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: T for now, but will become R in later chapters
Warnings: I'll be adding more warnings as I update, but for now, hostage situation/explicit violence/gratuitous angst
After a week of bed-rest, Klaus determines that Elena is fit to leave her room.
He tucks her hand into his arm and leads her down the dim hallways of this unfamiliar house. It's a sprawling place, much bigger than she would have thought when she was pent-up inside her room.
She does her best to memorize her surroundings, but Klaus is much too distracting for her to focus. She can feel the heat radiating from his skin through his shirt, hotter than any human would be. Stefan had always been a little cooler than normal, but Damon had been hot to the touch like this. All that human blood, pumping and buzzing through long-dead veins.
She wants to tell Klaus she can walk by herself just fine, thank you, but knows it will do no good. Instead she asks, "Whose house is this?"
He looks at her like she's dense. "Mine, of course."
They pass by a window. It's her first chance to look outside.
Elena peers through the frosted glass, but can't make sense of anything she sees. Even the tall trees darkening the yard seem strange to her. They waver and dance when she looks at them too closely.
"Where are we?" she asks, only half aware that she has spoken at all.
"Somewhere I can guarantee you will never be found."
She says something incoherent, then, about locator spells—
"I've had the property shored up, as it stands, against tracer spells and the like. Should your little witch try to find you, the spell will say you simply don't exist. The evidence will indicate your death." He says it all so casually, it's as though he hasn't just smashed the last of her hopes.
These are the last words she wants to hear, but they do her a single favor: they allow her to let go of everyone she has left behind. The knowledge that if they can't find her, they won't come looking for her, and that they will all stay safe and alive because of that, keeps her warm at night as she finishes recuperating from her first donation to Klaus's "cause." And then, during the day, when she entertains the idea of escape, of foiling Klaus's plans because they cannot be good or right—she thinks of Stefan, and of Tyler. How can she make her escape without putting their lives at risk? How can she save herself if it means she cannot save them?
She wonders if it would be so terrible to stay. To keep speaking to Stefan, reasoning with Tyler. Pouring her love into them, until she can get them all out of this. Because there is part of her that always has hope.
Even if it kills her.
Fresh clothes appear in the drawers of her dresser every few days. They're simple items, reminiscent of what she used to wear to school. Soft sweaters, dark wash blue jeans, converse sneakers. Tank tops and sleep shorts and cream colored soft-cup bras. It all fits, and she wonders who it was who bought her these things. The same is true of the adjoining bathroom—the bubble bath for her claw-foot tub, the shampoo and conditioner for her long dark hair, the scarlet towels for her body—all of it is seen to, replenished without her even noticing when it happened.
And there is a flat iron.
Eventually she earns the privilege to wander around the house as she pleases. So long as Stefan escorts her, she's even allowed to walk in the damp gardens outside.
The first time he takes her out, the morning rain has just cleared. She bounds away from him immediately, euphoric with the smell of the dewy grass and the sight of crystalline water droplets rolling off of the limp flowerheads.
Stefan snatches at her forearm a yard from the flowerbeds. His scowl, so reminiscent of the perpetual frown he wore in the weeks leading up to the sacrifice, tips her off.
"Relax, Stefan, I'm not going to hurt myself." She swallows the sudden lump in her throat as it occurs to her that he might care for entirely different reasons now. "I just got excited after being inside for so long."
His grip loosens, but he doesn't pull away.
Elena places her hand over his. "Stefan?"
Something shifts in his face, in the weight of his open palm against the flesh of her arm. He opens his mouth to speak but stops just before he voices the thought. Stefan clenches his jaw, lips parted. The sunlight catches his bone-white back teeth. He touches his fingers to the base of her throat, where she knows he can feel her heart gallop.
"Stefan?" Rebekah's clear voice whistles through the air.
Stefan darts from her like she will burn him. "Over here," he calls, stuffing his hands into the back-pockets of his jeans.
"What are you doing with her?" Rebekah asks him as she saunters over, tone more than indicating her opinion of Elena.
"Klaus wants me to babysit the bloodbank—says she needs the exercise to recover quickly."
"Oh. Well—" Rebekah smiles as she speaks, all glistening incisors and cherry red lips. She draws Stefan's face toward her and catches his lips against her own. Her lipstick smears on his lips, and for a moment his mouth looks as though it is tinged with blood.
When they pull apart, Rebekah keeps her arms twined around Stefan's bicep.
Elena can't bring herself to look at them as she grinds out, "I'd like to get back to our walk, Stefan."
Rebekah pouts. "Stefan, you should really consider showing me half the consideration you show Klaus's chit."
Klaus's chit. It's all so clear in Rebekah's mind. Elena belongs to Klaus and Rebekah belongs with Stefan. The thought makes her want to scream.
Stefan hasn't looked Elena's way once since Rebekah joined them. He makes a point, now, to look right at her as he throws his arm over Rebekah's shoulders and says, "No need to be jealous, Bex. Elena's just an assignment to me."
Her better judgment tells her that Stefan is just saying these things to placate Rebekah, that she should leave the subject alone. But the girl who still loves the man this monster used to be won't let her.
Whatever it was that had passed between them when they were alone just a moment ago will not let her.
She raises her chin and meets him stare for stare. "Stefan, I know that's not true. I know I mean more to you than—"
"Elena," Stefan interrupts. "Just stop."
I have to be strong.
She stops, but she does not quit.
The rules are very few, but very strict.
She must not miss any meals, and she must take the vitamins Stefan sets out for her each night before bed. She is allowed to wander the house at will, though she has been warned against opening any closed doors or prying into any locked drawers. The garden is hers to enjoy, so long as she is under Stefan's supervision. And of course, she cannot leave, and, eventually, she must give blood.
If she follows these rules, then her days are her own, and she has the freedom to fill them in any way that she desires.
The consequences for breaking these rules do not bear thinking upon.
Klaus stops visiting her.
It shouldn't bother her, but it does.
Truth be told, the house becomes a bit tedious once the initial fear and anxiety starts to wear off.
The problem, she supposes, is that there's really not enough to fill her time. If she had any intention to escape, she would spend her time plotting. Instead, she takes to wandering the house, meandering down long hallways and peering into unused rooms, the furniture within them covered in white sheets.
Sometimes she'll look out the window and see dark shapes moving around the grounds, or hear a creaking floorboard and swear that there's someone just around a corner.
At night, she can hear Rebekah's laughter, floating through the house like a ghost.
Twice, she sees Tyler on her way in or out from her morning walks with Stefan. He's always with someone—following Klaus, or talking to what she assumes must be the new hybrids. She can't make out their voices, only a low buzz. They are always at a distance.
She wishes she could speak to him, but after that first day, she's never had the chance.
"What does Klaus have Tyler doing?" she asks Stefan one morning in late September.
Stefan shrugs, like it really doesn't matter to him.
It occurs to Elena that while Stefan is trusted, a member of the inner circle, "the family," Tyler is just a lackey. The only difference between him and every other hybrid is that Elena is willing to give up her future for him. His worth is quite literally measured in her love for him.
She slips her hand into the crook of Stefan's arm as they take a turn around a bend in the garden, to where the asters are blooming in pale pink bursts.
He starts to pull away from her touch.
"The grass is wet, Stefan. I don't want to slip and fall," she tells him reasonably.
He raises his eyebrows at her. His expressions says, I know what you're doing. He allows her to keep touching him.
His skin is hot to the touch now, just like Klaus's. She wonders briefly how many people he's killed just since she arrived, but she pushes that thought out of her mind. She must focus if she's going to accomplish her goals.
"It must be Homecoming back home, just about now," she murmurs.
"Wishing I'd ask you to a dance?" He's doing his best to sound snide, to make fun of her, but there's something in his voice, something that she and maybe only she can read, that tells her he's the one who wishes they could dance.
She redirects their conversation. "Why are you protecting me, Stefan?"
"Klaus has given me very clear instructions." He narrows his eyes at her. "You think it's more than that though, don't you?"
Elena looks away from him. "Your words, not mine."
"I know what you're trying to do, Elena," he drawls, tone mocking and amused. "You're trying to give me those pretty dark eyes of yours, all filled up with sympathy and love and understanding, and you'll try to convince me to come back to you. It's too late for that."
He still hasn't pulled away from her touch.
"You're forgetting something, Stefan. I know you. Better than anyone. And I won't give up on you, not ever."
He turns to face her. Stefan's hands hover over her shoulders like he wants to crush them in his grip, shake her, but he can't. He's almost angry, underneath that cool mask he's adopted since he flipped his switch back in the gym. The veneer is cracking. His emotions might be turned off, but there is still something underneath all of that driving him. The memory of their love, his most primal desire for her. She knows it's there. Damon could not have loved Katherine for 145 years with his humanity switched off if this were not true.
"Why can't you just let it go, Elena? You'll be happier in the end."
I won't ever be happy without you.
She almost tells him that.
She closes her eyes and leans into him. He is so tense against her that he trembles. That's no matter. Like this, she can almost imagine that it's last year, that they're together at her lake house, just the two of them, alone and in love. She had kept a terrible secret from him then—the secret that she knew she was hurdling toward her own death. And she had revealed that to him, opened herself up completely until he had seen what kind of woman she really was.
If it really were last year, if they really were at that lake house still, she could have told him this secret now, this knowledge she has been sure of ever since he left.
I won't ever be happy without you. I will love you until I die.
She can no longer trust him with her secrets. Klaus made sure of that.
"I'm tired, Stefan. Take me inside."
He has no choice but to obey her direct orders when they pertain to her physical health. He does not offer her his arm, but she takes hold of it anyway.
He escorts her all the way to her bedroom, and lingers at the doorway for a moment like there is something he wants to tell her.
"I'm going to take a nap now, Stefan. I'll see you in a few hours." She shuts the door before he can get out whatever he wants to say. Better to let him sit on it a little while longer, she thinks.
Elena's been dancing to the tune of someone else's song ever since she learned what it meant to be the Petrova doppelganger. Even if it's only in this small way, it satisfies her to make someone else dance to her tune.
She spends a lot of time thinking about agency. Does she have any? If it's her decision to stay, does it still count, even if it's also what Klaus wants?
When she thinks over her time here—going on nearly a month—she has to pluck out the decisions she makes for herself, one by one.
There are not many. Just enough to keep her going.
A/N: For anyone wondering at this point, yes, yes, this is building toward K/E, but it's kind of a slow burn where that is concerned, and it is basically multi-pairing and Elena-centric, so there is going to be a lot of Stelena, because early season 3 Elena is about as in love with Stefan as a person can be in love with another person—which is going to be really important to how the K/E develops.
Reviews are very much appreciated.