Chapter Six
Kol was a brilliant magic teacher, considering the fact that he, himself, could no longer practice it.
It was a little bittersweet, though.
Sometimes, when he thought she wasn't paying attention, Elena could see the part of him that still yearned, even after all these years, to feel the warmth of his own magic against his skin.
He never mentioned it and he certainly never made her feel bad about her own gift, but just sometimes, every now and then, he looked as lost as she often felt, and she couldn't stop her heart from aching for him.
He took great delight in teaching her, though. It was their 'thing' according to him, something the two of them could share that the others couldn't be involved in.
He graciously allowed Jeremy to sit in on their lessons that day purely because he was only in town for a few more hours, Elena thought. Besides, Jeremy had left before she'd actually managed to successfully complete the spell, which was a testament to how complicated it was.
They'd exchanged teary, heartfelt goodbyes and Jeremy promised he'd try to come back for Christmas and Finn had assured her that he'd see Jeremy back to his home safely.
But, when she got back to her task, Kol was patient and gentle with her as he taught her to tease the control of her magic, to tempt it into her fingers rather than flooding her palms, allowing her to control more intricate spell-work.
For instance, learning the unlocking spell was deceptively difficult. It almost made her want to chuck her Harry Potter collection in the bin, those lucky bastards. She had to use just the right amount of magic for the right locks, anything too much could result in the metal fusing together, leaving her completely trapped and using too little would be completely ineffective but, as Kol had repeatedly pointed out to her, every lock was different.
Ironically, handcuffs were far harder to break out of than it was to open a door, because she really did need just the tiniest flicker of magic to accomplish it and she wasn't used to having to wrestle that kind of control from her core.
She was very deliberately not thinking about why Kol had handcuffs.
It was hard but rewarding. She didn't manage to get the handcuffs unlocked, but she did manage the backdoor and when she'd done it, Kol had lifted her clear off the ground with a bright smile on his face as he spun her around the kitchen,
"I told you," he crowed with obvious delight as a startled laugh fell from her lips, "I told you that you could do it!"
She clutched at his shoulders as he spun her around, a strange bubble of contentment and pride bubbling away in her chest.
Kol carefully placed her back on the ground, pride shining in his eyes,
"You'll get the hang of it all, in time," he told her earnestly, "and then no one will be able to keep you locked away, you'll always have a way to get yourself out. I'll teach you to pick locks the normal way, too."
And she couldn't help it, something in her chest cracked at the thought that Kol was doing everything in his power to not only keep her safe, because she had no doubt in her mind that he would always try to look out for her, but to also give her the tools that she needed to save herself.
And then she was pouncing on him, wrapping her shivering arms around him in an embrace so tight that she could feel him vibrating with the force of her tremors. He didn't complain, though, he just wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her as tightly as he dared with one hand on the back of her head.
And she knew she'd be okay.
She might not be right now, and recovery was going to be a bitch and she was definitely going to have to work at it, but she knew without a shadow of doubt that as long as she was a Mikaelson, she'd be okay. She'd always find her way home.
And gods, this was home.
Home.
"Thank you," she whispered into his ear, "I love you."
Kol went rigid and her heart stuttered as a flood of insecurity hit her, what had she just said? Should she take it back? Could she take it back? She'd not said that to any of them before-
"I love you, too, Little Bird." And she might have imagined it, but she was sure his voice cracked as relief flooded through her, her arms tightening around him.
They stayed like that for a minute, offering each other what comfort they could before Elena gently untangled herself from him, a wet smile on her face as she stepped back,
"Shall we keep going, then?"
But Kol shook his head,
"Not tonight. We need to take it easy for a few days, we can't go pushing your magic too hard after the last few weeks that you've had. Let's do something else."
Elena scrunched up her nose as Kol led her back to her seat, gently pushing her to sit down as he grabbed an apple and began to slice it,
"What do you want to do, then?"
Kol kept his eyes on her as he sliced the apple,
"I want to know what you want to do. So far, I've seen you do all the things that you think you should do. Is there anything that you want to do? We could play games, video games or board games, I have both. We could cook dinner, but I feel like that'll be me cooking and you watching. We could go shopping, but I think 'Bekah will chop my hands off and feed them to the chickens if we try to go shopping without her," he frowned as he grabbed a plate, carefully making a circle out of the apple slices before sliding the plate her way, "Come on, there's got to be something in that brain of yours that you actually want to do."
Elena quirked her lips while she thought about it, what did she want to do?
"When do you think I can move in?"
Kol blinked at her, as if the question had completely thrown him,
"What do you mean?" he asked slowly, as if he truly didn't understand the question and Elena rolled her eyes,
"Well, Elijah asked me to move in and I said that I would, but when, exactly, is that? He didn't actually say."
Kol leaned against the kitchen counter, an amused smile stretching across his face as he looked at her,
"Darling, you already have a stocked bedroom and bathroom here. Welcome, you're moved in."
Elena sucked in a breath through her teeth,
"I'm being serious, Kol. I don't want to go making assumptions-"
Rebekah swept into the room, effectively cutting her off as she swung the door far wider than it needed to go. Elena suspected she just wanted to make a point of her entrance,
"Elena, Dear, kindly do shut up. Kol's right, shockingly enough, you already have a room here and a bathroom and I'm pretty sure the chicken coop is half yours too. If you honestly think any of us are going to actually let you spend the night alone in your crappy apartment again, then you're clearly delusional."
And by the gods, Elena wanted to be angry, she wanted to want to scream and shout about how unfair that was, to rave about her independence and the folly of people making assumptions about what she wants, but all she felt was the sweet caress of relief.
The fact of the matter was that she simply didn't want to return to her apartment. She desperately didn't want to be alone, she wanted to feel safe, secure and content and she wouldn't get those feelings from her cramped living space.
Even installing all those locks hadn't made her feel any safer there.
What she wanted, more than anything in the world, was this.
Elena chewed on her lip as she looked between the two siblings in front of her,
"So… I can stay here tonight, then?"
A soft, tender smile spread over Rebekah's face,
"Yes, Elena. And tomorrow night, and the night after that etcetera, etcetera."
And if they noticed the way her shoulders relaxed, no one said anything,
"I'll uh, I'll need to collect some of my things."
Kol's shoulders drooped as visible disappointment decorated his face,
"You want to do that now?" and now he was whining, a high pitched bratty whine that had her laughing before she could even try to hide her amusement which caused a scowl to cross his features even as Rebekah shoved him out of her way.
She grabbed herself a blood bag and rolled her eyes at the pair of them before leaving the room, muttering not-so-quietly about annoying brothers.
When her laughter finally died down, she had to hold onto the counter in front of her to keep her balance,
"No, no, I know what I want to do," she ran a hand through her hair as Kol quirked a brow at her,
"Well, do enlighten me, then."
She offered him a wide smile,
"Can we go to your room and you can play that video game you like, the one with the zombies? And I'll flick through the grimoire? I just kinda want quiet company time."
And the smile he sent her told her she'd made the right choice,
"That sounds perfect. Come on, then," and then he was scooping up the grimoire and grabbing her wrist, dragging her to the stairs as she laughed along behind him.
She had no doubt that Caroline would come and find her when she was done with Tyler and Matt.
And while she had no problem with Tyler, she didn't really want to be around Matt right now.
Sure, she'd told him that they could move past this, but the more that she thought about it, the less she felt like that was really an option. The world had changed for her, and in the back of her mind she was aware that she had changed with it, she'd been hardened by the vicious things that she'd lived through.
Well, the things she'd very almost not lived through.
She supposed that almost dying had put some things into perspective for her.
Ultimately, the people that mattered, that really, truly mattered to her, had been in Montana. They'd come for her, to save her little human life and to bring her home. And those people?
She'd mattered to them before her world had fallen apart.
She'd been thinking about Bonnie and Matt throughout the day, and the more she thought about it, the more she felt like she'd been terribly wronged by them.
They'd both sought her out not even twenty four hours after her horrific fight for her life, when she was at her most vulnerable, to be forgiven for their wrongs and she'd come to the conclusion that they weren't doing it because they'd realised they were wrong.
No, they were doing it because she'd almost died.
And maybe a part of them couldn't bear the thought that she might die without offering them her forgiveness.
Or maybe they truly wanted to make things right.
Either way, the problem was, she just didn't care. There was nothing that they could say or do that would take away what she'd gone through for months because of them. It was going to take more than one lousy apology from either of them before she was ready to really forgive them.
Maybe she never would.
Which was, in itself, a startling conclusion to come to.
Because, just a few weeks ago, she'd have done anything for Bonnie to want to be her friend again, she'd have forgiven them both so fast that she'd have given herself whiplash.
What did it say about her that she'd lost that?
Maybe she'd come back from Montana a little darker than she'd been before.
She found that she didn't really care.
Kol pushed her into his room without hesitation and though Elena had been in there before, she always got a little kick out of seeing his bedroom.
The room was split into two colours, two of the walls were a dark, burnt orange that reminded her of a sunset and the other two were a soft cream. His bed took up very little space, though it was certainly larger than hers. He'd shoved it into the corner of the room to make space for the couch that he'd dragged in here and he had a tv much like the one downstairs, it took up a good portion of the wall, leaving a thin strip just wide enough for a floor-to-ceiling cd and dvd rack that he'd filled with music and video games. Each bedroom came with a walk in closet and their own bathroom, but where Elena had a chest of drawers, Kol had a desk with a high-powered computer on it that he had justified to Nik by saying it was for schoolwork, but Elena suspected he'd used it mostly for gaming.
He was very much still a teenager in many ways, he enjoyed sports and video games and had little to no regard for anyone's opinion on the matter.
Mind you, the others were just glad that he wasn't out massacring the townspeople.
He'd put a little table next to Elena's spot on the couch so that she had somewhere to put all the snacks that he was forever giving her. She wasn't sure where he was hiding them, but she knew he had a stash in his room somewhere because he never failed to make sure she had something to eat and drink when she joined him for a gaming session.
She'd find it one day and she'd chuck it out of his window.
Elena sat in her spot, her eyes flicking to find that her jacket, which she'd left last time she'd been here, was still exactly where she'd put it and her heart panged slightly as she turned her gaze to Kol, who had grabbed his xbox controller and then sat next to her, shooting her a quick grin before turning to his game.
She watched him for a minute before turning to the grimoire, which he'd put between them and she plucked it up off the seat and then crossed her legs so that she could balance it properly on her knees while she read.
She wondered distantly, as the hours passed, if anyone could ever understand how easy it was for her to simply exist with the Mikaelsons? Here she was, sitting cross-legged in the bedroom of an Original vampire, one who was rather famously unhinged, and it was just… Easy.
And when Kol got up to flick the light on when the shadows were beginning to make her skin crawl, all she could do was offer him a soft, real smile because she hadn't needed to tell him. He just knew.
Just like Elijah had known yesterday that she wasn't okay by the tone of her voice.
She couldn't bring herself to regret her decision to stay.