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


She never mentions the incident—any of it—to Rebekah.


The memory of Klaus in the window, asking her so intently to leave, frightens her too much to dwell upon.


And yet.


There has always been a hunger within her for the taste of terror.

A part of her that is divinely inspired by it.


After that night with the hybrids, she catches a few glimpses of Klaus here and there. Crossing the halls, climbing the stairs, passing by her on the way in or out.

There are a couple of times when she spots him from the window, striding over the grounds with a gaggle of new hybrids trotting behind him, his loyal pack of hounds. She never recognizes any of the new faces that she sees with increasing frequency around the property.

Once, he even joins her in the library for nearly twenty minutes.

It's as though he'd been circling her at a distance, but now something has drawn him closer—

No.

Elena chases that thought out of her head as soon as she thinks it.

Old habits, and all that.


She puts a tremendous amount of energy into pretending not to notice him very much at all.


Inexorably, she finds herself drawn back into the Water Garden Rooms. To the spacious desk under the window, with the particularly good light.

She had felt almost guilty about it the first time she had awoken from a daydream to realize she had wandered past the threshold of these rooms without conscious intention.

(The fact that she could sense Klaus, so near she feels as though she could reach out and touch him, does not help. Nor the suspicion that she had been unthinkingly searching out that taste of him in the air with her ill-starred sixth sense for him.)

But now the habit has formed, and she has begun to steal into this place with increasing frequency and need.

It's only in the still sanctuary of these rooms that she feels her head clear enough to write.


She doesn't have the heart, as yet, to rewrite any of the novels she lost in the fire.

(She can only start over so many times.)

Sometimes, she thinks about that manuscript she had pressed into Rafaela's hands last year. Perhaps her only surviving manuscript. Had she kept her promise to read it? Passed it on? Thrown it out?

Her hands tremble. She pulls out the sheaf of blank paper, yellowed and slightly mildewed, which she had found in a desk in one of the studies downstairs. From another drawer she pulls out the pages she has already written, as well as a stack of pens. She's also commandeered a typewriter, which appeals to her on an aesthetic level, although, when she had tested it, the letters had come out faint and fuzzy. Maybe Stefan could help her replace the ribbon.

Outside, she spies Rebekah, sitting at the side of one of the trickling ponds, dangling her feet into the icy water. Her legs gleam white in the winter sun, her feet flashing through the dark water like silvery fish as she idly kicks.

She pulls away from the window, before Rebekah can look up and spot her inside, and brings her writing supplies over to the bed, where she collapses into the soft mattress.

Gratefully ensconced in the solace of the empty room, she drafts a few more pages for the story idea that's been steadily unfolding in her thoughts these past few weeks. Given the plot, she might have framed it as a horror story when she was younger, but now she understands it as a love story. Love is frightening. And strange. And thrilling.

The painting that so reminds her of home calls out to her for her attention. Flashes of color, of memory, catch at the corner of her eyes the whole time she writes.

Determined, she never looks at it directly.


"Where do you disappear to for hours at a time?" Rebekah asks her one evening as they watch old episodes of I Love Lucy on the ancient wood-paneled television in one of the downstairs drawing rooms.

"I could ask you the same question." Except, of course, she knows exactly what Rebekah's been doing with Klaus. The evidence is rapidly filling the servants' quarters located up in the attic. Elena hears them prowling throughout the house at all hours.

Klaus had been good for his word, though. None of them so much as look at her, let alone venture within fifty feet of her. If she happens to walk into a room where any of them are present, they all hasten away with the mad frenetic energy of a pile of kicked ants.

"Come now, don't be pert," Rebekah says. "You know I only do what I must to keep our home a happy one. And besides. I thought you liked having the time to yourself."

"I do."

"Then what's the problem?"

Elena stares blankly at the tv screen. It's the candy episode. She can remember loving this one as a child, when she used to watch this show cuddled up with her mother late on Saturday nights, but the memory is so eroded she can no longer recall why she had adored it so, much less the sound of her mother's laugh. "I don't want to lose you," she tells Rebekah without looking at her, finally giving voice to the source of her restlessness, her loneliness.

"You won't."

"It feels like you've distanced yourself from me."

"I haven't, though. Not at all." Rebekah shifts beside her on the sofa. "Actually, there's something I very much have wanted to talk to you about lately."

Elena's heart skips sickly in her chest.

Here it is. The conversation she still is not ready to have.

She turns the tv off and turns to face her lover.

Rebekah smiles bravely for her. Takes her hand and, impulsively, drops a kiss against her pulse point. "This is going well between us, isn't it?"

"—Yes."

"And we're so very happy together, aren't we, darling?"

"We are."

Rebekah releases her, abruptly, her hands fluttering in her lap as she smooths non-existent wrinkles away on her gray silk dress. "Well, you see, I've been thinking, then, about how grand it would be to continue on. Together."

"We are together—"

"What I mean to say is that I should like—very much—to keep you with me always. To be together forever." She sounds so nervous. So uncertain. She cannot even bring herself to ask Elena directly, so Elena lays the question out in the open for her.

(She cannot help it. For Rebekah, there is very little she would not attempt, if only to save her from frowning. Even if that means addressing the one thing she wishes she could avoid forever.)

"You're asking if I'll become a vampire."

"Yes, exactly!" Rebekah looks to her so hopefully. When she smiles, all of her gleaming white teeth show, but whereas in the past that smile had raised the hairs on the back of her neck, it now has the power to stir the depths of her tenderness.

She has to ask the obvious question. "What about Klaus?"

All of the enthusiasm drains from Rebekah's face. "What about him?"

"He's not on board."

"We could complete your turn right now and he'd have to accept it."

Elena shakes her head. "I don't think he would."

"Has he said something to you?" Rebekah asks her sharply.

"He doesn't have to. I know how he'll react. And you do too."

"My whole life, he's stood in the way of anything that could ever make me happy. Why should I keep letting him?" She tucks Elena's hair behind her ear, her touch warm and lingering. Persuasive. "Why should we keep letting him?"

Elena almost wishes she could say yes. Almost.

"It's not as easy as you make it out to be."

"It can be very easy."

"I don't even know that I want to be a vampire."

Rebekah pulls away from her. "Oh." She stands up. Runs a hand through her hair. She hasn't trimmed it since last summer. It falls nearly to her shoulders now. "How silly of me. Jumping ahead of the plot again. Forget I ever brought it up—in fact—" She turns to Elena, clearly ready to compel the memory right out of her thoughts.

Elena grabs her wrist. "No, Rebekah—I'm glad you brought it up. Talking about it—thinking about our future—figuring out what we want—this is part of being a couple."

"But you've just rejected me."

"I'm not ready to make a decision like that."

"If you loved me, truly loved me, you would know your heart."

Elena lets her go. Looks down at her lap. "Maybe. I've never been very good at being clear with myself though." She can feel her mouth twisting into a pathetic approximation of a smile. "I can't really expect you to relate. You've never had that problem. You always know where your heart is."

"You told me your heart was open. That your eyes were clear. Were you lying to me?"

Elena shoots to her feet. Grabs Rebekah's hands back up again. "No."

"Then why can't you say yes to me?"

"We've only been together a couple of months. I'm still getting used to what it's like to actually be happy. I'm not ready for a big life decision like this. Not yet."

"I could turn you this instant, you know. Go through with it. You'll be angry with me at first, but you'll soon get over it once you realize how right I am."

Elena knows this too well. It's the secret dread she's been carrying in her heart ever since she overheard Rebekah raise this very topic. "You'd break my trust if you did."

Rebekah tuts. "Do I even have it now?"

"You know that you do."

She dashes away a scald of tears in her eyes. "This isn't fair."

"I'm not doing this to hurt you… and I'm not saying no. I'm saying, not right now."

"Are you certain my brother has nothing to do with your reticence?"

The question pierces Elena like an arrow.

"You mean because he needs my blood."

"No, because sometimes, I think—" Rebekah shakes her head, cutting herself off mid-sentence.

"Think what?"

For answer, she tilts Elena's mouth up for an astonishingly hungry kiss. "Never mind what I think. I can be a fool in love."


They don't talk about whether or not Elena will accept Rebekah's offer any more after that.

The question lingers between them, though. Elena sees it every time she looks into Rebekah's eyes. Every time Rebekah cocks her head to the side, every time she taps her foot or fires an arrow or swirls the ice in her gin cocktails. It's there in the way she holds her just a little too tightly now, the way that she presses herself against Elena when they make love, like she could keep her forever if only she never lets go.

Elena's nature is to run.

For Rebekah, though, she fights the instinct off.

Every day that she wrestles herself into staying, it is another step toward accepting Rebekah's proposal.

It feels a lot like taking the dive off the edge of the terrace in New York, all to set the moon in a necklace for her.

(For Rebekah, she tries just that.)


"You have blood on your chin," she murmurs to Stefan as they sort through the chateau's dusty record collection. She licks her thumb to wipe it away.

Stefan catches her hand. "You're letting your guard down too much."

"I've never been able to defend myself where you're concerned." She's only half-teasing.

Stefan knows it, too. He drops her hand as though she's burned him. "I'm not the only one here who could be a danger to you."

He almost sounds like the old Stefan again.

"Maybe I'm the danger," Elena argues with a sing-song laugh. She pulls a Dusty Springfield album out from the box and hands it over to Stefan. "Let's try this one."

Stefan plucks the record from the sleeve and sets the needle.

The band starts up, the music distant and warbled.

He offers her his hand and pulls her up to her feet to pull her into a dance. This is one way he's not like the old old Stefan at all. Rarely had her boyfriend ever liked to dance with her, but now, Stefan is always all too eager to pull her into his arms with only the slightest provocation.

"You've always been the danger, Elena," he sighs against her temple.


The last week of November roars in cold and blustery, with the bite of frost in the air promising an early snow.

Rebekah had left with Klaus two days earlier on a short trip, with promises that she would be back before Elena even noticed she was gone. Off to track down a smaller pack that had split from the bigger one nearby, with a few of the freshly turned hybrids to guide them.

"How many hybrids do you think Klaus has by now?" Elena asks Stefan as she watches a group of them raking up dead leaves through the kitchen window, a bowl of pie filling cradled in her arms.

Stefan shrugs from his spot leaning against the counter a few feet away. "A couple hundred."

"He's going to hunt werewolves to extinction if he doesn't ease up."

"Feeling guilty?"

Elena pauses mid-whisk. "Why should I feel guilty?"

"If there's going to be an extinction event, you'll be the catalyst."

Elena redoubles her efforts with the whisk. "No, Klaus will be the catalyst. If I let myself feel every ounce of guilt for everything he does, then I'd never be able to get out of bed in the morning."

"When was the last time you felt guilty about it at all?"

Again, Elena stills. Tries to think back.

She can't remember.

"The cornbread is burning," Stefan points out, without making any move to save it from the oven. He takes a slow sip from his glass of blood as he watches her scurry over to save the cornbread.

"You're a terrible sous chef," she tells him.

"I thought I was your instructor."

"I think I've graduated past needing supervision." She hands him the bowl and whisk. "How about you use some of that vaunted vampire super speed to get the batter smooth? I have to turn the turkey."

Stefan takes a minute to eye the line of casserole dishes ready to go into the oven, the heaps of chopped vegetables, the fragrant pot of cranberries and spices simmering away on the stove. "Do you think you're going a bit overboard?"

Elena finishes inspecting the turkey and shuts the oven door. "This is the first Thanksgiving that I'm not spending absolutely alone in four years. We have to do the full thing!"

"Do I really count as company?"

"You're my friend. Of course you count."

Stefan frowns, but he doesn't argue with her anymore after that.


Elena's just set the dining room table and coaxed Stefan into finding fresh candles and matches for the candelabras when she hears the front door open. The sound of Klaus and Rebekah's voices drifts down the halls, their words muted yet the flavor of their tones distinct. They're arguing, but not unpleasantly. Bickering, more like, in that way particular to siblings.

They pause when they spot Stefan and Elena in the dining room.

Rebekah recovers first, slinking in and taking the place beside Elena as naturally as though she had always intended it. She snaps her fingers at Stefan to bring her a place setting.

"What's the occasion?" she asks, peering into each of the dishes on the table.

Stefan returns with Rebekah's place setting and a very good bottle of wine. Deftly, he uncorks the bottle and fills Rebekah's glass. "It's Thanksgiving, Bex. And isn't Elena oh so very thankful?"

Elena blushes and looks away from the conspiratorial smirk Stefan shares with Rebekah, only to lock eyes with Klaus, lingering in the doorway.

"You're going to join us too, right?" she asks.

Klaus hesitates.

"It's Thanksgiving," she points out, parroting Stefan. "You have to."

He ducks his head, looking down at his hands. "If you insist."

"I do."

Tentatively, Klaus takes the spot next to her.

Elena smiles, and, miraculously, Klaus smiles back.

Friends, she thinks. They're going to be friends after all, no matter how much he drags his feet and acts like he won't have her even for that. All will be well.

Rebekah distracts her then by brushing her fingers against the inside of her wrist and passing her her wine goblet to sip from. When Elena hands the glass back to her, she catches her in a kiss, the flavor of the wine and something more rich on her tongue.

Everything inside of Elena twists with delicious warmth as Rebekah stares deeply into her eyes. "I've never really celebrated this holiday before. Is this where I say how thankful I am for you?" Rebekah teases.

If they were in human company, her words would have been pitched for her ears alone. Surrounded as they are by vampires, everyone can hear her.

Elena bites her lip. "I already know what's in your heart, whether you tell me or not."

"That doesn't mean it shouldn't be said."

An exquisite silence blooms over the table, broken, eventually, by Klaus. "As Elena is hostess, dear sister, I believe the honor of giving first thanks should fall to her."

The sound of his voice arrests her entirely. When he calls, she cannot help but to answer. It should be the other way around, and yet, it never has been.

With one last shared look with Rebekah, Elena reluctantly turns away to take in the rest of the table. For better or for worse, her merry band of hell-raisers, all gathered around the table for the simple reason that she asked them to be.

She absorbs first the wry twist to Klaus's mouth as he watches her, waiting on her response. Next, the frown Rebekah throws her brother's way when she thinks Elena won't see it. The expectant cast of Stefan's shoulders, like he's ready to jump up into a fray at a moment's notice. There's a definite, indefinable tension to the table, pulling tighter, and she knows that somehow she has found herself at the center of it. She's just not sure what she needs to do to unravel it.

She leans back and really looks at all of them. Each of their faces are so familiar that she aches as she studies them. Stony-eyed Stefan, worrying over each of them, even now. Wanting to protect them all from their own worst impulses, never mind that there is no one, save maybe her, to protect him from himself. Klaus in his cruel armor, impossible to look at in more than fleeting glances without falling into the trap of wishing he would look on her again, all fire and need and mystery, the way he had used to, just once more. She'd carry that memory to her grave. Rebekah, her night star. Moving too fast and shining too bright for her to hold. Impossibly fallen to earth. Impossibly her own.

One way or another, she has a claim on each of them, the way that each of them have a claim on her.

Something about the serious way she studies them seems to quieten the low tremor of hostility that had been brewing only seconds ago.

All three vampires watch her closely. Waiting for her words. Attending her.

(As though she is their queen.)

A secret smile spreads over Elena's face at the thought, mirrored, slowly, first on Rebekah's, then, hesitantly, like he's forgotten how but is helpless to resist, on Stefan's. Only Klaus doesn't smile, but his focus on her never wavers either.

Inspiration (and truth) strike. She raises her goblet. "I'm thankful this year for my family." She meets their eyes, slowly, one by one. "For all of you. For each of you."

Maybe she imagines it, but something in Klaus seems to soften at her use of the word family. The ghost of the good humored smile from when he had first sat down at the table with her twitches at the corner of his mouth again.

"Here, here," Rebekah calls, raising her own cup. Klaus and Stefan follow suit, whether through the force of habit or shared sentiment, Elena cannot say. Thinks maybe it doesn't matter.

She had cut the knot, found her way out of the maze, and now here they all are, gathered around the table. Together. Stefan makes some remark that pulls a laugh from Klaus, that sets a gleam in Rebekah's eyes and roses in her cheek as she tries to remain composed. Rebekah squeezes her hand, then, and when Elena glances up, she meets Klaus's eyes, just for a moment, in that old, conspiratorial way he used to share looks with her whenever they were gathered in a group. Her heart stutters in her chest. Warmth floods through her as she realizes, suddenly, that Stefan had been right all of those years ago, when she had asked him if she would ever have another Thanksgiving again, surrounded by family and friends… and he had told her, I think you'll be happy again.

Elena grins at Stefan across the table, and in that moment, he seems to remember some version of that conversation as well. He nods to her, a small acknowledgment that she never should have doubted him.

Distantly, she hears the front door open. Hybrids, scurrying from one job to the next. Sometimes Elena thinks that Klaus invents chore for them just to keep them busy.

Rebekah pours everyone more wine while Klaus and Stefan argue over the results of a South American archaeological dig conducted in the late 19th century.

Elena listens, content, a little buzzed from the wine, a little hopeful from the wreath of smiles and laughter all around.

If they can go on like this—if she can persuade Klaus to be her friend, can keep coaxing smiles from Stefan and such sparkling joy from Rebekah, then she knows that the four of them will be okay.

"I would hate to interrupt such a merry gathering, but as I hear today is a day for family, I can only hope that my invitation was merely misplaced."

All at once, the lively atmosphere of the room flickers and dies as they all turn at once to take in Elijah, his demeanor mild and cool as death as he stands in the doorway, immaculately turned out in a gleaming three-piece suit…apparently undaggered and awaiting an invitation to their dinner table.


"Elijah." His name spills from Rebekah's lips in the same shocked, helpless way that hopeless people groan the names of their gods. She makes a move to stand, but one look from Klaus stays her.

If Elijah is at all surprised by Rebekah's deference to Klaus or about the resulting coolness of his reception, he doesn't show it. A faint, fond smile plays over Elijah's lips as he greets. "Little sister."

It's the first time Elena's laid eyes on him since that day the manor burned. Since he'd almost caused her to bleed out on the lawn just to have a shot at taking out his brother. The shot she'd hand-delivered him years ago. The shot he'd betrayed her in order not to take.

Her anger wars with the potent nostalgia that floods her at the sight of him. He's cut his hair short sometime in the intervening months since that disastrous afternoon in September, and she somehow finds she misses the way the longer, almost boyish strands used to fall across his brow. It's an absurd, stupid thought to have, but it clings to her heart like cobwebs when she tries to bat it down.

Elijah had been her knight once, and there will always be a part of her that remembers that. A part of her that cannot forgive him for disappointing her.

Rebekah must sense Elena's turbulence. She clutches at her hand. As much a silent entreaty to hold back and allow them to handle Elijah as it is a plea for reassurance and strength.

The feeling of Rebekah's warm palm against her own anchors her. Drags her back from the roiling precipice of her anger and regret. If she feels so dislocated by Elijah's presence, she cannot imagine what Rebekah must be feeling. What love and anxiety.

Elena squeezes back.

I am here, she wants to say. I'm still here.

Slowly, without taking his eyes off of his brother, Klaus stands and gestures to the empty seat beside him. "Please, brother. Make yourself welcome. Since you've come all this way."

Elijah nods to Klaus, the barest acknowledgement that he is in fact a guest in his brother's domain, before claiming the seat beside him, just across from Stefan. "My gratitude." He takes the measure of each of them in turn, his dark eyes roving over Stefan, herself, and finally, for an extended moment, resting on Rebekah, who seems to shrink up into an uncertain girl under her older brother's scrutiny.

"What are you doing here?" Rebekah asks him.

It occurs to Elena that she's never actually seen Rebekah and Elijah interact before. Hell, she's never seen Klaus and Elijah interact, save for those confused moments just before she skewered herself on Mikael's dagger. She'd already been dead when Klaus had somehow talked Elijah out of murdering him. She has no idea what to actually expect from this encounter.

Experience tells her that the end result will probably be violence.

"It's been nearly a century since we were all together," Elijah replies. "Surely I don't need a reason to desire my family's company?"

"The company of the more interesting side of the family, at least," Klaus mutters. It's unclear who he's talking to.

Elijah's eyes linger on Rebekah's hand joined with her own; under the weight of that gaze, Rebekah presses her hand hard enough to bruise, and even though it hurts, Elena presses her hand back.

"You look well, Rebekah," Elijah murmurs. His regard shifts focus to her. "Hello, Elena."

"I was expecting you long before this," Klaus interrupts, tugging Elijah's attention away from them. His words remind Elena of a knife slipping against a whetstone. Stefan passes him a clean wine goblet. Despite the edge to his tone, Klaus pours his brother a glass as casually and normally as though Elijah really had come over for a family dinner. Maybe, for the three of them, this tense veil of polite bonne amie is normal.

As always in these situations, Stefan projects a consummately cool, unreadable, and, ultimately, easily dismissible attitude. The perfect persona for a lieutenant. Someone who can observe unobtrusively and strike when needed.

"I was unfortunately detained," Elijah allows, accepting the glass from Klaus and taking a deep pull of the wine.

"Daggered?"

"Staked."

"Hm. Not a very effective means of disablement."

"Our father was in a hurry. I expect he chose the nearest tool at hand."

"That was weeks ago. Revivification from a staking takes mere hours."

"Ah, but I had to track you down again after you vacated New York." Elijah glances around the room. "We used to pass such happy summers here." He smiles at Rebekah with a soft warmth Elena has only ever seen fleeting traces of before. "Do you remember that last summer here together? The concert you arranged for the neighborhood? When the soprano came down with a sore throat the day of the performance, so you decided to sing the part yourself?"

"I remember," Rebekah says, her voice faint and far away. Lost in a memory of a happier time, Elena suspects with a pang.

She doesn't talk about Elijah all that much—but Elena knows enough to know that he is her second-favorite brother. The one she could always trust the must. The one who always looked out for her in ways that Klaus is ultimately incapable of ever doing.

"It's good to have us all reunited under this roof," Elijah observes.

"And are we?" Rebekah asks, her eyes clearing of their mist as she refocuses on the present. She leans forward intently. "Are we all reunited?"

How much must she be hoping, in this moment, that they will somehow all return to the sunny summers of a century long past? That Elijah will slide right back into his place within the family, the stalwart older brother, perpetually wise and patient and kind.

He's not really any of those things, but Rebekah would never believe her if she pointed this out to her. Elena remembers what it had been like to believe in Elijah with every fiber of her being. To be willing to die on his word alone.

Elena tries to imagine how the dynamics within their little group would shift if Elijah were to join them. He's easily as domineering as Klaus, in his own way. As stubborn and as frightening. So far, she's only barely managed to keep her feet under her with just Klaus to contend with. She's not sure how she would manage with Elijah here too.

Worse than that, the idea of him joining them feels like an invasion. Like an interloper stepping in. All too easily, she can picture how impossible it would be to contend against him for Rebekah's attention (for Klaus's attention). How quickly she would find herself quite alone.

She knows that, if anything, given the immense history and familial bond among the three Originals at the table, that she is the interloper, the newcomer, the stranger—that at least Stefan, as another vampire, clearly fits in with the rest of them—but logic has little role to play when measured against the anxiety aroused by Elijah's mere presence.

She wants him gone.

"Kol and Finn were still walking the world of men when I parted with them," Elijah confirms.

"So then why come alone?" Stefan asks. It's the first he's spoken since Elijah entered the room. "Why not bring the whole family?"

"The details are for my siblings alone, I'm afraid."

"Come now, Elijah," Klaus prods. "I keep no secrets from Stefan. He's like a brother to me."

Elijah's dark eyes flick between Stefan and Klaus. There's nothing blatant about their body language, but then, Elijah's senses are very sharp. "I see," he says after a brief, weighty pause. It's very clear that he does. He nods in her general direction. "And Miss Gilbert? Is she privy to all of your affairs?"

"Elena is no concern of yours."

"I beg to differ. In point of fact, I would suggest she was my concern long before she was ever yours."

"Yes, well. Possession is nine-tenths of the law."

"Oh, then please clarify—does she belong to you or to our sister?"

If the words are meant to rattle Klaus, he doesn't show it. "According to Elena, she belongs to herself," Klaus drawls, swirling the wine in his goblet.

An unexpected thrill shoots up her spine at his words, even though she knows they are just a bit of theatricality aimed entirely at Elijah. Even though she doubts Klaus really even believes it himself.

Elijah doesn't seem to have a ready answer for this.

"Now," Klaus continues, taking a sip from his glass. "Stefan here raises an excellent point. What is the true purpose of this trip? And don't say it's for the sake of familial reconciliation. You could have come to us in New York at any time if you wished for a reunion. Instead, you hung back, gathering your resources and intelligence and pulling your strings. What are you about?"

"I think you know already—I'm here to negotiate."


"How civil of you," Klaus notes. "However, you'll be disappointed to learn that you have come all this way for naught. We have nothing to negotiate."

"You haven't even heard me out."

"Why should I trust you, when you've been working with our father all this time? Or do you deny it? Shall I expect him to storm through the doors at any minute, brandishing that stake?"

"I deny nothing. However, I assure you, I took pains to evade his spies or the possibility of being followed ere I traveled here."

"If familial accord is what you sought, then you should have staked him when you had the chance."

"I want to hear what he has to say," Rebekah chimes in.

"How can I negotiate with someone who would just as soon plant a stake in my heart?" Klaus asks, dismissing both of his siblings entirely. His fixation on that stake—on the only possible means of his own death—borders on fantastical obsession.

Elijah's jaw ticks. "Tensions were high that day. I wasn't thinking clearly."

"What about when we had that deal to kill him at the sacrifice?" Elena interjects.

Everyone turns to look at her.

Elijah is the only one who looks the least bit surprised that she should have something to add. "I don't follow."

Rebekah's fingers bite warningly into the flesh of her hand, compressing the bones with a sharp twinge. "I'm sure she misspoke."

Elena ignores her. "That plan was pre-mediated, so you were obviously thinking clearly. You have a history of trying to kill him. I don't see why we should trust you."

"From what I've been able to gather, you've been my brother's hostage for years. Why are you defending him?"

Klaus laughs. "Elena's always been rather protective of me."

"How unprecedented," Elijah murmurs dryly. He tilts his head, in that peculiar way that Klaus and all of his siblings seem to share as he appraises his brother. "You're only placing her in jeopardy by refusing to treat with me. Her, and everyone else you care about."

The comment scours all traces of humor from Klaus's face. "Is that a threat?" he asks, deadly quiet. The speed with which his mood transforms unnerves her, even after years of familiarity with Klaus's mercurial nature.

She wonders what emotion actually drives him right now. What kernel of truth lies buried beneath the miles of impenetrable emotional barriers he's erected around his heart.

"No. It's common sense," Elijah says. "Take it or leave it."

Klaus regards Elijah flatly. "Go on then."

That's his trick, she thinks. To make himself so flat and so hard that no one can ever find the weakness in him. (And there are weaknesses aplenty—the key is getting close enough to find them.)

"Mikael thirsts for her blood with near the furor that he clamors for yours," he says, indicating Elena.

Klaus slings an arm over the back of his chair. "Yes, obviously. I was there the last few times he's tried to kill her."

Again, Elijah cuts a glance at Stefan and at her. "Are you certain you'd rather not continue this discussion in private?"

Klaus waves him away. "Get on with it."

Elijah straightens his jacket and inspects his cufflinks. "You recall the reason why our father seeks your death."

"My bastardy, his wounded pride, a host of other tiresome reasons."

"No, the real reason."

"I'm not aware of any others."

"I speak of the fourth coffin."

The coffin she had been unable to open.

She fixes a suitably surprised expression on her face, even as voracious curiosity and speculation flare within her.

"What fourth coffin?"Rebekah demands.

For a split-second Klaus freezes, as though transfixed through the heart. A moment later it is as though that instant had never happened. He is quicksilver as a passing summer storm all over again.

"Ah, my stolen property." Klaus smiles. "I'd like it back."

She casts around the room, wondering if they had all seemed Klaus flinch as well.

If they had, no one comments on it.

Elijah folds his hands in front of him. "I thought possession was nine-tenths of the law."

Klaus shrugs. "You have me there." Abruptly, he rises from the table. "I can already see I'll need a drink for the rest of this." He disappears down the hall. From the depths of the house, they hear him call out to them, "Well, aren't the lot of you coming?"

Rebekah hurries after him, pulling Elena along in her wake. "What fourth coffin, Nick?" she hollers down the hall.

Behind them, Elijah and Stefan follow with measured steps.

"I'm surprised by you," she hears Elijah say to Stefan. "I would have thought you would never have surrendered Elena to this fate."

"What does that mean?"

"I thought you loved her too much to let anything ill befall her."

They make a turn down a corridor in pursuit of Klaus and Elena loses track of their conversation.

They find Klaus in the same library Elena had fallen asleep in a few nights past while waiting for Rebekah to come home, already refilling his glass at the bar. A moment later, Elijah and Stefan join them.

Stefan's face is creased into a deep frown. It grows deeper every time he looks at her.

Wordlessly, Klaus hands Rebekah and Elena glasses of their own before turning to Elijah. "May I offer you anything? Brandy? Scotch? I have a lovely stash of AB negative that I would be willing to decant for such an occasion. Our happy family reunion."

"What's Elijah talking about, Nick?" Rebekah repeats.

Elijah takes a seat in one of the armchairs and crosses a foot over his ankle. "I'll have a brandy," he decides.

"Because I should think there would have been three coffins," Rebekah continues, counting off on her fingers. "Elijah, Kol, Finn—unless you kept one on hand just for me."

Klaus ignores her. "What if I told you the coffin were empty?"

"Then I would have to ask why you should have gone to such trouble to place those blood wards on it. That would be an extraordinary amount of effort to guard nothing at all." Elijah examines his nails. "Not to mention, I did go through the trouble of confirming its contents, during those months I was gathering resources and pulling my strings." He glances up. "Did you not offer me a glass of brandy? Or did I imagine that?"

Klaus drains the remainder of his glass and tosses the entire crystal decanter of brandy to Elijah, who catches it seamlessly, one-handed.

"Yet for all the trouble you've gone through, you cannot get in." Klaus prowls across the room to loom over Elijah, smiling his most bloodthirsty smile. His most hurt smile. "That's why you've come to me. Let me guess: you've been working all this time to break my wards, and the only reason you even attempted to stand in Mikael's way when Finn grew impatient and undaggered him was just in case it would turn out you needed me to get in."

"I've never wanted you dead."

"As Elena just so helpfully pointed out, that's an utter lie."

Elijah frowns at her, briefly, before returning his attention to Klaus. "How is anything I've done any different from your incessant desire to imprison us each in eternal sleep?"

"I could have destroyed any of you at any time and instead I kept you all safe."

"If you bend over you may find a way to lower the bar for yourself just a little further."

"I'm surprised you can see down far enough, from atop that great high throne of moral authority you've built as a monument to yourself."

A crystal decanter hurls into the space between Klaus and Elijah and shatters against the far wall. "Will someone bloody well tell me what the hell is going on?" Rebekah screams.

Elijah raises an eyebrow at Klaus. "Do you see now why I asked if you would prefer to have this conversation privately? I was thinking of you when I suggested it."

Another decanter narrowly sails past Elijah's face. A shard from the impact cuts his cheek, only for the wound to reseal in an instant.

"I'm tired of the two of you always talking above my head! I'm not a child. I'm not too stupid or naïve to understand when the two of you are keeping secrets from me. Now, answer me: what or who is in this alleged fourth coffin?"

Quietly, Elena sidles over to stand by Stefan, who stands separate from the rest of them over by the bookshelves. Well away from the projectiles.

Stefan still looks dazed.

She offers him her drink.

He takes it from her unseeingly and drains the entire tumbler.

Elijah must have said something more to him than what she overheard—

"You're upset because you already know," Elijah tells Rebekah, pulling Elena away from her worries over Stefan. "Only your love for our brother blinds you to the truth of what I am ashamed to admit has been brazenly obvious from the beginning."

Rebekah flings herself onto the sofa across from Elijah and splays her arms wide. From her place behind the sofa, Elena can no longer see her face, but her body language is clear enough. "Do enlighten me, then" she snaps.

Elijah glances up at Klaus, but when he only greets him with stony silence, he sighs.

"It's our mother."

The silence that ensues is thick enough to swim through.

Elena stares at Klaus.

She'd known, of course, that there was a fourth coffin… but his mother? That doesn't even make sense—she'd been mortal—surely all that could remain after a millennium would be her bones? Less, even. Her dust.

Unless he had been lying to everyone around him for an entire millennium.

Klaus's eyes are very bright. He looks manic. Frayed. Everything she would expect him to be with such an explosive secret coming to light. Except, beneath those things, lurking like the dark shadow of an ambush predator at the bottom of a lagoon, is the spark of Klaus's raw, unbridled ambition.

Suspicion creeps over her. He's playing the rest of them. She's certain of it.

"What?" Rebekah finally asks. She sounds stunned, her voice small as a child's. "How can that be true?"

Elena's mind worries over Klaus's motives but her heart hears Rebekah's pain and confusion. Cannot help but want to go to her. To give her whatever support that she can.

She lurches forward to do just that, but Stefan grabs her arm. Holds her back.

Ensures she has to stay where she is, an observer rather than a participant in this night's drama.

Instead, it's Elijah who stands, brushing past Klaus to sit next to Rebekah. Very carefully, as though she is made from some fine, spun crystal that will break under the lightest of pressures, he touches her shoulder. "He's been lying to all of us since the beginning."

"Is she—is she not dead?"

"You know, it's a funny thing. Our father swears she is. Insists our brother is the one to have murdered her, not him." He studies Klaus. "But you wouldn't have carried her corpse around for ten centuries."

Klaus laughs, then. "So you've come to plead for me to release her, and, what? You'll get your happy family reunion? You think that Mikael will ever stop hunting me just because I've returned his wayward wife to him? You think that Finn will ever stop seeking our collective deaths? Or that Kol will ever master his baser instincts well enough for the lot of us to settle anywhere permanently?"

"Or that your avarice will ever be satisfied?" Rebekah asks.

Klaus stares her down. "What would you have me do?"

"If what Elijah is saying is true—if our mother is somehow alive and you have the chance to free her—then I would ask that you do that. Please."

Klaus throws himself into the chair Elijah had so recently occupied. The perfect study of petulance. "You said you were here to negotiate, Elijah. Tell me your terms."

"It's very simple: Open the coffin. Restore our mother to us. In return, I will ensure you are left in peace by the other members of our family."

"That's absurd. Make me a better offer."

"There is no better offer. Have you never considered that the reason we've been at war amongst ourselves for so long is because we've been missing a vital part of our family? A part you have always had the power to restore, apparently, yet never bothered to even try?"

Klaus looks off to the side. "You assume I have the wherewithal to do more than open the coffin."

Elijah pauses. "If she is under some spell, then we have witches aplenty at our disposal who can break it."

"And if I refuse?"

"Then I can no longer stand between you and the whirlwind you have sewn." When Klaus does not respond, Elijah leans forward. "Please, Niklaus. I wish for us to be a family again."

"I'll think on it." Klaus's gaze flicks up to lock with Elijah's, the blue of them electric, magnetic. She's seen that imploring look before. Knows exactly how impossible it is to refuse. "In the meantime, why don't you stay a while? We can test out this new familial harmony you're so eager to implement."

The two brothers watch each other for a very long time.

"Very well," Elijah concedes at last. He rises, his motions fluid as a ribbon of ink, fastidiously straightens his suit, and plucks two brandy glasses from the bar. God, even the way he pours liquor is elegant. He hands a glass to Klaus and raises his own. "To family."

Klaus glances over Elijah's shoulder, right at Elena, before raising his glass. "To family." He's smiling as he says it—the small, contained smile of a secret.


A/N: Hope everyone is staying safe this holiday season! Thanks for reading. Please comment if you are enjoying, or come find me over on tumblr at livleprete dot tumblr dot com. My inbox is open for any and all questions, and I post lots of previews and writing updates there. (As well as amazing FE fanart—moodboards, manips, playlists- by SPECTACULARLY talented artists!)