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
Their conversation has flipped everything on its head.
I've not fucked you once.
Her thoughts swoop and circle wildly, a moth flinging itself against a lantern, alighting from one moment to the next between the utter conviction that this was just another lie, another smokescreen, and the small, quivering desire for him to have been telling her the truth.
Because, if what really transpired was even just mostly in line with the version of events he just recounted to her—if maybe just maybe Klaus hadn't actually used her in this final way, then maybe she could open herself back up to all of the ways he makes her feel. All of the appetites his simple presence awakens—
No. She crushes the thoughts. Draws up again the image she has meditated upon as she rebuilt herself. Ashes, and husks—and, her thoughts wheeling, bodies turned to husks. Bodies drained of blood and life and lives drained of meaning. Blood that has meaning. Her blood—her blood in him—
In the hall outside his room, he pauses. "About my request," he says, turning the words over delicately, as though he is reluctant to vocalize them. They don't have the phonograph to disguise their words any longer. And perhaps, now that she has unmasked herself, unmasked him, he regrets revealing his hand so much.
(But that is the thing about him, he never reveals his hand, never trusts, never surrenders control—)
"I'll still do it."
His eyes narrow on her face. "Why?"
"I told you you couldn't have my heart. I never said I wasn't on your side."
"Doesn't that amount to the same thing?"
"What, hearts and minds?" She turns away from him, sees in her mind's eye her mother burning alive. Jenna and John dead, dead, and Stefan ruined, and Tyler with his neck snapped, limp and broken on the gym floor—And herself, wrapped up in Klaus's arms, his mouth on her flame-licked skin. That last image flickers hypnotically between her death by his bite last spring and that fateful, final night in the library, until the two become blurred, become one. "Maybe." She senses the way this answer needles him, arouses his frustrations, so she hurries to elaborate before his thoughts can race any further. "It's like you said. My destiny is with you. So, yes, I'll do as you ask. I'll play along, and I'll work for you."
He frowns at her words, but lets her lead the way downstairs to the meeting without further comment.
They enter together, but radiate the message in every line of their bodies that they have in truth come to this meeting very much apart. For Klaus, maybe, it's part of the charade, so no one will know she's just agreed to scheme for him. And of course, she cannot discount that his feelings are hurt. No, never that. For her… She very much wishes she could detach herself from him and make it stick.
The meeting takes place in the same study where Klaus had pulled her aside during the party, when she had convinced him to let her continue searching upstairs. Some of the furniture has been swapped out since that night. She wonders if the missing pieces were destroyed during the werewolf or later witch attack on the compound.
Marcel presides over a heavy, beautifully polished cherry oak desk, his hands gripping the edges. Everything about the way he holds himself speaks to power, dominance. Davina stands at his left shoulder, arms loose at her sides and a confident tilt to her jaw. She offers Elena the barest of smiles when their eyes catch. There's something tense and rippling about Davina, about the way her eyes flash in the dark. It's as though all of that godlike power she wields is emanating out through her pores, into the air around her. Rebekah sits on one of the sofas. The way she props her head against one of her hands, her long legs crossed so that all of those miles of flawless skin are on full display, lends her an air of general boredom, betrayed only by the way she jiggles her high-heeled foot. Conspicuously, Stefan has again placed himself off to the side. He leans against the bookshelf in the back, arms crossed over his chest. He tracks her closely as she turns into the room and, wanting to put some space between herself and Klaus, takes a seat next to Rebekah. Klaus takes a place on the sofa across from her, lounging back with his arms spread over the carved wooden back of the antique, for all the world looking like the bored ruler deigning to gift them with his presence.
"Glad you could bother to join us," Marcel tells Klaus, wryly, as though he sees through every inch of Klaus's posturing, and will not let it itch under his skin. Elena wishes she knew how he did that. Everything about Klaus itches under her skin.
Klaus flips his hands palms up, the gesture almost stylized in its indifference. "Your witch has claimed she can deliver the Crescent Pack to me and neutralize her irritating coven in exchange for my doppelganger's blood. I'm ready to hear the details now."
"My former coven," Davina corrects.
"Fair enough," he murmurs, a deadly gleam in his eye. There's nothing warm in the enigmatic twist of his lips when he smiles at her. It's a smile he has never bestowed upon Elena before—his smiles have almost always been too intimate, too confidential, or, in the rare times she had earned his ire, they had been laden with a vicious intensity and singularity of focus which had stripped her of every defense and left her huddling in a fear that gripped her like gusts of ice and howling winds.
Rebekah rolls her eyes.
"Everything we say here stays here," Marcel tells the room at large "Got that? Anyone gets wind of what Davina's got cooked up, and this whole plan is going to go up in non-proverbial flames real fast."
Klaus waves his hand. "I think we're all experienced in cloak and dagger. Now. Tell me how you're going to repay Elena's generous gift to you." The way he caresses her name makes it clear that it's really his gift she should be repaying.
Something else tickles at her thoughts. Something about how completely Davina holds Klaus's attention.
She is not used to Klaus being distracted. At least, not like this.
Davina takes a deep breath. "As things stand now, I can't free the wolves from the curse."
"Even with all that power?" Stefan asks. "Seems a bit convenient." He turns the words over carelessly, like it doesn't really matter to him one way or another. It's a dangerous tone of voice for him.
Elena wonders what his stake in all of this is, exactly. If maybe there is some reason other than familial-romantic tension keeping him apart from the rest of them.
Marcel jumps in. "It's not Davina's fault. She doesn't know how exactly Brynne Deveraux enacted the curse, and I didn't think to ask Brynne the details back when it was done."
"So how are you going to fix this?" Klaus asks, quietly. "Because if these wolves are permanently cursed, Marcellus, then someone has to pay for your shortsightedness."
"Relax. We got this figured."
"My power right now is like a blunt instrument," Davina explains. "Like a hammer—"
Rebekah scoffs. "More like a wrecking ball."
"—but it's not precise enough to cut through someone else's curse," she continues, "when I don't know any of the particulars of how it was designed. What I need to break this would be something more like a scalpel."
That doesn't make sense. Davina had had some of the details on the hybrid curse when she and Elena had tried to reforge it last December, but that had all been based on the ritual used to break it the previous spring, and whatever Klaus had told Marcel over the years. She hadn't exactly had access to the minutiae of the spell's original crafting. Why is this seemingly simpler curse so much more difficult for her to break? There has to be more to this.
"Is that where the other part of the plan comes in?" she asks, studying her hands folded in her lap. "Will neutralizing the French Quarter Coven put the scalpel in your hand?" It feels like a shot in the dark, but it's the best she can come up with.
Her skin prickles. When she looks up, Klaus is watching her. Weighing her.
For a moment, when their eyes lock, she forgets about everything else. Forgets herself enough to feel caught by him, irresistibly compelled by him. She flushes, and looks away. That's the entire problem. Her inexplicable susceptibility to him is the entire reason her life has gotten so monumentally fucked up.
Unbearable shame suffuses her. For all of the wretched agony discovering he had played with her head has caused her, it is nothing compared to realizing that the fault must lie somewhere with her inability to shut him out. She can just imagine how she would have responded to his advances—how damningly delayed she would be in rejecting him once she'd had a taste of him.
She twists her fingers together, hoping in vain that none of the vampires in the room have noticed the blood rising under her skin. She takes a deep breath, and breaks away from Klaus's intimate gaze. She tries with only scant success to calm herself while she waits for an answer to her question.
It doesn't come.
The room fills with a pressing silence that grows heavier by the moment as no one speaks. Elena glances up in time to see Davina look to Marcel, but she doesn't say anything. Her face is much too open. Elena's question has made her nervous. Like she wasn't quite ready for this part.
Elena sees Stefan shift against the bookshelf in her periphery, and even Rebekah has stopped jiggling her foot while they wait for the answer to her question. Elena licks her lips, turning everything over in her mind. This must be it. The real crux of what this meeting is about. Sometimes, even a blind shot hits the mark.
She realizes that she has turned to Klaus, is waiting for him to break this silence. She catches herself and refocuses on Marcel and Davina.
Finally, Marcel directs his words to Klaus. To the power in the room that even he, sometimes, must acknowledge. "Look, we all know that after you disposed of Agnes and her inner circle last December, that left a huge power vacuum in the Coven."
Recollecting herself, Davina picks up the thread of the story. "With all of that chaos and confusion your… visit to the coven's stronghold caused, and without any obvious candidates of strength or wisdom to take up Agnes's mantle… Someone unexpected stepped in to take the power for herself. To rally the coven and its allies."
"An outsider?" Klaus prompts.
Marcel shakes his head. "Not quite." He pauses. "It's Sophie Deveraux." There's something incredulous, as well as something soft and almost a little sad about how he says the name.
The revelation jolts her. Elena thinks of the girl who had brought her the peanut butter and jelly sandwich that terrible night. Who had thought that spilling her blood was wrong but was too weak to fight against the commands of her coven. Who had so easily been tricked and trapped in that cell. It's impossible to imagine her stepping in and snatching power for herself. Elena can't imagine that witch showing enough spine to do it.
"Deveraux," Klaus muses. "That name has come up already this night."
Rebekah, though, fixates on Marcel's tone. "What does it matter whether it's this Deveraux witch or any other? She's still the head of the coven."
"Head she may be, but she's neither powerful nor experienced," Marcel informs them. "This particular witch spent most of the last decade trying to outrun her nature, and it's only in the last year that any of it's caught up to her. How she wound up in charge is beyond me."
"You seem to know a lot about this witch, Marcel," Stefan notes from across the room, his voice studiously bland. "Care to share how you know her?"
Marcel's jaw clenches, but Davina puts a hand on his shoulder. One of these days, Stefan's not-so-idle observations are going to spark a confrontation between the two of them. Elena's not sure who would walk away from that.
She wonders which one Klaus would back.
"None of that matters," Davina says, stepping out from behind Marcel and coming to stand in front of the desk, in front of them all. "What matters is: Taking her down is going to be the key to getting your werewolves fixed. You help me do that, and in return, I'll free your wolves for you."
This announcement visibly thrills Klaus. She can see it in the way his breath freezes, for just a fraction of a moment, in the slow, easy way he cocks his head as he assesses her. God, he almost looks giddy. It's suppressed, hidden under that wall he likes to drop on anyone who dares get too close, but she's learned to read him too well not to see it. He must have an inkling on where she is going with this. "Are you capable?" he asks her, skepticism thick in his voice. "You would be battling more than just the one witch."
Of course this is how he responds. How like him, to insist his would-be ally talk him into letting her do her part, when he's already sold on the idea. He had done this with her, once. Elena wonders what that means, that he now plays that game with Davina.
"I've got this." Davina takes a slow, deep breath, and all of the hairs on Elena's arms stand on end as the room pulses with her cresting power. The light bulbs spit and pop in their sockets, and the windows creak under the pressure of her magic. How terrible must her power be, if Elena, an almost ordinary mortal, can sense it? How great must the strain be upon the finely tuned senses of the four vampires in the room? "I already have all but a trickle of my coven's strength running through my veins. That alone would make me strong enough to kill Sophie, or any other witch who came against me. But that's not enough to be a solution. It won't give me what I need to slice through the curse, and it won't put an end to your problems with the coven— There'll always be another witch, another coven member ready to fight in a ramping blood war, if we leave it at that. And there would be a blood war." Davina stares at them all with fire in her eyes. "I mean to take Sophie's crown from her head."
Utter delight sparkles in Klaus's eyes. Oh, how he will want this witch under his thumb.
Davina's power is a frightening, glorious thing, and, Elena realizes, with a blinding clarity, that she is, day by day, blossoming into an outrageous beauty. Power and beauty, all in one package. She knows how alluring Klaus finds those two gifts. She wonders, with a sudden, unexpected pang, whether his attention will wander to this girl once she has another year or two to mature.
She shoves the thought away as soon as it erupts in her mind.
"Where do I come in?" Elena asks quietly.
"What you're planning to do is terribly unnatural," Rebekah interjects, over Elena's question. "Your coven runs on ancestral magic, does it not? That usually requires a death before a coup d'etat may be enacted. A natural death. Or, at least, a death not at the hands of the usurper to the throne. Those finicky ancestors would look poorly on murdering for the crown, would they not? They might deny you the powers of the High Witch altogether were you to do such a thing."
"It is unnatural," Davina says. "Almost as unnatural as mothers murdering their own daughters." She turns to Elena. "What I'm suggesting… is an inversion of nature's balance. Rebekah's right. Normally, I would never be able to pull this off."
Elena rubs her wrist, where she can just barely see the blue of her veins. "But my blood can counteract that." She states it as a matter of fact. She finally understands, now, after all of the reading she has done over this winter, what exactly is so special about her blood.
Davina nods. "Right. Magically speaking, your blood and your blood alone has the power to turn the laws of nature on their ear. It's the perfect catalyst for anyone hoping to accomplish the impossible."
"The last time Elena's blood was required to break a curse, the ritual killed her," Stefan says, finally pushing off of the bookshelf and joining the rest of them. He stands at her shoulder, steady and watchful. It takes her aback. She feels—protected. Looked out for in a way she mostly hasn't in a long time now. "How do I know you won't do the same?" he asks.
I. That pronoun is telling. Stefan is speaking for himself, not for Klaus. Elena finally feels like she has the answer to the question she has been asking herself since August.
"This again!" Rebekah huffs, twisting around so she can face him. "Haven't we moved past this?"
Stefan tenses, and every line in his body shifts, into something subtly menacing. It's a way of holding himself that she had never noticed in the year they were together before he flipped his switch, but which she has become better and better at reading since they moved away from Mystic Falls. Like this, he dances right on the edge of true violence. "No. I think it's a serious question and I want an answer before we just agree. No going behind my back this time."
"Easy, Ripper," Klaus calls.
Ripper? Davina mouths at her, bewildered. None of the vampires notice the exchange.
"No need to take your obligations quite so seriously, or steal the show from me," Klaus continues. "After all," and here he moves, in that inhuman way that may as well be like teleporting, to stand face to face with Davina, "I won't allow any lasting harm to come to my doppelganger. We're clear on that, are we not?" Elena does not like the way he stands so close to the witch, the way he tilts his head as he studies her. Does not like the way he has stopped referring to her by name and has been bartering her around like an object.
How thin the veneer is with him. The second she brushes him off, he proves how right she had been to do it.
She repeats this to herself, over and over.
"I wouldn't kill her," Davina says, everything about the words resolute and definitive. "If she survived you then she deserves to live out the rest of her days."
"I still don't like it," Stefan says. If she didn't know better, Elena would almost think his words were for her benefit.
"Luckily you don't have to like it, Stefan," Klaus says, without breaking away from Davina. "Alright," he says, as though whatever it is he's gleaned from Davina's face has satisfied him. "I'll let you use her thusly. But my conditions still stand. I'll be present for the ritual, and I expect not a drop more than necessary to be spilled."
Davina turns away from Klaus to look at Elena. What kind of internal fortification she must have, to take her eyes off of this most blatant of threats, Elena cannot imagine.
"And you, Elena?" Davina calls. "Do you agree?"
She'd already given in to this plan this morning, but Davina doesn't know that. She appreciates that she asks for her permission. Even more so than she would have last fall.
But first… there are things she has to know.
"What's going to happen to the other witches, exactly, when you take control?" No one had really answered her questions about that earlier, but she hopes Davina will be more forthcoming with her.
The other girl raises her chin and throws her shoulder back—Elena doesn't even think she's conscious of the regal change in her posture. "They'll be mine, then." That spirit Elena admires so much in Davina shines in her eyes. They'll be mine, then. Those words might sound like a threat to Klaus, who thinks the coven will be dealt with. No, he wouldn't be able to understand any other course. Were he in Davina's shoes, he would slaughter them down to the last infant in arms. But somehow, Elena suspects that Davina plans to do something very different once she gains a foothold in this coven that had tried to extinguish her.
Elena does a quick mental check of what she knows, and what she suspects. Thinks about everything she read, everything she pieced together. About circles, and elemental magic, and blood magic, and what it takes to make and unmake along lines of desire, in contradiction to nature's will.
"My blood is just to amp up your spell so you can take over the coven, right?" She cannot bring herself to say the real words. So you can kill Sophie.
What does it mean that she can't bring herself to try to talk them out of that?
Davina nods shortly.
She thinks about how she will phrase her question carefully. "So then how are you going to break the werewolf curse? Don't you need some sort of sacrifice, at least in gesture, in order to break a binding curse like that? Who's at bat for that?"
Marcel and Davina share another look between them, but this, at least, has finally reclaimed Klaus's attention. He turns around to appraise her with brows raised.
"How do you figure that, sweetheart?" he asks her lightly.
She frowns at him, and then at the room at large. "Did you think you were subtle? I have eyes you know. It's not hard to notice which books you've been looking through, which ones you took with you when you left last winter."
"Ah, and so of course you couldn't resist prying."
"You encouraged me to pursue an auto-didactic education. Sorry if this isn't what you had in mind."
"Look, Elena," Marcel cuts in, totally ignoring the piqued glare Klaus throws at him, "The specifics of how Davina plans to break the werewolf curse aren't really relevant to your part. You don't have to carry any of that on your conscience."
"Didn't we already go through this entire song and dance this morning?" Rebekah asks her. "If you truly feel badly about any of this, simply remind yourself that our asking for your consent is merely a formality. Nick will no doubt have his way whether or not you are willing." She smiles while she speaks, and Elena has the strange impression that she thinks she's being helpful.
"But I would much prefer if you complied willingly," Klaus adds.
She looks again to Marcel, to Davina. Her co-conspirators. The only ones to have ever offered to save her. "Okay. My decision still stands. I'll help you."
Marcel claps his hands together. "Excellent. I think this calls for a drink."
A moment later she has something smoky and unfamiliar in her hand. This entire evening has left her flustered, pitched about by the tides and waves of her warring emotions. She presses the sweating glass against her throat, letting the damp cool soothe her spinning head.
Marcel captures Klaus and Rebekah's attention, and, grudgingly, Stefan's, on the other side of the room, although the way Klaus glances her way when Davina comes to sit next to her tells her how pointedly the two of them have been left together. The idea of working for Klaus right now exhausts her.
She wonders if Marcel might also have a reason for letting the two of them talk.
Davina settles down next to her and immediately she can feel the weight of the other girl's concern. "You doing okay? You don't look so hot."
"I wish I could say this has me out of sorts, but it's getting to be routine, at this point."
Davina opens her mouth, but then closes it again without saying anything.
Elena gets it. It's hard, to have gone through what they went through together, and to have to act as though they've never met before.
"I meant what I said earlier," Davina finally tells her. "You do deserve to live a long, happy life. I think we both do."
"So I hear." Elena musters a smile. The one Klaus thinks is so winning. "So when does this all go down?"
"Mercury, Venus, and Earth are all going to be in alignment next week. We'll do it then."
The timing doesn't seem particularly linked to the werewolf curse's parameters, but she supposes any celestial event will do.
"Good. I was hoping I wouldn't have to wait too long to see you with a crown."
"Davina seems taken with you," Klaus notes once they are back in their rooms.
Elena heads for the study where her bed has been set up. "I thought you expected no less," she tosses over her shoulder before slipping into the room.
Klaus catches the door before she can close it on him. "We need to talk."
"We've already said everything there is to say." She throws the armoire doors open and rifles through her duffel. "I'm tired. I want to go to sleep."
"You're wrong about me."
She pulls out a tank top and some plaid pajama bottoms. "I don't see how."
He switches course without a moment's hesitation. "You still want me. I know you do. I can smell it on you. Hear it in the way your blood pulses when I look at you."
His words light a tempest in her. She throws her clothes down on the bed and spins on him. "That's totally irrelevant—"
He catches her by the arms and reels her in against him. His mouth crashes against hers before she can think. Instantly, her lips open for him, and that wild hunger yawns awake inside of her, demanding and vast. She grapples him closer and sinks her fingers into his hair, lets him walk her back, until he has her up against the wall. His fingers cup her jaw, angling her face for a deeper, fiercer access to her mouth. He presses the whole length of his body against hers, and he is so close,and she can't breathe, can't think. Doesn't dare think about this.
Because—if she stops to think—if she gets even one full breath, she'll realize—
Klaus kisses her like he can change her mind if only he can distract her long enough. It nearly works.
Elena breaks away, but she doesn't quite push him away. Her breath comes in unsteady pants, and she can feel Klaus's heart hammering under her palms. Dimly, she notes that the charge between them is no different than any other attraction she's experienced.
"You can't do that," she tells him.
"Your destiny is with me. One way or another, you are tied to me. Forever."
"Is this the part where you compel me to forget, or does that come later?"
He pulls away from her, impatient. "You're impossible—you do realize that, of course?"
"What part of I don't want you anymore do you not understand? Despite what you might think, you're not entitled to me, and you're not the center of my universe."
This time, she is ready for it. He snaps her up and into his arms swiftly enough to make her teeth rattle, but she feels calm through all of it. Determined. When his mouth meets hers, she focuses on her breathing, taking slow, deep breaths through her nose. She ignores the way her stomach flips when his teeth catch her lower lip, stifles the shiver when his tongue brushes against her own. Ignores the Klaus altogether, remaining firmly unresponsive, like he's not even there. He'd once dared to tell her that her cruelty had been the thing keeping him from compelling her like a doll. He does not know how cruel she can be. Has not had even a taste of it.
When he finally gives up, he studies her narrowly for a long time, and she does her best to keep her eyes and mouth as cold as he deserves.
"You're very much mistaken," he says, before turning on his heel and leaving her alone.
Elena stays up until the first gray light of dawn, unable to sleep, unable to stop replaying the feeling of his lips on hers.
At some point in the night, she hears a commotion in the glassed in courtyard below. When she looks out the window, she sees Tyler, amongst a group of hybrids, filing in from outside. The moonlight bathes his face in shadow and sharp, silver relief. It soothes her to watch him, her most loyal friend, even as guilt gnaws at her.
She doesn't know what to do. Doesn't know how to disentangle herself from Klaus's thrall when thrust into such close quarters with him.
It's like all those months she spent with Tyler over at that manor were all just stolen time. Right now, it all feels more like a reverie than an actual memory.
Part of her knew that this would be the case. That that tranquility would not last longer than however long it took for Klaus to suck her back under.
She hadn't anticipated how tangled up in Tyler she could become in so short a time, though. Hadn't anticipated how she would feel without him by her side, laughing with and caring for and loving her.
Tyler glances up, at the last minute, and their eyes meet. He nods, once. She presses her fingers against the glass until he has disappeared out of sight.
"You look awful," Stefan tells her the next morning.
He's the second person to tell her something along those lines in the last day. The long months with Tyler have worn down her defenses if everyone around her can read her so easily.
"I had a lot to think about last night."
She'd heard Klaus leave the suite a few hours ago, but hadn't dared leave her room this morning lest she run into him. She's not sure how that would have played out, and she doesn't want another opportunity to succumb to her body's wretched, traitorous impulses.
He sits down next to her and sets a to-go cup of black coffee in her hands. "I wish you didn't have to be involved in all of this."
"It's no big deal. I'm always involved." She takes a sip of the coffee before glancing around hopefully. "You didn't bring breakfast, did you?"
He produces a bag of pastries, and watches her tear into a croissant. As far as these things go, it's not so bad hanging out with Stefan. It's easy to be quiet around him. Easy to think.
"What did Rebekah mean, last night, when she said she thought the two of you were 'past this?'" she asks around a bite of danish.
Stefan gives her a look, that tells her to quit while she's ahead.
She can't.
"Stefan, I know you think it's wrong of them to put me in the middle of this. I appreciated you standing up for me." She takes his hand, and he doesn't pull away. "I just want to understand what's going on here. Please. The more I know, the safer I can be."
He looks down at their joined hands, seemingly transfixed. "Do you know what Abattoir translates to?"
She shakes her head.
"The slaughter house. Figures Klaus would fucking name it that."
"Stefan—"
"Marcel and Klaus are both the type of guy who'll smile at you while he drives a stake into your heart. Or a dagger in your back. You do realize that, right? You can't trust either of them." He waits for her to nod before continuing. "When we got here, Marcel was all too willing to have us stay here with him, but he wouldn't let Klaus near Davina. As far as I know, last night was only the second time Klaus's even laid eyes on her." Stefan untangles their fingers and hunches over, elbows on his knees. "They were at an impasse almost immediately. You and Klaus really kicked the hornet's nest with the French Quarter Coven—they were giving Marcel serious trouble—but Marcel just didn't see a reason to give Klaus the loup-garous for the asking."
"What changed?"
"Rebekah brokered a deal. Convinced Klaus to let Davina, and therefore Marcel, use your blood in an undisclosed spell. In return, Davina was going to clear up Klaus's problems with the coven and get him his wolves."
"Rebekah thought of that by herself?"
He glances over at her meaningfully. "What do you think?"
She worries her lip, trying to imagine in what scenario Marcel could approach Rebekah about something like this. It sounds like the sort of thing best done between the sheets. "Are… are the two of you on the outs? Over Marcel?" The question pops out of her mouth before she can think to stop herself.
"I wish Marcel didn't have so much sway over her."
Trust Stefan to answer her so noncommittally.
"She feels like that about you and me."
"That's different."
She doesn't think it is, but she doesn't correct him.
"What do you think is going to happen to us, once Davina breaks the curse? Do you think we'll stay here?"
Stefan shakes his head. "I'm going to get you out of the city. No matter what."
"What?"
"Whatever Klaus and Marcel say, there's no scenario that ends with the two of them as brothers-in-arms. So long as there's a throne to be gained, they'll always fight for it. I won't let you be caught in the middle of that."
"Stefan, that's crazy. Klaus would kill you for taking off with me."
"I'm not going to change my mind on this."
Anger washes over her. Here she is, sacrificing so much to keep him safe, and he's going to throw it all away on some unnecessary heroic gesture. If he had to do something like this, she almost wishes he would have suggested running away with her last fall, when she still might have wanted that. "What if I won't go?"
"You'll go," he says, calmly, like it's the most obvious conclusion in the world.
Frustration eats at her anger. "Why are you being so forthcoming with me?"
"I think we're past lies and half-truths, now." He's never sounded more tired. Never sounded more resigned.
This draws her up short.
All that afternoon, she ponders over what Stefan had said. If she is being honest with herself, which she often is not, there is a small part of herself (an enormous part of herself) that equates these lying games and subterfuges with all that is exciting about passion and desire.
With the admission of bare honesty between them, their relationship—their all-enduring love, which had hoped all things—has never before felt quite so long dead and buried.
She wonders if Klaus knows his sister is probably sleeping with Marcel.
She has the impression that she's not really supposed to wander around the Abattoire at will, but it's also not as though Stefan can watch her every moment of every day.
"I won't compel you to stay in the room, Elena," he tells her before he leaves. "But I do want you to exercise some common sense. Don't go sticking your hand into a viper's nest."
Good advice. She makes a note to avoid any of Marcel's vampires, or any of the hybrids, for that matter, as she slips out of her room.
Just a couple of minutes into her exploring, Tyler pulls her into one of the guest rooms off the main gallery, one hand over her mouth to cover her startled squawk.
"What are you doing up here?" she whispers, hyper aware of just how bad it could be for both of them if they are caught here, now.
"I wanted to see you. How are you doing? Are you okay?"
She softens in his arms. Loops her arms around his neck and presses her face to his chest. Breathes in his familiar, comforting smell while he holds her, his warm hands rubbing circles into her back.
"It's fine," she says after a while. "There's some top secret scheming going on, but it's fine."
"Why did Klaus want you here?"
"He needs my help with something. Nothing big."
"Elena—"
"What does he have you doing? I saw you coming in last night."
"Dealing with the witches, mostly. He's had a few of the new guys working on establishing contacts with the Crescent City Pack, but that's slow work. Only one night a month to make inroads, and all that." His fingers toy with the ends of her hair. "You're sure you're okay? I've missed you."
The guilt hits her, harder than it did last night. Tyler's been nothing but good to her, and she's hardly thought about him since they arrived. Almost every spare thought in her head has been reserved for Klaus, and the precious few left have all been working hard untangling the convoluted content of what was presented to her last night.
Her fingers curl against the fabric of his shirt. She thinks about the heart thumping under her ear. That brave and loyal heart. That heart that she loves, fiercely, stubbornly, maybe even a little recklessly. This boy who has been her steadfast friend, her patient lover, deserves so much more than she can offer him. He deserves the world, and all she can give him is the part of herself not torn to pieces by all of the lies and the schemes.
She knows they're not destined to be together.
"I've missed you more than you can imagine," she says. "I wish we were still back at the house, just the two of us."
When Tyler kisses her, she lets herself forget about all of her ill feelings, her dreadful forebodings. So long as nobody knows about this, she can keep him safe.
It is enough, to be here with him. The one place she truly wants to be.
Davina had told her they would work the spell in a little over a week's time. For several days she falls into a quiet pattern. Soft, tense conversations with Stefan. Long stretches of time spent peering down into the courtyard, watching from her glass cage, as the inhabitants of this strange place come and go. Overly friendly run-ins with Marcel's vampires, who've apparently all received the mixed message from Marcel and Klaus that she is their guest and also maybe worth all of their heads if they so much as cause her to frown. Tyler catches hold of her, twice, once in the servants' stairwell and once in a disused pantry, and she lets herself get lost in the simple joy of him. She doesn't let him do more than kiss her. Not here.
She also finds herself growing used to Klaus's presence again.
After that first day, when the shock of his overwhelming presence had devastated so many of her painstakingly raised defenses, she's done a fairly good job of ignoring the way his mere proximity makes her blood heat.
"I see that you have made it through the day unscathed. Are you in need of anything?" he asks her when he sees her on the second evening. "Some books, maybe? I could get you some paper and inks, if you'd like."
"That… might be nice," she admits.
He leaves her alone after that, and she does not see him again until the next day.
He is all the more present in her thoughts for his absence.
For Klaus's part, he does not try to kiss her again.
He does, however, take pains to talk to her every night. In a way, this is worse. This makes it feel like he cares, and that is a very, very dangerous thought for her to have. It's the worst sort. The kind that will burrow into her brain and plant itself there and bare rotten fruit.
"How did you spend your time, when I was away?" he asks the next night. They are situated in the outer sitting room, Elena with her bare feet tucked under her while she reads.
Elena pauses. "Why?"
"I'm interested in you."
"I read. I drew. I made pancakes almost every morning for a month and used a cookie sheet to go sledding in the gardens. I took naps in the flowerbeds and crushed all of your daffodils."
He blinks at her, and watches her face for a long time, before finally saying, "You sound happy, when you talk about that."
"I was happy, in a way."
"And did Mr. Lockwood keep you adequate company?"
"We've already talked about that. He was fine. Infinitely preferable to your sister." She is careful never to talk about Tyler too warmly.
He asks her other questions, too. About books she has read, and the places here in New Orleans she would like to revisit.
All of it throws her. After their tempestuous reunion, she would have expected him to respond to her rejection in the ways he had in the past. Bodies strewn over the corridors and pointed messages written in blood and gore. This avenue he's taken unsettles her much more. It's like he's testing each point in her battlements for weakness, looking out for the softest spot before he strikes.
She'd been ready to freeze out anymore heated advances, and had been prepared for any flashes of monstrous temper, but she doesn't know how to defend against this at all.
The next night he asks her, "What would it take to make you happy, again?"
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"Tell me anyway."
"I was happy last spring because it was the first time in what feels like forever when I didn't think about you very much at all."
"Is that so?" he asks, thoughtfully, almost as though he poses the question to himself. "And yet, I was also the only thing on your mind."
"Of course not."
"But I was. It must have taken a great deal of mental discipline to overcome a compulsion, and a great deal of time. By your own admission you had feelings for me. What must you have had to do to sublimate those feelings into—drawing? Reading? Piecing together what I've been up to here?"
The total assuredness with which he speaks sends a bolt of indignant fury lancing through her.
And yet.
She remembers drawing a blue eye in the corner of her diary. She remembers other moments, smaller moments, when the memory of what she had wanted from Klaus had shaken her quietude. For almost a month she'd tried to sleep away her feelings for him, and had only succeeded in dreaming of him instead.
Realizing that he's not wrong makes her want to gouge his eyes out, the way she'd scratched through the one she'd drawn. Makes her want to kiss him so badly she thinks she'll die if she doesn't.
She wishes she were back home, alone with Tyler and safe from her own self. Maybe if that time had lasted just a little bit longer, she could have really moved past this.
"Why can't you just leave me alone?" she asks him, exhausted and crushed by the weight of her conflicting feelings. Everything is a haze inside her heart, like swimming under night dark water, and she cannot tell which direction she must swim to break the surface.
"Because you belong to me," he tells her, "and I cannot."
"You make me happy," she murmurs into Tyler's mouth, the words her most precious secret.
The clamor in the courtyard is the first sign she has that something is up.
When she looks out her window, she sees a knot of hybrids in the far corner of the room, and in their center, a dark haired girl Elena has never seen before. She could be a hybrid, Elena supposes, but there's an air of challenge in the way the girl holds herself that she's not used to seeing in the hybrids.
Later, she finds her sitting in her bedroom trying to pry Klaus's desk drawers open with a pocket knife.
"Can I help you?" she asks from the doorway.
The girl looks up. "Got a key?" She doesn't look even the slightest bit guilty.
"No." She'd found the key tucked into the back of one of Klaus's paintings hanging on the wall three days ago. Inside the desk, she'd found a sheaf of papers in Klaus's hand, a medallion shaped like an eight point star with a blood red stone set into the center, which she could tell was probably a Dark Object without even touching it, and a jar of century old paint marked mummy brown. "Is there a reason you're in my room?"
"Wanted to take a look behind the curtain." The girl jams her knife back into the desk lock.
Elena frowns over her shoulder, wishing Stefan or even Klaus would turn up. She doesn't really relish trying to shoo some weird girl with a knife out of her room. On the other hand, she definitely doesn't want to leave the weird girl with the knife in her room.
"I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name. I'm Elena."
"Hayley."
"Great. Hayley. Look, you probably don't realize this, but your being in here is a bad idea."
"Why?"
Because Klaus would not take kindly to someone breaking into his treasure vault.
"These are Klaus's private rooms."
The girl makes a show of looking around. "Yeah, obviously."
Well, not the response she'd expected. "Are you one of the hybrids?" she asks the girl, hoping to get some sort of handle on her.
Hayley scoffs and, giving up on the desk, shoves her knife into her boot. "Not hardly. I feel sorry for them." She stands up and steps right into Elena's space, so that they are nearly toe to toe. The other girl is taller, and uses her height to look down her nose at her, before leaning forward to sniff at her. Elena bats her away, but not before the girl gets a good whiff. "You really are human," she says. "That makes the better question who are you?"
The door opens behind them. They both turn.
"Little wolf," Klaus calls from the doorway, his slight pause the only sign of his surprise. "I was wondering where you'd run off to." He looks between the two of them, standing far too close together. He breaks them apart in a moment, his arm going around Hayley's waist as he pulls her away. "I see you've met Elena," he notes.
"Yeah. What's a human girl doing here?"
Klaus bestows Hayley with a disarming smile. "Always so curious, aren't we? I think I like that best about you."
The girl actually blushes.
Elena's frowns. "Aren't you curious what she was doing up here?" she asks him.
"Not particularly." He whispers something in the girl's ear, and the look she gives him in response is downright coquettish. He glances at Elena. "If you'll excuse us," he says, like he doesn't have the time of day for her, and tugs Hayley out of the room after him.
It's appallingly clear that Klaus's flirting with that Hayley girl is a ruse of some sort. She's certain of it.
She sees Hayley around the compound after that. Learns that she's a werewolf, and an orphan. Someone Klaus met last winter, while travelling through Appalachia.
Why he would keep a live werewolf by his side, and not turn her gnaws at her.
She's sitting by the fountain and watching them talk through a pair of open French doors leading into one of the interior rooms. Hayley's hands run up Klaus's chest, and he allows it, and it's all very convincing except she knows what he is really like.
A pair of Marcel's vampires—Thierry and Diego— interrupt them. Whatever they say makes Klaus straighten and head toward the front door, gathering hybrids as they go. Thierry and Diego follow, as does Hayley.
"Quick, while he's distracted," Marcel murmurs in her ear, before grabbing her hand and whisking her to the back of the building. He takes her up the back stairs and up, up into the attic where Davina had worked her magic at the solstice party. All of it takes only seconds.
Elena stumbles out of his grasp.
"What is this?" she asks. There are runes draw all around the door leading downstairs, and around the edges of the room.
"We need to talk," Marcel informs her.
Davina steps out from the shadowed back rooms. "Don't worry," she says, gesturing to the runes. "I've put up a ward. No one will hear us."
She takes them both in. Feels a certain satisfaction in knowing that her suspicions had been right. There clearly is some other plot underfoot. Some plot they want her help for.
"So talk."
"There's no easy way to say this," Davian tells her, and then pauses, worrying her lip.
Marcel turns, and informs her very simply, "The French Quarter Coven has the bloodstone."
A/N: Thank you x a million for all of the wonderful reviews I got on the last chapter!
As always, you can find me on my tumblr over at livlepretre – my inbox is always open and I post writing updates there often.