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/ Miscarriage / Hostage situation/explicit violence and torture/gratuitous angst/ potential character death
The very first time Elena leaves the country, she's twenty-two with a vampire riding shotgun.
Rebekah's directions had taken them north, to the New York-Canadian border.
She has no passport, but that's not a problem with Rebekah there to lean across the seat and compel their way through.
And then they are flying north through Quebec.
She's at the point in her life where both the most astonishing things and the most mundane things can both seem utterly surreal to her. The simple act of driving a car is as wild and impossible to believe as the fact that her daily problems include witches and werewolves and Original vampires out for her blood. Is as mystifying as death and resurrection had been.
She's not sure where Canada fits on that spectrum. It's hardly exotic. But then, her entire life is already stupendously, jaw-droppingly exotic.
Maybe just the fact that she is here, free, is extraordinary enough.
They pull up hours after dark to an imposing stone property set amidst rolling mountains.
It's more a chateau than a manor, Elena muses, as Rebekah leads her inside.
"I haven't been here since the summer of '93," Rebekah explains as they cross over the threshold. Elena understands without having to be told that she means the summer of 1893. "Nick bought the place while I was daggered, which was most of the 19th century. I had quite the job to do refurbishing it to make it habitable the first summer he brought me here." Rebekah looks around the place, wrinkling her nose at the mid-20th century pieces filling the house. Klaus's taste, Elena knows, but very much so not Rebekah's. "Seems I have the same job ahead of me now."
They wander through the vast, echoing halls, their boots clicking against the polished stone floors. Much like the manor, the furniture in many of the rooms is covered over with white drape cloths. Dust gathers thickly on the stained glass light fixtures overhead, which dapple the oak wainscoting in rich, warm jewel tone shadows. Huge windows overlook a vast wilderness, and a velvet night sky flecked with stars.
Distantly, they can hear the lull and whisper of voices from the other side of the house. The compelled cleaning crew, Elena bets, recalling her first night in New Orleans once upon a time.
At last they come to a grand, sweeping staircase, the carpet moth-eaten and bare.
"What a shame!" Rebekah cries as they climb the stairs. "Everything was so gorgeous when I left it—trust Nick not to bother keeping up the estate."
She can't actually imagine Rebekah lifting a finger to clean this place. Has never seen her perform menial labor of any kind. No, when Rebekah talks about keeping up a house, she means ordering a well-trained staff to do the work for her. Another throw-back to a time and a place when ladies did not do the work themselves, but organized the work of others.
And Rebekah had been a lady longer than any other.
Rebekah leads her up the stairs and through several more halls before stopping at a suite of rooms furnished in Second Empire antiques, toile, and rotting lace. The room, at least, is clean if age-worn, and the linens on the bed look fresh.
In the center of the room are a stack of trunks which Rebekah unlocks right away. They're filled with her effects from New York. Quickly, despite the cumbersome size, Rebekah dislodges the top trunk and opens up the one underneath it to paw through the contents. "None of your things are here," she notes.
"I had them stowed away in a room of Elena's own," Klaus replies from the doorway, where he leans, casually as can be, arms crossed over his chest, watching them.
Rebekah straightens and dusts her hands off. "Why should you have done that? Obviously Elena will be staying with me."
Klaus bestows a lingering look upon Elena before turning back to his sister. "Best not to presume a lady's intentions."
"Where's my room then?" Elena cuts in, before the tension can grow any thicker.
"I'll escort you." Klaus holds out his arm.
Rebekah links her hand with Elena's the instant he offers. "Simple directions will due, thank you. Which suite did you assign her? The Green Rooms? The Northwest Tower Rooms? The Peacock Rooms?"
"The Water Garden Rooms."
"But those are by your rooms. Clear on the other side of the building!"
Klaus rolls his shoulders, as though he's grown impatient with the conversation. "Elena here is still mine to watch over, is she not?"
"I thought we'd established that you'd ceded her unto me," Rebekah argues, a quiet steel in her voice.
"Actually, we established that I was coming along of my own free volition," Elena says. "No watching over required."
It's a disconcerting thing, to have the full attention of both Klaus and Rebekah upon her at once.
Well. She's used to feeling that way. Especially around the two of them.
She slips free from Rebekah's hand and pushes past Klaus into the hall. "Come on then. Which way?"
For a moment, they both continue to stare at her as though she is some strange, inscrutable creature that had suddenly stumbled into their midst, not the subject of their bizarre, increasingly frequent sibling squabbles. Then Rebekah shakes herself, blinking, and darts over to her side, gathering her up against her.
"This way, darling," she murmurs as she leads her away. "Though why my brother should have seen fit to assign you those rooms, I really couldn't say. We'll have to move you in with me on the morrow."
Elena nods, distracted by that very question, all the while resisting the keen urge to turn around to steal a final glance at Klaus. To measure the reality of him against the expectations blooming in her head.
As tempting as the impulse is, she cannot. To let him know that he interests her in the least would be to give him a certain power over her. To suggest that interest in front of Rebekah would be to chisel at Rebekah's sensitive heart.
Nevertheless, she manages to catch a quick glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye as they turn the corner.
She can't quite decipher the expression on his face.
The Water Garden Rooms are elegantly furnished in the taste of a century long gone— a taste that has become almost more familiar to Elena, these past few years, than the tastes of her own native time. The furniture gleams softly in the lamp light, and the warm smells of polish and beeswax permeate the air.
She and Rebekah pass through a reception room, a private dining room, and a sitting room before finally arriving in the bedroom at the heart of the suite, where trunks full of Elena's possessions have been neatly stacked at the foot of the bed.
The painting Klaus had purchased for her at the auction dominates the wall opposite the bed—were she to ever sleep in this bed, it would be the first thing she would see every morning, and the last thing she would see every night.
She doubts, though, that she will be spending much time in these rooms, as beautiful as they are.
"We'll have the servants fetch these over to our rooms," Rebekah says. "I think sometimes my brother does things just to vex me. He must be feeling neglected. I'll have to make a point to spend more time with him."
Of course. Elena nods along as she circles the room, fingers trailing along the writing desk under the large window, playing with the door to the armoire. She circles back to the window, peering into the boundless night.
"Why are these the Water Garden Rooms?" she asks.
"The gardens down below. You'll see them in the morning. Are you ready, dearest?"
Elena tears herself away from the window.
"Always."
When they leave, Elena cannot help but wonder which of the closed doors leads to Klaus's rooms.
Rebekah takes her back to her room. Lays her down against the soft, cool sheets on her ancient, four-poster bed, and teaches her to forget about everything else.
Stefan finds her in the kitchen early the next morning, after her trunks had all been removed to Rebekah's rooms—to their rooms—and unpacked.
He catches her in the middle of sorting through the pantry inventory.
"Klaus had the human staff stock the kitchen just yesterday," Stefan says, kneeling down next to her to pick up the notepad she had found to scrawl her list on. He glances it over. "This is thorough."
"Old habits die hard. I like to know what I have." She snatches the list back and resumes writing. "Do you think I could put an order in, if there's something particular I wanted?"
"Sure. Why not?" Stefan pulls a sleek new phone from his pocket and hands it over to her. It's identical to the phone Finn had snapped in half. "Klaus asked me to give you this, by the way."
"Oh. Did he say anything else?"
"No. Should he have?"
Elena turns back to her project. "Of course not."
It's a huge property, easily comparable in size to what the manor back in New Hampshire had been, and with just the four of them inhabiting it, it's quite easy for them all to avoid each other.
Or, more particularly, for Klaus to avoid her.
No more awkward eavesdropping, no more strained conversations, no more watching each other coming and going at all hours of the day.
No more need for Elena to attend him nightly, as she had in New York, just so he could keep his eye on her.
(No more possibility for bizarrely weighty little moments just between the two of them, with the feeling in the air of a set trap about to snap shut.)
This, Elena suspects, is the primary reason why Klaus had removed them to this property in the first place.
What a relief it must be for him, to finally be rid of her. The resolution had been there on his face the other night, when she had brushed past him. Whatever whimsy had urged him to seek her out, to place her rooms near his own, had been a passing regret.
He is something more than a passing regret to her.
That's the crux of the issue. What is passing and transitory to an immortal is life-defining to a mortal like herself.
(She will always have loved him, and will always have lost him.)
She's surprised to realize how much she still measures herself against him, even now.
Truth be told, though, Elena hardly even notices Klaus's absence those first few days in Quebec.
Exploring her new environs takes up a considerable amount of her attention—there are halls to wander, doors to peer behind, attics and cellars and whole wings of the building to creep through and discover.
If there is a certain determined drive to her explorations—a need to really know her surroundings as well as she possibly can—just in case—well. Who could blame her? If Mikael or his cronies show up again, Elena intends to be prepared.
In addition to the main structure, there are outbuildings to rummage through and the grounds themselves to walk. Hemmed in by mountains, spotted with spectral, bare-limbed trees, and snaked through with ponds and streams, they are somehow altogether less rugged and more manicured than she is used to. Low stone walls divide the gardens from the lawns, and gravel paths meander through the dormant flower beds and along the waterways. The Water Garden Rooms overlook it all, in what Elena imagines in the spring and summer must be a riot of damp color.
The itch to paint tickles at the back of her neck, a faint feeling that grows stronger with each passing day. She suppresses it with a shudder, committing herself instead to her silent note-taking.
In the remote stillness of country life, Rebekah reverts to many of her old pass times—she spends long, solitary hours knocking croquet balls through their hoops, or throwing lawn bowls over the dead brown winter grass. Sometimes she asks Elena to play with her, but more often than not, Elena finds her mid-game, playing with only herself for company.
Something about it breaks her heart. It's as though without the dynamism of the city, she must once again face the ghastly doldrums of eternity. As though she is a clock with its gears caught, stuck chiming the same moment, over and over again.
No wonder she would want someone to share her long and endless hours.
Every single day, Elena expects Rebekah to bring up the question of turning her.
Every single day, Elena wonders what she will tell her when that happens.
At one point, Rebekah unearths a bow and quiverful of arrows from a steel crate in the carriage house.
After that, she spends many an afternoon shooting at an old, gnarled oak tree on the south lawn.
Elena never sees her miss her mark.
"You're anxious about something," Rebekah murmurs against her hip. She kneels on the floor in front of Elena, fully dressed, her head in Elena's lap. The chill breeze from the open window ruffles her golden hair.
Elena, completely naked, shifts restlessly in the arm chair. The cold from the open window battles the heat of her desire. Her breasts ache to be touched, her hard, tight nipples to be palmed. Gooseflesh ripples over her arms, her belly. She cannot help but to press her thighs together, desperate for some relief. For the heat of Rebekah's hands, her mouth. Anything. "Are you sure you're not mistaking anticipation for anxiety?"
Rebekah glances up at her, a devilish glint in her pale blue eyes. "Possibly." Her fingers trace maddening patterns against the back of Elena's knees, up the sides of her thighs. "You've been very patient, haven't you?" She nips at Elena's fingers. "But have you been patient enough?"
"What do you want me to do?"
Rebekah leans back. "Don't move and don't speak until I permit you to," she compels her.
The compulsion slip-slides over her nerves. Instantly, she feels herself freeze in place, her hands lax at her side. Her stomach twists, desire laced with the smallest tinge of fear. Excitement roars full-throttle in her blood.
Grinning like a cat, Rebekah hitches one of her legs over her shoulder and teasingly trails her fingers along the sensitive skin there. Watches her with ravenous intention as she leans forward and blows softly against her sex.
Internally groaning, unable to do a thing to relieve or give voice to her ramping need, Elena can do nothing but watch as Rebekah slowly, teasingly, lowers her mouth to press a chaste kiss along her inner thigh.
"Look at you," she purrs, holding Elena's legs open. Elena can feel how wet she is. Can feel the slickness trickling from her core. "Vulnerable," Rebekah continues. "Desperate for me. All my own." She leans forward and buries her face between Elena's legs, her mouth sucking hard on Elena's clit as her tongue plunges inside of her.
Tied down by Rebekah's compulsion, she has no choice but to submit to Rebekah's attentions.
For her, unconquerable as she is, it's a glorious capitulation. To be taken care of, paid attention to, loved like this.
To lay down her sword.
Just for a moment.
If there's a part of her that isn't quite as complacent in her trust as she had been just last week, that worries, just a little, that Rebekah might—
Rebekah bites her, and everything whites out as her orgasm crashes over her. Her fingers curl and claw the upholstered arms of the chair as she rides it out.
It's not til after, when the wave has subsided, that she realizes she had somehow managed to move while under compulsion.
Experimentally, she tries to lift her hand from the sofa, but to no avail. It's like the connection between her brain and her hand may as well not exist until Rebekah wills it back into being.
She grows restless as the days grow ever shorter. Hungry for a change, a purpose, a spark.
Yes, there are still her morning rituals—yoga and meditation and various, random compulsions from Rebekah to practice against, all without even that flicker of success she is beginning to think she imagined that afternoon in front of the window—as well as her daily walks and perusals of the property, and, after the second day, when she stumbles on not one but two different libraries, more books to read than she can possibly get through in five years—but she is also lonely, in more ways than one.
When she's not diverting herself out of doors, or guarding Elena's attention in the bedroom, Rebekah disappears for hours at a time. Off with Klaus, Elena gathers from the small comments Rebekah drops whenever she traipses back inside to press a bloody kiss against Elena's shoulder. Showering him with attention so that he feels less left out. So that he stops using Elena as a means to capture Rebekah's attention.
It's working. Elena hasn't set eyes on him since the night she arrived, although, there are times when she can feel him so strongly she thinks he must be just on the other side of a door, just around the turn in a corridor.
Of course, she almost always feels him. Her awareness of him, even in his absence, is a sharpened needle slowly piercing her mind. (Drawing golden thread through all of her thoughts.)
Still. She cannot help but glance up from beneath her lashes when she senses him near. To look, very slowly, over her shoulder, hoping and dreading for a glimpse of him. To squint and shield her eyes from the sun because, for just a moment, she thinks she sees him in the misty distance, watching her from the edge of the mountains.
Elena does her very, very best to smother these impulses.
(She never sees for certain whether he is really there at all, or merely a phantom invading her thoughts.)
She misses Rebekah. Misses her sole, fixed attention. Misses the easy way they used to spend all day together.
Misses, with rare clarity, the time before this life. The warmth of the fire in the Salvatore boarding room, falling asleep pressed between Damon and Stefan and feeling completely safe. Giggling with Bonnie and Caroline over costumes and school dances and Matt's blue eyes and whether or not to volunteer for this year's Christmas fair. The way Jenna would roll her eyes and drink her wine whenever she and Jeremy would squabble at family dinner, but then she would wink, and pass Elena her glass to sip from when her parents were distracted scolding Jeremy.
She finds herself dreaming about Tyler Lockwood for the first time in years. Thinking about him for long hours as the sun sinks low in the sky, shifting the balance of nature from light to dark along with her memories. She doesn't understand what would bring those memories rushing up to the surface in such vivid reality now. Doesn't understand why something about the shape of the land here, the damp smell of moldering leaves, would fill her with such sorrow for her lost baby.
Doesn't know why Klaus's continued absence should pain her so, should feel so much like abandonment all over again, when she had accepted long ago that he would never come back for her.
Stefan proves to be her best distraction.
In the kitchen, he teaches her how to make osso buco and cioppino, patiently watching her chop and dice at a human pace and laughing at her with the warm condescension of an experienced cook whenever she reaches for the measuring spoons. He pours her glass after glass of wine and whiskey, insists that if they're going to cook so slowly they may as well pass the time in as tolerable a way as they possibly can.
This is perhaps the thing which surprises her the most about Stefan—that he has, apparently, been cut free to find ways to pass the time. She would have expected him to be dancing attendance on Klaus and Rebekah, but as far as she can tell, he has been cast as adrift as she has been for so many listless hours, day after day. Whatever Klaus is up to, he either doesn't need or doesn't want Stefan by his side to do it.
And with Rebekah preoccupied with her brother and Klaus preoccupied with, presumably, himself, Elena and Stefan end up falling into inevitable companionship. Drawn together as they always have been.
It's a profound relief. Something that makes her just a little bit less lonely.
Stefan dips a finger into her pot on the stove and tastes the wine sauce she has been laboring over for the past half hour. "You're not nearly so hopeless you used to be," he declares.
She bats him away from the stove. "Of course I'm not. Who ever said Elena Gilbert was ever hopeless?"
Stefan watches her with dark eyes. "Not I."
Later, Stefan is quiet when he samples her osso buco.
"Damon still makes this better," Elena admits.
He glances up at her. "It was his favorite when we were growing up."
Understanding sweeps away any possible uncertainty. "You miss him."
"How I feel is irrelevant."
Elena shakes her head. "No. I think it might be the only relevant thing."
Stefan leans back in his chair, slowly looking her over. "How far you've come."
"What does that mean?"
"You sound like a vampire."
If his words were meant to wound or otherwise upset her, they don't. She only meets his dark-eyed gaze steady stare for steady stare.
Eventually, she asks him the question that has been tickling at her for weeks now. "Why did you ask me about him, back at the house in New York?"
Stefan blinks. Looks away first. "Because even I can't help but to hope."
Sometimes, he joins her on her walks through the grounds.
The days slide into mist and drizzle as November marches onward. She almost slips, once, on a patch of damp grass, but Stefan catches her before she can fall. After that, he always offers her his arm when they set off, and she always takes it.
She wakes up ravenous in the middle of the night. Realizes she had fallen asleep on one of the sofas downstairs, waiting for Rebekah to come back from wherever she had been with her brother.
"Out", Stefan had said without elaboration. He hadn't seemed in the mood to talk, intent instead on tinkering with the sputtering furnace in the basement. Looking for something outside of himself to fix, since he couldn't fix what was wrong with him inside.
She'd tapped at the piano in the dusty ballroom for a while, wincing at the flat sound of the keys and wondering if Stefan would be willing to tune the instrument. Had caught herself thumbing at the scar on her lip, and had hastily clasped her hands behind her back.
Any minute she had expected Rebekah to waltz back inside, to find her and sweep her up into her arms. Had imagined her whirling her over the oak dance floor in the pantomime of a dance long forgotten.
At some point she'd wandered into the smaller of the two libraries, barricaded herself inside so that the room would be snug and warm once she had coaxed a fire to life in the fireplace.
Now, the fire has died down, and her stomach twists in complaint that she had neglected dinner, and, come to think of it, lunch as well.
She'd been distracted.
Elena sits up, rolling her head from side to side and stretching to relieve the twinge in her neck and shoulders from falling asleep at such an awkward angle.
She pauses to listen at the door.
The house is quiet, still.
Rebekah would have found and woken her if they were back.
Pushing aside her frustration and her anxiety about Rebekah's increasingly scattered attention, she marches toward the kitchen on the other side of the ground floor of the house.
It's not like she's jealous. Not like she suspects anything untoward. And it's not like she doesn't agree that yes, Rebekah needs to spend some time with her brother. It's just that she wishes she didn't have to spend so much time with him. Probably doing things that she, as a human, must inevitably be left out of.
And, okay, she also knows that Rebekah would prefer to include her in the most permanent way possible if she could have her way. That the proposal has been fluttering at the edges of all of their interactions ever since Elena overheard Rebekah asking for Klaus's permission.
Elena's tempted to accept the offer.
There's a part of her—a big part—that thinks she might even be happy if she just surrendered this last uncompromised part of herself—the part that is, deep down, still the same Elena Gilbert who has fought tooth and nail to hold on to her human heart. The mortal girl with death in her mouth and in her lungs. The one who somehow always survives.
That part of her that wants to give in to what Rebekah's offering her can see the future spread out boundlessly before her—a happy future, with the warmth of Rebekah's glowing love, with the yoke of Klaus's need for her blood off her shoulders. She could even slip some of her enemies. As a vampire, she could blend into the masses. Become as impossible for Mikael to find as Katherine had been for Klaus.
What holds her back is her fear. Fear that without her role as the doppelganger, she will no longer have a place here. That Klaus will no longer want her hanging about.
Fear that Rebekah's love will fade. That they will grow tired of each other.
Fear that she won't recognize herself anymore if she makes the turn. (It's already difficult, sometimes, to recognize herself when she looks in the mirror.)
That's it, in the end: She can't recognize the version of herself who would ever surrender like that. Who would ever succumb to that final seduction.
(She had already surrendered once, in the smashed ruins of a library, when she had torn out her own heart; she cannot ever imagine yielding like that again.)
A pool of warm yellow lamplight spills into the dark hallway from the open kitchen door. She steps inside without paying the light any mind, too wrapped up in her thoughts to process the hum of unfamiliar, low voices at the breakfast table on the other side of the kitchen until she's already standing in the middle of the room.
She pauses.
Sitting around the table are a group of men she has never seen before, each nursing a bloodbag or a glass of liquor or both. Hybrids. She's sure of it.
The group notices her at just the same time as she notices them. She doesn't recognize any of them.
One of them stands—a rangy, dark-haired youth, who looks too skinny underneath his baggy clothes, like he's used to never having enough to eat. He looks exceptionally hungry now.
Elena takes a step back, but he blocks her exit before she can retreat, faster than she can blink. Pinning her in the kitchen with no escape.
In her panic, her thoughts latch on to Klaus. If there are hybrids here, Klaus must have brought them. Tonight, probably.
Abruptly, she wonders if thisis why Klaus has chosen this place, specifically—so that he can turn a horde of new recruits. Whether this is what he and Rebekah have been doing—hunting wolves together.
He must be here—she swallows, tries to reach out for Klaus through her senses, but the hybrid who had cut her exit off demands her attention.
He says something to her in French, but the unfamiliar cadence of the Canadian dialect is difficult for her to pick out against the way her blood rushes in her ears. When she doesn't respond, the hybrid licks his lips, repeats himself in a gravelly Quebecois accent. "You're the human girl. The one Klaus keeps here."
"Yes."
He stares at her neck. "He's told us not to go near you. He never told us what to do if you came near us."
How long can a newly turned vampire hybrid hold out against his bloodlust? This one doesn't look all that in control. When she flicks her eyes over to the table, the other three don't look like they're mastering their appetites either. The realization that she's wandered into a shark tank, that she's the bait that's about to start a feeding frenzy, only makes her heart beat faster, only pumps the blood through her body in ways that she's all too aware will do nothing but encourage their savagery.
She glances around her in search of a weapon, anything that could help her defend herself. There's a wooden stirring spoon by the stove, not that it would be much use against a hybrid. She'd seen a set of carving knives in one of those drawers, but the hybrid would have to practically lie down and stay still for her to take his head off with one of those. Maybe if she asks very nicely. And then asks his friends if they'll do the same.
"He'll tear your heart out if you touch me," she warns him with conviction, backing toward the kitchen counter and reaching blindly back for the drawers.
The hybrid smiles at her. It might almost be rakish. "Not if I don't hurt you too bad." He darts forward in a blur of speed just as her fingers grasp the handle of a knife, wrenching her against him with such bruising, lightning force that she fumbles the blade. It clatters against the kitchen floor, unnoticed by the hybrid. Out of reach.
He yanks her chin up so that she's forced to look him in the eyes. His pupils are completely blown, fixed wide with desire for her blood.
The others gather around.
"Don't scream," he compels her. The compulsion billows around her, a loose net that nonetheless manages to trap her. Her struggling against it only tangles her up further inside of it.
He raises her wrist, and his incisors sink right in. And she wants to scream. She opens her mouth, can feel her vocal chords stretch, can feel the shriek gathering in her lungs. Gathering, gathering, but never releasing.
His teeth scrape against her bone and saw right through the tendons in her wrist. A second hybrid takes hold of her other arm and lines his mouth up with her pulse point. She wants to howl, but that part of her voice is locked up tight inside of her.
She kicks and thrashes, but that only deepens the wounds. Blood runs down her wrists, and the third and the fourth hybrid swarm over her, peeling back her shirt to lick at her bare skin.
"You really should have listened to the lady."
Those quiet, calmly regretful words are the only warning her assailants receive before Klaus rips their hearts from their chests, so swiftly that all four bodies hit the floor in a single thud.
In an instant, Elena finds herself saved. She can hardly process the depth of her relief at Klaus's timely rescue before he nods at her, as though it had been nothing, and slips back into the darkened corridors of the chateau.
Elena jumps over the bodies and calls after him before he can disappear. "Wait!"
Klaus pauses. Turns to regard her through the veil of moonlight streaming in from the gallery windows.
This is the first time she's actually clapped eyes on him in weeks. Had it not been for her unique connection to him, she would have assumed that he had removed himself from the estate altogether. Would never suspect that he has been keeping his eye on her.
(Watching over her?)
(No. Not that. Never that.)
He looks off, somehow. Unwell. There's something strained in his face, some shadow in his eyes that she can't illuminate.
She quells the part of herself that wants to reach for him.
"Thank you," she says. "For saving me."
"You wouldn't be very useful to me dead."
"All the same."
Klaus's gaze trails from her face to settle on her wrists. "You're bleeding."
Elena glances down at her wrists, at the blood dripping from her fang-wounds onto the floor. In all of the commotion of the past few minutes, she had completely forgotten about her injuries. They throb viciously now that Klaus has reminded her.
"Here. Let's see them," Klaus murmurs, stepping toward her to gather her wrists up so he can examine them more closely. Without another word, or even asking her permission, he bites into the palm of his free hand until it wells with blood and allows the open wound to drip his blood into her injuries. Magic sears through her. When he wipes the blood off of her wrist with the swipe of his thumb, the skin underneath is unblemished and whole.
She looks up from her healed arms and finds herself looking directly into Klaus's eyes. He is very, very close like this. The heat of his hands, still touching her, scalds through her thoughts. Her mouth parts, but she has no idea what she might say to him.
He looks at her long and hard. She's not sure what it is he's searching for in her. "Goodnight," he bids her at last, releasing her.
It's as though reality swoops back in the moment he is no longer touching her.
"Wait," she calls again. He's always so impatient to leave her. "So are you planning to bring any more hybrids here? Because some warning would be nice."
"I'll give them more specific instructions not to touch you, or so much as look at you in future. Will that satisfy you?"
"Will that keep me safe from them?"
"Will that keep them safe from you? Those aren't the first of my hybrids I've had to cut loose over you."
It's the first time he's referenced her unfortunate affair with Tyler Lockwood since its revelation.
His words may as well be a wall of flame for how completely they cut her off. How they burn her.
She's never been afraid to touch fire where he is concerned.
She jumps into his path, fully aware that he would barely have to lift a finger to shove her out of the way.
"What's with you lately?"
Klaus presses his lips together and steps around her.
Elena heels him.
The fact that he doesn't use his supernatural speed or strength to escape her, instead keeping his stride human, if clipped, is clue enough that he doesn't quite truly wish to elude her. Whatever is up with him, there's a part of him that wants to have this conversation.
"You've been completely MIA," she continues. "Have you been avoiding me?"
"Why would you say that?"
"Because…" She trails off before she can reveal how exactly she knows he's been lurking, yet so conspicuously absent she just knows it has to have been on purpose. "You've been acting really weird lately," she finally tells him. "It's off-putting."
He scoffs. "Am I required to take your comfort into account when choosing how to behave?"
"You used to." Sometimes.
"Past-tense."
"Sure, fine. Look. I get that we have a lot of bad history between us. I get that you're done with me, and most of the time, the best I can hope for is your indifference. And I've made my peace with that. But then you go and you make these huge gestures—you buy me the painting, or you defend me from Finn, or you save me tonight just in the nick of time—almost like you were watching over me—and it just wrecks me, okay? It throws me so much that I have no idea which way is up and which way is down anymore. I know whatever used to be between us is dead, and I know you don't even want to be my friend, but I have no idea what you do want from me. And it's not like I can avoid you, or put you off. So just—Tell me. Please."
Klaus halts in his tracks. "Do you love my sister?" he demands.
"Yes. Of course I do."
"Then you should return to her. Seek her out this instant."
"Why?"
"Because my patience for this conversation is at its very limit." He runs a hand over his face. Freezes, as though only just then realizing that his fingers are still wet with her blood from when he had healed her. Turns away from her so she cannot see his expression, but she can hear him, quite distinctly, when he says, "Please, Elena."
The intensity in his voice frightens her in a way that she no longer thought he could ever frighten her again.
She backs away, slowly, until she rounds a turn in the hallway, and as soon as he is out of sight, she dashes back to the rooms she shares with Rebekah.
A/N: Thanks so much for reading. It's been a very hard year for me, as I know it's been a hard year for everyone reading this. Hopefully this gives you all a little joy, the way hearing from you all always leaves me joy.
Please comment and let me know your thoughts. I have another update nearly complete, that hopefully will be published shortly!
