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: Extremely dubious consent verging on non-con/ Miscarraiage / Hostage situation/explicit violence and torture/gratuitous angst/ potential character death


How long until Finn drags himself into the shade? A minute? Two at most? Once out of the sun, he'll recover—she's sure of it.

This is her only chance to escape him. To find the others and warn them. (To warn Klaus.)

She sprints headlong toward the subway entrance, Finn's ring clutched between her sweaty fingers. Hurtles down the stairs and jumps the turnstile. Throws herself onto the train, heedless of the ruckus she's causing.

She doesn't relax until the train pulls away.

Think, think. She has to think.

How far will she have to be before Finn can no longer sense her bracelet? A few blocks? A few miles? Should she take it off?

No. Its protection is worth the gamble of Finn maybe finding her again, if it keeps Mikael or any other vampires from tracking her. If it keeps whatever witches Mikael may have brought with him from noticing her.

And, she thinks with a tight, satisfied smile as she pockets Finn's ring, so long as she sticks to the sun, Finn can't reach her.

The train stops, and Elena scrubs her hands through her hair, trying to muster a plan.

How to find the others?

No cellphone, so she won't be able to call or text any of them.

Had Rebekah mentioned where she planned to go today? Elena can't remember.

Fuck. What if she runs into Mikael while she's out searching for her? She doesn't have any weapons at all this time around. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

But… what if she doesn't run into him? What if Mikael's already found Klaus? What if Klaus is dead?

The thought crashes down on her like a mountain. Panic makes her head swim. Reality slips loose from between her fingers.

She takes a deep breath. Tries to calm herself.

Realizes that it doesn't matter whether she has a phone, that it doesn't matter that she isn't sure where to go, because no matter what, there is one person she can find. Whom she can always find.


At the next stop Elena detrains.

She can't help the way she looks over her shoulders, darting glances everywhere as she hurries up, into the sunlight.

It's not until she finds a sunny spot well away from any patch of shade that she dares to squeeze her eyes shut and concentrate.

The possibility that she will not sense him at all is so terrible that she almost cannot bring herself to look.

Except—she must.

She must.

She reaches—

There.

She pivots south.

She can feel him, a clear, persistent pull against her soul, impossible to miss now that she's focused in on it.

At this point, her awareness of Klaus is so persistent that she's mostly learned to tune it out. But now… she throws the full weight of her attention onto this trace of him. Feels it magnify with each step in his direction. Each breath. Each beat of her heart.

What begins as a walk quickly turns into a run as she winds her way through the city, searching Klaus out.

She takes the subway twice more, getting out and backpedaling where necessary.

Anything to get to him faster.


She's drenched in sweat and breathing hard by the time she finds him, nearly an hour later, at a remote boardwalk overlooking the Hudson.

"Klaus!" she calls, hands on her knees, panting.

He turns on the instant, surprise written plainly across his face. "Elena. What are you doing here?" He frowns. Appears at her side, an elbow under her arm to help her stand. "Are you alright?"

"Your father—your father's here."

He goes rigid, pulling her closer into his side, an arm firmly around her shoulders as he scans the area. "You saw him?"

"No—Finn." The story pours out of her mouth, too urgent for her to attempt any editing. "He told me your father was here looking for you, with that stake, I think. He said he'd brought reinforcements with him—witches, maybe? I'm not sure."

Klaus scoffs. "So Finn has sided with my father. Typical. He was ever certain we should suffer for our sins. I can't imagine a few centuries left to his own thoughts has improved him any." He pulls her off the boardwalk, into an alley along the side of a nearby building where they will be less conspicuous. He pulls his phone out, ready to dial Rebekah no doubt. "Did he mention whether Elijah or Kol were here with him?"

"I think Elijah might be daggered. He said he was indisposed."

"Ah. So Elijah couldn't hold the throne against the combined forced of my brother and my father. He shouldn't have undaggered the old monster."

Elena shakes her head. "No—I don't think that's right. I think Finn might be working is own angle. He said he was here to rescue me from Mikael. And from you."

Klaus's arm tightens around her shoulders. "Remind me how you slipped from his grasp?"

She shrugs. "I let him think I wanted to go with him and then when his guard was down I pulled his daylight ring off."

Klaus stares at her. "Pray repeat that? I cannot have possibly understood you properly."

Elena rolls her eyes and shows him Finn's daylight ring. "You heard me perfectly well."

He snatches it from her fingers. "Why you persist in these suicidal ploys—"

"What was I supposed to do? Let him kidnap me?"

"You might have charmed him like you seem to charm everyone else. He might have brought you home to your precious Mystic Falls."

"But then I wouldn't have been able to warn you."

He doesn't seem to have anything at all to say to that at first. "You didn't think to call my sister?" he asks at last.

"Finn sort of destroyed my phone."

"So you came to me," Klaus says slowly, like he's sounding the idea out. He watches her very carefully all the while, as though whatever she will say next will hold power over him—as impossible as that would be.

Elena shifts uncomfortably under his scrutiny. She doesn't like the way Klaus always seems to be implying things. She likes it even less when he he's right.

"I couldn't stand the idea that Mikael would get the jump on you, alright? I've told you before I wanted to be friends."

He continues examining her for a few more seconds, before taking a slow, deep breath. "Quite." He taps a few keys on his phone, gives a rapid fire explanation to first Rebekah, then Stefan. Makes plans to rendezvous. Assures them both that he has her with him, no need to search for her. To Stefan, he leaves instructions for the hotel to send them their belongings. He never lets go of his grip on her the entire time.

"We're leaving the city?" Elena asks when he hangs up.

"Best in my experience to avoid a fight where possible. New York will still be here in future."

What does that mean, when Klaus says in future? Past the timeframe of her own short life, she's positive.

A wave of sadness passes over her as she considers leaving this city she had only just started to feel at him in. She may never return.

"How long ago was your encounter with Finn?" he asks, breaking through her angst.

Elena considers. "A little over an hour, maybe?"

"You didn't give up on trying to find me easily."

She ignores the comment. "What's the plan, then? Get the car, meet up outside the city?"

"Car's too slow." He swings her up into his arms without awaiting her permission. "I'm much faster over shorter distances. We'll commandeer something once we're out of the city."

There's no additional warning. In a heartbeat he takes off with her, the bright mortal world passing by too quickly for her to sense anything other than the whip of distorted color and shape, the blur of rushing sound and the lashing of the wind against her cheeks. Elena tucks her face against Klaus's chest, her fingers clutching at his shoulders as he races them through the city. His arms remain iron strong and secure around her.

Being held by Klaus like this is an achingly familiar experience.

He had carried her in this way the very first time he'd ever truly touched her—when he'd taken her to meet their destiny.

This is the first time that he's touched her for so long since he saved her from bleeding out back at the smoldering remains of the manor.

When she leans her head against his chest, she picks up the familiar scent of him, concentrated right at his collar.

She cannot hear his heart under the rush of city noise. She imagines it, though, steady and slow and strong. Not at all a match for her own, still pounding from her race to find him.

There's a small part of her that's surprised he would deign to touch her for so long, to gather her so close to him.

He's made his feelings about her more than abundantly clear.

But… maybe he had been wrong. Maybe they could be friends. One day.

At that moment, Klaus careens headlong into a wall.

The impact shatters her thoughts.

Her whole body trembles and throbs like a sheet of metal struck with a mallet.

The tang of blood blooms bright in her mouth.

Slowly, Elena becomes aware that they have slammed down to a normal speed. That Klaus is still holding onto her, somehow one-handed, while he beats against an invisible barrier and spits curses from between his clenched teeth.

Nausea boils up inside of her. She struggles to climb out of Klaus's arms, feeling helpless and desperate as a fish on dry land as she fights to get clear of him before she hurls.

There's something wrong with her elbow, she realizes. It won't move. Her whole arm is a vice of agony, almost as bad as her head.

"Hold still, or I will drop you—" Klaus cuts off, a fresh string of curses falling from his mouth as he takes stock of her. A moment later there's a bloody wrist pressed to her mouth. "Drink."

She feels too awful to offer up even a token protest. She drinks.

Instantly, her head clears. The pain recedes.

Klaus sets her on her feet as she tests out her elbow, wondering if it really had been shattered moments ago or if she had only imagined that. Hard to say.

"Alright then?" he asks, watching her closely.

"Yeah. Right as rain. What is this?" she asks, pressing her hand up against the invisible barrier Klaus had hit. They're at the entrance to a pedestrian bridge out of the city. The barrier feels completely solid under her hand, though, curiously without temperature or texture.

With the speed Klaus had been going when they struck the barrier, she's surprised the collision hadn't killed her.

She glances at Klaus, who is busy glaring at the crowd passing them by, not impeded by the barrier in the least. He must have shielded her from the worst of the impact when they'd crashed into the wall.

"It's like an invitation barrier on a house," Elena realizes. Why would something like this be placed here? Almost like a snare…

"Except this one has been attuned to the two of us," Klaus says, gesturing to everyone around them moving freely through the barrier.

Elena shudders, hating this more every second. "Do you think the others are trapped too?"

Klaus shakes his head. "Mikael doesn't care about them. As far as he's concerned, my sister is free to live out the rest of her days in war or in peace, he doesn't care, so long as I am destroyed." He pauses thoughtfully. "If he pre-arranged to include you in this trap, then he wants you dead even more than I thought. More than for just an opportunistic kill. He must truly hate you." He laughs, then, the sound of it like someone reaching into her chest to pluck at her viscera. "It seems we've found some common ground after all."

Wonderful. Later, when they're well away from the city, she'll let herself think about the insane Original vampire hunting for her. To laugh at herself, for stirring up the enmity of yet another titanic foe. Maybe she'll even discover that Mikael's convinced the French Quarter Coven to help him, that they're the one who've laid the barrier. That would be her luck.

The thought kindles a memory, sobering her. "Can you break through?" she asks, recalling when he had clawed his way through Celeste's barrier spell all those years ago in order to reach her.

"With time and persistence, probably. You cannot, however, so the point is moot."

At least she knows he won't ditch her.

"What's our next step then? Do we try for another exit point?"

"It's as solid a plan as any. Mikael's only been here for a very little while. He can't have every avenue blocked." He holds his arms open for her. "Shall we?"


They try every direction. Despite Klaus's initial confidence, they are cut off at every possible point.

There's something else—something which Elena only notices after they've retried old directions a couple of times. Something, she realizes, which Klaus has already realized.

"Our circumference is getting smaller, isn't it." She doesn't bother to phrase it like a question.

"We're being herded, yes."

At that moment, Klaus's phone rings. He pulls them into a nearly deserted, dimly lit coffee shop, well out of sight of the street, before taking the call.

Elena's heart leaps when she recognizes the trill of Rebekah's voice on the other end of the line.

"We're already out, but the ogre's trailing us. We're going to be a tad late," Klaus murmurs into the receiver. "…Yes…Yes, I'll call you later, dearest… No, she's alright… Safe and sound, I promise… I have to go." He hangs up on her.

Elena stares at him, not bothering to conceal her surprise. "You lied to her."

"She's already well away from the city and safe. If she knew we weren't yet out, then she'd return for us. I won't risk her."

Elena nods, slowly. "Good." She a seat at the nearest table and twists at her fingers, thinking. "That's good." At least she won't have to worry about Rebekah. Even though Rebekah's about a thousand times more capable of taking care of herself than she is. A million. She's glad Klaus cares so much for his sister's safety.

"What's going on in that pretty head of yours?" Klaus asks.

Elena looks up at him. "I'm thinking that if we're being herded, then the best thing to do is to flip the script and do some hunting instead."

Klaus's mouth twitches. "I've forgotten what a bloodthirsty little thing you are."

"I don't see how. You were always happy to remind me of my cruelty."

"Even my memory can erode, when I don't think on something very often."

She has no idea how to respond to this, so she presses past it. "What do you know about your father's allies?"

Klaus takes the seat across from her. His eyes flick to the front of the shop every few seconds as he talks. "He has never had trouble recruiting the odd coven convinced that the error of my very existence needs correcting, or gathering a group of young vampires eager for glory that he can use as his cannon fodder. It can be… difficult to dodge him if enough vampires attempt to overwhelm me. Or it used to be."

The mental picture of vampires crawling over Klaus like ants while his own father jabs a stake at his heart makes her heart clench. She shoves the image aside, focusing instead on another angle. "So he probably just has some random coven with him," she says. Probably not the French Quarter Coven, thank God.

Klaus gives her a strange look. Misreads her comment. "The last I checked, the Bennett witch was not associated with any covens. I don't think she would deign to work with Mikael again after the last time."

This pulls Elena up short. "You've been keeping track of Bonnie?"

"That should stand to reason. She's a powerful witch who would love to see me dead."

They lapse into silence.

The bell above the door jingles, and someone orders a coffee. The hum of the espresso machine fills the space between them.

Klaus, she notices, keeps glancing toward the front of the shop.

He's in a strange mood today. Edgy. Practically vibrating in his seat. Like he's holding himself back, but only by the barest whisper of self-control.

"We should keep moving," he says after a few minutes.

She snaps her fingers. "Oh! That reminds me. Finn said something before I took his ring—he wanted us to walk at a normal pace, to avoid catching the attention of any witches."

Klaus gives her a sharp look. "You didn't think to mention this earlier?"

"I was distracted."

He sighs. All of his annoyance with her drains from him as though it had never been there at all. "It hardly matters. A few regular witches are no longer worth my consideration."

"So why not lure them out?" Elena asks him slowly, the plan coming to her as she says it aloud. A better idea sparks within her. She leans forward. "Or better yet, why not lure Mikael out?"

"No. Absolutely not."

"Why not? You can take him, can't you? Now that you know he's here?" The idea that Mikael would surprise Klaus had been the thing that had frightened her the most.

Now that the initial adrenaline rush has worn off, now that she's found Klaus and has someone to work with, to bounce ideas off of, she realizes that she actually feels fairly calm. She's had to go into so many dangerous situations by herself over the past few years, with nothing but her wits and her daring to keep her alive. It's much less scary when she doesn't have to do this alone. And besides that… Actually strategizing with someone is almost… comforting, by comparison. Fun, in its own bizarre way.

"I can," he says, answering her question. "Probably." He shakes his head. "It's irrelevant though."

"Why?"

"Because so long as you are here, he will try to use you against me, and I will likely let him."

She holds her wrist up in front of his face. "So long as I'm wearing this bracelet, he won't find me. I can hide, and you won't have to worry about your doppelganger getting offed half a century too soon. Problem solved."

"I've seen you wear this bracelet before. What is it?"

She frowns at him. Surely he's noticed? "It's a cloaking bracelet. Makes me hard to sense. Finn said he could barely hear or smell me. It's how I evaded Mikael and his cronies for so long back at the manor." She hesitates. "Davina made it for me."

She expects him to latch onto this last bit. "Finn still found you though," he points out instead.

"Yeah. Because he can sense certain sorts of magical objects or something." At Klaus's raised brows, she huffs. "I don't know! He's your brother. Shouldn't you know this sort of stuff about him? He was pretty vague with me about the whole thing."

"It's obviously not a very effective device."

"It is though." She squints at him. "How have you not noticed this bracelet before? I wear it all the time."

"Perhaps I had other things on my mind."

"But it's a good plan, right? Cut Mikael off, deal with him now?"

He purses his mouth. "How good the plan is is irrelevant. Mikael's going nowhere near you."

"That's the beauty of the plan! He won't have to! You can take him out and you can come get me afterwards."

"You're not leaving my sight, either."

"You're being ridiculous."

"No, I'm learning from past experience not to court disaster. I let you out on your own for just a few minutes and the next thing I know you'll be kidnapped by witches or up to your elbows in blood magic or gathering up an inexplicable armory of Dark Objects."

She doesn't exactly have a great defense for this—if she sees an opportunity, she'll take it, of course she will, but she's also no longer pitted against him, either. How can he not realize that she's on his side?

"And what if Finn finds you?" Klaus continues. "You can't have endeared yourself to him, leaving him to incinerate like that. Even now, he must be looking for you. Seeking revenge. You said yourself he can sense the bracelet."

She doesn't think Finn is likely to find her. It is just a gut feeling but… she trusts her instincts. The compulsion demanding she live trusts them too.

"It's a risk we'll just have to take," she decides.

"No. I can't very well fight Mikael if I'm distracted wondering about your safety." He drums his fingers against the table. "Do you see now why I preferred you to stay at the safe house? Think how much cozier that would be than scheming in this… hipster free trade coffee shop."

"I happen to like scheming."

"Of course you do. How could I forget?"

Elena glares at him. "Okay, so going after Mikael right now is out—not that I agree with your reasoning. If we can't eliminate the threat, then we have to find an escape route." She worries her lip, thinking. "Is it odd that the boundaries of the barrier keep shifting?"

"It's not impossible. The spell would need to be anchored to fixed points, but once set, they could be moved."

"But over so large a space, and so quickly? How large a coven would that take?"

Klaus stares at her. "A very large one indeed," he says slowly. "As large a force as the one Mikael brought to fore at the Abattoir a few years back, at least, to cover this much ground."

"Does he have that many witches at his disposal?"

"I can't say."

"They would need to channel something though in order to pull off such a huge spell, right? But then, what?"

Klaus doesn't answer her, a thoughtful frown creasing his brow.

"What if… what if it's not a standard barrier spell?" Elena asks, her mind racing over the mountains of practical information and abstract theory she had studied during her years in solitude. "What if it's a binding circle?"

"You mean, what if the witches are linked together to draw the barrier?"

"Yeah. The binding circle gets smaller as they all gradually walk closer to the center of the city, like they're pushing a net. We get trapped in the net, and all Mikael has to do is wait for us. No searching required. Just biding his time."

"That doesn't sound very much like my father."

"Maybe he's learned some patience."

"Maybe." Klaus leans back. "You realize that there's only one way to test if you're correct?"

Elena exhales slowly. "Yes."

For the first time in years, Klaus smiles just for her. "Splendid."

And in that moment, it doesn't matter how dangerous that smile is.

Elena smiles back.


It doesn't take long for her smile to slip once Klaus tells her what he has in mind.


At some point, Elena would really like to stop playing bait.

She waits on a park bench. It's just a little neighborhood bench—near the edge of their outer range, in as prominent a location as she and Klaus could devise. It's a risk—Mikael could be nearby, searching for them, but Klaus had thought that if he were going to go to the trouble of setting this trap for them, then he would be waiting for them at its heart.

She rubs her bare wrist, feeling oddly vulnerable without the shield of her bracelet.

If a witch walks close enough by, they'll sense her.

"You'll raise the hairs on her head," Klaus had assured her. "She won't be able to resist investigating you."

Neither of them are certain what might happen after that. There's an equal chance that the witch they're hoping will approach her will have been filled in on what she is and move to abduct her as there is that that witch could be completely in the dark about her. The witch could just be curious when they approach her. Powerless in the grand scheme of things. An order taker, like Sophie had been.

Innocent.

Elena hates not knowing. Hates sitting here defenseless even more.

She thumbs at the razor-thin scar that runs from the bottom of her ear and along the bottom of her jaw, where Celeste had slit her throat. Her last big run in with a witch who had taken an interest in her.

She really wishes she had some sort of weapon on her. A dagger would be great, or a Dark Object. Hell, a pocket knife.

Instead, all she has is Klaus's phone, given to her as a prop to make her look as oblivious as possible. He hadn't even unlocked it for her. Typical.

She shoots a glare off in the direction she thinks Klaus is watching her from. He'd put her bracelet on himself, so that he could get the drop on any witches she might reel in.

For the first time since he came back for her that terrible day at the manor, she cannot feel him at all.

Where her awareness of Klaus is usually a persistent echo inside of her, there is now only a gaping abyss. It's as though someone had cut him out of her.

She's unprepared by the welling horror that emptiness stirs within her. For how much she has come to depend upon the reassurance of his mere presence. Because of their blood bond, Klaus is as constant and inevitable for her as the sun rising in the morning, as the moon at night.

It's a dangerous way to feel about him.

She knows from past experience that he can leave her. That he can slip so far from her reach that she cannot feel him at all, until everything is as dark and murky as the water at the bottom of Wickery Creek.

Deep in her heart, she knows that it's an inevitability.


She waits.


Perhaps twenty minutes pass before a young blonde woman in a denim jacket pauses to frown at her from across the street.

There's a moment when Elena thinks the woman's staring could be incidental. When she almost prays that she'll shake her head and hurry on her way.

That moment passes, and still the woman stares at her, her gaze too direct and intent to be anything other than recognition.

Elena pretends not to notice her. She keeps her eyes locked on the screen of Klaus's phone.

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see the woman cross the street and make her way up the sidewalk toward her. She's young, Elena realizes. About her own age, maybe even a couple of years younger. More a girl than a woman.

The girl's maybe fifteen feet away from her when she raises her hand. At the flash of movement, Elena can't help but look up. Her vision throbs, beginning to black in and out, as she meets the girl's eyes.

She's looking right into them when Klaus breaks her neck.

A second later he's posed her on the bench next to Elena like she's fallen asleep waiting for the bus.

Elena leaps from the bench as soon as she processes what's just happened.

God, he's even thumbed her eyes closed.

She casts wildly around, certain that they must be drawing a crowd of horrified onlookers. That news of this will spread and any moment Mikael and his allies will descend upon them in a fiery flash.

Instead, everyone around them continues on about their day, chatting and scrolling through their phones and nodding along to music and drinking coffee, as though nothing at all extraordinary had happened.

Elena realizes that the whole thing had happened so fast that no one had even noticed.

What a pitiful way to die.

"It appears your bracelet really does work," Klaus notes as he rifles through the dead girl's pockets. He pulls her wallet from her jacket and thumbs through it, examining her ID. "She passed right by me and went straight for you instead." There's a tinge of excitement in his voice. Probably from flying incognito around a witch, when even the most untrained novice could like detect him at a substantial distance.

The combination of his buoyancy and the fact that, even with him right in front of her, there's a yawning emptiness where he should be claws at her nerves.

"We were supposed to question her," she snaps. "Not kill. Question." She draws the word out long and slow, because apparently he's too thick to grasp the meaning. She can't believe she'd thought he might hold it together.

"What does it look like I'm doing now?" he asks, indignantly waving the dead witch's ID. "She was about to drop you like a stone. Would you have preferred I let her finish so you didn't have to see?"

Elena's pragmatism wrestles with the slim amount of guilt she feels for her part in the witch's death. As always, her pragmatism wins out.

She crosses her arms over her breasts. "Well. What have you learned?"

"Name and address. Enough to guess at her coven." Klaus flicks the ID and wallet into a nearby trashcan. "If we're right, then the circle's one witch short. The other witches will've noticed something's gone amiss, no doubt, but they'll need some time to recoup. Shall we see if our theory was correct?"


Our theory. Those words ring in her ears as she lets Klaus lead her to the spot where they had last encountered the barrier, a few blocks back.

They clear the threshold like it had never existed in the first place.

Elena laughs, delighted despite herself. She turns and grins up at Klaus. "I was right!"

A beat passes— Elena beaming up at Klaus, him, frozen, staring down at her, and then he's smiling too—not the terrible, gleaming, anticipatory smile he had given her in the coffee shop, but the quiet, soft one that she had always cherished above all others. "A lucky guess."

"Admit it: we're free, thanks to me."

"You'd never have been able to handle that witch without me."

"You'd never have been able to lure the witch out without me. Speaking of which…" She holds out her hand. "Bracelet, please."

Klaus examines his wrist, encircled by her cloaking bracelet. "Let me wear it a while longer."

Elena quirks an eyebrow at him. "Accessorizing?"

"Something like that."

He takes hold of her hand, then, and whatever else Elena was going to say next flies out of her head as he pulls her through the city, further and further from Mikael's trap.

There's a very, very rational part of herself that knows that Klaus is just holding her hand like this because it's expedient. Really, he's just leading her like a pet. It's not really hand holding at all.

The thing is, she can tell herself these things, but her heart remembers.

The shock of skin to skin contact is enough to dredge up what she hadn't wanted to know about herself: Underneath it all—underneath all of the work she has done to find herself, to carve out a new life for herself, something just for her and her alone…underneath the intensity and joy of her love for Rebekah… there is still a part of herself that leaps when she hears him call her name. That may always leap.

Perhaps it's the connection between them. Blood calling to blood. Like to like. A mirror casting its own reflection into eternity.


Klaus pulls her after him for what seems like forever. She doesn't remember any of their initial attempts to cross the sitting taking this long, but then, Klaus had been sprinting at full tilt, whereas now he seems determined not to draw too much attention. Hence the bracelet.

The fact that he won't let go of her hand makes the time crawl all the slower.

A few blocks from the bridge, Klaus pulls Elena behind him.

A moment later, Finn steps out from an alley to block their way. The height of the surrounding buildings casts a blanket of protective shadow around him.

Elena peers over Klaus's shoulder. Despite how she left him, Finn looks hale and whole. Completely healed from what would have been a death blow to a normal vampire.

"The twenty-first century appears to agree with you, brother," Klaus says.

Finn squints at him. "You're wearing the girl's bracelet."

"The lengths I must go through to seek an audience with my own brothers. It's positively shameful."

Klaus's reasons for wearing her bracelet click into place. Why he had chosen such a slow pace to travel, and hadn't bothered to speak to her in ages. He'd wanted to hide his own presence and let Finn track the bracelet instead. He had lured Finn here, allowing him to think he was tracking Elena on her own until just this moment.

"You could have removed the dagger from my heart at any time over these past nine centuries if you truly desired my conversation."

"Circumstances change. You've become more interesting in the past three hours."

"So you admit you feel no guilt or shame for keeping me daggered?"

Klaus shrugs. "It was for your own good."

Only the slightest tightening around Finn's eyes reveals the fury Klaus's casual dismissal engenders within him. How he reins it in to speak, Elena cannot say.

"Relinquish the girl to me this instant, Niklaus, and I promise you there will be no need for violence between us."

For answer, Klaus takes Finn's ring out of his pocket and tosses it into the air.

Instantly Finn lunges for it, but he's not fast enough.

Klaus catches and pockets it in a flash, ducking into a pool of sunlight and dragging Elena back with him in the process. He never lets go of her hand. She ends up pressed against his back, her free hand flat against his shoulders. "How are you going to fight me if you cannot go out into the sun?" he taunts his brother.

Finn prowls at the edge of the shadows. "Do you expect me to beg you for my ring?"

"That would require you to do something interesting, so, no."

"You're as childish and selfish as ever, I see."

"You should reconsider the elder brother act. It rings less true when I've lived ten times as long as you."

Finn glowers. "Give over, Niklaus. The girl's an innocent in this. Remand her to me, and once I am satisfied that she is safe, I shall return to speak with you."

"I'm surprised you care so much for her safety, considering how she played you for a fool just a few scant hours ago."

"Clearly the girl's been compelled. That, or you've twisted her mind into such a desperate state that she can no longer tell friend from foe." For all that the conversation is supposedly about her, Finn never bothers to look her way.

"Perhaps she simply prefers a lifetime with me to the prospect of even a few hours in your dull company."

"No one deserves such a fate."

She can feel the way Klaus goes taught as a drawn wire at Finn's barb.

Even now, throwing the intensity of his disconnected loneliness into his face is still the easiest, surest way to wound him. No matter that so much of his anguish is entirely self-inflicted.

Klaus rallies faster than she expects him to. "Your self-righteousness rings rather hollow when you have blood on your lips. Tell me. How many did you have to drain to heal from your burns? Three? Four?"

Finn laughs, the sound hollow, like the husk of an old tree eaten through by termites. "Don't you see? I am as damned as the rest of you."

"You've been singing this song since the first morning we woke up with the taste of blood in our mouths."

"Nine centuries of black dreams have only shown me how right I am. We're abominations, Niklaus. All of us. We shouldn't be here."

Klaus sneers. "Where else do you suggest we go? Our graves?"

Finn steps up to the edge of the shade, a fire burning in his eyes. "To the next world. Together."

"What does Elijah think of this? Kol?" She can hear the smile in Klaus's voice as he continues without waiting for an answer, "Allow me to guess: They weren't interested. Is that why you undaggered Mikael?"

Finn shifts uncomfortably. "How did you know that was me?"

She can hear the smile in Klaus's voice as he explains, "Because Elijah has too much sense when his temper is cool and Kol would never invite any additional authority into his orbit. Besides all of that, I've been asking myself for hours why you would care about this particular girl when you've never actually raised a finger to defend any others, though they were infinitely more innocent by your standards than this one. I could only imagine one reason compelling enough to stir you from your eternal torpor: You feel guilty. You woke the old monster up hoping he would sympathize with you, and the first thing he did was bay for her blood."

"I thought he would be an ally," Finn admits plainly. It strikes Elena that he completely lacks the talent for dissembling shared by the rest of his siblings. "I had no inkling of his designs upon the girl until it was too late."

"An ally in what? My death? It's his sole passion."

"Finding an end," Finn reiterates. "For all of us."

Klaus watches his brother for a long time. "There is no end for us," he says at all. "I thought you would have realized that by now." He turns to leave, tugging Elena behind him.

"That's it? We're leaving?" she asks, the first she's spoken since Finn stepped into their path.

"I wanted to confirm whether he's in league with my father. Knowing he's not, there is no reason to linger."

"But he wants to kill you all."

"Let him try to find a way," Klaus answers carelessly. "There is none."

"If you care at all about that girl, you'll hand her over to me," Finn calls after them. "That, or kill her now, quickly. Death would be a mercy, compared to the future you'll give her."

In an instant Klaus has Finn pinned against the wall, his hand crushed around his brother's neck. "Think of harming her again and I'll obliterate you," Klaus snarls. The words are so harsh and low that they hardly sound human.

The vehemence of Klaus's response stuns her.

Finn laughs at him. "If you had a dagger on you or any way to follow through on your threats you would have used it already," he rasps. "Your words are empty."

Klaus drops him. "Elena is one of mine. The same goes for our sister. Stay far, far away, or I shall ensure you never have the chance to pass from this life into the next."

He spins on his heel, catching Elena up by the arm and shepherding her away, out into the afternoon sunlight.


They commandeer a car outside the city. It's a sleek sedan, faster and more compact than any vehicle Elena has shared with Klaus before.

Truthfully, it's a little strange, speeding north along the highway, just the two of them. Today's the longest they've been alone together since… since before he left her.

Again and again she replays the memory of Klaus lunging for Finn's throat after he had threatened her. With nothing else to distract her, she can think of nothing else. Klaus had been enraged beyond anything she had seen from him since he discovered her affair with Tyler. Over her.

Except, the more she ponders the memory, the more she concludes that his reaction shouldn't have surprised her so strongly. After all, he'd never stopped being possessive of her. Had never stopped caring about her physical welfare. And that was what had been at stake.

She needs to let it go.


Elena watches New York City fade behind her in the rearview mirror, until it is no more than a speck of light glinting off the glass.

"I never did ask," Klaus says when even that small speckle of light is so far gone it may as well have never existed. "How did you find me this morning?"

Outside, the sky is warm and orange near the western horizon, deepening to a blue-violet flecked with the first evening stars in the east.

Elena considers the question for a long moment, searching for something truthful she could offer him. "Would you believe me if I told you it was fate?"

He never responds.


It's nearly midnight when they pull up a drive to a secluded white house in the middle of the woods, somewhere approximately due west of New York.

Every light in the house is on. The windows blaze like a beacon promising welcome and safe harbor.

Rebekah appears on the front porch as soon as they pull in front of the house. She has Elena's car door open less than a second after that.

Elena tears her seatbelt off and flings herself into Rebekah's waiting arms. Feels herself come home.

This morning when they had said goodbye feels like a century ago.

Rebekah combs her fingers through her hair, checking her over. "You're truly alright, darling?" she asks her, peppering her face with kisses. "I was so worried. How far out did you have to drive before you lost him?"

"Totally fine," Elena assures her, ignoring Rebekah's second question. It had been Klaus's lie, not hers, this time, but she'd rather not stir Rebekah up unnecessarily. She glances behind her, to where Klaus is climbing out of the car. "It turns out Klaus and I made a pretty good team."

"I promised you I'd return her safe and sound, did I not?" Klaus asks as he passes them on their way to the front door.

Rebekah pauses. The tiniest crease furrows her brow. "Yes. I suppose you did."


The house emanates the unnatural stillness of a vampire's abode when Elena dresses and creeps out of the bed she shares with Rebekah some hours later.

It's not a particularly large house—merely three bedrooms at the top of an old, creaky set of stairs. The walls are thin enough that she had quite clearly heard the timber of Stefan's voice drifting down the hall from behind a closed door. They had chosen it for its seclusion and for the views of the wintry evergreen forest more than for anything else, Rebekah had explained when she had given her the brief tour before leading her up into their bedroom and falling into bed with her.

She'd come four times before exhaustion had claimed her, but something had woken her up, and after staring up at the ceiling and shivering and shifting about in her sleep for what must've been an hour, she gives up.

In the stillness of the moonlit kitchen, she finds a glass in one of the cupboards and pours herself a glass of water. Grabs the quilt from the sofa to wrap around her shoulders and takes it, barefoot, out onto the front porch.

Her heart leaps in her throat when she spies the dark shape hunched over on the front steps. It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust enough for the shape to resolve itself into Klaus's silhouette.

"Aren't you supposed to be tucked into your bed?" he asks her without looking back at her.

"Can't sleep." She settles down next to him and takes a sip from her glass.

They watch the night together.

The forest is so still that Elena swears she can see it breathe.

"This reminds me of home," she tells him, as the sky begins to lighten.

"Virginia?"

"No. Not that one."

He doesn't inquire further.

The sun is low on the eastern horizon when Klaus stands.

"I nearly forgot: I have your bracelet for you," he says, taking it from his wrist.

Awareness of him swells to the point of pain within her, too much too fast.

"Are you alright?" he asks, his fingers still outstretched, waiting for her to take the bracelet back.

"Yes." She hurries to slip the bracelet back on, her relief at being able to feel him again like a sharp blade in her chest. "Just had a bit of a spell," she assures him. "I'm fine now."

He nods, turns to leave.

Somehow, Elena cannot quite bring herself to let him go just yet. She has the feeling that once he leaves, whatever ease they had found with each other during the past twenty-four hours under duress will dissipate once again, replaced with Klaus's distant tolerance.

"I'm surprised you're letting me keep this," she blurts out.

He pauses. "Why?"

"Because I could use it to evade you."

His mouth quirks. That almost smile again. Something about it doesn't warm her the way it had yesterday. "Elena, if I wished to find you, no mere trinket could keep me from you."

"If," she repeats.

"If," he agrees.


Elena watches the sun rise over an unfamiliar forest.

At some point, Rebekah finds her and settles down next to her. Rests her head against her shoulder and takes her hand.

Elena takes a deep breath, breathing in the clean, familiar scent of her.

A deep peace washes over her.


She tucks away those old feelings that had come knocked loose inside of her the day before, aware that they are still there, but satisfied to leave them hidden, an undisturbed secret deep within herself.


A/N: Thanks for reading. Your comments give this fic life. Please let me know if you're enjoying, or swing by my inbox over on tumblr livlepretre for updates on the next chapter, fic previews, playlists, FE inspired art, etc! Until next time!