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's strongest association with Stefan is with the sun.
Lazy mornings in bed, cuddled up close, exchanging long, lingering kisses and making each other laugh. That morning at the lake house, when he came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her and the water sparkled like diamonds, so bright she was blind to anything but how happy she was in that one moment. Her last normal day—the last morning day, when he'd taken her to that waterfall and made her climb all the way to the top, their time together measured in the passing of the daylight overhead, until it finally disappeared over the horizon.
She knows that it might be cold and dark now, but the sun also rises.
One morning, she wakes up, stretches her fingers under the cool side of her pillow, and unexpectedly runs into firm, rectangular leather. She throws the pillow out of the way and finds a diary, bound in supple blue leather, bounding waves tooled into the surface. The pages are creamy, the binding crisp.
The blank diary in her hand is so full of potential. Better— it's a physical manifestation of a future where she can imaginer herself filling those pages up.
When Stefan comes in with her breakfast, neither of them make mention of the diary. But she smiles at him all morning, and the one quick smile she gets back is confirmation enough.
Some secrets are best kept if no one ever mentions them.
Once Stefan has left, and she is certain that he is out of hearing-range, Elena routes through her room, looking for an adequate hiding place. She finds a floorboard under her bed that comes loose with some strategic prying. She slips the journal in and hopes it will be safe there.
She and Tyler steal pockets of time together, time where Elena doesn't have to have her guard up, doesn't have to be constantly analyzing and planning and posturing and striving just to survive. A real sense of hope starts to unfurl in her chest. Delicate, yes, but real nonetheless.
She'll never be able to thank Tyler enough for the strength he gives her just by being her friend.
Tyler is as good as his word to her. He never approaches her directly— he still insists that Klaus told him not to, and if he wants to follow the letter of Klaus's orders, and not the spirit, she won't stop him, not when plausible deniability might prove so important for him in the future— but he is very good at making himself available, at finding moments when the other hybrids are distracted and Elena just happens to be traversing the halls, climbing the stairs, hanging around the front door. They spend their time together closeted up in his room, hidden away from the rest of the house.
On their second afternoon together, just two days after Tyler had promised her that he would be there for her, Elena takes her time looking through each one of her friend's drawings.
"What about your old work?" she asks him. "These don't look like the kind of work Jeremy described to me."
Tyler ducks his head stares down at his toes. He's blushing. "Jeremy told you about that?"
She scoffs. "Tyler. My baby brother caught you drawing monsters. Before that was normal. Of course he told me."
"Your brother can be such a little shit sometimes," he tells her.
She puts her hands on her hips. "Tyler Lockwood, Jeremy has always, and continues to be, off limits for your whining."
He holds up his hands. "Hey, now, Elena, I didn't mean to activate the mama-bear reaction."
Elena rolls her eyes at him, but it's such a familiar script that she smiles while she does it. "Apology accepted, I guess." She continues flipping through the drawings. "But you know, I think Jeremy would have liked it, if you'd wanted to talk to him about your drawings. He was an artist too."
"Yeah, that would've flown real well. Don't you know how mercilessly the guys on the team would've gone after me if it'd gotten out that I was having heart-to-hearts with Little Gilbert about art? And don't even get me started on how my dad would've reacted."
"Really? You think it would've been that big a deal?"
"Yes!"
She forgets how tied up Tyler had been with high school social politics. Or what his dad had been like. All of those details of day-to-day life from before the Salvatores came into her life are so rarely dwelled upon, seem so insignificant in the face of what happened afterwards. Still, it stings to hear Tyler's assessment of her brother.
"Do you think you would still feel that way now? If we'd been able to finish out our senior year?"
"About the drawing?"
"About Jeremy. And the drawing," she throws in as an after-thought, because she has the feeling that Tyler is more comfortable talking about his secret artwork than he is about her little brother.
"Look, 'Lena, we can't ever know how it would've played out in the end. Yeah, I think Jeremy was pretty much alright in the end. Colluding with you guys to kill vampires seems like it was really good for him. Built character, or whatever."
"Wow. Tyler Lockwood passes judgment on character."
"I have character," he tells her, so sincerely that she is taken aback.
Elena puts down the sheaf of papers she'd been flipping through and looks at him. She thinks of Tyler, who is so, so flawed. Who picked fights with Jeremy every chance he got during the worst few months of their lives, who treated Matt's sister terribly and made out with his mother, who got Caroline captured and tortured and hurt her so badly. Tyler, who always came through in the end, who helped pick up the pieces when her parents died, who forgave Caroline for her part in his uncle's death, who did not abandon them when he discovered all the secrets they had kept from him. Who had endured horrible pain every full moon for seven months, and yet still kept his sense of humor, his warmth and his loyalty. Who felt such responsibility toward the other hybrids that he would not abandon them, even though she wished he really would. Tyler, who had sworn to be her friend here.
"I know you have character," she tells him seriously. "I see it more every day."
Tyler looks absolutely surprised, surprised and happy, by her affirmation of him. She has always thought Tyler was arrogant, but she sees she was wrong now. Arrogance had only ever been his shield, to hide the uncertainty underneath. What had his life been like, before last year, that that shield should have been so firmly in place by the time they reached puberty? What had he meant, about how his father would have reacted? She had always known that Mayor Lockwood had a temper, especially after a few drinks— everyone knew that. But what if it had been more? Suddenly, everything Elena thought she knew about Tyler is painted in a brand new light, pieces fitting together that had seemed disparate and unrelated in the past. She's ashamed that she never noticed before.
Elena clears her throat, which feels tight all of a sudden, like she might cry. That would be silly, though. Tyler would never forgive her if he thought she pitied him even an ounce.
"So I assume you get to leave whenever you want, right?" She picks up a carton of fine vine charcoal. "Because you definitely didn't have any of these things when you arrived."
"Not whenever I want, no, but sometimes. More often if Klaus decides he trusts us."
"Does he trust you?"
"I've never given him a reason not to."
A thought occurs to her. "Tyler, you have to promise me that you won't ever give him a reason not to trust you. Not for as long as it takes."
"For as long as what takes, Elena?"
She doesn't answer him. "Promise me," she tells him instead.
Tyler studies her like he can see right through her. When had his eyes become so sharp? "I promise." He ruffles the back of his hair. "Geez, asking for lots of those lately, huh?"
"Well, you're the only one who'll make them to me anymore. I have a quota to fill."
"Then I suppose I have a responsibility to you."
"Is that so bad?"
"To be beholden to Elena Gilbert? No, it's not bad at all."
The thing about being with Tyler is that the hours pass more swiftly than they do under any other condition here. She spends two hours longer with him than she meant to, and has to race up the stairs by the kitchen back to her room if she is going to meet Stefan on time for dinner.
She's flying up the stairs between the first and second floor when she runs headlong into Klaus, knocking her precariously off balance. Her arms windmill as she tries to keep herself from tumbling backwards, and there's a moment where she thinks she really will have a nasty fall, but Klaus grabs her by the shoulders and stabilizes her with apparently effortless ease. Like this, they are in nearly identical positions to the last time she saw him that morning in her bedroom, several days ago now.
"Ah, Elena, there you are. I've been searching for you."
Her guard goes up immediately. "Well here I am."
"Hm, and where were you before that? Not in the library, certainly."
"No, I was just in the kitchen," she tells him, scrambling for an excuse. Somehow, she knows better than to let Klaus know she's been spending time with Tyler again. If he knew, he would probably find a way to take that time away from her just to spite her. she hopes he wouldn't kill Tyler if he knew, but she cannot put it past him. There have been too many dead bodies lately for her to put anything past him.
Klaus raises an eyebrow.
"What? I was hungry." Not good. She sounds defensive even to herself.
"Were you, indeed? Are your meals inadequate?" His tone implies that he's just playing along with her.
She wishes she were certain what game they were playing.
"I just wanted a snack, it's not that big of a deal." She pulls out of his hold and he lets her. "Anyway, it's dinner time now. I'm sure Stefan is already waiting for me."
She can feel his eyes on her while she climbs the stairs to the second story, imagines she can feel him listening to her as she makes her way down the hall to her bedroom.
It's only as she is turning into her bedroom that she realizes Klaus never told her why he was looking for her.
After that, Elena is very careful to keep track of the time she spends with Tyler. She doesn't want anyone to notice her absence ever again.
Fall marches on, and the green leaves begin to turn brown in the autumn rain.
Stefan helps her into a warm coat before he takes her out. His fingers linger longer than quite necessary as he adjusts her collar.
Spending time with Tyler puts things in perspective for Elena in a way that had been utterly lacking in her seclusion thus far. It was amazing how just a few carefree, honest hours a week could completely turn around her outlook. There's a dance in her step and a smile on her lips that had been absent so long that she had forgotten she'd ever had them.
Amazingly, Stefan is especially response to her shift in attitude. They're talking again, in ways that they haven't talked since before Klaus's specter had first darkened their lives last winter. Never about anything important. Rather, they talk about anything else, which quickly becomes everything else. Her relationship with him has become surprisingly easy ever since she hit upon the idea of simply not forcing him into difficult discussions.
(Secretly, she thinks that she's accomplished more to turn Stefan to her side in the past week than she had accomplished in the seven weeks of her stay before that time.)
Today, they are dissecting the merits (or, in Elena's opinion, serious demerits) of '80s hair bands. It's drizzling, and the wind bites at Elena's cheeks and nose as she trudges across the lawn with Stefan. The rain droplets hang in a fine mist in the air, like a gauzy curtain of crystals. Each breath she takes steams the air.
"You can say what you want," Elena tells him, "but Bon Jovi and Van Halen both suck."
"What's wrong with you?" Stefan asks. "How can you not like Bon Jovi? It's Bon Jovi." He emphasizes the name like that'll persuaded her.
Elena wrinkles her nose. "Because they're both completely ridiculous? You're only taking this so personally because he was your drinking buddy."
"Well, yeah. But that doesn't change the fact that it's unacceptable for you not to like Bon Jovi." His mouth crooks into a smile as he looks down at her from the corner of his eye. "I can't believe this has never come up before. We listened to Slippery When Wet all the time."
Elena shrugs. "I wasn't going to rain on your parade if you wanted to relive the '80s on the way to school."
"Hey. You have no idea what you're even talking about. Take that back." He frowns. "Besides, it was the '80s. None of it seemed so over-the-top."
"Oooooh getting defensive now, must have hit a nerve." She pats his arm. "It's okay, I won't tell anyone you have terrible taste in music."
"I'm not hearing this right now."
A tongue of lightening splits the sky, followed a moment later by a crack of thunder. They make it inside just before the drizzle becomes a deluge.
The rain persists throughout the day. Bolts of blue lightening illuminate the hallways darkened by the heavy gray clouds outside, and the walls tremble when the thunder rolls through.
Elena returns to the unused music room on the third floor that afternoon. It's a new spot for her, out of the way and seemingly forgotten by the others. Stefan is already there when she enters the room. Just like the last time, he is fiddling with the upright piano, his sleeves rolled up over his elbows, but this time he has what she recognizes as tuning instruments with him.
She closes the door behind her and steps up to the instrument and trails her fingers along the keys. "Are you fixing the piano?" she asks him.
"Just finished."
Elena pulls the bench over from where Stefan had cleared it away to work and taps her finger against C8. She'd had piano lessons— briefly— in the fourth grade. Embarrassingly little skill was left over from that time.
Stefan sits down next to her on the bench. His body presses against her side. The feel of him—- hot and solid— makes her flush. It's likely that Stefan can sense it, all that blood pooling just under her skin, the sweat pricking at her pores.
"There's a better piano downstairs," he tells her. "A grand piano that Klaus keeps tuned in the front parlor."
"Then why did you fix this one?"
He takes a moment to answer. "There are a lot of broken things I can't fix. Even if I wanted to. It's good, sometimes, to fix things."
That has always been his way. Fixing cars or fixing his brother, the desire to make better has always defined him as much as his tendency to be the one who broke them apart in the first place.
Rather than respond, Elena positions her hands over the keys and plays a familiar melody.
"Heart and Soul?" Stefan asks incredulously. "You just spent the morning insisting my taste was terrible, and you're playing Heart and Soul?"
"No, Stefan, we're playing Heart and Soul." She nudges him, and she doesn't pull away from him, and he doesn't push her away.
He acts totally put upon, of course, but he goes along with her anyway. His hands find their rhythm in the song next to hers, and their arms tangle while their hands dance along the keys. Elena can't help but laugh at him while she plays— he is always so serious and so doom and gloomy, and yet here he is, playing a song from her childhood.
Stefan turns his head to look down at her. He looks like he's about to say something to her, but the words die on his lips. Instead, he gets caught in her gaze, the moment going long and syrupy between them, that distended pocket of time between the realization that he is going to kiss her and the actuality of his lips pressed against hers.
It's been over six months since Stefan last kissed her. Back in Mystic Falls, she used to lie awake at night trying to remember what the last kiss had even been. She never could recall. Stefan's departure from her life had been swift and sudden, their final conversation on the town green giving no indication that things would come to such an end between them.
This kiss isn't like the kiss they might have shared in that small window of time between her resurrection and his departure. This kiss is hungry, like Stefan is trying to take as much of her as possible with each pass of his lips over hers. He reaches up and drags her against him, his arms crushing her impossibly close. That's okay. Elena wants to be crushed, if it's Stefan doing the crushing. Her fingers tangle in his hair as she tilts his head for better access to his mouth. She bites his lip, and revels in the silent snarl he makes against her mouth. She wants to claim him just as much as she wants him to claim her.
Vaguely, she registers the door opening before she is struck by a hammering blow to her chest that sends her flying off the bench. She lands heavily against the far wall. Her head smacks against the plaster with a definitive crack. Immediately, Stefan is at her side, checking the back of her head for injuries.
"What the hell did I just walk in on?" Rebekah demands from where she stands at the upright piano. She stands with her hands on her hips, pinning Stefan with her gaze as surely as an insect pinned to a board.
Instead of the unease Elena would expect from him in this situation, he looks totally cool under Rebekah's glare. "That wasn't anything, Bex." His fingers press painfully into the new bruise on the back of her skull.
"Don't patronize me, Stefan, I saw you kissing her!" She picks up the piano bench and hurls it at them. It explodes just above Elena's head, sending splinters raining down onto her. "You're always using your orders from Klaus as an excuse to be with her and I'm sick of it, Stefan. It's always Elena this and Elena that, and when will I be first with you? Do you know what it feels like, for me to come in and find you with her?" Her voice rises wildly as she speaks, an uneven tide of anger and pain like the swell and crash of waves during a storm. Tears run down Rebekah's face even as the vampire's visage transforms her face into something demonic and inhuman. "You know what, I knew something was amiss. I heard her laughing, and I heard the piano, and I just knew something was wrong, and I thought, no, Stefan's good to me, he wouldn't hurt me or betray my trust, not with— what do you call her? oh yes— with Klaus's bloodbank."
"Rebekah—"
"No, Stefan, I'm not going to listen to anymore excuses, I saw you." She turns her attention onto Elena. "I suppose you're feeling really proud of yourself, hm? You got Stefan to stray from me, actually got him to kiss you? Enjoy the memory, darling, because it's the only one you're going to get."
And then Rebekah is on her, tearing her out of Stefan's grasp like it's the easiest thing in the world, her fangs slicing into her neck like a knife through butter. She thinks she might have screamed when Rebekah bit into her, but the sound of her blood pounding in her ears is so loud that she cannot be certain.
For the first time since she has come here, Elena genuinely thinks she is going to die. There's an odd comfort to the familiarity of the feeling.
It only lasts a moment, but it seems like an eternity.
Klaus pulls Rebekah off of her, appearing in the room as suddenly as his sister had only a few minutes before. Rebekah actually stumbles a few steps before catching her balance. Elena's blood drips down her chin and stains the front of her white shirt crimson.
"And who, dear sister, gave you permission to touch my doppelganger?" Klaus asks. His voice is very low, and very dangerous.
Klaus stands protectively between Elena and Rebekah; Rebekah looks as though she would like to have another go at her, but isn't certain she can make it past her brother. Stefan, meanwhile, has perfected his poker face. His expression is carefully blank as he watches the two Originals square off against each other. Undoubtedly the safest course of action. How else, Elena reflects, could Stefan survive these two for long if he were not terribly good at playing the diplomat? Or, no, the courtier.
"Oh, I don't need your bloody permission, Nick," Rebekah retorts, disgust thick in her voice. "The creature deserved it."
"Hardly," Elena mutters. Her vision swims, and her whole body aches.
Klaus turns to eye her speculatively. "And why is that?" he asks Rebekah. "What could possibly entitle you to touch her against my express command?"
"I walked in on her with Stefan. You can't possibly hold me accountable for how I responded. You would have done the same."
Klaus raises his eyebrow and looks to Stefan, who has been quiet throughout the exchange. "With Stefan… or with Stefan?" There's an edge of menace to his tone that Elena distinctly does not like.
"With Stefan!" Rebekah cries.
Klaus saunters over to Stefan's side and lays his hand on Stefan's shoulder. He leans down, slightly, so that they are making eye contact. "This now marks the second time you've betrayed me or mine for this girl, do you realize? How am I supposed to trust you, when I'm not certain where your loyalties lie? When you have a habit of choosing her over us?"
"It wasn't a matter of loyalty. I swear it. It meant nothing."
"Nothing." His voice is flat when he speaks. "I'll be interested to see you prove that to me, Stefan. In the mean time, it seems as though you have an overdue lovers' quarrel. How about you get that over with while I tend to Elena, who means nothing, hm?"
Stefan nods, slowly. He darts a quick glance at her, so fast she would have missed it were her own eyes not riveted to his face.
And then Klaus is grabbing her by the arm to lead her out of the room, in just the manner he grabbed her in the halls on Senior Prank Night. He whisks her back to her bedroom, where he deposits her unceremoniously onto her bed. The momentum makes her bounce on the mattress and she nearly sicks up. She's still bleeding freely from her neck wound, and her head throbs dreadfully.
Wordlessly, Klaus bites into his wrist and offers her the wound from which to drink. She accepts the offer without a fight. She knows that even if she tried to refuse, Klaus would just force her to accept in the end. His blood coats the inside of her mouth, her lips, her teeth. Beneath the normal taste of blood, there is something else there. Something old and dark that she instinctively recognizes. He tastes like power. A power that she, too, possesses.
Afterwards, he leans over her and runs a finger down her neck, coating the digit in the blood that remains on her newly healed neck. He sticks the bloody finger in his mouth and sucks it clean. "Just as I remember you tasting," he murmurs. There's a golden glint to his eyes when he speaks.
In that moment, she's thrown forcibly back in time. She's too terrified to move, lest he want more from her than just that taste.
"That," Klaus tells her as he straightens up, "was a profoundly stupid thing you did today."
Upstairs, the very distinct sound of the upright piano crashing against the wall reverberates through the house.
"It's not my fault that Rebekah acts like a psychopathic toddler."
Klaus laughs at her. The sound is cruel rather than merry. "How conveniently you waive your own guilt on to another party!"
"My guilt? What did I do?"
Klaus clenches his jaw, and she senses the wolf straining at the edges of him. "I've gone to great trouble to keep you alive and to care for you. I'll be angry if you undo all of that in a fit of momentary lust."
"It wasn't lust." She won't go so far as to tell him that she loves Stefan. Despite the fact that he already knows it, it still seems dangerous to remind him. "And besides, do you really expect me to go the rest of my life without companionship?"
"I already offered you mine."
The horrible thought that Klaus is jealous of Stefan unfurls in her mind. She leans away from him, trying to put as much distance between them as she can. "I thought we were finished discussing that."
"Were we? Tell me, now, because I am truly curious. What does it take to get under the lovely Elena's skin? What is the special allure of Stefan Salvatore? — Not that I'm reprimanding your taste, sweetheart— personally, I understand the attraction completely, and he's undoubtedly the superior of the Salvatore brothers— but he is still as vicious a beast as they come. What is the appeal there? Was he your first?"
She blinks at him. "What? No."
He waves his hand at her. "Then explain it to me."
This is a dangerous path Klaus has set her to walk. There are too many pitfalls where Klaus's ego is concerned, and nearly any answer she gives could be catastrophic for Stefan.
And anyway, how could she ever explain her real reasoning? That she had promised Stefan her heart, forever, and that she had meant that pledge, no matter what? That she had faith in him that could overcome what had happened to him this summer? That recognized the tragedy of what Stefan had become because of Klaus? Or that Elena knew, underneath the monster, the boy she loved still lived and breathed. Had still given her a diary with waves tooled onto the cover.
"You wouldn't understand," she tells him.
He smiles at her, and the change in his demeanor to this pleasant facade sends alarm bells ringing in her head. "Are you so certain? I might understand only too well, what it's like to yearn for someone whose loyalties are divided."
"Stefan's loyalties are only divided because you brainwashed him."
"I think you'll find that you're wrong." Klaus backs away from her to lean against the doorway. He tilts his head to look at her. "Are you as fickle as your ancestresses, Elena? I rather hope for your sake that you are. It would be best if you gave Stefan over. As you've seen tonight, Rebekah does have her temper, as well as a possessive streak."
"Gee, that's not familiar at all."
Klaus smiles deepens. It is all sharp teeth. "We do have our family resemblances. I'm sure you're familiar with the concept."
The unmistakable sound of shattering glass wafts downstairs, followed by a crack and the splintering of something large and wooden.
"Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to make certain that my dear sister doesn't quite literally rip Stefan's heart out."
She knows he's probably speaking literally.
She falls asleep on top of her covers, her arms wrapped around her pillow like she had them wrapped around Stefan twenty minutes before.
She dreams.
Stefan is careful to speak with her as little as possible after that afternoon.
On the periphery, Rebekah circles them like a vulture.
She spies Tyler from a second story window, talking to Klaus as they walk the length of the front yard.
The music is what pulls her from her room that night. Perhaps it's stupid, after what happened the last time she left her room too long after dark, but her curiosity gets the best of her. Other than when she and Stefan had had their duet, Elena has heard no music in this house.
Tonight, music reverberates through the walls, pounds into her bones. She crawls out of bed, still dressed in her sleeping tank and cotton pajama shorts, and follows the pulse of it downstairs, to a set of wide double doors that have always been closed before this.
Tyler stands just outside of them. She sees him from the foot of the stairs. Just the sight of him relieves her; she cannot truly believe that anything is amiss if Tyler is a part of it. (Surely, he cannot be so far lost.) When she waves at him and strides over to him, though, he makes a motion like he wants her to stay back.
"Elena! Just the girl I was wanting to see!" Klaus's voice calls to her from beyond the double doors.
Now that she is close enough, she sees that the double doors lead into a large parlor, replete with the grand piano Stefan had mentioned before. There's a roaring fire in the hearth, casting strange shadows over the walls. It is the only light in the room. A mass of people she's never seen before dance and writhe in the cleared out center of the room, where the music is the loudest. Klaus lounges on a leather sofa, a hazy-eyed blonde girl tucked under his arm, and after a moment, she realizes that Stefan is here too, lingering near the back of the room. The piano keys are covered in blood.
Elena looks back at Tyler. No, he's not participating— more like standing attendance.
Tyler shakes his head. I'm sorry, Elena, he mouths at her.
Now that Klaus has seen her, she has no choice but to go to him. Ignoring him is simply not an option. Elena's still staring at Tyler's face, his eyes so large she can see the whites of them all the way around, as she stumbles into the room.
Klaus murmurs something to the blonde girl, who gets up and pours herself a drink, before signaling Elena over to him. He strikes like a viper when she is in range, drawing her down to sit close to his side. "We're having a party," he murmurs in her ear. He offers her his glass. "Would you care for a drink?"
Elena hesitates, glances around. Tentatively, she takes a sip of Klaus's drink and studies the crowd a little further. Not all of them, but many of them have bloody wounds running down their necks, their wrists and shoulders. Others bear the telltale sign of feeding. "How many of these are hybrids?" she asks, indicating the strangers.
"Oh, perhaps half a dozen of them. The rest we got from a college campus. Lots of young people, all eager to have a good time."
"I doubt they signed up to be fed on."
"No one says you can't give a little blood and still have a good time."
The blonde returns and hands Klaus a fresh drink. He clinks his glass against Elena's. "Cheers," he murmurs. "Drink up, love."
Whatever it is, it is very good, and very strong. She feels immediately more relaxed as soon as the burn of it settles in her stomach.
Klaus rests his hand on her bare thigh. His fingers trace patterns and send goosebumps racing over her flesh. She feels all hot and cold. She takes another sip of her drink, hoping it will settle her. Why she doesn't push him away, she cannot say.
"What is Stefan doing?" she asks after a while. She had lost sight of him in the crowd the moment she sat down next to Klaus.
Idly, Klaus continues touching her with just the barest of pressure, fingers tracing lightly toward the curve of her inner thigh. "Whatever I ask him to do. He's making up for yesterday."
"Klaus—"
"I've told him he's not to leave this room until everyone within it is drained absolutely dry. You are, of course, excluded from that instruction."
Elena pulls away from him. Her mouth is hanging open— The proper response here would be to beg Klaus, to ask him not to make Stefan go through with this, to make some sort of clever deal to let the innocent people in the room go— but she fumbles with the word.
At that moment, Rebekah struts into the room. Elena sees her out of the corner of her eye, a flash of bouncing blonde curls and an immaculate white designer sweater.
Klaus, also turns his attention to Rebekah. "Ah, sister, I see you've brought out guest of honor." The way Klaus says this last part is what tells Elena that things are quickly going to go from bad to worse.
She is right.
Clutched by the scruff of his neck, unable to break free of Rebekah's hold, is Matt Donovan.
A/N: Thank you for reading. If you're enjoying, please go ahead and send a review! It really is so wonderful to hear from each of you. You can find me on tumblr at livlepretre if you want to talk tvd, or anything else!