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

"Tyler, go join the other hybrids in the servants' quarters." Klaus throws the instructions over his shoulder without ever taking his eyes off of her, and Elena must force herself to keep her own eyes locked on Klaus, rather than betray herself by following Tyler's reluctant exit too closely.

It's a harrowing thing.

In all the long months of winter and into early spring, Elena has not allowed herself to dwell on what she would do when this day finally arrived. As though even thinking on it would conjure up the day when Klaus returned to claim her. And now that day is here, and she has been caught ill-prepared for the effect his presence has on her.

Klaus stands directly before her, his body hemming her in, his face too close, those devil's blue eyes and that deceptively soft mouth swimming in her vision. She's had months to master what he had done to her. But actually having him here, looking at her like that, feeling the way her body involuntarily warms under his regard, threatens to unravel her completely. Makes her flash hot and cold, until she thinks she might faint.

He sees her blanch, of course. Cannot help but mark the subtle shift in her body's reactions to him.

A frown pinches at his brows.

Elena gathers herself in. "I thought the point was for me to stay out of the spotlight," she says. Her voice does not shake as badly as she feared it might. Gamely, she throws back her shoulders and quirks a brow at Klaus. Forces herself to look at him without faltering. The way he has come to expect of her.

The bravado does its trick. Whatever insight had been flickering at the edges of Klaus's thoughts, it's gone now, receded under that unnervingly benign way he holds himself, in direct opposition to how she knows he really is. "Such a course has proved to be impossible." Here, Klaus tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear, revealing the silvered imprint of his teeth in her flesh. "And besides, you were never meant to be a mere chorus girl."

Marcel saves her from having to muster a response to this.

"Miss Gilbert," he greets her, breaking through the stifling intimacy of the moment. "Good of you to join us. Hopefully under less sanguinary circumstances, this time." Just like at the solstice party, he takes her hand and kisses the back of it. Unlike that time, Klaus visibly stiffens when Elena cannot suppress the involuntary blush that rises to her cheeks. Marcel is still every bit as dashing as he had been when she saw him last. He gives no indication whatsoever that, the last time they had seen each other, they had plotted Klaus's demise.

"You may remember Marcellus, Elena," Klaus says, shifting subtly so that he stands between Marcel and her, effectively breaking them apart. "He has so graciously invited us to domicile with him while we attend to our quandary with the witches."

She looks between the two of them. "So it's peace, then," she says slowly, the words careful on her tongue. She knows that's a euphemism at best even as she says it.

Klaus's lips twitch. He knows it too. The realization that were they alone, he would have laughed, strikes her like blow. She hates that she knows him so well. Detests that she cannot get this knowledge out of her head, no matter how much she wishes she had nothing to do with him. Despises the certainty that she will always have something to do with him, no matter the way it rends her apart.

She'd been in fairyland these past few months, soaking up her respite, soaking up the sun and the gentle spring breeze and the small rippling pleasures Tyler had given her, which had coursed and cascaded until they became a wave of true, unexpected happiness. But that time is over now.

(Over—for now.)

"Family shouldn't fight," Rebekah breaks in. She stands at Marcel's shoulder when she speaks. "Peace should be the natural course of things."

"Am I still family?" Marcel asks. He doesn't look to Stefan, but Elena can feel his attention drift to where Stefan watches them from the outskirts of this gathering.

Rebekah reassures him immediately. "Of course you are."

Klaus is not so quick to offer the same assurances.

It's a good question though. What does it mean, now that Marcel has reintegrated himself, at least nominally, into Klaus and Rebekah's circle? There had been strain enough when it had been just the four of them—Klaus, Rebekah, Stefan, and herself— in Klaus's warped family picture. That arrangement had worked just barely, and had still devolved to bloodshed on more than one occasion. She cannot imagine how this new dynamic will balance with Marcel thrown in the mix. The unease and distrust between Stefan and Marcel is palpable. Despite this alliance being her idea, she cannot imagine how this constellation of personalities will work together. Is surprised it hasn't already fallen apart.

It's a conflagration waiting to happen.

She locks eyes with Stefan.

Everything passes wordlessly between them. Amazing, how after all this time—what feels to her like an entire lifetime— and after all this distance— emotional, physical—that they can still glance at each other and read each other's souls in an instant. She would have thought the old connection would have dissolved by now, but it is as enduring as ever.

It's you and me, Stefan.

Stefan sees all that she sees. Has resigned himself to the inevitable explosion that will come to pass when Klaus and Rebekah must decide how they wish to define their family circle.

Old thoughts, thoughts she had put away, crowd into her head. Despite all of her best efforts to forget, she is still a member of this family—this court—so long as Klaus wishes it to be so. Just like Stefan, she will have to find a way to live with whatever fallout ensues. The foreknowledge burns through her with an unexpected caveat. No matter how this plays out, she will not allow either Stefan or Tyler to come to harm. Despite whatever misgivings she might have against Stefan, they are still both on her list. At this point, they practically are the list.

It's the first time the fighter in Elena has reared her head in months.

The room around her takes on a new, keener edge. It's as though in having recalled her purpose, all of the details take on a greater weight, each and every glance and carefully contrived response containing vast reaches of potentially vital insight into how she must play if she is to win.

"Okay," she says, cutting through the tension rapidly building amongst the four vampires. "So what's the plan? Why am I here?"

Klaus turns away from Marcel and Rebekah to address her. "Marcel's witch has promised us a solution."

"Davina will meet with us all tonight," Marcel says. Elena likes the way that he makes a point to say her name, to emphasize her individuality as a person before her function as a witch. "We'll go over the specifics then, once she raises some good old fashioned wards—better to keep everyone non-essential on a need-to-know-basis."

"So I'm essential." She hates that. (And a small, greedy part of her revels in it. In the fact that these creatures, so godlike and alien in their monstrosity, need her.)

Rebekah rolls her eyes. "You're not. Your blood is. That's a different matter entirely."

Her mind skitters over all of the books she has read by lamplight. Circles and full moons and you're the only lamb for me tumbling through her thoughts. She concentrates on keeping her face smooth, her breathing deep and even.

"Play nice," Marcel chides with an easy smile that nonetheless carries with it a weight of command. How he can be so smooth, ordering around an Original vampire, Elena cannot fathom.

Rebekah listens to him though.

King indeed.

Klaus glares at the both of them.

"The little Claire witch has promised that she can cut through the curse upon the Crescent Wolf Clan, in exchange for a small boon, which I have agreed to grant her."

"Is it yours to grant, Klaus?" Stefan asks. It's the first he's spoken.

Of course. Here is her role—to be used again for her body. No permission necessary.

After all this time, Stefan still wants the choice to be hers. Somewhere deep down inside of her, beneath the rubble and broken bits and pieces, she might still love Stefan for that.

Surprisingly, Klaus doesn't take offense. Stefan's words seem to sway him.

All four vampires look to her.

Elena takes her time assessing them, one by one. Rebekah, already a little bored, impatient. Stefan, mouth drawn down into a grimace, vibrating hopeless intensity and displeasure. Marcel, mouth tipped into a crooked too-knowing smile, gaze steady and direct as he urges her to agree, to trust him. And Klaus. Waiting for her to inevitably succumb to his will.

"If I say yes, what will happen to the French Quarter Coven?" she asks finally. Not that she really thinks she has any choice in this. Not if Klaus has already decided upon it.

"They'll no longer pose any threat to you," Klaus responds, utterly definitive.

She flashes back to the witch's compound. To a warm suit jacket thrown over her shoulders, and the shock she had felt when she took it off and beheld her scarlet-stained body in the beachside cottage mirror. "Will they die?" Will the blood be on my hands? Will it be any less on my hands if I say no and they force me to help them anyway?

"Only those who throw themselves on their own funeral pyres," Marcel tells her gently. Like he knows exactly where her thoughts are.

She shuts her eyes. This is Klaus's scheme. Surely, she should say no on principle. Except… This is Davina's scheme as well. If this is her scheme, then it must be far better, far kinder, than anything she, Elena, would have concocted. True, they had only had a few hours together, but it would be impossible to go through what they had gone through together and not get a sense of who that other person is, deep down. She trusts her. She has to trust that whatever Davina has bargained for, it is the right thing to do.

"Since I'm here already, and you've already agreed, Klaus, I'm sure I don't actually have a say in how you want to use me. So fine. I'll be ready to hear whatever Davina has to say tonight."

Klaus tips her face up, his thumb stroking at her pulse point. "Thank you, Elena."

When their gazes lock, something sharp and fervid slices through her. Her skin blazes where he touches her. It's a stomach churning shock, to feel how her body still responds to him so readily. Hot shame floods her. She tells herself to pull away, but finds that she cannot bear to do it. It is too much. He is too much.

She is so sick of these games, so sick of playing her parts just to barely scrape by.

(She thrives on it.)

"She looks exhausted, Klaus," Stefan says. He's moved in closer to the rest of the group while Klaus had been preoccupying her.

"I'm just—disoriented," she says.

"She should go lie down."

Almost out of habit, she finds herself wondering if it's the old compulsion forcing Stefan's care or if his concern is genuine. The question does not trouble her the way it used to.

Klaus quirks an eyebrow. The backs of his fingers are still stroking the underside of her jaw, the gesture at once flustering and enough to make her ill. "Elena?"

"Actually, that sounds good." Anything to break out of the hold he has on her.

"As my lady commands."

Klaus takes her up the stairs she had flown up and down so many times that solstice night, and leads her to what she remembers as his old suite of rooms. They enter a sitting room which she remembers racing through, while she hunted for the diamond. His bedroom is through one of these doors.

Surely he doesn't actually want her to sleep in his bed.

"Which guest room is mine?" she asks, willing him to give her an answer other than the one she suspects he will, with no small amount of alarm.

He frowns at her. "I've brought you back into the belly of the beast, but I won't have you far from me. I've had my private study set up with a bed for you. I mean to keep my eye on you."

"So I'm staying. In your rooms."

"Afraid?"

"No." Fear doesn't begin to encompass the complicated emotions he's raising in her.

"Good." All at once, Klaus sweeps into her personal space, crowding her up against a closed, solid wood door that she thinks muzzily must lead to a room with a bed in it. He brackets her body with both arms. Leans in, so that their mouths are very close. "I've missed you," he breathes, the sentiment almost more resonance than words as they rumble through her, tossing everything into chaos. Her body, traitor that it is, flushes, eager for him to close the distance between them. To have him in her arms again.

If anything, it's her very desire for him that jars her out of falling over the edge with him. Because the way her heart races isn't just lust, and the way her breaths come in shallow pants isn't just anticipation. A good deal of it is fear—not of him, per se. Elena has long since moved past the days when Klaus could command her so. Has long since become so very well acquainted with his dread horror that his particularities have simply become a fact of life. What Elena fears is herself. Her capacity to forget, to move past. To give in to this strange body's demand for her most fatal creation's touch.

Her fingers scramble at the brass doorknob. "You were away a long time," she tells him. "Months."

"I know it only too well."

The latch turns, and the door swings open behind her, and she ducks out of his arms, into the room behind her. The sitting room with her bed in the corner, thank God. "I'm too tired for this. I'll—" The dark, devouring light in his eyes almost undoes her. "I'll see you later."

She closes the door on him.

Once inside the room, Elena fists her hand in her mouth and bites down on the tender flesh to bottle the scream that clambers up her throat.

When she finally calms enough to attempt to rest, her racing mind and body will not let her.

How could it have been merely yesterday that she had lain in Tyler's arms all morning, the warm spring sun on their faces, the tender young grass damp beneath their bodies as they watched the clouds skate by and speculated on what their friends back in Mystic Falls would be doing in the fall?

Lying in this large, sinfully soft bed, surrounded by the trappings of Klaus's nineteenth century life of decadent luxury, pervasive boredom, and illicit power, it all seems like a dream. She might never have returned from New Orleans, might have simply imagined her entire reprieve.

Tonight, she'll pretend to meet Davina for the first time, inevitably offer up her blood, and in recompense she'll be reeled into another scheme of Klaus's warped devising. The same as ever.

No!

She can feel the change within herself. Feel the parts of her soul that had been so trampled that they appeared small, now lovingly tended, grown bright and strong again. Tyler had done that for her. They had done that for each other, together.

The urge to seek him out sparks through her. Only the certainty that she would never manage to meet with him here and keep it secret stops her from throwing herself out of bed and going to search for him. Too many eyes on her, and not enough knowledge of this place or how it and its inhabitants function day to day—or, night to night.

Too much uncertainty with Klaus, who might seek her out at any moment.

For now, the further Tyler remains from her, the safer he will be.

She hopes that, whatever it is Klaus asks her to do, whatever it is that Davina and Marcel ask her to do, that they will keep Tyler out of it. She does not dare to actually make the request, though, lest it draw any unnecessary attention to him as being special to her.

The study-cum-bedroom is the same room she had rummaged through while looking for the diamond, although, she had really been too busy, too afraid of getting caught, to take much in the last time. There's a heavy Napoleonic desk in the center of the room, the by-now expected towering bookshelves, and, stacked against a far wall, some very rickety looking French easels, splattered with old, faded paint. An imposing armoire dominates the far wall, and it is a relief to find her familiar gray leather duffel bag stashed inside of it. There are other things—a recently stocked liquor cabinet, what looks like a phonograph even more antiquated than Rebekah's gramophone, a locked trunk. She feels certain that some of the paintings on the walls are Klaus's work, although the style is different from the ones he had shown her. She chooses not to analyze how well she can pick his hand out from the multitudes.

She thinks it says a lot that Marcel never got rid of any of Klaus's things in all the long years he has been gone.

The room has large, dramatic French doors which should open onto the balcony, framed by swirling wrought-iron railings, except that when Elena tries the handles, they are locked. Perhaps not unexpected, given Klaus's remarks about keeping her safe. His definition of protecting her has always included caging her.

She peers through the dusty glass panes down into the courtyard, where Rebekah sits on the lip of the fountain, trailing her fingers through the gray-green water, choked with ferns and algae. Marcel sits hunched forward in one of the elegant arm chairs artlessly arranged throughout the room as though the covered courtyard were a parlor in an old, dignified home. He pretends to be typing something out on his cell phone, but really, he is watching Rebekah.

This is the first time Elena's gotten a good look at the Abattoir during the day, when that outer courtyard is empty and there is no one to distract her from looking her fill.

The light coming in from overhead casts a strange green, murky glow over everything out there, casting the whole space into a kind of perpetual twilight. Someone has closed up the exterior doors since she went upstairs, and the compound would have the feel of a tomb, she thinks—an ostentatious, ghoulish tomb—if not for the preponderance of lush plants, limp from the already formidable spring heat, hanging from the balconies, and the fragrant flowering trees, straining toward that watery light up above.

She wonders, if it were a tomb, then who had been meant to be sealed away here. Watches Marcel watching Rebekah, thinks about those diaries she had read, those diaries she stole from Elijah's home and hid when she got back to the compound, and—perhaps—she already knows.

For a few minutes, she wrestles with whether to try the door which leads back out to the rest of Klaus's rooms. The thought of hastening the moment when she must confront Klaus again makes her stomach knot and turn. Only, her daring is stronger than her trepidation. Is always stronger.

There are always things to be learned, if she listens and looks hard enough. Perhaps she can fill in some of the pieces she is missing from her research. Figure out why Klaus had taken the books he had from the library after his short visit last winter.

She slips out the door, into the sitting room, every nerve in her body aware of that simple door leading to Klaus's bedroom. Of all the potentiality that lurks behind it.

She makes it to the top of the interior stairwell before Stefan catches up to her.

"What are you doing out here?"

She turns to face him. Gives him an innocent shrug. "Stretching my legs."

"You shouldn't be out here. Marcel's lackeys aren't all house-trained. Some of them bite."

"Klaus hasn't given some theatrical speech meant to frighten them off of me?"

"Never underestimate the young and the foolish. C'mon." He leads her back to Klaus's suite of rooms and shuts the doors behind them.

"So I'm stuck in here." She slumps over on a velvet chaise longue. "And where are you staying?" She directs her question to the ceiling. It occurs to her that she doesn't actually know where Stefan sleeps back at the manor house. That she doesn't actually know where any of them sleep. She's not even sure whose room it had been where she had accidentally caught them in flagrante delicto.

"Rebekah's old rooms."

"Are they as stuck in the turn of the last century as these rooms are?"

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Stefan take a seat in a fauteuil chair across from her. "I don't mind it. It's kind of nostalgic for me."

"How much do you even remember between 1912 and whenever it was that Lexie found you?"

Stefan shrugs. "Not much. I was high a lot of the time. That spring in Chicago stands out though."

"What will you remember about this time, a century from now?"

"I'll remember you, Elena."

"So, what's the deal? Did Klaus send you in here to babysit me?"

Here he takes out his vaunted air quotes. "'Watch over' was the term used." He takes out his cell phone. "Are you hungry? I could order something for you," Stefan offers

"No."

He orders dinner for her anyway from a café down the street. Watches her as she eats it, still as careful to follow his directives as ever.

"Doesn't Rebekah mind your being here?"

Stefan rolls his phone between his hands. "She doesn't much care where I go right now."

"Because of Marcel."

He glances at her out of the corner of his eye. "Not entirely."

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry."

"You always are, Elena." When Stefan says it, it sounds like a virtue more than a fault.

Stefan produces an ancient cribbage board and a deck of cards and attempts to entice her into learning how to play.

The afternoon passes.

"There's something on your mind."

She looks up from the hand of cards she's been absently pondering for the past few minutes.

How is it that, even after everything, her primary desire is still to confess everything to him?

"I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours," she says.

Slowly and very deliberately, he lays down his cards. Takes his time in appraising her. "I did everything I could to keep you out of this city. It's too dangerous here. I can't—I couldn't stand to let anything happen to you." It's like she's standing in that kitchen with him again, the scar on her face still fresh, while Stefan pulls his own heart out for her.

She can't go back to that moment, ever again.

"I almost slept with Klaus a couple months back."

The silence that descends upon the room is deafening.

Finally, "Almost?"

"No. Not almost." She draws her legs up under her and balls her hands into fists on her thighs. "The thing is… I need to know. Did you know what he was doing to me, all this time?"

Stefan studies the parquet floor. "He likes to play games, Elena. I warned you."

"Stefan."

Their gazes lock. There's something almost pitying in his stare. "You were reaching for him with both hands, Elena. I couldn't have stopped you anymore than I could have stopped him. I tried."

"But you knew." Her eyes sting, and her throat feels tight.

"Never for certain."

"Well, congratulations. You were right, I had no idea what the rules are. Feel free to remind me how disappointed you are in me." She bats at her stupidly leaking eyes and throws herself to her feet, intent on closing herself off in her room until she can clear her head. More than anything, she has to be clear-minded tonight.

Stefan grabs her wrist and spins her into his arms, his waiting embrace. "The guy who said that sounds like a douche."

Despite herself, she laughs. "The biggest one I know."

Neither of them would have ever allowed themselves this level of physical intimacy last fall. This extended contact, this moment of comfort between two matched souls, would have been too risky. Everything between them had existed on that razored edge of repressed passion and suffocating regret. Something's shifted between them, though. Time, and the knowledge that they will never be possible again.

"I feel like such an idiot," she confesses into his shoulder when she starts to feel a little calmer.

"So you slept with Klaus. Join the club."

She huffs out a laugh. Perhaps he has a point.

"What do I do about him?"

"Same as always. Whatever you have to do."

She can tell when Klaus returns to the Abattoir by the flurry of agitated activity that breaks out in the courtyard below. Marcel's vampires act tough, but they scatter like startled sparrows whenever Klaus enters their midst. She wonders which of them was the one he bit last December.

Even though so many of the hybrids are totally unfamiliar to her, she would be able to pick them out from the French Quarter vampires in an instant from the way they heel Klaus as he strides across the premises like he still owns them. She looks for Tyler in that crowd, smothers her disappointment when she doesn't spot him. Klaus pauses, midway, to give one of the hybrids some instruction. He happens to glance up, then, and their eyes meet from where she watches him from her bedroom window.

The way he looks at her makes her stomach swoop, a feeling like falling from a very great height, exhilarating and terrifying all at once.

His coming to her after that moment is inevitable.

"You really are lovely," he says, almost regretfully, from where he watches her from the doorway between the sitting room and the study.

"Where've you been all afternoon?"

"Miss me?" he asks as he strides over to the cabinet in the corner of the room and pulls out two cut crystal glasses and a bottle of scotch. He hands her a glass almost peremptorily.

"I didn't like being cooped up in here."

"Was Stefan's company inadequate? I thought he was your special favorite."

She purses her lips. Deigns not to answer that.

They drink in silence for a time, Elena uncomfortably aware of Klaus's attention to her every move.

"What time is Davina supposed to show?" she finally asks.

"Not for a little while yet." He saunters over, plucks her drink from her hand and sets it down on the desk, and walks her back, away from the doors. Fiddles with the phonograph, until a thin thread of music, strange and waxy over the cylinder recording, wafts through the room. "Dance with me."

Klaus pulls her into his arms before she can think how to tell him no and guides her through the steps of a dance she doesn't know, doesn't pay enough attention to to learn.

And then she is back, in exactly the place she has so dreaded to be. Klaus's hand pressed against her waist, the heat of him bleeding through the thin fabric of her shirt. The smell of him, sharp and familiar in a way that she hadn't anticipated, a way that inexplicably leaves her feeling awake, eager. Elena tilts her head back, dizzy. Klaus watches her from beneath half-lidded eyes, his look intent, searching. A call to her blood. Everything that should be clear feels muddled, indistinct. She notices his lips, slightly parted. Imagines his mouth on her. The pleasure she had found in his mouth, drinking him in, breathing him, living on him. High on some rare substance. That mouth, that knows her better than she knows it, because he has tasted her and touched her, hunted and stalked and marked her for himself, took her for himself, until she had to tear and bite and claw what was left back for herself. To be her own again. Right now, he is so close to making her his again, and the thought fills her veins with ice. The room starts to whirl, and her skin feels too tight and too hot. She's going to be sick.

Klaus pulls her flush against him, and lowers his mouth to her ear. "I want you to persuade the Claire witch over to my cause."

Elena pulls back to stare at him. "What?"

"I think she'd be susceptible to the benevolent hand of friendship, if you offered it. See if she'll change her alliance from Marcellus over to me." Suddenly the music makes sense. He hadn't wanted to be overheard.

She breaks out of his arms and seizes her drink up off the table. Takes a sip and lets it settle her thoughts. She wanders into the next room, takes a seat in the fauteuil chair and drums her fingers on the arm. Klaus trails in after her. "Why would Davina listen to me?" she presses. She has to know what he knows.

"Because you have something extraordinary in common. And because there is not a creature on this wide blue planet immune to your charms."

What does it mean, that Klaus trusts her to advocate for him? She tries to see how this could be a trap.

"Do you really need her though? She's helping you now, already."

"Ah, but wouldn't it be convenient to have a witch of that power at my command? I'd like very much to stay for a time, after this is done with. We could stay here together. Wouldn't you like that? Prefer it?"

He comes over to stand behind her chair and strokes the loose strands of her hair back, behind her shoulder, exposing her neck. Trailing the tips of his fingers along the bare skin of her jaw, her throat, her shoulder. "Lovely girl, say that you will."

"Okay."

The truth reveals itself, almost too late. The request itself is not the trap. He is the trap. The lure, the seduction—the ravenous spider in the center of that silken web. Her own machinations and deceit have been the very things to have ultimately ensnared her.

Klaus's hands trail through her hair, fingers curling around her neck. He could snap it, and all the bones would shatter like spun glass.

The cylinder keeps spinning, that old, strange music permeating through the room, the musicality warped by time.

He leans forward, and murmurs, "We still have time yet, before we must present ourselves." He comes round to face her, and the effect it has on her is devastating. Here is the face that has haunted her dreams, saturated her thoughts, captivated, repulsed, and enthralled her. Damnation flickers in the wicked craving behind those eyes. If she gives in again, there will be no turning back. No last chance.

Her heart beats in her throat, a sharp, rapid thrum like the strike of a hammer.

"You gave me a hickey, the last time."

His mouth quirks into a heated smirk. "Did I?" The words are spoken with pure, smug satisfaction. "Were you very displeased?" He's not understanding what she is getting at at all.

"The thing is," she continues, gathering her courage, "You've left marks like that on me before. I've seen them."

This, at last, catches him up. Klaus doesn't pull away, but the all-consuming light in his eyes has shifted to something else—something guarded.

"Have you."

Elena stares him down. "I know you've been compelling me to forget—things. I know that all these—these memories I have of you ravishing me weren't really dreams, but were actually real."

Klaus stands up and goes to snatch his drink up off the lip of the cabinet. She watches him through the doorway as he takes a sip, refills the glass. "Ravishing. That sounds interesting," he tells her as he reemerges into the sitting room.

"I'm serious."

"Oh, I'm certain."

Elena puts herself on the other side of the room from him—not that it will do much good—and crosses her arms protectively across her body. "The thing is, I don't get it! God help me, I actually liked you! I wanted you."

"Then why does it bother you so much?"

"Because I don't know how much of it was me and how much of it was what you twisted into my head! I can't trust any of it—I can't trust you." And what a sucker punch to realize that she even wanted to.

"Trust," he repeats, rolling the word around in his mouth. "Is this the part where you tell me how upset you are, then, sweetheart?"

"No. This is the part where I tell you that whatever there was between you and me—it's over." She steels herself. "I don't have feelings for you anymore. I don't want you anymore."

For the briefest moment, raw anguish sweeps over his features. The emotion passes like a summer storm, raging in an instant, drenching to the bone— and then gone, a figment on the horizon. He clenches his jaw and bares his teeth in a rictus of a smile. "Is it."

"I mean it."

"I could compel you to forget about this," he muses, prowling towards her.

She raises her chin. "I would figure it out."

"Hmm." He eyes her speculatively as he continues his slow, foreboding approach. "It's possible to build an immunity to compulsion, after a fashion, it's true. Is that you, Elena dearest?" Her name has never sounded so menacing on his lips. He stops right in front of her, backing her into the corner of the room.

Elena holds her ground. "You've only ever used me, Klaus. I can't give my heart away to that."

"Then since we are in a mood for truth-tellings, let me fill you in on a little secret." He stares down into her eyes. Gone is the liquid-eyed lover. Here, now, is the vampire, terrible and deadly, his inhuman thoughts cold and intangible. He leans forward to drawl into her ear. "Your conclusions are all wrong. I've not fucked you once."

She rears back hard against the wall. "You're lying. Why should I believe you?"

"Because I have no reason to do otherwise." His words are a fire in her brain.

"I know you compelled me." She shudders, feeling the phantom of claws trailing over the base of her skull. "I could hardly hold the thought in my mind for even a minute altogether. That's how I figured it out."

He studies her for what feels like an interminable span of time. "Clever girl. Always so quick with an answer." Everything about him reads cruel, but admiring. His hand rises toward her face, but he catches himself in mid-air, the fingers spasming. He flits across the room and clenches his fist. It's impossible to tell whether he had meant to stroke her face or crush her skull, before he stopped himself.

"So why compel me at all, if it wasn't to mess with my mind, so I wouldn't realize you were screwing me left, right, and center?" It's a question that has nagged at her mind for months. In her memories, each of their encounters had been consensual. The only reason she can think of why he would alter those memories would be if it hadn't been.

He glares at her. "Because every time I attempted to seduce you, you made it clear you wanted nothing to do with me! That night in the library was the first time that didn't end with a slap, let alone the first time you let me kiss you as madly as I desired."

"That makes no sense! There were bruises on my body! And—there was my sweater—"

"You didn't always shoot me down right away. Always fast enough though."

She rubs her temples. "We've really never had sex."

"Not for lack of trying."

And the worst part is, she can see his reasoning. How he would hate for her to think of him as a failed, pathetic suitor. Someone to be rejected, over and over. How insinuating the idea of himself into her bed and into her body would leave this craving for him in her blood. Of course that would appeal to him, in ways that forcing her to submit to him and then erasing the experience never would. It's the ultimate conquest, not the act itself, which he would get off on. Anything else would be too damning a blow to his ego. Better far to change things around, make her forget all the times she rejected him and instead plant fantasies of how it might have gone if she has given in into her dreamscape. Blur the edges between truth and fiction until she could no longer tell the difference. Until fiction became truth.

"This is so fucked up," she tells him.

The edge wears off of Klaus's cold fury. "You know the facts now. I see it changes your opinion on me very little."

"You've been manipulating me for months. I can't forget about that."

"You said you had feelings for me. Can you so easily forget about those?"

"I didn't forget, Klaus. They're just gone. Ashes."

"As you say."

"And it's not like you ever really had feelings for me, is it? You wouldn't have done this to me, if you did."

At that, a great calm falls over him. "No, you're quite right. Love is a vampire's greatest weakness." He cocks his head. "The Claire witch just arrived. Shall we?" He ushers her from the room, locking out everything that was almost said and almost done between them.

A/N: And we are off and running again! Tons more in store. Next chapter: We'll find out how Klaus intends to defeat the witches, and what role, exactly, Elena is to play in that.