Bite-Sized
Disclaimer: I own nothing, except these words.
"I expect you're here to see my brother."
"Is he in?"
Elijah considers lying, considers telling her some harmless tale to turn her around, to keep her from coming in, from finding the girl upstairs that Niklaus has carelessly left to bleed out on the slick marble bathroom floor.
Not for the first time, he cannot help but think that his brother is infinitely undeserving of Elena Gilbert. If he had known that the two of them would somehow wind up in each other's arms, he never would have left town. Never would have left Elena so vulnerable.
He could never speak openly against the relationship, though. Anything he says would just be read as petty jealousy, instead of the dire warning against Niklaus's monstrous nature.
But perhaps he can show her.
Elijah offers her a smile, small and neat and contained. "He's upstairs." He opens the door wide and beckons her past the threshold. Studiously ignores the too-observant look Elena pins him with as she steps past him.
At the bottom of the stairs, she pauses. "I know things have been weird between us, ever since you came back."
"Have they?"
"You left, Elijah. You left me here when I needed you most."
"I'm here now."
She shakes her head. "That's not good enough."
He lets her go, his thoughts racing ahead to the moment when his brother inevitably reminds her that he is so very wrong for her. That something as twisted and cold and blood-thirsty as him could never be the right match for someone so kind and good-hearted as Elena Gilbert. And when that time comes, Elijah will seize his chance to be for her the knight she has always wanted him to be. The chance he had so foolishly thrown away with both hands, over and over again. (But Elijah is immortal. He is accustomed to chances coming back to him, again and again, and all he need do is decide to take them.)
Mere moments pass between Elena disappearing at the top of the stairs and the sound of heated arguing.
Elijah holds himself ready.
At the first sign that Niklaus will lash out, he'll intervene. Shelter Elena.
The minutes tick by. The argument grows hushed. Changes into something else altogether.
Later, Elena creeps down the stairs, her face flushed, her clothes wrinkled.
She pauses when she sees him.
"You knew about the body." She says it as a fact, not a question.
He doesn't answer her. Cannot answer the disappointment in her eyes.
"I don't know what you thought you were setting me up for, but whatever it was, it didn't work."
She leaves then, back up the stairs to rejoin his brother.
Elijah shuts his eyes. Considers for the first time that perhaps the chance to play white knight really will not come by again.
At some point, quite without his noticing, Elena Gilbert has learned to take care of herself.
A/N: Thanks for reading!
