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/ Miscarraiage / Hostage situation/explicit violence and torture/gratuitous angst/ potential character death
"Of all the stupid, suicidal stunts you could decide to pull, of course you choose the absolute most inconvenient. Stefan's going to be a complete menace to deal with now that he's had a fresh taste of you." Rebekah's fingers dig into the flesh of her forearm. There'll be bruises there tomorrow.
"Let me go."
"I had a hell of a time tracking you down," Rebekah continues, rapid-fire, as though she hadn't heard her. She pulls her along behind her at a swift clip that Elena struggles to keep up with. She barely manages not to trip over the broken sidewalks, unevenly illuminated as they are by only the occasional streetlamp. "You're lucky I pulled him off of you when I did. He was clearly winding himself up into one of his episodes. I'll be quite surprised if anyone in that wretched place is still breathing by morning."
"I said let go of me." Elena yanks as hard as she can on her trapped arm, merely succeeding in nearly pulling her shoulder out of the socket as a result. She grunts in mingled pain and frustration.
Rebekah finally looks at her. Frowns. "Do you have any recollection of what precisely Stefan said when he compelled you?" she asks, continuing to drag her along down the pavement.
It's either trot after her or wrench her shoulder further.
Elena glares at her as she keeps pace beside her. "He didn't compel me."
"Obviously he did. Elsewise, why would you fight me like this?"
"Does it never occur to you that maybe sometimes I want things?" she cries. "That I want to choose where I go and what I do and whom I spend my time with?"
"You're always welcome to suggest whichever diversions you might fancy."
Elena wants to scream. "My whole world can't revolve around you!"
Rebekah finally stops. "What does that mean?"
Elena tries to pull free again, but Rebekah holds her fast. "It means you had no right to come after me like that tonight! It means you had no right to interrupt us, or to act like you were saving me from something I chose."
Rebekah reels back as though she'd been slapped. "What would have happened if Stefan had ripped your throat out? Or torn your mouth wide open? He does that, you know. I would have thought you of all people would remember that."
"I don't recall that being Stefan's fault."
Oppressive silence descends between them. All of the sights and sounds of the city melt away as they regard each other. The only thing Elena can hear at all is the sound of their breath— short, rapid pants as they both fight for air. All she can feel is the heat of Rebekah's hand wrapped around her arm, bleeding into her skin. A vice around heart.
"I didn't realize you felt that way," Rebekah finally says.
This time, when Elena tugs at her arm, Rebekah lets her go. Her hand falls limp against her side.
Elena backs away a step. Looks at the ground, her fists clenched as she tells her, "Because it's never occurred to you that I would want any freedom of my own."
The words hang in the air between them, at once an accusation and a damnation.
For a moment, Rebekah stares at her, her beautiful face blank of any emotion, save, perhaps, for the shock of absorbing these words from Elena (from mild, meek, sweet Elena, so hungry for affection, for love, that she would beg for it from anyone, even from Rebekah, who had made her careless torment into a passion and had forgotten about her without a single regret for years until her caprice had led them back together).
Whatever astonishment Rebekah may have felt drains out of her in the next instant. She laughs, then, the sound like shattering glass. "Oh, there's no such thing as freedom, sweet girl." The word curdles on her tongue like sour fruit. "It's just a pretty lie we tell ourselves so we can sleep at night. I had thought you were smart enough to have figured that out by now."
Elena shakes her head. "You can't stop me from reaching for it just because you've always been too afraid to do it yourself."
"I'm not a coward."
"Is that also a lie you tell yourself just so you can sleep?"
The streetlamp over their heads flickers. In the east, the sky has begun to brighten with the first tentative breath of dawn.
Rebekah squints at Elena like she's never seen her before. "Why are you so angry with me?"
That's the question, isn't it.
A million possible answers flit through her thoughts.
Because you're going to forget about me one day, and you've made it so that I can never forget you.
Because you're my entire world, but I'm not yours.
Because I adore you.
Elena looks away from her. Out into the diminishing night, wreathed in deep blue shadows. "Because I can't go on like this. I can't keep on living my life just for you." She takes a deep breath. Turns back to face her. "I need to belong to myself, and you're making that impossible."
"I saved you. Nick was going to leave you at that safe house, and I was the one who stepped in and insisted we take you with us."
"Now I need you to let me go."
"I don't understand what you're saying. Are you saying you want to leave us? You can't, you know. My father will find you. To say nothing of Nick. There is no leaving. Not for any of us."
"No, I'm not trying to leave. I'm just—I need space, okay? I need to figure myself out, and to figure out what kind of life I can have for myself, that's not just an extension of yours."
Rebekah looks at her with huge, swimming eyes. "Am I not enough?" Her voice warbles over the question.
"That's the point. No one is. I need to be enough for myself."
Rebekah nods, smiling sharply enough to cut her throat, even as tears slide down her cheeks. "You know, I never understood what my brother meant when he said you were cruel. Not until just now."
"That's not fair."
"No, but hardly anything ever is." She pulls out her phone and taps at the screen. "Here, I've called a ride."
They wait in gelid silence. Minutes that feel like eons tick by until, finally, a black town car pulls up. Elena slides into the back seat and buckles in.
A moment ticks by. Rebekah doesn't follow her into the car.
Confused, Elena turns back to see what's keeping her, but Rebekah is already gone.
The car ride back to the hotel is a blur. So is the walk up to the hotel room, the half hour it takes her to shower and crawl, damp and exhausted, into bed.
She's almost afraid to get out of bed the next morning. Afraid that their argument will have destroyed the warmth and belonging they had built together these past few months. That the truth will be enough to break the trust they'd placed in each other.
Elena glances at the clock on her bedside table.
No, not morning. Afternoon.
It had been dawn when she'd finally fallen asleep, but now she discovers that she's slept through the entire morning and it's already after two o'clock.
Rebekah had never crept in to awaken her, as she had so often over the past few weeks.
Perhaps she's afraid to face her as well.
Perhaps.
Cautiously, Elena tiptoes out of bed and eases into the main living area of the suite, still dressed in her blue cotton pajamas.
She freezes at the threshold.
Reclining in her favorite arm chair near the window, her copy of The Moonstone in one hand, is Klaus.
"I've never actually read this before," he remarks without looking up at her. "Would you mind terribly if I borrow it?"
"What are you doing in here?"
He tosses the book onto the coffee table and beckons her closer.
Cautiously, she edges over to take a seat at the sofa, taking care to keep the full length of the coffee table between them.
Not that that actually makes much of a difference, but she feels better with Klaus held at a distance.
She can't trust herself to think clearly when he gets too close.
"I'm fulfilling a favor for my sister," he explains, examining his hands.
Elena glances around the suite. "Where is she? She didn't come home with me last night."
Klaus's gaze flicks up to her face for just a moment before returning to his hands. "I know." He pulls a white cell phone out of his jacket pocket, as well as a slick black credit card. Slides them over to her. "These are for you."
Elena stares at the two items before her in blank incomprehension. The initials on the card read E.G.M.
"Well, take them, before I change my mind," Klaus prods.
She hasn't had access to either a cell phone or a means to pay for anything herself since Klaus took her.
"Is this a trap?" she asks, still not daring to reach for either item.
"If it is, then it's a poor one."
"You've never offered me anything like this before. Why now?" What's changed?
"My sister requested these items for you."
She looks up sharply. "Really?"
"You seem surprised."
She flushes under his scrutiny. "You trust me with these?"
He leans back in the chair and cants his head to the side. "Not particularly, no."
"Then why give them to me?"
"Because you haven't run away yet, or contacted your would-be saviors in Virginia, and there is ultimately a great deal I am willing to do in order to placate my sister."
Ah. Of course.
"Thank you," she says, finally scooping up the phone and the credit card. She tries to ignore the way her hands shake as she takes them. The way the sheer possibility these two things represent makes the floor spin out from under her.
Klaus nods and stands, tucking her novel into his coat pocket as he strides toward the door. He's already halfway out the door when he pauses, and calls back to her, "Take care today, if you plan to explore the city by yourself. It can be a dangerous place for a girl caught out by herself."
"I can take care of myself."
His mouth tips up into a sardonic smile. "I could never forget."
She spends the afternoon at the Met.
She's passed it numerous times with Rebekah on their way to and fro, but apart from a brief sojourn to view a few pre-Raphaelite paintings on their way to spa, she hasn't had a chance to really visit.
Today, she wanders in as though in a dream. Pays for her ticket with the little black credit card, her heart clenching in anxiety and then joy when the teller smiles at her and hands her her ticket.
On a whim, she trails down the long hall of Greek statuary. Pale sunlight washes through the windows set high into the wall. The room nearly glows in shades of white and pearl and ivory, the shadows somehow thinner and more diffuse than they should be. In that strange and special light, the statues seem to breathe, their broken limbs and worn features lending them an air of tragedy that she senses they would be incomplete without. Perhaps once they had been whole, clean-limbed and beautiful, but now they are only complete in the context of their loss.
Upstairs, she marvels at the paintings, memories of long afternoons spent poring over reproductions of the Caravaggio and Titian paintings with Tyler at her side spilling over her as she takes in the real things. They are so much bigger and richer in detail than she could have ever appreciated when she was tucked into Tyler bed with the oversized books in her lap. Her eyes sting with tears as she stares at them. She never thought she'd see the originals with her own eyes. Never thought she'd ever make it out.
(The thought that Tyler should be here with her skitters through her, but she tucks it away, into the place inside herself where she keeps her love for him, and for their daughter.)
She sits for a long, long time, staring at a Toulouse-Lautrec painting.
For the first time in ages, she remembers the painting Klaus had once gifted her. She'd kept it tucked behind her dresser, out of sight, for years.
She can no longer recall what it was about that painting, exactly, which had made her heart pound in both joy and dread. Only that it had stirred those emotions within her.
For hours Elena drifts through the corridors of the Met, losing herself in the labyrinthine rooms, passing through countless countries as she wanders, the centuries passing her by faster and faster with each step.
There are rooms packed full of people where she must squeeze by and remote galleries where her only companions are the busts of the dead, watching her from across the room.
She spends the most time in these forgotten rooms, studying the tapestries, the ornate medieval statuary, the tiny painted copper icons gleaming like small jewels in the night sky.
The same pang of remembrance fills her here as it had at the Frick, a keen longing for the years she had spent exploring the manor (her library), the Abattoir, the plantation on the outskirts of New Orleans. The experience of unpacking a past at once both wondrous and mundane permeates the atmosphere here. The air feels so thick with the recollected thrill of discovery that she can scarcely breathe, scarcely think. A strange déjà vu engulfs her. Her vision swims. She feels at once like she is here for the very first time, and also that she is watching herself peer into these display cases for the hundredth time, the thousandth. A fierce tenderness pounds through her, which she realizes, after a few moments, is directed at herself. At the girl who had been so boundlessly curious, unable to stop herself from prying into drawers and armoires and searching behind picture frames, at the woman she has become, who has somehow survived through all the years of hollow hunger and empty longing and kept that flame of her inquiry alive and burning.
Who had made it to see these paintings and works of art with her own eyes. Against all the odds.
She stays until closing.
Her first text message arrives that night, on her walk home from the museum. The buzz of her phone in her pocket startles her, and at first she doesn't even realize what it is until it vibrates a second time.
On the screen is a text from Klaus. Nothing more than an address.
Rebekah is still gone when she gets home. Or—perhaps she is already with Klaus and Stefan.
Her stomach flutters as she applies her makeup and pins her hair. She takes an extra long time picking her slinky ink blue dress and silver cuffs for the evening. Putting off the time when she'll have to show up and face Rebekah after their words early this morning.
She feels bad about it now. Bad that they had argued, that Rebekah had taken her need for space to figure herself out as a rejection.
She could never reject Rebekah.
She taps at her phone, just to make sure there aren't any new messages she's missed.
Nothing.
When Klaus had told her that the phone and the credit card had been by Rebekah's request, Elena hadn't known how to take that. She'd pushed the question out of her mind altogether, in fact, so that she could take advantage of the rare opportunity to venture out and live her life solely for her own sake.
But now, she cannot help but dwell on it.
She twists her ring around her finger, pondering.
What does it mean that Rebekah had arranged for these gifts for her? That even after their argument, she had still gone out of her way to persuade Klaus to give her these things?
Maybe she'd misread her last night. Maybe her absence today hadn't been an emotionally fraught reaction to their argument, but instead an unlikely concession to Elena's need for space to herself.
She'll have to go out of her way to thank her tonight. To reassure her, and to apologize for what she'd said.
And… she'll have to face Stefan as well, to find out whether or not he'd really compelled her.
It never occurs to her not to go.
The address turns out to be for the same club as the one they had visited their first night in the city.
Tonight, a pianist plays under the glow of the spotlight, his hands dancing over the keys, sparking memories of other nights spent listening to the piano.
Elena is starting to learn that everything can be an artifact of the past, if she lets it.
Only—she has resolved that she doesn't want to live in the past anymore.
She sidles up to the same booth they had occupied the last time and slides in next to Stefan.
Unlike usual, Stefan doesn't make a show of welcoming her, of tugging her into his arms so he can flirt outrageously with her. He barely even nods her way when she smiles a greeting at him.
Fine. If he wants to pretend last night hadn't happened, she can deal.
She can. Really.
"I wasn't sure you would come," Klaus remarks from across the table, drawing her attention off of Stefan for the moment.
"Isn't that how this works?" Elena asks. "You text, I answer?"
"How it's supposed to, yes."
It had been a test then.
"Here I am." She cranes her neck, scanning the crowd. "Where's Rebekah?"
"Not joining us this evening."
Elena's stomach sinks. "I wasn't aware she could get out of a summons." She says it like it's a joke, even though everyone at the table knows it's really not.
"She's earned her privileges, here and there." Klaus's focus shifts over to Stefan. He asks him something about a library, or a librarian, or something—she's not sure, isn't really listening.
At some point she interrupts them to excuse herself and wanders over to the bar. Orders herself a gin and tonic, which she finishes in three huge gulps before ordering another.
She watches Stefan and Klaus at the booth, immersed in some private conversation that inevitably excludes her, and thinks, I don't want to be here.
And for the first time, she realizes she doesn't have to be.
Klaus had wanted her to show up, to prove that she would come when he called and not just take the first opportunity to try to escape; well, mission accomplished. Doppelganger accounted for.
She shoots him a text telling him she's going home.
He doesn't reply.
She falls asleep in the living room, waiting for Rebekah to return.
Still no Rebekah the next morning.
Elena creeps into her room, just to see if maybe she's holed up in there.
The bed linens are still crisp from when housekeeping had come through the day before.
She hadn't returned home at all the night before.
Elena shrugs this off.
She'd wanted some time to herself to think, begged for it… and if Rebekah's going to take off just because they argued, then Elena will just have to take the chance to sort herself out. It's what she'd asked for.
(The fear that Rebekah might stay away for years again still lingers as a tightness in the back of her throat, a weight on her chest, an ache in the pit of her stomach. That she might be stuck all alone with Klaus and Stefan without even Rebekah's friendship as a consolation—that she might never see that smile again—No. She cannot think about it.)
She orders breakfast up to the room and brings the tray out to the terrace, so she can watch the city below her while she sips at her coffee and nibbles on a danish. She licks the icing from her fingers very slowly as she plans her day.
The days that follow are largely solitary ones, but they are far from lonely.
When Rebekah does not show up at the end of the second day, Elena decides she can no more pine for Rebekah than she can continue pining for Klaus. Either she'll come back to her, or she won't.
She spends her days following her whims. Long walks through the park turn into meandering strolls through various neighborhoods, exploring side streets, perusing shops, popping in for a coffee or a drink wherever her whimsy leads her. Quiet afternoons revisiting the Met.
After a morning spent fretting over the rail maps, she even conquers the subway, making her way over to Brooklyn, to Queens, to Chelsea.
She discovers the High Line and eats ice cream as she strolls through the lush walkway, smelling fragrant flowers from the vendors along the way and taking photos of the sunset on her phone.
Another day she makes the circuitous journey out to the Cloisters, where for an entire afternoon she fools herself into believing she's run away, to some far off, remote and rugged island, where she will hold court and run wild over the craggy seashore. The hush of the museum beguiles her as she wanders the ancient stone halls, drinking in the deep silence and peace of the gardens, the galleries, the windswept pathway winding along the coast.
And when Klaus summons her each night, she dutifully appears, just long enough to prove that yes, another day has gone by, and she is still here.
She never stays long.
It's easier and easier every night to leave.
On the third night of Rebekah's absence, Elena cannot find either Klaus or Stefan when she arrives at the lounge Klaus had directed her to. The venue is huge and exceptionally dark, with a maze of rooms connected by twisting corridors dotted with shadowy alcoves. Live swing music in one of the rooms drowns out almost everything else. Perfect, probably, for a vampire's hunting grounds.
The ambiance annoys the hell out of her. She spends a good fifteen minutes searching for either of her companions before giving up and ordering herself an old fashioned from one of the bars set up in a shadowy side room.
Her hand brushes against the man's next to hers when the bartender sets the drink down on the polished brass lip of the bar. She startles so terribly on contact that she spills the drink all over herself.
"Oh, sorry, thought that was my drink," the man says, jumping back with a flustered smile. He reaches over the bar for a stack of napkins. "Here, let me help you with that," he offers, before pausing uncertainly with the napkin an inch from her damp dress.
He's rather good looking, she thinks, squinting up in the dark at him. Tall and dark-haired, with a strong chin and an earnest smile. And the way he's fretting over her is sweet, really.
Elena takes the napkins from him and dabs at her dress. "Buy me another drink?" she asks, offering him a smile of her own.
The man blinks down at her, his mouth working for a moment. "Of course."
He turns back to the bartender, just as Elena feels a hot hand close around her bare shoulder.
"There you are," Stefan says, slinging an arm over her shoulder. "Who's your friend?"
The man with the nice smile turns back to ask her something but pauses when he spots Stefan. "Your boyfriend?" He smiles and holds out a hand. "Devon," he offers. "I was just buying your girlfriend a fresh drink since I knocked hers over."
Stefan doesn't take his hand.
Slowly, Devon withdraws it, frowning. "Really, no harm meant," he assures Stefan.
The contemplative expression on Stefan's face is a terrible sign.
Elena twists out from under Stefan's arm and tries to pull him away before he can come up with any splendid ideas.
Devon shifts from foot to foot with Elena's fresh drink in his hand, his shoes crunching over the shattered glass of her original cocktail.
Stefan's eyes track the movement.
His mouth tips up into a twisted mockery of a joviality as he fixes on poor hapless Devon. "I have an idea," he says, leaning forward and hooking him with his compulsion. "How about I freshen up your drink?" He catches up an empty glass from the bar and crushes it between his fingers, before sprinkling the sparkling shards into Devon's glass amidst the ice. "There. Perfect. Now drink."
Devon raises the tumbler full of broken glass to his lips.
Elena swats it out of his hands and whips around to smack Stefan as hard as she can in the shoulder.
"What?" Stefan asks. "We were just having a good time."
Elena turns back to Devon, who is still standing about, staring at them. "What are you still doing here?" she hisses at him. "Go!" It's like he wants Stefan to keep playing with his life. She turns back to Stefan as soon as Devon retreats into the crowd. "What was that?" she demands. "Were you jealous or something?"
"Of Mr. White Collar? Don't be ridiculous."
"He was perfectly lovely, thanks. Next time find someone I'm not talking to to torment."
"Oh, he was lovely, was he? Did he make you feel all tingly?"
Elena studies him long and hard. "You are jealous."
"Why would I be jealous?"
"I know we haven't had a chance to talk about it but… the other night meant something to me. I don't really think you compelled me… Did you?"
"If you don't know then it doesn't matter."
"What about our kiss then?"
"It was just a kiss, Elena." He takes hold of her hand and leads her out into the main room, where the swing band is playing. "Don't get clingy on me," he warns her, before spinning her out onto the dance floor.
She thinks she sees Klaus, briefly, out of the corner of her eye. Hard to tell with Stefan racing her all over the dance floor.
One rainy afternoon, she ducks into a bookstore in SoHo and whiles away the remainder of the afternoon curled up in a corner with a stack of new novels—including a new copy of The Moonstone.
On her way out the door, she spots a display of pocket-sized diaries, bound in simple black leather.
She buys herself one and slips it into her back pocket with a pen. Begins jotting down her thoughts throughout the day—stray observations, drawings of the people she passes and the views from the streets, notes for later reference. The entries are slow at first, just a word here or there, a few descriptive marks on the page to depict something she had seen, but it's as though the act of journaling again awakens something that had been asleep since she burned her home down to the ground. The more she writes, the more she wants to write, the more she must write.
It's as Stefan once said: she's a Gilbert, and she needs to keep a diary. It's as essential to her as breathing, and—
And that's what she's been doing these past few days. These past few years, really, she realizes with a start, even if there are times when she had felt the task to be impossible. All this while she has been breathing, breathing, breathing—until it grew easy again.
She comes back the next day and buys herself an entire stack of journals. For the things she will want to say once this journal runs out.
Sometimes she is happy to sit in the corner of a café and people-watch, and sometimes she sits at the bar during happy hour and laughs with the men and women just getting off work, with the college students starting their nights, with the football fans cheering on their teams. It feels good to talk to other people—just normal people, living out their day to day lives, who have no idea that she only has only one foot left planted in the mortal world.
It feels good, too, to imagine that she might have been like them, if things had been different. That she might have made it to college at NYU or some place like that, and that she'd be out tonight with her pals, pre-gaming and dancing to the scratchy jukebox and discussing plans for the weekend.
There's one evening when she's at a college bar near Columbia, shooting pool with a group of girls she's just befriended with a smile and a few thoughtful little lies, when a group of boys they all seem to know approaches the table.
One of them takes a liking to her in particular.
It's been such a long time since a boy has looked at her with nothing more than simple want in his eyes. Since any boy has blushed and ducked his head when she laughs at his jokes, when she smiles her broadest smile at him. This one doesn't even notice how sharp that smile is.
So she lets him buy her drinks and dance with her and tell her about his philosophy thesis, and when he kisses her, she grabs him by the front of his shirt and drags him into an alcove in the back.
Her body comes alive under this stranger's touch, and it's nice to have something simple and uncomplicated, just for herself.
His hand drifts over her side, fingers questing under her shirt to stroke her bare skin. She shivers and presses closer, tilting her head for him to suck at the sensitive skin of her throat.
She doesn't have a plan for how this is going to go. Doesn't know when or if she's going to tell him to stop.
Her phone buzzing in her pocket makes the decision for her.
With a start, she realizes she'd missed the first text, over an hour ago. This, now, is the second text Klaus has sent her.
She breaks away from the college boy and ducks out under his arm. "I have to go!" she calls, snapping her leather jacket up from the floor and hurrying out the door.
It's nearly two hours later when she finally makes it to the address Klaus had texted her. There'd been no time to change or comb her hair or do anything other than fling herself through the doors, tousled and flushed, and get this over with.
"You're late," he chides her when she throws herself down at their table. He doesn't look her way, instead addressing the bottom of his glass of bourbon.
"Yes, well, I got caught up."
"Is that a hickey?" Stefan asks, peeling her coat collar away from her neck.
Elena bats at his hand. "Get off me, Stefan."
She thinks she sees Klaus freeze mid-drink to stare at the spot on her neck that must have bruised, but when she turns to face him, he's still examining the bottom of his glass.
Wishful thinking, making her imagine things.
"Well, here I am, checking in," she says uncomfortably, standing up. "I think I'd rather go, now. I'm pretty tired."
"Sit," Klaus orders. "Have a drink with us."
Despite herself, Elena sits. Accepts a drink from Klaus, and waits, in brutal silence, as the three of them complete a first round. A second round. A third. A fourth.
Stefan fidgets at her side.
The night stretches interminably on.
Finally, well after midnight, Klaus gets up to leave the table.
Elena takes that as her cue to leave.
"I hope you're not going out to meet your lover," Stefan calls out after her. "We don't have room at the table for a fifth."
She pops into the women's room on the way out to splash cold water on her face. Pulls her hair back and tilts her head so she can see the damage—
Smiles in delight when she realizes that the hickey has completely obscured the bite scar Klaus had given her a little over four years ago.
God bless enthusiastic college boys.
When she wakes up the next morning, Rebekah is perched on the edge of her bed, watching her.
Elena scrambles up and catches hold of her hand before she can pull away. "You're back."
"Did you think I wouldn't be?" Rebekah asks her carefully.
"It's been eight days."
"Your point?"
"I didn't like how we left it. I'm sorry for the way I said all of those things to you."
"But not sorry you said them?"
Elena holds her gaze for a long moment before shaking her head.
Rebekah sighs. "No, I don't suppose you would be."
"Are you very angry with me?"
She takes her time in answering. "No… not angry." She doesn't elaborate further.
"Where did you go?"
"To the coast. It was really rather dull." She appraises Elena quite seriously. "Have you at least been enjoying yourself in my absence? It would be a pity for me to have stayed away for all this time just for you to have stuck around this suite moping."
There's clearly part of Rebekah that hopes that that's exactly what she had done.
"No, I've been well. Klaus gave me the credit card and the phone you requested for me. I've been getting out. Exploring the city on my own. Doing a lot of thinking."
"Did you miss me at all, then?" There's something wistful and plaintive in Rebekah's tone, that catches at her like little hooks under her skin.
Elena blushes. Draws her blanket-draped knees up to her chest and hides her face in them. "Very much," she admits into the coverlets.
"Oh. Well, there is that, then." She draws Elena up, so that she can't hide behind her knees anymore. Twines a finger in her hair, wrapping the dark strands around and around before letting them go. She frowns after a moment. "What is that on your neck?"
Elena claps a hand over the mark. Her mouth opens to explain, but somehow, the words fail her.
"Did Stefan do that to you?" Rebekah presses.
"No, not Stefan."
Rebekah purses her lips. "Whoever it was looks to be tragically inexperienced. We should work on finding someone more talented for your bed." She rises and offers Elena her hand. "Shall we? I thought we could do brunch." She pauses. Hesitates. "Unless you'd rather not?"
Elena takes her hand. "There's nothing I'd rather do."
They pass a happy morning together, and in so many ways the hours pass exactly as they had before their argument. Before she had left the manor last summer, even.
The material circumstances have changed, but Elena could so easily deceive herself into believing that nothing truly had.
Except that when they finish, Elena tells Rebekah, "I'm planning to go my own way this afternoon. See you this evening?"
(She would have never requested this time to herself last summer.)
Rebekah looks like she wants to protest, but she doesn't.
She lets her go, and Elena finds herself looking back to catch another glimpse of her before she disappears around a corner.
For the first time since Rebekah left, Elena actually enjoys herself that night when she joins her three vampires for their nightly revelry.
It's as though the stars had been out of alignment with Rebekah gone. Still there in the night sky, but diminished somehow, unable to shine as bright or as true as they normally would in their natural arrangement.
Now that Rebekah is back, every star shines fierce as fire.
"I still don't understand why you traipsed off with Stefan that night," Rebekah murmurs days later as they watch Stefan seduce a couple across the room. They're at a private party tonight in a penthouse on the Upper West Side. Elena isn't sure how exactly they ended up here.
Elena takes a drink from her champagne and scans the room. Klaus had disappeared with the host over an hour ago.
"I was so angry with you," Elena admits. "I kept thinking that you were going to leave me behind, and forget all about me."
Rebekah pins her with a look so fully of pity she doesn't think she can bear to meet her eyes. She searches Stefan out, noting that he's found a piano. Will doubtlessly begin playing in just a moment for the besotted couple. The man laughs at something he says.
"That's why you felt you needed to make a life for yourself? Because you thought I'd abandon you?"
"You've already done it twice before."
"But that—that was different. That was—"
"It's okay—"
Stefan begins to play the piano. Something slow and sweet.
Rebekah plucks the champagne flute from her. Grasps her hand. "Dance with me."
"Oh—I'm not sure I feel like—"
"Nonsense," Rebekah says, leading her out into the center of the room and drawing her into a simple box step. "You love to dance."
"You love to dance."
"I love to dance with you, it's true. You make it so easy to forget the rest of the world—I wish it could be like this always."
They take a town car home, giggling and smashed on too much champagne as they clamber into the backseat.
Exhaustion tumbles over Elena like a waterfall. The car's gone no more than a couple of blocks before she feels her eyelids droop, and her whole body relax deliciously into the leather seats.
It's then, when she's just on the cusp of falling completely asleep, that she hears Rebekah whisper, a confession almost more for herself than for Elena, "You're wrong about me. I don't intend to ever forget about you. I don't intend to ever give myself the chance."
She visits the Whitney for the first time the next day. There's a retrospective of the collection on exhibit that she saw an ad for the day before, and she'd set out right after coffee on the terrace to see it.
("The 20th century isn't really my cup of tea," she had proclaimed when Elena had asked if she would like to accompany her. "Perhaps it's because I missed most of it.")
She's only been there perhaps a quarter of an hour, wandering through the galleries, most of her attention fixed on a wall of action paintings, trying to decipher the gestural intent of the mark-making, when she first notices that tell-tale hum in her bones that tells her Klaus is near. The hum changes in frequency and focus as he draws closer, narrowing from a hum into a drumbeat as he steps into the gallery with her.
She could never ignore him.
He spots her, of course. Sees her looking at him.
He waves.
Elena waves back.
Weirdly, amazingly, that's it. He leaves her be while she makes her slow progress through the show.
It's only later, as she's seated in a dark room watching a film piece she doesn't quite grasp that Klaus joins her, sliding onto the bench next to her. They're the only two in the room.
Elena glances at him out of the corner of her eye. The blue of the projection paints his face in cool, flickering shadows. He clutches a rolled up copy of the exhibition program in his hands, slowly rolling it tighter and tighter as the film unspools in the hush dark room.
They watch the film together once, twice.
On the third rotation, Klaus asks her, "Have you seen many shows since coming to the city?"
The urge for honesty bubbles in her throat. "A few," she manages. "There's something very lonely though about some of these museums—I think sometimes that the Met will break my heart if I linger there too long. But that's what makes it hard to leave."
Klaus watches the film play against the wall, unseeing. "I know just what you mean."
Elena folds and unfolds her hands. Her ring glints up at her in the spectral blue light. "I'm sorry I burned all of your paintings up, when I set the house on fire."
Klaus finally looks her way. His brows are raised, a rare moment of open surprise on his face as he searches her eyes. He takes a deep breath, and looks away again. "Better they then you, I should think."
"Still. Some of them I liked a lot. I hung my favorites up, all over the manor. They were my only company… for a long time."
The film begins again.
"And did you continue drawing?" he asks her.
It's the first real question he's ever asked her about those years on her own. About how she had fared in all that time.
Surprise unfurls through her at the way his attention makes her feel.
"Amongst other things," she replies. She stands up. Looks down on him. "I taught myself to paint, too." Without his help—because she hadn't really needed him in the end, had she?
Klaus looks up, into her face. Curiosity ripples across his features, but she doesn't feel the need to feed it.
She smiles at him, feeling bright and very free. "I'm supposed to meet Rebekah now, so I better be going."
She doesn't look back at him even once.
"You seem chipper," Rebekah remarks that afternoon as they hunt through a second-hand book store for first editions.
That night, she puts away her fleur de lis ring.
In the morning, her heart feels as light as her hand.
"So, I've been thinking," Elena begins the next afternoon, as she and Rebekah stroll down the High Line, soaking up the last of the autumn sun.
"Hmm?"
"I want you to help me learn how to resist compulsion."
Rebekah pauses mid-step. "We've already been over this."
Elena catches back up to her. Takes her hands in hers. "And I'm asking you again." She turns her hands over in hers and rubs her thumbs over her palms. "Please, Rebekah. This is the last thing that I need—to always know my own mind. My own heart." She swallows. "If... If you care for me, then please."
"How can you doubt me?"
"I don't doubt you."
Rebekah softens. Squeezes her hands. "Okay. Okay, I'll do it."
Something inside of Elena bursts free, the way that a tulip opens—slowly at first, then all at once.
That promise had been the last thing she had needed to know for certain.
She links her arm through Rebekah's as they continue their walk. Finds a bench for them to sit down, amidst a bed of fall blooms. Gathers her courage.
"I saw your brother yesterday, at the Whitney," Elena says, as casually as she can.
"Neither of you mentioned that last night. Was he beastly toward you?"
"Not at all."
"Truly?" Rebekah peers into her face. "You're usually so unhappy when you speak to him."
"That was just the thing—he was actually pleasant—or as pleasant as he can be—and I had his attention, for once—really had his attention—and all I could think was, I forgot to even think of you today."
"What are you saying?" Rebekah asks. There's something so fragile and so hopeful in her tone.
Elena takes a deep breath. Takes the plunge. "I'm saying that my eyes are clear, and my heart is open… and that if you feel the same way as I do, then—"
Rebekah pulls her face to hers and kisses her full on the mouth before she can finish. Elena grins into her mouth, feeling the way that Rebekah cannot help but smile back as she kisses her.
"Yes," Rebekah breathes against her lips. "Yes."
And in that simple word Elena hears her own truth, echoed back upon her.
I adore you.
I adore you.
A/N: Thanks for reading! Please drop a comment if you're enjoying this, or swing by my tumblr over at livlepretre.