Happy Birthday, Elena
Chapter 26
Despite Klaus technically being the fastest amongst his siblings, due to his status as a Hybrid, Rebekah was the first up the stairs and into the bedroom. Elijah had moved to resume his seat on the bed next to Elena, and he still had Raynor in his arms when Rebekah came into the room. A huge smile broke out on the blonde's face at the sight before her. When Klaus, Kol and Jeremy came to a stop just behind her, similar smiles appeared on their faces as well.
"What's his name?" Rebekah asked in a soft voice.
"Raynor Henrik Mikaelson." Elena replied, watching the expressions on Rebekah, Klaus and Kol's faces at hearing their nephew's middle name.
"Henrik... he would be thrilled to have his nephew named after him." Klaus responded.
"We wanted to honor him. As the names of our fathers were all out of the running." Elijah said.
"Yes, Raynor Mikael Mikaelson would have been a mouthful." Kol joked. "And the poor kid would have been laughed at." He added.
"It's not just Mikael's name that was out of the running. But Grayson and John as well. I didn't want to us to honor anyone that hunted vampires, given that his own father is a vampire." Elena explained.
"I'm missing something here, aren't I?" Kol asked.
"Mine and Elena's fathers." Jeremy said. "Our family, as a "founding family" of Mystic Falls, was in the business of hunting down and eliminating Vampires." He explained. "I'm with Elena on not wanting to name a child after any of them." He said while taking Rebekah's hand in his.
"Fathers? As in, the two of you have different fathers?" Klaus asked.
"John Gilbert is my biological father. Grayson Gilbert, who is Jeremy's father, is my paternal uncle, but when Isobel gave birth to me, Grayson and Miranda adopted me, and raised me as their daughter." Elena explained. "Isobel was only 16 when she had me." She added.
"On the brightside, you went 2 years past that before getting knocked up." Kol said.
"She wasn't 'knocked up', Kol." Elijah snapped.
"Technically, she was. Just not by conventional means, Brother." Kol argued.
"Elena, please take our son." Elijah said, glaring at his youngest brother, who had the good sense to take a step back. "Never insinuate that what happened to Elena today was in any way a result of the usual methods of getting pregnant. She did not want to have a child at 18 years old, this was forced upon her by our mother, most likely with the added plan of killing us all very soon so that I could not be around to support her or my son. Do I make myself clear, Kol?"
"Crystal. I'm sorry Elena." Kol said with a nod.
"Can I hold him?" Jeremy asked as he fully entered the room and walked around to the far side of the bed where Elena was sitting, holding the now sleeping baby boy.
"Sure, just be careful. Elijah got him to sleep and I don't want to wake him." Elena said and waited until Jeremy was sitting in the chair that Elijah had been occupying earlier to hand him her son.
"He'll be fine, Elena. Even if he does wake up, I'll rock him back to sleep." Jeremy said with a smirk.
Elena nodded once before leaning back against the pillows. She was exhausted, but that was to be expected. She had just endured 9 months of pregnancy in the space of a handful of hours, all thanks to magic, and she finally understood the toll that much magic had on Bonnie. Even if it wasn't the exact same thing as what Bonnie went through when she harnessed all of that magic, Elena had at least had a new respect for her best friend and would be mindful in the future on asking Bonnie to do too much. As she watched Jeremy gently rocking Raynor in his arms, and heard Elijah talking to his siblings in a low voice, Elena slowly let her eye lids droop closed and was soon asleep.
"Should we worry about Mother coming for the baby?" Rebekah asked as she watched Jeremy with their nephew.
"I don't know. But now that we have Bonnie back with her friends, and not pretending to hate them, maybe you and Caroline can talk to her about putting a protective ward around the building. Something that will stop even Mother from being able to come in." Elijah replied as he followed his sister's gaze.
"Bonnie might be powerful, but wouldn't that be asking a lot of her? Surely there would be consequences to her using that much magic." Klaus commented.
"The least we can do is talk to her about it, and if she thinks it's more than she can do, then we won't press her on it, and we'll figure out something else." Elijah replied. He didn't want to exhaust Bonnie by pushing her past her limits.
"What exactly can Mother do with a baby made from your blood before being turned into a vampire?" Kol questioned.
"I don't know." Elijah said. "But it honestly frightens me to even consider the possibilities." He added with a sigh.
"I know exactly what she will try to do, and it will have nothing to do with Raynor's blood." Rebekah said bitterly.
"Pray tell, Sister." Klaus said with a raised eyebrow.
"If Mother gets her hands on him, she will most certainly use him to blackmail or leverage to get us to eat or drink anything she gives us that she will have laced with Elena's blood to link us. Threaten to hurt Raynor if we don't comply. She knows that we put family above everything else, and that none of us would want to see one of our own hurt, especially at her hand. We would be put in the spot of choosing between letting her hurt Raynor so that Elijah can be here for Elena or leaving Elena vulnerable to anything else that Mother has planned for after we've all been killed." Rebekah explained.
"As much as I don't want to say this, but Bekah is right. Mother doesn't care about consequences. And after not caring if we survived the spell or not that turned us into Vampires, I don't see her having any qualms with hurting her own grandson to get us to do what she wants." Kol agreed.
"Then how do we keep Raynor and Elena safe if Bonnie doesn't think she can do the spell?" Klaus asked.
"This is something that we need everyone to help with." Elijah replied, his gaze drifting over to his now sleeping girlfriend. "Because I will not lose the woman I love or my son." He added.
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Everyone downstairs was starting to get anxious. They all wanted to meet the little baby boy, but having the aunt and uncles meet him was starting to take longer than Alaric having met him, and with everything that they were facing at the moment, any time that Elijah and Elena stayed away from the group, it caused concern to ripple through everyone. So when there was commotion at the top of the stairs, everyone in the living room turned to see if the new parents were bringing the baby downstairs. When it was just Klaus and Kol, there were a few audible grumbles through the rest of the group.
"Sorry to disappoint you lot. I could carry Kol like he was a baby if that would appease you all." Klaus offered with a slight frown.
"That wouldn't appease them, Brother. They want to see our nephew. We're old news now." Kol said with a smirk as he clapped a hand onto Klaus' shoulder before jumping out of the way of Klaus swinging his arm around.
"Where are Jeremy and Rebekah?" Bonnie asked.
"Upstairs still. Elijah wanted to talk to them. And we were tasked with talking to you, Little Witch." Klaus replied.
"Talk to me about what?"
"A possible protection spell around the building. Elijah doesn't want to force you to do one, if you don't think you can, but seeing as how the building being in Jeremy's name only prevents uninvited vampires from entering, it doesn't stop our Mother from getting entering." Kol explained.
"I'm not sure if I have the strength at the moment to do it, but if I can have a few days to rest up, it might be possible." Bonnie replied.
"That leads us to another thing. Something that everyone else here has already been made aware of." Klaus said, motioning for Bonnie to follow him away from the group.
"I really hope that everything is okay up there. Elena didn't want to be a teen mother." Caroline said, her eyes darting between Klaus and Bonnie, and the top of the stairs.
"Elena's strong, Care, it was probably just the pain of the pregnancy and birth that was making her say that." Matt said offered as he placed a hand on Caroline's shoulder.
"I know, but if on the off chance that it wasn't just the pain talking, they could be having a really difficult conversation about what to do going forward." Caroline replied.
"If that were the case, they wouldn't have had Alaric go up, or their siblings." Tyler commented.
"True. But um, speaking of having difficult conversations... we still need to talk." Caroline replied, finding it hard to meet Tyler's eyes.
"If its about the 2 weeks that you were following Klaus around, there's nothing to talk about. He had you compelled. I get it. He was getting ready for the ball, and everyone in Mystic Falls knows that you are the best party coordinator in town, and he probably didn't think you would say yes if had asked, so he compelled you." Tyler said with a shrug.
"There's more to it, Tyler." Caroline whispered moving towards him.
"You're not about to tell me that he compelled you to sleep with him, are you? Because if you are, then he raped you, and that's not your fault." Tyler said.
"Dude come on. Stop putting on a tough guy façade." Matt chided. "Care wants to talk to you, and even I can tell it's important. Let her talk and give her the curtesy of talking in private." He added.
"I don't need you telling me how to manage my relationship, Matt." Tyler snapped.
"He's just trying to help, Tyler." Caroline retaliated stepping between them. "And he's your best friend, so drop the attitude."
"Fine, you wanna talk, Caroline? Let's talk. How am I supposed to trust you after 2 weeks of absolutely no contact, when I know that you were being compelled for those 2 weeks by a psychotic maniac? How can I trust that he didn't compel you to do something that you wouldn't have normally agreed to do? How can I trust you when you say that he didn't do anything? How can you walk around, expecting everything is perfectly fine between us like nothing happened?" Tyler asked.
"I'm not." Caroline defended, folding her arms across her chest. "Since Klaus released me from his compulsion the night of the ball, I have been trying to find time alone with you to talk to you about all of this. And you have either been dismissive of the whole thing or avoid the topic all together. So I'm sorry if my best friend needing our help looks like me expecting things to be fine and dandy with our relationship. And if that's really how you see me, then maybe we shouldn't be together." She ranted.
"Maybe we shouldn't. It wouldn't have worked out in the long run with us anyway. You're the over self-controlled Vampire and I'm the newbie Werewolf that needs a chaperone during his transformations." Tyler huffed.
"I stayed with you the nights of your transformations because I didn't want you to be alone during them." Caroline said with a taken aback frown.
"Okay, that is enough out of both of you. If you have both forgotten already, there is a newborn upstairs that is probably trying to sleep. But no matter the circumstances surrounding this argument are, you two are going to need to sort them out in private so that Elena and that baby boy have all the help and protection we can give them." Liz said, bringing the fight to a halt. "Matt, you are currently the only one that has started to move into one of the other units, will you be so kind as to bring these two to your place, so they can work out their issues?" She asked.
"Sure thing, Sheriff." Matt said with a nod and turned towards the front door before coming to a stop. "I just remembered something. Something that you should all hear." He said, waiting for everyone's attention before continuing. "Before everything with Elena's pregnancy happened today, we found out that, even though the vampires that are here have been invited into the building by Jeremy, you need to also be invited into the individual apartments, as well. Even though the deed for the building is in Jeremy's name, with our individual "leases", noting us as tenants, we need to invite you into our apartments." He explained.
"And how exactly did you come to this conclusion, Matt?" Caroline asked.
"Earlier today, Elena was helping me unpack my stuff, and Elijah came to help, but he couldn't get into the actual apartment until I invited him in. I don't think he, Rebekah, Elena or Jeremy realized that would happen, but it's just another layer of security for all of us." Matt replied.
"So basically, everything that's going on is just making this building one of the most highly protected, with a multi-layer lowkey protection security system in all of Mystic Falls." Kol commented.
"In simpler terms, yes. But the way I'm seeing it is that Elijah is moving mountains to ensure Elena and their son are safe. And keeping Elena happy by ensuring the safety of her friends and family." Matt replied.
"And while I will need a few days to rest to recharge my magic, I think I should be able to put a protection spell around the building to keep other witches out. And I'll see what I can do about weaving a privacy spell into the protection spell so that no one who's outside the building can hear what's being said inside." Bonnie said as she and Klaus rejoined the group. "And before Matt takes Caroline and Tyler to his apartment for couples counseling, there's something that I need to tell you all as well." She said before going into the Long Con that she had been pulling on Damon and Stefan over the summer.
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To say that Jeremy and Rebekah were surprised when Elijah asked them to be Raynor's godparents would have been an understatement. Rebekah was naturally worried, given that if anything happened to Elijah, were their mother's plan to kill them all succeed, the same thing would happen to herself, and then both Elena and Jeremy would be devastated, but she agreed after Elijah assured her they wouldn't let their mother beat them. Jeremy on the other hand, knowing how much bad luck surrounded the Gilbert family, agreed quite quickly. He didn't want to think about a time when Elena wouldn't be around, but with their lives, he knew that that day could come much sooner than either of them wanted.
Once they had both agreed, Elijah asked for some privacy for him, Elena and Raynor. Noticing that Elena was still asleep, Elijah held Raynor in one arm while using his free hand to pull the covers over Elena. Only once he was sure that she was tucked in completely, Elijah moved around to the other side of the bed, gently placing Raynor in the middle of the bed before laying on his side, facing his son and girlfriend. As he placed a hand lightly on Raynor's stomach, Elijah let his eyes close before falling asleep. The last thought on his mind before he drifted off was of how much he hadn't realized he wanted a family of his own until this very moment. And he would be damned if he let anything happen to Elena or Raynor.
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By the time that Jeremy and Rebekah got back downstairs, there was tension hanging in the air. Caroline was standing incredibly close to Klaus and Matt while glaring at Tyler, who in turn was glaring at Klaus as he tried to comfort Caroline. Everyone else in the room was staring at Bonnie as they tried to get a grasp on everything she had just told them. But before either Jeremy or Rebekah could say or do anything, Klaus whispered something to Caroline, then the two of them were kissing. Jeremy noticed Tyler's jaw tighten at the display, and made to move towards his... friend?... but stopped when Tyler moved towards Klaus and Caroline, stupidly grabbed Klaus' arm to pull the Original away from Caroline and punched him.
When Tyler had pulled Klaus away from her, Caroline had stumbled backwards, thankful that Matt had been standing there to catch her. Once she got her footing again, Caroline looked between Tyler and Klaus, ready to separate them herself, only to find Rebekah and Kol already holding Klaus back, while her mom, Jeremy and Alaric held Tyler back. She couldn't stop the small laugh that escaped her lips at the fact that it took 3 non-supernatural people to hold a werewolf back, while it only took 2 original vampires to hold 1 hybrid back.
"Now probably isn't the best time to be laughing, Care." Matt muttered, but Caroline only shrugged.
"If you ever touch me again, you will be dead. I don't care if you're on Elena's safe list, you'll die." Klaus threatened, staring Tyler down.
"Then don't make out with my girl right in front of me." Tyler threw back.
"We literally just saw you two break up, not to mention the fact that I don't think Caroline belongs to anyone." Kol commented, his grip on Klaus loosening slightly.
"This doesn't involve you." Tyler growled.
"Oh, silly me for forgetting that this isn't common knowledge. You mess with one of us, you mess with all of us." Kol snapped.
"That's enough from all of you. Matt, please take Tyler to your place." Liz said, only letting Tyler go once Alaric had nodded that it was okay to do so.
Once everything had settled, and Matt had Tyler out of the apartment, Kol and Rebekah both let go of their brother. When they did, Klaus made a beeline for Caroline and pulled her into a hug. It was only once she could bury her face into Klaus' chest that Caroline broke down and let the tears fall. As everyone else in the room worked on getting ready to push ahead with the plan to get everyone currently living in the building out, and everyone that was in the apartment moved in, Klaus guided Caroline to the couch and sat down before pulling her into his lap and holding her close.
"I'm sorry for the part I played in your relationship ending, love." Klaus said.
"It never would have lasted anyway." Caroline muttered.
"How can you be so sure?" Klaus asked.
"One bite from him and I would die." Caroline replied.
"So you're saying that I'm the safer choice? Bit ironic if you think about it." Klaus said with a smirk.
"Not safer, just different, and maybe, in time, the better choice." Caroline admitted.
"Different because I'm a hybrid that you haven't known your whole life?" Klaus inquired.
"Exactly." Caroline said with a nod before resting her head on Klaus' shoulder.
Shortly after that, Klaus and Caroline were joined on the couch by Jeremy and Rebekah, who both looked like they were going to burst at the seems with joy, despite everything that had transpired that day. When Klaus simply gave his baby sister an expectant look with a raise eyebrow, Rebekah glanced at Jeremy before grinning at Klaus and Caroline.
"Elijah asked Jeremy and I to be Raynor's godparents." Rebekah said.
"THAT IS NOT FAIR!" Kol called from across the room.
"Elena's still human, so there's a chance that once we defeat Mother, she'll eventually want to have more kids." Rebekah replied, not even looking in Kol's direction, but knowing he heard her none-the-less.
"That's amazing, congratulations." Caroline said, a tight smile pulling at her lips.
"I'm sure it is nothing against you, Caroline." Jeremy said. "It's probably just the fact that Rebekah and I have been with them throughout everything the last 3 weeks when Elena in particular felt like both you and Bonnie had abandoned her because of her relationship with Elijah. If they do have more kids later on, I'm positive that Elena will ask you and Bonnie to be the godmothers." He said, taking Caroline's hand in his and giving it a squeeze.
"Thanks, Jer. Elena is lucky to have such a great brother." Caroline said, her tight smile turning into an appreciative one.