A/N: Thank you for all of the love on this story! It means so much, and I am so excited to take you all on this journey.
Her heart thundered in her chest.
Time, which had always been irrelevant in the face of her eternity, pulsed to a stop.
A thousand thoughts set sail in her mind as she looked at him. There was, as there had always been, something almost unnaturally haunting about his beauty.
Maybe it was the shade of blue his eyes took on, or the flawless complexion he sported, or the dark red his lips always seemed to be stained. Whatever it was he was alluring as he was deadly.
He stares at her for a moment, and she wonders what he must think of her. She certainly had taken to the modern era, her hair hanging just to her mid-chest instead of her lower back, straight versus curled, the barest hint makeup on her cheeks and eyes.
He drinks her up as he always had, like a dying man being presented water. She hates the wetness that builds readily between her legs. Hates that her heart thunders in her chest at the sight of him. Hates how she wishes to launch into his arms, to kiss him and take him as hers once more.
Damon is forgotten at her side as she is drawn back into Klaus' orbit. Klaus ignores the curator, the women who are eyeing him as he moves towards her.
"Hello love," He says, eyes searching hers and she knows this feeling. She had felt it each time they had embraced at the start of autumn and each time she had parted with him again in the spring. This was home.
"Klaus," She breathes, her fingers unconsciously moving to his wrist.
He tilts his head, and there is something about his smile that sets off the alarm bells which should have been ringing since she had stepped into the MET.
He was no longer angry. No longer sad. No longer yearning for her. No longer in love with her.
The revelations sting as they hit her in the chest. She had set aside her anger the moment she had lain eyes on him, just as she always had. He had not the same virtues of forgiveness she did. He was a wrathful creature.
Perhaps this was new ground for them.
He moves out of reach gesturing to the art.
"Is it not a perfect rendition?" He asks and she lets her eyes slide to the painting.
And in his defense, the accuracy of the two of them as individuals was perfect.
He steps closer to her and she knows he is about to strike. Her fingers clutch at her glass and she feels the static building in the air.
"How you sit, above me, and I am beneath you. Oh, how things have changed over the years," He snarls in her ear, breath hot.
Her breaths come quicker, tears building in her eyes.
Out of all of the ways she had dreamed they may reunite, this had not been it.
"Perhaps the callousness you present with? Or how I, as I am damned to do, am your subservient."
She narrows her eyes and turns at that. He has no look of shock, but almost amusement. He needed her to go be as angry as he was.
"Don't pretend that it was not you, husband, who set this all in motion. These are the consequences of your actions, not mine," she hisses acridly.
His smile falls at that and she knows that if this doesn't reign herself in soon, this would all shatter to an end like New Orleans had all of those years ago.
She exhales, and she sees Damon awkwardly looking towards her before he musters up whatever mortal courage he possed to walk forward.
Klaus's eyes are sharp as he looks towards Damon.
"Do not hurt him," Elena snarls under her breath before turning to her date.
"Damon, this is the artist of the piece," Elena tries, smiling with false kindness.
"Oh Elena, you hurt me reducing me to just artist," Klaus says and Damon's blue eyes sweep hers. She wants to tell him to not push it. She wants to tell him to set aside his ego and pick any other battle than this one.
"I take it you two know one another," Damon says, sliding an arm through Elena's.
"I could say the same for you," Klaus says, smirking as he moves his eyes to Elena's.
She felt the tension building in her chest.
"I'm her friend, who are you?" Damon asks, chest-puffing.
Elena felt her embarrassment for him. Poor man. He had no idea whom he was trying and failing to square off with for an honor that was never intended for Damon.
"Klaus Mikaelson, Elena's husband."
It feels like the air is zapped out of the room.
Damon looks at her quickly but Elena is narrowing her eyes at Klaus. He had turned the top and was watching it spin, as he was prone to do.
"Separated, from one another. A hasty lust-fueled diversion of my youth," Elena smiles, looking to Damon. "Hence why in the four years I've never felt right to mention him."
At that, Klaus' eyes narrow. Perhaps this was what it was meant to be after all. Barbs back and forth with a mortal caught between them. Internally she cringed. How different would they be from the other gods then if that were the case?
Damon has a thousand questions and she pleads to the fates that he would drop it.
He does. But Klaus does not.
"So lovely to run into you here—with another man, no less,"
She could sense the very real and pressing danger Damon was in.
"Hey, listen, buddy, she didn't do anything wrong," Damon says, trying to stand in front of her, but she feels anxiety unfurl in her stomach. No.
Klaus is a wolf, waiting for the lamb that is Damon to be presented for sacrifice.
"Klaus, if you so wish to speak, you can come by later this evening. Damon, we should be making our way to our reservations." She interjects before Klaus can pounce.
Klaus regards her with heavy eyes, and she knows.
This was it.
The build to the climax that would determine where the ashes of their love would fall. Together, held by delicate glue, or like forgotten dust along the dirty floor of history.
He regards her a moment, before nodding, and turning.
.
Damon is quiet on their walk to his car.
He opens the door for her, and gets in on his side, sitting in silence.
His jaw is clenched. She knows enough about the mortals to tell when they are agitated—perhaps he was frustrated. At her? At Klaus?
She swallows, looking at the steps of the Met.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
His voice almost sounds small. There is no pretense of confidence. No sneer. Nor jest.
She inhales before looking to him.
"If I had told you, would it have made a difference?"
The question seems to take him back.
"No," He admits, putting the car in drive.
They are quiet for a few moments, before she speaks.
"I think about sometimes how it might have panned out differently."
He slides his eyes over to her.
"If I had told you all. I doubt you'd be here right now."
He inhales a moment, before she catches his eye and he looks to her.
"We all have secrets. I promise to keep this one."
It was one of those genuine moments that reminded her why she loved humanity. Of course there was the dirty, horrid part of humanity—but there was this thread of understanding between mortals she had never quite captured within the immortal crowd.
There was a beginning, a middle and an end to their story. It was wrapped up in a nice little bow as the last of a dying breath escaped them.
But Elena's fate held no such luck. She lived on—in thoughts and words, in books. She felt buried alive. Sometimes eternity was a tomb in and of itself.
She smiles to Damon, and its easy to press her lips to his. It's easy to flutter her eyes shut and let herself pretend, just for a moment, that this was a wonderful beginning.
.
Dinner is lovely—any lingering awkwardness had faded following the kiss, and quite a few times she had felt Damon's stare lingering on her. She didn't mind it. The glimmer she utilized to dim her natural glow abated slightly, and it was nice to feel cherished. Even if only for a moment. If only to compartmentalize her anxiety she felt at seeing Klaus later.
Plans to enjoy another dinner came easily as Damon dropped her in front of her house, and she nodded once, kissing him again.
She had sensed Klaus in her home since they had turned down the street, and his black Porsche sat in the driveway.
When her key slides through the lock, she isn't surprised when she finds him opening the door. He looks the same as he did at the MET. He had changed out of his suit and into jeans and a grey shirt, and she could faintly smell cinder and ash and home on his collar.
She swallows, before squeezing past him, and through the door. She drops her keys on the table, and walks to the fridge, pouring herself a glass. She pours the ambrosia in the glass as he pours himself the whisky.
They move soundlessly towards the living room and she sits on the couch.
The fire crackles in the hearth as he puts on an old record, letting the needle of the arm hit at loudly.
She moves from the kitchen, shutting the light off behind her before settling into the couch.
His eyes look around the room (anywhere but her) and she exhales slowly.
"Why now?"
He looks to her then and there's a moment of the man under the mask—a myriad of emotions lay hidden and there was still a thick layer of rust in her ability to understand some of the more niche, less spoken ones. But she did see that there was genuine pain—dare she say loneliness—behind the hard exterior he had presented.
"I wasn't aware of a timetable I was supposed to follow," He quips, raising his eyebrows as he sips his drink.
"In fact, the timetable we had agreed upon, I've let you neglect for almost a century."
She inhales, looking towards the crackling fire.
"I thought we were long since past contractual twists."
"We aren't past anything, love."
It stings, but it's true. Their last fight had torn what she had thought to be a strong, solid relationship, threadbare. The tapestry of their love was in tatters.
"I ask again—why now? Why make a spectacle?" She asks.
He shakes his head, turning away from her.
"A spectacle would have been opening up the floor, watching the mortals perish and dragging you down. A spectacle would have been slaughtering the man who dared to hold my wife like she was his,"
Jealousy. This she could work with. She had dealt with his jealousy before. She had felt it and embraced it.
"You are jealous of a mortal?" She asks, arching a brow.
He sneers at that.
"Don't lower me,"
"You've lowered yourself." She returns.
He laughs, but there is no mirth in it.
"When did we land here?" He asks aloud and she looks away. Despite everything that had happened, she still had the urge to be gentle towards him. She still wishes to brush his hair off his forehead and place a kiss there, to protect the abandoned boy that he was.
"I don't know," she whispers, looking away as tears build in her eyes. She had made a promise almost a millennia ago not to cry in front of him, but now she was breaking that.
"We never were perfect but it wasn't this," She whispers and he looks over. She meets his eyes as the tears begin to roll down her face.
"But I know I've missed you. I know that every night I come home I expect you to be in the kitchen or the studio and you're not there."
He looks to her, eyes searching her face before he looks to the window.
"I don't know what I'm trying to save anymore, Elena."
She stands at that, inhaling.
"We could forgive it all and move on, maybe? Perhaps we could start fresh again somewhere new, together," He begins but she is already shaking her head.
"How many times do we push our issues into the flames of the past? How many more times do you dazzle me into complacency?" She asks, and he looks away.
"I don't know who I am without you. History does not know my name without yours." She begins and he barks out a laugh.
"That's always been your quest. Remembrance. You want them to know your name and yet you don't even acknowledge what you truly are. You hide behind the guise of nymph, but we both know," He begins but the pipes behind to rattle and he stills, looking towards her.
She hadn't been conscious she was doing it until his gaze snapped to hers.
"Right there, Elena, don't you know that it's there? Why not let it go? Why not embrace who you are? Stop hiding," He pushes.
"Enough—you don't get to come here and tell me who to be. You don't get to pretend like you've always had my best interest at heart when I've been a pawn in your revenge against my father."
He looks as if he'd been slapped, but it was true. Every move, every word, touch, kiss—she couldn't tell if it had ever been real.
"And that's the problem. I love you. Do you love me? Do you love me to be more than a piece on your chess board?"
He looks dejected. His eyes scan the fire, reading the flames rather than reading her, and he lets out a breath.
"I have seen you for who you are, I had believed you to be the compass in which I dictated my every move by for the last thousand years. But I am wise enough to admit I was wrong."
Her eyes fills with stinging tears, her nose and face prickling with a cocktail of regret, anger and sadness.
"You are a sly seductress who has only ever leveraged her face and hidden under the guise of innocent nymph. But you are no dull creature—your teeth are sharp and coated in the blood of those foolish enough to get close to you."
The tears come unabidden down her cheeks as she looks to him. His rejection stung a deeper part of her she did not quite know. Maybe the part hidden away behind the callousness one needed to survive an eternity.
"I loathe you for it," he says, but all that remains is passive dejectedness.
There was nothing left. Nothing left to say.
She takes a step forward and he looks to her.
"You have spent centuries running from who I am. You chose me."
"I chose wrong."
"Lies," She says, the anger rising in her chest.
"You slaughtered Matthew in my name. I watched you flay him limb by limb, all as he dared to look to me."
"I should apologize at once to him. Perhaps drag him from the rivers and toss him to your feet." He says, anger rising to meet hers.
"And lest we not forget the women and the men you've fucked over the years. Let us not forget that this ruse you put on of the dejected lover is just that—arouse. A falsehood perpetuated by your inability to take accountability."
He snarls at that, throwing his glass at the wall behind her.
"Enough of this!"
She hadn't seen those eyes—those strange red eyes that engulfed the blue seas like a crimson wave. His eyes prickled underneath, and she could see the monster beneath. A revelation of what they were. Immortal. Inhuman. Married to the course of forever.
He inhales and she looks away, shaking her head.
"What happened?"
He doesn't answer a moment.
"This was a mistake."
"Coming here or finding me at the dinner party all of those years ago?"
He laughs at that and she lets the ghost of a smile pass over her face.
"All of it."
Her smile fades, and she finishes her second glass, before shaking her head.
"So leave me, run away back to your throne," She says.
He laughs, mirthlessly, before looking at her.
"I will not run. You are mine. And I will win you."
"I am not a prize to be won,"
He shakes his head, and she swallows.
"You are mine. I have let you have your precious mortals. But when the time comes, I will take you home."
A/N: That's all for now! I should be updating weekly :) Follow over at my tumblr, Franciskh, for more sneak peeks and updates 3