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: Suicidal ideation/suicide attempt/hostage situation/explicit violence/gratuitous angst/dubious consent

He's alive?

So it would appear.

Nick, what you're saying cannot be true. Marcel would never—

How do you know what someone would or wouldn't do, if he were abandoned by his family?

The hand that snatches her back closes around her arm like iron. She can hear the whoosh of wind whipping past her ears as someone drags her back onto the levee, from where she had dangled for a heartbeat over the open water.

Angry at being rescued, at being condemned to the future Klaus envisions for her (alone, alone, so totally, completely alone forever), Elena reaches out and blindly slaps the person holding on to her. Her hand strikes, a full-armed backswing, and the shock of contact sends reverberations shooting all up her arm and into her shoulder.

"Whoah now, what do you think you're doing?" a voice like velvet night, smooth as whiskey, asks her. There's something about that warm, calm voice that niggles at Elena's mind.

She looks up into the face of the man who had pried her from the fortune teller that night, in what had quickly turned into a strange and unsettling interlude—Marcel.

"Let me go," she demands.

"So you can throw yourself into the river? No thanks, I'm not in the habit of letting beautiful women I've just saved drown themselves." He stares down at her. "Stop struggling, will you?"

Elena glares at him, but continues trying to break free from him. There's no good comeback for what he had said. She had been trying to drown herself, and that still seems like the most sensible course of action to her. To return her body to the water. She would prefer to die in water than in flames.

Marcel frowns at her. "Say, aren't you that girl Agnes was bothering the other night?" He nods to himself when she doesn't answer. "You are, aren't you."

"The fortune teller? I don't know what she wanted."

He cocks his head and studies her. "Don't tell me whatever fortune she sold you is what had you jumping into the river."

He has the same trick as Klaus of making the extraordinary, the unwieldy, seem small and every day and ultimately inconsequential. All of her emotion, her hopelessness, the pricked bubble of her happiness here, temporary, ephemeral, impossible to recapture after Klaus has knocked the veil of companionship and connection away, all of that is rendered small and amusing in this stranger's eyes, like he can find the warmth and humor in any situation, no matter how dire. On a purely gut level, she both likes him and loathes him for it in equal measure.

And yet, when she turns to stare him in the eyes, ready to snap back at him, something in him softens, a little, and he tells her, "You must be the saddest girl in New Orleans."

The sincerity in his words strikes her, and though they should seem overblown, ridiculous, they don't. She thinks she might be. His words make it suddenly difficult to keep back a ratcheting sob. It's got to be well after midnight, and she's sobering, riding that dangerous low as the alcohol filters out of her bloodstream.

"Why do you say that?" The question nearly sticks in her throat, thick with tears as it is, yet when it does come, it's soft, with a vulnerability that suggests even the slightest hint of malice will destroy her. She hates that she sounds like that, cannot help that she sounds like that.

"Only reason a girl like you would throw herself into the Mississippi were if her heart were broken." He's still staring at her, too intently for comfort. Fixing her face in his mind.

She scrubs furiously at her cheeks and tries to pull away from him. "I'm not doing this over a guy."

"I never said you were."

"I have my reasons."

"Sure you do. Everyone does." He pauses a moment, studying her. "Do you want to talk about it?" He gestures behind him, to the twinkling lights of Café Du Monde. "In my experience, there's nothing coffee and donuts can't fix."

Vividly uncomfortable, she tries again to shrug out of his grasp, but his hold on her is implacable in a frighteningly familiar way. His skin burns hot through the thin layer of her coat. The moonlight catches his ring, set with a tell-tale blue stone.

She should be frightened of this Marcel, this person who apparently makes the rules here, who has taken a sudden and determined interest in her. (Whom she is pretty sure she has heard Klaus and Rebekah whispering about in dark corridors.) But she's not, because she's already faced her nightmares and discovered that no, there is no waking up, there is only this. And she had wanted to try a beignet, to sit in one of the little folding chairs under the awning and watch the city go by.

Perhaps there is still time for that, and she can throw herself into the river afterwards, when Marcel has left her alone.

"Okay."

She lets him lead her down to the little café, and settles herself in. A stripe of white powdered sugar stains the bodice of the beautiful blue dress when she leans carelessly against the table, and more drifts down like snow into the folds of the skirt as she settles it over her knees.

Marcel lounges back in his chair, imminently at ease, as he studies her.

He studies her, and she has the uncanny feeling that his eyes take in everything about her. The direct way she meets his gaze, the scar on her lip, the defiant tilt to her chin, the pounding of her pulse in her throat, and, from the way his eyes linger, the silvery-white raised scars crisscrossing the flesh there.

"I'm Marcel, by the way," he tells her, totally at ease with himself. "I don't think I ever caught your name."

"Elena."

"I haven't seen you around before. Are you visiting?" he asks, instead of the questions she can see percolating behind that warm, reassuring smile.

"Maybe. I don't know."

"That's an odd answer."

"It's not up to me."

"Ah. So you're here with someone then?"

"Unfortunately."

"Boyfriend?"

Elena's mouth twists. "Decidedly no."

He looks like he wants to pursue that, but the waitress appears, dressed in a green apron with a white cap, just in time to save Elena the awkward dancing around an explanation.

Marcel glances at her. "You drink coffee, right?"

Elena nods.

He gives the waitress that brilliant white smile. "Two orders of beignets, and two café au laits."

When he turns back to her, he looks like he's going to continue his earlier questioning. Elena cuts him off.

"Do you live in the Quarter? I've seen you around here twice now."

"Sure. Favorite place in the city is right here, neighborhood where I grew up."

She stirs her finger through a pile of powdered sugar leftover from someone else's order. "Doesn't seem very kid friendly."

"Truth be told, it wasn't. I had a family to look after me, though, so it worked out, more or less."

"Hm." That's more than interesting, in light of what she's heard. Ruthlessly, she suppresses her curiosity. The power plays going on in this city are neither here nor there for her.

She thinks about her own family, her parents, in the pitch dark waters of Virginia, their hair like seaweed in the gloom, the last time her father had held her hand.

"There it is again."

"What?"

"That sadness."

He plants his hands palms down on his knees and cocks his head. "You don't have a family to look after you?"

"No." She tries to clear her throat. "They're—they're all gone, now."

He nods, taking her in stride as easily as she suspects he takes absolutely everything else. Perhaps it was growing up here, or perhaps it is just who Marcel is. "That's hard." Normally, that would just be a platitude, but she gets the strong sense that Marcel is being completely honest with her.

"It is," she tells him, a crack of surprise lancing through her at how earnestly relieved she is, to have someone really listening to her, sincerely acknowledging her feelings.

There's an ease to being with him, sitting quietly and letting the world go by, that she hadn't anticipated when she agreed to join him.

She doesn't dare let her guard down, not with this stranger, but there's a fierce reality to this moment that grounds her unmoored soul.

The waitress comes by and sets their orders in front of them, and Marcel pays. Gingerly, Elena picks up the hot beignet, takes her first bite and promptly inhales a clot of powder sugar that she has to cough up.

Marcel laughs at her.

Astonishingly, she laughs with him. It happens faster than she can think, a reflex just like breathing.

"You remind me of someone. A girl I know," he tells her, tapping his finger against his white glazed coffee cup.

The statement makes her freeze up. She dreads what Marcel might say next. Careless of her, to forget.

"Yeah? How so?" she asks carefully.

Marcel notices the shift in her. Of course he does. He's been singularly focused on her this entire time.

"This girl—she's a tough one, the way I suspect you are. But beneath that, she's just a girl. That's the miracle in her, that she can still find it in herself to be a girl after everything she's been through. That she's strong enough to go on. To laugh."

Definitely not a description of Katherine. She forces herself to relax, even as irritation with him sparks through her. "You're projecting a lot on to me. You don't even know me."

He shrugs. Looks like he's about to go on.

And suddenly she is tired of this. Sobering up, beginning to feel ill with how she had nearly drowned herself, yet careening back and forth in a nervous see-saw between wanting to go through with it still and wanting to get as far from the river as she can. She decides it must be time to cut to the heart of the matter.

"Why did you stop me earlier?"

He tilts his head back and studies her through his lashes. His words sound almost lazy when he says, "Don't you think I'd save anyone? Out of the goodness of my heart? What kind of a person wouldn't?" Lazy, the way a lion is lazy before it goes for the throat.

"Maybe." She knows what kind.

If she looks up, she knows she'll catch him still looking at her, staring the way that lion would stare, all intent and suppressed action. Instead of meeting those eyes, she looks away from him, out into the night, where the levee blocks the river from her view. A set of concrete steps winds up the side, over a set of railroad tracks, before meandering onto the riverwalk.

"You don't have a lot of faith in your fellow mankind, do you?"

She purses her lips.

"Is that it, then? Life is nasty, brutish, and short?"

"You still haven't answered my question."

He leans forward. "Why did I save you?" He nods to himself. "Okay. Let's make a deal, then—I answer your question, you answer mine."

Negotiations. There's something almost comforting about the idea, something familiar and easy.

Her thoughts race. "Sure. But I get to ask a follow up question before I answer yours." He wouldn't have made the offer in the first place unless there is something that he wants, something she could give him. Some reason for this interview beyond mere chance and the kindness of strangers. She's banking on that more heavily than she would like to, but she's faced steeper odds before with more implacable adversaries than this.

"That's not playing fair," he chides her.

"Who said anything about fair? Now answer my question."

When Marcel smiles, it is very, very hard to look away.

"I noticed you up by the river before you jumped. Recognized you from the other night, with Agnes. When I saw you make ready to throw yourself in… Well. I knew I couldn't let that happen without at least talking to you first."

"And because it was out of the goodness of your heart."

"Oh, most definitely." And the weird thing is, he sounds totally sincere. And she believes him!

By their terms she gets one more question. She'd love to ask him why he wanted to talk to her, why he's bothering to talk to her now, is certain, even, that that's where he expects her to go, but she has more important mysteries to solve.

"What exactly did Agnes mean last week when she told you, your city, your rules?"

He pauses. Because he is thinking of telling her the truth, or because he wants her to think that he is?

"Brave or stupid," he mutters to himself.

"What?"

"I've been trying to decide, since I first saw you earlier tonight, wandering all alone in the most dangerous city in America, if you were brave or stupid."

"You're trying to get around answering my question."

"I'm not. It's just, I think I now know which one."

She ignores the bait. It's irrelevant. "And my question? What does that mean, that you set the rules?"

He leans back and spreads his arms. "Just what it said. It's my city, my home, and I rule everyone within it, one way or another."

"What, like you're the prince of the city or something?" She says it lightly, like it's patently ridiculous, except she knows how possible it truly is with his type. Something in his tone tells her that it is so—he really does rule here.

"I'm not the Prince. I'm the King." He's oddly emphatic when he tells her this.

"Why that distinction?"

He wags a finger at her. "Nuh-uh-uh. My turn."

She pushes away from where she had realized she has been leaning over the table toward him, drawn like iron to a magnet, slinks all the way back in her seat as she waits for what Marcel may want from her.

Marcel stares at her for what seems a very long time before he speaks. "Are you here with Klaus Mikaelson?" He asks her this point blank.

"What?"

"You've got bite scars on your neck, you're on vervain, and like I said, I rule here. That's why I know that the only new vampire to come to town is Klaus. Right around the same time you showed up. So. Are you here with Klaus?"

If she needed confirmation on who Klaus has been tangling with, she has it for certain now.

I'm the King. No, Klaus wouldn't like that at all.

Vaguely, she wonders when it was that he had tried to compel her. Shakes her head to clear the thought away. Unimportant.

"I don't know what you're talking about." She stands up to leave, but Marcel grabs hold of her arm quicker than she can blink. "Let me go."

"Not until you answer my question. And don't lie. I'll know it if you do." He never says the word vampire, but it's there between them, just the same. He knows that she knows.

Elena glares at him through slitted eyes. "I'm not here because I want to be, believe me."

"Is that a confirmation?"

Elena sits back down and he releases her. "Yes."

"What does Klaus want with a girl like you?" He squints at her. "And how does a nice girl like you end up with Klaus? Wouldn't you rather be off at college?"

"That's high school, actually, thanks. I was supposed to be a senior this year, but Klaus pulled me out."

"Shit. You're just a kid."

"I haven't been a kid in a long time."

"No. I guess not."

The seconds tick by with neither of them saying anything. Marcel still hasn't touched any of his food, and the taste of the café au lait has begun to grow bitter on Elena's tongue. She thinks about trying to leave again, except… Except some instinct, some nugget of pure insight, passed down from Katerina Petrova herself, compels her to stay and wait for where Marcel is going with this.

As though plucking the thoughts from her head, Marcel tells her, "I never met Katerina Petrova. Never saw a portrait of her either. But Klaus described her to me often enough." More than anything, she wants to escape this moment. And yet—his words, indisputably the most dangerous he could choose to utter, prove hypnotic, a dark sucking pull from which she cannot tear herself away. "He was prone to these black, black moods, because of her. Told me all about the doppelganger he failed to sacrifice, how he'd be cursed to be only half himself forever. But that's changed now, hasn't it? So." And here, that casual air Marcel had adopted all evening falls away from him like a cloak. "Klaus shows up in New Orleans after a century on the run, a hybrid at last, and who does he bring with him? A human girl who matches Katerina Petrova's description exactly."

There must be something he wants from her, she thinks, fighting the gnawing urge to run. Something he can't or he won't just take, or else they wouldn't be sitting here, having this conversation under twinkling white lights. Negotiations are far from over. Everything is fine.

"Is this a threat?" she asks carefully.

"No, actually. It's an invitation."

"To what?"

"I'm throwing a party at my place next week. Night of the solstice. Klaus'll be there. Can you get him to take you?"

"Unlikely. If you haven't noticed, he doesn't take me out when he goes to see you and do" —she gestures vaguely—"whatever it is you do together." She really does not want to dwell on what they might get up to together. "Wait, Klaus is going to your party? I thought you were enemies."

"Oh, we are. Neither of us ever says that out loud though."

Enemies, maybe, but also family. Klaus had called him that, would not have said it if he hadn't meant it. He was so selective about that word.

Unbidden, she wonders if this will be Stefan, one day, plotting to overthrow the old monster.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I want your help. I have a witch, Elena. A strong one. With your blood, she can channel the power of the solstice in order to bind Klaus's power—a reversal of the spell from the sacrifice."

"I suppose I couldn't come with you tonight," she muses. "He'd tear the city apart to look for me." The wind changes direction, whipping the cold night air under the café canopy. "How long have you known I was the doppelganger?"

"Not for certain until tonight. But that didn't stop me from speculating."

"How do I know I can trust you?"

"Because I want Klaus out of my city. He bit one of my guys ten days ago, and just because he cured him in the end, doesn't mean he will next time. He's a walking chaos agent, and I like things orderly." He leans forward, hands braced against the sides of the table. "And Elena, one of my rules?" He waits for her to meet his eyes. "We don't mess with kids. Don't throw your life away, Elena. Help me see justice is done."

She looks away from him. Justice. She would like that. And yet, she still doesn't really know if she can trust him. Worse, this plan may be doomed to fail. If so, wouldn't it be better to tell Klaus everything, to fall on her sword and hope and pray it gets her enough goodwill to make sure to continue protecting her loved ones from his wrath? What he would do if she tried to betray him in this and failed does not bear thinking upon. Except— the thought of that future, where she keeps on as his pet and blood-donor, crushes something deep and yearning within her.

She has no idea what she will do when the appointed time arrives. But, sitting across the table from a powerful vampire, there is only one possible answer she can give.

"I'll help you."

He smiles, one of those great eye-crinkling ones that she bets can get him anything he wants.

Marcel had said he would know if she lied.

He had never realized though—She is a master liar.

A/N: Thank you for reading, and for all of the wonderful reviews! I have to admit, I've been working on this chapter since like July (how do you write Marcel and Elena, they never interact ever?!), but I am so happy it's finished and the scheming has commenced! What do you think—will Elena betray Klaus, or Marcel?

Lots of Klaus in next chapter.