(The Stars Were Brightly Shining)

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.

Summary: After a one night stand with Klaus, Elena discovers she's not going to be alone for Christmas after all.

Spoilers: Seasons 3 & 4

Rating: R

Warnings: canon typical violence/ teen pregnancy / angst angst angst and Christmas


Except the gang doesn't seem to think so.

"Did he threaten you?" Bonnie asks from her perch at the kitchen island. "Or the baby?"

"Well, no," Elena admits, frowning. "But he was upset."

"About what?"

Elena turns away and busies herself throwing dishes into the sink. "You know, the usual," she answers vaguely, turning back to her friends. No way she can possibly answer that with any honesty. That would require letting on about that night, which is a no-go zone.

Caroline, who has been jittery and nervous ever since Elena dropped the news that Klaus was back, bites her lip and asks, "Is this definitely something we need to do something about? Or is this one of those situations where it's best to just let sleeping bears lie?"

Bonnie nods along, like Caroline's being completely reasonable here.

Elena gapes at the two of them. She can't believe this. She calls a group meeting to discuss Klaus, Enemy Number One, and Tyler and Matt don't even show up, while neither Caroline nor Bonnie seem to see the urgency.

"No way. If Klaus is back, we have to get rid of him."

"Elena," Bonnie says her name like she's about to break some bad news. "Unless you have any idea on how to get rid of Klaus, I've got nothing." Her phone rings, then, and after glancing at it, she tells them, "I have to take this. I'll catch you both later," and heads out the door.

Caroline taps her nails against the counter. "Don't look so worried, Elena. If Klaus tries anything, we'll think of something, like we always do. But in the mean time I think we have more important things to worry about—like the Winter Wonderland fest, which is only one week away. I sure could use an extra pair of hands?"

Elena agrees—she always agrees—and Caroline lets herself out.

She gives Tyler a call, thinking to give him and his cohort at least some forewarning, but his phone rings through to voicemail. She leaves a message but doesn't hear anything back until later that afternoon, when he texts her a simple thx.


She watches the sun set through her kitchen window, her hands curled around a steaming mug of vervain tea, and considers whether she's overreacting. She replays her conversation with Klaus over and over again in her mind, dissecting it for any hint of a threat to anyone she loved. The conversation had been charged, and she'd been unnerved at the time, but could that have just been the surprise of seeing him? Could she have misread the whole thing? It was true, he'd never said a word against the pregnancy itself. Had seemed primarily preoccupied with discovering the identity of the father, which, joke's on him, there isn't one, so no need to worry over much about him finding and eviscerating an ex-boyfriend.

Except, she can't shake the feeling that she's right about this. That she has every right to be freaked out and suspicious and that it's her friends who are wrong to dismiss the danger so quickly.


Two, three days go by, and she doesn't see any more of Klaus. If he hadn't come by her house, she wouldn't even know he was back.

That all strikes her as patently odd.

She notices one more thing: her hybrid bodyguards have all stopped trailing her.

It's just not possible that Klaus has stopped monitoring her altogether.


It's so quiet that she begins to wonder if it had all been one of those pregnancy dreams. The idea that she had called up her friends and worried so much over a nightmare fills her with so much embarrassment and anxiety that she actually drives by his house, just to double-check that she hadn't actually imagined the whole episode.

There's a black SUV in the driveway that she unfortunately remembers from that night and a steady stream of hybrids crisscross the property, looking as agitated as a nest of kicked ants. The sight reassures her that Klaus is definitely back while also completely unsettling her in the process.

She drives away as fast as she can, hoping no one saw her.


"It's the weirdest thing," she confides to Caroline over coffee at the Grill while the other girl reviews her to-do list. "I haven't seen him at all since he showed up on my doorstep. I think he's up to something."

Caroline peers up at her over the top of her planner. "Klaus? Oh, no, I saw him yesterday. He's donating a painting to the festival."

"What?"

"Yeah, I saw him here last night and he agreed to make a painting for the auction. I told you he's just decided to move back into that mansion he built. You know how he is." She makes a birdlike gesture. "Flighty."

"Did he say anything to you? Ask you any leading questions?"

"Other than the usual terrible pick-up lines? No." She goes back to writing notes in her tiny, careful script. "Don't borrow trouble, Elena, or trouble will borrow you."


Klaus. Making a painting. Ha!


Before she leaves, she asks Matt for a favor.


Days more slip by.

Nothing.


Maybe she had misread him. No. Not possible. But maybe—


The one time she sees him, he's stepping out of City Hall, locked in conversation with the mayor.

She stops, and watches him as they cross the street together, as they pass within twenty feet of her. He never even looks her way.


It makes her suspicious.


That night, on a hunch, she goes to the window, and very, very slowly, draws back her curtains, just a fraction of an inch, so that she can look outside onto the moonlit street.


She wakes up the next morning to a text from Tyler.

Seen Bonnie? Need 2 talk 2 her.

Elena lies awake staring at her phone. Realizes she hasn't seen Bonnie since that morning she'd called her and Caroline over to tell her about Klaus.

When she calls, it rings through to voicemail.


She's very careful not to say anything that could incriminate her or any of their friends.


The day goes by without Bonnie texting her back.

Elena grows more uneasy as the day goes on. It's not at all like Bonnie not to call her back, or at least text. The last time she'd avoided her like this, they ended up barely talking for months.


Dutifully, Elena goes over to the town green that afternoon to help Caroline string up decorations. The festival is the next day. Caroline, predictably, is flipping out as she orders hordes of volunteers around.

"Have you heard from Bonnie lately?" she asks her as they unpack boxes and boxes of lanterns.

"Oh, she's gone to Whitmore to meet with that Professor again." Caroline turns to a volunteer. "Why are you setting up those tables so close to the booths? People need to be able to walk!"

"Again?" Elena echoes.

"Huh? Oh, yeah, he's been helping her with her research about the—" Caroline gestures discreetly over her midsection. "You know." When Elena doesn't say anything, Caroline rushes on. "But don't worry! She hasn't told him anything specific that could connect her research back to you. Professor Shane doesn't really know anything."

The fact that Bonnie's been seeing Professor Shane and keeping it from her—but not from Caroline—stings more than a little. She'd thought the three of them were past keeping secrets from each other.

"I wish she'd mentioned this to me," Elena says, to cover her hurt. "That guy gives me the creeps."

Caroline shrugs, undisturbed. "Bonnie doesn't seem to get them from him. And besides, she's a big girl. She can take care of herself."

Elena glances behind her, for just a second, before pointedly turning her eyes back to the decorating at hand. "Yeah, I suppose we all are."


Matt finally comes through with that favor later that afternoon.

Just walked in, he texts her, alerting her that Klaus had just arrived at the Grill.

Elena makes her excuses to Caroline and wastes no time in racing over to his mansion.

If there are any clues or any information to be had that will help her get a handle on the situation with him, then they'll be there, in his home.


The front door isn't even locked. It's so easy to sneak inside that part of Elena wants to turn back, in case this is a trap.

But no. Klaus is at the Grill. His hybrids aren't really even his anymore. Everything is fine.

Without knowing what, exactly, she's looking for, rifling through his house is challenging work. She finds a ream of hand-written letters from across multiple centuries that all seem completely disconnected yet are kept bundled meaningfully together, a stack of grimoires, none of which are written in English, a few weapons stuck randomly into drawers here and there, and a number of necklaces and odd pieces metal or bone or stone that make her skin crawl when she runs her fingers over them. None of it tells her anything useful.

She finds the painting Caroline had mentioned on her way out, and frowns at the snowflake motif. So he really had made a painting, just because Caroline had asked.

Unable to help herself, she another step closer, to examine the palette table strewn with heaps of runny paint, the chemical odor going straight to her head, the brushes soaking in some soaking in some sort of solvent, the rags and dishes and powdered pigments in unmarked jars. Her heart pangs a little bit as she studies Klaus's work table, the place where he works his alchemy.

Yearningly, she reaches out, and touches her fingertips to the surface of the painting. They come away wet. Her fingers smudge the brushwork as she pulls away, and as she stares at the muddied section of the painting, the urge to ruin the rest of it rises up inside of her, sharp and unappeasable.

She smears her entire palm across the surface of the painting in one harsh slash, taking savage satisfaction in wrecking Klaus's work. She imagines herself wiping her hands over his life, his soul, warping everything he knew about himself in the process, the way he had warped her that night he'd let her look through his paintings and begged her to tell him her deepest darkest secret. She should never have let it happen. She knows that now.

It had happened, though, and no matter how much she tries to bury it all under denial so thick she could choke on it, she can't take it back. Not any of it.


That night, she opens up her curtains and spots him watching her window from beneath the shadow of the spreading oak, she wraps a shawl around her shoulders and slips outside, onto the porch. Sits down on the porch swing, drawing her knees up under her, and watches him watching her.


A/N: thanks for reading!