Been a Son
Tonight feels impossible, but she did it. Her plan worked and everyone made it through it in one piece. She's reminded not everyone did by Tyler's red eyes and his puffy cheeks. She settles back on the couch next to him handing him a clinking glass. He stopped crying three drinks ago and numbly accepts the fourth from her.
"You don't have to keep me here. Watching over me like this. I'll be fine." His sentences squish together like he's forgotten where to pause.
"We are watching over each other, Ty. Everyone else is so preoccupied tonight and honestly, I don't want to be alone either." He nods an acceptance to her reasoning. She was feeling forgotten with how quickly and strangely everyone had paired off. She understands mostly, but she'd been surprised by Bonnie and Finn. Tyler thinks she's taking care of him, but it feels like the other way around for her.
"I can't believe you did it. I mean, I'm glad you did, but I'm shocked. No offense. He was in my head twice and it's the most scared I've ever been. Even more than the first time I turned."
"We almost didn't. It was Rebekah and Amara who really did the heavy lifting." She bumps her shoulder into Tyler's to nudge his elbows off his thighs.
"You don't give yourself enough credit," he says, looking up at her with serious eyes that she doesn't often see from him.
"Ideas and plans don't mean much without people to help execute them," she deflects.
"And you always seem to have people willing to help." His words hover somewhere between an accusation and an observation.
She blows on the tea, considering Tyler's words over the rim of her mug. She thinks about all the different people who'd fallen into her life just when she'd needed them. The café owner in Palermo who often gave her free pastries when she didn't have enough money for food or the way Elijah had wanted to protect her from Klaus in the days after they met. She moved so often and without notice, but there was always a handful of people willing to help her.
"What about you? Is there anything I can do to help?"
"No, they are ruling Liv's death a natural cause. It looks like she had a heart attack. I called her family to let them know and I guess Luke's awake now. They're having her body transported back to Oregon for the burial."
"Are you going back?"
"I don't think so," he hesitates and then explains himself under Elena's reproachful gaze. "I feel like they blame me. They sounded so angry on the phone."
"That's understandable, Tyler. The anger not the blaming," she corrects when she sees the hurt expression on his face. "That doesn't mean you shouldn't go or honor her life. We could have a memorial for her here if you wanted."
"She didn't exactly make a lot of friends here, 'Lena."
"Liv was a little rough around the edges, but she was also kind." Elena snorts a little with the confused look Tyler gives her. "There's a difference between nice and kind. Liv was kind. After Jeremy, she opened up to me about her brother. She even gave me some great relationship advice."
"When did you two talk about relationships?"
"She drove me home one day and I was worried to tell Klaus about those dreams I'd had about Stefan. She just told me to be honest. That there wasn't anything else for me to do and just let the cards fall where they may."
"Liv always did like it all out in the open like that."
"It's a great policy to live by."
Tyler's jaw clenches and Elena can tell he's biting the inside of his cheek. He moves to stand and Elena reaches out to grab him by the shoulders. At first, he tries to look away from her but she guides their eyes back to meet with her hand lightly at the side of his face. "I miss her so much. How do you live missing someone this much?" His voice cracks and he manages to wring out the question from his twisting vocal chords.
"I don't know," she answers truthfully. She sits back into the couch and brings Tyler with her until she's cradling his head against her chest and he has his arm wrapped around her waist. "I don't think I've done a very good job at it, but maybe we can help each other out with that?" Elena holds Tyler close like she can magically heal his heartbreak if she just squeezes hard enough.
Outside, the wind picks up and Elena likes the way it feels sneaking into the house through the broken window. She feels Tyler's back stiffen under her hands and his head shoots up. He's not embarrassed by the stray tears because he'd too fixated on the wind. Elena falls back awkwardly on the couch when Tyler stands up to walk over to the window. He leans his nose up into the air and the gesture is entirely wolfish and wild.
She's never bothered to ask and even now it seems overly personal, but she can't help herself. "Ty? Are you…sniffing the air? Can you actually smell something?"
"I can. It gets better the closer it gets to the full moon." Elena follows him when he walks to open the front door.
Peering over his shoulder, she asks, "What do you smell now?"
"I thought – a wolf."
"A regular wolf or like you?"
"Hard to tell. There's not much of a difference."
Taking Tyler by surprise, Elena takes quick, intentional strides out into the lawn. She doesn't get far out into the yard when she stops suddenly, Tyler catching up with her.
"Elena! What the hell are you doing?"
"I thought, maybe, it was Klaus?" She shifts from one leg to the other, squinting to try to make out anything in the dark, but her night vision isn't as good as Tyler's. He spots a shadow slinking back into the woods that surround the property, but chooses to dismiss it as a trick of the light.
"Whatever it was, it's gone now." He turns Elena around and they go back inside, wet grass clinging to their feet. Elena makes up a bed on the couch for Tyler, insisting he's had too much to drink to even think about going home. Silently, he agrees but he doesn't want to admit she's right so he closes his eyes and pretends to disagree.
In the woods surrounding Mystic Falls, Klaus hunts out his frustration as a wolf. A massive, sulking beast tears into throats, spraying blood across the forest floor and into his grey fur. His hackles had raised when he realized that Tyler sniffed him out. He hated seeing her standing behind him like he was protecting her from the darkness outside. Klaus wanted to be the only one to protect Elena and seeing Tyler with her had only served to remind him that he hadn't been.
So, he ran.
Elena has barely been asleep for a few hours when Amara walks into her room. She's so unnaturally light on her feet that Elena doesn't know she's in the room until Amara sits on her bed and shakes her awake. She has to take deep, gulping breathes to convince her heart to go back to her chest where it belongs while Amara patiently studies her.
"What's wrong? What happened?"
"Nothing has happened, Elena. Not every wrong thing that can happen, will," Amara chides her.
"Then why are you in my room?"
"I'm leaving. I wanted you to know. Elijah has helped me with the currency and arranging a flight." Elena sits up in bed with her back against the headboard, blinking Amara in. The original Petrova sits at the end of her bed looking out of place in a pair of jeans and loose, cream top. "I hope you don't mind. I needed new clothes, but I didn't have time to find my own so I borrowed some of yours."
"Borrowing implies temporary." Elena and Amara sit in uncomfortable silence before Elena breaks it again. "Keep them. They look good on you." She stifles a laugh in her chest at the absurdity of the moment. "Where are you staying?"
"I haven't seen it, but Elijah assured me that it would be appropriate for me. It's small. Manageable. Isolated, but he assures me that it would be easy for me to walk to the nearest town."
"Nice of him."
"He is one of the kindest men I've met." Amara looks down, fiddling with the shirt as though she was embarrassed by the statement. "Elena, I came to say good-bye and to thank you. I don't know if I'll adjust or how I'll handle the pain of passing death, but I suppose I now have the opportunity to discover my own strength."
Amara reaches out to grab Elena's hand, holding it in both of hers. "I don't know who I am in this world, but perhaps after I've found that out our paths will cross again and you'll get the chance to meet that girl."
She sounds so hopeful and Elena resists the urge to pull her in for a hug. Amara is skittish and Elena has learned that sometimes it is best to wait and not push for more with certain people.
Bonnie and Elena are shocked that Caroline insists on leaving without a party. She's been mapping out a travel route that will take them at least six months to complete and she's excited to get started. Elena thinks she's also anxious to get out of Mystic Falls before another terror visits town.
Caroline intends to begin in Paris and Bonnie asks how long until they get a photo in the group chat of an engagement ring set against the Eiffel Tower. They hide Caroline's blush in a tearful group hug while Stefan hovers around the outskirts of their friendship, waiting for Caroline.
Elena and Bonnie stand in the driveway watching Stefan's car turn around the corner and disappear. She tries to convince Bonnie to move into the mansion, but she declines. Bonnie assures her she'll be fine at the boarding house and while Elena believes her, she still schedules a weekly brunch with her friend to keep an eye on her.
After everyone has left, Elena begins to clean up with Rebekah while Elijah makes arrangements to repair the broken window. Finn is gone most of the day and Elena assumes he's off burying Silas in the woods. No one speaks of him and with each room they clean it's like a piece of him is erased from the world.
Elijah leaves as soon as the cleaning is done and Elena settles next to Rebekah waiting for Finn to come home. Rebekah has to snap her fingers to get Elena's attention several times. Her mind keeps wandering to Klaus and Kol, who she'd expected would have returned by now. A part of her had hoped that Klaus had been the one to kill Silas. She wanted him to save her in the final hour, but she hides the disappointment from the others and herself.
While Elena and his sister talk over dinner and Finn pats the last bits of dirt over Silas's makeshift grave, Klaus paces anxiously in a clearing waiting for his brother. It's easy for Elijah to see Klaus as the wolf he is when he's like this and he wonders how he ever could have missed it while they were growing up.
A twig snaps under Elijah's expensive shoes and Klaus glares at him. "What took you so long?"
"I had a mess to tend to, Niklaus. If I'd left before it was taken care of, don't you think it would have sparked our sister's curiosity? You'd asked me to be certain no one followed me. Why have you called me here? After everything, why not just come home?" He examines a nearby tree, splattered with blood and his fingers come away red.
"Precisely because of everything. How can I possibly explain to Elena why I abandoned her and our child? Left her in the care of others while she felt the irrational need to go wake up and kill the first immortal?"
"It was for her brother. You know as well as I do, family is irrational." They stare at each other over the distance Klaus created. "I've found that if you begin talking, the words find their way out one way or the other. Why did you leave? You had to have been able to smell truth on her that night. Easier than the rest of us, I'd imagine."
"I panicked. I didn't want it to be true. In that moment, I would have preferred a lie." The building energy radiates from Klaus's back to his shoulders, threatening to explode out.
"Why?" Elijah roars uncharacteristically. "You had it all! Not even in my dreams do I allow myself to think about a family, a baby. And you? Reject it like it means nothing!" Their screams echo through the trees, their matching rage threatening to light the dry pine needles on fire if it could.
"It means everything to me!"
"Then why leave!"
"Because all I could think about was turning into Mikael! Becoming him and hurting my child!"
"You worried the child would turn you into our father?" Stunned, Elijah's tone softens.
"I worry that I would find him buried under the surface of who I am, treacherously waiting like a spider. That it isn't a matter of turning into Mikael, but discovering that I am him." Disgust pulls at Klaus's upper lip until he's snarling.
"Niklaus…"
"What if I fail her? What if she wakes up one day and finally opens her eyes to the monster in her bed?"
"I won't let that happen."
"What of my child? How can I possibly be there for the child when I am what I am?"
"Show up. Day by day."
"Help me, Elijah. You once stood in this spot and vowed to me that we would find Elena when her friends spirited her away. I'm asking you to help me once more. Help me find the path back to her heart? If you believe in me, if you ever believed in me, then you'll do this for me."
"Of course, Niklaus. What is it you need?" The two brothers, so entangled in each other, conspire in the woods together though Klaus is in no rush. Kol is already working on the first part of his plan though his agreement was won over with threats of violence instead of the emotional plea that Elijah needed to be convinced.
Shrieks pierce the quiet of the house when Kol sneaks up behind Elena at the kitchen sink to pick her up and lightly spin her around. Finn and Rebekah rush in only to find their brother on one knee in front of her, his hands rubbing Elena's growing belly.
"How dare you keep growing while I'm away. It's hardly been a couple of weeks. It's not fair that so much has happened while I was gone," he pretends to pout.
"It happens, Kol. Maybe think about that next time you decide to skip town?"
He grins up at her mischievously and in a flash her legs are dangling over his arms as he carries her out of the room like a child. "Sorry, darling, but there is no room for this excessive sass and attitude now that I'm home. That duty belongs to me and me alone."
She playfully kicks at his side pretending to struggle as he takes her to the front door. Elena stops laughing the moment he sets her down in front of dozens of bouquets laid out on the walkway, spilling over into the yard. White roses are seafoam against the blue of the hydrangeas.
"They're from Klaus," he explains. "Though if I knew you were going to look at me like that I'd have lied and said they were from me."
"So, he's back."
"Of course he is. Elijah sent me on a mission and I always get my man," he winks at her, failing to lighten the mood.
"Why isn't he here?" she asks, crossing her arms under her chest.
"How should I know what goes on in that beast's head? I can only imagine that this is just the beginning of a series of ridiculous gestures to win you back."
"I would have preferred he just show up himself instead of roping you into this," she gestures out to the ocean of white and blue. Humorless and a little upset, Elena goes back to her dishes and leaves the bouquets out on the lawn for someone else to deal with. She is not a prize to be won with flowers and Klaus needs to realize that the only thing she wants from him is honesty.
A/N: Sometimes there are threads from this story that I want to explore that don't really have a place in the story. How Bonnie and Damon went on adventures and she grew to love him. How Elena yearned for Elijah in the years before she met Klaus. And now, Amara. I'm so curious about what her life will be like in this comfortable little village I imagine her in. I think she'd quickly establish a witchy reputation for herself even though she isn't a witch. Kids come to her cottage in the woods to "get a look at the witch". She sees death and I wonder if she'd eventually embrace it and let it into her life. Using it to find lost things for people or delivering final messages. I imagine that she eventually finds friends and even love with a shy, man who she feels comfortable holding silence with.
Anyway, thanks for reading!