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: R
Warnings: Hostage situation/explicit violence/gratuitous angst/dubious consent
Stefan doesn't bring her breakfast the next morning. Really, she's fine with it. If she sees him right now, she might break.
It's later, as she reflects and writes in the diary Stefan had gifted her, that she realizes. Stefan had been a dream—no, a memory of a dream that she had nourished with her heart's blood, but which had never really had any chance of coming true again without terrible consequence. In many ways, it had been her last dream.
But a dreamless sleep is said to be the deepest sleep of all. And she is so, so tired.
The scar startles her each time she catches her reflection. She takes to avoiding looking at her face when she brushes her teeth or straightens her hair, but she still catches glimpses of the unfamiliar line out of the corner of her eye. She cannot really say why, it's just a scar, half an inch long, straight and slender, already looking like it had been healed for years, except—
She'll never pass as Katherine again.
Somehow, that makes her feel like less herself than ever.
Learning to let go is hard.
Elena slips through the house on bare feet, letting the chill of the floor boards soak up into her skin.
Outside, the first frost of the season covers everything with a gleaming silver blanket that sparkles in the weak morning sunlight.
She wanders from room to room, hall to hall, peeking past doors left ajar and peering down corridors, pausing to listen.
Finally, she spots a silvery blonde head of hair disappearing around a corner.
"Rebekah! Wait!"
Rebekah turns, and cocks her head, as she waits for Elena to hurry over to her. There's a vague curiosity in her air, the hawk wondering which way the mouse will run before it kills it.
For a wonder, Stefan is not with her. It's a small mercy, but a mercy all the same.
Elena has too much pride to think that this will be easy, and she doesn't know if she could do this if anyone else were here to listen.
Rebekah crosses her arms under her breasts and flips her hair back over her shoulder. "If you think I'm going to apologize or feel the smallest ounce of pity for taking you down a notch, then you don't know me very well."
Elena frowns. "I didn't come here for that."
"Oh? I suppose then you're here to beg—"
"Rebekah. Just listen." She pauses, and waits until she is sure that Rebekah is not going to go on. She only wants to have to say this once. "You win, Rebekah. I'm taking myself out of the race."
Stefan's name hangs between them, all the more deafening for not being said aloud.
For her part, Rebekah looks like she's just been hit between the eyes. Incredulity flashes in her eyes, and suspicion plays at the corner of her mouth, but beneath those things, a hint of the insecure girl who will never grow up shows. Elena meets her stare for stare and wills the other girl to believe her.
"Really?" she asks, eventually, voice high and uncertain. It occurs to Elena that her usually imperious tone hides that girlish quality about her.
"Really."
"Why? Why now?"
"Because I don't want to hurt him anymore. And because he does love you." Her throat tightens around the last part, some guttering spark within her refusing to surrender, but she forces herself to say it all. To let go.
Another girl might tell her, He loves you, too. Rebekah doesn't. Elena tells herself to be glad that she doesn't.
Brow knit, Rebekah studies her, eyes intent on her face. Finally, she nods. "That's truce then, I suppose." She grimaces. "I'd rather not shake on it."
Not that Elena is stupid enough to believe in truce from one of the Originals.
Perhaps another week goes by. Stefan continues to bring her meals, though Rebekah never lets him stay longer than it takes to deliver them. Whether she is trying to spare Elena the pain of his presence or is simply still too jealous of Stefan's attention remains unclear. Sometimes, he doesn't come at all.
Idly, she wonders whether Rebekah has had to add another layer to Klaus's compulsion in order to keep Stefan from monitoring her more closely. She tears her toast into scraps while she wonders, and dusts the crumbs from her fingers without really noticing what she is doing.
No one makes her do much of anything now. Slowly but surely, the routine has worn away in Klaus's absence. There are two days when she doesn't get out of bed for longer than it takes to bring her trays down to the kitchen, and another three when she goes outside for her walk and sits under the dead maple tree for a long, long time. On the third, she stays until the sun goes down completely and everything settles into the deep dark of a winter night. Her fingers are numb and her mind slow with the cold when Stefan finally remembers to look for her and brings her in.
It's dark, when she first sees him, and it's not until they are inside that she notices the blood ring around his mouth, the dark stain on his grey shirt. Rebekah watches them from the doorway, a smear on her cheek that she doesn't seem to notice. The tag sticks up from her blouse collar; she has it on inside out.
Alone in her bedroom, she forms a fist with her hand. The wind-chapped skin cracks and bleeds as soon as she flexes it. The blood is fever-bright in the lamp light. Vaguely, she thinks Klaus was right, she does need a pair of gloves. She doesn't bother to wash the blood away before falling fully clothed into her bed to sleep.
There just doesn't seem to be a point in much anymore. Her plan to win Stefan over, to subvert Klaus's will, had already reaped its first harvest when he helped her save Matt, but she sees now that taking root in him further will destroy him rather than heal him.
Of course, there is still Tyler. But knowing what she knows about the sire bond, she's at a loss on how to really help him, or even reach him. All she can do is be there for him, as he is there for her. And yet, she doubts that that will be enough, even as she resigns herself that it will have to be.
On the seventh day, Klaus returns.
He returns without warning or preamble.
Elena's at the top of the curving front stairway, just about to come down, when the double doors in the entrance foyer bang open, and Klaus saunters in. Elena freezes.
He looks just as she remembers, only, more. It's a feeling she recalls from that lightning flash moment in the school hallway on Senior Prank Night, when she had turned a corner and he was just there, suddenly, snatching at her arm and leering into her face. The memory of him is never enough to contain the reality, the way the air pressure seems to drop whenever he enters a room, and the hairs at the nape of her neck stand on end, the sense of a storm churning on the edge of a hurricane.
Rebekah and Stefan emerge from the front parlor, and immediately secure Klaus's attention.
They say something to each other, but Elena's heart, galloping in her chest, blocks out whatever it might be.
Elena?
She hears her name, through the thud-thud of her hammering heart. This is probably the time to present herself, but she can't move her feet.
Klaus spots her standing at the top of the stairs anyway, and turns toward her. His face jars loose flashes of dream-memory mixed with the thoughts that surface just before sleep. Thoughts she wishes would remain submerged forever.
A smile, overly warm yet impersonal, starts to pull at his lips. "Ah, there you are. Come now, let's see my girl. I trust Stefan here has been taking care of you." He comes to stand at the foot of the stairs, and holds out his hand for her to take.
The familiarity of the gesture jolts her into moving, into brushing past him, the way this script between them demands.
She goes to lean against the wall by the door, across from where Rebekah and Stefan are waiting. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see a whole crowd standing outside, an air of anxiety to the way they shift and mill. Klaus's new hybrids. She is too afraid to look, lest Tyler not be one of them.
Klaus turns smoothly to follow her, clearly not intending to let her slip past. Amusement roughens his voice when he speaks. "I see you haven't lost an ounce of stubbornness in the past month—" His eyes latch onto her face. He frowns. "What is that?"
The scar on her lip throbs under his scrutiny.
She claps a hand over her mouth, but he bats it away and grips her under the chin, tilts her head this way and that as he glowers at her mouth. Elena pries at his hand, trying to get out from under his focused attention. (A feeble attempt. She always has his attention.)
"That's a bite mark," he remarks, voice so low she would not have heard it if he hadn't been right there. She has no doubt that Stefan and Rebekah have heard him crystal clear though.
Just as quickly as he'd grabbed her he whirls to face the others. "Who," he snarls, "got his teeth into her?"
"Nik, I think you're overreacting," Rebekah begins.
"How? I left express orders for her to be watched over! And look how you return her!"
"Oh, it's hardly noticeable." Rebekah shoots Elena a glare that clearly means, Stay out of this.
"Look at her face and tell me that!" he shouts, gesturing wildly at Elena.
"Oh yes, her face! That's what this is really about, isn't it? Your obsession with that perfect face. Well it's ruined now, isn't it?"
If anything had been close to hand, Klaus would have smashed it. Faster than Elena's eye can track, he's pinned his sister to the wall, his arm pressed tight to her throat, teeth bared at her, and then Stefan pushes his way between them.
"It was me. Klaus, it was me," Stefan insists, a quiet power in his voice. A determination that Elena recognizes from those days from before when his guilt and need for penance laid heaviest on his mind.
The declaration sends everything into a topsy-turvy chaos—Klaus furiously reaches for Stefan and Rebekah pulls him back, shouting, "It's my fault, Nik! I compelled him to do it!" They go on like that, tearing at each other, until Elena cannot stand back any longer. Without a thought she flings herself forward, into the terrible, maybe deadly confrontation.
Desperately, she throws herself between Klaus and Stefan, and grabs a hold of Klaus's shirt. "Stop!" He freezes mid-motion. His hand had been making a dive for Stefan's sternum, and had paused a hair's breadth from her chest. Another millisecond, and she might have been dead.
"Out of the way, Elena," Klaus orders.
She sets her jaw. "No."
Klaus fixes his full attention on her, then. The scar on her lip makes his eyes narrow into slits all over again, but he no longer has the light of murder in his eyes that he had had just a moment ago. The initial rage is passing, like a wave that has crested.
"Tyler," he calls evenly, not breaking eye contact with Elena for a second. "Take Elena back to her room. I need to have a word with the rest of the family."
And just like that, Tyler breaks free from the pack of hybrids outside, a dark familiar shape silhouetted by the bright morning light shining in through the open front door.
She is so relieved to see him that she lets him break her away from the tangle, his gentle hand on her arm leading her back up the stairs, into the relative safety of her bedroom.
"Now," she hears Klaus begin as soon as she is halfway up the steps. "Explain to me how Elena came by that scar. In detail."
Tyler pulls her out of the stairway and down the hall, and Rebekah's answer is lost to the distance.
Left alone with Tyler, the guilt she feels over their last interaction closes in on her.
"How are you?" she asks him quietly. It's a poor start.
He glances at her briefly before turning his eyes forward again. "Getting by."
"I wasn't sure you were coming back."
"Thought that was alright with you."
She opens her bedroom door and pulls him inside. "Look, Ty, I'm sorry."
He scratches at the back of his neck. "You don't have anything to be sorry about, 'Lena."
"No, I do. I forgot that we're both prisoners here, one way or another."
"I'm not a prisoner," he tells her quickly.
She smiles sadly at him and sits down on her bed. "Of course not. But I wasn't acting like your friend, and I'm sorry. I know we're both in difficult situations all the same, and that you're doing your best." She pats the spot next to her and waits for Tyler to settle down next to her before asking, "What happened when you were gone? Were you able to…. help any of Klaus's hybrids?"
"Yeah, if you mean teaching them not to piss Klaus off too much."
Downstairs, she hears a window break.
"Almost everyone who was here before is gone," he continues, like he can't heart the raised voices downstairs. "Sent out on Klaus's orders. We have a new batch here to train. Klaus wants to put me in charge of them, officially."
There's a long silence. She takes the moment to study him. He's dressed in black jeans and a leather jacket, not all that different than something he would have worn back home, but there is still something different about him. He hasn't aged, of course—he never will again—but there is still something older about him than there was just a month ago. A weight to his presence that wasn't there before.
"Where did you go? To… recruit, I mean."
Tyler hunches forward, elbows on knees. He keeps his focus straight ahead as he tells her, "All sorts of places. Some places I wish we hadn't gone." He chews at his lip, still not looking at her. "Out west, mostly. We passed through Louisiana on our way back."
She waits, but he doesn't look like he wants to say anything more on the topic.
Finally, he turns to look her over, sharp eyes measuring each hair on her head.
"More importantly, what really happened here?"
Elena's mouth works. A lie starts to form, but as she looks up into his face, the words wither on her tongue.
She finds that there aren't any words, and when she lunges forward to wrap her arms around Tyler, it doesn't matter, because he folds himself around her, soaks up the tears she didn't even know she was crying, and in the end, he is still here, her friend.
Klaus steps into her room that afternoon, long after Tyler has left.
She's been curled up in the armchair by the window, not really wanting to leave the room while Klaus was on the outs with his sister. Once she had learned that no hearts had been ripped out, and everyone was more or less alright, she had been content to stay where she was.
He comes over to her and peers closely into her face.
"Does it bother you that much?" she asks him acidly.
"Yes."
Elena huffs and pushes past him to start sorting through her dresser drawers, refolding her sweaters just for something to keep her hands busy while she fumes. "You know, I'm glad. Maybe you'll get over your sick fascination with my face now."
She turns her head so she can watch him over her shoulder, through the curtain of her hair. He's just standing there, eyes darker than they should be, still as death as he watches her.
Suddenly, he's right behind her. He reaches past her, chest brushing against her back, and rubs his thumb against the pulse in her wrist. Like this, he is certain to feel every jump in her heart beat. "I told you Bex is as jealous as a cat. Of course she tried to mar you."
Elena breaks her hand away and twists around, so they are face to face. So close, she is forced to tilt her head back to speak to him—almost as though she were waiting to be kissed.
"Am I? Marred?" She's surprised that really wants to know what he thinks.
He touches her upper lip and traces the line out. "I never should have left you with my sister. That was careless." He smiles, but the smile doesn't reach his eyes. "Can I trust you to behave, Elena?"
"Why?" she asks. His finger is still tracing her scar. When she speaks, her mouth brushes his palm. Annoyed, she tosses her head back and leans away from him.
"Some circumstances of which I was not aware were brought to my attention while I was away. I have business to attend to elsewhere."
"What does that have to do with me?"
"It was folly to leave you here. Besides the incident, you're clearly too thin and too pale—I suppose Bex spent the whole time scheming for ways to get around dear Stefan's instructions?" He nods to himself without any sign of affirmation from her. "Of course she did. That leaves us with only one option. I need you to come with me."
Go with him?
Dumbfounded, Elena asks the only question she can think of. "Where?"
This time, the grin on Klaus's face is a true one. "Why, New Orleans of course."
The morning she and Klaus are set to leave, she pulls her diary from her hiding place, and discovers a sprig of vervain pressed between the pages.
A/N: Yeah, so who wants to lay bets on what happens in Nola?
Thanks for reading, and thank you to all of my wonderful reviewers! Your insights and comments have been such a great motivation to get back to writing, and to stay the course with this. Reviews are always appreciated, or if you want to talk tvd, ou can find me on tumblr at livlepretre – my ask box is always open.