(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 stares at that closed door for a good while. Through it, she can feel Klaus seething. Can feel his hurt and his jealousy and his anger and his lust for her. His covetous love.
Very nearly, she opens the door and throws herself into his arms.
Very nearly.
Only the realization that he had become too much of a crutch for her these past couple of weeks stops her.
If she has only learned a single lesson this fall it has been this: She is strong enough to stand all by herself. To withstand all by herself. She doesn't need anyone to hold her up.
Even though it had been nice.
More than nice.
Miraculous, in its own way, to have a pair of strong arms to hold her close. To lift her up.
But that's not what she wants.
She doesn't want to rely on anyone.
Doesn't want to need anyone.
All she wants is this: someone who will stay with her, quietly, day after day, so that while she is doing the hard work of standing on her own two feet, she doesn't have to do it all alone.
Chilled from the cold house as much as from these thoughts—from the catastrophe between Klaus and the Salvatores that had been so narrowly averted—Elena flicks the switch on the gas fireplace and watches in silence as the flames slowly burst from the gas jets and dance within the hearth. The sight of the fire mesmerizes her, the way it always does. Not quite the way that a real wood-burning fire would—the way the fires she's grown so accustomed to do. The way the fire in her memory burns. But when she stretches her fingers out to feel the heat tickling along her skin, she thinks that this fire is warm enough.
There's a ruckus in the back of the house that eventually draws Elena to the kitchen, where Damon is laid out on the breakfast table, his head twisted at a nauseating angle.
Stefan and Bonnie confer in low voices over by the sink. She catches a few words, enough for her to realize that Bonnie is explaining the various protection spells she'd put up around the house.
The white oak stake is just lying there on the counter.
Behind her, Damon groans and sits up. "I think I need a chiropractor," he grumbles, rubbing the side of his neck.
"Loosely speaking, the argument could be made that that's what Klaus is," Stefan observes.
"Then I need a less hands-on one." Damon groans. "What did I miss?"
Stefan and Bonnie both join Damon over by the table to fill him in. For a moment, their backs are turned, and no one is paying her a bit of attention.
She grabs the stake and marches into the living room, over to the fireplace. Casually tosses it in.
She watches in grim satisfaction as her flames devour this tool that could so easily destroy her whole world in an instant.
Naturally, the rest of them smell the burning wood, but by the time they all swarm into the living room, it's too late.
Cursing, Damon reaches into the flames to extract the stake, but it disintegrates in his hand. "What the hell, Elena? That was our only weapon!"
Elena holds her ground. "A weapon that would kill you and everyone else I care about."
"And Klaus," Stefan sighs, exhausted and bitter from something more than mere jealousy. "Can't ever forget about Klaus." He says it like it's the singular fact of his existence.
"No, I can't," she agrees. "And I'm not going to let you two martyr yourselves just to make sure he's out of my life."
"When were you going to tell us that he's the father?" Stefan asks.
"What?" Damon looks utterly poleaxed, but somehow manages to sound outright apoplectic. "Klaus is the mystery dad? How?"
"Hybrid loophole?" Bonnie guesses.
Damon shudders. Grabs Elena by the arms, so that he can look deeply, searchingly into her eyes. "And you destroyed the stake? You'll never be rid of him now." There's a raw desperation in him for which she had been wholly unprepared.
Even now, he wants so badly to save her.
And because of that, she is so, so gentle with him.
"I know," she tells him softly. "But I didn't have any other choices. I can't lose any of you, and I can't take the chance that you'd be willing to pay that price just to get rid of him." She reaches up to wrap her hands around his wrists. To brace herself. "And—maybe I don't want to be rid of him. Not like that anyway."
"You've got to be nearing your second trimester," Stefan says, off to their side.
Elena frowns, trying to see where he's going with this. "Yeah. So?"
"So if Klaus is the father, that means you were sleeping with him last fall. While you were involved with us."
A stricken expression crosses Damon's face. He drops his hold on her.
Wisely, perhaps, Bonnie makes herself scarce.
Taking the two brothers in, Elena wants to scream.
Somehow, in all her angst and misery, she'd totally forgotten how maddeningly frustrating these two are.
"Just the once," she confirms tightly. "Around the time you were kidnapping me and threatening to drive me off the bridge." Or don't you remember? She doesn't bother to hide her pain from them. Her anger or her betrayal. "Everything else has been recent, after you two left me without a word of warning or explanation."
Stefan, at least, has the grace to look abashed.
"We had a good reason," Damon mutters.
"You said that yesterday."
"We were chasing down Esther. For what she did to Alaric. And to you."
At this news, Elena actually laughs at him. She can't help it.
"What?" Damon asks.
His lack of self-awareness only makes it worse. "Some job you did!" Elena gasps between sawing gales of laughter that she can't for the life of her seem to control. She collapses onto the sofa, clutching at her sides.
God. What had they been doing? Running in circles all this time? Esther must have led them on a merry chase indeed, considering all of her schemes had been focused on Mystic Falls all along.
Stefan eyes her carefully. "Elena, I know you're upset—"
"Upset! Ha! No, I'm just shocked. I've been assuming all this time that I needed the two of you to help me outthink all of this, that without you, I was useless, but it turns out without me, the two of you are the useless ones!" She's laughing so hard that tears roll down her face. It feels an awful lot like sobbing. "You two realize that Esther's been here, right? Manipulating Bonnie, Shane, this Hunter?"
"And going after you now," Stefan says. "Is it because of the baby? Because it's…" He trails off, like he can't bear to call it what it is. Klaus's.
This, at last, stoppers her laughter.
"Yes," she confirms, sobering. She hiccups just a little, coughing to cover it, as she explains, "I never got the whole picture on what she wanted, exactly, before Klaus came to rescue me from her."
"Nothing good," Damon muses. He studies her, his eyes trailing over her from head to toe, before turning to peer out the window. To wave and smile, no doubt at Klaus. It's a relief, not to have him watching her so closely. Clocking her every thought. "We should cut and run," Damon says, turning back to face them. "The three of us, the way we should have done it last November."
She can imagine it so clearly—what might have happened if they had only asked her to come along with them.
She would have said yes.
She would have followed them anywhere. To the ends of the earth.
Maybe, somehow, she wouldn't have had to choose. Could have selfishly had them both, and been content in that, nestled between them, the way she always preferred to be.
And she would have been happy. Would have basked in their love.
Would have been, could have been.
Can no longer be.
"No. I'm not going anywhere," Elena declares. She leaps to her feet. Backs straight into Stefan's stone hard chest.
He catches her around the shoulders. "It's a good idea," he tells her.
"It's the smart idea," Damon corrects.
"Then I'm not smart." She twists, and Stefan lets her go. "I'm not running away with the two of you."
"Why not?" Damon asks. "We've got to be more fun than Klaus. Way cooler. Funnier, too."
"Because I'd only be running away for a little while. Taking five minutes. Esther will eventually catch up. Klaus will find me." She swallows, hard, and gathers the courage to tear open all of her only partially healed wounds for them to see. "We'll remember why the three of us didn't work the first time we tried it. Why our love wasn't enough." Her voice breaks on the end. But she forges onward. "So… I'd rather face everything head on." Face her heart, no matter how stormy and frightening.
They both look like they want to argue. Like they want to prove her wrong.
She knows hearing any proclamations to the contrary will only hurt her.
Neither of them have ever been afraid of hurting her.
She's spared from having to hear whatever doubtlessly heart-rending reply her two beloveds would doubtlessly serve up by the front door clattering open as Caroline trudges inside, her arms loaded down with shopping and to-go bags.
"You could have at least helped me with these," she hollers over her shoulder, down to Klaus, whom Elena glimpses leaning against his car, arms crossed, a sour expression twisting his face.
How Caroline can muster this level of ease around him when no one else can is beyond her. More than that, there's an intimacy to the way Caroline chides him that Elena doesn't have the energy to pick apart right now. To the way Klaus had apparently let her breeze right past him without raising any significant fuss about it.
She smothers that little seed of jealousy before it has a chance to take root any further.
Caroline pauses in the open doorway, absorbing the sight of the Salvatores, the debris on the floor, Elena's fluster.
"I was gone an hour. Why is everyone like this?"
A/N: thank you for reading!