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: Extremely dubious consent verging on non-con/Hostage situation/explicit violence and torture/gratuitous angst/ potential character death
She doesn't know how long she stands in the library, the blood from her cut palm dripping onto the floor as she stares at the place where Klaus had disappeared.
I'm leaving you.
Live.
Her vision blurs. She's not sure why.
The echoing sound of the front door slamming shut breaks her from her stupor. Blinking rapidly to clear her eyes, she races to one of the rooms overlooking the front drive. Sees the familiar black SUV rolling over the gravel drive. Vanishing behind the gate.
No.
He can't have left. He wouldn't—
Elena hurtles through the house, throwing open doors, peering into every room. Searching.
She calls his name, and still expects for him to appear, like he always does, almost out of thin air. To smirk at her, his eyes hot on her skin as he inquires after her fluster.
"Listen to your heart fly," he'll say, his mouth curling around the words. "Have you missed me so much already?"
"Yes," she'll tell him. Yes. She'll be honest. She'll tell him anything. Everything. All of the things she's been too afraid and too prideful and ashamed to ever admit before now.
Now, when she realizes how stupid all of her old reasons for holding back had been.
Now, if only he will not go where she cannot follow him.
She tears through the whole house twice, three times. He's nowhere. Winded, she even calls for Stefan. For Rebekah. For any random hybrid.
For anyone.
He can't have left her. Can't have really given up on her.
Your destiny is with me. One way or another, you are tied to me. Forever.
He'd told her that just a couple of weeks ago.
There's no one here.
Exhausted, Elena drifts through the house in a fog. Her palm throbs something vicious when she wipes her hand against her brow, but she forgets why. It's not important right now.
There's really no one here.
She really is all alone.
That's what I wanted, wasn't it?
She can't recall.
Warm prickly grass slides under her feet. She finds herself standing under the protecting arms of the Japanese Maple without remembering coming outside at all.
If she looks up and to the left, she'll be looking straight out over the expansive grounds she had raced over last night. At the place where she had last held Klaus in her arms.
The sun has already risen and begun its descent toward the horizon since that time. Has already burned all of the dew that clung over everything away to nothing, like it was never there. The towering line of trees hemming in the property will by now be casting long shadows over the grass. Obscuring everything.
She does not look up.
Instead, she stumbles over to her spot beneath the tree, in the densest patch of shade, where she feels almost sheltered. Hidden.
For a moment she stares at the ground beneath her feet. There had been an iron lawn chair placed just here last year. She hasn't seen it in a long time. She wonders what's happened to it.
It doesn't matter.
Bone weary, she collapses to the ground at the foot of the tree, and, drawing her knees to her chest, buries her face against them. Wills herself to draw comfort from the tightness of her own arms wrapped around herself.
She can't.
Can't feel anything at all. It's like there was once a string that tethered her to her body, but that string's been cut, and so she hovers, outside of herself, unable to climb back into her own skin.
All was as a dream, and a shallow, vapid one at that.
Except it hadn't been.
It had been real. It had been so real that in the end she had had no choice but to turn and face the truth.
I love you.
For a single night, she had held him in her arms. Pressed herself close to him, her heart beating against his own. Wrapped together like that, he had had confided in her. Had let her see the truths lurking deep inside of him.
She had accepted all of those truths. Had accepted everything she had ever learned about him, everything he had ever done—even what should have been impossible. Unforgivable.
She had loved him anyway.
He had been unable to accept her in the same measure. To see all of her, and to love her for it.
I no longer care.
It doesn't matter.
She still loves him.
Can feel it, a wound in her chest.
Forever, he had told her.
It hadn't even lasted a year.
What was a year to Klaus?
Nothing.
The sun goes down. The birds stop singing, the insects chirring. Cool night air blankets the yard in blessed silence. The first gleaming stars peak through the cloud cover.
Elena turns on her back and contemplates their distance, their indifference.
Klaus may as well be as distant as one of those stars.
She screws her eyes shut and fights against the fresh swell of misery that thought brings.
Eventually, the moon rises.
The moon.
Her moon.
Frowning, she closes her eyes, and reaches deep within herself, to that secret, latent power slumbering inside of her. To that place where she stops being a girl and is instead a force of nature bound in flesh and blood.
She finds that wellspring inside herself, and she follows it from that source within her and out, along the blood-borne current that connects her… still… to Klaus.
And she feels him.
A fierce and overwhelming relief crushes her heart. Steals her breath in a single, startled huff.
A wild, reckless hope unfurls within her.
("It's like the feeling the wave must have before the moon sweeps back the tide."
"Like if you called him, he would answer.")
Their connection, magnified a thousand-fold after Davina's ritual had consumed the bloodstone, has the strength to call him back to her, even now. It must.
Come to me, she calls him, through that bond. Come back to me.
She doesn't care if he doesn't love her back.
It would be enough, just for him to be here with her.
She falls asleep, calling his name in her heart.
Waiting for him to answer.
She's in the library reading. She'd come in here after finding it too hard to sleep, having simply thrown a pullover sweater over her pajamas. The fireplace had been lit when she arrived, the flames dancing yellow-orange in the grate, and she is having remarkable trouble focusing. Her eyes retrace the same words again and again, without deriving any meaning.
She senses him before she sees him. That niggling awareness of him that she has developed is something she would rather not linger on. All too easily he has become the center of her universe, the golden thread she follows to find her way out of the labyrinth he has placed her in.
The firelight catches the gold in his hair, the perpetually raging storm in his blue eyes. When he sits down next to her and throws his arm over the back of the sofa behind her head, she finds herself too transfixed by him to protest his closeness.
"What game are you playing?" she asks him, somewhat recklessly.
He's tipped his head back and closed his eyes, exposing his throat to her. Only his lips move when he tells her, "Everything's a game after a thousand years, dearheart. You'll have to be more specific." He could be a statue, she thinks. Only something truly dead could hold so still.
They talk. About Stefan. About Matt. About why she hadn't tried harder to save her friend.
He draws her up short. Makes her question herself in ways she hadn't been prepared to do.
All at once she realizes that Klaus is staring at her. He's always staring at her, it seems, ever since the beginning. Weighing her, studying her, working so, so hard to decipher her. To know her.
She cannot look away.
"Imagine I'm going to tell you whatever it is that you most long for me to say to you, in your most secret heart of hearts," he tells her intently, changing topics out of the blue. Like he'd only been half-listening to their conversation, only waiting for a chance to draw her into his web with the low burr of his voice and the grasping intensity of his gaze. (You know, you're different than I anticipated.)
She swallows. His eyes dart down, following the bob of her throat. Slowly, he reaches out and touches his hand to her knee, inching the finger upward, to the place on her thigh he had touched her before. He doesn't break eye contact with her the whole time.
"I'm telling you, right now, whatever words it would take from me to thaw you out," he continues, soft and coaxing. "Confessing everything you need to hear for you to let go of your inhibitions against me. To desire me as your lover." He draws the tip of his finger over her thigh as he speaks, the barest pressure against her skin, so light she could be imagining it. (I thought you'd be Katerina come-again, but you're something else.)
His words unlock something inside of her. Some distant, yearning part of her that has always wanted to be seen for only herself, ever since the day she discovered that her face belonged to another.
He must see the way his words affect her—surely there must be some opening in her expression, some sign that yes, she is listening, and she is interested—
"You believe me," he tells her, definitive.
Yes.
He is very close, so close she can see each golden lash distinctly. His thumb brushes against the inside of her thigh. She cannot break away from that blue gaze.
"Completely." (I find I am very interested in you, Elena. Elena…)
There are a thousand warning bells ringing in her mind. A thousand reasons to say no, to pull back and run, run far away.
She ignores them all. It's like she's magnetized, drawn into him and unable to break free from this current running between them. Her hand trembles when she reaches for him. His stubble scratches against the inside of her palm. She shivers as she imagines it rubbing against other places.
Her touch galvanizes him. Naked triumph shines in his eyes. In a heartbeat his free hand is buried in her hair, drawing her forward. Instantaneously she is grasping him by the shoulders, dragging him against her with all of her strength. They meet in the middle, lips and teeth and tongues pressing, pulling, dancing against each other. She can feel him smirk against her mouth. Cuts her lips against it.
She's in his lap, legs wrapped around his waist, without quite knowing how she got there. Klaus's hand is still pressed to the inside of her thigh, where he's stroking over the sensitive flesh there. A deep throb pulses between her legs, hot and electric. Mindlessly, she grinds against him, not at all stopping to think about the repercussions of doing this with Klaus.
She breaks the kiss to tear her sweater off over her head. As soon as the sweater is gone Klaus pulls her down closer against him, to where he can access the newly exposed flesh at the top of her breasts.
Neither of them speak, but Klaus doesn't need to. Every line in his body telegraphs how eager he is for her. How much he desires her. Hungers for her.
Whatever this is, she doesn't think she can stop now that she's begun it. Everything else is fuzzy, like she can't think or move or breathe except to touch, to taste, and if she has regrets or second-thoughts she'll have to worry about them later.
Klaus's fingers slide up her leg to the apex of her thigh. He presses a finger over her underwear, against the wet line of her sex—It's almost unbearable how much she wants him in that moment, how much she needs him inside of her.
This is crazy, but she finds that she can't stop now that she's started.
It's the work of seconds to unbuckle Klaus's belt and unzip his pants. Her fingers quest under the fabric, not a moment's hesitation or demure thought in her head when she finds him hard and hot and eager for her. She wraps her fingers around the length of him, revels in the way he growls against her breast, the way he pulls her closer against him, so he can desperately thrust against her center. The slide of his cockhead over her clit, even with the barrier of her pajama shorts between them, makes her whole body clench in want.
He feels it. Buries his hands in her hair, fingers combing through her tresses over and over again as he kisses her, his mouth like a brand against her lips.
Impatiently, she rises up over his lap, breaking the kiss so she can tug off her sleep shorts and underwear. Klaus watches her in a kind of mesmerized torpor, a smug smile playing at the corner of his mouth. Well, she'll show him smug.
When she sinks back down into Klaus's lap, the wet spread of her sex presses against the length of his straining cock and wipes that expression clean off his face.
Klaus startles against her. Pulls her closer and presses his mouth to her throat, muttering curses against the scar he left her last year as he covers her hand with his own, and guides himself inside of her. Helplessly, she rolls her hips, needing him deeper inside of her, needing the feeling of him sliding against her inner walls, the friction of his fingers tight against her clit, more more more—
Klaus groans and bites down hard against her throat with blunt, human teeth, sucking ruthlessly at the oversensitive skin there as he thrusts into her.
And it's good, it's good, it's something she's needed and hadn't even realized how much she need it until just now.
Elena buries her fingers in the hair at the back of his neck and tugs, so that he is forced to look at her. He obliges, and looks up into her face with eyes glazed over in lust.
They stare at each other for a long moment, not breaking eye contact as Klaus grinds into her. Shameless moans fall from her lips all the while, her fingers tightening in his hair as his hands brush against her thighs, her hips, her quivering clit. Her whole universe shrinks down to the feeling of his hands on her body, his eyes locked onto her face.
He watches her and watches her, endlessly, endlessly.
A shadow passes over his face.
His hips stutter. Slow completely. He goes completely stony beneath her, even while still inside of her, as he looks upon her. His fingers clench unconsciously around her hips.
She doesn't understand what's happened, or why he's stopped, just when he's gotten something that he's clearly wanted so very much. Her, ready and willing for him. Just when he'd convinced her that she wants him back.
A flush creeps up her face. She gulps for air, her chest heaving, as she tries to figure out what's gone wrong. How to put everything right again.
Klaus traces the curve of her cheek with the back of a finger. "What do you want?" he asks her at length, his voice low and serious in the heavy silence between them.
"You. I want you."
Her answer doesn't satisfy him. She can see it plain as day in the frown that creases his forehead. The way he won't look her in the eye anymore.
Carefully, he pulls her off of him and sets her down on the sofa beside him. He hands her her underwear and pajama shorts. Her camisole and her sweater.
"You don't want me?" she asks, stunned. Her fingers pick at the hem of her sweater. She still naked. Bare for him.
"I do want you. The thing is, you don't want me. Not truly." He rebuckles himself into his clothing and stands. Turns to study her, that frown still pinching his features, as though she is a puzzle he is trying to work out. "I didn't think I cared what you wanted. I thought this—this illusion would be enough to satisfy me."
"I don't understand." Her voice wobbles. "I do want—"
He cuts her off. "You don't." His gaze trails over her. In a flash, he drops down before her, so he is eye level with her. "Forget that this happened."
She nods, captive to his words.
"You're going to get dressed now, and go back to your room." He pauses. A wicked gleam enters his eye, erasing the frown from his face altogether. "You're going to go back to your room and dream about me. And in your dream, you'll recall what you imagine I said to you, that so swayed your feelings toward me. You'll remember exactly how it felt to be at the mercy of my touch. Under my mouth, clasped between my teeth. You'll burn for me as you dream about all the things I can make you feel."
"And what will you do?" The question slips out before she can stop herself.
Klaus pulls away, as though taken aback. He clenches his jaw. "I'll find another distraction, I'm sure." He trails his fingers through her hair. Pins her with that dark, portentous stare. "Until next time. Pleasant dreams."
Elena blinks up into the morning sunlight filtering down through the green branches of the tree overhead.
Slowly, she sits up, trying to make sense of her surroundings. To orient herself in time and place.
She must have fallen asleep out here.
Weird, that no one came and got her.
She glances over to the far edge of the property.
Remembrance breaks over her like a wave. Nearly sucks her under, as the recollection of searching and searching and finding nothing but a vast, echoing solitude punches through her.
She can't quite remember coming out here. Settling under this tree.
What she does recall is the moon. The way the longing had careened into her, hard and desperate, at the sight of it. The way she had fallen asleep calling. Calling…
Certain that if she called, he would answer.
A terrible, electrifying thought unfolds within her.
He could be inside, right now. Could be waiting for her.
Stumbling to her feet, Elena staggers over the lawn, through the back door leading into the kitchen, which in her stupor she had left open to bang in the wind.
That same hope that had stolen over her last night propels her up the stairs, onto the main floor of the house. Causes her to peel through the manor again, calling his name—
All she hears is herself. Her voice, a howling in the wind.
No one answers her.
Determined, Elena shuts her eyes, and reaches out, through her power, to yank on the arc between them.
She can feel him, as clearly as she could the night before, but there's no sign he can feel her reaching out to him. No answering leap, the way there had been that night she had found him daggered in the witches' cellar.
Just. Nothing.
Eventually, she has to admit to herself the truth which she's been avoiding since he walked out of the library the day before.
He really is gone, and she cannot reach him.
She collapses into bed, fully dressed in the same clothing she's been wearing for days now. Since New Orleans. Pulls the covers over her head, and hides from her own solitude.
The tears come, of course. Great, wracking sobs that make it hard for her to breathe through the pain in her chest, the fire in her throat. That wring her out so badly that she just can't find the energy to get out of bed afterwards.
She lets herself feel everything. Every bit of grief and loneliness, every bit of heartbreak.
Tyler had taught her this. Taught her that it's okay, to mourn for herself, as he had held her and rocked her against him and whispered his love for her into her ear. He'd taught her that, and then held out his hand to her and helped her build a life worth living.
He had saved her that day. Had taught her to dream again. To hope.
She'd been so selfish with what he'd given her. Would never be able to repay him, or to make up for what had been done to him.
Maybe when Rebekah had compelled him, she had also compelled him to forget about her, to forget about any of this.
That would be better, if Tyler could forget that any of this ever happened.
If he could start fresh somewhere.
Even as she squeezes her eyes shut and curls into a ball, clutching spasmodically at her own sides, struggling just to breathe, she sends up a little prayer that Tyler is safe, somewhere.
She's not sure how long she stays there, in the cocoon she's made for herself under the covers.
She imagines herself like a caterpillar inside its chrysalis, slowly dissolving into mush.
Metamorphosing.
Emerging a butterfly.
"I thought you didn't want me to know where you were keeping me," she asks as she stares out the windows of the shiny black SUV at the picturesque New Hampshire countryside zipping by at double the speed limit. She presses her face up to the glass and cranes her neck to take in the remnants of the fall foliage clinging to a lip of granite overhanging the highway.
"Already planning your escape?"
She turns away from the window and considers him. "I've already told you before that I'd never run from you." She fiddles with the blue hair tie around her wrist. Twists it in her fingers. "I guess I just didn't think about how we would actually be traveling down to New Orleans. Hadn't thought about the road trip aspect."
He glances at her out of the corner of his eye. "Nervous to be alone with me for so long?" he asks her lowly.
His tone puts her graphically in mind of how he has murmured other things to her—suggestive things, lewd things that have made her whole body ignite in want—
In her dreams. Only ever in her dreams.
A furious blush scorches her face, even as just the memory of those dreams makes her stomach knot and her hips shift restlessly against the leather seat. Klaus can probably detect exactly where her thoughts have veered. God, this is so humiliating.
"Of course not," she answers, finally, her voice sounding strangled even to her own ears. She hazards a glance at Klaus, his attention unwaveringly on the winding highway ahead of them. Nothing in his expression gives him away, and yet… She could swear that there's a gleam in his eye that hadn't been there before she started fantasizing about him under her. Over her. Behind her. She swallows thickly. Knots the hair tie between her fingers. Unknots it. "I've just… never been so far from home before," she manages, barreling on before her subconscious can throw up any more lurid fantasies to make this car ride even more uncomfortable for her. "I'm excited."
This piques Klaus's interest. He's obviously feeling magnanimous enough today not to prod after what exactly had gotten under her skin all of a sudden. Instead he asks her, "Where have you been, then?"
Elena shrugs. Drops the hair tie into the cupholder and folds her hands across her lap. "D.C. with my class, back in 9th grade. The Outer Banks a few times, for the beach with my family. A couple of trips to the Smokey Mountains. Georgia."
"So you've never been anywhere at all, then."
"Well I've been to New Hampshire."
His mouth quirks, almost like he's tempted to smile. "That you have been."
She leans her head against the window. "I was going to go away for school. New York, maybe, or out West."
"Behave on this trip and perhaps I'll take you one day."
"You don't mean that, though."
"I might."
"You're only taking me now because you don't have another choice."
"Perhaps I enjoy your company."
"You enjoy looking at me when I'm turned so you can't see my scar."
He doesn't refute her. "Still," he says, after a moment, "The fact remains that you are coming with me to the Crescent City. You ought to at least receive a proper introduction to her."
"What, are you offering to show me around?"
A new idea visibly brightens that gleam in his eyes that has never quite gone away since those dreams had popped back into her thoughts. "You don't get sea-sick, do you?"
"No, not at all." She doesn't mention the other sickness she has—the longing for the water that she's never been able to kill entirely.
"Then I have just the idea," he announces, satisfaction rich in his voice.
And he does.
He shows her the city—his city—from exactly the angle he had first glimpsed it, and even though she doesn't remember the conversation that led them here, she drinks it all in like a desert plant soaks up water.
Forgets her cares, just for a little while.
A pounding headache drives her awake.
For a long time, Elena stares at the ceiling. Her throat feels enflamed, each breath like sandpaper as she struggles under the weight of her fatigue. She's feels so weak, so depleted after everything, that even breathing feels like a chore. She could swear that each beat of her heart takes a conscious effort.
It takes a while, but eventually it occurs to her that she hasn't had anything to drink in days.
There's a part of her that doesn't care. She can't leave the property, can't go find anyone who matters to her—her brother or Bonnie or Caroline or Damon or Stefan or… or Klaus. She's stuck, imprisoned here on her lonesome. If she can't leave, and there's no reason to stay, then there's a huge part of her, the part that is just so, so tired, that urges her to just lay back, to close her eyes. Rest. Let herself drift off, into the death that she has had so much trouble claiming.
It would be a relief.
No sooner does she have the thought than Klaus's compulsion needles into her. Live.
She climbs out of bed and shuffles to the bathroom to stick her head under the sink and guzzle cold water straight from the tap without ever consciously deciding to do it.
Drinks so much, so fast, that she throws it all up again.
She cries while she heaves, clinging to the edge of the sink.
Utterly spent, miserable with watery vomit and strings of stomach acid still clinging to her face and spotting the front of her shirt, Elena lies on her side on the bathroom floor, her cheek pressed to the cold tiles. God, she wishes he were here to wrap his arms around her, to stroke her back, to drape his coat around her shoulders and swing her up into his arms, the way he had done the night of the solstice. She wouldn't even care this time if the coat were covered in blood. All that would matter is that Klaus would look at her again the way he had done that night.
She's digging down deep into that kernel of power within her blood before she can even think about it, casting her senses out again to find her connection to Klaus.
The connection is substantially weaker than it was two days ago, the last time she attempted this. She tries not to panic over this change. Assures herself that this just means he's moved a little further away. Of course he would. What's there to do in New Hampshire, anyway?
Taking a deep breath, she tries once more to call him back to her.
She lies there a long time, straining to feel some change in the tide of him. Some sign that he's heard her.
She can't sense anything at all. Just the faint humming awareness of him, her blood's unnatural progeny.
It feels like an omen. Like no matter what she tries, she'll never be able to claw her way back from this.
And God. She is still so weary. She wants nothing more than to lie here a while longer, to wallow in her own dolor for just a few more minutes, but already Klaus's compulsion is kicking back in. Forcing her up. Back to the tap.
Fury bubbles up within her. She clenches her fist and hammers at the tile floor until her bones throb from her hand up to her elbow. The barely healed cut on her palm splits at some point, spilling slippery blood onto the floor, but she doesn't care. She doesn't care, because how dare he.
How dare he leave her—abandon her—and strip away the last remaining bits of free will she had left. How dare he be able to leave her, when she could never leave him—
How dare he grow indifferent to her, when he's warped and moulded her until she could never be indifferent to him.
She hates that even though he's her creature according to every magical law and theory, she is the one who had ultimately been remade in his image. Who had been made his—
No. No.
She is herself. Herself, and only herself.
Determined, Elena takes a deep breath, wipes the admixture of snot and crusting vomit from her chin, and drags herself back to the tap.
Afterward, she stares at herself in the mirror for a long, long time.
Reminding herself.
She makes it down to the kitchen. Wraps her hand in a kitchen towel and grabs a glass out of the cabinet to fill with water and the loaf of multi-grain bread, which she devours straight from the bag. She carries the glass and the bread with her as she wanders barefoot through the house, pausing now and then in her survey to take a sip, or to pull a slice of bread from the bag, or simply to rest. Her legs shake just from climbing the stairs, and her arms ache from holding the water glass aloft. Too many days with too much fear and adrenaline, too many tears, and not enough food or water have left her weaker than she can remember being since her earliest days here.
There are some parts of the manor she's never been in before. Halls that have always seemed too foreboding. Rooms with doors that have always been firmly shut.
She frowns as she crosses into a gallery she's only been in a handful of times before. One of these doors leads to a room with a wide oak four-post bed, where she had caught Stefan in Klaus's embrace. Half the doors are hanging open, as though whoever had been here last had flown through the rooms in a hurry.
Worrying her lip, she sidles up to one of the open doors and glances inside. She recognizes the contents of the room, with its open armoire and clothes strewn all over the bed, the pale pink chaise longue, the floor. Her foot had snagged on that white sweater carelessly tossed on the floor by the bathroom and she had almost tripped and banged her head against the sharp edge of an end table, only managing to just barely catch herself against the doorjamb in time.
That had happened just the other day.
She remembers throwing the door open to come in here.
Elena drops her glass and bread and flees the hall gallery.
Ends up in the tattered remains of the library, which still bears the imprint of Klaus's rage.
Her den of iniquity, he had called it.
The smashed up leather sofa snags her eye.
Her heart pounds in her chest as the phantom of a night last October slithers up to the surface of her thoughts.
She remembers. Can recall with perfect clarity exactly how Klaus had looked at her as he caught her in the snare of his compulsion. The hollowness of his actual words to her that night laps over the compelled memory of what she had yearned for him to say. Except none of that matters, compared to the twist—the dagger—the sudden, fully formed memory that surges up within her of climbing into Klaus's lap and feeling the ecstasy of him inside of her.
A sharp pang of longing shoots through her, even through her misery at the recollection.
For months, she had burned for him, daring herself again and again to just succumb to his seduction, to fulfill her desire. To say to hell with it and make herself happy.
She never had. Not entirely.
On an intellectual level, she's known since February that she and Klaus had slept together. That he had been lying when she'd confronted him about it her first night in New Orleans and he had given her that lame explanation. But after everything that had happened, she had decided to put it behind her. To accept that she'd fallen in love with a monster, and sometimes monsters did monstrous things.
It's just that she never expected to remember those things.
She picks her way over to the couch and slumps into the sunken cushions of the broken couch, ignoring the way the whole thing now tips precariously backwards. She massages her fingers into her temples.
Remembering.
That's the entire problem.
Now that she's had some water and some food in her stomach, now that she's had some sleep and a few hours quiet, bits and pieces of disjointed memories are started to pop up like wildflowers in the spring. Memories of things she had been compelled to forget, or not to notice.
Like how the directive not to open any closed doors had been compelled into her sometime in those hazy first couple of weeks. Or how she hadn't noticed the distinctive autumn foliage all around her last fall, save for the scarlet leaves of her favorite tree, and so had never even guessed that she could be in New England.
She reels over how obvious it all seems right now.
Feels ready to throw up again as shreds of new memories, out of context, burble up. The car ride to and from New Orleans last December. Nights where he'd come into her room and sit on the edge of her bed, and tell her things he never would have told her if he thought she would remember them. More than one kiss that never led anywhere.
Elena lies on the remains of the leather couch for a long time, sifting through her memories of the past year. Looking for anything new, or suddenly reframed, or out of place. Trying to fit the disparate pieces together, into a cohesive image.
Again and again, despite her best efforts, her thoughts keep circling the memory of that night with Klaus here in the library.
She should feel horrified, disgusted, enraged over what had happened that night.
She doesn't. She forgives him, and she doesn't have the wherewithal to punish herself for it.
She can't stop thinking about how he had put a stop to it almost as soon as it had begun.
How he had called her dearheart, and looked at her so intently when he confessed that he had thought that illusion he'd spun up would be enough to satisfy him. As though the answers lay within her. Her. Which implied… Which implied that he didn't want her for just her body. Not even then, when they had hardly really known one another.
The insight fills her with an intense bittersweetness—Sweet, because it's a validation that the store she'd put in him hadn't been for nothing. He had felt something real for her. Bitter, because his repulsion toward illusions are the reason she's remembering any of this in the first place. She'd spun an immaculate illusion for Klaus—not because she'd wanted to, but because she'd had to in order to survive—and he had spurned her the moment she had been forced to show her hand.
She doesn't understand why she's remembering all of this now.
Oh, she knows the deal—knows that daggering an Original undoes any of their standing compulsions—but none of that accounts for why she's remembering everything now, when Klaus had been daggered last December, and none of these compulsions had slipped loose then.
She chews over this for days as the memories drift back to her, little piece by little piece.
Sometimes an entire afternoon will surface in her dreams, clear and bright and tangible.
Klaus pours himself a drink and sits down next to her on the sofa, mindless of any sense of personal space.
Elena tries to ignore the way her breath stutters and her stomach flips in his proximity. Her hand doesn't shake at all as she flips onto the next page of Northanger Abbey.
Gently, Klaus plucks the book from her hands and places it on the table.
"Hey! I was reading that!"
"Pause a moment. I want to talk."
Elena blinks, taken aback. "About what?"
"Personal matters."
She pauses. "Uh—wouldn't your sister or Stefan be better for this?" she finally ventures.
"No. You're precisely the one I wish to speak to."
She fidgets uncomfortably for several long minutes while Klaus nurses his drink before he finally tells her, "I thought I would be happy. I was so certain that with the curse broken, reunited with my favorite sister, with Stefan, with a veritable army of hybrids at my command—I thought I would be happier."
She doesn't know what to say to that. Except the stupidest thing possible, which, unfortunately, slips out of her mouth before she can stop herself. "You're lonely."
"Impossible."
Now that she's said it, it's so obvious. Why else would he spend so much time here with her?
"No, really. The hybrids won't ever make you feel any less alone, because they're not your friends. They're too… sycophantic for that." She has more to say, but a sense of self-preservation holds her back.
Klaus notices. "Go on."
She hates what she's about to tell him, honest as it is. Hates what it means admitting about her own loneliness. "Well… It's just that no matter how much you like spending time with Rebekah and Stefan, you're always going to be a third-wheel there."
He frowns while she speaks, absently swirling the dregs of his drink around the bottom of his tumbler. "You think the issue is that I don't have anyone entirely my own to distract me."
She ignores the way he phrases that. "Everyone needs someone."
"Who do you have?"
"Jane Austen."
His mouth twitches. He hands her back the book, but pauses midway through the motion, turns and faces her. He looks at her for a long time.
"What?" she asks, self-conscious. She smooths a hand down her hair, scrubs at her face. "Do I have something on my face?"
He shakes his head. Relinquishes her novel to her. "No, no. It's just that something's only now occurred to me."
The look he's throwing her way gives her the heebie jeebies.
Klaus smiles at her, all dazzling white sharp teeth, and catches her in the infinite well of his blue stare. "You've given me a lot to think on, sweetheart. My gratitude." He picks her hand up and brushes his lips against her fingers before she can react. "Now if you'll grant me one last favor—"
She nods, too shocked from the intimate feeling of his mouth on her to actually say anything.
"Forget that this conversation ever transpired."
Sometimes all she'll get is a thread of dialogue, a remark without context.
("You just looked so very lovely. I was tempted beyond reason."
("You never asked me where I got the blood on my hands."
"It wasn't yours.")
("I want to be seen for who I am."
"You're the only one who sees me.")
She sees more of him than she has ever seen before. She sees him when he's vulnerable. Sees him when he's frustrated. Sees him when he's confused. When he is so sick with longing for her love that it nearly cripples him.
The terrible thing is that the more she remembers, the more fiercely her heart cleaves to him.
They've been in the car for hours and hours—driving back from New Orleans.
He had compelled her into this dreamy state, content to be quiet and look out the window and not to remember any of this when they return.
Winter rain has chased them from Florida all the way up the East Coast. Elena doesn't mind. She likes the distraction of the rain hitting the windshield, of the storm distorting the landscape into abstract shapes. It helps her not to think about the person occupying the seat next to her. Because, floaty dreamy state or now, she does think of him. Often.
He hasn't said anything to her since he'd pulled over in Florida, but every now and then she catches him darting glances her way. Once, a deer runs into the road, and Klaus has to swerve to avoid hitting it. Immediately he reaches out and rubs his thumb over the back of her hand, soothing her until her heartrate goes back to normal.
She thinks maybe she should pull her hand away, but the impulse floats just out of reach. She lets it go.
The minutes tick by as the miles fall behind them.
The sun is getting low in the sky when Klaus finally asks her, "That night you dreamed of our liaison in the library—what did you imagine I said to you?"
The question catches her a little off-guard. Distantly, she knows she's still upset at him for tampering with her dreams. She might even be offended by the question, except that all of those feelings feel buried under a thick layer of cotton.
Therefore, obediently, she casts back for the memory of what he had said to her.
"You told me I was different than you anticipated."
Klaus frowns. "Is that all?" Disappointment suffuses the question.
"No. You told me you thought I'd be Katerina come again, but that I was something else. That you were interested in me." The next part makes her blush. "You said my name."
Again, he asks her, "Is that all?"
"You wouldn't understand."
"Tell me."
At this command, some of the fog inside Elena's mind lifts. For a few minutes, she feels herself again. Even so, she struggles with the words. "Everyone always sees me as just Katherine 2.0. And I don't want to be—I want to be seen for who I am, not who I look like."
"There's more to being Tatia's doppelganger than just sharing her face."
Tatia. The Original Petrova girl. Klaus had mentioned her by name once before.
"That's the problem," Elena admits. "I don't know that I am any different. I think I might be just the same. That's why… that's why it affected me so much, when I dreamt you had told me those things. It's just a foolish wish for something that can't come true."
"It's not foolish."
"No, it is. I get that."
Klaus pulls over onto the side of the highway and parks the car. Turns to really look at her. Pins her with a look so full of longing that it stops her breath. "I can tell you with perfect honesty that you are not who I thought you would be. Elena."
The words pierce her. She doesn't know whether they count or not, when she's just delivered to him exactly the right script.
He reaches out to stroke her face, but she pulls away from his touch.
Ruefully, Klaus withdraws his hand. Restarts the car. "One day," he tells her, without elaborating further.
She always wishes he had finished his sentence, because she cannot shake the feeling that one day is here.
A/N: Thanks so much for reading, and for sticking with me through the hiatus! We are on to the final arc of this fic now.
I hope everyone has stayed safe and healthy and is doing what they need to take care of themselves. Treat yourselves kindly.
If you're curious for updates on the fic/like klaulena content, or ever want to stop into my inbox, I can be found on tumblr at livlepretre.
Until next time xoxo