Bite-Sized
Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.
Rebekah watched as Elena, the newest doppelganger, held court with her brother playing the doting courtier by her side. Now this was a girl that she would be proud to call sister.
Which, one might imagine, came as a terrible shock for her. She hadn't particularly enjoyed watching Tatia tear her two favorite brothers to bits for sport, and she had avoided any introduction to the ill-starred (and, she had hoped, soon to be dead and forgotten) Katerina Petrova altogether. (She had gotten part of her wish in fact if not in spirit, which had taught her an awful lot about wishing in the first place.)
Avoiding this Elena Gilbert simply hadn't been possible. Nik had met her during her junior year abroad in Italy, proceeded to immediately woo her, and, despite his many, many lectures on the dangers of the heart, and the apparently completely cold, calculating way he had handled Katerina, had fallen inexplicably and irreversibly in love with the girl.
Rebekah had been prepared to hate her for it.
Now, as she watched the way Elena so effortlessly smoothed things over between her brother and Marcel with nothing more than a well-placed touch to her brother's arm and an open, almost mischievous smile for Marcel, Rebekah could admit that perhaps she had been over hasty in forming her opinions.
This Elena Gilbert was a strange creature to behold. Two, maybe three years older than either of her predecessors had been when they met their untimely ends. Her face was at once shockingly familiar and jarringly wrong. She didn't know how Nik could look at her without his eyes watering from the strain of holding those two different versions of that face in mind at once, but perhaps that had been the key to his falling in love with her at all. Maybe if he had met her when she was still a teenager, still an exact mirror of Tatia or Katerina, he would have snapped her up and killed her on the spot. Instead, curiosity had given him time to get to know her.
Another odd detail stuck out: how easily Elena seemed to take the supernatural world in stride. She would have to question Nik, or maybe better yet Elijah, about that later.
Elena noticed her watching them from the shadows of the Abattoir entrance, then. Standing, the girl approached her and held her arms wide in welcome.
"You must be Rebekah!" she exclaimed with unfeigned warmth. "Klaus has told me so many wonderful things about you– he adores you, you know."
Blushing, Rebekah found herself hugging this girl as though she'd known her her whole life. Found herself reeled in by that seductive Petrova charm that this girl positively oozed. Realized she didn't mind, so long as she kept smiling so sweetly at her.
When they joined the gathering, Nik was perhaps over-eager to draw Elena's attention back to himself, and Elena seemed all too happy to bestow her radiant regard upon him.
Rebekah had never appreciated how handsome Nik could look with his face transformed by love.
Had she not been so intent in her study of the couple, had she not been so suspicious of the girl from the get-go, she would not have noticed the way the girl's eyes gleamed and hardened, ever so minutely, as she gazed down upon Nik's open, yearning face. It was such a small thing– just a flash, and it was over, Elena's face smooth and blissful once again. But it bothered Rebekah, like a splinter under her nail.
Later, as Rebekah prowled through night clubs hunting for an interesting meal, she mulled that expression over, trying to put her finger on the emotion she had detected in that girl's eyes.
It was later, as she wiped the blood from her mouth with the back of her wrist and straightened her skirt, that it came to her: triumph. And Rebekah understood, with perfect clarity, what type of woman it must have taken to conquer her brother's heart.
A/N: This is it for this little prompt series. If you enjoyed these, please check out my other fics- I have about 10 finished Klaus/Elena fics, and two wips, including the epic-length labor of love, Fairytale Ending. I hope you'll check them out!
