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: M
Warnings: Canon typical violence, explicit sexual situations, super unhealthy relationships, incest
Elena's eyes snap open and she sits straight up in bed when she awakens from the dream. Her whole body pulses, alive and alert. A pool of moonlight illuminates the foot of the bed, but behind that, the shadows pool and linger. No one is there, she tells herself.
With a trembling hand she reaches past the hem of her underwear and touches the tips of her fingers to herself, where she finds herself wet, the lining of her underwear soaked through. Her thighs and her breasts are damp with perspiration, the sticky feeling she has after she's brought herself off in the dark and quiet of her room. Something she hasn't felt secure enough to try since the summer.
The dream is still as vivid as when she was in it. She can imagine the touch, the taste, of Klaus's body as perfectly as if it was a real memory and not some wicked fantasy her subconscious had boiled up just to punish her. Just the thought of Klaus inside of her sends another wave of desire cresting over her.
Uncertainly, she presses her thumb against her clit and slides two fingers inside of herself. She tries to relax against her pillows and imagine Stefan while she does this, but Klaus's image keeps arising unbidden and soon she gives up. Unwilling to get herself off to thoughts of Klaus, she withdraws and wipes her sticky fingers off on the edge of her blanket.
Maybe she just needs a glass of water. A bit of a walk to calm herself down.
Maybe you just want to run into Klaus, a voice whispers in the back of her mind. She crushes it. But curiosity killed the cat.
She throws on a sweater (the same green one as in the dream?) and pads out of her room, making for the kitchen. The house is silent all the way to the kitchen, and she begins to suspect that everyone is out. The idea calms her immeasurably. After the past few weeks, having a night to herself would be a welcome relief. It would be like it was in the beginning, back when she had explored the house so much more fearlessly than she has explored it recently.
She doesn't venture into the basement level, since she knows that is where Klaus quarters his hybrids. She definitely does not care to see Tyler. Instead, she sticks to the upstairs galleries. She ambles down long halls, through empty rooms and disused parlors.
Suddenly, she pauses down a moonlit hall. There are voices coming from behind a heavy oak door—voices when she had expected everyone was out.
The wind creaks against the glass windows. Outside, skeletal tree branches whip in the wind, sending shadows dancing over the hallway walls. The thick embroidered rug running down the hall does nothing for the chill in the air.
She knows she is not allowed to open any door that is closed, she knows she may regret this, but no one has ever said a word about listening—
There is a moan, low and throaty and it absolutely sends a shiver down her spine. The sensation rolls down her bones, sending waves of hot-cold-hot-cold through her body and leaving her wanting—every physical sensation she has been trying so hard to quash, to bury, over the past hour comes roiling to the surface. Just a touch, anything, after so long, so much loneliness, would be like heaven.
After another moment, she hears a sigh, and a soft, huffing laugh she recognizes. Stefan's behind that door. Stefan and Rebekah. She should leave, really she should, but something roots her to the spot. Some feeling that this, too, cannot be real.
There's a long pause. Everything is silent behind the doors, at least as far as she can make out with her all too human ears. But then the wind groans, and so do the floorboards, and there is a crash, the sound of crystal shattering against marble (she has learned that sound well), and then Rebekah's screaming, absolutely screaming, the words indistinguishable in the vampire's pique.
The door bangs open and then Elena is confronted with Rebekah. She's naked, save for a silk robe she barely bothers to tie together. Her tousled blonde hair resembles a wild lion's mane, and a slick of blood slides down her belly and over her hip bone. Rebekah barely takes note of her before she shoves past her, slamming the door so hard that it bounces for a moment, and Elena catches an eyeful.
For just a moment, she sees— something—
(Stefan and Klaus, Klaus's hands on Stefan's shoulders, Stefan's eyes closed and head tipped back, their bare bodies tangled together, an ivory silk sheet kicked to the foot of the bed—)
The lock on the door catches shut before she can really make sense of what she has seen.
(Except she knows, of course she knows.)
She can still hear them, behind the closed door.
Eventually Rebekah comes back. The blonde looks her up and down. "You're still here?" she asks as she slips past her. She doesn't bother to wait for an answer, as though she'd forgotten that Elena was there as soon as the question fell past her lips.
Why should this new discovery shake her so much, she wonders as she leaves. It's not as though she hadn't known that Stefan and Rebekah were sexually involved. What should one more rival matter? And yet, this is just one more layer, one more obstacle, and this one an obstacle that, if she is very truthful with herself, intimidates her significantly more than Rebekah ever could. Rebekah is petulant and violent and dangerous if you don't pay close attention. Klaus is death.
She had meant to return to her room, get back in bed and pretend she hadn't gone looking where she had been told not to. It would have made things simpler, in some ways, for her old paradigm to remain intact; but of course Klaus has tilted everything on its axis.
It's hard to judge whether her efforts to pry Stefan free may have all been futile because she didn't have the complete picture. Or maybe none of this matters, and she can still win him over with charm alone. Still, the idea preys on her. In what ways might she have miscalculated, because she didn't have the complete picture?
Without really paying attention, she's wandered down into the kitchen, where she's sunk into a wooden chair and laid her face against the cool grain of the scrubbed-down wooden table. For a time, she doesn't have to think.
Dawn has turned the sky a pale, eerie gray when Stefan comes in and leans against the doorjamb. She knows it's him without getting up by the weight of his silence.
"You're not just sleeping with Rebekah, are you?" she asks him, when she finally lifts her head from the table in order to look at him.
Stefan licks his lips. "No."
She'd known, of course, but actually hearing it—
"Do you have feelings for him too, then?" It's not quite what she wants to say. She wants to say, Do you love him? How many people must I share you with?
"It's not romantic. Not like it is between Bex and me."
Not like it is between Bex and me. It's a better and worse answer than she had been hoping for.
"What is it then, just physical?" She pauses. "Is it consensual?" Is he using you? Is he using you because of me?
"As consensual as anything with Klaus ever is. And no, it's not just physical. It's just not about romance, per se."
When she offers him a blank look, he elaborates. "Klaus likes to be in control. He's possessive of those he's close to, and he expresses that physically. He sees me as his brother, someone he wants to be very close to."
"He's not fucking his sister though."
Stefan raises an eyebrow, and all at once she remembers that Rebekah had been in there too.
"Really?"
"We're vampires, Elena. We're going to live forever."
Somehow, this is an element of vampirism that had gone over her head.
"Did you and Damon…?"
"No—but you already know we've shared a woman before."
"And that was when you were human. With Katherine."
"Then and other times."
"Stefan, they're brother and sister."
"Klaus and Rebekah have a history. They work that out in their own way."
Elena presses her fingers to her temples. And then, because she cannot help herself, and because her dream was so vivid, she asks, "Do you like having sex with him?"
"When he's in a good mood."
"And when he's not?"
Stefan doesn't answer her.
"How long has this been going on? All summer?" When she was trying so hard to find him and win him back.
"All summer, all fall, and before then, back in the 20s."
When she thought she needed to rescue him, he was fucking his kidnapper.
How fast he had walked away from her, from them, if it hadn't even taken him the length of the summer to find someone else.
No, that wasn't fair. He had already told her how it was.
I pretended you were dead last summer. You were dead last summer. I wasn't ever going to see you again.
"I don't know what this means," she confesses.
"It doesn't mean anything. Nothing's changed, except you have a bigger picture." He steps forward and offers her his hand.
A bigger picture, not the bigger picture.
She puts her hand in his, and watches as his fingers curl around her own.
He's right in a way; nothing has changed except for her perspective. She may understand Klaus better now, too. Jealous of the ones he loves most—desperate to keep Rebekah and Stefan's attentions and affections, violently disposed when their eyes wander to each other.
Just the thought of getting caught amidst them makes her feel lightheaded, like her legs won't hold her steady.
It had always seemed possible to wrest Stefan over from Rebekah, but she has no confidence that she can win him over if Klaus has his eyes on him.
After all, no one had been able to save her once Klaus set his eyes on her.
Life continues the monotonous cycle.
After breakfast, Stefan helps her into her coat for their morning walk. He pauses, her coat half lifted in his hands, and asks, "When did you get that?"
Elena turns to look at him. "Get what?"
Stefan puts her coat down on her bed and reaches for her. His hand hovers just over the juncture at her neck and shoulder. Heat radiates from the palm of his hand. This close, her body cannot tell the difference between this lingering at a distance and a real touch. "This bruise. What's it from?"
Frowning, Elena heads over to her bathroom mirror and peels her collar back. Sure enough, there's a bruise that's formed overnight, a deep blue-black bruise, red-violet around the edges and irregularly shaped. It could be a thumb print.
Stefan follows her into the bathroom and stands behind her, peering down at the bruise, brows knitted together into a pensive frown.
"Rebekah must've given it to me yesterday," Elena declares before stepping away from the mirror.
This declaration does nothing to soothe Stefan. "I should've interfered."
As though he could've pulled himself together enough for that yesterday.
"It doesn't matter, don't worry about it."
"I have to worry about it."
"Because of Klaus's compulsion?"
"You know why."
Elena purses her lips. "I don't really know that I do. I mean, would you have stepped in solely because Klaus wanted you to? Or would it have been because you didn't want Rebekah to hurt me?"
"Bex is the jealous type. She'd pull you apart like a wish-bone."
"Klaus is the jealous type too."
He doesn't deny it. The knowledge of it hangs between them.
He never does answer her question.
Later, when she is alone, she goes back to the mirror and studies the bruise.
A/N: So, I know, a bit cruel, but all I can say is read carefully, and all will be revealed in time.
Thank you for everyone who reviewed the last chapter, I appreciate your feedback and comments, they really make my day, and your comments are such wonderful motivation to write and continue working on this story!
That being said, please leave me a review if you're enjoying! Lots more K/E coming up this next chapter, + some reaction…