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 and Implication of Non-Con/Hostage situation/explicit violence and torture/gratuitous angst/extremely dubious consent/potential character death
She wakes up slumped against the arm of the parlor sofa, back in the grand manor that has been her prison, and, sometimes, her home.
Tyler paces by the wide double doors leading out into the foyer, biting at his thumb and periodically scrubbing a hand through his hair.
"What happened?" she asks, the words thick in her throat. The details are all blurry to her.
"Klaus told me to get you out."
She stares at him as the last hour she can actually remember reasserts itself in the forefront of her mind.
Elena leaps to her feet and heads for the door.
"You can't leave."
"Watch me—"
He grabs ahold of her shoulders and spins her to face him. "Elena, there's no point."
He tells her this so gently that it makes her see red.
"There's always a point—"
"You've been out cold for nearly sixteen hours. Whatever's happened already happened."
She stumbles out of his grasp. Panic claws at her throat. "What? How?" Her thoughts reel. "That water you gave me? Was it drugged?"
"Look, it's what Klaus asked me to do, okay? He told me that if things went sideways, I wasn't supposed to fight, I was just supposed to get you out. He gave me that bottle and told me to use it if you fought me on it."
"Did he tell you to lie to me too?" she spits.
"Yeah, he did."
The words take the fight out of her. How is she supposed to be mad at him, when he literally can't tell Klaus no?
It occurs to her that Klaus had kept his promise. He'd found something for Tyler to do that kept him out of harm's way.
There's no satisfaction in it.
She wanders back into the parlor and collapses onto the sofa. Stares blindly at the spot on the floor where Matt had bled out just last fall. He could be dead right now, and she wouldn't have been there to save him this time.
Stefan had been bleeding like that when she'd left him.
(So quietly within herself that she pretends not to hear it, she thinks, If Klaus is gone, what's left for me?)
Elena shivers and wraps her arms around herself. "What do you think happened to all of them?"
"I don't know."
For the first time all year, she can't raise the walls within her heart to separate herself from everyone she left behind. It's like seeing them again has ripped those protections all down, and now all she can do is yearn for them and worry about them and tear herself apart for them.
"Do you think they're dead?"
Tyler picks his way over to her and kneels at her feet. Takes her hands and holds them between his own, warming them. "You have to have faith, Elena."
"I don't know if I can keep going."
Tenderly, he wipes the tears from her face. "But you will."
"Why were they even there? What were they even trying to accomplish?"
"It's like I told you before. You inspire them."
"I don't want to."
"I know."
"I wish they could have saved you. I wish Caroline had found you, and pulled you out."
He looks back at her with dark, shining eyes when she says this. She can read the intention in the lines of his body before he reaches up to cup her face, and she knows that she should stop him, should have that conversation with him that she had planned to have, but Tyler Lockwood's presence feels so comforting and necessary at this moment, and she's not sure she has the strength to push away this last piece of home when everything inside of her is bubbling over with this excess of confused longing.
She lets Tyler Lockwood kiss her, slowly, gently, with devastating gratitude. She kisses him back, for just a moment, because she loves him too, even if she knows now that she'll never be able to love him in the way that he deserves. The way that she wishes she could love.
When they pull apart, he rests his forehead against hers. "Thank you, for wanting to save me, Elena."
She places her hand over his, tries to find the words within herself to tell him her heart.
"Am I interrupting something?"
For a little while, she'd entertained the idea that she might be falling in love with Tyler Lockwood. Maybe she had been, once. She has room in her heart for multitudes.
Klaus does not.
Elena startles back as though she's touched a hot iron.
Klaus stands rigid in the doorway, his head tilted to the side, staring at her.
Any relief she might have felt at seeing him here, alive, unharmed, is completely scoured away by the circumstances.
There's something strange about his posture—it strikes her that in the past, he would have settled into a deliberately casual pose before announcing his presence—would have crossed his arms over his chest, leaned against the doorjamb and raised his brows at her while he waited for his response. Would have arranged an immaculate tableau of nonchalance in order to revel in menacing her. Not so now. Klaus stands there with his arms loose at his side, almost like he's forgotten his own body, as he waits for her response. The disbelief playing over his features, roughening his voice, is so much worse than the cool amusement he would ordinarily relish serving her. A rare, unguarded expression worries at his features. He almost looks vulnerable.
She has yearned, so much, for him to drop his guard with her.
She had not wanted it like this, though.
The moment lengthens damningly, Klaus's question hanging heavily in the air.
Slowly, Tyler gets to his feet to face Klaus.
Alarmed, Elena jumps up and pushes herself in front of Tyler.
It's the wrong move.
Klaus recovers from his momentary vulnerability on the instant. The speed with which a mask of cold fury closes over his face makes Elena's head spin.
"Eager to defend your boy, are you?" he sneers. "And here you led me to believe that he meant nothing to you." She can hear the accusation in his voice. The whisper of liar liar liar.
"It's not what it looks like. You have to understand."
He weighs her.
"You keep telling me that of late."
Finds her wanting.
"Klaus, you're not giving me a chance—"
Klaus smiles like a sword being drawn from its sheath. "Ah. Then we are in luck that I have the means to settle this very easily." He turns to Tyler, who has stepped out from behind her to stand at her side. "Tell me, my most loyal hybrid, what is the nature of your relationship with my dear Elena here?"
Tyler clenches his jaw, but stands steady under the enormous weight of Klaus's chilling attention. "We take care of each other."
Surprise flits across Klaus's face. Then suspicion. "Take care of her how?"
Elena breaks in. "Klaus, stop it! It's me you're angry at, not him."
"I think I'll be the one to determine that. Tyler?"
"She's been unhappy. Lonely. I tried to bring her out of that."
"I don't recall telling you to do that."
"You didn't have to. She's my friend."
Klaus stares at him for a beat. "Very neatly done. Evading my questions, and every word the truth, I'm sure." With deadly, liquid speed, he wraps his hand around Tyler's throat and shoves him backward, until he has Tyler effortlessly pinioned against the wall, his feet hanging two feet off the floor. Tyler scrabbles uselessly at Klaus's hand, incapable of shifting that implacable grip.
Elena flies across the room to tear at Klaus's arm, but he handles her with awful ease, needing only one hand to restrain her at arm's length while he keeps Tyler pinned with the other.
"Now, let's try this again, shall we? What's the nature of your relationship with my girl?" He tightens his grip on Tyler's wind pipe. "Are you her lover?"
"Yes," Tyler wheezes around Klaus's stranglehold on him.
Klaus flinches as though he's been dealt a physical blow.
With that one word, Elena's stomach drops to her feet. Her whole body flashes cold.
Klaus's fingers twitch, and with just that slight movement, Tyler's windpipe crumples beneath his touch. He drops him on the floor, and snatches Elena back before she can go to him. Tyler clutches at his throat as his face turns a violent shade of red, then purple, as he gags for breath.
"Stay here while I deal with Elena," Klaus growls, before turning on his heel and dragging her from the room after him.
"You know, I came here straight away," he tells her furiously as he hauls her up the stairs and down the hall into her bedroom. "Like a fool, I actually worried for your wellbeing."
Klaus tows her so swiftly that she has to half-run-half-stumble to keep up with him.
"What are you going to do to him?" she asks. Her voice trembles over the question.
"Hmm, I don't know, sweetheart. What's the punishment for treason again?" He yanks open her bedroom door and throws her down on the floor. "Oh yes! I recall—Death."
Elena clambers to her feet. "I'll never forgive you if you kill him."
If anything, this proclamation enrages him further. "I'll never forgive you if I don't," he snaps.
"You told me you wouldn't harm anyone else I loved."
"A promise made before I discovered your treachery with the quarterback, or that you'd been spreading your legs for the Lockwood boy." Klaus stalks directly into her personal space and begins to circle her as though she were prey. "Tell me, Elena," he commands, his voice low and ominously intimate, "Are there any other lovers, past or present, I should be concerned about? Stefan perhaps? Did he know, when he killed the quarterback, that it was not for true? Was he deceiving me too? Or what of Stefan's brother? He would make a satisfying victim. Because once I slay one of your passel of suitors, I may as well slay the rest."
Elena raises her chin. "You're trying to hurt me the way that I hurt you. I get it. But you don't need to hurt Tyler to get to me. You can stop, any time you want." You've already gotten me.
He grabs her by the jaw and tilts her face up so that she's forced to look into his seething eyes. "On the contrary, my dear. I mean for this to be a lesson you shan't soon forget. Only when your lover's pain and anguish is commensurate with the depths of your betrayal will I release him from his agony. And that," he says, squeezing her jaw with enough force that she fears he'll break it, "will take a very long time indeed."
She stumbles and nearly trips when he lets go of her.
He's really not going to listen to her.
Desperate tears blur her vision. "Please, Klaus," she says. "I'm begging you. I'll do anything. Just let him go—"
"What good are your promises?" he asks her coldly. "You're just a liar."
He may as well have struck her.
The accusation—oh, and how true it is!—sends her reeling.
"I am what I've had to be to survive you," she whispers.
Klaus leans back and appraises her out of hooded eyes. "Tell me, then, Elena mine. Was taking that boy into your bed part of surviving? Or was it that it got you off, fucking him in secret as I courted you? Is that why you begged for him as your caretaker? So you could laugh at me and deny me?" He catches her up in his arms and whispers intimately in her ear, "You must have known you were signing his death warrant. Must have known that I would find out."
"You're so cruel," she tells him helplessly.
"I must rise to your level."
He brushes past her, then, and steps out of the room. "I think I'm going to enjoy torturing this one more than I usually do," he throws over his shoulder, before shutting the door behind him.
Elena flings herself at the door a second too late.
The bolt turns over in the lock, trapping her inside.
The screaming starts only minutes later.
It goes on and on and on.
She slams into the door and bangs her fists against it, pounding against it as hard as she can, hollering, begging, sobbing until her throat goes raw.
No one answers her.
She may as well not exist.
Time loses meaning as the wretched agony rife in Tyler's scream claws at her sanity. Day passes into golden late afternoon, into twilight.
At first, she can clearly make out the cadence of Tyler's voice in the sound of it, but at some point it breaks, sliding into a pitch more like the howl of an animal than anything once human.
The sound of Tyler Lockwood's suffering pushes her into a frenzy.
No matter how hard she throws herself at the door, the solid wood won't budge, and there's no way to drop from her window to the ground below without risking a broken ankle or worse. She'd never bothered to learn how to pick a lock, and she's paying for it now.
With no escape, she paces the room, fingers tearing at her hair and nails biting at her scalp as she tries to think, to drown out the sound of what she has done to Tyler—what her love has done to him, what her happiness with him has meant for him—
She has no idea what she would even do if she could spring herself from the room. Can't even begin to imagine how she could possibly save Tyler, let alone herself.
Klaus had been right. She'd been merrily signing Tyler's death warrant all spring. She may as well have drawn hearts all over it. The monstrosity of her own selfishness eviscerates her. Devours her whole.
And even now, she cannot bring herself to hate Klaus. Not as she should. She's too far gone for that. Doesn't think she'll ever be able to muster it again.
Again, that longing to forge a path to freedom unspools within her chest, so fast and so complete that it actually aches.
Elena returns to the window and throws it open. A warm spring breeze ruffles her hair. She peers down to the garden beds nearly twenty feet below. Part of her wishes the fall were a longer one, so she could take it.
She shuts the window.
The house goes silent hours and hours after dark.
The silence is worse than the screaming.
The sun rises, and sets again.
She hears one short, keening cry, mid-afternoon, but nothing more.
Klaus doesn't reappear.
The isolation allows her no escape from her own thoughts. Ideas churn feverishly through her brain as she wears circles through the floor.
Almost two days pass locked in the room. Hunger stabs at her. Her arms and legs feel shaky, and a persistent headache drums in her temples, though, whether it is from the hunger—she must be going on three days without food— or the exhaustion or the anguished tears she sheds, she cannot tell.
When she is tired, she lies down on the floor, unable to stand her warm, soft bed right now.
When she is thirsty, she drinks from the faucet until her belly aches.
All the while, she cannot stop her mind from racing.
Endless questions plague her.
What had happened to her friends? To Stefan? Who had won the battle? Why had Klaus shown up by himself?
She can't bear to dwell on the obvious answers. Not when there just hadn't been time to find out, to brace herself for impact, when as soon as Klaus had arrived she had been totally subsumed by the singular goal of keeping Tyler Lockwood alive.
The uncertainty swirls together with the fear she feels for Tyler, for herself, forming a noxious cocktail in the pit of her stomach.
It takes time, for her to realize what it is she's feeling.
Hopeless despair.
On the second night, Klaus finally comes to her.
She can feel him before she sees him, the way the earth feels thunder before lightning splits the sky.
He strolls into the darkened room and kneels in front of where she sits slumped against her dresser.
His arms, she notices, are slathered with blood up to the elbow. She can just barely make out the wet shimmer of it by the moonlight streaming in from her window. There's a smear on his forehead as well, as though he had casually wiped his hand against his brow.
He smiles at her with perfect, sharp white teeth.
"How are you enjoying my symphony?" he asks with deadly charm. "I've written it for you."
"I meant what I said earlier," she rasps, lifting her chin to look him steadily in the eye. "I'll never forgive you."
"Forever is a long time." He brushes the back of his finger against her cheek in a cruel facsimile of intimacy. (Or maybe not. Maybe this really is Klaus's version of concern.) His touch is warm and wet with Tyler's blood. "But you'll have learned a valuable lesson," he continues, "which in this case serves my purposes far better."
Elena knocks his hand back and leaps to her feet, putting as much space between them as she can in the relatively small room. Every room feels too small when Klaus enters it.
"Please," she begs once more. "Please just stop. Just let him go."
"Why should I?"
"Because I've done everything you've ever asked! I haven't run away, I've given you my blood, I've given up my life for you—What more do you want from me?"
He storms over to her and, snatching her up, shakes her hard enough to make her teeth rattle. "Everything," he tells her darkly. "I want the only thought in your head to be of me, the way mine is of you. I want to cut away all others from your heart, to make it so that there is no room in you for any other than me. I want there to be no comfort for you but in my embrace, no refuge except in my possession. I want you."
His mouth descends on hers, then, the kiss hot and demanding. The kind of kiss meant to conquer. To consume. The kind of kiss that demands she yield, lest she be swept away completely. Klaus's sharp teeth slide against her lips, dangerous, seductive. Her mouth burns where they prick her.
Sense memory of another kiss like this last November overpowers her.
She jerks back, tries to break away, only for Klaus's implacable grip to keep her caged to his body. His mouth slips against hers, and his fangs sink into her lips. Blood wells in her mouth. Klaus snarls against her and redoubles his efforts, his tongue tracing over the raw wounds, his hands roaming her body.
When he tastes her—when he takes her blood into his mouth—she can sense the arc between them electrify. She feels it as a throbbing wave that rolls over every synapse. It drowns out everything else.
She cannot help but kiss him back, then, to revel in the blood-slick feel of his mouth moving against her own. In the feeling of satisfaction that roars through her when they strain toward these moments of real connection.
His embrace is the furthest thing from salvation. It's the deepest pit of hell. She'll gladly burn—
That's the whole problem with Klaus. She loses all control when she's with him.
(He's the one who showed her just how far she'd be willing to go if pressed.)
There are some things she swore there would be no coming back from. She meant that.
Klaus pushes her over towards the bed, and Elena uses the momentum to tear herself out of his arms.
Her heart, that loves so many, stumbles wildly in her chest. "I can't give you what you want," she says. "It's impossible."
He regards her with eyes blackened by lust and, she thinks, that simmering rage that always boils just under his skin. "I came here to make peace," he tells her. "But I see you're not quite ready to submit to me. Let us fix that, shall we?"
He seizes her arm and forces her out the door with him, leading her down the stairs, into the second parlor room where she and Tyler had whiled away so many months
The room has been transformed entirely.
The furniture has all been pushed back against the walls, and a fire roars in the hearth. Variously shaped fire pokers and tongs heat to white-hot in the flames. A table full of instruments, sharp and blunt, and another one full of knives, sit off to one side. Strips of cloth soaking in a bath strewn with sprigs of vervain and wolfsbane heat by the fire, and a puddle of some dark liquid pools on the floorboards. The acrid smell of burnt meat, of spilt blood mixed with viscera, permeates the air.
She has to steel herself to look at the person at the center of all of this horror.
Tyler hangs suspended by his wrists from the chandelier. Blood and gore coats him, so much so that it takes her a moment to understand the purpose of the various knives stuck seemingly at random into his body—that the knives are holding his wounds open, keeping him from healing. One of those cloths soaked in vervain and wolsfbane wraps around his throat. The flesh beneath it sizzles and smokes.
The sight of him obliterates any other thought from her head. Blocks out the sun, the moon, the pounding of her heart. It's a nightmare she's had for almost a year playing out in real time, right before her eyes.
Klaus grips her by the shoulders and draws her over to stand right in front of Tyler.
"Do you see what you've done to him?" he murmurs in her ear. His fingers dig into her shoulders like claws.
Tyler's whole body spasms at the sound of Klaus's voice. A pitiful moan creaks past his lips.
Desperately, Elena shakes her head. She can't take her eyes off of Tyler. "No. You did this."
"I beg to differ, my dear." Klaus twines a strand of her hair around his finger. "Would you like to see a magic trick?" He puts his finger to her lips before she can tell him no. "Tyler," he calls.
Slowly, Tyler opens his eyes to stare blearily at the two of them.
"Shift," Klaus commands.
The response is instantaneous. Tyler bucks at the chains binding him, trying to tear them down. To run away. At the same time, the transformation rips through him.
Elena's never actually seen it happen before. Caroline had described it to her, last spring, when she had begun helping Tyler, but it's another thing again to witness it.
Tyler's back arches unnaturally, his shoulders straining out of their sockets and his forearms snapping with an audible crack that viscerally reminds Elena of the time Klaus snapped Tyler's neck. Alien muscles ripple along Tyler's abdomen as his ribs creak and pop into formation. He screams raggedly with each shift of bone and muscle. His throat is so wrecked that she doubts she would recognize the howl for a human voice if she heard it in the woods.
Worst of all, the knives move as Tyler's body changes. A couple fall out of him, but most only twist deeper into his muscles. Fresh blood splatters the floor as Tyler completes his transformation into the wolf, a piece of his innards hanging from an open wound in his belly. The wolf snarls wretchedly as his lupine wrists slip free from the manacles, and lands in a broken heap on the floor. In the wake of the transformation, his whole body quivers from head to toe like a piece of struck metal.
Elena tries to run to Tyler, but Klaus holds her back.
"Ah ah, we wouldn't want to get bitten."
Elena spins to face him. "How long do you plan to keep doing this to him?"
"Until I'm satisfied. He's at my mercy, after all. It then follows that I get to call the shots."
"You don't have any mercy."
He shrugs. "You've got me there." He looks past her, down to Tyler on the floor. "Shift back," he orders, with a snap of his fingers.
The wolf shrieks again as its legs break and its spine snaps free of its shape.
Klaus is right. All of Tyler's suffering, every piece of it, is because she is selfish, because she is cruel.
It's all her fault.
She can't take it anymore.
She flees, and Klaus lets her.
She's more hurricane than girl when she returns to her room. In a fit, she kicks over the armchair, tosses the bedside table onto the floor, tears up her drawings. A flash of color snags her attention, and she spins, chasing it. Her eyes land on the Toulouse-Lautrec painting hanging oh so innocently upon the wall. She stares at the orange and pink flowers until her vision throbs, and suddenly she can't stand it anymore. She finds the first thing that comes to hand—a heavy ceramic mug off her bedside table that she'd used to store her pens—and she hurls it at the painting as hard as she can.
The mug crashes against the wall, breaking apart on impact. It tears the delicate canvas of the painting in two. It's only after, as Elena stands there panting, staring at the painting, that she understands that she hasn't made anything better at all. The orange and pink flowers are still there, accusing her.
Downstairs, Tyler is still suffering.
Still suffering, and there's nothing she can do about it. Not here, as a prisoner in this house.
Raised voices filter up from downstairs, smashing through her dark thoughts. Familiar voices. Stefan.
A moment later Stefan himself is at her door. Alive.
Elena throws herself into his arms.
He catches her. Of course he catches her.
Stefan wraps his arms around her and she shuts her eyes and buries her face in the crook of his neck, and lets the familiarity and the safety of him roll over her, until everything else but the beating of his heart and the scent of his skin dissolves like a bad dream.
It's a moment's respite she can only give herself for a moment. But by God, she takes it.
"I was so worried you were dead," she whispers into his shirt. "What took you so long to get here?"
"Rebekah got me out of the Abattoir, but everything was chaos after that. It took some time for her to get the dagger out. Longer to get back on my feet. I don't remember too much of the past couple of days."
"You saved me."
Stefan's arms tighten around her. "I lived with the ghost of you haunting me all of last summer. I can't do that again."
He'll have to, eventually.
"What happened? Did everyone…?"
She leaves the question open-ended. Cannot bear to finish it.
"They got out."
"All of them?" With all the violence unleashed in that building, she can hardly credit it.
"Your friends have a knack for surviving against impossible odds."
"You mean our friends."
He doesn't respond.
She pulls away and stares up into his face, trying to gauge his emotions.
For her part, the relief she should be feeling at her friends' miraculous survival feels small and distant. Unreachable through the hammering of her fear and her guilt at what is unfolding just downstairs.
Now that she really looks at Stefan, he looks awful. Worn and pale, with dark circles under his eyes. All at once she realizes that he's giving off almost no body heat. The recovery from his injuries must have been monumental if he's still showing the aftershocks.
At the same time as she takes him in, so he absorbs her.
"Why is Klaus torturing Tyler Lockwood?" he asks her at length. "He wouldn't say."
"Because he found out we were sleeping together." There's no point in hiding the truth now.
He blinks at her. The rebuke she's expecting, the questions—How could you be so stupid? So careless? So reckless? So selfish? —none of it ever comes.
"Klaus doesn't handle betrayal well," he murmurs instead.
The words spark another worry in her. "Klaus knows Matt's alive. He suspects you knew. You have to be careful around him."
Stefan nods, thoughtfully. He doesn't look particularly surprised by the news. "Tonight's the night, then."
"What?"
"We have to go. Tonight. As soon as possible."
"That's crazy. If we run, he'll know for sure we're guilty."
"We are guilty." He draws her back into his embrace and kisses her forehead. "Once Klaus is finished with Tyler, with me, he'll turn his full attention on you. He won't kill you for this. It'll be much worse than that. A living hell you'll never escape. His obsession with you is depthless. His capacity for revenge endless. I can't let that happen to you."
"And I can't let you risk your life for me."
"Oh, Elena," he breathes. "That's never been your choice." He draws away from her. "I need to get some supplies together. Be ready in an hour."
An hour. An hour to do what she can. The last of what she can. Alone.
She goes down to the kitchen and pulls bread and jam from the fridge, peanut butter from the cabinet. Makes herself the PB&J Sophie had meant to give her as a last meal all those months ago.
On the other side of the house, Tyler begins to scream again.
She wanders through the house like a ghost. A dark repeat of her old habits.
She encounters Rebekah in the empty third floor room that used to hold the upright piano.
The other girl sits in the window seat, gazing out into the dark. There's something very tired in her expression, and for the first time, Elena thinks she looks her age.
"I told you not to rock the boat," Rebekah chides her without looking up from the window.
A huge splintering crack snags her attention as she passes down the hall from the library.
She knows who's in there. Knows what she has to do.
Elena steps into the library and finds Klaus raging on the far side of the room. Her heart sinks when she sees the state he's left her beloved refuge in—not much better than her bedroom. The crash must have been the sound of the heavy mahogany table being thrown against one of the towering bookshelves. The table itself is smashed into pieces, and there's a huge divot in the bookshelf from the impact. Dozens of books have tumbled to the ground, many of their spines crushed and twisted. Other signs of Klaus's temper are abundant in the room. The crystal decanters have all been smashed, their shards glittering like diamond blades in the thick weave of the oriental rug. The leather sofa she had so loved lazing away hours upon has been ripped in twain.
"What are you doing?" she asks from the doorway. She feels like she's in one of her dreams, only so much worse.
"Elena! The queen of the hour!" Klaus greets her with vicious joviality. He darts into her personal space with eye-watering speed. Grabs her by the arm. "Come, see how I've redecorated your den of iniquity."
"What?"
"How now, you don't think your dearly beloved held anything back from me? I asked, and he answered, sweetheart." He marches her over to the ruined remains of the sofa. His grip on her arms is punishing. "He told me all about how you took him on this sofa. Were you thinking of me as you rode him? Did you wonder if I would rip his heart from his body for it? Could you taste his death when he came?"
Heat races up her neck. Shame.
She hadn't then, no. She'd been too stupid, too blind.
But she had thought of him. Only of him.
Klaus notices her blush. "Such a beauty you are," he growls, gathering her hair back from her neck. "Such a rare face. You could launch a thousand ships with it, if I let you. I won't ever, though. I've caught your Paris and strung him up from the battlements before you could run away with him. Be grateful for that."
She trembles under his touch. Shuts her eyes. "I've never run from you before," she whispers shakily.
"Won't you, though? It's in your nature."
"It doesn't matter what I want."
He spins her around to face him. Snarls in her face. "If you run, I'll hunt you. To the ends of the earth. The lives of your friends and your family will be forfeit. I'll butcher each and every one of them and paint your portrait in their blood. I will not stop until you are mine, and mine alone." He places his hand over her heart. Feels its gallop. "Oh, you're afraid of me now, aren't you?" He draws her close and whispers savagely in her ear. "You should never have stopped." As fast as he'd snatched her, Klaus shoves her away.
She falls and lands hard on the ruined remnant of the leather sofa.
Once, she'd held Klaus in her arms and kissed him until the stars faded into mist.
Once, she'd led a boy she'd cherished since childhood to his death, veiled in the guise of love.
The line between wrong and right is thinnest here, in this room, in just this spot, in the darkest hours of night.
The two of them know all of these things as they stare each other down.
She cannot take the sight of herself reflected in his deadly eyes a moment longer.
She tears from the room like a rabbit.
Can feel his eyes tracking her all the while.
Her heart burns for a way out of all of this.
The only way out.
Katherine had been blamed for running away. For surviving, the only way she knew how. No matter the consequences.
The same heart that beat in Katerina Petrova also beats in Elena.
She cannot help her nature.
She creeps downstairs and into the second parlor.
She only has a moment.
Elena finds Tyler alone, strung up again from the chandelier. He looks even worse than before. His blood loss must be tremendous, for none of his wounds to be making even a small effort to close. She's not sure he'll last the night.
Tears roll down her face as she steps up to him. As she reaches up and touches the side of his dear, beloved face, blackened and burned.
He stirs under her touch, but doesn't awaken.
"Goodbye, Tyler," she whispers. "I'm sorry." The last, she only mouths. If she says it out loud, it will kill her.
She can't look back.
Not even for Tyler.
She slips out through the kitchen door, into the cool night air.
The moon is very bright tonight, and shines silver over the wet grass.
A quicksilver memory tickles at the edges of her thoughts.
She takes a deep breath.
Run, her blood sings in her ears. A siren's call no woman with her face has ever been able to resist.
Elena shoots across the lawn like an arrow in flight.
Her legs burn with effort, with desperation, as she hurtles over the wet lawn, her feet slipping in the pre-dawn dew. Each breath comes like a hot, sharp knife in her lungs as she battles forward, toward the line of trees at the perimeter of the property.
She feels the dark tide of his approach a millisecond before he snatches her up and spins her around in his arms.
Elena had run, and Klaus had given chase. Had caught her.
It had been inevitable. Destiny.
Exactly what she had depended upon happening.
Elena spins in Klaus's arms, and the dagger in her fist glints gold in the moonlight. She drives it into his heart without hesitation. Without mercy. After all, she's slain giants before.
Klaus gasps, his mouth dropping open in shock, and he stares at her with huge, wide eyes as the life leeches from him. His fingers clutch weakly at her, and she holds onto him until the last light leaves his eyes.
Perhaps seeing her clearly for the first time.
She's still holding him when the sun begins to creep over the horizon.
The night's dew has soaked through her clothes, leaving her shivering as she holds onto him. His blood stains the front of her shirt, and her hands.
The spring air at this hour is misty, insubstantial with possibility and illusion.
Just as before, he is still so beautiful, even in death.
Rebekah emerges from the house and meets her out at the edge of the property. "I did my part," she announces. "Lockwood is out. I compelled him to run, always, and to never let Klaus find him."
Elena squeezes her eyes shut. Grief for Tyler, never getting to go home, washes through her, even if this desperate gamble to save him had been all her own idea.
Grief because she'll never see him again.
And yet. She had saved him.
"And Stefan?"
"Compelled as well. He won't remember helping your Matt survive. Or trying to abscond with you." She watches Elena stroke Klaus's golden hair back from his face.
"Thank you," Elena murmurs.
"I couldn't stand by and watch my brother kill another man for simply loving the wrong woman." Rebekah turns and stares out into the shimmering line of trees, backlit by the rising dawn. "It's time, Elena. Your scheme succeeded, though I doubt he'll ever forgive either one of us for our parts. Undagger my brother."
The sun rises, and Elena pulls the dagger free.
A/N: I TOLD y'all that Elena had a card up her sleeve!
I've been keeping that Elena held onto that gold dagger secret since chapter 22, and the suspense has been KILLING me. If you're wondering why she hasn't used it until this moment, don't worry, she and Klaus are going to have a LONG discussion about all of this in the next installment. GRATUITOUS angst guaranteed.
Please drop me a comment if you're enjoying this—I love hearing from all of you lovelies! Thanks for reading!