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
The next few days pass in a total blur.
Elena and Rebekah hardly leave their bed.
They operate on complete lover time—all of Elena's focus and energy and attention taken up by learning this final element of Rebekah which had been mostly hidden away from her last summer, when Rebekah had revealed the other broken pieces of herself to her.
Elena teaches her in turn.
She cannot get over the satisfaction she feels curled up with her in the morning, feeding her bites of flaking pastry and licking the dripping filling off of her chest, holding hands as the sun sets, striving between her thighs and drinking her up like nectar.
It's like she's addicted to her. Like she had not understood how starved for connection she had been, how ravenous for love she could be, until Rebekah had given her a taste, and now she does not know if she will ever get enough.
The only time they come up for air is at night.
"So you're fucking Bex now," Stefan notes the night after the auction the moment he gets her alone.
"Klaus told you?" She had seen him, briefly, before he had disappeared, taking his sister with him.
"He didn't have to. You both reek of sex."
Huh. Apparently showering isn't enough to wash the sexcapades out of her hair.
"So why do you care?" Elena asks.
"I care about anything that has to do with my two favorite girls."
Elena appraises him.
The thing about Stefan is that he's always had this slippery streak. It's the same personality trait that had had them lying to Damon and sneaking out to the woods in the middle of the night to dig up the grimoire behind his back. That had helped him lie to Klaus that entire summer after the sacrifice. That's kept him alive for all this time in Klaus's court.
"You're worried this is going to make waves," Elena deduces.
"It's one thing for Klaus to share his favorite's attention. Another to lose it entirely."
"Rebekah's had lovers before."
Stefan stares at her for a long, long time before he answers. "And other than me, he's never tolerated them." There's something in his tone she cannot understand.
She always understands him. This impenetrability frightens her.
"What's he going to do?" she asks, her voice a bit shakier than she would prefer. "Get rid of me just because he doesn't like that I have Rebekah's attention?"
"No. He won't do that."
He never says what he will do.
"You seem preoccupied," Rebekah notes as Elena gets ready for bed in front of the vanity mirror.
Elena startles. Realizes she has been staring blankly at her own reflection for several minutes. "Just something Stefan said."
Rebekah comes up behind her and hooks her chin over her shoulder. Their eyes meet in the mirror.
"He didn't try to compel you again, did he?"
"No. Nothing like that." She bites her lip. "I think he was trying to warn me, actually."
Rebekah hums, her fingers playing with the ends of Elena's hair. "Warn you? Whatever from?"
Elena leans into Rebekah's soothing touch. "You know what? The more I think about it, the more I think he was just trying to get into my head."
"You're certain he didn't compel you?"
"Well, no. I can't ever be certain." She shifts, looping her arms around Rebekah's neck so she can look imploringly into her eyes as she adds. "Not without your help, anyway."
"Is it that time already?"
"You promised."
"I suppose I did."
Rebekah closes her eyes and rests her forehead against hers. Takes a deep, steadying breath. When she pulls back, something shifts in her gaze. It's as though one moment, Elena is merely looking into her lover's winter pale blue eyes, and the next, it's like she's drowning, so desperate for oxygen that she's willing to breathe water.
She takes that breath.
An immense calm settles over her.
"Tell me what Stefan said to you tonight that has you so unsettled," Rebekah compels her.
"He told me Klaus doesn't like to share his favorite's attention." The words slide off her tongue slick as oil.
Rebekah frowns. The compulsion snaps. "That's news?"
Elena yanks herself out of Rebekah's embrace. "What was that?"
"Compulsion practice, obviously. You're still susceptible, by the way, so obviously your meditations have all been for naught."
Elena scowls. "I thought you would tell me to hop on one leg or something. Not tell you things I obviously didn't want to tell you."
Rebekah shrugs. "You never specified the rules."
"I didn't think you'd take advantage!"
She waves her concerns away. "It's much more useful if we practice with things you would rather not do. More importantly: why were you so upset by what Stefan said? I should have thought you knew that about my brother already. You did say you'd read my diaries."
Elena sits down hard on the edge of the bed. "Well, I've never been the one sleeping with his favorite before."
Rebekah weighs her. "Are you afraid of him?"
"No. Of course not. I wouldn't be doing this with you if I were."
Rebekah joins her on the bed. "What happened to your Tyler Lockwood was terrible."
Elena looks away.
"I noticed how you kept that room Nick strung him up in locked up. How you avoided it. I would have done the same. Nick… has often been cruel to the ones I love." She takes her hand. "But he won't be cruel to you. Not like that."
"He doesn't care enough about me anymore to be cruel."
Rebekah doesn't disagree with her.
Elena stares down at where their fingers tangle together. "We're lucky, aren't we?"
"Yes, obviously. But in what particular sense are you referring to?"
"You've finally found someone your brother can't afford to get rid of, and I've found the one person outside of his power." The one person safe from him. "We can be together, and there's not a thing Klaus can do to stop it."
Rebekah stares at her for a long, long time. There's a shadow in her eyes that has been absent these past few days, that Elena desperately regrets placing there. "Is that why you approached me?" she asks at last. "Because I was your only possible option?"
Vehemently, Elena shakes her head. "No. I approached you because you were the one my heart wanted."
"Well then. I suppose that does make us lucky."
She kisses Rebekah, until the sadness leaves her eyes and her mouth and her breath.
(It's not possible for Rebekah to ever quite do the same for her, but that's another story.)
The next morning, Rebekah catches her eye as Elena walks past her on her way to the shower.
"Hop on one leg."
Startled by the sudden net of the compulsion, Elena hops.
"You look like a demented flamingo," Rebekah gasps as Elena hops toward her, intent on some kind of retribution.
Elena ends up laughing so hard while trying to reach Rebekah that she falls over.
(But, Elena realizes, even if she can never entirely erase the sadness that has seeped so deep down into her that it can never really be erased, Rebekah still has the power to bring light and laughter and happiness back into her world.)
She works harder on her meditations, recommitting herself to the mental discipline she had developed before she burned her life down and got massively distracted. Every morning, she rises with the sun and painstakingly guides herself through her exercises, attuning herself more and more deeply with the ebb and flow of her own mind. Knowing herself. Mastering herself. She repeats the process again each evening, eyes closed, breaths even, letting the outside world fall away—even Klaus feels distant, beyond the horizon, like she'd never inadvertently linked herself to him, when she is deep into her meditations.
Rebekah, for her part, does hold true to her word and help.
The first time after the Demented Flamingo Incident, they're sifting through costume jewelry at a flea market on the off chance that they'll stumble on an amulet or perhaps a real stone hidden amongst the sea of glass baubles.
Elena tries on glittering rings, admiring the filigree metal and rich colors of the glass stones sparkling in the autumn sunlight while Rebekah trails her fingers over a tray of necklaces. Elena throws her a smile and wriggles her fingers, each one bejeweled.
Rebekah glances over to the vender, an elderly woman with a bad limp, busy writing out a sale slip for another customer. She turns back to Elena. Makes eye contact. "Steal them," she commands her, quite clearly.
Elena's mouth works, a protest on her lips, but she can't bring herself to pluck the rings off her fingers. It's like her hands are completely paralyzed. Instead, she turns and walks off, out of the flea market, heedless of the vender yelling after her.
Shame reddens Elena's cheeks. The vender had smiled so warmly at the two of them when they had approached her booth.
Not Rebekah's, though. Rebekah beams her sunny smile at her and grasps hold of her hand, merrily examining Elena's new rings and slipping a bright blue one lined with rhinestones onto her own hand.
"That wasn't very nice," Elena grumbles.
"Learn to resist me then."
Not that resisting Rebekah is easy, under any circumstances.
Rebekah flips through an old edition of Better Homes and Gardens, the morning sunlight catching in her hair like strands of shimmering white gold. Her beautiful, elegant fingers flip through the pages, her attention captured by the glossy magazine pages before her. She glances up, for just a moment.
Even now, when Elena knows the taste of Rebekah in her mouth, knows the feel of those long fingers curling inside of her, the warmth of her body pressed against her own, it's the simple act of looking directly into Rebekah's eyes that makes her heart flutter the most. That makes her blood warm and her breath catch, and something strange flutter in her stomach.
"Cut your hair," Rebekah orders her simply, only the smallest curling of her lip revealing her awareness of Elena's physical reaction to her at all.
A pair of golden scissors lie on the end table near Rebekah's elbow—no doubt the inspiration for this command.
Elena's already snatched them up and snipped short a lock of hair before she even realizes what she's done.
She stares for a long time at the puddle of glossy dark hair at her feet. Feels at the freshly cut ends of her hair, brushing against her throat.
She should be furious. At Rebekah for compelling her to do this on a whim or at herself for inviting this sort of situation in the first place.
Curiously, she's not. Not at Rebekah, and not at herself.
When she looks up, Rebekah is watching her. Waiting for her response.
"You're calling the salon to fix this," Elena tells her, before settling down next to her.
Rebekah laughs. Tucks the newly short strands of hair behind Elena's ear. A few slip out, over her cheek, all the same.
"As you wish," she murmurs against her throat.
They nearly miss their appointment.
Later, Elena examines her new haircut, the way her hair now tumbles into curls that end just above her shoulders.
Her hair's never been this short before. She hadn't anticipated how curly it would be, without the weight of longer tresses.
Without her long hair, the resemblance between herself and her predecessors recedes even further into the distance.
Somehow, that thought doesn't distress her the way that it normally does.
That evening, she catches both Klaus and Stefan staring at her.
She ignores them both.
Another time Elena and Rebekah are walking through Central Park in the lengthening twilight, their shoulders brushing together as they flirt, the heat of Rebekah's body through her thin jacket and the smoldering looks she keeps casting her way driving Elena mad as her head fills with all of the delicious ways their bodies can fit together just as soon as they get home, when Rebekah pulls her off the path and into a copse of trees. Autumn leaves crinkle underfoot. If Elena closes her eyes, tunes out the distant sound of cars zipping by, the murmuring crush of humanity, she could almost imagine herself in the woods back at the manor.
"Take me right here," Rebekah compels her, backing against the trunk of a spreading tree.
Immediately, Elena drops to her knees. Looks up at Rebekah. "We're in public. Anyone could see."
For answer, all Rebekah does is lift her skirt, revealing a stretch of creamy thigh.
Elena reaches out to stroke her hand along the expanse of warm, smooth skin, unable to help herself. Watches the way Rebekah swallows and trembles as her fingers trail up, brushing up the inside of her thigh, trailing over her bare hip, cupping the round firmness of her perfect ass as she flips her dress up to address her already slippery sex. That's the thing with vampires, Elena thinks, as she bends her head to taste Rebekah's desire. Always ready to go. Always bubbling over with want. Hunger. A need to fill that empty ache inside of them.
She's more than happy to try.
Experimentally, she licks into her, catching the heady flavor of her on her tongue.
Rebekah positively melts under her mouth.
A few more swipes of her tongue, a few passes over her girl's stiff, needy clit, has Rebekah trembling like a tea kettle on the brink. She slings her leg over Elena's shoulder, changing the angle just so, opening herself entirely up to Elena's explorations.
Elena wraps one hand around the knee hooked over her shoulder for balance, snakes the other under her own jeans to touch herself as she ministers to Rebekah's needs.
From the sound of Rebekah's breathy cries, she's close. Elena nuzzles closer. Just a few more seconds will have her boiling over.
After, Rebekah pulls her up and kisses her deeply, her tongue probing past her lips, sampling her own pleasure where it has pooled in Elena's mouth.
"For the record," Elena tells her, after Rebekah's pulled away and she's had a moment to catch her breath, "It's not very useful compulsion practice to compel me to do things I already want to do."
"No?"
"Never even occurred to me to try to fight you on that one."
Rebekah grins, feline and predatory. "You liked me ordering you like that."
Elena flushes. She doesn't contradict her though.
It becomes a game with them after that.
(And Elena excels, as she does in all games.)
Rebekah kneels behind her on the bed, her arm pinned around Elena's waist to keep her flush against her as she reaches around and slowly fucks her with her hand. Her thumb circles, lightly petting over everywhere except for where Elena needs her to touch her most. Desperately, she grinds into the heel of Rebekah's hand, searching for some friction.
"Hold still now, dearest," Rebekah admonishes, her breath ruffling Elena's hair, tickling her neck.
Needfully, Elena arches against her, throwing her head back against Rebekah's shoulder's and canting her hips. Rebekah's fingers slip against her clit, sending a delicious jolt all through Elena's body. Before she can replicate the movement, Rebekah's arm tightens around her, holding her frozen against her.
The roughness of Rebekah's touch, the insistence of it, only makes Elena burn for her all the more.
"I said, hold still. Is this so hard?"
Her lips trail against Elena's throat and it's all she can do to resist pressing herself against that sinful graze of wicked sharp teeth. Just the thought of Rebekah's teeth in her flesh is enough to have her blood pounding, a sharp, insistent rap between her legs.
Distantly, she recalls a time before she desired fangs and bites and that delicious frisson of pleasure-pain that only a vampire's kiss could deliver. A time when her sense of the ecstatic had been tied up in soft touches and gentle kisses. In human warmth and safety.
She doesn't let herself examine when that had changed. When her desire had bloomed into this yearning for the death lurking behind her lover's cherry bow lips.
(Had it been the terror of that kiss in the music room? Or later, on a bed in New Orleans, her thighs spread wide for a pair of strong broad shoulders as she surrendered to her most secret, urgent wish... Or before all of that, on the night of a full moon? Impossible to say. Impossible, since she never lets herself discover the answer for certain.)
"Bite me," Elena urges, pressing herself against Rebekah's mouth.
"Lie down and spread your legs for me," Rebekah pants, ignoring Elena's breathy request, instead punctuating her order with a long lick up the side of her throat designed to drive her absolutely insane.
Disappointed, burning all the same, Elena obeys.
Submits herself to the sublime pleasure of Rebekah's steely hands gripping her wrists, her hips, her knees. To the exquisite torment of coming apart, again, and again, and again, under her eager mouth. A whisper away from what she has begun to crave.
And when Rebekah does bite her, the sheer swamping pleasure of it is divine.
There's a break in the usual habit one night. A plan, cooked up between Rebekah and Klaus, Elena gathers, to snag a private box at the Met Opera.
"Not that the opera went so well the last time my brother took an interest," Rebekah notes as she leads her up the sweeping staircase, champagne flutes in hand. "The circumstances surrounding that episode were quite different though, I should think. Quite."
As exciting as their glamorous surroundings are as they take their seats, as rich and sweet as the sound of the instruments warming up, or as dazzling a spectacle as the cast, costuming, and set designs are, Elena cannot really focus on any of it. Not with Rebekah, murmuring the translation of the German lyrics into her ear, her voice like a caress against her bare skin. And certainly not with her awareness of Klaus and Stefan beside them—shifting in their chairs, murmuring to each other. She can feel the weight of their eyes on her, on Rebekah. On the way that Rebekah's hand trails up her arm, playing over the nape of her neck, twining the ends of her hair around her fingers. The way Elena shivers under her touch, anticipating the moment when the two of them can be alone together again at last. Making a spectacle of themselves.
At intermission, Rebekah excuses herself. There's a black, hungry look in her eyes, that Elena knows to mean that she intends to satisfy her hungers now, so that she can satisfy her other appetites with Elena later without the risk of harming her.
That's okay. She understands Rebekah. Understands her needs and actions and the way she thinks in a way that is so instinctive to her that she has nearly forgotten what it had been like to view her as an alien creature.
Stefan slips off with Rebekah, leaving Elena alone with Klaus.
"Thirsty?" he asks, already rising and offering her his arm.
He, at least, must be.
For a moment, she imagines him drinking from her, the way that Rebekah had this morning.
Except, unlike with Rebekah, Elena knows exactly what it feels like when Klaus does not let go.
To be drained by him, until there is nothing left.
Silently, Elena slips her hand into the crook of Klaus's arm and lets him lead her from their box, out into the plush auditorium where the line for the bar already snakes down the stairs.
He slides them to the very front of the line, cutting off the complaint from the couple behind them with some careless compulsion. Order them Ramos Gin Fizzes, which aren't even on the menu, without brooking any room for argument from the bartender.
The gin fizzes take forever to make, Elena recalls from that distant trip to New Orleans, when Klaus had introduced her to a whirlwind of gustatory delicacies.
They have an uncomfortable pocket of time to kill together.
Elena looks around, anywhere but at Klaus, making a poor attempt to take in the details of the grand old building, the immense crowd of patrons pressing in on all sides, wondering if maybe she can spot Rebekah or even Stefan in the crowd.
All the while, she can feel Klaus's eyes trailing over her in a way she remembers from years ago. Assessing her closely.
"You've lain your spell upon my sister," he notes.
She glances up at him sharply. "Perhaps I'm the one who's been enchanted." Equivocations have never been so useful as they are now, with Klaus's old compulsion tugging hard at her words.
Despite Rebekah's assurances, Elena cannot help but feel a trickle of apprehension that Klaus would broach the topic of their relationship with her.
Klaus smiles, and there's something slow and dangerous about the expression.
A chill rolls up Elena's spine, settling at the base of her neck, exposed and vulnerable now that the shield of her hair has been shorn.
"No need to prevaricate," he assures her. Almost as if… as if he is encouraging her to confide in him. As though he is fishing for something.
Elena frowns, unsure what information Klaus could possibly be searching for.
Certain, though, that she needs to answer him very, very carefully.
The clink of their drinks against the bar startles her out of her thoughts.
Relieved for the excuse to leave this conversation unfinished, she flashes the bartender a grateful smile and scoops her drink up. "Shall we?" she asks Klaus brightly, as though she hadn't just dropped the topic. She steps away from the bar without giving him a chance to reply.
Immediately she knocks directly into another woman who had stepped into her path at the last moment. Their drinks clatter to the ground, and Elena would have slipped had Klaus not caught her. The other woman is not so lucky—she trips halfway down the staircase before anyone reacts to help her.
She turns to thank Klaus, but a burning sensation at the base of her throat distracts her. A trickling warmth seeps over her skin. All at once, she realizes what must have happened: how the scabs over Rebekah's bite mark must have torn open when she had collided with the other woman a moment before.
She presses her hand over the collar of her dress, concealing the wound, for all the good that does—Klaus bats her hand away and peels her collar away from her neck with a sharp wrench that splits the silk clean in two.
"Did a shard of glass catch you?" he asks.
"I'm fine." She tries to twist out of his hold, but he seems determined to ascertain that his precious bloodbank is hale and whole.
"You're bleeding." He frowns. Abruptly lets her go. "That's a bite mark."
Elena adjusts her torn collar. "I told you—" Her teeth click shut. She had been about to say, I told you it was nothing. "I'm fine."
He stares at the place under her hands, where her blood has seeped through the material of her dress. "I'll have a word with her. She shan't harm you again." He steps around her, jaw set, head cocked as he scans the building for his sister.
Elena grabs hold of his arm before he can disappear on her. "Wait. It's not like that."
"It's one thing for her to play love games with you, quite another to maul you." Carefully, he pries her hand off of his arm.
"I wanted her to bite me."
His eyes go very dark. "You've had, what? Four, five vampires for lovers before?" he asks her lowly, stepping right up into her personal space, so she has to crane her neck to look up into his face. "In all that time, I've never known you to desire such a thing."
"This is different—"
"How?" There's an urgency to the question Elena doesn't understand.
"Because I love her." It's not until she says the words that she realizes just how true they are. How true they must be. "And I think she loves me too."
Klaus doesn't contradict her. She can't understand the expression on his face. Unbidden, the image of the ocean springs to mind. The knowledge that it can be flat and glassy on the surface, when all the while something violent and roiling is transpiring down in the icy black depths.
Elena swallows. Tips her chin up. "I know how inconvenient this must be for you, the two of us together. I know you don't like sharing Rebekah, and I know it must frustrate you that you can't just do away with me when you need me alive. But since we're stuck together, I'd like it if we could be friends. Sometimes I think you'd like that too."
"Friends," Klaus repeats flatly, tasting the word. He shakes his head. "No, your friendship does not appeal to me."
His dismissive certainty stings her, even though she knows she should be past his ability to hurt her.
Rebekah finds them at just that moment, her fingers slipping through Elena's, pulling her out of Klaus's orbit. Just the merest touch of her skin is enough to soothe all of the jagged feelings Klaus is so talented in provoking.
"The intermission's nearly over," Rebekah notes, tugging Elena back toward the box. Midway back, she pauses to call over her shoulder, "Nick, aren't you coming?"
Elena turns just in time to catch a glimpse of Klaus, still standing where she had left him. He blinks at the pair of them slowly, before waving them off.
They go back without him.
The second half of the opera goes by in as much a blur as the first half, but for slightly different reasons.
Now that Elena realizes she loves her, every single thing about Rebekah feels magnified times a thousand. A million. Her smile is more radiant than the sparkle of the innumerable crystal chandeliers overhead. Her laughter moves her in the same way as the peal of church bells late at night. Even the things she had always categorized as Rebekah's imperfections—her quick temper, her carelessness, her tendency to treat others as her playthings without even realizing it—all of those quirks simply complement the overall scope of her good qualities—her hopefulness, her sentimentality, her deep and abiding love. The good and the bad blend together, adding up to something special and beautiful to Elena. To the specific girl who is her beloved. Her whole body pounds with tenderness for her as Rebekah continues whispering her translations to her, oblivious to the fact that Elena has no idea what she's even saying to her right now.
She can't believe she hadn't realized it until this night.
Hadn't realized that the impossible had happened—that, somehow, without ever meaning to, her heart had healed, and she had fallen in love again.
The one thing that distracts her from these fierce thoughts is Klaus's return midway through the second half. She hears him, cannot help but be aware of him as he resumes his place next to Stefan, but she doesn't ever quite turn her head to look at him.
She doesn't actually look over at Klaus and Stefan until she and Rebekah are leaving.
She's shocked to realize that there is a woman's sitting in Stefan's lap, her dark eyes wide, her lips trembling but no sound escaping. Too terrified to scream, or compelled to remain silent and docile?
And then Klaus leans forward, his hand brushing against Stefan's arm as he whispers something in his ear, and it triggers a years old memory—Klaus and Stefan in the gardens at the manor on a sunny autumn morning, Klaus's mouth pressed to Stefan's ear as he murmurs his encouragement and his endearments into it.
That had been the first moment she had recognized them as really, truly lovers. That she had had to admit it to herself that there was something honest and deep between them, something other than manipulation and control.
No doubt at Klaus's urging, Stefan yields to instinct and clamps his jaws around the woman's throat.
The woman actually moans when his teeth sink in.
Rebekah rolls her eyes for Elena's benefit before tugging her toward the door.
Elena can't help but look back over her shoulder.
From the way Klaus had been watching Stefan, she almost expects to turn back and find them kissing amidst the spray of arterial blood.
Instead, when she glances back, she finds herself staring directly into Klaus's dark and unreadable eyes.
She pushes the entire incident out of her mind.
(She'd thought she'd known Klaus so well, once. But she had been wrong about him. Completely wrong.)
The next morning, Rebekah distracts Elena completely from her daily meditation routine.
"The thing of it is," Rebekah says, as though they're already mid-conversation, "I've completely lost my head for you. I'm absolutely in love with you and there's not a thing I can do about it."
Elena opens her eyes, blinking against the morning sunlight. Realizes with a rush of pleasure that they had been mid-conversation after all. She just hadn't noticed until they were already here.
Rebekah toys with the hem of her skirt. "Is there any chance you're going to say something back?" she asks without looking her in the eye. Too nervous that the answer may not be all that she is hoping for.
Elena hooks Rebekah's fingers against her own and slides their palms together, in that slow, impractical way they had begun holding hands last summer, so like the slow, impractical way they had ultimately fallen together.
"I was trying to figure out the best way to tell you, but it seems like you've beat me to it," Elena sighs. She can't quite keep the smile out of her voice.
Rebekah glances up sharply at her. "You mean…?"
Elena nods, so fervently she thinks her neck might snap.
Rebekah presses her palms to the sides of Elena's face and pulls her in for a desperate kiss.
"I love you too," Elena swears between kisses that taste like marmalade and tea. "I love you so much sometimes I think my heart might explode."
Later, Rebekah traces a finger over Elena's bare hip.
"I think we're going to be very happy," she says.
They are.
It's not the easiest thing to pay attention to anything at all outside of Rebekah, but Elena does try. Years and years spent eavesdropping and conjecturing and piecing together scraps of information into a cloak to conceal herself behind make for a difficult habit to break, even when she is very, very distracted.
Nevertheless, she cannot help but note a change in the tension between Klaus and Stefan over the days that follow their excursion to the opera.
If Elena had been asked about it directly in the weeks she has been back in their company, she would have hazarded that no, Klaus and Stefan had not been sleeping together. Sure, Rebekah had mentioned that the three of them were involved again during those three years Elena had spent apart from them, and she supposes that Klaus and Stefan must have carried on for a time even after Rebekah had left them, but Elena had noticed nothing specific between them to hint that their relationship currently contained a carnal element.
She cannot decide if she had somehow just missed it, too wrapped up in the final guttering sparks of her hopes for Klaus and the brand new, bright star of her burgeoning love affair with Rebekah, or if something has simply shifted back into place between the two.
Whatever the case, she's somehow not at all surprised when she looks out the hotel lobby windows one night and spies them just outside, entangled in a pool of yellow streetlight. Klaus pushes Stefan so hard against the metal base of the lamp as they devour each other that the whole structure groans, setting the wan light to flickering.
For a long, drawn out moment, all she can do is stand in that window and stare at these two men she has loved, kissed, embraced, wrapped up now in each other.
Each time the light cuts out, she fears they might disappear in the fleeting darkness. Hopes for it, too.
Her stomach twists.
(She smothers the feeling as soon as she recognizes it.)
She turns on her heel and heads back upstairs.
She has all but moved into Rebekah's suite upstairs ever since they first fell into bed with each other, but that night, for reasons Elena cannot (cannot) articulate to herself, she insists on making love in her old bedroom.
The colors from the Joan Mitchell painting flash in the corners of her eyes, always just barely out of focus.
"So what's the deal with you and Klaus?" Elena asks Stefan at the first opportunity. A bizarre inversion of the conversation they had just had about her own personal life, Elena reflects.
Maybe that's what she and Stefan have become: each other's confidantes.
No. More than that.
Each other's truth seekers.
Stefan shrugs. "It's whatever he wants it to be."
Elena frowns at him, although she can hardly see his face. The venue tonight is a pervasively dark basement bar, strung up with lights in shades of electric blue, pink, and violet that cast strange shadows over every face. The two of them have found themselves alone at the bar, while first Klaus, and later Rebekah, had drifted away, out into the sea of bodies grinding madly to the overloud live music.
She catches glimpses of them, every now and then, as they prowl from one hapless prey item to the next.
In this cruel half-light, her companions look less human than ever. Their hunger skates too close to the surface to hide it under soft sunlight and flickering candlelight, under luxurious clothes and refined manners, the way that they usually do. Even Rebekah looks ghastly.
(Not that that has ever been enough to warn away Elena's fascination.)
"That's it?" she asks.
"Are you wondering if we've fallen in love?" Stefan teases her. He shakes his head, suddenly serious. "That's not Klaus. At least, that's not Klaus and me."
Klaus rejoins them before she can press Stefan further.
"Did I hear my name?" he asks, just behind her. She can feel the blazing heat of his body like an inferno against her back as he slips past her, to reach for the drink he had abandoned earlier in order to slake other thirsts. He is, she realizes after a moment, absolutely sodden with blood spray. Not that anyone would notice. With Halloween just around the corner, there are more than a few revelers already wearing costumes. Klaus's gruesome… accessorizing wouldn't draw a moment's notice.
No, it's not the crimson gore dripping down his chin and making his shirt cling to his chest that would unnerve, but the way that the uncanny lighting in here reveals him for the inhuman beast that he is.
Elena can't help but think that Klaus must know this though. No predator as ancient as he, as accomplished as he at blending in, could enter a place like this and fail to recognize the way in which every human's eyes skitter away from him as soon as they notice him. Too bad none of them trust their instincts and run for true.
"I'm not as interesting to Elena as I used to be," Stefan explains. He reaches over the bar and grabs a bottle of scotch carelessly left out by the busy staff. "Perhaps you'll have better luck." He pours them each three fingers and throws his back in a single gulp before pouring himself a second glass.
Klaus glances at her. Maybe it's the strangeness of the lighting, revealing all of the hidden, monstrous parts of Klaus that his beautiful face usually conceals so well, but she glimpses in him a fierce and savage hunger. The strength of it knocks the air from her lungs. When she tries to breathe, it's as though there is no air at all in the room.
Something behind her garners his attention half a second later.
"No, I know better than to try my hand at a losing game," Klaus replies. He turns back to Stefan and leads him out into that writhing crowd, leaving Elena on her own at the bar. Left to watch as her three companions hunt. Odd one out, though, it's no fault of their own.
Rebekah returns to her eventually. Wraps her in her arms and presses butterfly kisses along her throat. She's warm in Elena's arms, and giddy from the blood high.
"Let's go somewhere private," she whispers, nipping at Elena's neck.
A bolt of heat flares low in Elena's belly. Builds into a crescendo as Rebekah presses herself against her.
Over Rebekah's shoulder, Elena can just barely make out the dark shape of Stefan hunched over a man, his mouth at his shoulder, the way a lover's might be. She scans the crowd, looking for another familiar shade but unable to pinpoint him.
Rebekah's clever fingers slide under the waistband of her jeans to curl slowly against her aching center.
"I'm all yours," Elena swears.
There's a little café Elena discovered during that week Rebekah had been away, where she likes to sit in the front window and drink cappuccino while she writes in her diary.
On this blue October morning, she's really been doodling more than writing, mindlessly sketching out the skeletal limbs of the half-bare trees outside as she ponders the formless anxiety that had had her tossing and turning all night long the night before.
She and Rebekah had parted ways over an hour ago, with vague plans to reconnect later in the afternoon.
They are, Elena realizes with a soft pang, already past that first initial rush when leaving each other's arms would be just too impossible.
She suddenly misses her so ferociously she doesn't think she can make it until this afternoon before seeing her again. She fishes her cellphone from her jacket pocket and begins typing out a text.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees a man sit down across from her.
Elena looks up, ready to tell him she's not interested in any company.
The words die on her lips as she stares at the man sitting across from her.
He's handsome, she thinks, in a grim foreboding way, like a stone angel guarding a mausoleum.
Nothing about his specific features are familiar to her, and yet, she realizes with a plummeting feeling in her stomach, she recognizes who he is all the same. She could never look into eyes that stormy and not recognize Klaus's brother.
There's a long pause as Finn watches her realize who he is.
She absorbs the details of his appearance, even as her mind tumbles.
The last time she had seen him, the wear and grime of centuries had obscured his features nearly completely, as though he really had been a stone statue, his face eroded by time.
If that memory were not so sharp in her mind, she would never be able to hold it against the clean cut, serious man sitting across from her, turned out in a somehow prim yet practical button down and slacks. For the sake of appearances, he should have a coat with him, Elena thinks, but perhaps he's not yet used to fitting in with the mortal world.
None of this matters though.
What matters is that one of Klaus's siblings is here, in this city.
The possibilities swarm her. Is he here to kill her? To take her hostage? To lay a trap? Or… could he be here as a friend? An ally, even?
How had Finn even found her? Her cloaking bracelet should have made that next to impossible. Unless his walking into this particular café and recognizing her is just some freak twist of fate.
The thing is, no one ever seems to talk about Finn. Elijah, yes. Kol even, sure. But Finn? She has no idea who he is. What to expect from him. What he wants.
It's entirely up to her to figure it out. Fast.
"We have not yet had the pleasure of meeting," Finn begins. "May I assume, though, from your reaction, that you know who I am?"
She nods, still speechless.
He smiles, just the barest amount. "Of course, no introduction is necessary for one such as yourself. Although, I wasn't entirely certain I had the right girl until I saw how you responded to my presence. Your face is not quite as I recollected. Nor your surname. It is 'Miss Gilbert,' correct?"
Stupid, stupid. She's so accustomed to being recognized no matter what she does. It had never occurred to her that she could have simply played dumb and avoided this conversation altogether. Could have slipped out and let Klaus know and let him handle this.
Well. Nothing to be done about it now.
"Yes. That's me."
The smile grows broader. Exposing all of those terribly sharp teeth. How hungry must he be, even now, over a month into his reanimation, after centuries and centuries of desiccation? "My brother has told me quite a lot about you."
Something about the implicit threat of that smile calms her the way nothing else could. Forces her to rise to the challenge as she feels him out.
She smiles back. She doesn't have fangs, of course, but that doesn't mean that she doesn't have teeth just as sharp. Sharper. "Good things, I hope."
He seems to take her smile at face value. "He describes you as a paragon of virtue," he informs her candidly, without any trace of blandishment. As though he is simply delivering her the facts.
Elena leans back in her chair. Trust Elijah to know how to flatter a girl.
"Is Elijah with you then?" she asks after an idle moment, as though she's merely picking up Finn's thread in the conversation. If Elijah's here, she could talk to him. Negotiate.
Finn shakes his head, immediately dashing her tenuous hopes. "No, Elijah's currently… indisposed. It is because of what he said that I am here with you now, though."
She's spent enough time around Originals to recognize their euphemisms. She expects this means Elijah's withered away in some box somewhere.
She's less sorry but more disappointed than she had expected. It would have been easier to deal with Elijah. Beyond that, her feelings toward him are still too complicated to fully parse.
"I'm afraid I don't follow," she says, shrugging helplessly.
She wonders if she could shoot a text off to Rebekah without Finn noticing.
"He claims you are my brother Niklaus's victim. His hostage. An innocent in all of this. I'm here to prevent my father from destroying you."
Elena recoils. "Mikael's here? In the city?"
"Indeed. I followed him."
She jumps up, intent on dashing out to warn the others, but Finn grabs her around the wrist and forces her to sit back down. He snaps her phone in half the instant she lunges for it.
"Listen to me carefully, Miss Gilbert. My father reached the city ahead of me—his lead is slim, but I have no doubt he will use it to his utmost advantage. Any moment now, he will root out my brother from whatever dark hole he's hidden himself in and extinguish him. The outcome of that conflict is unavoidable."
"You talk about his death like you don't care."
"This isn't the course I would have chosen, but there's no turning back from it now. Once my father has dealt with Niklaus, he will begin his search for you." He glances meaningfully at her wrist. "That cloaking amulet will only hide you for so long. Eventually, if you do not flee, he will track you down. He is determined."
A new plan takes shape. One that will require her to walk a razor-thin wire if she's going to succeed.
She looks down into her lap. Her lashes fan against her cheeks. She can feel him watching her. Taking in her slim shoulders, how fragile and uncertain she must appear. Deliberately, she worries her lip, before quietly asking, "How did you find me?"
"My father mentioned that you had a device or some such thing rendering you nearly undetectable. It truly is a marvelous creation. I should like, very much, to meet the witch who crafted it for you some day. Even sitting just across from you, I can barely make out a whisper of your scent. I can see your chest rise and fall, but I cannot detect your heart beat, or hear your breath." He shakes himself from his reverie. "I knew I could not track you, but I have a… sensitivity toward magically imbued items. Once I was close enough, I was able to detect the bracelet."
"How close is close enough?"
"What I deem close, you would call far." He pauses. "I can tell you have concern for my brother, which is to your credit. You have a tender heart. Know then that he is better off in the next world than he is haunting this one as some foul and corrupted beast," he tells her gently. "Do you understand?"
"He's not the brother you remember from before." Years of listening to Klaus and Rebekah have made this insight blatantly obvious.
"He's not."
(Who is Finn to hold that against Klaus? Elena cannot. Not when she is so far from the sister Jeremy remembers.)
"Come. We must away," he says, pulling her up and toward the door. "My father will no doubt have moved his agents into the city by now. We'll walk at a normal pace, so as to avoid detection. Don't struggle, and this will be much the easier for you."
The city must be crawling with witches, then. Elena can't imagine having enough witches to cover such a sprawling city, but she also cannot account for the depth of Mikael's resources. For all she knows, after a thousand years, they could be limitless.
"Where are you going to take me?" she asks, pushing those speculations aside.
"Away, where my father cannot reach you."
Because that's not ominous.
Even now, that old compulsion to remain alive crawls under her skin. Dares her to take the risks even she hesitates to take.
So she doesn't fight him. Lets him lead her out, into the bright sunshine.
His grip on her arm relaxes. After a couple of blocks with no argument from her, he releases her altogether with a murmured, "Stay close."
She obeys, sliding her hand into his own as they make their way down the busy city sidewalk.
They're in a part of Manhattan Elena knows well. They pass by familiar bookshops and jewelry stores and bars. There's a subway entrance down the cross street, just a block away.
They must look like a couple to everyone they pass.
Her fingers link with Finn's. The edge of his ring grinds into her fingers.
She can feel him glance down at her when she threads their fingers together, but she doesn't look up at him. Concentrates instead on screwing her face into a suitably frightened expression. Creased brow, worried lip—nothing too over the top.
Her palms sweat from the adrenaline, making her hand slide against his own cool, dry one. Hopefully he'll interpret it as anxiety.
They come to the cross street.
In one fluid motion, she wraps her fingers around the gold ring on his hand and yanks. Impossibly, miraculously, the ring slides off.
Instantly, the sun sears Finn's skin to an unnatural, blistering red. He tries to grab hold of her, but he's already too weak to fight her. She shoves him back, and he falls to his knees in the street, reaching for her. He doesn't catch flame.
Elena runs.
A/N: If you're enjoying, please leave a comment or come say hi over on tumblr (my handle is livlepretre)!
Seriously, your comments keep this fic hurtling on! I am so grateful to each and every one of you. Thank you so much for reading!
Happy Halloween, y'all!