Back to Black

The chair clambers to the floor and Klaus lets the door swing open freely, taking a generous, strategic step back. She can't see past his shoulders, but Elena watches from the couch anyway, casual and confident that whatever is behind the door is no match for Klaus.

She has just a moment to recognize her brother before the two men behind him lunge forward towards her hybrid. A tall, bald man has Klaus by the neck and a shorter, scruffy man has plunged a stake into his side, dangerously close to his heart were he a normal vampire.

Still, his anguished grunt compels Elena to bolt up to her feet and she immediately looks around her flat for something that could possible help Klaus. She wasn't prepared for this. She'd been spending her days waiting for him, not stockpiling weapons.

It isn't long before Klaus has the smaller man kneeling, his hand clenching at the very human throat. Klaus's fingers dig in, small rivers of blood flowing down his neck and into his beard. She isn't sure how it happened, but the taller man is laying in the broken remnants of her favorite chair. She'd been searching for anything useful when she caught him flying through the air as if he was feather light.

"Jeremy! Do something!" she screams.

"I'm trying," he tells her, but she can't help but feel he isn't doing much. He's circling on the outside of the action, looking for a way in.

She's so focused on Klaus and his grip on the smaller man that she's taken aback when the taller one sneaks behind her, locking her into his chest with his forearm, too strong over her neck. When he raises her off the ground, she digs her nails into his skin, surprised that he's barely flinched. She recognizes his inhuman strength but that doesn't help her as she kicks her legs, trying to find something to stand on to alleviate the pressure that builds on her throat.

"Conner!" Jeremy yells out, a wide panicked look in his eyes. This is clearly not how he envisioned this morning going. Neither had she. She had been looking forward to Klaus showing her around the city, listening to his stories of the past. She hadn't expected to begin their morning with a brawl.

"Let Galen go!" booms the mountain of a man holding Elena up off the ground. She coughs and spits, trying anything to get in a breath. Her lungs are lighting up and nothing she does to Conner seems to be working, much less bothers him.

Klaus turns around, slowly taking the scene before him in. He pushes Galen to the ground, turning his back on both Hunters to face Connor. "Put her down and I'll merely make you wish you were dead."

Jeremy leans down to say something to Galen, who nods and quickly scrambles to his feet and leaves the flat. If Klaus notices, he doesn't acknowledge that anyone has escaped. His eyes, wide and a little scared, belong entirely to Elena.

Klaus takes a careful step forward towards Connor and Elena. "I won't repeat myself."

His grip on her neck tightens and she gasps for air, fighting against the feeling of her body going limp. "I'm not stupid. She's coffin bait. Look at the bite mark on her neck. It isn't even healed. She's flaunting it."

"Hey! Cool it Connor. That's my sister. Let her go!" Jeremy comes to stand next to Klaus, who shifts his gaze to the younger man just briefly.

"Sister or not, she's clearly not on our side, Jeremy."

"What's your problem man? There's no reason for you to be acting like this. She's human."

Conner scoffs and rolls his eyes. "Hardly. She's not any better than them."

"We came here for her help, not to assault her. Drop her. Please man? She's basically the only family I have left."

Connor eyes Jeremy closely before shoving Elena violently to the ground. She can tell her knees will be bruised without the hour when she hits the ground. She grimaces and coughs as she takes her first gulp of air.

Klaus is at her side before she'd even seen him move. He tenderly moves her hands from her neck, examining her carefully.

"Are you hurt?" He's bent over her and has her head cradled in his chest. She appreciates the tenderness, but worries about how quickly he seems to have abandoned vigilance against the still present danger in the room. That her brother would bring a man like Connor into her home, makes her trust Jeremy a little less. At least, his judgement.

"I'll be fine," she says as she rubs her hand softly over her throat, red and already blossoming with a sick array of colors. Then, she hears a crashing noise behind her. Jeremy has Connor by the throat in the broken shards of her coffee table.

Great, everything in this apartment is going to be broken before this is over.

"Get him out of here, Jeremy. Or I will. I venture that unlike you, I don't care about the state of him when he does leave." Klaus stands up, deliberately stepping around the wreckage. He has positioned himself between Elena and the two Hunters.

"Just back off, Klaus! I'll take care of him." Jeremy keeps his focus on Conner, showing Klaus just where he thinks the danger lays.

A growl and flash of movement later, Klaus has pushed Jeremy off Connor and has the bigger man lifted off the ground. Elena stands up, edging towards the kitchen.

"Didn't seem like you were really taking care of the situation, young Hunter."

Klaus grabs one of Connor's arms, dropping the man and twisting viciously upward, breaking bones. He screams out as Klaus lets him drop to the floor, letting gravity pull the shoulder clean out of socket. Elena keeps inching towards the stove, her eyes only flitting away from the fight for seconds at a time.

"Elena, do something!"

"Like what, Jer?" she asks, breaking her focus on Klaus.

"Call him off?"

"He's not a dog. And your friends started this." She reaches for a knife when Jeremy's attention goes back to Conner, his breathe labored and teeth flashing.

Klaus has Connor's jaw in his hands, tilting his eyes towards Elena. "Apologize."

His jaw tenses in Klaus's hands, eyes glaring at her before he spits on the ground. Before he can get a word out though, Klaus had already back handed him though his firm grip on the man's shirt makes Connor look like an awful clown bop bag. He looks back at Elena and shrugs. "Didn't seem like an apology to me, love."

"If it was, it was a weird way to begin one," she replies, earning her a smile.

Jeremy takes this distraction as an opportunity and runs head long into Klaus, toppling him over and freeing Connor.

"Run!" he grunts out as he struggles to pin Klaus down. All he needs is a second.

Connor stands and makes a move toward Elena, who brandishes her knife. "You getting out of here is the smartest thing you could ever do," she advises. He nods and if she didn't have vampires to compare him to, she'd call it fast.

She'd been hopeful that Connor leaving would be the end of it, but she was wrong. She turns around to see Klaus and Jeremy tousling together, arms locked around each other's shoulders. She throws her knife into the hard wood floors with a resounding 'thud'.

"Stop it! Both of you!" Yelling takes effort. Her throat is already uncomfortably raw and raising her voice only tears it up more.

Klaus releases her brother and takes a step back even as Jeremy takes a purposeful step forward. "Jer! I mean it. Step back and explain to me what the hell just happened. Now."

"Yes, do explain why you interrupted my well-earned time with your sister with a pointless fight."

"We didn't know you were here."

"So, you were coming over at four in the morning to your sister's flat with two other men in tow to do what exactly? Wake her up for breakfast? Watch the sunrise?"

"I didn't think you would mind, Elena."

"I mean, not if you really needed me, Jer. Wait. How did you find me?"

"Connor traced your phone when you called me a couple months ago. I've known where you were this whole time," he explains.

"And you didn't think to reach out to me? Give me even a hint of where your sister may be?" Klaus sneers.

"I hadn't really thought about it."

"Jeremy!"

"What? I had other things on my mind."

"Of course, you're a bloody Hunter. You lot are only capable of holding a single thought at a time and not for very long."

For the first time since the three men had stormed into her small flat, Elena really took notice of Jeremy, "Your tattoo. I can see it now."

"Yeah, that's why I came over with Connor and Galen. I literally just finished it and I wanted to see if anyone besides the guys could see it."

"It's massive."

"As it should be. It's a map, sweetheart."

"A map? Jeremy, a map to what?"

"Elena, you promised that once I'd finished the tattoo that you'd help me."

"I remember, Jeremy. What do you need? How can I help you?"

"I need you to come back with me to Mystic Falls." When she looks back to Klaus, he is emphatically shaking his head side to side. His jaw set firmly in place and his nose flaring help punctuate his disapproval.

"Absolutely not, sweetheart."

A/N: Thanks for reading! What a way to start a morning. Probably more of a wake up than just coffee.