(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
And miraculously, the peace lasts as the winter melts inexorably into spring.
Elena focuses on finishing out her senior year, splitting her time between her house and Klaus's mansion as she conjugates her Spanish verbs and writes her history essays (and if the new history teacher's prompts are less engaging than his predecessor's… well—she can't let herself linger over it) and just— lives.
For most of her second trimester, she's able to keep her pregnancy under wraps with the help of drapey shirts and oversized shrug sweaters—the acquisition of which is carried out with extreme relish by Caroline, who loves the opportunity to help Elena pick out an entirely new wardrobe, and is treated with someone less helpful but more amusing enthusiasm by Bonnie, who seems to think this is a great opportunity for novelty clothing.
"You're making fun of me," Elena huffs affectionately when Bonnie holds up a maternity bustier in metallic silver. She's not sure whether the piece is supposed to scream sexy Renaissance witch, Valkyrie, or 80s synth band keyboardist. Possibly a terrifying combination of the three.
Actually, she wonders if Klaus would be into that—
"Only a little," Bonnie concedes, shimmying the bustier in front of her. "But how often will you have the figure for this?"
"Conceal and Appeal, Bonnie, those are our watch words!" Caroline hollers from the back of the store, her head buried in a clothing rack as she flicks through the pieces. After a considering moment, she pokes her head up. "Unless we've moved on to Appeal and Reveal?"
Elena shakes her head. "Let's put that off for as long as we can. I really don't want to deal with the Poor Pregnant Orphan Girl looks I'm bound to get once the word gets out. Or, you know, the high school rumor mill in general."
In the end, it's not really up to her when the big news gets out.
It's early March, about five months into her pregnancy. She's at a charity function for the hospital, representing her parents, who had spearheaded this particular event every year, and wondering whether she will inevitably end up spearheading it herself in a few years' time.
Theoretically, Klaus is her date to this particular event—theoretically, because she hasn't seen him in nearly twenty minutes, ever since he wandered off immersed in discussion with the city planner. It's as though in deciding to settle down here, he cannot help but to interfere with even the dustiest levers of power her small town has to offer.
She supposes his absence means he's either confident in his sway over the Town Council or he trusts her to charm them enough for the both of them. In a way, now that she's firmly on Team Klaus, it's a cheering thought.
As soon as she thinks this, though, Mayor Lockwood spots her and cuts through the crowd to reach her.
It's a crowded room—impossible to navigate without jostling into someone.
A passing waiter makes the mistake of taking a step backward to clear a path for old Mrs. Fell, right as Mayor Lockwood Steps directly behind him. The waiter trips, and his tray laden with champagne flutes upends all over Elena—soaking through her dress and plastering the material to her tell-tale rounded belly.
For a moment that lasts an eternity, Elena stands frozen as Carol Lockwood stares and stares at her changed figure—as the helpless waiter tries to apologize and pat her dry, succeeding only in drawing attention to her as a growing number of guests take notice and whisper amongst themselves.
Only Mayor Lockwood breaking from her shock and propelling Elena into a quiet alcove by the stairs finally snaps her from her freeze-up.
"Elena, dear, what's happened to you?" she begins, her tone ripe with a heady mix of motherly concern and matronly disappointment. "Who got you into trouble like this? It wasn't Matthew Donovan, was it?"
"What? No, of course not—"
"I would hate to overstep my boundaries, dear, but whoever the father is, he really should be taking responsibility—"
Klaus chooses that moment to appear almost literally out of thin air. "I assure you, I have taken all possible responsibility," he murmurs, wrapping a proprietary arm around Elena's waist.
Elena would roll her eyes at the possessiveness in his tone if she weren't so distracted by the frankly astonishing image of Carol Lockwood's jaw hanging down to her collarbone. Another tally Team Klaus's favor.
"You can't possibly be implying that you're the father," the mayor finally stutters, her voice as thin and pale as her face.
"Oh, but you see, I am." There's something evil about the way Klaus just beams when he says this.
"But you're a vampire."
"And a werewolf," Klaus helpfully reminds her.
Elena can literally see the cogs turning in Mayor Lockwood's head as visions of getting potential grandchildren out of Tyler after all flit through her imagination. She shakes herself. "You're far too old for Elena!"
Klaus shrugs, as though to say, you've got me there.
"Maybe the Town Council should release a PSA about the dangers of dating vampires?" Elena asks.
The mayor glares at her. "I would have thought, as a Gilbert, that you would know better."
Of course, it's not really her Gilbert heritage that has so often gotten her into trouble. It's the other, peskier side of her heritage that always trips her up.
That attracts so much danger.
That attracts her to danger in turn.
Well. Hell. Her reputation is never going to recover from this anyway. She may as well speak her mind.
"Frankly, I don't think it's your business or anyone else's how I choose to live my life—or whom I choose to spend it with." She tugs on Klaus's arm to return to the fundraiser with her head held high, but he seems to have something more he would like to say.
"You owe Miss Gilbert your life."
Elena frowns. She's not actually sure what Klaus is talking about.
"You must remember your station from here on out," Klaus continues, utterly patronizing. "And never dare condescend to my lady again. Are we quite clear?"
His lady. As in his possession… or his sovereign? That line is never entirely clear with Klaus. May never be clear.
Mayor Lockwood swallows. Hard. "Crystal."
Sometimes it's a little embarrassing having a boyfriend literally out of the middle ages, but… she would be lying if she said it isn't nice to have someone so willing to fight her battles for her. Just sometimes.
"Say hi to Tyler for me, will you?" Elena murmurs before she leaves, Klaus following in her wake.
Back in the ballroom, it's impossible not to notice the surreptitious looks thrown her way.
"Are they whispering about me?" Elena asks as Klaus snags a glass champagne from a passing waiter.
"Of course."
Elena sighs. "I wish this could have been put off for a little longer."
"What does it matter? You're my queen, and you're carrying my heir. Let the world know it."
"I'm your girlfriend, and we just happen to be having a baby together."
"However you wish to phrase it." He upends the drink, leaving it on the nearest table, and takes her hands. "Dance with me."
Elena blushes. "No one else is dancing."
"You're already the center of attention. You may as well enjoy it."
The thing is: she does.
Even if it causes some uncomfortable looks and a few too many curious questions at school.
Some of her teachers can't even look her in the eye—especially once word gets around of who the father is.
"Wait, isn't he like thirty?" Sarah Teague asks her as they shuffle through the lunch line.
"Something like that," Elena replies, grabbing a carton of milk.
It's easier now more than ever to tell just who exactly is in on the town secret. The exact shade of alarm, disgust, and intrigue always tells the tale.
It takes a few weeks of the constant buzz around her to finally exhaust her. For the effort of smiling and letting all of the gossip and the stares roll off of her back to strain her last nerves.
Only her friends—unswervingly loyal even in the face of much bigger scandals—make it at all bearable.
That, and the way her entire body lights up when Klaus is inside of her. The feeling of rightness she has when it's just the two of them, skin to skin, his broad palm splayed over her belly, her teeth in his shoulder as she rides his lap.
It's easy to lose herself in that feeling. That welcome and release.
So easy that she lets herself.
Gives herself permission, again and again, to love and be loved.
A week before spring break, Elena flicks through a magazine while lounging on Klaus's sofa, seduced by glossy images of white sand beaches and tropical sunsets. Honestly, anything to get out of Mystic Falls right now sounds like heaven.
"You've been everywhere, huh?" she sighs.
Klaus considers. "I haven't been off planet."
"So: everywhere."
His mouth twitches. Fighting that smile she sees more and more of these days. "Essentially."
"What's that like?"
"Come with me and find out."
"Maybe after the baby's born."
"You have some sort of holiday next week, don't you? Why not then?"
Elena pauses. Well. Why not?
A week later, Klaus ushers her onto a private jet. They have a week in Barcelona planned—a week soaking up the sun on the beaches, walking La Rambla, and exploring the rich architecture and cuisine the city has to offer. Elena's never been to Europe before—isn't at all certain of her Spanish, untested outside of the classroom—but none of that matters. The whole trip still has the faint, unreal quality of a dream—Klaus had asked her where she would like to go, she had blurted out the first romantic city she could think of, and then presto! Trip completely arranged for her by the time she woke up the next morning.
They waste the first two days in bed, making love with the windows open and the breeze off the ocean curling over their bare skin.
It's so easy, spooned in tight together as the buttery early April sun slides over the bed, to keep doing this forever. To keep reveling in the exquisite fullness of Klaus thrusting into her, one hand spreading her thighs wide while the other trails over her breasts, her ribs, down to the cradle of her hips only to tease at her clit. Her whole body throbs, blooms under his touch. She can almost imagine what he must see—an eternity in his bed, letting him lick the salt from her skin, to lave at the tangy, musky flesh of her breasts, her underarms, her overflowing quim.
The sun gets low, the pulse of the city changing into something darker, wilder. Something to match her own heart.
"Look at you," Klaus murmurs against her core. "My very own ripe pomegranate, ready to burst." The reverberations of his voice send delicious tingles up her body, only to settle again at the epicenter of her need.
It's all she can do to groan and shift her hips closer. To pray that Klaus will answer her prayer for a relief only he can provide.
"Demanding," he laughs, his cool breath skirting over her most sensitive flesh. He dips a finger inside of her, spreading the moisture out, slicking her up. "Yet I am your servant," he vows, rewarding her with his mouth, his teeth, his tongue.
Washing away everything else, until all of her worries recede with the Mediterranean tide.
"Do you mean that?" she asks him later, when they finally creep out of bed to lazily stroll along ancient streets arm in arm, searching for a midnight snack. "When you call yourself my servant?"
He draws her into a pool of moonlight and takes both of her hands. Her dress, gauzy and light as the moon itself, swirls around her knees.
"I mean to say you are my queen," he tells her, so seriously her heart stutters in her chest.
He's called her this before, and yet—
It's impossible not to be drawn in by his magnetism. To feel the gravity of his attention, his affection, deadly potent without any compulsion necessary at all.
"Your queen consort?" she asks, keeping her voice deliberately light, teasing. Trying to draw him out, the way he has drawn her out.
He studies her for a long time. His throat works as he regards her, the weight of his stare like a heavy cloak upon her shoulders. Like a shroud—no—a veil—
"Rule me if you so wish, or stand by my side," he tells her at last. "Whichever will satisfy you."
The answer takes her aback.
She's never known Klaus to surrender. Not truly.
Except—maybe that's not entirely true.
He had surrendered to her the night of the Winter Wonderland festival—she just hadn't realized it as such at the time.
Elena twists her grip, so that she is the one holding his hands instead of the other way around. "I think it's enough, for now, to say that you satisfy me, and to leave it at that."
He doesn't disagree with her.
Though, sometimes, she thinks she can see the question still lingering in his eyes when she catches him looking at her, in that fraction of a second before he looks away. As ghostly and as fleeting as a sigh on the breeze.
Rule me or rule with me.
Which is it to be?
Elena's hair curls in the salty sea breeze.
"Leave it," Klaus says as he watches her fretting over the volume and the texture before the vanity mirror. He slinks up behind her and gathers the thick, wild tresses into his hand, pressing a kiss against the side of her throat, over his scar. His eyes flick up and catch hers in the mirror.
They make a striking pair.
They always have.
The baby kicks, startling her attention away.
Something softer steals over Klaus's face as he rests his hand over the swell of her six months pregnant belly.
It's that expression on his face as he feels their child's life gathered under his palm that makes Elena think she might be able to really love him forever.
Days later, and she and Klaus have finally disentangled from each other enough to take in the sights.
They're at a sidewalk café, lounging over coffee while Elena samples half a dozen different pastries with a fiendish sort of delight. That's the thing about setting out with Klaus—everything is about excess, except he doesn't register it as such. Only encourages her, soaking in her delight with an almost drugged expression.
Too much sun and too much sex, she muses.
But no—it can't be. He's had literally ten lifetimes of sun and sex. More.
It's love he's so unused to experiencing— love that hunts him even as it lulls him. That turns him bright and sharp and terrible, even as it inspires him to be better than he really is. To be a sort of man again, after years and years of smothering that part of himself.
She brushes her fingers against the inside of his wrist. A gentle caress. An intimacy between them.
He parts his lips as though to say something—her name rolls off the tip of his tongue, liquid and lovely. An endearment so much more personal than any of the other myriad things he calls people.
In a moment, she's going to lean across the table to kiss him—she just can't help herself. He's so terribly beautiful in the golden sunshine. So terribly her own.
"Nick?"
His name startles Klaus out of their moment. Startles Elena too, who slumps back inelegantly in her iron chair.
It takes her a few seconds to process the sight before her—Elijah and Rebekah, linked arm in arm just a couple of feet away from them, the two of them inhumanly still as they take in the sight of her, so obviously with child, here with Klaus—love struck, doting Klaus.
He goes tense as a drawn wire as the three vampires assess each other.
She knows that in an instant, he could throw himself between Elena and his siblings as a shield. Could decide to whisk her away instead, or hurl himself at his siblings as her spear. That he is balanced on a blade's edge, ready for anything.
The odds of randomly running into Elijah and Rebekah like this should be slim to zero—they had the entire globe to wander, why would they be here, on this particular week? But of course she and Klaus wouldn't be able to enjoy something as simple as a vacation without running into his family drama. Of course.
It's clear though, from the shock in Rebekah's voice, that she is as surprised by this visit as they are. That there is no nefarious scheme afoot.
It really is a random encounter.
Elijah is the first to break the maw of silence. He brushes at the shoulders of his pale linen suit and straightens his tie, with an air so casual Elena actually feels envious. "It seems we have some catching up to do."
Elijah takes the seat next to Elena and Rebekah next to Klaus as they invite themselves to join them at their table. If Klaus wishes to protest this, he doesn't quite get the chance.
Rebekah's narrowed eyes, like chips of blue ice, remain trained on Elena even as she addresses her brother. "I've always known you were obsessed with these creatures, but this is taking it a bit too far, don't you think?"
"How so?" Klaus asks, aggressively pleasant.
"It's grotesque, taking your pet out on a leash like this. Worse."
"I fail to see how."
"It must be terribly convenient that you need her alive since you're utterly fixated upon her face, but really? Taking her for your mistress?" So Rebekah hadn't missed the lusty looks between the two of them. Great. Just great. "Is she any better than a doll?"
Wonderful. She thinks she's just a sex doll.
And to think Elena had once doubted Rebekah's ability to adjust to the twenty-first century.
"Did it never occur to you I'm here because I want to be?" Elena drawls.
Elijah studies her, mouth slightly agape. "You're not compelled." He says it like it's a revelation.
"Because she'd have to be compelled to want to spend any time with me," Klaus mutters darkly.
"Yep," Elena confirms for Elijah. "But we prefer the term girlfriend. Mistress is just so passé."
"Were you at least compelled when Klaus arranged for whomever got his get on you to crawl between your legs?" Rebekah demands, the question laced with acid. "Or did my brother seduce you first, so you'd go along with whatever he desired?" Her tone slinks into a confidential purr. "I suppose the child's father would have been a ringer for my brother. That's exactly the type of thing he would enjoy."
Elena quirks an eyebrow at Klaus. "You could say he was practically his doppelganger."
"I cannot believe you would truly wish for this," Elijah presses. "My brother has ever been your tormentor. Not six months ago you were doing all in your power to destroy him."
Elena shrugs, helpless under Elijah's scrutiny. "It's complicated."
"How can it be?"
"I can be very persuasive when I desire to be," Klaus interjects. "Perhaps I changed Elena's mind on the topic." He takes a sip of his espresso. Completely nonchalant. Sickeningly smug. You'd never know how thoroughly his siblings' sudden appearance had ruffled his composure merely ten minutes past. "Or perhaps the fact that I'm the father of her child had something to do with it."
The others react as though he's detonated a bomb.
For all intents and purposes, he has.
For the next ten minutes, as Klaus, absolutely preening, unspools the entire tale for his siblings, Elena endures a series of sputtering denials, sneering recriminations, tacit speculation, and, finally, hushed, deeply unsettling consideration from both Elijah and Rebekah as they finally accept the truth of the matter. Elijah actually has tears in his eyes as he gazes upon her. And Rebekah… Rebekah looks at her as though she would tear the child from her womb to have for herself if she were able.
She's not certain who she needs to keep a closer watch out for in the coming months.
Beneath the table, Klaus takes her hand. Squeezes it, just once, briefly. A silent signal between them.
They'll both be watching.
"Well," Rebekah finally sniffs. "I suppose this means I'd better get used to you."
Impossible to say whether Rebekah truly means it. Elena doubts Rebekah's let her see beneath her mask since she drove that dagger through her heart—apart from those times she tried to kill her, that is.
Elijah's mouth quirks. "I believe what my sister means to say is: Welcome to the family."
("Welcome to the family," Klaus grumbles later. "As though it's his decision alone whether or not you belong with us."
"I don't though. Belong with the lot of you, I mean."
"No, you don't," Klaus agrees slowly, like he hadn't thought of it before.
"I do belong with you though," Elena adds after a heavy minute. She rests her head against Klaus's shoulder. "The three of us belong together—separate and apart from the rest of your family."
He pulls her in tight against his side. "I possess something extraordinary that the rest of them would kill for."
"I know."
He laughs, sudden as a gale. "Well, what else is new?")
They end up spending the last two days of their trip with Elijah and Rebekah, whiling away the long days at museums and shops and cafés and parks, staying out late into the night over long dinners and drinks at private clubs, rambling through the streets and soaking up the scent of the air, the brisk breeze, the quality of the light—all of the phenomenological symptoms of her removal from the pressures and tedium of home.
In the Gothic Quarter, Rebekah picks through a tray of jewelry at one of the market stands. "Nick may desire you now," she remarks, holding up a silver ring set with a pale green stone. "But your power over him will diminish as the seasons turn and you no longer resemble his beloved Tatia." She hands the vendor cash and moves on to another stall, twirling the ring between her thumb and forefinger. "You should get him to turn you before that happens if you wish to keep your claws in him." Rebekah appraises her the way she did the tray of jewelry. "You may get a couple of decades out of him before he loses interest if you act swiftly."
In the distance, Klaus and Elijah haggle over an antique camera—the sort that requires a glass plate rather than film.
"You're making a lot of assumptions," Elena says, her gaze sliding back to Rebekah. "You don't know anything about our relationship."
"I don't see a ring on your finger, which tells me everything I need to know about my brother's intentions towards you."
"Maybe it says more about my intentions towards him."
This, of all things, startles a laugh out of Rebekah, as though Elena had yanked it by force out of her chest.
"How simple of me to ever forget what a cold bitch you are," Rebekah says, almost fondly. "You'll do well with my brother, I think." She places the ring with the green stone in her hand. "Here, this suits you perfectly."
The ring is warm in her hand. Elena holds it up to the light. The stone itself is clear and flawless as a glass flat sea. "Why?" she cannot help but to ask.
"Because it's a counterfeit."
Elena slips it on her hand. "But convincing nonetheless."
Rebekah sizes her up. "Yes—utterly convincing."
When they say goodbye on the runway at the tiny private airport, Elijah takes her aside.
"If you ever find yourself in need of anything—you, or the child— know that I am at your service."
"That's quite a different tune than when I asked for your help last fall." Her lack of confidence in him seeps into her tone. She can't help it. She never had recovered her good opinion of him.
Somehow, Elijah, her bright and shining one, had fallen short.
Or—maybe she had grown taller.
Elijah at least has the grace to look discomfited by her measure of him.
"You must understand, my family must always come first." He offers her a small, conciliatory smile. "That includes you now, Elena. I hope you know that."
She doesn't. Not really.
As she'd told Klaus—she's not one of them. Isn't interested in being one of them.
There's no use in telling any of this to Elijah though. Some secrets are for Klaus and Klaus alone. So, she smiles and thanks him, as kindly as she can, knowing in her heart that she never will call on him.
Rebekah chooses that moment to step in, pressing her hand against Elena's belly and leaning down to murmur her goodbyes to the baby.
"I'll be back soon to pay a visit, precious," Rebekah promises Elena's bump.
"You may as well discard any mad fantasies of absconding with the babe and raising her for your own," Klaus warns her, drawing Elena away from Rebekah's grasping touch.
Rebekah sniffs. "It shan't be hard to accomplish. With Elena here for a mother, and you for a father, I expect she'll be clamoring to live with me by the time she's six."
"Then you're already underestimating my daughter's common sense," Klaus snipes back.
The two continue to bicker for some minutes, drawing Elijah in as well, before Elena intercedes. "Rebekah, would you like to be godmother?"
The three ancient vampires before her all fall silent.
Rebekah hesitates. "Why would you offer me that?"
"Because you're my baby's aunt. And if you stop dropping not-so-subtle threats, maybe we can work something out where you can actually have a role in her life. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
Rebekah doesn't respond. Can't respond, maybe. Probably doesn't know how to accept this kindness Elena is throwing out to her with anything other than suspicion.
"Think about it," Elena urges her. "You know how to get in touch with us when you decide what you want."
On the plane, Klaus toys with her fingers, his thumb brushing over the green stone of the counterfeit ring.
"Where did this come from?"
"Rebekah gave it to me."
"A gift? That seems unlike her."
"One of those not-so-subtle-threats I mentioned earlier."
"Yet you're wearing it."
"Well, I wasn't going to back down. And besides. I like it."
Klaus huffs a laugh, twining their fingers together. "I'm partial to it myself."
By April, college admissions letters have poured in.
It's over coffee after school one day that Caroline discovers they're not all planning to attend college together after all. "Wait, I thought Whitmore was the plan—didn't your dad teach there?" she demands of Elena when she reveals she's not going.
"After everything last December it just feels… haunted, you know?"
"Hello? You're surrounded by vampires. Your life is haunted. What gives?"
"Care, lighten up," Bonnie prods her. "It's Elena's decision."
"But the three of us were going to be roommates! Tyler and I have both already put our deposits down!"
Elena laughs. "The three of us plus the baby?"
Caroline deflates. "Okay, point taken. But if not Whitmore, then where?"
Elena shrugs. "I have a few in-state options. No matter what, though, I'm going to take a gap year while my whole life gets recalibrated."
"Fair enough." Caroline turns to Bonnie. "What about you? Are you going to take the scholarship Whitmore offered you, or are you abandoning me too?"
"I'm not abandoning you," Bonnie hedges.
"Oh my God! You're totally ditching me too!"
"I'm taking time off before I start college to work on my magic. Do you remember those witches Klaus called to help with the baby? Thérèse and her coven offered to help me. To teach me— Like an apprenticeship. Like what I never had the chance to have with Grams."
"So you'll be gone for the summer."
Bonnie shrugs. "Maybe longer. I'm leaving right after graduation. But—I need this. For myself."
"Will you at least have your phone so I can text you?"
Bonnie laughs. "As though I could stop you!"
Caroline rests her chin against her knuckles. "This is going to be so embarrassing. Tyler and I are going to be that couple that doesn't have any friends."
"Look on the bright side," Elena coaxes. "If you have a terrible time at college, you can do it all over again in a few decades."
She ends up deciding on UVA. Honestly, with the way her past year had gone, she's a little shocked she got in in the first place.
Once the decision is made, Klaus immediately starts hunting for real estate in the area.
"Well, you're not planning to live on campus," he reasons when she tells him he's jumping the boat.
"Well, no, not with the baby—"
"And obviously I don't intend to remain here once you remove to Charlottesville."
"Obviously."
"So of course we'll live together. Properly." He asks the last bit like a question—like he's just realized in the middle of his explanation that she hasn't actually consented to anything of the sort—despite the fact that she spends almost every night with him.
They hadn't even decided which house to set the nursery up in.
Formally moving in together is a huge step—and yet—why not? Why not hedge on things going well? If they don't, she has a year to back out. And besides. He hasn't pushed the issue in months… surely that indicates some progress in establishing her boundaries with him? Maybe that should be rewarded with some trust.
"Okay. But I want to pick the house."
The nursery ends up going in her childhood bedroom, while she moves into her parents' old room.
It's strange, sorting through the last remnants of her parents, of Jenna, and Alaric—boxing them up with the past, into that loving distance of memory.
The actual move itself is startlingly easy with Tyler and Caroline's help—she, Matt, and Bonnie have almost nothing to do when Tyler can lift a dresser without needing a second pair of hands. And frankly, the efficiency with which Caroline assembles the baby furniture is downright alarming.
Yet despite the supernatural speed with which the entire move and nursery set up is accomplished, it all feels remarkably, amazingly normal. Just the five of them—missing a few faces, but still mostly whole and together despite that—joking and teasing and eating pizza and living.
Admittedly, she's not the least bit excited for prom.
She knows she should be—knows that senior prom is one of those milestone moments, and she has a million reasons to be grateful, and yes, the limousine Tyler's rented does sound really cool.
Except, there's still that little fact that she's now seven months pregnant and it's pretty much impossible to set foot out in public let alone on campus without everyone whispering behind her back.
(Still the little fact that her mom should be here to help her do her hair, and her dad should be reminding her about her curfew, and maybe in the back of her mind there's even a part of her thinking there should be a nice human boyfriend fastening a corsage onto her wrist.)
She's not even bringing a date to this—Klaus had offered, of course, but she'd turned him down, instead insisting that she wanted to spend the night with her friends. A last huzzah before graduating in just a couple of weeks and Bonnie's departure for parts unknown starts the inevitable fracturing of their group.
The thing is:
She's figured out how to have a relationship with Klaus, and she's figured out how to balance her crazy life with the friendships that matter most, but she hasn't figured out how those two worlds can actually collide. All she has is that glimmering she sensed on Christmas day—that hopefully, one day, she'll be able to integrate the two in a way that will make sense.
Maybe it'll just be a matter of time.
The idea is both appealing, in that it would mean she doesn't have to do anything but sit back and wait for it to happen, and daunting, since time is ever the issue in her life.
Will she remain mortal? Or will she eventually take Klaus up on his offer—his desire—to turn her?
How much will it even be her decision in the end? Already she can think of a million scenarios that would rip the choice right out of her hands.
The dilemma leaves her brooding throughout the limo ride as the chauffeur picks everyone up one by one, and then meanders toward the school so the rest of the gang can drink champagne and Tyler can roll the roof back and holler at the moon.
"What's going on with you tonight?" Matt asks her as they pile out of the limousine.
"Don't mind me, it's just a mood swing," she assures him as he helps her out. Her balance isn't all it used to be these days.
"You have a tell for when you lie, you know."
Elena pauses, taken aback. "What is it?"
"If I told you, you'd just do everything you could to smother it." Matt smiles down at her. "I'll keep your secrets though."
The words strike her like a bolt to the heart. She feels oddly misty when she squeezes his arm and tells him, "I know. You always have."
Matt leads her in, to the darkened gym strung up with balloons and fairy lights, and the five of them pose for the photographer before Caroline and Bonnie drag them all out onto the dance floor.
An hour later, she's taken a seat at the edge of the room, her feet aching and her head spinning from keeping up the necessary mental barriers to ignore all of the attention she inevitably garners.
Thirty feet away, Tyler spins Caroline across the dance floor while Bonnie and Matt clap and jive.
In a minute, she's going to push herself back up and rejoin them. In a minute.
Out of nowhere, Klaus drops down in front of her.
"I thought you'd be dancing the night away." He touches her ankle, tracing over the bone there.
"What are you doing here?"
His mouth tips into a half smile that makes her stomach flutter. "Crashing these school parties is something of a tradition for me. I thought it best to end on a high note."
She eyes him cautiously. "You're not going to put in a song request, right?"
He laughs. "I'll resist, if you dance with me. You look far too beautiful to while away your evening on your own."
Elena blushes, her fingers plucking at her jade green knit dress. It's not the prom dress she'd have normally picked for herself, but it's wonderful to receive the compliment—and to know he means it.
She takes his hand and lets him reel her back in.
May bleeds into June.
Bonnie leaves for Europe, and Caroline throws herself into various summer charity committees to fill her time before college.
With the baby due in just a little over a month, Elena decamps to the lake house with Klaus to enjoy a few final weeks of quiet.
Wild, for the fantasy Klaus had spun for her last December to be realized in full technicolor as she leans back on her elbows, completely nude on the sun-warmed dock as Klaus labors between her thighs to bring her to another cascading orgasm.
What had he said? Something about Venus—
Sweat slides down her neck, pools in the hollow between her breasts. She can't think with his mouth hot and slick against her sex and his clever hands working her up and over like this, over and over. It's too hot to move, too hot to speak, the baby inside of her such a sap on her energy that all she can do is lie back and submit herself to Klaus's ardor.
Just a foot beneath where she lies on the docks, the lake churns dark and deep. One of her feet dangles off of the dock, and cool lake water laps against her ankles. Grounding her in this moment.
"You're more tempting now than ever," Klaus mutters thickly. He sounds drunk, looks drunk as he crawls up the length of her body and guides her into his lap. Everywhere the sun touches her skin, he presses his mouth, sucking the salt from her skin and covering her in love-marks. Her arms and breasts are dappled with them, imprinted with him. She's so full already—she feels exhausted, jelly-limbed, unable to so much as grind her hips against his without his hands to help her—but it feels so good when he slides inside of her, like maybe this will be the bit of relief that she is aching for.
"Enjoy it now, then," she groans, guiding his hands to her breasts. "Just a few more weeks until the baby's born."
"I'll have to fill you with another one then," he promises her.
And—it's not like she actually wants another child—at least, not for a good long while—but there's something indescribably hot about the way Klaus worships her, about the simple physiological need he has to father her children. And beneath that—there's something transgressive there, about creating life with the undead, about breaking all of those natural barriers, that scorches her with a different kind of desire than the sort she feels simply for Klaus's body. That makes her pull him closer, even as she's already clenching around him. Desperate to chase this feeling he's awakened in her.
"We haven't picked a name yet, you know," she tells him later, dressed in a flimsy cotton sundress, her hair wet from the shower, as she idly paddles her feet in the water beneath the dock.
Klaus sits down next to her. "Did you have something in mind?"
She thinks over that. Family names—Miranda and Jenna—immediately spring to mind, but… Her mother would never approve of the decisions she's made for her life, and it would feel too much like spitting on Jenna's memory to use her name when she's gone and fallen in love with Klaus.
No—those names are part of the past, and she has to keep them there. Tucked away in her heart, close and safe, but best not disturbed.
"I suppose I don't," Elena finally concedes after a minute of thinking it over. "You're the ancient one. What would you name a daughter?"
"I haven't exactly spent the past ten centuries mulling the question over."
"Even hypothetically?"
"Of course not. The only child I ever had was ten years old when I took him in, so there was never a need for me to contemplate such details."
Okay.
"What about something sweet, like Sophia?"
"That's a dreadfully common name for an entirely uncommon child."
She hadn't been aware that Klaus had familiarized himself with the top ten baby names of 2011.
"Is that a bad thing?"
Klaus thinks for a moment. "I've always fancied Nadia."
"Nadia?" Her brow furrows. "What does it mean?"
"Hope. Entirely appropriate, wouldn't you say?"
Ugh. Elijah had suggested Hope to her over text message just last week. "Nope. We're not pinning that on our daughter. We'd might as well name her Patience or Silence."
Klaus sniffs. "Picking a name with a special meaning is entirely different from naming the child after the virtue itself."
"What about Celeste? I've always liked that name."
Klaus's mouth twists. "That won't work."
Elena drops back to prop herself up on her elbows and lets her head fall back so she's looking full up at the blue sky. "I can already tell you're going to make this next to impossible."
Klaus kicks a wave of water onto her leg. "Come now, where would the fun be if this were easy?"
It's three days later, when they're lounging on a flannel blanket under the stars, her head in Klaus's lap, that he suggests, quite out of the blue, "What about Lyra?"
"Lyra?" It has a vaguely familiar ring to it.
"After the constellation." He takes her hand and traces the shape of it against the velvet night sky. "It was hanging in the sky above us on that night you finally surrendered to me."
"Surrendered? You're remembering a night that never happened."
"On the night you came to me, after the winter festival. When you accepted my suit."
"Oh. That night." Elena squints up at the constellation Klaus had shown her. At the star shining from the middle of it, brighter than any of the others in the night sky. "Tell me the story."
"Hm?"
"Constellations all have a story, right? Tell me this one, so I'll know whether or not we're going to name our daughter for it."
So Klaus does—he tells her about brave, lovelorn Orpheus, the musician, the poet—the artist—and even though parts of the story are familiar—the long descent into the Underworld, the hope, the failure—there are other parts that feel new again when she hears them in the cadence of Klaus's voice.
And she looks up at the sky and thinks that Klaus had probably been right to want to name their daughter for hope—although, she would never tell him that—and thinks about the ways that those stars in the sky might speak to that theme.
On a blistering hot day in July, when the humid air is thick as a wall and twice as smothering, Elena welcomes her daughter.
Exhausted, bloodied, Elena pulls the tiny, howling creature to her chest and places her hand over her back. Her skin nearly glows in the uncertain light.
"Lyra," she whispers. "I've waited so long just to meet you."
Christmas that year is an entirely different sort of holiday than the one the year before. There aren't any witches save the ones who are lifelong dearest friends, no uninvited evil relatives, only the somewhat more mundane brothers and sisters sending gifts from Milan and Hong Kong and Milwaukee, and of course, no impossible revelations.
Not that the revelation of watching Klaus with their daughter is any less earth-shattering, because the sight of him holding her propped on his hip, showing her all of the sparkling ornaments on the tree one by one, has the power to reshape her entire understanding of him, the way that watching him be a father has reshaped her perceptions each and every single day since Lyra was born.
There's a quietude that has fallen over him since Lyra's birth that she could never have predicted. As though that great churning ambition of his had finally been satisfied.
Klaus has always been lonely—a self-imposed loneliness born of his own insecurities, to be sure, but lonely nonetheless—yet Elena has come to realize that while she will never be able to completely fill that void, only match him, there is something about Lyra that absolves Klaus of his solitude in a way nothing else ever could.
That absolves her as well, in a way she had dreamed about all through the lonely fall of her pregnancy but somehow had never really expected to have fulfilled.
Over on the sofa, Elena sifts through the mail, pausing for a moment on an unsigned card from Los Angeles. She recognizes the handwriting with a soft pang, the same one she suspects she will always have in moments such as these.
Just checking in, it reads. Nothing more.
She tucks it away and turns her attention back to her family. "What are you whispering about to impressionable young minds?" she asks, the question soft and warm as the cinnamon and evergreen-spiced air within the home.
"I'm telling her her future."
"Oh?"
"She'll be great one day," Klaus elaborates adoringly, hooking Lyra's fingers with his own as she bats at his face. "An empress of sun and moon."
"That sounds too lofty for a baby."
Klaus brings the baby back with him to settle next to her on the couch, shifting Lyra to his lap and wrapping his arm around Elena's shoulders. "Are you jealous, my love?"
"That you never want to let me hold the baby?" She scoops her daughter out of Klaus's lap and snuggles her against her shoulder. "Yes, definitively."
Klaus presses a kiss into her hair. "I can't help myself. She's the first person who's ever entirely belonged to me."
There are so many arguments she could make against that—the sired hybrids not least amongst them—but she settles instead on telling him, "I'm surprised you no longer include me in that category."
"You taught me to know better than that."
Elena glances up at him from beneath her lashes. "I think you mean that."
"You know that I do."
She studies him, looking for the same thing she looks for every day.
Finding that flicker of what she needs from him, she kisses him softly on the mouth.
Squished between them, Lyra squeals and tugs on her hair.
Elena grins against Klaus's mouth, pulling away to lift their daughter up. "Perhaps you're the jealous one," she teases her, bouncing her on her knee until she beams up at them.
Tomorrow, they're meeting her friends at the Winter Wonderland Festival. It'll be the first time since last May that the old gang will be reunited. A chance to see how her little family fits into those old dynamics. A step closer to that future she yearns for. And one more tiny nudge toward answering all of the many still unresolved questions she has about what direction she desires for her life.
But for now, it's just the three of them, quiet and content in the soft warm glow of the Christmas tree. Together.
THE END
A/N: Thank you to each and every one of you who has read this fic, and special love to all of you wonderful commenters out there. Your comments mean everything to me and kept this fic going until the end.
If you're new to my writing and enjoy this ship, I hope you'll look through the many other Klaus x Elena fics I have written over the years.
For those wondering, my next project is going to be to return to Fairytale Ending, which is fast approaching the final act. Look for a new chapter of Fairytale Ending later in the month.
Stay safe everyone, and take care.
-adlyb