Fairytale Ending

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.

Summary: Klaus takes his girl and his hybrid and gets out of that one pony town.

Spoilers: Through 3x05, The Reckoning

Rating: R

Warnings: Extremely dubious consent verging on non-con/ Miscarriage / Hostage situation/explicit violence and torture/gratuitous angst/ potential character death

On that first night of Elijah's residence, Stefan escorts her to her rooms shortly after Klaus and Elijah come to terms.

"Wait," she says, when he turns to leave. "Are you okay?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"Did Elijah say something to you?"

"What doesn't he say? He's a very charming man."

He stalks off, then, leaving her to the quiet of her empty bedroom.

Later, she hears them—the Originals plus Stefan—outside by the cars. She watches them from her window as they all climb into the back of a black town car, one of the hybrids at the wheel.

Rebekah sways like a stalk of wheat in the breeze, her feet bare and silver. Buzzed on liquor, blood, or the excitement of her brother joining them, or maybe all three.

In the moonlit darkness, their faces overlaid with the odd shadows of the swaying bare limbed trees decorating the front garden, they look less like themselves and more like primordial terrors, slipping through dreams into reality in the thin hours of the morning.

Klaus glances up, directly at her window.

Elena throws herself back.

Had she imagined that gleam smoldering in Klaus's eye earlier? That bright fierce hunger to prize the advantage from Elijah's grip?

None of the others had commented on it. In fact, they had all behaved as though they believed his poorly-concealed-distress act. And it was an act. The more Elena replays the memory, the more certain she becomes. The more glaring the performance is. Sure, Klaus had flung himself about, had erratically postured and accused and looked wild and stormy while doing it, but he hadn't even broken anything. Hadn't smashed up the room, hadn't ripped into anyone's chests, hadn't even threatened anyone. The only one who had done any of those things had been Rebekah.

It's been years since she's witnessed an out and out Klaus tantrum, but she cannot believe that Elijah could possibly drop in, completely upend the precarious harmony of Klaus's little domestic setup, all while threatening and cornering Klaus, and Klaus wouldn't throw a spectacularly explosive fit… unless she is right.

He'd said he'd been expecting Elijah for some time—and he'd known all fall that Elijah had possession of the fourth coffin. Hell, Elijah had mentioned it explicitly right before things went irreversibly sideways back at the manor.

There's no way Klaus wouldn't have prepared for this. Wouldn't have spent his time plotting and scheming for a way to outmaneuver his brother.

After all, it's exactly what she would have done.

The only question, then, is whether or not she trusts Elijah to uphold his end of the bargain.

(That Elijah is doing exactly what she had feared he would—stealing her place with the rest of them—doesn't figure into her speculations at all.

Not one bit.)

She worries about Rebekah. Tries to imagine what it would be like to find out her own mother might still be alive after all. To discover the person whom she had unreservedly trusted had in fact intentionally kept her from her.

Rage, she thinks, might be how she would react. Devastation. Grief. Bitter hope.

She and Rebekah had been just about the same age when their mothers had died. She knows what it means to be a motherless seventeen year old girl. Always longing for the comfort and connection of that singular relationship. Cut off from it forever.

The memory of that crushing black water rushes over her, suffocating her with the full impact of the profound longing and sadness she hasn't let herself feel for her mother in years.

If thinking about someone else's mother can stir these feelings up in her, what must tonight's revelations have done to Rebekah?

And what must it mean for Rebekah to undoubtedly feel all of these things and to have gotten in the car with her brother anyway?

When they return, in the blue hour before dawn, they're all a little more vivid than they had been when they left. Their eyes brighter, their mouths and cheeks redder, their movements languid and fierce. Their bodies full of fresh human blood, anchoring them more securely to the mortal plane. Sourcing the wellspring of their magic. Blocking out the sound of death beckoning them. (The call which Elena can hear, always, a low sweet song in the background of everything she does. Clashing with the urgent hum of Klaus's compulsion, demanding that she live. With her own desire to.)

Looking at the four of them now is like gazing into the past. She could be back at the manor, peering at them from her old bedroom window, a living ghost, haunted by the revelry of the dead.

Elena takes them all in. Stefan, sharp and smirking, somehow also missing his shoes now. Rebekah leaning heavily against him, a telling, dark stain fanned across her cheek. Even Elijah has lost his tie, at some point. The top two buttons of his shirt hangs loose around his throat. Klaus lingering after them, watching them all with an aloof hunger etched into his face.

Disheveled, beautiful demons, all of them. Her demons. Her whole body pounds with fear and yearning for them.

If she had been searching (hoping) for a sign that Rebekah had not enjoyed herself, she doesn't find it.

Stefan murmurs something in Rebekah's ear—leans in just a little too close, in Elena's opinion. The sound of Rebekah's laughter rings over the still morning grounds like a flock of startled birds.

A few minutes later, Rebekah sweeps into the room. Finds Elena standing at the window in her nightgown, where it is so blatantly obvious she had been watching them. Waiting for them.

She wants to talk to her, to take care of her. To hash out Rebekah's feelings. To ask her about whether or not Elijah or Klaus had said anything more.

She never gets the chance, because immediately Rebekah's hands are in her hair, her mouth is devouring her own, and her burning body is pressed flush against her own, one leg already wrapping around her hips. The kiss is fire and hunger with no hope of satiation.

"I could devour you," Rebekah growls against her mouth. She nuzzles against Elena's cheek, scenting along her jaw.

"You didn't say you were going out," Elena says, pulling away, only to find herself trapped by the vice of Rebekah's roaming hands.

"Didn't I?" She mouths the words against Elena's pulse more than she says them. Her hands wander to Elena's waist, her hips. In one, sudden motion, she rips Elena's nightgown clean down the center. Pushes her against the wall and laves her from collarbone to breast, belly to thigh. "I'm starved for you," she pants from her knees.

"You don't look like it. You look like you've had everyone you could have possibly wanted tonight."

Rebekah grins up at her. "Are you jealous?"

"Of your victims? No."

"Oh, but you are jealous! That's marvelous news."

"And why is that?"

"Because if you're jealous, then that means you're truly mine."

"Of course I'm yours. I hate it when you leave me behind."

"I've offered to include you."

Elena looks away. "I thought we'd talked about this. I'm not ready."

Rebekah stands. Grasps her hands and leads her over to the velvet chaise in the dressing room. Positions herself provocatively upon the soft cushions. Unlike the furniture in the rest of the suite, this piece is new. Something Rebekah had had delivered just this past week. The material and color are different, but the silhouette is just the same as the chaise in her old room at the manor where they had shared their first kiss. "Fuck me here."

Unable to help herself, Elena climbs on top of her. Stares down into her bright eyes. Tenderly wipes the splash of blood from her cheek.

You're letting your guard down too much.

"Just like that?" Elena asks. "Topic dropped?"

"We have forever to discuss it. But this moment, right now—ravishing you on this particular morning—this only comes once."

Elena's mouth quirks. "Who said anything about only coming once?"

Rebekah pushes herself up onto her elbows. "Don't make promises unless you intend to keep them," she warns, her mouth a breath from her own. And then they are kissing again, the taste of Rebekah slick and hot in Elena's mouth as they tumble together onto the chaise.

It's already past noon when Elena awakens, curled up under a thin flannel robe on the chaise.

She is as brimming full of questions and anxieties as she had been the night before. Rest has only brought them into clearer focus.

"Rebekah?" she calls out.

No answer.

Shrugging into the robe, she looks around the suite, but to no avail.

Wherever she is, Rebekah is long gone.

Still unsettled from the night before, Elena spends a solid half hour searching for Rebekah throughout the chateau before she finally concedes that she is most probably out with one or both of her brothers and that she will have to wait for Rebekah to come to her.

More and more, that seems to be the case.

Elijah finds her in the ballroom, absently plunking away at the piano keys.

"I didn't know you played," he says, running his finger along the gleaming side of the baby grand. One of the hybrids must have cleaned this room since the last time she was in here, because the whole place sparkles in the bright afternoon light. Even the piano has been tuned.

"Obviously I don't," Elena tells him, turning away from the piano and shutting the lid.

"It's good to see you."

Elena doesn't respond right away. She stares at him, trying to see in him the man she had trusted with her entire being once upon a time. The dark, arresting eyes are the same. The lively quirk of the mouth, the strong jaw and beautiful, expressive hands. And yet, she is so disillusioned by him that none of those features impact her the way they once did.

"I wish I could say the same," she finally tells him, standing to leave.

"Have I done something to offend you?"

Elena pauses. "No. The fault is mine. I put my trust where I shouldn't have." She glances at him. Takes in his utter composure. Annoyance ripples through her. "By the way, you owe me a thank you."

"Whatever for?"

"For pulling the dagger from your heart. Again."

In response, he smiles that small, glowing smile he had given her with his first hello. As though she were still just that scared girl, trying to be braver than she really was. Unexpectedly, the sight of that smile still makes her heart skip a beat. "Thank you, Elena. It seems I owe you very much. May I escort you to wherever it is you're heading?" There's a sly playfulness to the question. He understands she's trying to avoid him. That there's no polite or plausible excuse she could give him to refuse so simple and benign a request. He enjoys entrapping her.

Elena offers him her sharpest smile. "Of course." Takes his arm. Tries not to think of a different walk together, through the Lockwood grounds.

She hates the way she thrills at his touch.

Elijah's eyes flick over her cloaking bracelet when she takes his arm, but he says nothing on the topic, instead keeping his observations to himself, the way that he always has.

Aimlessly, she leads him down one of the many upstairs galleries, Elijah content to follow her lead. It's obvious that she has no particular destination in mind, but Elijah does not call her out on it. Equally obvious is that Elijah must desire an opportunity to speak with her very much.

If avoiding him altogether is out of the question, then she may as well hear whatever it is he has to say. Her instinctive need to gather as much information as she can from the powerful figures around her demands nothing less.

"I must apologize for my brother," Elijah eventually begins. "I understand you've been his… guest for some time now."

"When does a guest stop being a guest?" she muses.

"When the situation becomes permanent."

She gives him a meaningful look.

"And is it? Permanent?" he presses.

"Katherine told me what happened to her family when she ran. You know I've always been willing to do anything to protect mine."

"Yet you do not seem unhappy here."

"I had to make the best of things."

"Is that what your relationship with my sister is? Making the best of things?"

"No. It's more than that."

"She's wildly in love with you."

Hearing Elijah confirm it bolsters her in ways she hadn't even been cognizant she needed bolstering. "And I with her."

"That's very good to hear, then. Unexpected, but good to hear."

"Disappointed?" she teases.

Elijah laughs, though there is no humor in it. "You're so beautiful that to look upon you is to stare into the sun. Of course I am disappointed that your heart is settled firmly on my sister."

Despite her misgivings, Elena flushes under the effusive praise. He is still a very handsome man. "You're overplaying your hand, Elijah. I know my face isn't… what it was." She gathers herself in, smothering the spark of false warmth his words had given her. "So. Instead of flattering me, just tell me upfront: what do you want from me?"

His brow quirks. "No, your face isn't what it was," he agrees. There's something unreadable in his tone, but he moves on without hovering over the topic. "Your word—your opinion—holds a great deal of weight here."

Elena shakes her head. "I wouldn't go that far."

"I would. The instant you cast aspersions on my intentions last night, Niklaus raised his defenses against me. He listens to you."

"We're not as close as we used to be."

"But you admit that you were once close."

"Sure. In a way." The memory of their single night together, of the secrets Klaus had entrusted her with, of the haven and home she had found in the circle of his arms, flickers through her thoughts, too bright and too hot to hold onto for long.

"I should very much like to have you on my side, Elena."

Elena looks out the windows, to the barren wilderness past the cultivated estate grounds. A veil of mist boils over the distant mountains, rapidly swallowing the sunny afternoon. "Don't you think you and Klaus will come to an agreement?"

"I think my brother is very stubborn. More so wheresoever he perceives a slight or a threat."

"I wouldn't know."

"Wouldn't you?"

Elena stiffens. Has to take deep breaths to force herself to relax. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"My brother dearly loves to exile those closest to him when gets into a pique," Elijah says, not unsympathetically. "He's done the same to me many times over the years."

"Your point?"

"That he took you back proves your value to him." He pulls her over into a secluded alcove. "All I ask is that you speak to him. For Rebekah's sake, if for no one else's. She deserves this reunion with her mother."

"Why should I trust you?"

Elijah frowns. "You know I keep my bargains."

Elena steps away from him. "No, you don't."

He catches her arm. "If you're upset with me for what happened back in New Hampshire—"

"For nearly letting me bleed to death so that you could indulge your anger with Klaus?"

"I apologize. I wasn't in my right mind," he says, repeating his excuses from last night. "Resurrection can be…"

"Rattling. I know." She narrows her eyes. "That's my point, actually. I died for you. On your word. Which you didn't keep."

"You agreed to go through with the sacrifice and in exchange I kept your list of loved ones safe, from my brother as well as from myriad other threats."

"Where were you then when Klaus kidnapped and turned my Aunt Jenna then? When he tore out her heart?" She breaks away from him. "You failed me and then you didn't even keep up your side of the bargain. After I'd already gone through with mine!" Tears gather in her eyes. She clenches her jaw, furious with herself for allowing Elijah to affect her so deeply. She should be past all of this. Thought she finally was, when she admitted to herself that she had fallen in love with Klaus. "I trusted you."

Elijah looks at her the way he did when she drove the dagger into his heart. "It seems I owe you a greater debt than I realized. I hope one day that I will be able to make it up to you. I have no excuse save that I did what I had to in order to see my family reunited once more. A motive I think you can relate to, even through the fog of your justified anger with me." He holds his hand out to her, palm open. "Which is why I am asking for your help, Elena."

She laughs at him. At his nerve. "How can I? I lost everything because of you."

"You gained some things too."

"You don't know the hell I went through first. The hell you put me through."

"If you're asking me to apologize for sparing my brother's life, I won't do it."

She wavers. "You really love him, don't you?"

Elijah looks away from her. "…Yes."

It's that love for him that moves her. She understands what it means to love him too.

"I won't do anything that hurts Rebekah." She pauses. "Or Klaus."

"This is to her benefit. And his, though he will not want to see it."

"So, what? You want me to tell him I think he should go along with your scheme?"

"Well, perhaps don't refer to it as a scheme. But essentially: yes. The next time you are alone with him, or better yet, the next time we are all gathered in a group, lend the idea your support. Certainly don't voice any reasons he should decline the offer."

"What happens after Klaus opens the coffin?"

"My hope is that my mother can facilitate an end to the warring amongst us. She was always a powerful mediator."

"No, I mean for me."

"You'll get to enjoy the benefits," he replies. It's an astonishingly vague answer.

"Can I trust you?" Elena asks again. Because she cannot help herself. Because she has to.

"I'll pledge you my honor."

They regard each other for a long, long moment before she finally nods her assent. "Alright. I'll see what I can do."

Elijah smiles gratefully down at her.

She had once been so enamored of that smile. Had felt so special when he bestowed it on her.

(She still is. She still does.)

"Thank you, Elena."

It's a heady thing, to have the gratitude of one such as he.

Elena watches him walk away, her face still frozen in the mask of tentative capitulation.

All that talk about the importance of family, and never once had he ever offered to reunite her with her own. Elijah is, perhaps, the one person who truly has the power to do just that. To extract her from this life and place her back into the life she should have had. Whether it just doesn't occur to him or whether he is loath to break up either his sister's happiness or his brother's personal arrangements is irrelevant. The outcome is the same.

It doesn't matter that she's tucked away her longing for the past. That she no longer dreams about the friends she left behind, the future she might have had. That the realest things in her life are Klaus, Rebekah, and Stefan.

If he had any honor to speak of, he at least would have made her the offer.

Her conversation with Elijah only further tangles her thoughts. There is a huge part of her that instinctually yearns to trust him, that cannot help but feel swayed by his persuasions. The rest of her can never forget what he did to her. Cannot stop accusing liar liar liar whenever she mulls over his words. His promises and assurances. The illusionary honor he had pledged her.

As suspicious as she is of him, though, she thinks he was honest about one thing: he really believes that the fulfillment of his goals would be best for Rebekah.

She has to think of Rebekah.

Even if her instincts scream at her not to trust Elijah.

After warming herself with a mug of black coffee, Elena shrugs on her leather jacket and trudges out into the damp gray afternoon, hoping a walk will clear her head.

She stumbles into Stefan, staring out over the huge pond in the Northwest corner of the property, the surface roiling with the same November mist she had seen streaming down from the mountains earlier. He holds himself so impossibly still she almost doesn't notice him. He has never looked less human to her than he does in this moment. Never more painfully beautiful, either.

"I missed you in the kitchen," she says, joining him to stare out over the water.

"Don't count on me joining you anymore."

"What does that mean?"

"I'm bored with you."

Elena turns to stare at him, but he never takes his eyes off the water.

He's lying. If he were truly bored with her, they wouldn't be having this conversation right now. He'd just ignore her. He wouldn't have to work so hard to keep his eyes off of her.

"What did Elijah say to you last night?" He's been here less than twenty-four hours, and already Klaus is scheming, Rebekah is even more distracted than she had been before, Stefan is attempting an emotional retreat, and he has her pacing and twisting, trying to figure out where all of this leaves her.

"Why do you bring him up?"

"I overheard the two of you. I know he said… something."

Stefan stares out at the water for so long she thinks he's going to refuse to answer. Then, abruptly, he admits, "For some reason he thinks I was in love with you." He says it like it's the most preposterous thing in the world. Still without looking at her.

And she could let him keep thinking that. Could keep things clean and simple between them.

Except, things are never clean and simple between them. They're messy and they're complicated, and erasing Stefan's knowledge of their history can't actually erase the fact that they have history. All it's done is twist him up inside. Twist them both up.

Their relationship is too deep to lie her way out anymore.

She is too tired to lie to Stefan anymore.

Elena swallows past the tears lumping her throat. Gathers her courage. "You were."

Stefan smiles, that cruel, wide grin of his. Like the joke's on him and he knows it. "I know."

She reels. He may as well have dropped a grenade on her. "What?" The question is pure reflex. Whatever Stefan says next, she can barely think clearly enough to understand it. Were he to reach out and bite her, she would never be able to gather the wits to fend him off.

"I know," he enunciates.

"How? Since when?"

"Since last night. Everything clicked into place. Why I have these—impulses toward you. Why looking at you feels like turning a knife inside myself. Someone's compelled me to forget." He finally turns to look at her. "Klaus, or Rebekah?"

She gapes at him.

He shrugs. Turns back to the water. "Doesn't matter."

"Do you want your memories back?" she finally asks.

"Not particularly."

Elena stares hard at the water, her eyes burning with a scald of tears for the second time today. She's imagined this conversation a hundred times. A thousand times. Imagined the benediction of coming clean with him. The purifying sear of his inevitable anger with her. The catharsis of an eventual forgiveness.

Never had she pictured this disaffected acceptance of his life's erosion.

"I'm sorry," she tells him.

"What for?"

"It was my idea."

She can feel him looking at her again, but she keeps her eyes straight ahead.

"You had your reasons," Stefan supposes.

"I did."

"Was I happier, before?"

Elena grimaces.

Stefan laughs. "Forget I asked."

She spends the afternoon wandering the halls of the chateau.

Whenever a hybrid notices her, they scurry away like beetles avoiding the light, slavishly obeying Klaus's orders.

There are still things to explore here, entire rooms she has only so far had time to perform a cursory glance over, entire bookshelves and trunks and chests of drawers she's never looked through. It's possible this is an entirely too intrusive and familiar attitude, but she can't help herself. Years in possession of the manor have planted in her a proprietary curiosity.

She's in one of the disused upstairs studies, sifting through a stack of old journals, their script barely legible, trying to figure out if they may have anything useful in them, the way that Kol's journals had, when she hears Rebekah and Klaus's voices drifting down the hall.

Relief that she has finally located Rebekah propels her to her feet before she processes their conversation topic.

"You had no right," Rebekah says, her voice strained with banked anger.

"She kept bigger secrets from me than any I've ever kept from you."

They pause outside the door to the study.

"That's a lie and you know it. Don't you think I would have liked to have my mother? Don't you think I needed her?" Rebekah presses.

"What could she give you that I haven't?" Klaus snaps.

"How about love, Nick? Pure and simple."

Elena freezes. Glances at her bracelet. They must not realize she's in here. That she can hear them. She severely doubts that Rebekah would ever land a blow like that against Klaus where either of them thought someone else could overhear it.

"Would you abandon me?" Klaus asks, his voice chill as the dead mid-winter wind.

"She's my mother, Nick."

"Our mother."

"Nick—"

"Do you remember the promise you made me just a couple of months ago? You told me you would always choose me. I'm asking you to choose me now."

"That's not fair."

"Life seldom is. You're so fond of saying that, I thought you would remember."

Something crashes amidst the sound of snapping wood. The building shakes. It's entirely possible Rebekah has shoved Klaus through the wall.

"You always want me to choose you," she accuses. "Yet you never choose me." Tears muddle her voice. Make her harder to understand.

"Pick your side wisely, little sister," Klaus warns. "And remember to never bet against me."

He must storm off, then, because the argument cuts off. Rebekah screams, under her breath, before stomping off herself.

She tracks Rebekah down in the wine cellar, where she finds her pulling bottles off the shelf and carelessly letting them drop and shatter upon the floor.

"Upset?" Elena calls from the stairs.

Rebekah sniffs. "Why would you say that?"

"Because it looks like you're smashing up all of Klaus's favorite vintages."

The nature of Rebekah's regard changes. "That's an awfully specific thing to notice."

"I lived in his house for three years. I had a lot of time to notice what wine he liked most."

"Is there a point to this or are you just here to judge me?"

"No," Elena says, stepping carefully through the field of glass until she reaches Rebekah. "I'm here to support you."

"I don't need it."

Elena draws her into her arms. "Of course you do."

"Why would I? My brothers are silently fighting, my father is out to kill at least one of us, my mother, as it turns out, has been alive and under some sort of sleeping spell all this time—really, it's just another average day." Despite her words, Rebekah rests her head against Elena's shoulder, and allows her to stroke her hair.

"Your mother's alive though, and Klaus kept it from you. I can't imagine what you must be feeling."

"It's complicated."

"Don't you want to tell me about it? You'll feel better."

Rebekah pulls away from her embrace to look at her. "What good will talking about it do? What's done is done. My family is torn in twain, and I am trapped in the middle." She frowns. "As are you, unfortunately."

"What does that mean?"

"You said it yourself. You're a part of this family, now. Just like Marcel is, at the end of the day. Marcel will go with Nick, of course. Kol may, too. Finn will definitely side with our parents, and it looks like Elijah will as well, though I could never have seen that coming before this visit. So much can change in just a few short decades, and it's so easy to miss it altogether…" She shakes her head, as though pushing those thoughts away. "That leaves you and me."

"Isn't there a middle ground? Couldn't you visit with your parents, but still ultimately stay with Klaus?"

"My brother has made it more than clear that he won't abide by any half-measures. It's him or them."

"I want to say that I'll go wherever you go."

Rebekah smiles for her. "Of course you will."

"No, Rebekah, I said I want to say that. But I can't. I have to stay with Klaus."

"Because of your family?"

No.

Rebekah goes on before she can gather a proper response. "Because if we go to my parents—if we explain the situation, explain how you've been Nick's prisoner and how you've been so chocked full of compulsions you really had no choice but to dagger my father—I think that they'll help us."

Elena shakes her head. "I don't think it's that simple. Your father's not a reasonable man."

Rebekah sets her jaw stubbornly. "He could be. He used to be. Not everything has to be about Nick."

That's the thing though. For Elena, it is.

He's not just an obstacle. He's her fate.

(Just not in the way she once thought.)

Rebekah must see it on her face. "Why are you being like this? This is our chance."

"I just wish we could go on the way we have been," Elena says. "Just the four of us, happy like we were yesterday afternoon."

"That was before I found out my brother had been lying to me for nearly our entire existences."

But after a thousand other sins against her.

"What will you do if Klaus refuses to open the coffin?"

"There are ways to make him amenable."

"What does that mean?"

Rebekah sighs, looking around at the mess of shimmering glass shards and dark purple wine staining the floor around their feet. "Sometimes we must be rough to get what we need."

The days slip by like the last of the brown autumn leaves that sail on the blustery wind as November slides into December.

For all that the chateau is on the surface merrier with the addition of Elijah, Elena ends up spending much of her time alone. Stefan avoids her, finding places to pass his days in solitude that, so far, she has not discovered. Meanwhile, whenever she cares to search, she always finds some constellation of the Originals, their heads bent together in quiet conversation, secret jokes and secret smiles and secret signals passing amongst them as fluidly as though they are speaking their first language. Perhaps, for them, swimming through eternity, treading time forever, their relationships to each other—their only fixed points of reference in the vastness of the universe—is their mother tongue. Whether she spies Rebekah and Elijah returning from a walk through the countryside, or Klaus and Elijah playing at dueling pistols, or the three of them laughing over old cyanotype photos in a language she doesn't recognize, the inevitable intimacy and bond amongst them is clear. The history that they all take for granted.

This is not to say she is excluded. There are dinners and games of charades and snap-dragon to pass the time and evenings where Stefan takes up the piano again and Rebekah blushingly sings at Elijah's request.

One night they even build an enormous bonfire in a clearing by the pond. The heat of it is enormous, swallowing up the cold of the night as though it never was. Behind her, Rebekah and Stefan argue over a constellation in the night sky while Elijah collects pebbles from the bank of the pond. She stares into the flames until her eyes ache.

"You've been quiet these past few days," Klaus observes from right beside her, startling her from her vigil over the fire.

She turns to look at him. Cannot fight down the pang that shoots through her at the sight of him illuminated in scarlet and gold. He has always been most beautiful to her like this. Most her own.

"I wasn't aware that my company was missed."

His smile devastates her. "Indeed. We're the very picture of a happy family reunited, are we not?"

Elena tears her eyes away from his face. Refocuses her attention on the three others, who have wandered some distance away. Frowns as Stefan leans awfully close to Rebekah when he speaks to her.

"One would assume," she replies vaguely, distracted by the way Rebekah places her hand on Stefan's shoulder. How long that touch lingers.

"So long as you are paying attention."

Elijah seems to cock his head ever so slightly in their direction. Listening in.

She turns back to Klaus. Forces herself not to react to the way the blazing fire paints him as her fiercest, most tightly held memory.

"The real question is: are you convinced?" Do you trust him?

"Do I have any reason not to be?"

Elena considers the question. Her sole one-on-one conversation with Elijah. What's best for Rebekah. "What do you have to lose by trusting your family?"

"Surely nothing." He contemplates the flame. Holds his hand against the unbearable heat of it. Watches as the skin blisters, dissolves, and renews itself, again and again. "What do you think of our Elijah? Is he in earnest?"

She hesitates. "As long as I've known him, all he's wanted is to be reunited with his family."

He pulls his hand from the flame. "Were it only so easy." He glances behind them, toward the others, who are by now mere indistinct blurs against the gathering dark. "Best have a care, lest Stefan steal my sister from you."

He leaves her then, joining the others as they wander through the moonlit grounds. Their voices fade with the distance, until they are nothing more than disembodied howls on the night wind.

Elena trudges inside alone.

That night, and every other night, they all go out without her.

She always stays up late, waiting for them to return.

A/N: We are officially out of hiatus! Thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed while I took a break on this fic—your comments kept this fic alive. And welcome to all of my new readers, including those who may have joined after reading (The Stars Were Brightly Shining). Please do leave me your comments to let me know what you think. As always, you can reach me over on tumblr—my handle is livlepretre.