't care how much it hurts her arm, it's worth it just to strike out at someone. Blood still sticks to her hand. The blow leaves a great red splotch on his cheek that he wipes at unconsciously as he studies her. Everything about the motion is so casual, so thoughtless, as he makes to haul her off again, and that blood came from her, her hands made that wound, that blood is on her (and Jenna's blood and John's blood and Zoe's blood and Matt's blood and there is so much blood on her hands)."Fuck you, Klaus," she spits. "I'm done being dragged through hell for you."

"Elena." He says her name so seriously. Like he's trying to soothe a skittish animal. It breaks apart the hard knot of her anger, cuts right through the quick of her horror, to hear her name like that from him. He continues in that same soft, firm voice. "We're going to go inside, and you're going to tell me exactly what happened while I was away."

He spares only a glance for the broken front door, blown quite literally off its hinges. Obviously, he's already seen it.

They settle in the front parlor. The low nineteenth century sofa faces a cold amber marble fireplace, but with warm yellow lamplight flooding the room, there's something comforting about this place, especially after the frozen blue moonlight of tonight's near miss. There's so little to find comfort in, right now, that she lets herself cling to this. To him.

Klaus's eyes linger on her bloody fingers. The look summons up a sharp memory of that dream, and for just a moment she wonders what would happen if she held her fingers out for him.

"Tell me," he says, the command so simple that there is no choice but to comply.

"There were these witches." She takes a deep breath, asks the question that has been bothering her so much since she realized how vulnerable Klaus had left her whenever he went out without her. "Did you know about them, Klaus? That they thought they might use me for yet another creepy sacrifice? Because they just burst through the door, and there wasn't a thing I could do to stop them grabbing me." She's watching him hard, ready to catch the least little subterfuge.

His jaw clenches when she tells him this, but all he says is, "Obviously you are unharmed." After all these months with him, she's learning to read between the lines. It's more a question than a statement.

"I got lucky."

"Who took you?" he prods her. "What was the name?"

She imagines she can see the murder working itself out behind his eyes. He's furious. If Marcel hasn't already wiped them out, Klaus surely will.

"Her name was Agnes." She pauses, unsure if she should say any more. It's likely that she's just condemned Agnes to death, giving her Klaus's name. "But Klaus. Some vampires showed up, right before… Some vampires showed up. Knew they'd been using magic. Knew it, Klaus, like they have a detection system or something."

He doesn't look the least bit surprised by this revelation.

"How did you bloody your hand?"

She blanches, remembering the wet slide of that peculiar blade, the one she had snatched from the plantation despite her suspicions about it, as it sunk into the witch's chest.

Not his chest, she thinks. His heart. His mortal heart.

A wave of nausea nearly overcomes her. She stares at her fingers. Feels a powerful disgust toward herself, for that stray fantasy of moments ago. He would have killed me. It was him or me. Yes. They were going to kill her, that unnamed witch she stabbed (killed) was going to hold her down while Agnes slit her throat or bled her out or whatever it was they were going to do. She's be dead right now, if she hadn't made her move. If Marcel hadn't intervened. Him or me. What did that make her, that she had been able to so effortlessly make that choice?

You're so cruel.

It's in my nature. And in yours.

"I'm tired. I'd like to go to bed."

He lets her go.

She has a lot to think on.

It seems wise to resume her vervain.

They don't go out the next day.

It's not quite one o'clock, and Klaus has immersed himself with an old book that he holds out carefully, as though the pages would crumble if he turns them too quickly. Infuriatingly, last night does not seemed to have spurred him on one way or another.

"Would you be a dear and stop your pacing? It's a tad distracting," he tells her without taking his eyes off what he is reading.

She freezes and glares at him, but when he still doesn't look up from his book, she throws herself into an armchair across from him and jiggles her foot against the coffee table. After last night, the tedium is killing her.

Klaus peers at her over the top of the book. "You seem like you have something to say."

She bursts from the chair again and resumes her pacing. "You can't just pretend like last night didn't happen. You need to tell me what's going on." She pauses. "One way or another, I'm involved now. You need to let me help."

He scoffs. "Don't be absurd. You'd be a terrible liability."

"Look, we have to handle this soon. Else, they're just going to come back for me." The party is tomorrow night. He's got to have the same clock ticking down in his mind as she does in hers. Unless, of course, she is overplaying its significance relative to everything else.

"You don't even know what you're proposing to venture into."

"Last night I told you those vampires knew that the witches had done magic. It was like they were responding to it, like they had a radar for it or something. But that wasn't news for you. What do you know about it?" And why weren't you with Marcel last night? And a quieter voice inside herself asks: Why weren't you there to save me?

He shuts the book and tosses it onto the table. "If I answer your questions, will you find something quiet to do? Despite appearances, I'm working on something."

"Yes." Scheming could be very quiet work. She just needs something to work from. Anything.

"The vampires knew the witches were doing magic, because they do have a method of detection."

"One of the vampires said it was against the rules." After a beat, she adds, like it's not important at all, "One of the witches called him Marcel."

He looks at her sharply. "Their ringleader. Has the French Quarter coven thoroughly trussed. Kills the unlucky witch he catches working a spell."

His words paint Marcel in a considerably more unfavorable light. Yet, those witches had been about to perform a human sacrifice, so maybe Marcel's rules can't be such a bad thing. Maybe the witches here needed to be contained.

"Why would they risk him finding them, to… use me for their spell?" she finishes.

Klaus's eyes gleam. "Therein lies the answer to my question, sweetheart. It'll be interesting to find out."

He leaves that afternoon, and Elena goes up to her room. Whatever is going to happen, will happen soon. She swears to herself that, one way or another, she's not going to sit this one out.

Klaus bursts through the front door just a few hours after he left. A spot of dried blood mattes the hair at his temple, another trickle dried over his lip. She watches from where she's sprawled out on the sofa as he slams the door and scrubs his hands through his hair.

"It's a plot," he tells her, without elaborating further.

Now, he's the one pacing, muttering to himself. Elena throws herself toward him, grabs hold of his arms.

"Klaus, Klaus, slow down. Tell me what happened."

"I found your answers, of course. Found out about the little Harvest witch who wasn't harvested a few months back, whose been doing Marcel's bidding. She's a Claire witch," he spits, as though any of this means anything to her.

He's not making any sense. She grabs on to the first thing she can to try to start putting the pieces together.

"Why does that matter, that she's a Claire witch?"

"I ever tell you why I daggered my dear brother Kol?"

She shakes her head. She's never even heard the name before.

"He had a plot, beginning of the last century. A coup d'état. Planned to forge a weapon that would work on me, despite my hybrid nature. Naturally, I found out, and put an end to him and the witches who helped him."

The plot holes in this story are a mile wide, but that's typical. Trust him never to trust anyone with too many details, especially about any potential weapon that would work on him.

"I don't understand. Where do the Claire witches come in?"

He breaks free of her and prowls the hallway, his movements too harsh and sudden for a human. "Oh! It was a Claire witch who worked my dear brother's spell in the first place. And it was Marcel—Marcel, my old protégé!— who helped me foil the plan in the first place! Don't you see? He knows about the weapon, and he's got the right witch for the forging of it, and he's got the ingredients at his fingertips at the Abattoire because I left them there when I fled! I'll be there tomorrow night, you know, he's invited me, and he just expects me to walk into his trap! Just like that!"

You know how he is.

Paranoid?

Ranting and raving and breaking things whenever he gets angry. It was hard to follow.

God, she how she relates to Tyler right at this moment.

She still doesn't really understand what it is he's trying to explain to her. It's like flipping a book open right in the middle, no context, and discovering that on top of everything else, the pages are out of order, some of them missing altogether. None of this quite matches up with what Marcel had revealed to her last week, either. He'd mentioned a binding spell, not a weapon.

What she does understand is that he can't do this alone. Klaus is like a livewire, snapping and sparking at random. He'll never solve this by himself. She thinks about him, the way he seems to her in those increasingly less rare moments when she catches him off guard and he offers her these little truths about himself, and so disarms her totally. This terribly lonely man, always looking for a family, a friend. Marcel had been that to him, once, she thinks. His protégé, he had called him. And now he's trying to kill him. What would that feel like?

"Let me help you."

She offers this without forethought and without artifice.

Klaus freezes where he stands.

"Sorry, what?"

Elena steps in front of him and catches his gaze. "Let me help you," she tells him, with all of the strength she can gather in her voice.

Klaus stares at her, mouth agape. He collects himself. "Why would you want to help me? I'd think you'd be pleased."

She should be. But the thought of Klaus, facing this alone… It hurts her, a little bit. Slowly, she takes his hand. That feeling again, like a current between them. "You feel this too, right?" His fingers twitch in her grasp. She dares to look up at him through her lashes.

He stoops down so that their faces are very close. All she can see are his eyes, boring into hers. "Are you for true? Do you really want to help me?"

"Yes." She means it. Knowing him, he's trying to compel her but she doesn't even have to lie to him. He hears that ring of truth and she can see the moment he takes it inside of himself.

The moment hangs heavy, and if she doesn't break this tension, she's going to do something she's not quite ready for yet.

"Besides," she tells him, trying to break the mood, "how else am I going to have my revenge on those witches?"

It works. His lips quirk and he moves back, away from her. Temptation passes.

"What makes you think you're going anywhere near them?"

"You just said I could help!"

"No, we just established that your intentions are pure. So to speak. But I've no intention of putting you anywhere near the danger."

She crosses her arms and tries very hard not to tap her foot. He's so exasperating! Like dealing with Damon but worse. "It's too late for that, Klaus. The witches know where I am, and if there's some link with Marcel, then he might know about me too. Whatever your next move is, I want in on it."

"No." He walks past her, pours himself a drink from the bar.

"Did Stefan ever tell you that I daggered Elijah once?"

He sets the bottle down and faces her. "You must've botched the job, then, because I seem to remember doing that very thing after the sacrifice."

Well then. That answers one of her questions. Ruthlessly, she pushes the thought away, shakes her head. "I undaggered him later. But that's not what I'm talking about."

"By all means," he prompts, flicking his fingers in a go on then motion. "Tell me the tale."

She walks over to him and helps herself to the drink he'd poured himself. He lets her. "It was last spring. We'd had a deal that fell apart. I wanted to renegotiate, but he wanted to take me away until the sacrifice, so that no one I loved would ever see me again."

"Good man, Elijah," Klaus murmurs while he pours himself a fresh glass of bourbon. "Can't fault his strategy. Where'd it go wrong for him then?"

"Oh. I successfully renegotiated." She lifts the corner of her shirt up, where a razor thin silver scar runs over the flat of her abdomen. "I took a kitchen knife and I stabbed myself with it. Almost bled out right there, because I wouldn't let him heal me unless he agreed to my terms." Klaus's eyes are riveted to the spot on her stomach. He always hates these stories, these reminders of how many times she'd almost died before he met her. There's something sick to that. Something about how it's not that she almost died, it's that she almost died before he had his shot at her. She takes a sip of her drink to steady herself. "He agreed, of course, finally, so I stumbled over the threshold and into his arms. And used my last remaining strength to drive the dagger I'd kept hidden into his heart." Elijah had clutched at her as the life left him. He'd been so palpably relieved, she recalls, to have her in his arms. To have the chance to save her.

Beside her, Klaus is quiet while he listens to her. She wonders what hearing this must be like for him, hearing from her about the brother with whom he could never quite find a balance.

"Where did you get the dagger?" Klaus asks after a while.

"My uncle. He was my biological father. He was desperate to save me." She clears her throat, which has gone oddly tight as she thinks on last spring, and sets the remainder of her drink on the lip of the bar. "So anyway, the point is, if I can take on your brother, I can definitely hold my own against a few witches and some regular vampires."

"You won that round against Elijah through subterfuge alone."

"You'd be surprised how far that can take a girl. That, and holding my cool under pressure. So. What's the plan?"

When he doesn't respond she turns to him. "Klaus, don't you want help?"

She can feel the moment he relents. Between one breath and the next, all of that fierce tension just drains out of his body. "You're not going to be taking on any witches or vampires, alright?"

"Okay."

"You're going to come along in a strictly reconnaissance role. No confrontations."

"Fine."

He sighs. "You'd best sit, then. We have a lot to discuss."

They light the fire, and they talk.

"You said, come along. Where?" She knows where, hopes she knows where.

"Marcel has conveniently invited me to his solstice party tomorrow night. The venue is my old abode. As I said, I'm sure it's a trap. Care to be my date?"

His date. Her heart races. All this time, trying to figure out how to go if she decides to betray Klaus, and now that she has decided against it, he miraculously proffers her the invitation. Could it be so easy?

"If I'm going to help you, I need the full story."

"You wheedled your way into this. Why should I indulge you?"

"You love telling stories. And besides. I can't go in without knowing exactly what I'm getting into."

He rolls his eyes, and then he indulges her.

He tells her the most bizarre story.

"I'm here for the werewolves, of course."

"Oh, obviously. For your hybrids."

He nods. "I thought the loup-garou packs here would be an easy addition to my army."

"So why weren't they?"

"Well, to begin, it seems there's a curse."

"So you need the witches to break the curse—"

"But Marcel has control of the witches. Terribly annoying. Not to mention it seems their little ritual sacrifice went rather poorly last time. Probably makes them too weak right now to unbind the werewolves anyway." He mulls that over. "Now, if I can get a hold of the Claire witch and deliver her to them, there would be a way to restore them while tying a string to the coven. Gratitude always goes a long way."

"You told me she's a child, Klaus. You can't do that."

He stares at her levelly. "Sure I can. It was much harder to sacrifice you last spring, and I hardly hesitated at all."

"What do you think they were trying to do?" she finally asks him. They're curled up on the couch together, Klaus facing forward, Elena facing him. If he turned, they would be very close indeed. "The witches, when they tried to sacrifice me. Why were they doing that?"

Klaus shrugs. "Someone in that coven at some point figured you out. Could have happened any time, I suppose, all that mystical energy you put off."

"What?" He's always telling her these unnerving things about how she smells or feels to him. She wonders if she'll ever stop being offput by it all.

"Mystical energy. Your blood's still potent as ever. Can feel it, if I'm close enough. Makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up sometimes, being near you. I expect a witch might be able to pick up on that as well."

"So, what. They thought they could kill me instead of the last remaining Harvest witch? That doesn't sound right."

"Might not have been a permanent solution, but it might have worked well enough for a temporary fix. Long enough for them to overpower Davina and get what they want from her."

"Is this all just about power for Marcel then? Bind the werewolves, control the witches, and give his vampires free reign over the city?"

"It's always about power, sweetheart. Just a matter of who's the one wielding it, at the end of the day."

I'm not the Prince. I'm the King.

And she suspects she's looking at the Pretender to the Throne.

"Repeat the plan back to me."

"We've already been over it twice."

"Repeat the plan back to me."

She rolls her eyes. It's a simple plan. Really, it is.

And yet. She's done this too many times to dare think, what could go wrong?

The fire is burned down to just the embers. In a few moments, the last log will collapse in itself, sending sparks up as it dies.

She feels warm and drowsy from all the bourbon, from the heat of the fire and the press of Klaus's body close beside her. She must be nodding off, because the next thing she knows, Klaus has plucked her from the sofa and is carrying her up the stairs to her bed. It's so very lovely to tuck her face against his neck and let him.

It's that feeling again, like a sharp nail trailing from the back of her skull down her neck, that wakes her.

She opens her eyes and stares straight up into Klaus's face as he sits at her bedside. "You fell asleep by the fire," he tells her softly. His fingers graze over her shoulder. "Go back to sleep."

Dutifully, she closes her eyes.

It seems like forever before he leaves.

For a long time, she doesn't let herself think of anything, just lets herself float along, eyes shut, the soft sounds of the city at night in her ears.

If she opens her eyes, she's afraid she'll see the shadow.

Klaus leaves. Her heart pounds. Panic rises within her.

Because the thing is, she recognizes what that feeling is—like spiderwebs clinging to the brain like glass sinking into the nape of her neck like the roar of river water in her ears—she knows what it is because she's felt it before and she knows what it's like when a vampire casts out a net of compulsion, only for that web to snag – for just one paralyzing moment! – before releasing and sliding back uselessly, like a wave on the beach.

And suddenly, everything is sharp and clear in a way it hasn't been, not for months, not since she first started dreaming about him. God, she's such an idiot. He's been in her head, sending her these dreams, making her sympathize with him and changing how she feels about him and making her—oh my God!—fantasize about his mouth on her, between her legs, at her throat, making her speculate about what he would taste like and exactly what it would feel like to just give in and have him inside of her and in this terrible, crashing moment, she thinks, why is she even tempted to just give in, except that he's put that thought in her head?

How how how how how had she missed this? How had she not even considered that he would be manipulating her? In what sane world would she ever offer him help? And mean it!

In what sane world could she ever forget about what he did to Jenna? asks a small voice inside herself. She hasn't heard that voice in months now.

She's going to throw up.

In the bathroom, she stares at herself in the mirror. It's still dark outside. Not total darkness, but the deep grey of pre-dawn. Just enough light to see herself by. She doesn't turn on the light, doesn't think she could bear to see herself reflected in such detail.

Her shoulder feels strained.

Half-hysterically, she peels off the sweater she'd never changed out of before going to sleep and stares at the web of bruises that cross from shoulder to neck. She fists her hand in her mouth to keep from screaming and bites down, breathing hard.

Just this morning she would have dismissed this. She would have said, oh, the witches did this to me. But now…. But now but now but now—

What if it's not just dreams?

The thought—the violation—is too much for her to dwell on for long. Perhaps she'll be ready to think about it more deeply tomorrow night, when this is finished with. Perhaps then she can turn herself down that path, but for now—

—For now, it's Jenna she thinks on. The aunt who loved her and died for her, who did the best she could to take up where her mother left off, who one day got a phone call and rushed headlong into danger because she thought her niece needed her. Jenna, who Klaus killed out of nothing, in the end, but a shallow sort of spite. Not even aimed at her, really. He hadn't known her then He'd killed Jenna because she, Elena, had had the Petrova face and he had wanted to lash out at her because of it.

The fury these thoughts churn up feels good. Feels right. Like she's thinking clearly for the first time in ages. Klaus deserves for her to double-cross him. And Jenna deserves to have her murdered brought to justice, even if it's a justice of Elena's own devising.

The next evening, Elena stands in front of the long stand mirror in her room, smoothing a black silk dress over her hips. She'd chosen it because the full skirt would hide anything she chose to place in its pockets. And because black suits her, the perpetual mourner.

Behind her, Klaus clears his throat. He looks terribly handsome, in a stark black suit and his hair slicked back.

"Are you ready, my dear?"

She slinks over to him, aware of the way he tracks her every movement, and links her arm through his.

"I am."

Revenge is a terrible thing.

A/N: So, YES, as many of you have guessed, Klaus has been in Elena's dreams—he's a terrible creep, so of course he has been.

I know a lot of you have been hoping Elena wouldn't betray Klaus… but doesn't he deserve it? And wouldn't it be something to see Elena take some of her own back?

Next chapter: The New Orleans Arc Finale!

Please drop me a review if you're enjoying xoxo