AN: I am so tired it's ridiculous, but this chapter is for you guys.
When she sees him again, it seems like it's been ages. She can wear his voice, from her mind palace, asking her to let him in. She pictures him, and the walls, waiting. She collapses them, she'll raise them again when he's with her. She hears his footsteps up the stairs. A little slower than usual. He's tired, she recognizes. She makes her bed expand, so he can sit on it without her without being too close, if he wanted that. He's not wearing a suit jacket, and he takes off his shoes before he sits next to her. He says hello, and she tells him it's okay to relax. His back is on her bed before she can adjust her position. She raises the walls.
He tells her of the IV in her arm, and her wet hair, and about a meeting with a coven that was interested in righting the power imbalance. Klaus didn't want to rule with an iron fist. He just wanted to rule, he explains along with the meeting. Once he's done explaining that, and his day, she asks him something. It's a quiet request, and he feels his face soften a little at it. She wants him to go do what he needs to do in the real world, and then fall asleep in her head with her. It's not something new to them, it's the first time she's had a mind palace for it though. He used to do that in the beginning days, when he would wake up to the sounds of her nightmares, gasping and choking for air. She had those for a long time. He'd finally offered to keep her dreams safe, his walls were too old and high for her to ever see something she wasn't supposed to, like his feelings for her or his memories. They just had happy dreams. She needs that, she needs the familiarity, at least right now. He agrees, asking her to keep her walls down until he gets back. No one else in the house wants to be in her head, he assures her. Not unless she wants them there. She tells him to go deal with the real world, she'll wait. And he disappears, and she'll have to rearrange her Elijah room a little, when he's away for a longer time.
He's back faster than she imagined, faster than she had dared to hope, but he's in pajamas. His suit like pajamas, she had given him so much grief for them, and he had always gone with it good-naturedly. She adjusts the light.
"Elijah?" She asks, when the comforter is covering them both.
"Hmm?" He asks.
"I don't think Caroline knows how to enter minds. You might have to teach her when she gets here." She yawns and he tells her he will. He picks a dream scenario, and she closes her eyes and lets his imagination blend into hers.