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
A canopy of Christmas lights twinkles overhead as Elena hurries back to the pink stucco house. A shimmering rainbow of soft white and pink and blue and green against the clear black of the night sky, shining down from the boughs of wrought iron balconies. Their light just barely filters down to where she passes by on the sidewalk underneath, a shadow slipping through the night.
Marcel has given her his promise that he will not follow her, and though she should not, she believes him.
"If any vampire waylays you," he tells her as they part, "you tell him you're under my protection, got that?"
There's only one vampire on her mind this night. Or lately, it seems, any night at all.
The lights twinkle softly, and inky clouds skate over the milk white face of the waxing gibbous moon, and Elena's heart pounds like thunder in her chest, a deep rolling boom that drums ever faster as she approaches the house she shares with Klaus.
She has stayed out much later than she had planned to (she had never planned to return at all).
If Klaus has returned ahead of her, she has no defenses ready.
And yet the gate is still unlatched, as she left it. Cool moon shadows play over the puddled water on the old brick walkway from an early evening shower. The potted plants ringing the courtyard drip as she skirts by them to the door that she'd left open beneath the gallery. Not against her return, but in a moment of reckless carelessness.
It's terribly easy to slip back in, to return as though she has always meant to, as though she has always been here all along.
And miracles of miracles—Klaus is not here.
He would have been on her in a moment if he were.
Her staccato heart beat would have drawn him like a flame.
She hurries up the stairs to her bedroom, and drags the travel duffel out from the bottom of her armoire. Hastily, she pokes through the lining, searching for that incision in the silk where she had stashed her secret stash. Her fingers search blindly before finally closing over the vervain.
It's hard to be careful with the plant, when she is trying so hard to do this as quickly as possible. Her hands tremble as she pulls it free from its hiding place, and florets scatter to the inside of her bag. She'll have to carefully gather those, lest she lose any of this precious, dwindling weapon.
She stares at the sprig, counting the pale violet flowers, estimating. Three doses left. A week to go. She'll have to time her dosages in order to take one the night of the party. Will have to take the risk of skipping one another night in order to time it just right.
If. If she decides to go through with this.
Either way, she decides to stop taking the vervain. Just for a bit. The dosage she took before dinner will probably last her into tomorrow and after that…
Her thoughts skitter and jump over what could happen to her unawares, but she knows she'll go through with this.
It takes hours for her to sober up.
As she does, the dull creeping horror of what she had almost done claws deeper and deeper into her, a vine beneath her skin, thorns ripping through her flesh to twist into her bones.
Part of her still thinks she should creep back out and throw herself into the river after all, but without the liquor firing her veins, wringing her tears and her blackest heartache out of her, it's no longer the strongest part. And the weight of all of it—the fear, the shame, the exhausting need for it all to just end—is just too much, so she does what she has always done.
She puts it all aside, and she focuses on the matter at hand.
Sometime, later, it'll occur to her that she's never had time to unpack any of her grief. Not for her parents, not for herself, not for anyone. But that will be later.
Klaus comes home an hour after dawn.
She's showered and her powdered sugar stained dress has been balled up and squashed into a corner of the duffel. All evidence of her earlier foray is hidden away. The lights are off, and she lies down on top of the coverlet, staring at the ceiling, her hair dampening the pillow. She's still awake when she hears him come home, and she doesn't bother to pretend that she's been asleep. She's thought about this for hours. This will all go off much better if she keeps her reaction to tonight's revelations as close to the truth as possible. He has to believe her, must not suspect her of more, and the truth is the surest path to that.
There's a little creak from the hallway outside of her room, and then the door opens, so softly and slowly that she would never have noticed it if she weren't waiting for it.
Klaus eases into her room and stands at the foot of her bed.
Elena doesn't acknowledge him, but the way her heart starts to gallop in her chest must surely give away that she knows he's there.
"You should be asleep," he tells her softly.
She continues to ignore him. It's petty and it feels good, to give in to what she wants to do, where he is concerned.
He sits down at the edge of her bed. This close, she can feel the heat radiating from him, and even though she's furious with him, part of her wishes she could reach out to him. It would be good, right now, not to feel so alone.
"You've been crying."
She turns her back to him and shuts her eyes.
She still hasn't made up her mind what she's going to do about Marcel. To join him, or betray him?
But in the meantime, let Klaus think she's just upset. Let him focus on that, and let the rest remain hidden.
When she doesn't come downstairs the next morning, Klaus comes up to fetch her.
"Still abed?" He flicks through her wardrobe, picks out a pullover sweater in a pale rose pink and a pair of jeans, which he tosses on the end of the bed. "Get dressed, I want to take you out."
She doesn't move.
"What's this?" he asks.
The anger wells up in her. "What's this?" she mimics under her breath.
He hears her anyway. His mouth twitches, and she can't tell if he's offended or amused. Probably both.
They go for brunch together in a ridiculously picturesque café in sight of the river. The proximity of it tears her thoughts in opposing directions.
She orders coffee, black, but she only pushes her shrimp and grits around with her fork.
For the most part, it's not too difficult to be in Klaus's company. He's only too happy to keep up more than his end of the conversation, and all she has to do is nod, or say yes or say no. No need to actually engage him, and she's already given herself permission to be act as upset with him as she really feels. Yet after a while, Klaus seems to tire of this, and the silence stretches.
"Are you unwell?" he finally asks her.
"Right as rain."
"That must be cold by now," he says, indicating her breakfast. "I'll order you another plate."
"Why bother? Does it even matter if I enjoy it?"
"You're still upset about last night."
"Gold star for the hybrid," she tells him acidly, throwing his phrase back at him.
He looks at her like he doesn't really understand her at all. It's bewildering, totally topsy-turvy, and reminds her yet again how little he values her as a person, how much he sees her as his possession instead. She hates him so much.
"Even a century ago," he tells her, length, "this would have been the normal course of things. Womanhood, motherhood—if I had found you a century ago, you wouldn't fight me on this."
"It's not about whether it's 1910 or 2010." She cuts a shrimp up into little bitty pieces while she talks. Wishes she were cutting him up. "It's about you treating me like— like one of your playthings. One of your victims."
"To be fair, you're the only one of my victims that's ever gotten back up again."
"Is my whole life a joke to you?" It feels good, to let every ounce of her bitterness seep into her voice.
He studies her for a beat, and then beckons the waiter over. Does, in fact, order her a fresh plate.
When the waiter disappears, he touches her wrist and draws her gaze over to his. "I want you to stop worrying about the baby. Stop thinking about it at all. Just enjoy yourself."
The vervain in her system is weaker than it was last night, when Marcel had apparently tried to compel her, because this time, she can feel the command try to take root within her, feel those hooks trying to sink into her mind, the failure like a long scratch against the base of her skull as the vervain shakes the compulsion off.
It had never occurred to her that he would try to compel her. Internally, she scrambles. Hates him just a little bit more for making her pretend to be okay, for denying her the opportunity to take everything out on him as much as he so richly deserves.
Elena offers him a smile, like flipping a switch inside of herself. "Are we going to the museum today?" Perhaps that was laying it on too thick with him, but he had mention the art museum down at the end of Esplanade as somewhere he had wanted to take her. Supposedly, he has a painting there, though she wants to doubt him.
(She had remembered the drawings she had found in his library so many months ago, and she had thought maybe and fought the warmth in her face. What a fool she was.)
The suggestion and the smile seem to satisfy Klaus. Her new plate of food arrives, and this time, she has to make a show of relishing every bite, has to keep up her end of the conversation as Klaus discusses the founding of the museum, the architectural plans, which pieces he insisted on for the initial collection. The usual. She tunes it out a little and focuses on giving him the performance of her life. She laughs. She asks him questions. She wrinkles her nose and rolls her eyes, all of the things she would have done if they had had this conversation yesterday morning instead of today. Every single aspect of her performance, down to the rhythm of her heart, the cadence of her breath, and the tension in her shoulders must be absolutely perfect in order to sell him on this.
If she fails, if her vervain stash is discovered, Klaus will seek a reckoning, she is sure of it.
They take a car down Esplanade into City Park in Mid City, where the live oaks draped in Spanish moss tower over the neo-classical façade of the New Orleans Art Museum.
There's a retrospective up, showcasing the original collection, and Klaus takes particular satisfaction in telling her about each painting. He stands just behind her, the way he did when they went to the Cabildo (the way he did when he killed her). She tries not to lean into him, to ignore the pull she feels toward his embrace.
Logically, she knows he's only held her in his arms a handful of times, and almost every single one of those experiences had been horrific for her. And yet, she's dreamed of him so often, and had been having such a nice time with him until last night, that she has to keep reminding herself where they truly stand.
For the first time, she wishes he would take her back to that awful manor house with its lonely grounds and empty halls. Everything had been clearer back there, and nothing had been fun. Locked away like that, there had been no way to ever forget where they stood.
In the third gallery, he pauses and drags her over to the center of the room.
"This is it."
She stares blankly at the painting. A bowl of cherries on a table top, a crumpled table cloth, a dripping candle.
"This is your painting?"
"Hm. Haven't seen it in nearly a century."
"I didn't expect anything so… ordinary."
Klaus raises his eyebrow. "What were you expecting?"
"I don't know. You're a millennium old. Something profound, I guess. Something more than what we mere mortals paint." That edges dangerously close to sarcasm, but she catches herself and moderates her tone at the end, and he doesn't pick up on it.
"Cézanne once said he wanted to astonish Parish with an apple. I admired that about him." He reaches out and ghosts his hand over the brushwork in the painting. "I wanted to do that too. I had lost all hope of breaking my curse, and I thought I may have to find another way to prove myself. To make something ordinary extraordinary."
It should be absurd. Klaus, an Original vampire, ordinary. Something about how he says it makes it not, though. He really means it, and though she wishes more than anything to just be an ordinary girl with an ordinary future, she understands him, in that moment, with a clarity that makes her feel unsteady on her feet.
The afternoon drags on. They eventually spill out onto the ground floor, where Klaus takes her over to the café and buys her a latte. The golden four o'clock winter light pours in through the floor to ceiling windows and catches the gold in the hair curling at his nape, the delicate fringe of his eyelashes, pale against his cheek. Everything feels hazy to her as she soaks it in, the unreality of this moment as it subsumes her.
She blames it on that face, she thinks. If he had not been so beautiful. Observing him now, when he's not paying attention to her, when he's doing normal things like fishing cash out of a wallet, she can admit this to herself. There is something about Klaus that magnetizes her, some physical attraction that appeals to her on the deepest level.
That face, and those rare moments of honesty he sometimes offers her, out of the deep blue.
It had been so easy, last night, lying awake in her empty bed, to plan against him, when she hadn't been confronted with the man himself.
He hands her her latte and his fingers brush against hers.
She can feel herself faltering. Wavering.
He offers her his arm, and she takes it, and lets him lead her out into the sunshine, to the sculpture garden where he promises her some fine examples of somethings or others.
Arm and arm and it would be nice to let herself forget about last night, to forget about it all and slip back into a kind of happiness that was purely based on momentary sensation and enjoyment.
She imagines that crack in her resolve as a fissure line going through an ice cliff. It's going to cause a wave when it hits the ocean.
She skips her vervain that night, and the next night too.
Just three doses left, whatever she decides to do about Marcel, and no idea how long Klaus will keep her here, or what she may end up needing it for.
It's a calculated risk, but a risk all the same.
Before she knows it the week has turned into the next, and she is no closer to really making a decision. Klaus hasn't so much as mentioned Marcel's solstice party, and she hasn't yet devised any plausible not-at-all-suspicious way of bringing it up. It's tempting to let the date pass and do nothing at all.
The problem is, with each passing day, it's harder to remain angry with him.
On this particular day, Klaus has left her in the house rather than take her with him. She wonders what he is up to, if he is with Marcel.
For a while, she paces around inside, flips through old books. Almost talks herself into snooping through Klaus's room. Almost. She consoles herself for this great cowardice by passing the hour before noon in the walled garden. At least it's in contradiction of Klaus's standing order not to leave the house without him. There's not much to see, but the garden is still fragrant with the scent of Confederate jasmine, the winter air still fresh on her face. Quiet as she is, she can hear the sounds of the city like a lifepulse, passerbys and cars and trollies as they make their way by, and in the near distance, the boats on the river.
Sometime in the mid-afternoon, she investigates the kitchen, where the refrigerator is always full of fresh produce and the pantry is mysteriously stocked with spices and staples, even though she and Klaus rarely eat in and she never sees who it is who keeps it so meticulously stocked.
She picks through the refrigerator shelves, dully contemplating how wasteful this lifestyle Klaus has neatly slotted her into truly is. A bowl of red and yellow apples sitting on the top shelf of the refrigerator catches her eye, and before she knows it she is sorting through the spice rack, plucking the cinnamon and sugar and nutmeg from the shelf and thinking about how her mother used to bake apples in the fall, when the first crisp cold snaps would frost the yard in silver ice.
Elena's already got a sharp knife in her hands, the blade peeling the first ring of skin from the apple, when she pauses, realizing that the last time she had been in a kitchen to cook, she and Damon had made her family's terrible chili recipe together.
They had parted so poorly.
After all this time, it takes her by surprise, how sharp her longing for him is. How her regret for that time seems to open into an unending cavern in her chest. That sunny August morning in her family kitchen seems impossibly far away now, a dream shimmering on the edge of her mind.
"What are you making?"
The sound of Klaus's voice, that low burr tinged with the most casual curiosity, startles her from her reverie; the knife slips in her fingers and slices her. She drops the knife. Blood wells to the surface between one heartbeat and the next.
She turns to face him, her hand clutched at her breast, and finds him standing in the doorway, frozen. Drinking in the bloodied sight of her with a fixation that makes the very air feel heavier.
"Klaus…" She breathes his name, and if it comes out sounding ragged, it's because it is very hard to think with him looking at her like that. His eyes are very dark when he finally looks up to her face. Those eyes. No longer blue at all, really.
As though his name had unlocked something within him, he prowls toward her. Instinctively, she backs away, until she connects with the kitchen island. Quicker than thought he has her pinned there, one arm on either side of her, locking her into place.
She swallows, but her mouth is suddenly dry, and her throat clicks painfully. "Klaus," she whispers his name again. "What are you doing?" He is so terribly close. She clutches her hand tighter against her, away from him. The motion makes the blood flow more freely. She can feel it trickle down the lines of her palm, onto her wrist.
His eyes linger on her fingers, a caress that makes her stomach swoop. "May I?" He says it so softly, so gently. Just like that, she can imagine what it would be like to let him.
She is very tempted.
"You're scaring me," she tells him.
He lets his hand hover just barely over her left breast. She can feel that phantom touch. "Your heart is thundering, it's true." He tilts his head, takes a deep, slow breath. "But not for fear." His voice is low and rough, and so certain of her. "Elena, let me in." There's an unspoken question in his low, quiet voice. A persuasive desperation, as though her refusal would just undo him. Part of her knows that this is just more illusion, one more pretty trap meant to seduce her. The other part of her, though, the part of her that she can just barely admit is wildly fascinated by him, wants to be seduced. Is already under his thrall.
Trembling, she uncurls her fingers and offers Klaus her finger.
Slowly, oh so slowly, he wraps his fingers around her wrist and guides her hand to his mouth. And then his lips are on her, his tongue laving the wound, stroking her, coaxing the blood free. Languidly, he works his way down to her wrist and to the inside of her elbow, where the blood has trailed.
Klaus has never touched her like this. Not when he kissed her, and not when he bit her. His touch ignites a fever within her, scorches her like tongues of flame licking their way up the insides of her arm. With her free hand, she gives in to persistent temptation and she lets herself run her fingers through his golden hair. Once she starts, she can't stop. Klaus growls against her elbow and pushes into her further, works his way up from her elbow to her shoulder to her neck, and somewhere along the line, the nature of his mouth on her changes. She can feel the sharp tips of his teeth grazing over the curve of her throat, but the feel of his mouth over that sensitive spot at the soft juncture between her neck and shoulder is too delicious for her to care. Heat pools between her legs, a feeling that spreads up her sides when he runs his fingers from the swell of her hips to the curve of her ribcage. It's a full body flush that feeds on the feeling of his hands on her, of his mouth on her.
It is so easy—terribly easy—for her to turn her head, to catch his mouth with hers, to wrap her arms around his neck and bury her hands in his hair and drag him closer.
This kiss is nothing like the one from last fall. Where before, she had been too startled to do more than succumb to his possession of her, here, now, she throws herself enthusiastically into his maddening embrace, kisses him with a desperate ardor born of months of quiet fury and fascination.
Whatever she feels, Klaus does not seem the least bit surprised by this unwieldly need she has. She can feel his smirk against her lips, feel the satisfaction in him as she throws herself into him. His hips pin her against the back of the island, and his hands roam over her body, mapping her, knowing her.
She doesn't put up the least little resistance when he sweeps everything off of the island counter onto the floor, when he places his hands under her thighs and lifts her onto the cold marble surface. It's all she can do to hang onto him without breaking these blood-simmering kisses, to wrap her legs around him and urge him onto the island with her, so that he is on top of her, so that he is pinioned as close to her as she so desperately needs him to be.
She's going to hell for this.
She'll have to worry about that later.
Somewhere along the line she manages to pull Klaus's shirt off and over his head, revels in the feel of his bare skin under her hands, the power that radiates from every line of him. He tears at her sweater, leaving bite marks on the swell of her breast, the curve of her ribcage, and the tender flesh at her waist as he peals it off of her. He deftly unbuckles and unbuttons her jeans and twists her underwear up and over her knees, distracts her terribly while she fumbles with his pants.
There's no preamble, no exploratory touches, just Elena, long leg hooked over Klaus's pale hip and the driving need to have him inside of her. Without her knowing exactly when, that need has become an ache, a powerful emptiness that only he can fill. It coalesces in the pounding of her blood, the insistent slickness between her legs. When he pushes into her, it feels like this moment has always been inevitable, the end she has been careening toward ever since he first offered her his hand.
She blinks into the darkness, lets her eyes adjust to take in the silvery moon shadows skimming over her bed through a crack in the drapes.
One of those shadows is deeper than the rest.
It's not like she remembers everything the next morning super well. Just the faint sense that she'd been dreaming about something the night before. Dreaming about something that, when she thought about it, caused a slight warming of her body. Some misty dream that had left an almost imperceptible tackiness to her skin when she awoke, as though she had been perspiring in her sleep. What it had been about nags at her all the next morning, while she's straightening her hair, while she's putting on her makeup. It's not until she sees Klaus of course that the immediate twinge between her legs causes her to remember.
Oh, how she remembers.
Distantly, she thinks she can hear the beginnings of that avalanche hitting the open water.
"Where are you going?"
"Out. No need to fret, I'll be back by sunrise."
"You always say that. I don't know how much longer I can just," and here she throws her hands up to form the air quotes, "Not fret."
"Why, do you miss me when I'm gone?"
She chooses not to answer that. "How much longer are we going to be here, anyway?"
"No need to be shy about it if you do, sweetheart."
"Klaus."
"I think I like our domestic situation here. Don't you? No reason to hurry back."
Domestic situation. It strikes her that Klaus is always looking for the combination that will make him happy at last. Odd, the way her heart races when she thinks that this could be it.
"What about Rebekah and Stefan? Your hybrids? Are we just ditching them?"
He shrugs. "Only until I have need or want of them again." He checks his coat pocket, and then he's out the door.
Elena paces the halls. The solstice is just three nights away. It's been a terrible gamble, but she hasn't taken any of her vervain since her conversation with Marcel last week. She still doesn't know what to do. Rationally, she knows teaming up with Marcel is an opportunity she cannot afford to miss. After almost five months of captivity, this has been her only meaningful opportunity to escape in a way that will also take down Klaus. If he were bound… if he were bound, then he wouldn't be any more powerful than any of the other Originals. She's already taken down Elijah once. Taken down an Original. She would bet on herself to do it again. (She will always bet on herself.) And then she could return home.
But all of those speculations are moot, of course, because her heart… Her heart, despite everything with Klaus, despite all of the just awful, awful torment he's put her through, is undeniably drawn to him.
(It's a weakness she blames on her Petrova heritage.)
She glances at her wrist watch, a pretty silver chain with a delicate oval face, something Klaus had gifted her. Half past midnight. Hours and hours to go before he returns.
She pauses, frustrated with herself for wanting him to come back. Scrubs her hands through her hair, takes ten deep, slow breaths.
Downstairs, one of the doors creaks open.
He's back early then. Relief shoots through her, followed quickly by an intense wave of irritation at herself for feeling this way.
She descends the stairs slowly, doing her best to project a disinterested air. "You're back early. Is there something…" She trails off, looking at the group of strangers huddled in the front foyer, led by an unfortunately familiar fortune-teller. Her eyes cannot help but linger on where the door has been broken in.
So, probably not just a fortune-teller.
She swallows, her throat clicking tight on the motion. "May I help you?" she asks, finally, at a loss how to handle this.
Agnes steps forward. "Klaus Mikaelson has sent us for you. We need you to come with us. Hurry."
"Let me get my coat."
She keeps her pace steady as she makes it up the stairs, brisk, but not so fast as to give anything away.
Once she reaches the top of the landing, she darts into her room, shuts the door and throws the lock. Every second she can buy might count.
Hastily, she drags her duffle out of her armoire and rifles through it, fumbling for the hole in the lining where she hides her secrets. Her hand closes around the hilt of the bone blade just as she hears a pounding on the door. An odd friction slides against her skin when she touches it, just like the last time, but she shoves any thoughts of the sensation away.
Elena tucks the blade into the back waistband of her jeans and hurries to the window. Yanks the heavy silk curtains out of the way. Not good. The windows are sealed shut. Even if she breaks the window, the sheer drop below onto the street sure to break an ankle at the very least. She'll have to risk it.
The pounding stops. She glances back at the door just in time to see the lock turn over by itself and the door burst open, wood splintering into the air. One of the men Agnes had brought with her stands just outside the threshold, hands down and at his side. Not the usual way to break down a door. If she had been uncertain before, there is no doubt left that she is dealing with a witch coven.
The memory of Agnes's disturbing interest in her sends a shiver up her spine. Why had she been so intrigued? The obvious answer, that she had somehow sensed what Elena is, hangs in the back of Elena's mind, an ominous dark cloud over her thoughts.
The witch raises his hand, and she braces for it, that crushing blackness that comes when magic overpowers the mind, but Agnes pushes her way past him, throws an arm out behind her. "Stop! We must not damage her." Agnes turns to Elena. "Come with us now, child. Do not be afraid. We will not harm you."
By this time, Elena has heard so many lies. Is so sick of being lied to.
She's not given a choice in the end. The two male witches drag her out by the arms, totally immune to her struggle to break free.
A/N: Thank you for all of your lovely reviews, I appreciate each and every one! More soon. Leave me a review to let me know what you think, or drop me a line on tumblr over at livlepretre
**Based on a few reviews I've received for this chapter, I wanted to clarify the following:
1) When Klaus compels Elena to stop worrying about the baby, the compulsion doesn't actually work, because of course the vervain is still in her system from the night before- it's the same reason Marcel couldn't compel her in the previous chapter. So everything after the compulsion is Elena pretending to stop worrying, putting on the show of her life for him while still furious and upset and spiraling. Of course, the line between pretending and actually being get very blurry for her, just like her moral compass gets incredibly blurred on the show.
2) The sex scene is, alas, another dream. More on all of this in the next chapter though!