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
Elena awakens in the middle of the night to someone looming over her. The shape is an inhumanly still black mass against the deep dark of her room. In the haze of her mind careening toward wakefulness, her thoughts latch onto old childhood nightmares of ghosts and demons, completely forgetting the terrible truth of vampiric reality. She draws breath to scream, but a hand over her mouth stops her.
As her eyes adjust to the moonlight filtering in through the window, Elena can just make out the glow of silvery blonde hair.
Rebekah leans forward, so her lips are against Elena's ear. "I thought it was time for the two of us to have a chat, just the two of us girls." She is so close Elena can feel her mouth curl into a smile against the shell of her ear. Her whole body is pressed against her. "I'm about to take my hand away from your mouth. If you scream, I really will take great pleasure in tearing your larynx out. So your choice, darling."
When Klaus uses pet names on her, Elena can sense a certain level of vague, possessive affection, the kind of affability that'll smile while it tears your throat out. It makes her skin crawl when he calls her sweetheart or love, but there's nothing immediately threatening about it. His endearments are all insinuation.
Rebekah's, on the other hand… Elena senses that darling is the verbal equivalent of Rebekah holding a dagger at her throat. Worse, really. Rebekah's teeth are literally scraping against the underside of her jaw.
Once upon a time, it was her mother who called her sweetheart when she kissed her goodnight, her father who called her darling when she looked like she needed cheering up. Those aren't the immediate associations Elena has with those words anymore. Instead, it's the chill up her spine Rebekah just gave her, the way her stomach twists up in sick nerves when Klaus gets too close. Just one more thing to add to the list of things Elena hates about them.
Nevertheless, when Rebekah takes her hand away from Elena's mouth and pulls back, Elena does not scream. She pushes aside the instincts telling her to run (animal instincts? Petrova instincts?) and gathers her courage like a shield. Very quietly she asks her, "Why not just compel me to stay quiet?"
She can practically hear Rebekah roll her eyes. "Because I wanted to have a conversation, not a monologue."
Elena rises to her elbows and tries to scoot herself into a sitting position, but Rebekah effortlessly keeps her pinned with one hand on her shoulder. It puts Elena off, just a bit. She's used to negotiating these dangerous situations eye to eye, with at least the appearance of equality, if not equality in truth.
After all, she knows: appearance is everything.
Elena decides to play her best and most direct card, hoping to end this before it begins. "Klaus won't like it that you were in here."
"As it happens, I don't particularly care what Klaus would like."
Elena isn't stupid. She knows better than to tell Rebekah that she clearly does care what Klaus would like. It's probably why Rebekah is choosing this midnight tête-à-tête over draining her dry.
"I saw you in the gardens with Stefan," Rebekah continues. She says it casually, her voice oozing boredom. She could be remarking on the weather. Rebekah runs a finger along Elena's exposed collarbone. The gesture is absent, like someone drawing condensation circles on a damp coffee table. Like everything else Rebekah does, the gesture is supposed to communicate to Elena just how worthless, how small, how inconsequential she really is.
Elena sees through her. Perhaps the past year has been a bit of an ego-trip, but she'll never take her own self-worth for granted again, no matter what anyone tries to tell her.
The fact that Rebekah is in here at all proves to her how seriously the vampire is taking her.
"So? I'm in the gardens with Stefan every day." Elena does her best to sound as casual and as flippant as Rebekah.
"I know. It's rather distasteful." Rebekah studies her, head cocked to the side like a bird. "I do have to say, I understand why you're doing it though."
"Doing what? I'm not even allowed outside without Stefan with me, and not even Klaus expects me to go the rest of my life cooped up here." (She thinks about Katherine, stuck in the tomb, but the memory merges with an image of herself, stuck in this house without even the small escape of the yard—but her mind slithers away from that topic as soon as it touches it.)
"You're trying to win Stefan back, obviously. It's all a bit sad, really, but I do understand. I'm stuck on him too."
Elena shakes her head. "You don't know Stefan. And you don't know me. You don't know us."
Rebekah laughs at her. "You're the one who doesn't know what she's talking about."
It might be reckless to challenge Rebekah, but Elena has always thrown herself headlong into trouble. And if Rebekah thinks Elena is going to be an easy victim, someone to walk all over, she'd better think again. "Please, enlighten me then. Because this Stefan? With his emotions turned off, following Klaus's every order? That's not the real Stefan. The real Stefan is kind, and thoughtful, and compassionate. How can you say you know him at all, when he's not even himself right now?"
The moonlight catches on Rebekah's teeth as she smiles. "Oh, but I do know the real Stefan. We're old flames, if you will."
This is the first Elena's heard of this.
"We fell in love back in the twenties, you know," Rebekah continues. "The "roaring twenties" I think they're calling it now. And he was kind." She sighs, a bit wistfully, and lowers her voice, as though they're really having the girl-talk Rebekah labeled this as when she first woke Elena up. "Kind, and thoughtful, and considerate, and everything a girl could want in a fella. The perfect boyfriend. I just adored him."
"If you were such a pair of lovebirds, why hasn't he ever mentioned you?"
"Oh, that's Nick's fault, naturally. He found out we were going to run away together, so he daggered me for ninety years and compelled Stefan to forget all about me."
"Until now." She says it without inflection, without emotion. Like it's just a fact, one of many. Like it might not be the only fact that matters, in the end. She can feel tears forming in her eyes, but she won't give Rebekah the satisfaction of letting them fall.
"Yes. Until now. So Elena. Before you get too carried away with your little schemes, do remember." She traces one finger up and down Elena's cheekbone, over the ridge of her brow, her eyelid, and down the slope of her nose. Her fingers rest against her lips as she speaks. "You were only borrowing him for a time. Now that time is up, and you must give him back. If you don't relinquish him today, your heart will just get broken tomorrow. Are we quite clear?"
"Crystal."
"Glad to hear it." Rebekah rises and straightens up her clothes. "And Elena? Do try to get some rest. You'll need it for your next donation."
She clicks the door shut almost silently, shutting Elena alone in her room with her thoughts and the phantom sensation of Rebekah's touch.
She has trouble sleeping after that.
Sometimes she wakes up and thinks she sees someone standing at the foot of her bed, a shadow deeper than the rest.
It could be Rebekah. But she doesn't think it is.
The idea that Stefan actually has a history with Rebekah throws her. How can she rely on her history with him to pull him out of this, if the ones she is trying to save him from also have a history with him? How deep does his acquaintance with Klaus and Rebekah go?
She remembers, now, how she had overhead Klaus talking about Stefan's ripper past in Chicago. He'd implied that they'd known each other very, very well.
She wants to ask Stefan about his past, but something stops her. A part of herself that does not want to know for sure, because it will make going forward that much harder.
It doesn't matter.
Because—
It's you and me, Stefan.
Always.
She meant that.
She must go on, and so she does.
She does her best not to think of everyone she's left behind. They're far away and safe, and that has to be enough.
It's better if she forgets about them because, unless there is some unforeseen change some future day, she will not see them again.
But she still dreams of them at night. Vague flashes of color, lightening and flame and feathers, Damon's voice in her ear, the way Jeremy cried at their parents' funeral, and didn't at Aunt Jenna's and Uncle John's.
It's to these disjointed strains of thoughts and images that she awakens not long after Rebekah's nocturnal visit.
Once awake, the questions Rebekah brought up mingle with the guilt she feels for abandoning her family back in Mystic Falls.
She lies awake for what must be hours, watching the three-quarters moon through her window, before she decides to hell with it.
Elena throws back her comforter and steps barefoot onto the cold hardwood floor.
She almost expects someone to be standing guard outside her door, but no one's there.
At first, she creeps down familiar paths—past the door to the gardens, through the hall with the long line of portraits and paintings, up long flights of stairs, the carpets plush and rich between her toes. At every turn she expects someone to stop her, to tell her she must go back to bed.
No one does.
It occurs to her that the house may be truly empty. Klaus and Rebekah and Stefan may all be out, the hybrids disposed of for the evening, and Elena left here alone, locked up, the lone treasure in this vault.
Her heart slams against her ribs. What if she really is alone? What would she do?
The delicious thought that she might in actuality be alone nearly every night slithers through her.
Without the others here to remind her of the true state of things, she can imagine herself not the treasure in the vault, but the queen of the castle.
Even if it's not true, she allows herself to believe it for a little while.
She returns to bed just as the last stars are beginning to fade from the night sky.
This is the first of her nighttime wanderings, but not the last.
One night she sees a shaft of light spilling out from a doorway, down one of the third story hallways. As she draws nearer, she sees that the door is ajar, by just an inch. This door has always been closed.
Her instincts tell her someone is behind this door. She can feel it, somehow, in the charge of the air, in the heavy silence that drapes over everything like a shroud.
She pushes through the door anyway, and walks into the room like she has every right to be there. She's the queen of the castle.
Klaus is slumped forward in a low-backed leather armchair, staring fixedly at the fire burning low in the grate, a crystal tumbler of what looks like bourbon carelessly dangling between his fingertips. He looks like he's brooding.
He speaks without looking at her. "I don't recall saying you could come in here."
"The door was open." Elena glances around at the rest of the room—it's a library with polished oak bookcases filled with beautiful leather-bound tomes, and a host of paintings—masterpieces, all—hanging between the bookcases. The fire crackling in the grate casts an orange glow over the room, and makes everything seem soft and warm and inviting. An open decanter of what her nose identifies as—yep—bourbon sits on a sideboard behind the sofa. Yes, Klaus is definitely brooding, because this is definitely the place to go for such things.
Klaus's mouth twitches like he wants to smile before his face smoothes again into that bored, condescending mask he and his sister have perfected. The interest that flares in his eyes isn't her imagination, though.
Yes—whatever it was that had Klaus in a mood before she came in seems forgotten, pushed away for another time. It feels good, to finally have his attention after weeks of nothing.
He eyes her pajama shorts, the camisole that she is only too aware lacks a bra underneath. "And what is my doppelganger doing out of bed at this hour?"
My doppelganger. He says it like he owns her.
He continues, "I hope your night hasn't been disturbed in any way." There's an edge of menace there. Because of course—Klaus wants her rested and healthy, so she will be ready for a lifetime of bleeding for him. Elena wonders what he would do if he knew that Rebekah had come to see her.
She shrugs. "I'm living in a house full of vampires. I was bound to become nocturnal at some point." Distracted by her surroundings and unable to help herself, Elena steps toward one of the bookshelves, and delicately traces her fingers along the spines. Some of the books are very old. Gold flakes speckle her fingertips when she pulls away, leaving titles a little less legible in her wake. "Is this your library?"
"One of them."
One of them. There are already more books in this room alone than Elena has ever seen in a private home. It's the kind of library princes and dukes and earls have in period piece dramas—but then, she forgets. Klaus was once a lord too.
Her hands itch to pull out a book, any book.
And yet, this part of herself—the part that loves a novel more than anything, that dreamed of being a writer, and filled her journals with every thought, feeling, and fear she possessed—this part, she would like to keep from him. He already has so much of her.
Elena turns back to him and finds him watching her. With his face illuminated by flickering firelight, she's taken forcibly back to the night of the sacrifice. He'd watched her like this then, with the singular intensity of a snake watching a vole.
She seats herself on the sofa across from him, separated by only a carved mahogany coffee table, and stares right back.
"Long time no see," she tells him, when the staring contest starts to feel too intimate.
He raises his glass to his lips and takes a sip. He never takes his eyes off of her.
"Didn't realize you'd noticed my absence," he drawls.
"Because I have such an exciting life and wouldn't possibly notice when one of the three people I ever speak to disappears."
"You sound unhappy," he notes. He doesn't, though. On the contrary, he sounds quite pleased. "Did you miss me?" His voice is low, rough, and—God, she hopes she's wrong—teasing.
"No."
"That sounds like a yes, Elena."
She purses her lips. "I don't miss you. I miss…" She misses how easy Klaus made it to define herself against him. Her light to his dark, her good intentions to his bad ones. She misses having him as her rock to dash herself against. The way he made her heart pound and her blood sing—in anger, fear, and excitement. Without him, she feels adrift. Her days march on in one long monotonous dirge, and she is left to all of the feelings quietude and solitude expose—despair, melancholy, ennui, indifference. She misses being certain. She slumps under the weight of his examination, both unwilling and unable to tell him these truths.
"You're looking unwell," he says at length, when it is clear she does not intend to tell him what she really misses. "And you've lost weight. Have you been eating, taking yours vitamins? Exercising?"
"I'm your prisoner, not your pet," she snaps.
"I fail to see the difference."
"You can't just feed me and water me and expect me to flourish."
He puts his glass down on the table and leans back, hand braced against one of his thighs. "Is my care of you inadequate? Do you lack for anything?"
His questions make her furious. She wants to throttle him. "You can't be serious."
He spreads his hands wide in a gesture of placation. "I'm entirely serious, love. Humor me. What would make your time here more enjoyable?"
"I'm never going to enjoy myself."
"Elena."
"I already told you. I'm a person, not a pet. I can't… I can't just eat and sleep and walk around the garden everyday."
A keen look of understanding starts to spread over Klaus's face. "You're bored."
She huffs. "I'm not bored." She sounds like a petulant teenager.
He actually laughs at her, delighted. "You are, though. For what's a body without a lively mind?" He puts a foot up on the table and leans back. "I suppose you were about to finish high school, hm? It was—what was it? – Senior Prank Night when I retrieved you?"
"Yes."
"And what would you have learned this year in school? Calculus? History? Physics?" He doesn't wait for a response before going on. "While I'm afraid that you won't have a proper tutor, I do recall a time when an auto-didactic education was very highly favored. Shall we try that, Elena? What do you say? Shall I open up my library to you, free you to peruse whichever volumes you like best?"
Clearly, Klaus feels as though he's just made her a magnanimous offer, and he's expecting an enthusiastic response.
God, it's a struggle to answer. Just the idea of being able to come in here and read, to escape for just a few hours—it would be heaven, and she feels grateful for his offer. But there's still enough stubborn steel in her that she remembers that it's his fault that she's trapped here, his fault that if she is to read, it must be at his leisure, in his library, and not on her favorite couch in front of the fireplace at the Salvatore Boarding House.
Very carefully, she tells him, "Yes, I would like that."
"Good. Then it's settled." He gives her one of those slow smiles, before standing to pour her a drink from the decanter behind her. His fingers brush hers as he hands her the drink. "A toast then—To your education."
A/N: Please review, and let me know your thoughts—and I'll do my part to keep this momentum rolling.