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

She doesn't bring her journal or her drawings or her three novels back to the rooms she shares with Rebekah. Instead, she brings them to the Water Garden Rooms. Her rooms. She tucks them away in her desk, and lies back on the bed. Gazes at the Joan Mitchell painting for a long, long time.

And all the while, Klaus lingers at the edges of her senses, almost within reach.

Almost. There is that word again. Maybe the most important word in her life.

For a moment, she had almost believed he had wanted her.

For a moment, she had almost wanted him.

"You seem distracted, darling," Rebekah breathes into her hair. They lie twined together in the blue pre-dawn light, Rebekah's calf slowly brushing against her own in the near darkness.

Guilt instantly lances through her. "No more so than you are," Elena says, disentangling herself and rising from the bed.

Rebekah sits up. "What does that mean?" The blankets pool around her waist, exposing her naked chest to the cold night air.

She's beautiful and terrible like this. A Greek statue of divinity brought to awful life.

Elena is very careful not to look at her.

If she looks, she'll forget herself, the way she has so many times before.

(Or worse. She might reveal her true thoughts.)

"You've grown distant from me," she tells her while looking out the window.

Rebekah tuts. "Nonsense."

"You go out every night without me."

"If you'd complete the turn, you could come with me."

"I've already told you I'm not ready."

Rebekah presses herself up against Elena's back. Her skin simmers with stolen heat. "It's not about whether you're a human or a vampire. It's about whether you wish to never be parted from me."

Elena turns in her arms. "You say that, but you're standing at the edge of a ravine a thousand years wide. You don't know what you're asking me."

"Of course I do. I'm asking if you love me."

"You can't even remember what it means to be human."

Rebekah sighs. Tucks a wisp of Elena's hair behind her ears. "Do you?"

Elena pulls away from her. "I'm trying to."

"You'll tear yourself apart, trying."

"I know."

"I do love you, you know," Elena tells her, before Rebekah leaves.

Rebekah pauses at the door. "I know."

"But I don't love watching you cozy up to Stefan."

Rebekah laughs. Returns to drop another kiss on her mouth. "If you didn't mind it, I would know you didn't love me as you swear you do."

She's not sure who the better liar is between the two of them. When their bed filled so full to brimming with them.

(But she knows she was the first to cross that boundary.)

(She always is.)

The five of them while away the evening together, drinking sidecars and listening to Rebekah sing while Stefan accompanies her on the piano. Klaus and Elijah play shogi by the fire, neither of them speaking except to exchange banalities, while Elena reclines on the divan, bare legs curled up under her, watching the room.

It's the first time that she's seen Klaus since their kiss. Her first opportunity to judge him.

To judge herself. To judge for herself.

After bidding her an initial peremptory good evening, he hasn't glanced her way once.

Despite this, she could swear she could detect an almost jagged edge to the reverberation his presence always stirs within her soul. Something has stirred him up.

Something, or someone, she muses, watching the brothers, one fair, the other dark, mirror each other across the room, reflecting back nothing but empty observations as they hide their depths from each other. There is more than one match afoot between the two of them.

That's how she knows Klaus's polite indifference can only be calculated on his part. Like everything is with him. Further confirmation that that kiss had been merely another ploy to turn her into one of his assets. Another piece on his board.

But for what? She still hasn't figured out what his angle is. Has been too distracted by her own personal issues to pursue the matter. The fact that Klaus had been the one to so thoroughly divert her attention away from where it should have been all along nearly sets her teeth to grinding—

But why kiss her? Why try to seduce her when he had made it oh so clear that he wanted nothing more to do with her in that regard?

Why keep her journal?

She halts that line of thinking before it can sweep her away. Shuts it down with an implacable force of will that has kept her whole and sane these past few years. None of those things matter. Not for a long time, now.

What matters is right here, right now.

Elena stretches out on the divan, swishing the ice around in her drink as she waits for the inevitable shift in the atmosphere of the evening. For her chance to prove to Rebekah, to herself, the truth of her words this morning. That it is Rebekah she loves. Rebekah whose best interests she will choose.

(The truth of herself, which she is determined to realize, even if there is a corner of her heart that whispers that she is a liar. That she is a liar and she is lying and the fact that she thinks she is being honest only means she is in her element.)

Slowly, a plan begins to form. Cohere.

The night grows long. Takes on that eerie oppressive weight that only the witching hour can achieve. It's a time of night that belongs to vampires, and which, she now freely admits, belongs to her as well. A time she has learned to fear, a little, for how thin her armor becomes at this hour—but also a time worth waiting for, as the only time she has ever truly been able to reach Klaus when he most does not want her to reach him at all.

It's an old insight that hits her through the muddle of whiskey and citrus swarming over her tongue and buzzing through her thoughts. Something she associates so fiercely with the taste of Klaus's mouth, with the truths he barely dared to breathe into her ear.

(What does it mean that last night his lies had tasted just the same, that his manipulations and his deceptions had been just as sweet as any secret he had ever gifted her?)

(No—)

Now is her time.

She slinks over to the piano, letting the alcohol loosen her limbs so she sways just a little unsteadily on her feet, her hips swishing in a way that she knows draws the focus of everyone in the room. Carelessly, she drapes herself over the piano and watches Stefan play.

His fingers never falter on the keys.

She can feel Rebekah's eyes on her all the while.

Good.

She's willing to admit that there may have been some jealousy fueling her decision to come over here, to implement this particular plan. She's only human, after all.

Idly, she taps a key on the piano, a high note, and hums a few bars of an old, achingly familiar melody.

Stefan finds the song in an instant, La Vie en Rose unfurling from his long white fingers as though he had always meant to play it. As though he had always meant to follow her lead.

Across the room, Klaus and Elijah have gone quiet.

Rebekah cocks her head. "I don't know this one," she admits after a moment. Somehow she is still missing so much about the twentieth century, even after years and years to play catch up.

"I'm afraid I shan't be able to sing the lyrics." She picks up a worn songbook, the pages brown with age, and flicks through it. "Let's choose another one."

"No, play this one," Elena insists.

"Why? Does it matter?" Rebekah laughs, coming around the piano to pull her into her arms. "It does have a nice tune, I suppose," she allows. "Is this one very famous?"

"It was her mother's favorite," Klaus supplies.

There's a drawn out beat of silence after he speaks, like he is as surprised to have been armed with the information as the rest of them are to have heard it from him.

So he had remembered.

Relieved, Elena allows herself to relax into Rebekah's embrace. The hardest part—the trickiest part—has already passed. Now she doesn't have to be the one to connect the song to her mother. That would have been dreadfully obvious.

"Sing me a few lines," Rebekah requests.

Elena stiffens all over again. The request genuinely catches her off guard. Just the idea embarrasses her too much to look up as she explains, "Oh, no, I have a terrible voice—"

"Far from it," Elijah interjects.

She's about to wrinkle her nose and insist he's never heard her sing, except—to hell with it. If either Tatia or Katherine had ever sung for him, then he may as well have.

Stefan raises a cool eyebrow, a challenge if ever there was one.

Not one to back down, Elena takes a deep breath and forces her limbs to go loose, her breath to come easy, focusing on Rebekah, beautiful and smiling encouragingly for her, solid and warm in her arms. She lets the familiar melody wash over her, and the words tumble from her lips before she has time to second guess herself. "Hold me close and hold me fast, the magic spell you cast, this is La vie en rose." Her gaze inadvertently slips from Rebekah's and locks with Klaus's across the room. His stare penetrates her sharper than any fangs. Hastily, she jerks her gaze back to her lover's. She barely hears herself sing as she continues, "When you kiss me, heaven sighs.."

Somehow she makes it to the end.

"I can see why your mother loved that song," Rebekah sighs once the final notes trail off. "How dreamy." She turns to the piano, and trails her fingers along the keys. Hums a few notes of something odd, something unfamiliar, and yet…

When she begins to sing in a language Elena has only rarely heard from her, her voice clear and cool as running water, she recognizes from the muted expression in Rebekah's eyes what song she must be singing. Whom she must be thinking of.

There is no world in which Elena recollecting her own dead mother in such a poignant manner could ever fail to arouse the same old memories in Rebekah. She's too much of a romantic in every sense of the word to ever resist the invitation to reminisce.

After a moment, Stefan picks up on the direction of the song, and meanders through the notes in a way that sounds almost right.

Elena works very, very hard not to look at Elijah as he draws near to the piano, until he joins Rebekah, his voice a deep baritone as he brushes over those foreign syllables.

To do so would be to ruin the illusion she has somehow managed to spin into a reality—this moment where Rebekah and Elijah—and maybe, just maybe Klaus—can remember their mother together, in this simple, easy way. And if she can convince Klaus to participate… maybe she can wedge the door open for him to agree to Elijah's terms. To Rebekah's desires.

Rebekah and Elijah paint a pretty picture. Together, the two of them look more like dazzling comets, lost in time amidst the never ending backdrop of the cosmos, than they do like creatures of flesh and blood. Like visions of some ancient past sprung forth from dreams. Like family.

All at once, she feels like an intruder in the room. Like she is looking at something between the two siblings that she should not be prying into.

It's natural, then, to take a step back.

To end up next to Klaus, who lingers by the fireplace, observing his brother and sister with a clenched jaw and glistening eyes—a trick of the light, surely.

"Why don't you join them?" Elena asks him after a time.

"They have no need of me."

"But it would still be nice, wouldn't it?"

Klaus looks at her again, and she wishes so badly she knew exactly what he wanted.

Anger wells within her again as her thoughts inevitably flash back to that moment in his bedroom. She still doesn't understand what had happened, or why it had felt…

She used to be able to read him so well.

But now… it would be useless to guess blindly at the magic words that will sway Klaus's thinking into accepting this moment of peace with his family. Impossible to navigate the right phrasing that will sell the lie while still abiding by the parameters of Klaus's old truth compulsion.

So, instead, she tells him the truth of what she wants.

"I would give almost anything to be able to have a moment like that again with my brother." Her voice is so quiet when she speaks that if Klaus were not a vampire, she doubts he would have heard her. "You shouldn't waste this chance."

Klaus looks at her—and it hurts, to expose herself to his inspection, to let him see the way her heart still aches at unexpected times for an unreachable past—but she bears it. Somehow, she always finds a way to bear up under his scrutiny.

Finally, he tears his eyes away, only to look to his family.

And as he joins them, triumph surges in Elena's heart.

She leaves them to it, after that. Best not to prod too much too fast, lest she awaken Klaus's suspicion—but she catches Elijah's eye on her way out the door, catches the way he inclines his head to her, just the barest bit—an acknowledgment that he sees what she has done.

The next day they gather out by the pond on the edge of the property, ostensibly to see how well the population of stocked fish have held up without any bothersome holiday fishermen pestering them for the past several years. They've brought a blanket and thermoses, but for the rest of them these are all just props meant to foster a certain ambiance. For Elena, they are a necessity. Even so, she shivers as the icy wind cuts through her quilted coat while Klaus and Elijah fish with their shirt sleeves rolled up and Rebekah wades past the willow grasses until the water brushes her upper thighs so she can catch silver fish with her hands. Only Stefan disdains the project, instead lying back on the blanket next to Elena and watching the other three vampires with blank disinterest.

It makes her nervous, being so close to Stefan.

"Don't you fish?" he asks her at length.

Elena glances at him sidelong. "I used to."

"At the lake house." He swishes the words around in his mouth. Squints at her. "I remember being there alone with you. Which never made sense, did it, until now." He reaches out, quick as thought, and lays the flat of his palm over her side, just where the knife scar is.

His touch sears her. Makes her want to run. She trembles from the effort of lying still under his touch.

She will never run away from him. Not even now. Especially not now, when everything she took from him is so starkly apparent to the both of them.

"We were there as lovers," he reasons slowly.

She swallows thickly. Feels her heart in her mouth. "Yes. For a weekend getaway."

He glances past them, to where their three erstwhile companions are arguing over a fish that Rebekah has supposedly startled away from the bait.

"To get away from Klaus."

"Well, more the idea of him."

It had been possible, back then. There had been hours at a time where she had been able to place him entirely out of her mind. When she could fill that spot inside of her soul with Stefan, Stefan, Stefan.

He pulls his hand away. Stands. "Did you like pretending?" He's asking about more than that weekend.

Elena can't look at him. "No."

He laughs. "Me neither." Turns and leaves her there so he can sidle up to Rebekah, careless of the way the freezing water soaks into their clothes and hair as they splash in the shallows.

On the trek back to the house, Klaus wordlessly drops his coat around her shoulders.

She's too surprised to do more than pull the coat, still warm from his body, tighter around herself.

Rebekah's flesh is freezing when she draws her into their bedroom back at the chateau. Ice trickles from the loose tendrils of hair around her face.

Her mouth is hot, though, as she pries Klaus's coat from her shoulders and tosses it carelessly onto the floor near the blazing fireplace. The taste of her is vivid and full, like drinking smoke and the nectar from hothouse flowers, and despite the chill, Elena finds herself burning, pressing herself closer into Rebekah, needing something only Rebekah could possibly provide.

After, she finds the coat eaten through with embers.

She doesn't return it, then, but tucks it away into the empty armoire in the Water Garden Rooms instead.

She's drawing in the gardens a few days later when Klaus drops a wooden box with a brass clasp onto the ground at her feet.

Gingerly, Elena picks it up.

Inside, she finds an assortment of brushes.

"These are what you were looking for the other day, were they not?"

Elena glances up sharply at Klaus. "How did you know?"

He settles down next to her on the cold ground, flicking sharp rocks out of his way so he can recline back on his elbows. "Your hands smelled of mineral spirits that day." The day he had kissed her. "It was no great leap to realize you had been hunting through my studio provisions, nor to take stock of what was missing. What wasn't."

She looks down at her drawing, feels her face heating as she feels the weight of Klaus's regard as he studies it in turn. She crumples it up. "I'm not sorry," she mumbles.

His mouth twitches as he takes the balled up paper from her to smooth it out on the dead grass in front of him. "My fault for forgetting I was sheltering a thief." His fingertips trail through the charcoal, come away black. He tilts his head, watching her. "A thief, and what else?"

Elena sorts through the brushes, thumbing at the bristles. Some of these look like they'll be hell to get clean again. She's careful not to look up as she attempts to formulate a proper response. "I'm not sure what you might mean by that." There. Nice and vague, and true enough. Relief whistles through her when she manages to get the sentence out without the compulsion strangling the words.

"Were you in my position, what would you do?"

They both know he's asking about his mother. His family.

"If I could have my mother back? My brother? The rest?" She swallows hard. "I—"

He cuts her off. "Not your mother. I meant if you were me. Contending with my mother. My father, my brothers." But not, tellingly, Rebekah.

His specificity really makes it hard for her to prevaricate. "Would it really be so bad to capitulate? To open up the coffin, see if some sort of peace could be made?"

Klaus shakes his head, a dry, humorless laugh escaping him. "Elijah has sold you a bill of goods if you think my mother's return would slake Mikael's lust for my blood. Or yours, for that matter."

"Rebekah thinks he can be reasoned with. That if she went to him, and spoke up for me, that he'd leave me alone."

"Is that what you want?" he asks. "For Rebekah to bring you home to meet my parents?" His tone is wry, nearly mocking. There's something else there too, which Elena has difficulty identifying. "You would regret it, I assure you."

Elena snatches her drawing back and tucks it away, out of Klaus's grasp. "What I want would be to return to how things were last month, before Elijah came back, but since that's no longer an option—" She throws her hands up in the air. "I don't understand why you can't do this for Rebekah. I don't understand what you have to lose."

"Yet you do understand that even if I open the coffin—even if Rebekah breaks her word to me and leaves, for a time, as she has been wont to do over these many centuries—that I cannot let you go with her, yes?"

She not only understands that, she had told Rebekah as much just a few short weeks ago. Had made the decision herself. Yet to admit that now would feel like a further admission that in her heart, she is not true to Rebekah. And the thing is, she is. She loves Rebekah. She would fight through fire for Rebekah. Would endure hell for her. But she cannot run away with her, not if it means abandoning Klaus. Cannot break her vow to protect the ones she left behind, a vow sealed in her compliance to his will.

At his words, Elena has to look away, into her lap, because there is something worse.

There is a part of her that twists at the idea of leaving him. Of forsaking him.

He misreads her reaction.

She knows it the instant he grabs her chin between his fingers, forcing her to look up and meet his eyes. "Did Elijah promise you that?" His fingers tighten. "Or did he promise to bring you back to Virginia? Is that how he persuaded you to his side?"

Elena yanks hard on his fingers with both hands, but she may as well force a mountain to move. It's only when he chooses to let her go that she is freed. "Elijah hasn't persuaded me to do anything."

"Your tune has changed. When he arrived, you were suspicious of him, and now you would have me bend to his will. If he hasn't turned your head with honey sweet promises, what then? Has he compelled you?" He searches her features as though debating whether or not to compel the answers out of her head himself.

Elena rubs at the sore spots on her face, dimly aware that she'll probably bruise. "I just want to do what's best for Rebekah, okay? That's it. No persuasions necessary."

"Because you love her."

"Yes. Yes, exactly."

Her answer saps the fight from him, the anger.

After all, he loves Rebekah too.

"Elijah cannot be trusted," he murmurs.

"I'm aware."

"No, I don't think you are."

At dinner, Klaus is all smiles. Laughing with his brother and telling jokes, taking deep draughts from his wine glass as the three of them open bottle after bottle, as the conversation lulls into another language—something Eastern European, Elena hesitates to guess—before tripping back into English.

"I wish Kol were here," Rebekah sighs. "You would adore him, Elena, he is always such happy company."

"She would adore him until he ripped her apart, limb from limb," Klaus corrects.

Elena frowns at him. "What, is Kol another ripper?" She'd never had that impression from his writings. He'd seemed like such a studious, carefully reasoned man.

"One significantly less controlled and significantly more dangerous than our dear Stefan here, I should say."

"That's not fair," Rebekah says.

"That's right, I've only had a little more than a century to build my reputation," Stefan agrees, cutting off whatever defense Rebekah was about to summon for Kol. "Give me another nine and I may yet rise to his heights."

"I think you mean fall to his depths," Elijah rebuts, a small smile curling at the corner of his mouth.

"That doesn't account for the mountains of bodies I'd have to climb over to match him."

They all laugh at that, apart from Elena, who sips at her wine and thinks very, very hard about how, while she hadn't found it that funny, she hadn't found it not funny either.

Around her, the four of them start to bicker, warmth and laughter punctuating the barbs that land.

"Oh, it's been too long since we were all gathered together," Rebekah laments, resting her chin on her hand. "Truly, all of us."

"Mayhaps that will soon change," Klaus ventures.

Rebekah sits up straighter. "Do you mean…?"

"Elena suggests it would be in the best interest of all if we could come to terms."

Rebekah grabs her hand so tightly Elena thinks her fingers might break. "Truly?" There's a breathless excitement to her voice, as though she cannot quite get enough air to speak.

"All I did was plead your case," Elena says, a blush rising on her cheeks.

Elijah nods imperceptibly. "Nevertheless, it seems my sister and I owe you a debt of gratitude if you've found a way to make our brother see reason."

Something about the currents in Elijah's voice pings that nagging sense that there is something else she should be grasping, but she's distracted before she can think too much on it by Rebekah's exuberant buoyancy at the prospect of a family reunion.

Rebekah fills the rest of the dinner making plans for the future.

A future in which Elena cannot quite determine how she will figure.

Her eyes catch Klaus's across the table, and a charged moment passes before she can tear her gaze away.

"Peace, Bex," he eventually calls. "I have not agreed to anything just yet."

"But you will."

"Even so."

Stefan chucks her under the chin on the way to the drawing room. "You have a bruise coming up."

Elena doesn't wait up for them that night. She sleeps through Rebekah coming back, only waking when she slots her body in behind hers. Hours later, and Rebekah is still vibrating with excitement.

She lies awake for a time, trying in vain to find rest again before eventually giving up and rolling out of bed, to wander over to the window.

The sun is already a watery yellow ball high in the sky. The few remaining birds that have not yet flown south for the winter chatter on the barren tree branches and steal winter berries from the gardens.

Quietly, she throws on jeans and a sweater and slips into the hall.

Outside their rooms, the chateau is heavy with hushed silence.

The others must have just gone to sleep as well.

That makes her queen of the castle, she thinks, her thoughts drifting back years and years as she ghosts through the halls. Without any particular agenda, she meanders to the kitchens, steals a quick breakfast, and then trails aimlessly through the many rooms of the grand estate.

She ends up grabbing the brushes and the supplies she commandeered from Klaus and venturing onto the grounds to paint, though the conditions don't appeal to her in quite the way that they did the other day.

In truth, nothing appeals to her the way that her garden did back home in New Hampshire, but all of that is gone now. There is no going back.

Late in the afternoon, she gives up, and decides to bring Klaus his brushes back. There just doesn't seem to be any point in painting this place that somehow does not feel right to her.

She's just slipped the freshly clean brushes back into Klaus's sunlit studio within his rooms when she hears his voice, emanating from the reception room on the other side of the door. A moment later, Elijah murmurs a reply.

Something stops her from announcing herself. Some instinct long honed, insisting that if the opportunity to eavesdrop amongst the power brokers in her life presents itself, she needs to take it.

Hardly daring to breath, she pulls back from the door so that there is no chance of either of them detecting her shadow in the doorway and listens in, her fingers gripping her cloaking bracelet all the while.

"You do see how I have much to lose and very little to gain in this scenario?" Klaus asks, obviously continuing a conversation of which Elena has missed the beginning.

"Except everything, of course," Elijah rejoins.

"Everything?"

"Your family for one."

"That's a fool's dream and you know it. There is no way that Father will ever welcome me back as his son. Nor would I want him in return."

Discussing the Great Matter. What else.

"We only ever fractured apart because our keystone was smashed," Elijah insists, weariness and thinning patience evident in his voice.

"She deceived me from the moment of my birth. Lied with every breath. Even in death, she attempted to destroy me. Sought to ensure I would be ever alone should I break the curse."

It occurs to Elena that they've never actually discussed his feelings about that little discovery, that he needs her blood to make hybrids but had first needed to drain her to the point of death in order to break the curse in the first place. That his own mother had been the one to set the terms surprises her. Knowing Klaus and his bottomless loneliness, she can understand a little bit better the resentment and the hurt that would keep him from wanting to release her.

"Consider this then an opportunity to question her yourself and finally find some answers."

"And what of my doppelganger?"

"What about her?"

"What have you promised her? What pretty future did you dangle before her to win her over to your side?"

"I did not have to do any such thing. Her love for our sister proved strong enough to move her on its own."

There's a long pause before Klaus says, so quietly Elena must strain to hear him, "She said much the same herself."

"You may keep her, if you wish."

Elena's breath catches. He says it so casually. As though he has the right to broker for her future.

"Her custody is not yours to dictate." The words are blade sharp.

"I am simply attempting to negotiate terms, brother."

"Would you stand in my way if I were to hand her over to Mikael?"

Elena's blood goes cold. No. There is no way.

The silence between them writhes as Elena waits for Elijah's response.

"What would be the point?" he finally asks.

"We both know there will be no peace with Father without sacrifice."

"And you would be willing to part with her, just like that?"

"I have enough of her blood laid away to keep me in good standing for a long while yet. And it would be worth it to deter Mikael."

Again, the silence presses in as Elijah considers Klaus's words. Eventually, he says, "Keep her or trade her away to quench a portion of our father's bloodlust. I care not, in the end, so long as you agree to the rest." He pauses. "But our sister's wrath will be yours to assuage."

A wave of nausea ripples through her, blurring her vision and turning her thoughts inward as she absorbs how easily Elijah had agreed to her death for the sake of obtaining what he wants. After swearing to her that she could trust him. Her legs fold out from under her and she collapses to the floor, but she barely notices as she grapples with what she's just overheard.

She shouldn't be surprised, of course—not after how he had betrayed her years ago—but somehow, it still stings that she would put all of that behind her against her better judgment and help him, even if she had only done it for Rebekah's sake—

She can't think right now about what Rebekah would choose if she were given a choice between her mother and her. She wants to think she knows what she would choose, except—

Except how can she when Klaus is just on the other side of the door, suggesting they use her as a peace offering, as a sacrifice yet again—

None of it makes sense.

Because she knows—she knows, deep in her heart, in her soul—that the one thing Klaus would never do is allow her to die by someone else's hands.

He is still ever jealous of her death.

Part of her doubts he would even let old age usurp his role for him when the time comes. (If it comes.)

Beyond the doorway, she can hear them exchanging words too quiet for her to decipher, and then the sound of fading footsteps as they quit the rooms.

Minutes later, she's still huddling in the corner of Klaus's studio, thoughts wheeling, fingernails digging bloody trenches in the thin skin of her wrist as she clutches her cloaking bracelet, when Klaus throws the door open and steps inside.

He slides right into her personal space, crouching over her so that she has nowhere to look but at him.

"You see how little Elijah values you. You're a pawn to him and nothing more. Something to be used for whatever brings the greatest value."

Elena blinks at him. "You knew I was in here listening. You meant for me to hear that conversation." God, that was probably why he'd leant her the brushes in the first place. So that he could orchestrate a time and a place for her to eavesdrop.

"Obviously." He frowns. "I hope you didn't take my words to heart."

He had been bluffing when he had suggested handing her over. The sure knowledge of it sweeps over her, a soothing wave that lets her breathe freely again.

"I only meant for you to understand my brother as I do," Klaus continues. "He is not your friend and he will do you no favors."

Slowly, Elena lets go of her wrist. "I never thought he was my friend."

Klaus's gaze lingers on her bloody fingernails before flitting back up to her face. "Yet you were taken in by him just the same."

Of course she was. Even knowing Elijah as she does, she cannot help but wish for him to be the man she once mistook him for.

"Why go through all of this effort to sway me?" she asks when she can find her voice.

"I'm playing a dangerous game against my brother. My father. Very possibly the rest of my family as well. I want you to play by my side." He strokes her hair away from her face. "To wield that wicked mind of yours like the blade it is to aid me in my quest."

The comparison between herself and a dagger stings, but she's sure Klaus meant it to. He has no sweetness left for her anymore.

Elena ducks out of his touch and jumps to her feet. She stares at him hard. "You're not really going to ever let your mother out, are you?" She knows it's true as soon as she says it. Is incandescent with fury that he could be so petty, so selfish, so impossible—that he could break Rebekah's heart like this— could break her own—

Klaus's hand lingers in midair. He drops it as though he had never touched her at all.

"My mother is dead."

The words strip her of all of her anger.

"What?"

"Hadn't you surmised the truth of it yet? My mother has been dead this entire time. Even should I open the coffin, it's not her body they will find in an enchanted stasis. Merely her corpse."

"I don't understand." Why keep her corpse?

Klaus sighs like an old man, then, and suddenly she is overwhelmingly aware that he is, he is, of course he is. He leans back against the wall and settles fully on the floor, and somehow she finds herself sliding down the wall to sit across from him. Finds herself listening as he relays to her memories from a past so distant they may as well be from a dream—of the last days of his mortal life, his boyhood, the horror of the night he was reborn as a monster, the beginning of the end and the confrontation that ended with his mother's heart clenched in his bloody fist. It's awful and pathetic and she pities him and loathes him and loves him as he tells her each wretched detail. She cannot help it. There is not a secret Klaus could tell her that would make her turn away from him. It's a weakness and she knows it but right now she cannot find room within herself to battle it. At some point she reaches out to hold his hand where it lands in a pool of late afternoon winter sunlight. He lets her. Their joined hands are too radiant to look at directly, so she avoids the sight altogether, focusing instead on anything else.

"They're going to be furious with you when they find out," she finally tells him when he finishes.

"They've been furious with me for one reason or another for centuries."

"What's your angle? Why pretend your mother is just in some enchanted sleep?"

"I want the white oak stake my father has in his possession. I'll never know peace until I'm rid of it."

"You think Elijah can deliver it to you."

His eyes catch hers. Blaze. "Yes."

She reads in him all of his intent, his selfish, fearful ambition.

"So that's your grand plan. You're going to trade him your mother for the stake, and then balk at the final moment."

Klaus hums noncommittally, but she hears it for the confirmation it is.

It's a relief, really, to finally have his motives pinned.

And yet…

"Why are you telling me this?" Why trust her with his plans?

"You've already murdered me once. I do not think you have it within you to see me dead a second time."

He is right and he is wrong, but Elena does not feel the need to correct or clarify.

"Say I do help you. What's in it for me?"

Klaus's gaze slides over her face, so slowly it feels as though he's touched her with his hands. "You said before that you wished to return to how things were prior to my brother's arrival. This is the closest I can come to giving you that."

It's a lovely thought, to return to those tranquil, lazy autumn days. When Rebekah had been more hers, somehow. Before Stefan had found out the truth of their past and shoved her away with both hands.

But Klaus had not looked at her quite like this back then. Like he valued her. Needed her. It's a heady thing, for Klaus to show his appreciation of her so openly. Before Elijah showed up—before Klaus decided he wanted her help, for whatever reason—she had hesitated to hope they might be friends.

There is a part of her that thinks being accomplices is even better.

She hopes he might still look at her with so much warmth when this is over and he no longer thinks he needs her.

"What about Rebekah, then? She thinks the two of us are going to run away together once you awaken your mother. She's going to be devastated."

Klaus's eyes darken. "I already warned you not to run away—"

"I didn't agree, I'm just telling you what Rebekah wants. I don't see her sitting down to family dinners once she finds out you've been lying to her again."

He brushes her concerns off. "Let me see to my sister."

"How are you going to keep Elijah from pursuing you after he finds out you lied to him?"

"He'll cool off after a time. And without the white oak stake, of what harm is he truly capable?"

Maybe… maybe it could really be this simple.

And there's more than a little satisfaction in the idea that Elijah will be screwed over in much the same way as he had done to her the night of the sacrifice.

Klaus stands, offers her his hand to pull her to his feet.

"So do we have a deal then?"

Elena frowns at him.

Klaus's word is a mirage, easy to mistake for one thing when he means another. She's been burned by him more times now than she cares to remember.

"Let me think about it."

"But hopefully not for long," he calls after her as she steps past him.

Elena turns back. "What is time to you?"

His mouth twitches, some expression staunched before it could slip fully across his face. When he answers, it's with a vampire's ambiguity. "An illusion."

A/N: Special thank you to bloodbank and brokenbell for all of their support this year. I wouldn't be updating right now without them.

Thank you everyone who has patiently waited for this chapter, and for all of your kind comments and support while I navigated my first year of motherhood.

Please let me know what you think in the comments. Xoxo