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: Discussion/Implication of Non-Con/Hostage situation/explicit violence/gratuitous angst/extremely dubious consent/potential character death

Her hands do not shake as she turns on the cold water sink tap, and lets the clear, icy water fill her cupped hands. She takes a long, steady drink, and then another, and another, until her stomach feels like it will burst from the cold inside of her. When she is finished, she wipes her mouth on the back of her hand, gathers her hair over her shoulder and out of the way, and stares at herself hard in the mirror.

Foggy pieces she had not wanted to fit together coalesce against her will. Memories of a shadow at the foot of her bed, and mysterious bruises, loose threads at the edges of her mind that slip through her fingers when she tries to tie them together. But she is determined. She works at it, fighting her way toward an understanding that hovers just out of reach. She had known, just for a split-second, when she saw the blue and purple splotch on her neck. She had recognized it and realized— something

—no wait, there's nothing—

The knowledge slips through her grasp.

She tries to think clearly.

Stares hard at the marks on her arms, at the damning bruise on her neck.

Stark and unforgiving comprehension flashes through her. Klaus has touched her before. While she slept, while she was unable to say no to him, he touched her. She knows it, recognizes the truth of it deep in her gut the moment she thinks it.

Part of her has known it for months now. Knew it as soon as she realized he had been in her head, planting those wicked dreams to entice her. She'd known that those bruises she had brushed away without too much thought had been indicative of something more, something sinister. Known it, and been unable to face it. Had conveniently let it slip her mind, after being swept up in the harrowing events that unfolded around the solstice. Had forgotten, almost too easily. As if—

She brings her hands up to her temples, fighting a vicious throbbing in her head. Through it all, she grits her teeth, and refuses to relinquish this line of thought. Refuses to let these connections slither from her mind. She lowers her hands, and stares at herself so fixedly that her eyes sting. The pain passes, bringing hot, bubbling fury and shame in its wake. The morning's revelation remains as bright and hideous as it had been when first she thought of it.

She'd been so breathtakingly stupid, letting Klaus kiss her the other night, letting him touch her and hold her and flirt his way past her defenses with nothing more than a few seemingly (achingly, soul shatteringly) honest words. And she hates him, hates him, because this deception crushes the small, girlish part of her that had hoped. That had given herself permission to want him.

Fuck. Fuck Klaus, for making her dream of him, for making her want him, for invading her thoughts and planting those fantasies and touching her when she had fucking told him no. Fuck Klaus for making her care about him. For treating her like just a pretty doll even after everything. For proving that that is all she'll ever be to him.

She turns away from the mirror, stalks halfway across the bathroom back to her bedroom. She has no idea what she's going to do, but she has to do something—

One of those elusive threads of understanding snaps taught like a whip.

Elena freezes dead in her tracks.

Dreams. Dreams that have confused her, knocked her off balance. Dreams that leave bruises, and aches, and appetites she cannot define.

The realization rears up, complete and perfect and terrible. The blood leeches from her face.

Dreams that are not dreams at all.

He didn't compel you, did he?

A mind that does not want to grasp the facts, or understand what they mean. That wants to brush them away, or forget about them, when they do surface. Isn't that what it's like, to be compelled?

Even now, she shies away from the possibility.

Except, it makes too much sickening sense.

And then she knows. The dreams were all real. And she's been compelled not to forget, but to be unable to put two-and-two together. So that the flavor of those liaisons would linger with her after, so that need to satiate her body's hunger for him would grow and grow and grow, a ravenous beast beneath her skin.

There's this horrible, sucking feeling unfurling within her chest, a churning whirlpool of viscous rage and sharp betrayal and beneath that, worse than that, a raw throbbing anguish that astonishes her as it surfaces, a swift, sharp crescendo that overwhelms every other feeling, razing every other thought and emotion as it devastates her.

Everything goes in and out of focus.

She's on the floor, curled on her side, her face pressed into the winter-cold white tile. She doesn't remember lying down. She takes deep, gulping breaths and shuts her eyes, tries to think.

(She is falling, falling, and she cannot understand how there was ever a part of herself so radiantly sure that he would catch her.)

When had the first dream come about? She casts back in her memories. Before that ill-fated afternoon in the garden, when Klaus had propositioned her in the most degrading way possible? No, later, after that—and the memory spills open inside of her of a night when Klaus had purposefully given her too much to drink, so that she would languidly accept the trace of his fingers on her thighs as they watched the midnight depravations unfold, the two of them separate and apart from everything except the inexplicable, thrilling spark between them. It had been after that, after that strange interview with Matt about her first time, that she had begun to dream of him. She remembers waking up from one of the early, more memorable ones, sticky and unsatisfied. She'd gone to get a glass of water—and thrown on the same green sweater as in her dream. Now that she's thinking about it, she remembers noticing that detail—and forgetting about it as soon as the thought had formed. Even now she must fight to cling to this correlation. To remember…

Her fingers press into the bruise on her neck.

The same sweater. That was it. Yes, the same sweater. Left strewn over the foot of her bed as though she had just taken it off before going to sleep. She feels positive that's not how she remembers that night, until she realizes she doesn't actually remember going to bed that night at all.

There it is then. Evidence, of memories that Klaus has compelled her to remember as dreams.

For a long time, she lies on the bathroom floor, the heels of her hands pressed into her eyes as she tries to wrap her mind, her heart, around this violation.

Should it even surprise her? That Klaus, who has murdered her and abducted her and exploited her for her blood, who has plainly informed her of his plan to use her as a broodmare to produce the next Petrova heir, would assault her mind and her body like this?

Is it rape? she wonders. She's not sure. In the dreams—in her memories—she'd always enthusiastically participated. Consented to everything. But what does that even mean? Klaus had already manipulated her into remembering everything as a dream. He could alter her memories any which way he chooses.

She'll never know.

Her mind tries to grapple with the possibility. To rationalize. Is it any worse than any of the other ways he's used me? Dehumanized me? Devalued me? She can't say. She feels a little bit broken, because of that, like she should know the answer deep down.

She'd been such a fool, telling Tyler just last night that she would know if Klaus had compelled her. Acting like she knew him so well. Knew her own mind so well.

What had been the point of any of it? Of trying so hard to win her over, to convince her, when he was just going to take what he wanted anyway?

She had told him no, and he hadn't cared a damn. It mustn't have meant anything at all to him when she told him yes the other night. When she'd dared to let herself have what she wanted, what she yearned for in the deepest reaches of her heart, where she so rarely lets herself tread—

—To save him. To touch him and taste him, to listen to him talk and to see the world like he does, all color and passion and fire, but most of all, to save him.

Then let me get to know you.

—To be seen by him, for herself and herself alone.

Something vital shatters inside of her. She thinks she'll die from it.

(She knows that she won't. She'll survive. Somehow, she always does.)

There are tears, and she lets herself cry them.

That Klaus would do this to her. That she had cared about him, let him into her heart against all of her reservations, against every moral fiber of her being, against every instinct that demanded she run—all because he had illuminated some slumbering sliver of her soul that had responded to him as though dawn had finally risen—that she had kissed him, had taken the final steps through the hell of her conscience and their past to be with him—and he had still shredded her apart, cast away all of these decisions that meant something, because they were all she had left, and because her actions were all she had left of herself, and it should have been her choice, not his, never his—Her body, her life, her decision—

Her mind.

She has no idea what's real and what's not. No idea what she might have admitted to him and then been compelled to forget.

The thought makes her heart lurch, and her throat closes shut and her gut clenches and she can't breathe, she thinks she's going to be sick—

She heaves into the toilet, stomach acid and water. Her head aches and her belly trembles, and she doesn't feel any better at all.

Slowly, she lowers herself back onto the floor and looks up to the window, where the clear white winter sunshine trickles through.

She has to know her mind. Too much rides on that.

There are so many questions that she never even thought to ask him. Like, say she did sleep with him. Would he have been faithful to her?

What would it have even meant? She can't imagine herself playing the role of girlfriend, or confidante, or beloved. No, the more she thinks about it, the more certain she becomes that she would have been playing the role of pet. Has been unwittingly playing that role, which she swore she would never do, for a while now.

It's not like anything would have changed. She would still be imprisoned here, an unwilling member of his court.

She had gone into this with her eyes open. Had known exactly how cruel Klaus could be, exactly how monstrous. What the fucking hell had she been thinking?

Those other times… those other times that even now she wants to bury as far beneath the grave dirt of her soul, she can move past. She can't blame herself for any of that. Won't. But the other night… She had not forgotten who Klaus was. What he had done to the ones she loved most. To the innocents whose corpses she'd learned to step around like so much furniture. She'd kissed Klaus, and decided she didn't care. Gave herself permission to want him, told herself she was so unhappy and so lonely— as though that vindicated her, as though his hands and mouth were not so red that just allowing him to touch her must have indelibly stained her with their blood.

Her conscience pricks her, and, finding her heart tender, takes a long slice.

There's a firm knock on her bedroom door. "Elena? Are you up here?" Tyler calls. There's a note of anxiety in his voice.

He pokes his head in a moment later, when she doesn't answer, and, seeing her sitting on the bathroom floor, back pressed to the side of the tub and knees drawn up to her chest, he immediately crosses through the bedroom and kneels at her side.

"Elena, what's wrong?" he asks, eyes roving over every inch of her, as though he's looking for some hidden injury. His fingers tap nervously against his leg.

No, not nervously.

"I'm fine."

Tyler flips his phone out, starts punching in a phone number.

"Who are you calling?"

He doesn't reply.

Elena swats the phone out of his hand. It skitters across the white floor tiles, into the corner of the room.

Tyler stares at her like she's mental. "The hell?"

"I don't want you calling Klaus."

He's already retrieved his phone and taps at the smart screen. "Great, screen's frozen." He sits down next to her and slides the phone back into his pocket. "So, want to tell me what the problem is?"

"I don't want you calling Klaus."

"He kind of asked me to. You know, if you seemed… If I thought something might be wrong." He pulls the phone out again and checks it.

She leans her head back against the lip of the tub and shuts her eyes. "I think my mom would be so ashamed of me, if she could see me now," she tells him dully.

Tyler sits close enough at her side that she can feel it when he sets the phone down, the case clinking against the tile floor. "That's not true," he tells her firmly.

"It is, though. I'm just—it's just— my whole life is going to go by, and I'll have done nothing with it, amounted to nothing. Yeah, I can draw, or write, but none of that matters. No one will ever see any of it." Every day will be the same. How long until she forgets again what Klaus really is? Everything he's done to her, to the ones she loves? She's already forgotten more than once. How long until she stops fighting the collar he keeps trying to slip around her neck? The thought of it, the sheer pointless and inevitable repetition of the cycle, forces her to laugh, a dry rasp with no joy in it. "God, what's the point? What are we even doing here?"

"Surviving. Every day, we're surviving."

"I don't know why, though."

"You can't let that light inside of you go out. Once it's gone…"

Once it's gone, she'll be like Katerina. No, not like. Exactly the same. Exactly.

"It's all my fault. Everything. All of it. Jenna, my Uncle John, your Uncle Mason, you, Stefan—it's all my fault, and I don't know how to live with that."

Tyler cocks his head and studies her. "You're swinging pretty wildly between believing you don't matter at all and believing you matter a lot. Believe me, Elena, it's definitely the latter." He pauses. "But not in the way you just said. In the good way."

"How can you sound so certain?"

"The way I figure it, what the town council says goes. We're the only two left. That means we're the town council now. So if I say you matter, you matter. Easy enough?"

She considers him. "Yes." Her answer surprises her, even if Tyler seems to take it as a matter of course.

"Cool." He stands, and helps her to her feet. "Now. Are you hungry? Want some pizza?"

"You could order pizza?" Her mouth waters just thinking about it.

"Yeah, if my phone ever stops glitching. You didn't have to smack it so hard, Gilbert. I would have listened if you'd asked me not to call Klaus."

He wouldn't have, but she appreciates that he thinks he would.

And so she lets Tyler lead her downstairs. He finds her a deck of cards and they play gin rummy in front of the fire while they wait for the pizza to arrive.

That night, she lies awake, staring at the ceiling.

Had the others known? Had she been the object of their ridicule? It takes nothing at all to imagine how Rebekah must have giggled at her from behind those long, elegant fingers.

Things Stefan has said to her drift through her mind. Warnings of you think you know the rules and you won't be able to live with yourself if you give in to him.

That was the trouble with them, these days. They were always talking around each other. Never saying exactly what they meant.

Maybe he had been compelled, and unable to tell her anything more specific. Maybe he'd worried what others might overhear, and knew he couldn't speak more directly about it.

But he had tried to warn her… and she just hadn't listened.

Her poor Stefan, torn in twain. It's one more thing he will hate himself for when he remembers who he is.

She thinks she must have been on the path to becoming like him, whoever she was before all of this ripped apart inside Klaus's golden net.

She should feel angry, deceived, that Stefan had not done more, tried harder, to help her, but her feelings for him have been locked up so tightly for so long that she can no longer access them. It's like there's a wall, there, and she cannot pass.

There are days when she doesn't want to get out of bed. Days when she wakes up, and for a second, she feels happy, before she feels the weight of those memories—or lack of memories—smothering her alive. Her guilt wars with a kind of grief she has never experienced before—a grief for herself, for the agonizing ache of feeling like she should feel one way and actually feeling another.

There are days when the rage boils over in her like a swarming thunderhead, incandescent flashes of fury streaking through her blood.

Tyler begins teaching her how to fight. She pawns it off as an interest in the health benefits, but really, it's a way for her to channel all of this… excess.

And she draws. And she writes. And she reads. And gradually, as February trickles by, and March begins, she finds a way to live with herself.

She stops sleeping in Tyler's room altogether. If he notices, he never lets on.

At night she replays those dreams, as best as she can recall them, over and over. Obsesses over each little detail. Thinks, would I have really said that? Thought that? Is that who I am? Or is that who Klaus told me to be?

Sometimes, she's glad that she doesn't know for certain what actually happened.

She never tells Tyler about any of it.

She's too ashamed to admit that she had ever wanted Klaus.

One day in early March, she's curled up in the window seat of the now defunct music room on the third floor. Her diary sits balanced on her knees, but she hasn't written anything for several minutes.

Outside, the snow is melting. A songbird hops along a bare winter branch.

Even though this room has been the site of so many distressing episodes, she still finds herself drawn here. The good moments have been few and far between since she arrived at this house, but a good many of them have been right here.

It's a few months late, but Elena has settled on a New Year's resolution— to savor each moment of happiness while it lasts.

Right now, she might be happy.

Tyler's voice drifts down the hall.

Right. Of course. Yeah, she's right here.

He appears in the doorway a moment after that, and hands her his cell phone.

"Klaus," he mouths to her.

She shakes her head no, even as her fingers curl around the slick metal. She holds it up to her ear. Tyler stands by the door, a pretense to give her privacy. She can't see his hands, but she would bet that they're tapping against the doorframe. She can't be left alone with a telephone, after all.

"Elena?" Klaus speaks her name softly, full of tenderness, pleasure.

For a moment, it's all she can do just to breathe.

"I can hear you breathing, you know," he says lightly over the line.

"I'm here."

Five weeks with nothing from him, and now this, out of the blue. She supposes five weeks must be just a blink of an eye to him. It's been an eternity for her.

"It's good to hear your voice." He sounds like he means it. His sincerity twists something inside of her. God, it would be so much easier if he didn't care at all.

"Where are you?" Are you coming back? Do I have to see you again?

"On the wrong side of the river, at the moment, but I'll fix that soon enough."

She doesn't have anything to say to that, so she doesn't say anything at all.

"Are you well?" he asks after a moment.

"I'm fine."

"How have you been passing your time?"

"All of the same ways I did before. I've read a lot." She pauses, wars with the urge to fish for information from him. The impulse passes.

"I've thought about you ceaselessly," he murmurs into the phone. His voice is a bedroom caress, an intimation of what they had left unfinished between them. What will never be finished between them.

Elena blinks away tears. "I've thought about you, too," she tells him seriously.

Her answer seems to satisfy him, despite the way she delivered it. She wishes that it didn't. She wishes he could feel the way she feels: torn apart, grappling for purchase.

"I've sent you a gift."

"What sort of gift?"

"An extravagant one. Take care, my dear one."

The line goes dead.

Tyler takes the phone back, and raises his eyebrows. "Everything okay?"

"It's fine." She pushes past him.

The almost of her feelings for Klaus are a husk inside of her. Bone dry and empty. Just a shell of what had burned so sharp and bright for so short a time.

She scrubs her face and leans over the sink, scrutinizes her damp features in the mirror, water droplets clinging to her lashes and slipping down her cheeks. Takes in the wreck of herself. The wreck Klaus had made of her.

Spots the white and silver scar on the side of her neck, the imprint of that bite somehow so much clearer than the faint stray marks left over from the other times she had been bitten.

Maybe because this bite had been something different from the others.

The mark of his possession.

She cranes her neck back in the mirror, studies it.

No.

The mark of her survival.

She wants, she wants so much to chart her own destiny.

A/N: Thank you for reading.