(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


For the second time in less than a year, her entire world shatters and reforms within the confines of this blazing circle, trapped by the maelstrom of the very same strange creature's regard. This creature—Her lover and her murderer. Her fated one.

The father of her child.

The words clatter through her, sharp and dissonant.

Only a couple of seconds have passed since Esther's explosive declaration, but nevertheless she catches on that Elena's attention is not where it should be—

She frowns, twisting around to see what has Elena frozen and pinned in place.

The abrupt motion breaks Elena from her stupor. Her survival instinct triggers, daring her to use this distraction that can finally give her an edge.

The second Esther turns, Elena strikes out, throwing all of her weight behind the punch just like Alaric had taught her, and coldcocks her. The blow crashes against Esther's temple and knocks her out in an instant. She crumples to the ground in a heap.

The force of the impact shoots from her hand up into her wrist. Elena curses, shaking her throbbing hand.

Klaus merely blinks at her, at his mother sprawled on the ground, and back at her. His mouth gapes. His arm, still poised to wrench his mother's neck from her shoulders, slowly falls to his side.

A dark intensity sweeps over his face as he absorbs the sight of her, standing in their circle.

He steps over his mother and joins her in that circle as though magnetized by some supernatural force.

Perhaps he is.

Perhaps that's why Elena feels rooted to the ground herself, like all she can do is wait for him to capture her, when what she really wants is to run, far away from this place, from him, from what she's just learned.

Klaus's arms come around her, scooping her up and swinging her into a bridal carry. His eyes rove over her face. The heat of his body bleeds through his shirt, into her chilled skin.

There's a possessive intimacy to the way he looks at her for which she is not prepared. The way he looks at her now makes every other look he's ever given her seem pale and mild by comparison.

It's all she can do to link her arms around his neck. To meet his stare and try not to drown beneath the sweeping tide of him. Of everything that look promises.

He kisses her, a brutal, claiming kiss. "Close your eyes," he murmurs.

Relieved for even this small escape, she does.

The wind rushes and the night howls around them as Klaus takes her home—a phantasmagorical reversal of last spring, when he had stolen her from her home to take her to this circle of fire and death and despair. When he had first united them.

Now, it seems, she must face a far more irrevocable union with him, somehow so much more enormous and doomful than anything she had agreed to last spring.


Klaus takes her back to his mansion. Settles her down on the leather sofa in his favorite study and kneels at her feet. His hands circle her waist, his touch light. Reverent. His eyes flick up to her face, before darting back down to the firm expanse of her belly. He peels her shirt back and lays his fiery palm flat against her skin. A wild, fierce light blazes in his eyes, transforming every familiar contour of his face as incredulous joy sweeps over him. When at last he looks at her again, his features are radiant with an emotion it takes her a moment to name.

Victory.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she asks him, her voice fluttery and weak with an overabundance of feelings—confusion, apprehension.

(Terror.)

"I've just learned that the woman I love is miraculously carrying my child," he tells her slowly, an irrepressible smile tugging at his lips. The dark intensity she had noted earlier seeps into the words. "You're truly bound to me forever, now."

"How can you be so certain it's really yours?"

She doesn't like the idea at all. Viscerally loathes the notion that this cherished miracle—her miracle, her hope, her bright, unlikely light in the dark—is something she will have to share with anyone else.

Even Klaus. Maybe especially Klaus.

He's already taken so much from her.

Klaus presses his hand more firmly over her womb. "I can feel it," he says. "I cannot comprehend how I overlooked it before—that tiny, fierce glimmer of power. So akin to my own…" He trails off in mute wonder.

Elena shoves his hands off of her and surges to her feet. "The baby's not yours. She was lying."

"What reason could she possibly have?"

She paces the room. "I don't know. To distract us, or to throw us off our game, or to make me trust her—any number of possible reasons." Her heart slams against her chest. She feels shaky, like she might need to throw up again.

Slowly, Klaus rises to his feet. Recaptures her in his embrace. "My mother is many things—a ruthless, scheming murderess, and a powerful and resourceful witch not least amongst those things—but she is merely a middling liar. The babe is ours."

"Listen to yourself! That's not even possible. You're a vampire."

"And a werewolf."

"Well, has this ever happened to you before?" she demands, knowing very well what the answer is going to be.

"No, but I've only been free of my curse for a few months." He cups the side of her face with devastating gentleness. "Your blood freed me, Elena. Remade me into what I was always meant to be. Released me from the shackles of the vampire's curse. Could it not stand to reason that I am simply bit more alive than I was last year?" How swift he is to accept these conclusions!

His thumb strokes over her cheekbone.

It's hypnotic, soothing.

Tempting.

Elena shakes herself out of his hold. She can't allow him to distract her. Not now. Not with her child on the line.

"What about all the other women you've slept with since you've broken the curse?" she asks. "Should I be worried that there are a gaggle of other women carrying your children then?"

"What other women? You're the only woman I've had in years."

Elena blinks, unable to summon a response to this admission.

"Doesn't it strike you as romantic?" he presses. "Or at least auspicious?" Again, his hand slips between them, to rest against her stomach. "Our very first night together, and we manage to forge this bright new life together."

Elena gazes up into his face. His familiar, comforting, handsome face, so etched with love for her, with longing for her.

"It can't be true," she whispers.

"Why are you so set against this?"

She opens her mouth, but no words come out. Tears sting her eyes. She doesn't know what she can possibly say to him to make him understand.

She's so afraid. Afraid to face what this might mean if it turns out to be real. Of all of the incalculable ways this will set her future in stone.

Klaus had been right. If this child is really their child, then she is already bound to him forever.

There will be no other choice for what her life might be. No other choices for her baby. All of her anxieties about moving too fast with him will feel like a hollow joke.

She can feel everything she needs to know about her future in the proprietary weight of his hand against her belly.

And then there is the past, absolutely crushing to think of now after so long hiding from it. Between her conversation with Stefan calling her to bitter account and actually revisiting the place where Jenna had died, she doesn't know how she can fall so easily back into Klaus's arms.

(And buried deep beneath all of these fears is the small voice in her head, whispering a truth into her heart which she can neither acknowledge nor ignore:

She doesn't get to have happy endings like this. It's too perfect.

One way or another, this is going to end horribly.)

"It's too much," she finally struggles to tell him, trying to push him away. He doesn't let her. Without his acquiescence, he is as immovable as a mountain. "I can't handle all of this."

"Then let me."

"You always say that. Maybe I don't want you to."

"But maybe you need me to."

He has her there. She does need him. In so many ways.

She hates that, because she can no longer hate him.

Elena slumps against him. "I don't want to be together just because we have a child together."

"Happily for us, we decided to be together before we had any inkling that was the case."

He picks her up again and settles into the sofa with her in his lap.

She shivers in his grasp.

"Are you cold?" he asks. "I could build a fire."

"How did you find me before? In the clearing?"

"Bonnie found me. Utterly distraught. I had her track you with a locator spell."

Surprise ripples through her—faint in comparison to the shock of discovering her child's paternity, but affecting nonetheless.

Klaus frowns. "That reminds me—I was to text them once I'd recovered you."

"Them?"

He pulls his phone out and taps out a quick message. "Bonnie and Caroline."

Klaus is on a text chain with her two closest friends. Immediately she shoves the thought away. She can't possibly process that right now.

"Your mother's been controlling her," Elena tells him instead. "She's the contact with the stake, and the one who was influencing Shane." She explains everything she had figured out about his mother's involvement. "I just don't understand how it all fits together."

"I should have killed her when I had the chance," Klaus murmurs. He considers her. "Why did she bring you back to the site of the sacrifice?"

"Something about the magic still being strong there."

"What did she want with you?"

"Not me, the baby. And she didn't say."

Klaus strokes her hair. "You're exhausted. Let's get you to bed."

It's not what she wants.

If she had her way, she'd go somewhere distant and remote where she could be quiet and have a long, uninterrupted think about her options, and where she could try to wrap her mind around her baby's true heritage.

Not that she thinks Klaus will let her out of his sight long enough for that.

Reluctantly, Elena agrees.

Tomorrow, she thinks against the clawing panic in her heart. She'll figure this all out tomorrow.


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