(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
The next morning she finds out the Salvatores have left town again.
This time, they write her a goodbye.
And an invitation, left open.
She tucks the letter away at the bottom of her father's desk drawer, where it's unlikely to be disturbed.
Spends the day working on her college applications—most of them due by the New Year—while Klaus oversees the repairs to her front door.
"How long do you think the new frame will last?" Elena teases him from behind her laptop.
"Depends. Have you lately antagonized any other vampires without invitations?"
"Believe it or not, you're the only vampire who's ever put up such a fuss about getting inside."
Klaus sits down next to her at the dining room table, a thoughtful frown creasing his brow. "Obviously the Salvatores have invitations. Caroline and Tyler. Who else?"
Elena shuts her laptop to think. "Elijah. Katherine, unfortunately." She taps her nails against the table. "All the rest are dead."
"All the rest? Do you make a habit then of inviting vampires in?"
Elena rolls her eyes. "You have no idea how chaotic the first few months were after I found out about vampires. I had stalkers galore because I look like Katherine." She flicks him. "You included, must I add."
"Tell me."
"What?"
"Tell me about that time in your life. I want to hear about it."
It's not a story she's ever told before.
If anything, all she has practice in is helping others through the crisis of discovery.
And yet—He sounds so in earnest. Like he really does want to hear about what she went through. How she felt at the time.
And so she tells him. Everything she can remember, stilted and conflicting as the narrative is. It feels like reaching back into another lifetime—in some ways, it literally is. There are pieces she remembers as though they just happened an hour ago, and entire weeks that blur together. Impossible to consider that all of this had happened merely a year and a half ago. That she should have so recently been that girl, still heartbroken and barren inside from her grief. Still so innocent.
She hadn't known herself then. Not as she knows herself now.
Hadn't realized who she would be. Who her fate would make her.
But throughout the entire story, Klaus listens. Comments, occasionally.
("You had a vampire compass?"
"It was very useful. I wish I still had it."
"Surely you can spot a vampire without one."
"That's beside the point.")
Eventually, she gets to the part where Rose had kidnapped her. When she had met Elijah, and how she had coerced Katherine into telling her everything. How she had made that fateful deal.
"I always wondered why you were so eager to capitulate," Klaus admits.
She doesn't want to touch this. Not when he'd still broken his side of the bargain.
That was before she'd learned that he didn't follow the same code of honor as his brother.
Exhausted from rehashing the past, Elena slumps forward against the table, her chin in her hands. Even now, she can't help but watch Klaus, to absorb his details. His contradictions and surprises.
"You do have a sort of honor to you, don't you," she muses.
Klaus shoots her a meaningful look. "I've sworn my oaths to you. I'll swear you more if you desire it."
Till death us do part, if he had his way. Even now, when he's relented to her desires, she knows that idea is still lingering in the back of his mind.
Eternity.
She shakes it off.
"I believe you." She squints at him. Tries to reason out all of the things he's said to her since he crashed back into her life with his fuming declarations and his stormy ultimatums. "You protect what's yours."
Never mind that she doesn't always agree with how he categorizes those things. Never mind that she doesn't consider herself his at all.
She can accept that he does.
Can accept that he will always gaze out on the world from an alien perspective. That that will never change.
"I do," he agrees, sounding a bit caught off guard. "We're alike in that way."
She would never have phrased it that way, but—
"Yes—I suppose we are."
Klaus lets himself out with a promise to return later, and she spends a quiet afternoon tweaking her common app essay and cross-checking the supplemental materials for each of the colleges she has on her list. Most of them are here, in Virginia, with just a few further afield. She's had to carefully review policies for deferral, so she can take a gap year while the baby's a newborn.
It's a great distraction from her evening plans, which, if she's totally honest with herself, she is at least a little apprehensive about.
Klaus had been right that Bonnie hadn't had long to work on the spell. Hadn't had any advice from any older witches, either.
No. She can't think like this. Not when this spell is utterly necessary.
She cannot deal with an iota more of Klaus's bizarro family drama.
The moon has newly risen when Elena and Klaus meet Bonnie at the clearing where the sacrifice had gone down the spring before.
Bonnie has already cleared the remaining snow from the night before from the three circles and lit enormous fires that burn too fiercely to be anything other than enchanted.
For a moment, with Klaus pressed so close to her back, she feels as though she's fallen into the past.
A few footsteps carry her into the circle that had belonged to her on that doomed night.
She shivers, but not from the wind.
She's literally walking over her own grave.
She catches Klaus's gaze, from where he stands watch outside the circle. Not to join her this time.
Part of her wishes he would. Would be comforted, even, by him taking up his rightful role in this.
"Deep breath, Elena," Bonnie coaches her. "This won't take very long."
"Walk me through how you intend to accomplish this," Klaus prompts.
"I don't have a lot of time before the moon moves too high—"
"Walk me through it."
Bonnie takes a deep, long-suffering breath. "Fine. It's simple enough. From what Elena told me, your psychotic mother planned to do the cloaking spell here because the sacrifice weakened the fabric of reality, especially in this particular place. It's… easier to manipulate Nature here, in these elemental circles, than in other places. I'm not sure exactly what your mother intended, but I've reasoned that I can use the residual magic released by your combined essences here to mask the baby's magic signature—she's already half you and half Elena, so the best way to hide her is to camouflage her beneath your two signatures."
"What does the actual ritual involve? Any bloodshed? Explosions?"
"Elena just needs to hold still while I wrap the baby in the cloak. The rest of the ingredients are just to focus the energies." She points at the collection of crystals and incense she has set before her on the ground.
"Got it," Elena calls, really wishing they could get this over with.
"Great, then I'm going to begin."
For a long while, it feels like nothing's happening.
Sure, Bonnie gets this really intent look in her eyes as she begins to speak the incantation, her hand flung out in front of her as though searching for some vibration in the air.
Elena glances at Klaus, who shrugs and directs her attention back to Bonnie.
The moon tracks over the sky.
The snow continues to melt in a wider and wider circle around the fires. The sound of trickling water blends with the rustle of bare winter branches in the mild wind.
And, finally, something seems to reach out and touch its hand to her womb. And it pulls—tighter, tighter.
Nervous, Elena reaches a hand to her belly.
"Everything alright?" Klaus calls.
"Yes—I feel—something."
Bonnie continues her spellwork.
All at once Elena realizes how near she's come to the edge of the circle.
The spell cinches tighter. Tighter.
She can't breathe.
Tighter.
Her panic mounts—she fights for air—
Klaus looks ready to pluck her out of the circle, but Bonnie grabs his arm. Somehow stays him.
Tighter.
Elena falls to her knees as air finally, mercifully rushes back into her lungs.
That tightness remains, though less oppressive than it had been during the spell. She tells herself it will fade in time.
"Done," Bonnie tells her as she helps Elena to stand. She reaches her hand out, her palm hovering just above Elena's belly. "I can't sense her at all. She'll be safe, for a while at least."
Klaus extracts Elena from Bonnie and pulls her over to the side. Lays his hand against the base of her throat, the other over her belly. "Alright there?"
"Just a little uncomfortable." She leans into Klaus's touch. "And the baby? She doesn't sound distressed, does she?"
"Only a little. It should pass."
Elena nods. Breaks away to thank Bonnie for her help and to say goodnight.
Safe. It's all she can ask for.
She twists and turns with unpleasant dreams that night. Not that her dreams aren't often upsetting—between her actual life, supernatural incursions, and the pregnancy hormones, nightmares are almost more a matter of course than pleasant dreams.
Tonight she dreams she's been caught in a huge pincer that's tearing her in half. That she's been stung by a giant scorpion and is locked inside her own body as she slowly succumbs to the searing fire of the venom. That she's back under the river, the icy water smothering her in the endless dark.
Klaus shakes her awake. It takes a minute to realize where she is—to recognize his bedroom, the four poster bed, the dim embers of the fire dying in the hearth. In the east, the sun is beginning to rise.
Awareness doesn't lessen her distress. Doubling over, Elena clutches at her abdomen. It feels like she's on fire.
A/N: Well, this is not quite the penultimate chapter after all. I only have a bit more I would like to cover, but obviously I have no idea how long it's going to take me to get there. WHOOPS my bad guys.
Anyway, please comment and let me know your thoughts!