(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
She's sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed for sleep in one of Klaus's long-sleeved shirts, examining her bruised knuckles, barely keeping her racing thoughts in check, forcing herself to take deep, even breaths and slowly, slowly release them, when she feels Klaus's attention on her again.
He'd wandered over to the fireplace to work on the fire he'd promised her while she had mechanically prepared for bed. Now, he leans against the carved mantle, his profile illuminated by the warm glow of the crackling flames, watching her with that still, predatory focus that in the past had both thrilled and unsettled her. Now, it only ratchets up the trepidation building and buzzing like hornets in her chest.
"I didn't know you could throw a punch like that," he observes.
"That's me. Full of surprises." Her voice sounds strained to her own ears, but Klaus doesn't seem to hear it.
An odd expression flickers across his face. "Marry me."
Elena startles. Every single one of the doubts she's been spiraling under falls right out of her head. "What?"
Klaus strides over and sinks to one knee in front of her. Takes her left hand. "I want you to marry me."
She looks down at his hand clasping hers. That's not my hand in his, she thinks. It can't possibly be. "I literally just told you this morning that we were moving too fast."
"And I told you the pace of our relationship is irrelevant in the face of what we are to each other."
"You're not thinking clearly."
Klaus's eyes narrow. "You're unhappy to learn that this child is mine."
The possessiveness of his tone snaps her out of her shocked abstraction. "You mean ours."
"At least you admit I have some right to it."
Anger seeps through the fear and the anxiety and the distress. It feels like Klaus tricked her into admitting that the baby may not solely belong to her.
She tries to pull away, but he won't let her.
Elena huffs, desperately trying to hang on to her reserve. "Look, I'm completely drained. Can we not have this fight right now?"
"Who's fighting? I've just asked you to marry me. If anything, I'm attempting to woo you."
"No, you're trying to claim me."
"Yes, exactly." Klaus traces the pulse point in her wrist. "Marry me, Elena. Be my wife, my queen, my goddess."
I kind of like the symmetry of three women, three goddesses.
All of the fight drains out of her once again at the memory, leaving her with nothing but wrung out truth.
She doesn't know how long she can keep fighting him. It's just too hard.
It always has been.
When she doesn't respond to his entreaty with any more than a hopeless stare, he climbs atop the bed with her and pins her beneath him. Automatically, her legs spread to cradle him against her.
Like this, her body is so open and vulnerable to him.
"Marry me," he coaxes for a third time. "Let me make you happy." His lips brush against her own as he speaks. The weight of him— comforting, familiar, and yet utterly electrifying— nearly compels her to assent.
Nearly.
"I'm not ready for that," she tells him. Confesses to him, speaking from the part of herself so tremulous and uncertain that she can barely raise her voice about a whisper, "I'm not sure I'm even really ready to be in a relationship with you, let alone commit myself."
Her words break the illusion of tenderness he had spun for her. Between one blink and the next, Klaus's whole countenance shifts to one of cruel calculation.
"It doesn't matter what you want or what you're ready for," he declares with implacable certainty. "You need me."
She does, she does—she had told him as much only last week—but cannot help but reject hi when he treats her this way. "No I don't."
"Pray tell, how then do you plan to protect the child?"
"What do you mean? It's a baby. I think I can handle that."
"An unnatural baby. A supernatural baby. My mother is just the first to take notice. Others will come for it. Think of Bonnie's instinct to murder it within your womb. How much danger the child has been before it's even been born. You'll need me if you stand any chance of keeping it safe."
"Her," she replies faintly, her thoughts racing over the threats Klaus has pointed out. He's right of course. She's in way over her head. "Your mother said it's a girl."
Delight gleams in Klaus's eyes. "A daughter," he breathes. "How splendid."
She resists the way his reaction makes her heart melt. Cuts straight past the danger of lingering over Klaus's response to discovering the baby is a girl—that way can only lie danger. Straight past the dangers Klaus has enumerated as well.
"You're trying to pressure me, but it won't work," she informs him.
"Yes, it will. Deep down you already agree with me. You know I'm right, just as you know I'm right about us."
Elena writhes beneath him. "Let me up. I want to go home."
He rolls off of her, but he restrains her from leaving the bed with a hand pressed firmly to her shoulder. "You can't possibly be thinking of leaving."
Elena glares at him. "I just said I was."
"My mother's still out there. Your Bonnie, too. Innumerable other threats. You're safest here with me."
"What, are you planning to abduct me? Hide me away forever?"
Klaus's eyes darken and his mouth sets into stubborn petulance. "Possibly."
Elena draws away from him. "You're really tempted, aren't you?"
"Yes."
She watches him like the wolf he is. "You won't though, right?"
"I'll do whatever I have to to keep you safe, Elena. You and our daughter. I've told you this many a time before."
He had. Over and over again.
This is the precise reason she'd decided she would run if Klaus's witch contacts decided her pregnancy should be terminated.
She can't trust him not to make these decisions for her. Not to trap her.
If she knows him (and she does), he's already planning to take off with her.
An idea sparks in the back of her mind, a bright ember in the darkness.
Elena licks her lips. Shifts closer to him. Her breath flutters in her lungs. Each breath somehow makes her feel more lightheaded, not less. There're knots in her stomach that only tug tighter when she asks, "Do you mean that?"
"With everything I am or will ever be."
Fear, desire. They are so similar at their heart. So intertwined in her history with Klaus to begin with.
It's easy for her to climb into Klaus's lap. To stare down at him like she belongs there, above him, cold and imperious as the winter stars. "Tell me you're mine," she demands, her hand on his jaw, fingernails biting into him as she offers him this one final out.
He searches her face. "Telling you what you want to hear will not make it so," he says at last.
She slaps him. It's good and satisfying, especially when she sees the mark her hand makes on his pale cheek before fading away into nothing.
He snarls at her, but before he can retaliate with word or action, she hauls him in for a kiss. Her mouth slides over his, rough and demanding and messy. She shoves her tongue into his mouth, hissing when his fangs slice it open, groaning when he grapples her closer to suck at his tongue.
Frantically, ill with anxiety bordering on dread, her hands work at his belt buckle and fly. It's the work of moments to shove her underwear aside and impale herself upon him. He growls against her mouth when she sinks down upon him, the vibrations rumbling through her chest as she experimentally rises and falls against him. She has to hold onto his shoulders to keep herself steady as she rides him, but she likes that. Likes the feeling of her hands near his throat, of pushing him down further beneath her as she rises above him—no matter that she inevitably sinks down to his level. No matter that this display of power over him is all an illusion at his sufferance.
In his mind, their relationship is so very clear. She belongs to him, body and soul. Has since the very beginning. It's his divine right to do with her whatsoever he pleases—to fuck, marry, or kill her, she thinks half-hysterically. The fact that he loves her is only another set of chains with which to ensnare her. The fact that this baby is his is just proof of his dominion over her.
That ownership has never stretched both ways.
She is his mirror, but he is the one staring into his reflection, not her.
Klaus's hands dig into the flesh at her hips, clutching her to him. There will be bruises spotting her like a leopard the next morning.
The image makes her groan. Her body tightens around him, wicked heat blooming low in her belly. Even with her breaths tight and shallow in her lungs and her heart pounding in her throat, she's still so slick with desire and need and sick thirst for the monster beneath her that she feels it manifest within her as a physical pain.
She can't help herself. Can't even blame herself for this. A leopard can't change its spots. And she'll do anything for this baby.
When she feels herself getting close, she leans forward, pressing her body flush against him. By now she's sweaty, Klaus's shirt sticking to her damp body and her hair plastered to her neck and starting to curl. Each grind of her hips sends a delicious wave of friction against her breasts, her sex. She buries her face in his throat, inhaling the tangy, primal scent of him.
Faintly, she can hear Klaus mouthing his adoration against her collarbone—"My precious girl, my queen, my love, my perfect goddess divine—"
Her body hitches, inner muscles seizing down hard as she surges toward her climax. It's the work of an instant to press her mouth against Klaus's throat and sink her teeth into him as she comes. His blood slicks her teeth, hot and coppery and so potent she feels her tongue go numb.
Klaus shouts something when she bites him, his hands locking around her and crushing her to him as he batters into her, as violent and possessive and wild as she has ever experienced him.
(Caroline has told her what it does to a vampire when their lover feeds from them like this.)
She takes two, three strong pulls from his neck, her fingers curling like claws into his shoulders as she rides him through her orgasm and into a second, racing high that ripples through her entire body. She's still soaring, hurtling toward that free fall, when Klaus shoots hard inside of her, calling her name.
He's so terribly careful with her afterwards. He traces the lines and curves of her face with his fingertips, smoothing back her hair and watching her with a sort of half-stunned expression. His thumb traces her lip, catching and smearing a stray droplet of blood outward along her cheek. "What did I do to deserve you?" he asks, marveling. "The mother of my child." He laughs, then, suddenly. Pulls her from his lap and settles her into the bed with him, securing the blankets high around their shoulders. Inevitably, his hands wander back to her waist. It's as though now that he has discovered the origin of her baby, he just can't stop touching her, stroking her, petting her. "To think how jealous I was when I first learned of this creature's existence." He offers her a confidential smile, slow and hot and slippery and savage. "I tormented myself with images of you giving yourself to another. Spent my idle hours envisioning a slow, cruel death for whoever the father turned out to be." He presses a line of kisses against her jawline. Against the scar he'd left her last year. "To discover I had only myself to blame—I cannot fathom the depth of my fortune."
"Why do you really want to marry me?" she asks him muzzily, her eyes only half open.
Klaus is quiet for a long, long time.
"Because I've never been so certain of anyone before," he finally tells her.
Something in the simplicity of the declaration strikes her harder than any of his lofty declarations of love and devotion.
She can't remember the last time she was certain of anyone.
Can't remember the last time she was truly deserving of such trust either.
She lies in bed with him for what feels like hours, waiting to be absolutely certain that he'd really fallen asleep.
Only the deepest sleep will be sufficient for what she needs to do.
Fighting for composure, Elena slips from the bed. The sex had been a great distraction, for her as well as for him, but whatever diversion it had provided is long since passed. She has only the terror and the sheer gall of what she is about to do.
The oak floors immediately creak as soon as her feet touch them, and she freezes, waiting in the dark for Klaus to stir and ask her why she's up. She doesn't even dare to so much as breathe as she waits out the long seconds until she's certain it's safe to keep moving.
That first step is the hardest. The most frightening.
After that, her fear fuels her as nothing else could. She steals through the house on snow soft feet used to stalking through vampire lairs.
Swiftly, she navigates to Klaus's studio, where he has a pile of lumber already cut and prepared for stretching canvases.
For a long time, she wavers, staring hard at the pile of wood, not at all certain she can do this.
The moon creeps out from behind the clouds, casting the room in a pale gray luminescence.
The moment passes.
Illuminated by moonlight, a prime contender pops out at her from amidst the stack of options. Already sharpened to a near point.
In her hand, the stretcher bar becomes a stake.
Elena drifts back to Klaus's bedroom as though in a dream. A very bad dream from which she is about to wake up.
(Only she has the power to end it.)
She stands over his bed, watching him sleep. He's so beautiful in the dark that she longs to let the stake drop from her fingers and mold herself to him, cleaving so tightly that they'll become one flesh, as surely as the child knitting itself together within her is the union of their flesh made real and whole and so very permanent.
Every instinct in her body is screaming at her that she needs to escape him though. That she needs time to rally, to think, to figure out what she needs. What her baby really needs.
If he won't give it to her, then she'll have to carve it out for herself.
Yet, the price of carving that freedom for herself is so high.
He's going to be incandescent with rage when he wakes up. Especially when he realizes that she'd only fucked him like that to throw him off his guard.
Well. It's his fault for falling for it.
(It's not as though he isn't familiar with her family history of seduction and deceit.)
Deep within her, she knows that if she doesn't leave now, then it'll be too late. She'll never have the chance again.
She's too afraid to stay.
Elena steels herself.
Takes a deep breath.
And sinks the stake into Klaus's heart.
It takes all of her puny mortal strength.
All of the strength in her untempered heart.
(She must kill all of her reflections if she wants to be the one to live. And for her child, she will do anything.)
Klaus's eyes snap open the moment the stake pierces his heart, but by then, it's too late.
She's won.
He's looking right at her as his face turns gray, confusion and fear twisting his features before they fall slack. A single tear leaks from his eye, rolling slowly down his cheek. The sight of it transfixes her.
Slowly, Elena falls to her knees, and presses her lips against that tear, tasting the bitter salt of it. And then she leans forward, so that her mouth is at Klaus's ear, and tells him a secret. "You've been mine since long before I was ever born," she whispers to him. "You waited for me for a thousand years. Your whole immortal existence comes down to me. Your love for me. Your desire for me. Your obsession with me. In that way, I own you as you will never own me." She cards her fingers through his beautiful golden hair. "That's power."
Rising to her feet, she takes a moment to gaze upon his deathly features. She imagines his soul, bound up tight as an oyster's pearl in some deep, murky place where she cannot reach, searching for a way back to the living world. She hopes wherever he is, he heard her.
There's not much time to waste. From what she understands, a regular stake to the heart will only temporarily incapacitate an Original. No one's ever told her how long that state persists for. Hours, she thinks—hopes—based on the time Elijah had been staked at that old decrepit house Rose had brought her too. Only minutes if she's astonishingly unlucky.
She tears a page from a notebook and scrawls Klaus a note.
I'm sorry.
There's not much more she can say.
Dressing quickly, Elena fishes Klaus's car keys out of his jacket pocket and locks the door behind her.
A minute later she's slipping behind the wheel of Klaus's shiny black SUV, peeling out into the fading night.
A/N: Honestly, I love this bad bitch. I hope you all do too.
Thank you everyone for reading. Please comment if you are enjoying!
