Disclaimer: Not mine, except for the story itself.

AN: I wrote this as a gift for readergirl37. Happy birthday, Emma! Hope you like my small gift.

*o0O0o*
*stealing all the stars in yesterday's sky*
*o0O0o*

The feeling of vertigo was like the sensation one might feel surviving a drop from an airplane. Her head spun, her lungs on fire as the breath froze in her chest, her heart beating with the power of battle drums.

Confusion danced through Elena's head as the world around her transformed from the forest of trees and the circle of witches, into the formerly grand living room of an abandoned mansion. Familiar, like an old dream.

She shook her head, trying to dispel the strangeness when her eyes caught movement, someone halting at the top of the staircase, startled into stillness... and Elena's world stopped as her eyes were caught by his.

He looked just as he did the last time she'd seen him fifty years ago; just as he did - exactly as he did - the first time she'd seen him two hundred years back; just as he'd looked in the painfully precious century and a half between.

She hadn't thought she would ever see that immortal face ever again. Those sharply angular lines of the face; those depths of honor and humanity and cool practicality in his brown eyes; that hidden, tightly guarded well of love Elena had once thought spoken for and then found herself drinking from so freely; those strong shoulders that had softened at her touch a hundred thousand times.

She hadn't thought she would ever see him again. Not when the last time had ended as he burned into ash in front of Elena's sobbing, screaming, horrified self.

She stared at him. Her heart both breaking and mending at once.

Her dead husband stared at her with surprise. Surprise, but no emotion. Then rushed to her in the space of a heartbeat, halting in front of her as something vital, something Elena knew should be there, - had been there for longer than she'd been ready to see it - was entirely missing.

Still, as he leaned toward her, his nose nearly against the collarbone of her neck while he breathed in deeply, scenting the mortality she had shed nearly three lifetimes ago, Elena could not help the way her buckling knees made her lean toward him too.

His own scent overpowered everything else. The dust of the old house was overcome by sandalwood and old books and the smell of a fresh, clean shirt because he could never attend a meeting without an impeccably pressed suit he'd put on less than an hour back.

"Human," he mused aloud, speaking more to himself than to her, something amused sparking to life "it's impossible."

Elijah.

Her heart was screaming his name. Elena bit into her lip to hold it safely in its place. She could not ruin it now. It had worked, not the way she'd intended it maybe, - she'd tried to bring him forward instead of going back, - but the witches had warned her that playing with time was always unpredictable, always a throw of the dice.

All that mattered was that he was alive. And whole. And in front of her.

She did not care that he did not love her yet now. If there was one thing Elena did not fear, could not fear, it's that there could ever be a world where Elijah did not come to love her in the end.

All she needed was some time. And she'd already stolen herself plenty.

"Hello there," he spoke, unknowingly echoing the himself from her memory.

Elena's rushing heartbeat slowed, her mind pushing her heart aside as the place in her past asserted its facts. She was human - not something she had any intention to remain but useful just now. Klaus's curse was yet to be broken, and the sacrifices he would choose could still be changed. Jenna was still alive.

If she played this right. If she played it just right, she could get back more than just her husband; fix more hearts than just her own.

She tightened her jaw and looked into Elijah's eyes.

"I want to make a deal," she said and felt something warm simmer in her chest as intrigue flickered over the stone of his face, his lips twitching slightly in the way that called out for her to touch with her suddenly itching fingertips.

Within the safety of her own mind, Elena smiled helplessly.

*o0O0o*

AN2: ❤️