(The Stars Were Brightly Shining)

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.

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

Spoilers: Seasons 3 & 4

Rating: R

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


Shock spills over her.

It's only been a couple of months since the last time she saw them—since their night together, when she had felt whole and hopeful and absolutely right pressed between their bodies—but it may as well be another lifetime altogether.

When they had left her without so much as a goodbye, they'd taken the last part of her innocence with them.

She's not the same girl who had kissed them and prayed for them to envelop her in their love. She's not the same girl she was even a few weeks ago.

And yet, right now, there is an unignorable part of that wants to be that girl. That cannot help but to reach for their shared past.

They are both still so beautiful that her entire body aches with repressed longing.

"What are you doing in my house?" she asks them when she at last finds her voice.

"Looking for you, obviously," Damon begins. "Bonnie called us and said you were in trouble. Something about Klaus." He eyes the room. "Whatever magic was used in this room still reeks, by the way."

"Bonnie called you?" she collapses into the nearest chair. She can't believe this. Can't believe that all this time, when she had been mourning them, knowing in her heart that she had lost them, that they would probably never come back to Mystic Falls during her life time, or else would only return when it would be too late for them all, when she would be old and gray and nothing like the girl they had loved— all that time, Bonnie had apparently had the power to reach them when she, Elena, could not. It hurts. So much.

"Two days ago," Stefan confirms. "We came back as fast as we could."

"You answered for her?" She's not sure why that fact stands out more than any other. Not with Stefan and Damon both here, the two missing pieces of her soul standing right here in her living room.

It occurs to her that the three of them are all teetering on the edge of a precipice. The distance between their past and their present is both so infinitesimal that any little word they speak has the power to wound her in a way no others could. At the same time, the abyss between them is so distant and daunting that she knows that if she ever tries to jump the distance and meet them again, the way she had so thoughtlessly been able to do in the past, that she would surely fall.

Memory flashes through her. That morning on her porch, Alaric's blood still hot and cloying on her hands. Of dialing and holding her breath and hoping that if she reached out, then someone would take her hand. "You never pick up for me." Her voice sounds so small.

"You never called," Damon says.

It hits her then—they had left her… and she had let them.

No, she'd never once tried to contact them in the months they'd been away. By that point, she had become so accustomed to abandonment that she had accepted it as another grief and pushed forward. And then—and then she had found out about the baby, and the pain of their leaving had shrunken down into a point within her heart so small that it had been easy to ignore. Like a needle embedded so long in the flesh that so long as she never prodded it, she could go on about her life and forget that it was there at all. It's been especially easy not to think of them with how wrapped up she's been with Klaus, and everything else that's happened since—

Damon approaches her, slowly, like she might spook at any moment. "Elena—" He freezes a few feet from her. His eyes widen, and he recoils as though she's a snake.

At the same time, Stefan cocks his head and squints at her. A moment later, naked disbelief plays over his face. "You're pregnant?"

She gapes, caught off-guard by the question. Before she can respond, Damon snatches her up and hauls her tight against him, wrenching a startled scream from her. He buries his nose against her throat and inhales hard. His fingers clench around her wrists hard enough to bruise. She knows what he must smell on her skin.

She hasn't been afraid of Damon in a long, long time. She's afraid of him now, though. "Damon, you're hurting me." She tries to tear herself away from him, but his grip is implacable.

"I don't believe it," he snarls, pulling away to glare down at her, completely heedless of her attempts to twist out of his grasp. "Are you off your vervain?" he demands. He clenches his jaw, the familiar light of murder glinting in his eyes. "I'm going to kill him."

Stefan jumps between them, breaking Damon's hold on her and shoving his brother to the other side of the room. Damon lands hard against the fireplace, all of the framed photos on the mantle crashing to the ground and the iron fire screen crumpling in the wake of the impact.

Off-balance from Stefan abruptly freeing her, Elena trips and lands hard on the coffee table. Cursing, she rubs at her tailbone and then her wrists. Deep fingerprint bruises are already blooming against her skin.

"Lay off of her," Stefan orders his brother.

"Don't you smell it?"

"Yeah, she's pregnant, you prick. Stop rattling her around."

Damon pushes Stefan out of his way. "Yeah, well, she's also fucking Klaus."

Elena shoves herself to her feet. "You both left me. It's none of your business whom I sleep with."

"She's obviously been compelled," Damon tells Stefan, like she's not even in the room.

Stefan doesn't rush to agree. There's something terribly knowing in his eyes as he examines her. Something she can't quite put her finger on.

How many nights in those first few weeks after they'd left had she lain awake imagining their reunion? Somehow, she'd never imagined this. How ridiculous of her. "I'm not compelled," she repeats, heat creeping into her voice. "And I'd appreciate it if you stopped looking at me like I'm broken. I'm not." Not anymore.

"You're not stupid enough to climb into bed with Klaus," Damon says.

"I was stupid enough to climb into bed with you, so I guess the jury's still out on that."

Damon storms over to her and grabs her again by the shoulders. Not gently—never gently with him—but not exactly rough, either. "I never would have left you if I'd thought you'd end up with him."

The judgment in his tone stokes her anger. Deep down, Elena's relieved. It's easier to be angry at him than to feel the crushing weight of her hurt. Than to deal with the maelstrom of feelings their sudden reappearance has rekindled inside of her.

"Of course not," she hisses. "You and Stefan both put your revenge against him before me time and again."

Damon lets her go. "So, what, is sleeping with Klaus your revenge?"

The question catches her. She thinks about everything she's shared with Klaus these past few weeks, and beyond that—to the secret moments between them all throughout last fall, and the bigger moments last spring that had rocked her and defined her as nothing else ever had—as nothing else may never be able to again. She thinks about the way he had lurked in her head and her heart, a shadow that had fallen over everything, its shade somehow transformed into a comfort and a respite rather than a thing to fear—

"My relationship with Klaus doesn't have anything to do with you," she finally tells him.

Damon must read the truth of it on her face. He looks away first. Falls into the arm chair and glares in the direction of the melted Christmas tree.

"Who's the father of your baby, Elena?" Stefan asks her, breaking through the silence.

Elena watches him warily. "You're not going to lecture me about Klaus?"

He sighs like he's exhausted. "He's always been obsessed with you. It's our fault for not anticipating this."

"Yeah, he has been. But this was my decision, and I don't regret it." She brushes past both of them to the kitchen, where she sets the kettle on to boil and knocks back her prenatal vitamins.

Stefan follows her in. Pins her with that dark, arresting stare whose power she has never been able to resist. "He murdered Jenna, Elena."

He may as well have stabbed her.

Elena clutches at the edge of the kitchen counter as her knees nearly buckle out from under her. No, no, no, no, she's sworn to herself never to think of this—Never ever ever—because if she does then she'll have to face the fact that she's let Jenna's murderer into her heart, and all she'll ever be able to see ever again is Jenna's fear in those final moments, that cold gray face, pinned beneath her lover, a bloody stake in his hand—

"If sleeping with him is really your choice, then I'm surprised you can forget that," he continues.

He's right. He's right. Of course he is. She had just been so happy to forget—to forget—and what sort of a monster does that make her?

The same feeling as the day before rises up inside of her, smothering her—She tries to breathe but it's like her lungs are frozen— She wants Klaus desperately right now, to anchor her, to hold her, but that urge only makes her swelling misery that much more unbearable. Her vision swims.

Stefan catches her before she can faint. "If he's forcing you in any way, Elena, we can help you," he tells her. "We can free you."

His arms come around her, and for a moment, Elena slides into the peace of memory. She knows these arms. She knows this scent. She knows that voice, calm and quiet and always, always assuring. It's enough to clear her thoughts, to wipe away the nightmare of her guilt.

"He's not forcing me," Elena mumbles, pushing herself away from him. "He's just… The only one who never seems to leave me."

For a moment, Stefan looks absolutely stricken. "Everything I ever did was to keep you safe from him."

"That's not true, though."

Behind them, the tea kettle shrieks.

Elena turns away from him then to take the kettle off the stove. Sets her vervain tea to steep in one of her favorite mugs. One of the ones Jenna had brought with her when she moved in after her parents died. Her heart twists. Carefully, she scoops it up and holds the hot ceramic cupped between her hands. Focuses on that, on pushing down all of the ugly roiling feelings of doubt and shame which Stefan had dredged up only moments ago.

"So then who's the father of your child?" Damon asks, emerging from the living room to lean in the doorjamb. Obviously, he's been listening to their entire conversation. "Someone Klaus arranged? Or was it a rebound lay right after we left?"

"Damon, that's enough," Stefan chides.

"Inquiring minds want to know." He still has that knack for sounding utterly cold and indifferent when really he's burning up with jealousy and hurt beneath the surface. The intimacy of the insight rips at her mangled heart.

"Would knowing change anything?" she asks.

"Depends on the answer."

Elena shuts her eyes. Casts herself back, to that night they had all three of them come together in Damon's enormous bed. She's spent so much time trying to imagine what she could have possibly said to them that night to have made them stay. What she must have said to them that had made them leave her. Wondering why Katherine could keep them so effortlessly, when she just couldn't, even when it was what she wanted with every grasping inch of her soul.

"I can't do this with you two," she admits, sagging against the counter. "I can't keep having this conversation like the two of you care about me."

"We do care," Stefan says. So reasonably. So definitively.

She explodes. "You still left me, though! You still carved my heart out when you did, and I was alone, bleeding out, and it was up to me to put the pieces back together all by myself! You can't just show up here like that doesn't matter and demand answers about my life."

The ensuing silence grates against her nerves. She blows on her steaming tea, her temper turning the gesture into an irritated, staccato huff. She scalds her tongue on the first sip anyway. Her belly twinges sharply.

"If it makes you feel better, we had a good reason for leaving," Damon says after an excruciating minute passes.

"Fuck you."

The doorbell rings, then, startling the three of them. Elena fumbles the mug, hot tea scalding her hands, but Stefan catches it before it cracks against the floor.

Absolute exhaustion sweeps over her.

"Elena?" Caroline calls from the front of the house. "The door was open so I let myself in—I saw you invited Bonnie so I thought I'd come over a little early so you two wouldn't have to face each other one on one."

"Oh, great, Vampire Barbie," Damon mutters.

Caroline obviously hears the comment, because a second later she zips into the kitchen. "You two are back? What the hell? Since when?"

"Since a couple of hours ago," Stefan replies. "Bonnie warned us Elena was in trouble."

"Yeah, she said it was about Klaus," Damon says. "She failed to mention the problem was she's fucking him." He pauses. "Or that she's gotten herself knocked up."

"Knocked up's kind of a strong word for it," Caroline replies, sidling next to Elena and examining her burnt hand with a concerned frown. She hisses and pulls away as soon as her fingers come into contact with the tea on her skin.

"Sorry," Elena whispers to her. "I spilled the vervain tea on myself."

"What does that mean?" Damon asks, interrupting them.

"Hm?" Caroline barely spares him a glance as she wraps a handful of ice in a dishrag for Elena to hold against her hands.

"You said 'knocked up is kind of a strong word.' What does that mean?"

Elena attempts to subtly shake her head at Caroline, to signal that she doesn't want to share.

Damon catches it. Of course he does. He's always been hyper aware of her, even when he was cutting her out. His eyes narrow. "Were you attacked? Is that it?"

"Look, if I tell you, will you back off about it?"

They don't agree—of course they don't—but she's too wrung out to bother keeping this secret. If she doesn't tell them, she's certain Bonnie will, and she'd rather at least head this off now when she can control the narrative.

So, Elena takes a deep breath, and brings them up to speed on What's Happening to Her Body, take three.


A/N: Thanks for reading! Please let me know what you think!