Warning: Use of language I this chapter as well as brief character death and mentions of trauma.
'I'll tell them put me back in it
Darling, I would do it again, ah, ah
If I could hold you for a minute
Darling, I'd go through it again, ah, ah
I would still be surprised I could find you, darling
In any life
If I could hold you for a minute
Darling, I would do it again, ah, ah
I would not change it each time (I would not change it each time)
Heaven is not fit to house a love (Heaven is not fit to house a love)
Like you and I (like you and I)' Hozier, "Francesca."
Footsteps hounded his descent down the stairs, a stampeding rush of impatience and exclamations of incredulity -and lunacy- punctuated by the staccato rapid-fire of his sister's heels, the quiet slide of his brother's brogues against marble, the breathless, rushed squeak of age-worn sneakers, all of which Klaus easily ignored with the single-minded focus of a man who would not be dissuaded by arguments of logic, pleas of reasoning or demands for practicality. He'd meant what he said: he was going to die today. But only for a short while, only long enough to get the information he needed from the Other Side, and then come back and cure Elena. After which, he'd give that detestable prick Damon Salvatore an ultimatum regarding his ridiculous demands over their relationship, see how he liked it, when the shoe was on the other foot.
Elena may have agreed to his stipulations the heat of the moment, spurred on by her need to keep the peace, blinded by her passionate need and belief that there was no singular thing more important than family, that there was no cause worth putting the weight of herself above -even if he believed far to the contrary- but Klaus was far less understanding, and would make his feelings known with such colourful vengeance that it would have made Pollock's eyes swim to behold it. There was no way, after all of this, that he would not be with her, no way that he would let the love of his immortal love slip by simply because some young vampire couldn't get his head out of his own selfish, jealous arse and be happy for her, still delusionally clinging to some gossamer-thin hope that someway, someday, somehow, she'd choose him. That there existed a time and a place where he could get everything he always wanted, everything he believed he was entitled to, that he would have finally changed his ways enough as to be deemed acceptable, to be worthy of the prize he believed Elena Gilbert to be.
Hadn't he learnt by now? Hadn't any of them learnt that love did not work that way? It never had, and it never would.
Because if Elena had ever truly loved Damon Salvatore, she would have accepted him, all of him, a long time ago, Stefan or not. Because if Elena really wanted something, she fought for it, with every fiber of her heart, every inch of her soul. And, contrary to popular belief, she did not want an easy love; she'd picked Klaus, after all. And he was by far the most complicated being to walk the face of the earth, of that the hybrid would and could readily admit, damaged and twisted and torn-apart like old parchment, gaping holes in his morals and a threadbare sense of humility. He did not know how to be anyone but himself, this raging, violent thing that seemed to make the very earth quake with his mere presence; Elena was not asking him to. Had never asked him to, not once, not out of fear but because she knew that that kind of change had to come from himself. He had to want it, if he ever wanted it to stick.
Still, he had no idea about the confines and parameters and stipulations of a modern relationship; she was supposed to show him, had been working solely in the dark these last few days. They were meant to work it out, together.
Elena was supposed to teach him the one thing Klaus had never learnt: how to give your heart to someone, and entrust them to keep it without breaking it.
So everything would work out. It had to. Because he himself was selfish, and jealous, had spent so many centuries watching his siblings falling in love, over and over again, seeing how it transformed them, tempered their sharp edges and their claws, but never had he truly experienced it for himself, until now. Until Elena Gilbert with her smiles and her secret sadness and her need to please and her desire to love and the aching loneliness that had so deeply resonated with him that night, two sides of the same coin, equal and opposing faces, forces, coming together, falling together, falling for each other like fate had already laid out every single step of this for them, so they could end up here.
Lady Fate was not a mistress one easily ignored; Klaus had no intentions of denying her her scheming.
"Niklaus, would you mind explaining yourself and just what exactly you're up to?" Elijah demanded, one hand reaching out to still him in place, spinning him around on the tiled kitchen floor.
Klaus shrugged off his brother's grip, proceeding through the house as he called over his shoulder ambiguously, "I'm going to get a bottle of wine."
At first, he hadn't known where best to keep the damned thing. At first, he'd had no idea why he'd even chosen to hold on to it, to take a knife and carve a tiny, disc-shaped sliver of Mikael's white oak stake, no bigger than a loose button off a coat. Maybe as insurance, a future bargaining chip, something he could negotiate with. Or maybe something else, something darker, like if he was ever cursed by The Five again. If he ever turned into Mikael. If he decided that this existence as the hated, evil hybrid really wasn't worth living, and to finally call it a day. Or...as a reminder, that he could still be killed, that he wasn't invincible, and should live every day accordingly. Because life was so very much more intense when it was fleeting, each chance more appealing, each crazy idea and risk more delicious when there was no safety net to catch you.
Whatever the reason, Klaus was glad of it now as he traversed the gloom of the night-dark wine cellar, a chill creeping up his spine despite his imperviousness to temperature fluctuations, right hand immediately going to a now-familiar spot, plucking the empty bottle of cherry wine he'd saved from his and Elena's first night. Taking out the broken cork, he tipped the bottle upside down until the remaining shard of white oak fell into his awaiting palm. It hadn't been big enough to be used as a proper stake, would barely even pierce his heart, but for what he had planned, he didn't need it to be, only needed it to incapacitate him long enough and gravely enough so he could reach the Other Side. And have a conversation with the man he could have called father.
Klaus gathered them all in the living room, waiting until both Caroline and Alaric -and Damon Salvatore, who supposedly just couldn't bear to be left out of anything, apparently- had converged in the collection of plush armchairs and sofas before explaining what exactly he had in mind.
"For those of you who don't know, Elena has been poisoned by my mother," he began, gently, if only for the sake of Caroline and Elena's pseudo-parent (who Klaus was mightily ticked off with for his callously irresponsible disappearing act over the course of the past few days). "It's fatal, and we've looked everywhere in Mystic Falls for the cure, but Bonnie was able to discover that the plant we need, the Merlock orchid, is being cloaked by magic. As a boy, I only remember it growing in one place. So I have to ask someone who also knew of its existence, and has used it before."
As soon as the words left his mouth, Damon's eyes went stormcloud blue, lightning sparks of fury dancing in their depths. "Woah, hold on a second. Elena's dying? Because of your mom? Oh, that's just terrific," he purred, a cruel little smirk crawling its way onto his face like an unwelcome insect. "Didn't I say this would happen? Didn't I say it was a bad idea for the mangy hybrid mutt to get his paws anywhere near Elena?"
"If you're fishing for validation, you won't find it, mate," Kol warned him, calm tone belying the ice in his expression, far colder than that currently swimming within the depths of his glass of bourbon. "We all know that neither of them were ever going to agree to your little deal. And if you thought otherwise...you're even more stupid than you look, which is a mighty fine achievement."
The elder Salvatore rolled his eyes, a default defense against criticism, Klaus had swiftly realized. "Piss off, Psycho Boy."
Klaus felt Rebekah tense at his side, a barely-suppressed growl locking her jaw as she snapped, angry and fast as a shark scenting blood in the water, "Don't speak to my brother like that, you wanker!"
"Yeah, what she said! Only in American," Caroline chimed in, never one to be left out of a good round of Damon Salvatore bashing. It still made him oddly curious, the apparent history that lay between the two. Klaus had his suspicions -he'd known many vampires with an attitude eerily similar to that of Stefan's brother, knew their tricks and their games and their traps for pretty prey- but knew it wasn't his place to pry. He doubted even Elena knew the full extent, otherwise Damon would have been removed from the inner sanctum long before this.
Ah, if only.
"As I was saying, I need to get in touch with someone familiar with the Merlock Orchid, only they're on the Other Side. So I have to die." Plain, simple, effective. An easy sequence of rational steps, culminating in one singular desire, one guaranteed outcome: making sure Elena lived. Everything else in-between was inconsequential.
"I'll take photos, make it my new lock screen wallpaper," Damon mocked arrogantly, leather-jacketed arms crossed over his chest, the picture of unruffled nonchalance. He hadn't even asked about her, if he could see her, if she was in pain or how she'd even been poisoned in the first place. No, he was chucking out quips like he was at a sunny Sunday barbeque, without a single care for...
"For God's sake, Damon, shut the fuck up! Elena is upstairs right now, dying, suffering from some magic poison that we might not be able to cure her of; now is not the time for making jokes!" Chest rising and falling from his startling outburst, Alaric turned to Klaus, expression somber but unwavering as he said, "I don't get what you mean by that, that you have to die: you're an Original, the Hybrid. Only the White Oak stake can kill you, and that burned along with Mikael."
Klaus tossed the piece of wood on the table, into the bowl he usually reserved for coasters as he merely replied, "Not all of it."
Alaric shook his head, fingertips tracing the rough whorls and swirls of wood. "Why can't I go?" he wondered, the words tripping over his tongue in their desperate rush to get out. "I could use the Gilbert ring, go to the Other Side like I normally do when someone kills me" -a pointed glare in Damon's vicinity, oh there was some lingering bad blood there- "and get whatever you need instead, with a solid guarantee I'll come back, unlike you. This could actually kill you. Permanently." The History teacher Klaus had formerly inhabited sighed, carding agitated fingers through his sandy hair, making it stick up in frenzied peaks, and Klaus felt for him in that moment, deeply and truly, seeing him in such clear distress over Elena, feeling bonded by the shared source of pain. And beyond that, he was grateful that even after losing two fathers, she had not lost a father's love.
"I don't get why you'd do this for her," Ric admitted, eyes skirting around the assembled group confusedly. "I don't even get why she's here, or why your siblings look like they're going to burst into tears. Did you all become friends or something while I was gone?" A dry chuckle, heavy with disbelief, absurdity, as if that was the strangest incident imaginable, even in this crazy town of theirs.
It was Rebekah who spoke up, voice firm yet soft, a happy-sad smile on her face as she corrected him, "No, not friends. Family. We love her like our own. Besides, if we showed even the slightest lick of disdain for her, Klaus would be putting us all back in coffins. But...she does grow on you, kind of like a weed, only prettier and with a sort of inspiring tenacity, especially when she's not letting the Salvatores dictate her every move like bloody puppet masters."
Damon made disgruntled murmurs of protest. Bekah happily ignored him, finishing with a heartfelt, "She's braver than I could have ever imagined a Petrova to be, and being here for her now is the least we can do to repay her for putting up with our darling brother."
"I quite agree, Bex. She's officially part of the fold, old sport," Kol added with his own bright grin. "We've practically adopted her. I'm sure Nik has every intention of changing her last name to Mikaelson at some point in the future..."
Silence held the reins of the room, relinquished when Alaric breathed out, barely audible, barely there, "You're...in love with my sort-of daughter?"
"Yes, very much so." No use lying. No use pretending. Curse the heavens and the stars, the deepest oceans of the earth, Niklaus Mikaelson was in love, and here he was, sitting in a room full of people who usually hated him, in a town he himself had hated, asking this man to trust him, trust in the fact that he would do anything for this young woman he called, claimed, as his blood, for no other reason than that he wanted to, had to, needed to, in order to continue living anything remotely resembling a fulfilled and worthwhile existence.
Ric nodded, seemingly satisfied despite the blunt answer. "And she feels the same?"
"Yes, she does." That was harder to say, even though she'd told him as such, had used her last moments during the spell last night to tell him so, deciding that out of everything she could have possibly said, any message she could have requested to be relayed to family or friends, any promise she could have extracted from him, that he would have moved mountains to achieve, and all she chose, all she had wished him to give him was the greatest gift of his immortal life: being loved by somebody, and knowing it to be true.
Alaric nodded again. Reached out, took Klaus' untouched glass of scotch, drained it dry, thumped it on the table. Swallowed like he'd just drank a bottle of acid and said, "And I still can't do this instead because...?"
Klaus tried not to let his relief show at the words, the lack of hostility, the quiet but no less meaningful acceptance. It was likely the only sign he'd from the man, after what he'd done to Jenna, that he now, selfishly, regretted, because it has caused Elena pain. But he'd been blinded, blinded by a thousand years' worth of waiting, of coming so close, right up to the very edge of satisfaction, only to be denied it. He'd been thinking only of himself, of making himself whole, and not of the family he was consequently tearing apart. "Because the person in question might not talk to you, but they most certainly will to me." He hoped. He prayed. Even if it was out of idle, parental curiosity, he hoped that Ansel was truly nothing like Mikael had been, that he really had been the kind man his mother had spoken of with such deep fondness and affection, even a thousand years after his death, love undimming despite all the havoc it had wrought on them all to varying degrees since then. "This is the only way we can get the information we need. Once I find the location of the orchid, Bonnie can remove the cloaking spell and we can harness the root for the antidote, since I unfortunately can't bring back any physical specimen. I have to find it there so that we can use it here."
An accepting nod from Alaric. "Okay then. So how are we doing this?"
Smiling tiredly, Klaus picked up the remaining piece of the white oak stake, spinning it deftly between his fingers, over his knuckles, a magician doing an elaborate coin trick, appearing and disappearing and reappearing, a similar feat to what he would soon be attempting. "With a little magic, some luck, and a great deal of faith, I imagine."
Half an hour later, with much bickering over crumbling grimoires and spell ratios, scattered remains of drunken bottles of alcohol used to calm raging nerves and fraying tempers littered like rubber skeletons in a haunted house attraction, after being forced to watch Kol and Caroline sitting so close on the sofa she was in danger of changing her postal address to his lap, the vampire hanging onto his brother's every word and sideways smirk, and making so many trips up to Elena's room -because he couldn't bear to not have someone with her that he'd almost made himself dizzy- Klaus was staring down into the mouth of a glass vial, full of a viscous liquid in an alarmingly off-putting shade of red. It reminded him of the berries he'd crushed as a boy to make red paint with, how his mother had always warned him to never eat them, that they were for the birds and would make him sick if he did. Oh, how things changed. How a mother could go from nurturing and protective to violent and destructive, could metamorphose into a being no longer capable of looking at himself or any of other children with any modicum of love.
Was he really so irredeemable? Klaus knew, given time, he would always forgive his siblings for any transgression or slight, knew that if Elena chopped his head off or ripped out his heart or set his paintings on fire he'd still kiss her just as sweetheart the next morning. If he could forgive, why couldn't she? Why could she not face the reality of her actions? This was what she wanted, what she asked the spirits to help her achieve; it wasn't their fault if she didn't read the fine print, didn't think there'd be consequences.
Later. He'd think about Esther later -if he ever even wished to spare a moment for her after all of this.
Gazing down at the thing in his hand, Klaus was hit with a vertiginous wave of uncertainty, bombarded by all the questions he currently had no answers to. He had no idea how long he'd be dead for, if it would even be enough time, if his body would repair itself too quickly and he'd return before he had the information he needed. He had a bottle of vervain and one of wolfsbane beside it, to slow the healing process, but it was just guesswork, a fool's gamble, a shot in the dark...
But he'd do it anyway. For Elena, for the one person who had seen him at his worst and brought out his best, he would gladly do this for her, put everything on the line, court uncertain death once again if it meant saving her from a very certain one.
He would do it, yes, but not without saying goodbye to her first.
Entrusting the vial in his older brother's capable hands, Klaus wordlessly left the room; everyone with a brain knew where he was going. Easing through the pulled-to door, Klaus made his way over to the bed, looking down at Elena through a misty haze of tears, clinging to his lashes with a force equalled by his grip on her hand, looking so small and fragile and pale in his.
It was the scariest thing he could have never imagined, this great woman who had stared down death and fangs and him, completely unafraid, beautiful as a sunrise, every colorful emotion in the sky, still so young and idealistic but still so wise, who had and felt things in ways Klaus never had, not even in all his years of life. Her stubbornness matched his own, her loneliness and love for her family echoed his. She was, truly, the bravest person he had ever met, and at that moment, he wished for a little more of it himself as he took her hand, thumb sweeping over the ridges of her knuckles, more pronounced and sharp than they'd ever been, her skin sticking to his with a sheen of fevered sweat as he watched the darkening tendrils of her veins, infected by his mother's poison, killing her with every beat of her heart.
With a shaky breath, the hybrid began. "Hello, sweetheart. I don't know if you can hear me or not. I don't know where you are, or what you're feeling. But I want you to know to not be afraid. I want you to know that I'm going to fix this, all of this, so that you can wake up, can be well again. I won't stop until I do, and we both know I'm the most determined, often pig-headed creature to ever roam the face of the earth. If I say I'm going to do something, I always do it. I will not let you die, Elena," Klaus promised her, stumbling over the word like he'd stumbled the first time he'd picked up a sword, as of yet unaccustomed to the weight but knowing he had to learn to bear it, would not survive if he didn't, "and no force of heaven or hell could or will ever stop me. This isn't even about us being together, about how we feel for one another. If this worked, if I cure you, and could only have you love by never seeing you again...I'd do it. I would. It would break me like nothing else, but I will never be the reason you suffer, never again."
Because he'd been wrong, earlier. Idealistic. Vain. Selfish. Because looking at her like this, with a spiderweb of purple-black veins marching across her skin like an invading, conquering army pillaging her of her strength and the rasping rattle of her breaths like brittle branches bombarded in a blustering gale that barely lifted her chest and the small whimper contorting her lips into a line of disorienting dismay as she tried to hide her pain even in the midst of her unconsciousness...yes, he would agree to Damon's terms, would let her live out a long and happy life, full of light and joy and all the wonder she could ever want, so long as she was here to live it, him and his loneliness and his need for her be damned as so many believed his soul to always, and forever be, if they even thought he had one at all.
It was the least he could give her, and was the most fitting punishment for a thousand years of cruelty and bloodshed.
"If I don't come back...I do not want you to blame yourself, for any of this, you hear? I don't want to be watching over you from the Great Beyond only to see you alone and miserable because of me." It was meant in jest, a teasing quip, but Klaus meant it, with all of his heart. If he did not make it out of today alive, he could only go in peace knowing that she would survive this in all ways. She'd be alright, he knew it in his bones. She would survive his loss, if it came to it. She'd survived the death of her parents, both adoptive and biological, had seen Jenna die and buried highschool friends and born witness to her brother's death almost as many times as he'd daggered his own. He couldn't go through with this if he didn't, if he didn't believe that he needed her more than she needed him, otherwise he would hold her in his arms for all time and never, ever leave.
Lightly, he touched her cheek, ran the back of his hand over her flushed skin. Could have almost sworn she smiled despite her abject agony. And it gave Klaus the strength to continue on, to bite back his tears like he'd bitten into so many necks as he felt a prickling in his own of unshed tears, "I want to thank you, Elena, for everything that you've done for me, everything you've given, for bestowing upon me the deepest love that I could have ever known and yet never believed myself worthy of. I want to thank you for your kindness, the truest gift I have never and will never deserve. And I want to thank you for the fact that wherever I go...I will have the memory of your light and your love with me, and keep it close, always and forever. And if I die...I will wait for you, wherever that may be, no matter how long it takes for us to be reunited, and every second of the wait will be worth it, for you, my Elena, my heart. Never forget that to me, you are unforgettable, and always shall be."
He pressed a kiss to her lips, felt his tears staining his own, and, for one, brief, butterfly-wing beat swift second, felt her stir beneath his touch, ever so slightly. Violently, Klaus pulled back, wrenched himself away from her, almost stumbling backwards, the process, the loss of contact more painful than transforming into a wolf had been that first moon, not far from here, feeling like he was losing something vital as he turned his back on her, made his way down the stairs without realizing he was doing so, no sound in the manor but that of his shallow footsteps, echoing dully like dirt being shoveled onto a grave. Wiping at his face, the hybrid cleared his throat harshly before swinging open the sliding doors of the sitting room, eight pairs of eyes staring at him with an intense, needling sympathy. He did not want their pity, only their help, and their promise that if it all went to hell, Elena would not be alone in the aftermath.
It's one of the things he knew she hated the most, being alone. That, and the constant waiting, the sword hanging over her head, never knowing when and if and how and who it will strike because she had never been afraid for her own life, only those of the people she deemed to necessary, to vital, to live without.
It was a strange thing, to know that somehow -and not just someone, but Elena Gilbert, former cheerleader and forever champion of goodness and honesty and courage- could ever believe that he was worth such a sacrifice, that Elena had walked to her death willingly once again, this time *for him rather than because of him. The thought had been on his mind for several hours, as he sat by her bedside, held her hand as staunchly as he held in his tears, why she'd gone with Finn last night. He hadn't had an invitation to the house, she could have waited him out. But in that time, he could have hurt someone else to get to her. Bonnie, or Caroline, or even Jeremy. Matt the human bartender or Liz Forbes the mortal sheriff.
Elena loved to many people to keep them all safe all the time, although Klaus did love watching her try, once out of amusement but now our of pride and respect for her stubborn determination, how she thought she could hold back the wave of death with little more than the palms of her hands and the grit of her soul.
She was too good for this world, certainly too good for him, and yet she had united him, him and his family and hers rallying under this same banner, this shared goal of her survival.
Even when she wasn't there, she was still making his life better. The least he could offer in turn was the promise not to kill anyone there.
"Stefan. I see you've joined the party. Are you here to celebrate over my still-warm corpse?" Klaus asked the most recent guest conversationally, raising a slightly amused brow when his old friend merely looked at him stonily and crossed his arms; the re-emergence of Brooding Stefan. How wonderful.
"You know why I'm here." I'm here for Elena. "What I don't know is why I was the last to know."
"Jer doesn't know yet. Alaric's telling him now, in case this goes bad," Bonnie remarked calmly, setting up a clockwise circle of candles, sizzling anger in her green eyes as she stared at Stefan. The wound of Abby's unwilling transformation was still too new, too raw, and Klaus suspected it would be a long time before she could look at either Salvatore without contempt, even though it had been a joint decision between them all.
"Personally, I wouldn't have told you at all," Klaus swooped in, diverting the vampire's attention and allowing Bonnie a moment's reprieve -she needed all her energy for the spell, after all, not to expel it on useless grudges- "but I suppose your brother is too much of a blabbermouth to resist. I bet he just loved making me out to be the villain of this particular piece, didn't you, Damon?"
Damon grinned, wicked and slow like a knife to the gut, twisting the blade in ever deeper. "You know I did."
"Why?" Stefan wondered, seeming to be genuinely hurt by the hybrid's implication, as if he could not possibly fathom any crime he should be punished for in the form of this denied knowledge, this impenetrable guarding of Elena. "Why wouldn't you want me here?"
In a flash, Bekah had him pinned to the wall, the raven surveying the worm it was about to clamp its beak around. Stefan was smart enough not to struggle, knowing from times past that it would only entice her appetite to spill a little blood. "Does he really have to spell it out for you?" his little sister seethed, spitting venom in a way he had not seen since he had forbidden her from being with Marcellus a hundred -and every other time before that- years ago. "You went after Elena. You kidnapped her, fed her your blood and were about to run her off the road where her parents died, where she almost died. I may have not been her biggest fan up until recently, but even I would have never done anything so twisted and cruel. Nik prizes loyalty and trust above all; he will never forgive you for breaking Elena's. And neither will she. It's how they started off in the first place."
"How do you mean?" The words were little more than a gasp, agonized by the torturous prospect that he had driven his 'great love' into the arms of his greatest enemy, that the Almighty Stefan had finally done something wrong that he could not blame on his Ripper. It was something Klaus had never done, never pretended that a hero lurked beneath his monster. There could, after all, be no darkness without light.
Gods, he was never going to get Elena out of his head, was he?
Gods, why did that no longer scare him, but make him feel loved like never before?
It was the hybrid's turn to answer flatly, "You left her stranded in the middle of nowhere after tossing her phone out the window. She had to ask Damon to come get her, who didn't even notice she was five seconds away from breaking. She needed to forget, and she needed to be somewhere she felt safe, where she knew that nothing bad would happen to her. Which is why I'm doing this. Because I made her a promise, one I will gladly die to uphold. Because that is what you do when you truly love someone, Stefan Salvatore. It's not just about being willing to do whatever it takes, to put yourself in the line of fire for them -we are immortal, the laws of nature do not apply to us anyway- but about being there. It's about honesty, and equality, and trust and respect. Love is a choice, one you make every day, over anyone and everyone else. Something you, old friend, could never and will never do for her. You're too scared of turning into a monster, of letting go. I'm not. I know who I am, and I'm at peace with it, because of her. And that's how I can do this, and know that I shall succeed."
Bonnie moved her head, a shallow nod. It was time. Making his way to the chalk-drawn circle -he really hoped that was the water-soluble kind, that hardwood floor was barely two months old- Klaus paused when Elijah reached out to him, gripping his shoulder in an embrace of iron-like intensity.
"Niklaus..." His brother began, then tapered off like the train of a floor-length dress, like one breath wasn't enough room to contain all that he wished to say to him.
So the hybrid spared him the trouble. "Time is of the essence, brother; be quick about it."
Elijah nodded, let go, straightened his already pin-straight green tie with a slow flourish. "Of course, I only wished to say...that I'm proud of you. And that I love you, always and forever."
And if Klaus Mikaelson had had any more tears left in him that day, he would have shed them at that, at the light in his brother's eyes -light, not disappointment or anger or frustration or horror, but everything good and true he knew his brother had ever wanted for him, and that Klaus had wanted for himself as well- and so he plunged into the depths of his not-quite-so-dead heart and murmured, "I sentiment I most heartily return."
"And I as well," Rebekah smiled at him, gaze clouding with her own tears.
An expectant haze hung over the room like a burgeoning full moon, helped along by Bekah as she swatted at their still-silent brother.
"Ow! That hurt," Kol pouted, rubbing at his shoulder dejectedly before huffing out an exasperated, "Yes, yes, we all love Nik! Happy now?"
"You just fulfilled my dying wish." Klaus smiled at them all, this family that they had fought and bled and died for, that had started wars and caused chaos the likes of which even Loki himself would turn bashful at, who had reigned together for a thousand years but not been together in the ways that truly mattered, shattered and fractured in their own ways, consumed by their own darkness. But no longer. They had a home and a future and a family, and nothing would stop him from coming back to that...and making Elena a part of it.
And so, with no drop of hesitation, Nik upended the contents of the vial into his mouth, the low murmurings of Bonnie's magic drowning out his swallow.
For a moment, nothing happened. And then...pain.
So, so much pain, slicing through every part of him, every atom and particle, enough that it brought him to his knees, clawing at his chest like he could somehow get it out, gasping like he was underwater -was this what drowning was like, what Elena had gone through, what Stefan had mercilessly taunted her with that night?- like he'd been plunged into an unforgiving fire even while everything inside him went cold as ice.
Dimly, as if from far away, he heard a scream, realized it was his own and that his bones were shifting, changing, altering his form into that of his wolf...before everything just...stopped.
And Klaus Mikaelson lay dead.
"Come on, Nik, you're acting as if this is a big deal. You know they love you and are more than happy to have you here; they wouldn't have invited you otherwise."
"Ah, but you forget, sweetheart, that we are quite the package deal these days. If they wanted you, they had to resign themselves to suffering with me."
"Since when you are so prone to self-doubt?"
"Since your parents invited me to spend Christmas with you all and there's, as you well know, quite a big secret we as of yet have not divulged to them, even though half your bloody dorm knows already. Makes a bloke fear for his life, just a little."
"Don't worry, Nik: you know I can protect you from anything."
Klaus' first impressions of the Other Side were...surreal. He was in the exact same place and position of which he'd died, and yet he hardly recognized his surroundings, awash in a disorienting haze of blue-white light like he was on the set for some low-budget sci-fi movie. It wasn't exactly comforting, looking down at his hand and seeing it in a pale, half-dead light. He knew he should have retained some sense of surprise, waking up in his own body when he distinctly remembered shifting right before he died, but he had far more pressing matters on his mind.
Like the man standing before him, arm braced against the mantle of the fireplace in a move that was so eerily similar it was like looking in a mirror, slightly warped and flecked with age yet still uncanny. But this was no true reflection of himself, of course. The man's hair was dark, face noticeably tense and expectant, even shadowed in profile as it was. Dressed in a light cotton shirt and dark trousers reminiscent of centuries past, he was neither ordinary nor extraordinary; he simply was. Like he'd always been her, in this exact place, waiting. Waiting for him.
He didn't look anything like Klaus, in the hybrid's opinion. If anything, looking at the man only exacerbated his own likeness to Mikael, something that had often plagued Klaus once he'd discovered his mother's infidelity. He shared no blood with Mikael, yet looked more like him than he did his real father; it was a hard pill to swallow, even now.
Ghostly flames leapt in the grate as the seconds trickled by, shedding little illumination but adding to the overall Gothic and untouched feel of the place, abandonment and hopelessness cohabitating despairingly close, mingling like an embrace of tragic and star-crossed, life-cut-too-short lovers.
So, this was death.
Klaus wasn't exactly impressed.
Hauling himself to his feet, the hybrid dusted off his clothes like he'd just taken a tumble down a grassy summer hill rather than imbibing a magical poison that had stopped his heart, hands clenched into sharp fists to hide their traitorous tremor as everything inside him began to scream that this was wrong, wrong, wrong, that he shouldn't be here, it wasn't his time yet...and stared at his father. Ansel, his mother had said his name was. In another life, he could have, would have, should have been Niklaus Anselson. He didn't know what to make of the thought, so he shoved it aside for later rumination like he did most things he couldn't figure out what to do with.
"Do you know why I'm here?" Klaus demanded of the looming figure, watching in numb fascination as the man nodded, turning around to meet his gaze at last, revealing a face he had never seen and yet felt familiar to him on some unknown yet intrinsic level, tugging at him with incessant hands of *kin, like how he knew that if he saw Henrik again by some miracle, if there was a place his soul existed as a child who had been able to grow up, he'd still recognize him in an instant.
"Yes, I do," were his father's first words to him. "You seek the whereabouts of the Merlock orchid. You need it to cure your love, Elena."
His gaze was steady, clear, so different from Mikael's, who'd hardly ever been able to look him in the eye, too embarrassed and ashamed by his gentle-hearted weakling of a child, his greatest disappointment, so unworthy of him or his name or his love that he had only ever had for Freya, that name that he both loathed and yearned to know of...
"Will you help me locate it?" Klaus hated asking for help like that, sounding so weak and crazed with desperation, so exposed and laid-bare, couldn't honestly remember the last time he'd asked for any sort of assistance or help except...
"You look a little bit out of your element there, Nik," Elena teased him, leaning in the doorway of the kitchen, head cocked and eyes glowing, her grin a gunshot to his chest -because he knew that even if he had a lifetime of moments like this with her, a lifetime of love and happiness, it would still send a jolt of surprise through him, each and every time, when he realized that look was for him- as she watched him try to make waffles for her.
"I'm a thousand year old hybrid, love; I think I know how to work a bloody waffle maker," he insisted, the effect of his words underscored by the machine's egregious bleeping.
She came up behind him, arms around his waist, murmured lovingly in his ear, "It's okay to ask for help, you know. I'm not gonna suddenly change my mind about you just cause you haven't yet learned how to use a waffle maker."
"Fine," he'd kissed her. "Elena, light out of my life, will you please help me with your ridiculously complicated waffle maker."
Another kiss, another grin. "It'd be my pleasure."
"Do you really think I'd turn you away in your hour of need?" Ansel inquired firmly, tone tipping dangerously close into the confines of hurt disbelief. "You, my son, my only child, the last living joy of my heart?"
"I don't know you, was never given the chance to, the chance to call you father. Esther may have extolled your numerous virtues...but let's just say her opinion no longer holds much weight," Klaus replied diplomatically, hands folding themselves leisurely in his pockets, concealing his emotions with them. He wished that he didn't have to play pretend, wished that he knew this man well enough to simply be honest and not fear treachery at every turn, but it was Elena's life at stake, and he would not and could not afford any risks, any unforeseen actions that might jeopardize her welfare. He would never forgive himself if she died solely because a part of him still longed for a (good) father.
"It's true, your mother is no longer the same woman I fell in love with all those years ago. Time and regret have warped her into something unrecognizable. But I believe there is still goodness in her, somewhere, however small. That one day, she could be redeemed."
Everything in Klaus seems to freeze at the admission, his mouth subconsciously hanging agape, a black hole he wished to command to swallow up those words and eradicate them from existence so he'd never have to hear their like ever again. "If you really think that, then you are disgustingly deluded!" the hybrid exclaimed, hope slowly dying as he stared at the man before him; if he was really so insane to still be in love with Esther, then he would be of no use to him. "She tried to murder her own children, her very flesh and blood like we were, are, nothing..."
Ansel held up a hand, the gesture so very much like Elijah -despite the fact they did share blood- that Klaus paused in his diatribe long enough for him to expand, "I didn't say it was right, Niklaus, I just said I still loved her and have hope for her. Something I'm sure your Elena could understand."
Pain tore through him like a white-hot poker, searing his insides with a bubbling, primordial rage at his "father's"audacity, his blindness. "Elena is nothing like you! She never would have abandoned a child of hers to a monster such as Mikael-"
"That was not my choice! Esther forbade me from seeing you, ever! I had to wait! All those years, I lived off of brief glimpses of you, sustained by the knowledge that one day, you would trigger your wolf, that you would need me, your father, the one that had loved you and would never stop, to guide you on your new path."
"Then where were you!?" Klaus couldn't help but roar like the wounded animal he often felt like he was, the words pouring out of that still-broken place inside of himself that would never go away. "Where were you when I needed you most? You could have saved me from Esther's magic; I could have kept my wolf, not been subjected to a hundred lifetimes of misery! Of being alone."
Ansel's eyes shimmer with regret, and the sight only serves to further irritate him, rubbing up against all the raw parts of him. Instead, Klaus simply takes a breath and shakes his head, dejected and tired and weary. "You know what? It doesn't matter. I don't care about your reasons, I only care about finding that damn flower. Can you do that, or do we need to have another argument to assuage your parental guilt?"
His father gave a painfully reluctant nod. "Of course. I know I have much to make up for, things I know I can never put right, but I want you to know that you have my support, Klaus, that you don't have to do this alone. It is a trait of Mikaelsons, I have learnt, to want love so desperately and yet simultaneously be so scared by it. You will do anything for each other, anything for family. Even your own mother...she went to great lengths to ensure she could get everything she desired."
"I don't understand." The hybrid shook his head, riddled with confusion at the riddle.
"You will."
Suddenly, the fire died in the grate, winking out like an exploded star. "After a thousand years, you learn a thing or two about how this place works," Ansel explained off of his son's half-curious, half-suspicious glance. "Your flair for the dramatic, you would appreciate it."
"It was...mildly impressive, yes" He'd try, was trying. Because he could hear Elena voice in his head, as if she were standing right beside him, chiding him in that gentle but forcefully impassioned way of hers with something like, 'Klaus, you know I'd give almost anything to have an opportunity like this, to talk to one of my parents one last time. And in a way, I'm lucky; I have so many good, loving, happy memories of them. Don't deprive yourself the same opportunity, even if you're both technically ghosts right now: it doesn't mean your time together has any less substance or importance.'
Who was he to not listen to such sage advice? (Even if it was only in his head)
Ansel nodded, a silent thanks for his effort, like he knew that this whole situation wasn't easy for Klaus because it wasn't for himself. "Thank you." And Klaus inexplicably wondered if his father had imagined them ever meeting here, like this, of he had conjured up multiple scenarios over the past thousand years about how he might finally meet the child he never got the chance to raise, but still the chance to love, even if it was from afar, and then from a separate plane of ghostly existence.
A web of quiet between them, suspended like an ornament on a Christmas tree, silken strands rubbing at Klaus' too-sensitive nerves. He wanted to fill that quiet, fill it with something meaningful, memorable, but all he could bring himself to say was, "Where should we start looking for this blasted flower?"
Thankfully, Ansel did not protest the abandonment of friendly conversation, instead simply turning in the direction of the front door as he explained, "There was once a grove, near the center of the woods. Hopefully it still remains there."
"Hopefully?" Klaus echoed as he followed after him, teeth grinding like a mortar and pestle in his jaw, jagged stumps of incredulity. "How reassuring."
"I know it's not much to go on, but we don't have much choice."
'We.' Klaus liked that, liked the fact that he hadn't said you, that he'd made them sound like a team, like he wasn't on his own. It was oddly comforting, and with the thought came the notion of familiarity, of family, of how he could so easily get attached and let Ansel fill the void that had been created since the moment of his very birth. But he couldn't. Because his time was short, and -hopefully- the rest of his life afterwards very long, and it would hurt all the more when he inevitably had to leave the man behind.
Gravel crunched under their boots in the driveway like chucked dice, noisy and chalky and far too loud. Over the decades, Klaus had grown so accustomed to the ambient noise of modern life, of the ever-flowing stream of traffic and chatter, made all the more noticeable with his supernatural hearing -even in the country no vampire truly ever had peace and quiet. But the Other Side was devoid of any such signs of civilization, despite the placement of familiar buildings and landmarks, how the trees still swayed the same ways, the inky depths of the forest still calling out to that primal part of him, of his wolf. He wondered if Ansel could feel it, too, but didn't know how to ask. So they continued on in silence, not uncomfortable or grating but...contemplative, respectful.
After several minutes, Ansel unexpectedly turned directions, leading him on a path that even Klaus, with all his explorations of these woods, had never been on before. Pushing aside a wayward branch, his father turned to him with a hesitant yet hopeful smile as he asked wonderingly, "What's she like?"
Pausing, Klaus narrowly avoided a confrontation with a leafy frond, mouth pausing at the out-of-the-blue question. He knew who he was asking about, of course -it was glaringly obvious- but that wasn't the problem. The problem was the fact that despite their shared genetics, he was still such an unknown element to Klaus, and he was not the most open of persons to even those who knew him well. Elijah was the one he always turned to in such matters, trusting his level-headed and well-choreographed approach to all things whilst simultaneously knowing the heart of a romantic lurked under every three piece suit. So, he decided to buy himself a little time, deflecting with a tactful, "What do you mean, what she's like? Don't you have the Mystic Falls Cable Channel on 24/7 around here?"
Ansel smiled indulgently, one eyebrow quirked in amusement as he conceded, "Yes, but I want to know her from your perspective. I want to know about what you, my son, saw in her, why you fell in love with her, after all this time."
"You mean after two other doppelgängers?" Klaus wondered, bitterness coating his throat like a layer of dust, momentarily choking out the instinctual happiness thoughts of Elena now brought him.
"That as well."
"I'm...not sure," the hybrid admitted slowly, words as methodical and cautious as his steps. "I've never thought about putting it into words. This whole 'falling in love' thing is still rather new to me."
"Try, for me. Indulge an old man's curiosity. Unless you'd rather talk about your many murderous exploits," Ansel suggested with a decided tilt of his head.
Klaus grinned harshly. "Touché."
The trees began to thin out, thin trunks giving way to older, thicker trees, signaling an entrance into an older part of the forest. Glancing up at the hazy light through the dense foliage, he found himself wondering to the sky, "Is this really how you want to pass the time? Some imitation of a father-son conversation, two beers on the back of a sun-scorched porch and listening to *John Denver and the chirping of cicadas?"
A hand fell on his shoulder, heavy like a brand, welcome like an act of kindness, longed for in a way that Klaus never let himself think of since he'd found out so long ago that he could have had a different life, that he had had another father who might have given him the love he had so desperately craves. "Is it really such a shock that I want to know you, Niklaus?" Ansel murmured, so much pain and regret lingering behind his eyes, as clear to him as a reflection in a lake, a perfect mirror of a thousand other moments, a hundred other faces that had directed such expressions at him, usually under entirely different circumstances. "That I want to know about the life you've led? Yes, I may have seen it, may have borne witness to your every atrocity, but I also know what you value. Family, love, loyalty. That some -if not all- of your happiest moments were the simplest, the purest. Summers in Europe with your brothers, riding through fields on horseback. Sitting with master painters and sculptors, so eager to learn and appreciate. Christmases with your boy, Marcellus, watching him open a present for the first time. And Elena. Sharing heartaches and looking up at the stars together and seeing a possible future mapped instead. That is the man who I know to be my son, who I am proud to share blood with. I would never turn away from your darkness, Klaus, but it is your light I most enjoy, my son, it is what I wish to see of you now."
And so Klaus inquired, aching and raw and dying for the possibility of healing like a man dying in the desert, "Where should I start?"
"Where every love story starts," was the answer he received. "At the beginning."
"Elena? Elena, can you hear me? It's Jeremy, your brother. I know you're in pain right now, I know you're sick, and I'm sorry, Lena, I'm so sorry I can't be with you right now. But I'm gonna talk to you, okay? I'm gonna stay on the line for as long as it takes, even if I rack up a crazy phone bill. 'Cause you're worth it, you're my big sister, and I love you so much. So, so much. You're my best friend and...God, I can't lose you. I can't lose the last piece of our family, of my heart. I won't survive without you, Elena..."
As soon as he started, Klaus found the words flowed far easier than he'd imagined, like he was talking to himself rather than a near-stranger he just happened to share DNA with. What with the bluish, bioluminescent glow over everything, it was hard to keep track of the time by the passing of the sun, but soon he found he settled on a rhythm, his footsteps matching the tempo of his words, each one more surprising and yet adoration-dripping than the last.
"The moment I first saw her, I was filled with such loathing and joy of equal measure that I could do nothing but stare at her. I was so used to thinking of doppelgängers in the past, who were of the past, yet to see that face in a modern context, to encounter that familiar spirit yet housed with a different, better heart...it almost made me doubt myself, if only for a second. She was an innocent, her fate decided by the scribes of destiny long before she ever drew her first breath, and here I was about to sign her death warrant for my own selfishness. Of course, that didn't stop me, but I was more careful than I'd originally intended to be. I found myself not wanting to hurt her more than I already was, even if only in a physical capacity. Killing her aunt, right in front of her, though, the last of her family...that was something Mikael would have done. Looking back, I hate myself for it, and no matter who much she loves me, I don't think Elena will ever forgive me entirely for it; there will always be some part of her that knows me as the killer of her last hopes of family, and I don't blame her."
"It's why this is all such a surprise, really. She was the princess in the tower, surrounded by a bevy of knights and warriors and even a dragon or two. But she climbed out, all by herself, and still she found me. Maybe it had something to do with the curse, with our blood, calling out to each other from across distance and time and the rationality of the universe. Or maybe you can only really trust someone who you know has hurt you before, rather than waiting for a blow from someone you trust. All I know is that Elena was in a dark place, one I unfortunately had a hand in putting her in, and she came to me, wanting nothing, asking for nothing but a barrier against the world and someone who would listen, just once. Such a simple request, well within my capabilities. It cost me nothing, could mean nothing -or so I tried to convince myself. And so I gave it to her. I gave it to her without much thought of consequence or subsequent events, how it could start us both down a road to something I think I had always been trying to avoid."
A sad, too-knowing sigh from his father. "And what was that?"
"Attachment. I lost Henrik. I lost my wolf. I lost the chance at knowing you. I lost my innocence and my kindness. Mikael killed my favourite horse, then my favourite joy centuries later. Rebekah betrayed me even though the fault was mine. I wiped Stefan's memories and let him live his life without knowing there was someone who understood him. I never saw Aurora again. Katerina took my brother and left behind someone who could hardly look me in the eye for years. When I cling to something, I choke the life out of it. I don't even mean to, but I'm just so scared of letting go, or being let go of. I'm possessive to a deathly fault, and even as I felt myself growing closer to Elena...I could not beat the thought of extinguishing that bright light once again, of snuffing out something so beautiful. And she is so, so beautiful. And kind. And courageous. She can be stubborn like you can't believe, but she feels everything with such an intensity that even as a vampire, I can only marvel at it, never hope of replicating it. But I try. There is darkness there, too, and loneliness. Anger. Hatred. Vengeance. She's like a well-crafted sword: perfectly balanced. The perfect blend of mercy and damnation. She is everything I never thought I could want, or want to need. But there is no other love I'd rather die for than her."
Just as the words fell from his lips, the hybrid felt an odd tingling in his chest, like there was a rope tied to himself and someone unseen hand was tugging at it. Instinctively, he knew it was the calling of home, that the spell must be wearing off and that he would soon be forced to return, with or without the information he needed. Already he could feel spasms of pain dancing through his limbs, reminding him of the agony he would no doubt face when he awoke. He hadn't even realized he'd stumbled until he felt strong arms wind around his shoulders, supporting him against the side of a tree.
"We have to hurry," Klaus gasped out through a clenched jaw, eyes swimming slightly as they gazed up at the concerned face of his father, blurred like a waterlogged photograph.
Ansel nodded solemnly, absently smoothing a stray lock of hair from his forehead. It was such a little gesture, and yet it made him feel like a child again, that there was someone there for him, watching over him. "I know, son. I know."
After a few moments, Klaus regained some of his strength, although Ansel's arm remained across his shoulders, steering him through the littered debris of the forest floor. But with each step, he felt that strength draining away, the tugging inside himself becoming more persistent and agitated. He tried to tamp it down, tried to ignore it like he'd ignored so many other things in his life -mainly good things and happy memories that became too painful to recall- but his father remained resolute, urging him on with a soft, "Keep your eyes open, Klaus, we're almost there. You just need to hang on a little longer, son." And so he tried, legs feeling like they were cloistered in cement, lungs aching like he was underwater, head spinning like that time he'd drunk half a tavern with Kol and...and then he noticed that dry, crumpled leaves had given way to soft, uninterrupted earth, dotted with violet-pink flowers like the first blushes of sunset, like hope given colour and texture and life.
The Merlock orchids. He'd found them. He hadn't let her down.
Gingerly, he reached out to stroke on of the velvety petals, silently counting the flowers; more than enough for a cure, then extras to keep in case Esther tried something like this again -which he doubted, she was too inventive for that, wouldn't reuse something if she knew the danger of her threat could be diminished by a ready-to-hand cure- or someone else did. But his jubilation was short-lived, because now that he'd reached the end of his quest, he had no reason to stay, except one, except his father standing before him, the man who had surprised him and comforted him and made him ache for everything he had never had, everything they had both been denied and deprived of. Klaus may have lost his father, but Ansel had lost his son, and that was a pain that, even through all his many centuries, despite loving Marcellus as his own (who at least he had been given the chance to raise) he could not imagine.
Klaus was not ashamed of the tears that fell, blurring the world around him, dripping onto the petals beside him like the first drops of rain, the first stirrings of a sorrowful sky.
"Have I really made the almighty Klaus Mikaelson cry?" Ansel asked wonderingly, a hint of teasing embroidered into the melancholia of his voice.
A watery chuckle escaped him, swallowed up by the silent forest. "Wonders never do seem to cease around here," Klaus acknowledged with a smile that was more of a grimace. He'd never been particularly good at goodbyes, at finding the right words to say. When someone left him, it was either out of boredom or of fear, but the situation at hand involved neither, only the feeling that Klaus had stumbled across something infinitely precious and that he longed to take back with him. And maybe he could, one day. He'd said it himself; wonders never ceased in Mystic Falls. Was conjuring the dead really such a stretch? But even if it could be achieved, what right did Klaus have to rob his father at his chance of peace, of moving on from whatever limbo the Other Side existed as and being, finally, at rest? Didn't his father deserve that after the death Mikael had dealt him and the tears spent watching and waiting and grieving?
Yes, yes he did. So, knowing that this would most likely be their last moments together, Klaus did not hold back the truth he felt in his heart, in the very marrow of his bones, "I'm glad I got to know you, even if it was only for an hour or two."
"And I'm glad I got to see the goodness I always knew was inside of you for myself," Ansel replied, hands cupping both sides of his face as he looked into Klaus' anguish-blue eyes. "And I want you to know that, despite everything you've done, the persona of the evil hybrid you have created, I am proud of you. Proud that you did this, that you opened up your heart and finally let the light into your life. Please don't ever lose it, my son. Please don't ever forget that you were born out of that same kind of love, that you're capable of it, too, every day. That I will love you every day, even though you can't see me, I will never leave you."
"And I will never forget you," Klaus insisted, sealing his vow with a gentle squeeze of his father's wrist.
"Do you remember the way?"
The blond nodded.
"Good." Ansel stepped back, surveying him like he wanted to catalog every detail of him, his son, to memory, and Klaus couldn't help but wonder how many times his father had done so before, how many partings they had had that Klaus was unaware of, too young or too oblivious to remember.
Distantly, the hybrid could make out voices, seeming to echo from the trees himself, chanting his name, calling him back, and as much as he wanted to tell them to go to hell, as much as he wanted to stay with his father...Elena needed him, needed him back. And this was not his place, nor his time to die. There was still a world out there, waiting for the two of them to fill it.
"Son?" Klaus looked up, frowning at the smile on his father's face. But he soon found out when Ansel confessed, "There's just one more thing I need to tell you: according to the spirits, because of your werewolf genealogy...the Original hybrid can still have children," before the world faded to black around him, and took Klaus with it.
The world came back to him in a dizzying rush, disallowing him even a moment's reprieve as Klaus felt his eyes open, afternoon light stinging his eyes. Growling, Klaus tried to get to his feet, only to realize he was curled up at the foot of a bed and, most notably, still in his wolf form. Almost immediately, he picked up the sound of Elena's heartbeat, even fainter than it had been several hours previous; it wasn't non-existent, though, they still had time. Klaus reached out a paw to her, gently nuzzling at her face in lieu of a kiss. It was the only time he allowed himself with her before shifting back into his normal form, putting on clothes at rapid speed before swinging open his bedroom door...and finding everyone huddled in various positions on the floor, looking up at him with expectant faces like children hoping from presents with Santa. Luckily, Klaus was in a position to deliver.
"I've got it. I know where the flowers are."
Kol and Bonnie immediately rose to their feet, the former carefully extracting a passed-out Caroline from across his chest. It seemed the near-death of a close friend really did make people reconsider their own lives, made them not want to waste time, even if they were vampires and had an abundance of it. Klaus just hoped they could alternate holidays on who had to deal with his baby brother's antics.
Klaus gave them the directions he'd memorized, and soon the two were off, Bonnie grumbling about the queasiness of vamp-speed but diligently agreeing that time was of the essence. With nothing else to do but wait, the hybrid left his family and acquired guests and headed into his studio, locking the door behind him. The smells of paint and wax and charcoal and turpentine assailed his senses, enveloping in a faux sense of comfort and security. He knew he would only truly feel those things when Elena awoke, but this would just have to do for the time being. Walking his long fingers over the various bristles of various brushes, he let his mind wander over the events of the day -not even a day, really, the clock said it was barely after three forty- and how different he felt. He hadn't realized how much he'd needed to see his father, how much he'd needed to hear his reassurances. He'd finally found answers to some of the questions that had plagued him ever since he'd first turned, when Elijah had found him in the woods and they'd come to the painful but inevitable conclusion that they did not share the same father.
It had changed some things, but in his heart, Klaus knew he was a Mikaelson and would be one always, and forever. That Mikael had been the one to shape him into who he was, but only Klaus himself could decide who he would be. He knew he would never be Ansel, would never exude such kindness and respect and sincerity to all he met, but he could let some of the traits Mikael had instilled in him go, could learn to be better, both for himself and for Elena. Life was a precious thing, fragile and delicate, and it made no sense to squander it simply because he could, because he wanted to. He could not undo every bad thing he had ever done...but maybe there was a balance to be found, a way to be something new. Elena deserved no less. And if what Ansel had said really was true, if he could one day know the joys of fatherhood...
A well-timed knock shattered Klaus' ruminations, stalling his derailing train of thought. In a blink, Klaus was opening the door on the weary face of Elijah, rumpled and stressed but with a faint glimmer of relief lighting up his eyes. "Kol and Bonnie successfully found the orchids and removed the cloaking spell," Elijah began without preamble, knowing that anything resembling exposition would not currently be appreciated. "The antidote will be ready within the hour."
"Thank you," Klaus murmured, sagging against the doorway as he felt his own sense of relief course through him. "Soon everything will be set to rights and we can forget this horrible past few days."
"Agreed."
Crossing the room without invitation, Elijah made himself at home in one of the plush armchairs situated by the window to make better use of the daylight. Fingers steepled under his chin, his brother was quiet for several moments, mulling over his thoughts with a contemplative tilt to his head, gaze trained on the high-polished shine of his shoes.
"I know that recent events must have...troubled you, especially after what occurred with Mikael not too long ago, old wounds that might have reopened. While I know that your primary concern at this moment is of course Elena, I only wished to remind you that you cannot take care of her if you are not taking care of yourself, if there are things on your mind you need to work through. I know it is different with me than it is with her, I know you feel like you have to live up to some sense of expectation I have put on you, intentionally or otherwise, but I am still, and always will be, your brother, and I will never let you suffer when it is within my power to remedy that anguish." Not again, he did not need to say, brow pinched with fingers of sorrow and regret.
"This is when we break out the ice cream and have a good ole heart to heart?" Klaus snarked, automatically masking and undermining the heartfelt gesture as he tried to compose himself. He couldn't remember the last time he and Elijah had just been...brothers, rather than just vague allies or worse, opposing forces, holding up lists of indiscretions and pointing accusing fingers. The hybrid may have forgiven him for sticking a hand in his chest the night of the sacrifice, and Elijah may have been mollified by the undaggering of their siblings, but in the face of all they'd done, all they'd done to each other, he had neither expected, sought out or initiated any deeper sense of reconciliation.
Maybe Elijah was doing this now because he believed that Klaus never would, that it would always fall to him to extend the olive branch any time their bond snapped. Maybe he didn't think Klaus was capable of admitting when he was wrong, that his pride and ego outweighed his love for him. Admittedly, it had, many times in the past. But after recent events, after they all came so close to dying at their mother's hands...none of those seemed excusable, justifiable, important. After seeing the woman he loved almost die in his arms twice in one day, he could not beat the thought of any of his family not knowing that they came first, always and forever.
Elijah smiled, brief and fleeting, evidently not surprised by the maneuver. "I believe Rebekah has some raspberry ripple in the fridge if you were so inclined, but in all seriousness...is there anything you'd like to talk to me about?"
He did. He did and he didn't. But if Klaus didn't say it aloud to someone, he thought he might just go crazy -permanently, of the non Hunter's Curse variety. So he took a seat opposite his brother, bracing his hands on his thighs, feeling the coarse fibers of his jeans under his fingertips as he confessed, "Right before I...came back to myself, my father, Ansel, said something to me that I haven't been able to stop thinking about."
"Something about Esther?" the Original guessed cautiously.
Klaus shook his head, loosing a long breath that curled all the way up to the ceiling. "No. About me. According to the spirits of the Other Side -who are suddenly experts in such matters- because of my status as both vampire and werewolf...he claimed that I could father children if I so desired, that I'm not longer sterile like the rest of the vampire species because of my lycanthropy."
"I see."
Elijah leaned back in the couch cushions, looking like he was dying for a drink. "So the magic of your wolf nature counteracts the biological effects of vampirism. Of course, any such child would not only be part vampire and werewolf, but witch as well. Not just from you-"
"But Elena as well. With her Traveler heritage."
Brows scrunched in skepticism. "Does she even know of that?"
"I have no idea," Klaus replied truthfully, slinging his legs over the arm of the antique armchair, leather studs digging absently into the backs of his knees. "I don't know what Katerina did or didn't tell her during her oh so merry sojourn here; it was only by accident that we ourselves found out when one of the coven members tracked us down and tried to kill us."
"You have to admit, there would be a certain irony of you were the one to carry on the doppelgänger line," Elijah mused dryly, lips quirking in appreciation of the universe's twisted sense of humour, the idea of a Petrova doppelgänger, somewhere down the line, with Elena's face and his last name.
"Which is not lost on me whatsoever. But it wouldn't be about that, it isn't about that. We've not even been on a date, 'Lijah! How the bloody hell am I supposed to bring this up in casual conversation? Loving me is one thing, but to have a child together..." Klaus sighed, running an agitated hand through his hair, mind swirling like a tornado, unable to latch onto anything for long before tossing it away. The thought of little girls with his blue eyes and her button nose, or boys with his blond hair and her brown eyes, and then he couldn't help but think of Henrik, of Marcel, of the countless children he had left parentless, forced them to struggle alone in the world...
Like one might approach a tiger, Elijah delicately broached, "Are you saying that because you don't want to...?"
"Because she might not want to." Deciding to let the subject drop, Klaus rose to his feet, shaking stray paint flakes off his shirt. He really needed to clean this place more. "Regardless, all that matters right now is that she gets better."
"Niklaus, you can't dare dream of keeping this from her," his brother warned, blurring to stand before him with a pensive and disapproving expression. Ah, much more familiar.
"Of course not. I'll just wait a decade or so and bring it up then," he dismissed mock-cheerfully, heading in the direction of the door.
"Brother..." Gods, he could feel his brother massaging his temples in frustration from here.
Exasperated, Klaus stopped but didn't turn around, choosing to address the marble statue of a griffin in the corner instead. "I want her to be happy, Elijah, I want her to do what makes her happy. I want her to graduate and pursue her interests and go to college or travel the world or live in a fairy cottage and raise border collies; whatever it is, I want it for her. I'm not taking anything else away from her."
"Incidentally, that's what you'll be doing if you keep this to yourself. You know that she'd make an amazing mother, far better than ours ever could have been."
"I know that," the hybrid interjected immediately. "No child of hers would ever doubt that it was loved, not for a single second."
"And neither would yours," Elijah argued, tone soft like he hadn't heard it since the seventeen hundreds, since he'd knelt in the burning grass of a burning village and tried to put a horse back together that was long since dead. "You are not Father, Niklaus. While there may have been times where you were in danger of becoming him...you have not. You raised Marcellus with as much love as any biological parent would have-"
"But that didn't stop him from dying!" Tears raced from his eyes, leaping down his cheeks with the force of a waterfall. Today had been too damn long and too damn hard to keep them in any longer. "And as much as I loved him and always, always will, the thought of losing another child, to lose one with Elena...I couldn't bear it, Elijah. I already love her so much..."
"I know." An arm came around his shoulders, pressing his nose into Elijah's collarbone. Klaus allowed himself to be held, knowing that there was no shame or weakness in admitting he needed him right now. "Talk to her about it. There is, after all, no rush." He pulled away, smile turning from melancholy to mischievous. Sometimes it was easy to forget who taught their youngest brothers all the best tricks. "But please bear in mind that the contest for 'Best Uncle' begins early, and there is no chance in either heaven or hell that I'd let Kol take that mantle."
"You're not...upset? Angry? Secretly jealous?" Klaus wondered with shock. "You've always been the most caring of the two of us, and it was Bekah that has always wanted a family...so why me? Why am I the only one of us to be gifted with this opportunity?"
"I don't know, Niklaus. All I know is...I think you finally deserve it."
The cure was finally done. Everyone was downstairs, although Klaus suspected that if he opened the door, he'd find both Bonnie and Alaric lurking, sitting in an anxious silence while Caroline kept the peace in the living room.
Klaus had the sudden and inextricable feeling of being on a tightrope, of an acrobat with a thousand eyes upon them, each one waiting for them to either perform miracles or plummet gruesomely to their death.
Gingerly, he began to apply the paste to the side of her neck, careful to keep it out of her hair. Once the handkerchief was empty, he took up residence at the head of the bed, situating her head in his lap so he could monitor her for any changes, and also because he just wanted to hold her.
After two hours, when the swelling went down, her fever broke, and yet she did not wake, he called for Elijah and Bonnie. Five minutes later, the two came to the same conclusion: "You need to go into her mind?"
"Why?" Klaus immediately questioned them both. "This illness was physical, not mental."
"Yes, but given how long she was unconscious for, how much pain she was in..." Bonnie trailed off, Elijah dutifully claiming her train of thought. "It's possible, in the effort of protecting herself from her ordeal, Elena may have retreated into her own subconscious for escape. So while she may be physically fine and well...her mind doesn't want to process it. Perhaps this is the final straw for her."
"No. I refuse to believe that. I refuse to believe that Elena would ever give up like that."
Bonnie crossed her arms over her chest, green eyes sad and weary. "Klaus, you haven't lived her life. She's had a thousand years worth of drama and heartache crushed into a single year. Who wouldn't want to escape that?"
"She would never leave Jeremy," Klaus insisted with a pained growl, knowing it was a cheap shot but currently not giving a damn.
"I know, but right now she's not in her right mind."
"Then I guess I'll just have to pull her out of it," he exclaimed fiercely and before a word of protest could be uttered, before he could be told of ever danger, every risk that he already knew -but didn't care about, because it was Elena, and her pain called out to him like a song he had been listening to all these years, the hybrid was closing his eyes and..
and...
Klaus is standing in four feet of snow, fingers frozen by frigid torrents of blustery air battering him from all directions, a merciless siege of soul-sucking cold. The only source of warmth to be found is the sight before him...is of Elena, lashes swept up in flurries of snowflakes, tangling in a monochromatic embrace with her mascara as she turns to him with a teasing smile, absentmindedly brushing down his shoulders like she's done it a million times before, looking so very, very alive that it almost sends him to his knees right then and there in the snowbank, in the indentions of steps he did not remember taking and knows he never has.
Trees hug the landscape in every direction, capped in hats of freezing snow and the sky is a painting of spotlessness, not a cloud to be seen. He has no idea where he is, or where he's supposed to be, all he knows is that Elena is right beside him, alive and well, looking at him with such love it's almost unreal.
Because it's not real; she's looking at him like she's loved him for years, like this is a song and dance she knows well and she's puzzled as to why he's not following along with her foot work.
Klaus flexes frozen fingers in leather gloves and wonders why he feels so cold, why he can't hear Elena's heartbeat or the chittering of forest animals. Just where has she gone, in the great labyrinth of her mind? What manner of castle has she retreated to in order to wait out this particular invasion?
"Come on, Nik, lose the whole 'deer in headlights look.' You know that we Gilberts can smell weakness a mile away." When he fails to respond to her joke she leans in closer, smelling like pine trees and spice and home, but not. Because she doesn't know what he thinks of when he inhales her familiar scent, she doesn't know what he sees when he looks at her -the whole world laid before him, every impossibility made possible by the touch of her hand and the depth of her smile. "Everything's going to be fine, okay? I promise. Christmas is the most magical time of the year, very well known for its miracles. Making it through the night without argument isn't, therefore, outside the realm of possibility."
He just shakes his head at her, cold wind whipping the tips of his ears. He'd forgotten what it was like to be cold, to feel this particular kind of cold, gods, all the winters he was sent out to collect firewood in the snow as punishment by Mikael, breath crystalizing in his lungs as he trudged through trees in Elijah's old boots...
"Elena, what...?"
"Here goes nothing," she says breezily, opening the door and letting out an influx of light and colour and sound he feels like a blow across the face. Christmas carols crooning from the kitchen, laughter from the living room, fairy lights and festive garlands adorning every possible surface, a fire crackling merrily like none of these people have ever been burned by flames both seen and unseen, evils of every fire and flavour, most of them his doing. "Hi, everyone, it's the return of the prodigal daughter and her incredibly charming boyfriend!" Elena calls out happily, dragging him by the hand across the threshold without invitation, and of course he slips past the barrier like a knife in butter even though he's never actually stepped foot in the real Gilbert Lake House -he's catching up now, catching on, it's the only possible place she'd go, her house is full of too many bad memories for even her subconscious to be able to re-dress that stage into something palatable- because he's in her head and he can't figure out why, why she won't come out even though she'd been given the antidote, why her mind has brought them to this...until he does.
Until two figures approach them, immediately wrapping Elena up in a tight and loving embrace like the arms of a sweater, tutting over how cold she is like a pair of worried parents, keeping her cozy and safe and warm.
Because that's what they're supposed to do. Because they are her parents. Or, what Elena has imagined them to look like if they'd lived, if their car had never gone off Wickery Bridge. Under the threat of poison, hovering at the brink of death, she'd retreated into the ultimate fantasy, the conjured safety of love and family and...him. He's still here, right there beside her, and it warms him to no end, to know that she believes he belongs at her side as much as he does, even in the midst of her unconscious mind, that he feels like such a permanent and vital piece of her life that he stands pride of place alongside her family. Miranda Gilbert stands tall and proud, brown hair lightly dusted with grey like a layer of powdered sugar, smile open and inviting. Grayson stands at her shoulder, his arm around her waist and a cup of hot cocoa in his other hand, eyes twinkling cheerily behind his glasses like the ornaments on the tree he can see behind him.
Oh, Elena.
"I'm so glad you guys could make it in time, the roads are just awful. Poor Jenna and Ric almost got turned around."
Elena squeezes his hand, beaming up at him with a wide smile. "Lucky for me Nik is a very good driver. Is Jeremy here yet?"
"In the kitchen helping Jenna 'test' the cranberry stuffing," her father winks conspiratorially and it's all just so very, very strange, so domestic and picturesque, like something out of a Hallmark movie, a Christmas card with stitched stockings and gold filigree and a pre-selected message with hardly any space to write your own. "Hopefully there'll still be enough for tomorrow. Are those for us?"
Suddenly Klaus notices she's got a stack of presents bundled under one arm, sporting name tags in both of their handwriting because apparently they're one of 'those couples' in her mind, the kind that drive everyone crazy by doing everything together and be so very nauseatingly obvious in their adoration and love for the other. It's the thing he finds easiest to stomach in all of this. Elena rolls her eyes playfully. "No, me and Nik just found a bunch of empty boxes and wrapped them just for fun like normal people do."
"Well, they are very well wrapped," her mother plays along with the joke, taking the presents from her daughter like the good hostess she was meant to be, that everyone said she was, that Carol Lockwood could never quite live up to, or so the housewives said.
"When I see 'we'...I mean that my boyfriend has exceptional artistic ability and I'm just really good at tying bows; it was a team effort, but Klaus deserves most of the credit. Especially for how much tape I got everywhere. We'll probably still be finding it in the couch this time next year."
"All the best relationships are, honey. Come on, you kids get warmed up and I'll put these under the tree. Dinner should be ready soon, if I can ever get into the kitchen again."
"Thanks, mom," Elena replies, and there's something in her eyes, a brief flicker, a sudden weight to her words and for a minute Klaus begins to hope, but then it's gone just as swiftly as it appeared, taking his chances with it as he follows her into the kitchen for another round of enthusiastic greetings. Seeing Jenna Sommers alive and well is by no means a pleasant experience, if only because he knows this will be the only happy memory of her he will ever have, that there will be no more Christmases like this for her, all because of him. And then he looks at Alaric, and realizes this is the first time he's ever seen the man really smile, his face the mirror opposite to how he last saw it half an hour ago, and his heart breaks for Elena, a china vase smashed with a ball pein hammer, shattering shards flying in all directions, tangling in the strings of fairy lights, visible only to him.
She looks so happy, asking her brother how he's doing at art school, teasing Jenna about where all the mulled wine's gone and stealing a cookie right out of Ric's unsuspecting hands. How can he pull her out of this? What right does he have to dispel this illusion when he knows this is all she's ever wanted, ever since the night her parents died? Because he's thought about it, too, had his own version of dreams like this where his brother Henrik was still alive, that he'd never been cursed, that Mikael had never laid a hand on him and they could have been a real family. Scenarios he's played out countless times like well-worn records, so much so that he can still hear that conjured laughter in his heard, the chirping of birds and the splash of the Falls as he chases his brother through woods that are not dark and never will be, never be stained red with blood. He's dreamed as many alternate lives as he's lived, and he knows their pull all too well, and for all the strength he knows Elena to possess...he doesn't know if it will be enough this time.
He does not know if she has the strength to fight herself.
Jeremy comes towards him, clapping him brotherly on the shoulder. "Hey, man, I know Elena told me to keep it on the down low and everything...but congratulations. I'm so happy for the two of you. I feel like everything is finally how it's supposed to be, you know? My sister's always at her best with you by her side, supporting her and...well, I can't imagine having anyone else as my brother in law. I'm just thankful it's not Damon."
He agrees, of course he agrees, but all of this is just so wrong, Klaus has no idea if Jeremy even knows about their relationship back home, can never imagine him saying such things even if he did. But Elena can. Elena wants them to get along. Elena wants them to be one big, happy family that has dinner and snowball fights and stays up late by the fire telling stories, she wants the ring and the wedding and the house and the kids and he wants to give it all to her, whatever she wants...but he wants it to be them. He wishes he could give her her parents back, her aunt back, all these things she's lost and doesn't know how to find or even that's she's lost them in the chaos of the last year...but he can't. No one can.
So as Jeremy turns around to tell her all about the new teaching assistant job at her Gram's university, he decides to wait. To bide his time. To bite his tongue. To sit through dinner and smiles and conversation, to fake it until he makes it, makes it to the right moment to tell her. It's not after he catches her stealing bites of his pumpkin pie. It's not when her mother finally notices the ring on her finger and her eyes go very, very wide. It's not when Elena shoots him a sheepish '*Well, I guess the cat's out of the bag now, might as well tell them' grin before telling a tale of moonlight and candles and rose petals and a dorm room almost burned to the ground that he does not know. It's not when her father screeches his chair back across the hardwood floor and gives a rousing toast, welcoming him to the family -that he definitely doesn't tear up at because it's not real, for God's sake. It's not when he helps her load the dishwasher, not even when she kisses him as she drags him into her childhood room and shuts the door. It's when he finds her at two in the morning, outside on the porch in a thin T-shirt with no socks or jacket and he knows she can't, won't get hypothermia, but he still darts into the living room anyway, still takes the crocheted blanket off the back of the couch and drapes it around her before helping her into a pair of slippers, pulling her firmly against his chest like he can keep every bad thing away.
"I had a dream," she says into his bare chest. "I had a dream where I died. There was fire, and trees. You were there." She looks up at him, eyes scared like a cornered doe that sees the crossbow bolt and knows it is destined for their heart. "You...you had these fangs, and your eyes...why would I dream something like that? Why would I ever possibly think you'd do anything to hurt me?"
She's breaking his heart. She's breaking his heart because he has, he's hurt her so many times in so many ways, as many ways as he now loves her and...
"Klaus? Why aren't you saying anything? Why are you so quiet?"
He's not. His thoughts are drowning in his ears, a cascading flood that he can't see past. He can't see any way through this but plowing right down the middle. "Elena, love, that was no dream. That was a memory." Better to rip off the band-aid and blah blah blah.
Elena shakes her head, taking a step back from him. "No. That's not right. I think I'd remember something like that."
"But it is right, Elena! It's this that's wrong! None of this is real!"
She gasps, floored by his raised voice. She's never had cause to see a wolf before, let alone the biggest and baddest of them all.
He takes her by the shoulders, careful, only doing so to make sure she can't hide from his gaze or the truth of his words. "This is not real, Elena. Your parents are dead, they died in an accident on Wickery Bridge in May 2008, when you were sixteen. A vampire saved your life, a vampire you fell in love with. You found out that John Gilbert is actually your father, that your mother was Isobel Flemming, that she was Alaric's wife and she'd been willingly turned into a vampire. She was a teenager when she had you so she gave you up, to Miranda and Grayson, where they loved and raised you as their own. Bonnie is a witch and Caroline is a vampire and so are Stefan and Damon. Elena, you're a Petrova doppelgänger, the last human one, and I'm the world's first hybrid, vampire and werewolf, and you're remembering that I killed you to break my curse, that I killed Jenna, that John gave his life to save you-"
"Stop, just stop!" Her breath comes in ragged, panicked pants, she's close to hyperventilating, Nik, please, what you're saying...it's not true! It's crazy! My parents are Miranda and Grayson Gilbert, they're alive, they're right inside and Jenna's with Ric and he was never married before her and-and vampires and witches and werewolves aren't real! They're not! They're fictitious constructs to-" She runs a hand through her hair, the blanket slipping down her shoulders. Finally, her brown eyes meet his, and in a coaxing, sympathetic tone that feels so false coming from her it makes him ache -its the voice you tell someone in a movie that what they're seeing isn't real, but it's okay, you'll make sure they'll get the proper help they need, don't worry, it's the voice of surprise-twist killer who was masquerading as the best friend all along as they unravel the fabric of your whole world piece by piece- "I know you've had a hard year with your parents passing, that you're still coming to terms with what they did to you, but believing in delusions isn't healthy, Nik!"
Now she's crying, now she's shouting at him, gripping at him and shaking him like she thinks she can keep the shards of his sanity together through kinetic force alone, tears in her eyes and her voice freezing like mercury drops of ice. "You have your brothers and your sisters to look after, who need you! I need you, I need you to stop this, honey, please just stop..."
He grasps her wrists, holds her like he did yesterday morning -Gods, had that really only been a day ago?- as he cups her chin, barefoot in jeans and bare in transparent honesty, as he murmurs with utmost conviction, "Sweetheart, I love you. I love you more than anything in this world or any other. Which is why I'm doing this, why I'm saying this, the truth. I'm a vampire, Elena, the original hybrid, I am what I am because you helped make me and then remade me into something better. These things are real, Elena, and in the real world, we deal with them every day. It's scary, and tragic and so very, very bloody and I'm so sorry for everything that I've ever done that has led you to it...but I can't regret it. I can't regret knowing you, or loving you, the real you. Because this...this is not who you are. This is what you could have been, but we will just never know. But I like who you are, I love who you are, that with every hardship thrown your way that you have always, always got back up, that they forged you into the hero that you are. That after your parent's car went off Wickery Bridge that night-"
"No, no, my father swerved! He swerved and we stopped and we didn't go over! We didn't, we didn't, we didn't-!" Every word a pound on his chest, every tear a scythe to his very soul as she runs away from him, away from his words, out into the snow that she thinks will save her. But he pushes through. He pushes through because if this was Elena in his place right now, she'd find the right way, the right words, every time he'd push her away she'd come right back because she can't leave well enough alone, can't leave him alone just like he can't leave her, can't live without her now.
"You tried so hard to keep everything together. That you're still trying. You're still so loving and caring and compassionate, you're still giving monsters like me a chance even if we don't believe we deserve it because all that matters is that you do. Elena, I know it's nice here, it's quiet and peaceful and no one we love is dead, and while I would love to someday soon give you a ring like the one you're wearing right now...this love, this lie, it's not us, Elena. It's not you or me. We are not these people. We are not these idyllic versions of ourselves. We're messy and broken and complicated and amoral and selfish and sacrificing and self-sacrificing and as wrong as you may think that is, it is what brought us together. A house such as ours could only be built on a rocky foundation, my love. A love like ours can only bloom out of a soil drenched in storms and hellfire and tears. And it can only survive if you remember, if you let it all in. Let it in, Elena, and let me catch you. Let me catch you before you fall. Let me help you save yourself. Let me bring you back to where you belong, to the people that love you. Elena, you have so much love, so much love still left. And it will never, ever replace what you had for your parents, for Jenna. But they wouldn't want this for you, my love, they wouldn't want you to hide. Don't hide from the light, Elena. I did. I hid for so long that I didn't even recognize it when I first saw it, when I first saw you. But I do. I see it now, Elena. And you have to see it, too. You do not belong in darkness, Elena. You do not belong in a half life of shadowed ghosts. Elena, my forever love, please come back to me."
He can see it in her eyes, the moment it comes back, feel the way she shudders and suffers, the way her whole body seems to morph along with it, curling up and under all this weight she carries. Suddenly, she's Elena, she's Cinderella turning back into the downtrodden servant. She's the orphan who feels like she will never get a happily ever after, never live happily ever again. "I don't, I don't, I don't want to! I want to stay! Niklaus, please, don't make me go back! I won't go back! I won't! I won't!"
She falls to her knees, arms wrapping around herself as she screams, and screams, and keeps screaming, so hard it feels like it'll shatter the whole world apart. Maybe that's the point. He kneels with her in the snow, arms going around her shoulders, his forehead pressing against hers.
She doesn't stop screaming.
Lights go on in the house.
But then there is no house.
In the blink of an eye, everything moves backwards, snow rising up from the ground to return back to its home in the sky. The cars parked in the driveway disappear, popping out of existence like soap bubbles. The trees die, shriveling away, and then the ground is the next thing to go. The last is the sky, the stars winking out until they are floating in perpetual black, still clinging to each other. This is the bottom of the abyss, the void of her grief. He thinks it's the loneliness place he's ever seen. He thinks -he knows- he has one just like it.
Elena has stopped screaming. She's crying, sobbing instead, clutching at him so hard her nails break his skin, the cuts already healing even as she makes them. He doesn't care. Let her spill his blood, he's already spilled so much of hers.
"Elena." He says it, over and over again. Elena, I love you. Elena, I'm not going anywhere. Elena, you're my everything. Elena, I'll help you through this. Elena, you don't have to be scared. Elena, I'll stay with you until the world burns down around us, and even then, I'll still be holding you. Always.
"Klaus."
Her eyes are dry. Suddenly, she's back in the clothes he last saw her in, the ones she's been in all day since he found her this morning.
She presses her lips to his, long and slow like she's knitting her soul back together with every stroke of his tongue against hers. She cups his face, looks deep into his eyes, and says, "Thank you," before everything else goes away and...
Klaus jolted upright with a gasp, so forcefully he almost broke his own neck. Instinctively, he reached out for Elena, heart hammering at a wild gallop in his chest. And there were no words ever written or to ever be written that could describe the pure joy he felt at seeing her lashes blink open, to see her gaze latch onto his, full of a million grateful pleas. He did not need a single one of them. He only needed, now and forever, her.
"Hi."
He smiled. "Hello."
"I love you."
"I love you, too."
What else was there to say?
Once being deemed medically and magically healthy, Elena kicked everyone else out of the house and called her brother. Klaus sat with her the whole time, hand never straying from hers, blue eyes filled with such wonder she almost felt the urge to look over her shoulder, to see who he was really looking at. But it was her. Every time, it was always her. She told him everything, everything she saw, everything she felt, how real it all was, how much she missed him, and about everything Klaus had done for her, now and in the last few weeks. How, after all this time, she was finally happy, but would be happier still if she could share it all with her little brother. He made a promise to be on the next flight out of Denver. Klaus immediately offered the use of his private jet, since apparently it was the least he could do after almost getting him killed. Jeremy accepted.
Rebekah made her a cup of tea. Kol offered her a piece of toast. Elijah set aside a first edition copy of Emma for her to read when she was feeling up to it. She put her arms around all four of them and finally allowed herself to cry. Not for her dead, but for herself, for everything that she'd been through, everything she'd tried so hard to keep hidden. She cried for herself and she cried for them, children still after years and claws and layers of losses. She cried for daughters and sons, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers and aunts. Those that they had loved too much and those that had not loved them enough, for family by blood and by blood that had found them, forged them, fitted them into a family. She kissed the love of her life with salt on both their lips and felt like she was, finally, out of the car, that she could finally breathe. That she could finally say goodbye, that her place and her peace was among the living, and not the dead.
Elena Gilbert was no longer the sad little girl who lost her parents. She was the hero of her own story, who had faced the hardest parts of herself and come out the other side. She was unexpected, and new, a tale still in the process of telling, not set in stone and no longer carved from it or building walls of it around her heart.
She was the woman who never wanted to let go of Niklaus Mikaelson's hand.
And so she never did.
Elena gave herself five days. Five days of settling into a new normal, of packing all her stuff into boxes and bags and moving it into the mansion for good, five days with school and the joyous return of her brother, five nights falling asleep in Klaus' arms what was now their bed, five mornings of arguing over the Lucky Charms with Kol and sharing exasperated smiles with Elijah and planning lunches with Rebekah before she finally braved the Salvatore Boarding House, the first place on her list. It was not the last.
She found them in the living room, just like she always did, each in separate corners, just like they always were. Both turned at the sound of her approach, just like she knew they always would, because even if she told them everything she'd planned on saying, every new desire of her heart...she didn't think they'd ever be okay with it, that they'd ever let go of the love they had for her. But that was not her fault, nor her concern. Her only concern was clearing the air and letting them know she'd let go of hers.
"Elena," Stefan smiled, steadfast and quiet and patient, the diplomat who thought his kind smiles would win him the long game, would win him her. They wouldn't. "It's good to see you up and about. We were all really worried about you."
"Yeah, next time an evil enchantress comes round for tea, do the smart thing and run in the other direction." Five days, it had been five days since she'd almost died twice, and Damon's first words to her are a joke, at her expense no less. It hurt her more than she would ever let on.
"Thank you, Stefan. I'm doing much better." Oh, how she detested small talk. "Have you got some time to space?"
"Sure," the younger Salvatore agreed instantly, hope springing to life in his eyes. "We can go to my room and-"
Elena swiftly cut him off. "Actually, what I have to say relates to the both of you."
"Uh oh, this seems serious. Better pour the adult drinks."
Her lips curled into a smirk, the wicked one she knew neither of them liked, because neither wanted to think of her as anything but pure goodness, even though every person on the planet was made up of both, good and bad, had the capacity for both. They couldn't stand it when she disobeyed the rules of her programming, when she coloured over the lines of their picture-perfect idea of her, the doppelgänger who went haywire, no longer innocent doe-eyed Elena but not like Katherine, either. She was her own person, always had been, and always would be. And she needed them to see that, needed them to see every part of her, most of all the one that was happy, happy without them fighting over her, happier that she wasn't in love with them like she had been.
Damon smirked over his shoulder. "Are you sure you can handle it, Elena?"
Yes. But all she said was, "Why don't we find out?"
Several minutes later, after the drinks had been poured and coasters rearranged on the coffee table -Caroline's influence, no doubt- Elena looked up at the both of them, these men who danced into her life and swept her off her feet and buried every previous misconception she had about the world...but also made her bury friends, and parents, and family, even if they didn't mean to. And while she was so, so thankful that she had Klaus in her life now...she will never forget that if she had never met them, if they had never been intrigued by her, Katherine wouldn't have come, either, Rose and Trevor never would have found her, she never would have made her deal with Elijah and...absently, she smoothed out a crease in her jeans, picked at a fleck of paint in her sweater she'd gotten from two nights ago when she stayed awake to watch Klaus paint. That little speck of him gave her the courage to open her mouth and begin, "Stefan, I loved you since the first time we kissed. Damon, I hated you from the moment you tried to make me kiss you."
The elder Salvatore's face darkened, clouds of frustration blocking out the rays of apology.
"Both of you, please don't say anything. Please don't interrupt me until I've got out what I needed to." She won't ask again. She won't wait for them. And so she doesn't.
"Stefan, I hated you when you drove us onto Wickery Bridge, when you forced me to drink your blood, when you used my life as a bargaining chip to get what you wanted, what was most important to you: revenge on Klaus. A hollow, pointless crusade, especially against an Original, let alone a hybrid, who has over eight hundred and fifty years on you in every aspect. Damon, I knew I loved you for sure when you gave me my necklace back for my birthday. It was the most selfless you had ever been, and it meant so much to me that you tried to put your own feelings aside to give me what I needed most: hope. It showed me the goodness that I know is inside you, the one you try so hard to hide from everybody, most of all yourself."
"Elena..." they said in unison, but the doppelgänger shook her head, tipping back the dregs of whiskey in her glass before she hurled it into the fireplace, the antique glass immediately cracking and melting with the intensity of the flames.
Damon rolled his eyes. "That's coming out of your paycheck, missy."
Elena's grin was a savage thing. "Bill it to the Mikaelsons. As I was saying...I've felt everything for the two of you. I've been everything for the two of you. Friend and allie and adversary. I've held you at your lowest points and let you hold me in mine. I've told you both things that at the time I'd never told anybody else. You changed my whole world and brought the truth of who I was, where I came from, to light, and I will always be grateful for that, for every time you saved me, every time you saved my friends. But you've also put them in danger. You've been willing to sacrifice them at my expense, because you somehow think their lives are worth less than mine, that I'm more important, and I am, but only to you. You've gone against my wishes countless times and kept so many secrets from me under the guise of 'protecting me.' But no more. It stops. Today."
"Elena, you really can't expect us to agree to any of that crap, can you? You're acting like a spoiled brat, complaining about how we've kept you alive for the past year! No one else could have done that, and unfortunately it forced us to make a few sacrifices along the way-"
"Sacrifice?" Elena bolted out of her chair, gripping the arm rests of Damon's as her eyes bored into his, her fire threatening to eradicate his ice. "Don't you dare talk to me about sacrifice, Damon. Don't act as if you've lost anything that really, truly mattered to you in the last year! Because we all know that Stefan is the most important person in your life, as he should be! He's your brother, your family. I am not. I'm just the physical copy of the girl you used to love who broke your heart. I used to be your friend, but that wasn't enough for you, wasn't good enough for you anymore. It was what I needed from you after Stefan was gone...but it wasn't what you wanted after he came back. You needed to reassert yourself as my favourite, to flaunt it in Stefan's face to mask your insecurity. Am I right?"
Damon sighed wearily, so perfectly unruffled it made her ache, made her jaw clench and her nostrils flare. "Elena, enough with the psychology-"
"Am I right?"
"Elena." Stefan reached to wrap his hand around her wrist, tugging her away from his brother as his other hand landed on the side of her face, his skin feeling like ice water against hers. "Calm down. That's all in the past now."
"But it's not! It's not, Stefan!" Elena jerked away from him, banged her shin on the leg of the table. But she didn't care. She didn't care if it hurt, if hearing the truth was too painful for them right now. It was now or never, because otherwise they'd try to talk her out of it, to prolong the inevitable for as long as they could, and they had forever. But she did not. And she would not spend the rest of hers thinking of the two of them apart, eternally at odds. She would not see one more family broken, especially not at her own hand.
Her nails dug into the skin of her palm, ruby-red crescent marring her flesh, reminding her that she was strong, that she had claws, too, and that sometimes she needed to use them. "I love Klaus. I know what he's done and I love him anyway. And I know that I promised to stay away from him, that we'd break up if you helped us with Esther, but I won't. And I'm not sorry. I'm not sorry that I'm going back on my word when you've both gone back on yours. I'm not sorry that while I love you both, I'm in love with neither of you. But I am sorry that because of me, you've wasted so much time you could have devoted to fixing your relationship instead. Destiny brought Klaus and I together, but it is my choice to love him, for us to love each other. I know it will be hard, likely the hardest thing I've ever done. I know he's not perfect, but I don't need him to be. Because, out of everyone in this whole damn town, he was the only one that saw me, for what I was and how I felt, and that's what matters."
The two continued to stare at her like she was a ghost, an apparition, like she'd just torn their hearts from their chests and laughed all the while.
Elena let out a bone-weary sigh, slumping back into her spot on the loveseat. "And so, I'm proposing another deal. Stefan, you are free to carry out the rest of senior year with us. But after graduation...I want you and Damon out of Mystic Falls."
"That's bullshit, Elena!" Damon immediately exploded, rage volcanic and sulfurous, sucking all the oxygen from the room. "This is Stefan's home. Our home! Our family helped found this damn town and-"
"And technically the Mikaelsons were here first," she replied with an easy shrug, "but this is not a battle of semantics, Damon. I was what brought Stefan here, what made you stay after Katherine. And now I'm telling you both to go."
"And what do we get out of it?" the dark-haired vampire sneered, already pouring himself another drink. Hopefully when he's gone she can convince Alaric to cut down, to get help. She doesn't need anyone perpetuating or instigating bad behavior, certainly not when it'll be his responsibility to look after Jeremy.
"Klaus and I will leave as well. For good. Of course, we'll visit, and you're free to do so as well, but not for months on end. We go out separate ways, all of us. We're growing up; it's what people do. We say goodbye, we do what's best for us, not for other people. I need a fresh start, too."
They'd talked about it at length, her and Klaus, before opening up the debate to the rest of their family. Everyone agreed that it was time, that as important as Mystic Falls was to them...home could be anywhere, so long as they had each other, loved each other. Home was no longer a place, but the people she made them with, that they both did. It was time for somewhere that could be just theirs. They'd talked about all the cities he'd been to and the countries she'd always wanted to visit and then one night he'd sat down with her in the grass like they had that first night and told her The Thing, the thing she can hardly imagine, hardly think about, that she forces herself to skirt around the edge of but had not left her thoughts for a moment, the impossibility of it almost too much and yet the idea of it so very, very enough for her, all she'd ever wanted and..
Stefan frowned, arms crossed tightly over his chest, brooding and incredulous. "You're not going to Whitmore like Caroline and Bonnie? I thought that was what you wanted, that you guys had been planning it for years..."
"That's my whole point, Stefan," Elena interrupted him, not unkindly, reaching out to take his hand in both of hers, eyes bright with freedom and possibility. She was getting through to him, she knew how to win him over. "Plans change, people change. I don't want to die in this town, Stefan. I want to live, I want to have adventures, I want to see the world and find my place in it."
"Just not with me."
A shake of the head. "No. Not you, not Damon or Matt. Just Klaus. He's all I want."
"He'll kill you, you know," Damon interjected, the first words he'd spoken in minutes, tone paced and measured like he was doling out cruelty. "He may not sink his teeth into your neck again and feed on you until your heart stops, but he'll kill every good things about you, everything that makes you, you, I guarantee it. You won't even recognize yourself. And, if there really is a life after this one, your precious parents and beloved Jenna won't either. "
"Who says my turning into a vampire wouldn't have done that as well?" Off their baffled look, Elena barked a laugh, harsh and brittle, agonized by their blindness. "Oh, come on, don't act as if that wasn't where this was going, what both of you wanted! You wanted me, forever. But I don't want forever with you, either of you. Maybe one day I will with Klaus, I don't know, I can't know the future...all I do know is that he is my choice, today and tomorrow, next week and next month and five years from now, and I won't let either if you stop me, or let you take that away from me. And I hope, somewhere down the road, we can find it in ourselves to be friends like we used to be. I can't stop you from thinking what you do, and all I can say is that I love him, and I trust him, and he's killed me once before and I came back, that he's saved me from death and from my grief and my guilt, and every good thing you think he'll take away from me, I know that's exactly what he'll strive most to protect because it means even more to him. We're not the prince and princess riding off into the Technicolor sunset: we're the two warriors, bruised and battered and bloody, putting down our swords and going home, together."
She dropped Stefan's hand, rising gracefully to her feet. Staring them down in her blue sweater and jeans and old Converse, Elena asked the two men she'd loved and whose love she was now happy to lose, "Do we have a deal?"
The next stop is Caroline's for a sleepover. Huddled in a sea of blankets, Elena told her best friends everything, the things she hadn't told Stefan or Damon, about Klaus going into her mind and what he saw there, how he helped her pull herself out of it. She told her friends that she wanted to start therapy, that there was a specialist in New Orleans, Camille O'Connell, that Klaus had put her in touch with who supposedly had lots of vampire patients and her own tale of family tragedy. She offered them the number, and both of them took it. Elena knew that there were things she didn't know, things involving the Salvatores that she either didn't know or had made them feel like they couldn't tell her. She wanted that to change. She wanted them to get back to the people they were, the bright young things who didn't have to look over their shoulders for things on the night with fangs, only older and wiser and more aware of their bravery and their voices.
It was a start.
She told them about her deal, about leaving Mystic Falls after graduation, that she was sorry that she wasn't going to Whitmore with them but that she knew this was where their paths diverged for now, but she knew they'd cross again, and keep crossing, as those who were so tightly entwined as the three of them were always fated to do. She told them that they were sisters, each and every one of them, as her tears dripped into her bowl of ice cream and Anne Hathaway kissed Chris Pine on the TV screen behind them, and that nothing, not even her loving The Big Bad Wolf himself, could or would ever change that.
They believed her.
That night, they fell asleep, heads in laps and pillows on the floor, old wounds knitting and new ones feeling less tender. And when a breakfast basket piled high with pastries and chocolates and designer coffee arrived on Liz Forbes' doorstep bright and early the next morning, it was Caroline that said, "Maybe dating a Mikaelson really does have its perks."
Two months later, Elena's steps echoed across the marble mansion entryway as she unwound her scarf at the end of a frosty December day, neatly hanging the trailing cashmere fabric up on the coat rack beside her boyfriend's thick wooden jacket that she definitely didn't keep stealing because 'Nik, you're an Original, you don't even feel the cold and no matter what you say I don't look sexy even as a frozen popsicle.' "I'm home!" she called out, blowing on her chilled fingers as she kicked off her shoes, mind already full of thoughts of cuddling by a fireplace with a hot cup of coffee and a Klaus-shaped pillow.
"I'm in the study!" she heard him call out distantly, and immediately curiosity began to thrum through her. Klaus hardly ever used his study, he said he felt too much like Elijah, which was apparently just too unacceptable. Making her way through the halls that she now knew like the back of her hand, Elena found the door of the study, grasping the handle without need of invitation. None of the doors there were locked to her, and with everyone's Original vampire senses they'd hear her coming a mile away, but it meant a lot to her, the faith and show of trust, the openness and lack of secrets. Smiling instantly at the sight that greeted her, of Klaus seated at the desk, fingers steepled thoughtfully under his chin, face awash in the glow of a laptop, obviously intently ruminating over something.
Coming around the behemoth of a desk -because Klaus Mikaelson never did anything by half, if the new library built solely for her on the second floor was any indication- Elena leaned across, balancing her weight on her palm as she brought her lips to his. Klaus returned it hungrily, fingers diving into her hair as his other hand cupped he cheek. Her nose brushed against hers, scrunching when it met the rosy-red tip. "You're freezing, my love. I can't believe you turned me down for a ride home."
"I know, but someone had to help Caroline put up all the decorations for the Freshman Holiday Formal in the cafeteria and I had no idea how long I was going to be and someone's sister who shall remain nameless was supposed to be helping me but instead snuck off to the Grill to meet up with a certain bartender..."
"And my girlfriend has a wondrous, bleeding heart and is too charitable to be human, I know." His hands gripped her waist, swinging her about so that she laid diagonally across his lap. Her arm draped itself around his shoulders, the movement as easy and thoughtless as breathing now, his warmth instantly seeping into her. "What're you up to?"
"Well, seeing as today was your last day and the official start of winter break...I was thinking about how we should take a vacation. We did mention it, after all, right before my mother tried to kill you and everything went to hell."
"You're kidding."
"I know we're not a normal couple, but I think it's important that we still try to have some sense of normalcy in our relationship..." Klaus adorably rambled, misunderstanding, studiously not meeting her gaze and fixating instead on a point over her shoulder.
Elena shook her head, brushing a sweeping kiss against his temple tenderly as she pulled her phone from her pocket, scrolling to the last page she'd been looking at. "No, sweetheart, I want to. Which is why I was looking at vacation ideas all through my lunch break."
Klaus' face broke out into a beaming, dazzling, breathtaking grin, the one he saved only for her, that made her feel so loved and so alive it was almost unreal -and yet was so very, very real, she knew that for sure now, all of this was real. "Great minds think alike." It was his turn to kiss her, murmuring sweetly against her lips, "Where do you want to go?"
Her answer was immediate. "Anywhere, so long as I'm with you."
Her boyfriend laughed, the sound rumbling through her chest as he shook his head exasperatedly, "That's not exactly helpful, Elena."
Glancing out the window, she took in the sight of the frozen driveway, of the trees gilded in snowflakes and the sleeting drizzle beginning to fall from the sky. "How about somewhere warm? Then again, I've always wanted to see a beach covered in snow, but it's not like Hawaii's going to be much better than here at this time of the year..."
"Australia is still warm around now, and I know how fond you are of koalas..."
Elena shut him up with a kiss. "You know me so well, don't you?"
"I really do." He dipped his head for another kiss. "I love you."
Her heart raced as it always did, every single time he said it, as she knew it always would, an endearment that, like him, would never age and that she would never not love, because this was her life now, their life, as rare and sweet as the cherry wine she'd come here for, only to find so much more. "I love you, too."
"Australia?"
Elena nodded with a kiss. "Adventure."
Author's Note: Hi, everyone! Chapter five, at last. This was really hard to write but I think it's some of my best work and I sincerely hope you enjoyed it! There will be an extra short chapter, a deleted/extra scene if you will, and then the epilogue. The Christmas unreality scene was inspired by one of my favorite Supernatural episodes, 'What Is And What Should Never Be.'
All my love, Temperance Cain.