Bite-Sized
Disclaimer: I own nothing, except these words.
"There's an old voice in my head that's holding me back."
"Well, tell her that I miss our little talks."
"You're not taking me seriously," Elena insists.
Her husband glances up at her from behind his easel. "No?" His brush drips a cad red wash onto their hardwood floor– how many times does she have to remind him to use a drop cloth?– as he studies her. For a moment, as she stares at the steady drip drip drip of the red paint, her mind replaces the image of the red liquid with a red liquid of another sort– with blood, dark and vital, pattering onto a different hardwood floor, in a room that feels as familiar and real in her mind's eye as their parlor here in New Orleans is right now. "Tell me, then," her husband says, drawing her out of her dark flight of fancy. He sets his brush down and joins her on the low sofa by the fireplace.
Elena swallows thickly, pushing the shape of her bloody thoughts away as much as possible while still holding onto the import of them.
She glances down at her husband's hands, smeared in red paint. She blanches when she looks up into his face– expects, for a moment, for his eyes to shine with unholy black fire, for his mouth to be ringed in blood and gore, for his fangs– no. No. It's just the crackling firelight playing tricks on her.
Her husband so enjoys to paint by firelight. That's the only reason that, when she thinks of him, her first flash of his face in her mind's eye is always illuminated by firelight.
"You can trust me with anything," he promises her.
"You'll think I'm crazy."
"I would never."
"You'll realize it was a mistake to marry me."
"Marrying you was the single good decision I have ever made in a long life of far too many terrible choices."
His conviction fills Elena with the bravery she has been hunting for. Still. She cannot meet his eyes when she confesses to him, "Sometimes, when I look at you, I don't recognize you."
She can hear a frown in his voice as he tells her, "Go on."
"I mean, I know it's you, but you're… you're a monster. I look at you and I get this flash, like you want to hunt me– to hurt me, to–" She cuts herself off. The thought of him tearing her throat out is too horrific to speak aloud.
Her husband cups her face between his hands, heedless of the red paint he smears along her jaw, and turns her gaze to his own. "You don't have to be afraid of me," he murmurs to her. "I made sure you would never have to be afraid of me again."
Elena frowns. "Made sure? What does that mean?"
There's something frightening and oh so familiar in her husband's eyes. Something inhuman.
A name tickles at the edges of her thoughts. Klaus–
But when he smiles at her, she cannot help but lean in to his touch.
"You have a stubborn mind, my love," he murmurs. "That's all." Her husband leans forward and kisses her full on the lips. And when he pulls away, he coaxes her, in an oddly compelling tone of voice, "Forget these troubling memories, now. You are safe here with me, and I will never let any harm befall you again."
Four months later the same voice in her head whispers to her again. Warning her.
Again, eight months after that.
Three more years pass, in which she and her husband have a daughter together and move into a bigger house near the park, in which they have a few knockout rows and a few even more explosive make-ups, in which her career as a freelance writer begins to gel and she realizes with a bolt as she curls up with a cup of coffee on their back porch to watch her husband chase their giggling daughter through the backyard that she is really truly happy. And it's the very awareness of that happiness that stirs her– that strikes her as not right.
Elena frowns, rubbing at the old scar on her neck, which aches sometimes with a phantom pain she cannot explain, especially since she's never been able to say for certain how she even got that scar–
Her eyes land on her husband, his arms full as he snatches their daughter up and tosses her high overhead.
The pieces snap together in her mind in an instant.
She drops her coffee mug, shattering it upon the ground.
Her husband turns to face her, settling their daughter on his shoulders. "Everything alright?" he calls.
"Fine! Clumsy me, I just fumbled the mug." She smiles her sunniest smile at him.
Klaus won't be compelling her again.
And when she's ready, they're going to have a little talk.