Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Nothing Stefan does anymore should surprise her. She doesn't know why, then, she feels so betrayed by him using her to get even with Klaus, when he's made it perfectly clear he doesn't care about her anymore. Doesn't care about anything other than his petty, stupid revenge.

"Stefan has his reasons for what he's doing," Damon tells her, like his brother's swan dive off the deep end should excuse him using her as a pawn.

"He crossed a line."

Damon cups his hands around her face. Draws her into his gaze as though his blue eyes and soft lips will make her forget everything else. "We're winning, Elena."

"You've been keeping secrets from me."

He doesn't deny it.

A week has passed with nothing but silence filling the space that the Salvatores used to inhabit in her life. They're dodging her phone calls, both of them, and when she goes over to their house, it's always empty. She'd gone back to the old witch house on a hunch, and again, zilch. She'd been so certain she'd find them there, conspiring, and the fact that they're not makes her even more suspicious of them.

It shocks her how accustomed she had become to them always including her. To being the third spoke in their wheel. Somehow, she'd assumed that the three of them would keep on turning in that circle forever. That her life would be spent conspiring and conjecturing in front of their parlor fireplace, pressed up close and warm between the two brothers as they spun out increasingly elaborate schemes to keep everyone on their list alive for another day. As they invented victories out of impossible odds.

She never imagined that they would cut her out. Without warning, without even a conversation to tip her off.

That the two of them are plotting something together is completely obvious. She wants to slap them both. If she could find them.

What she's not prepared for is realizing that the rest of her friends are in on it too. Bonnie can't even look her in the eye anymore. Won't give her a straight answer about anything. Caroline just plain avoids her. And between his maybe-a-serial-killer new girlfriend and whatever research and sketchy recon she's sure Damon's asked of him, Alaric's never around.

And of course, Tyler is not really himself anymore, and Jeremy is just gone, and Matt doesn't want anything to do with anything supernatural if he can help it. Most days, that seems like it includes her, too.

Weeks pass. It's October between one blink and the next. The leaves turn yellow and orange but mostly brown and drift listlessly to the ground.

No one ever warns her anymore about what will happen to her if she has a Salvatore on both arms.

She can't even remember the last time the three of them were all in a room together.

She's so sick of it. Sick of this loneliness, this isolation. Sick of everyone she trusted shutting her out and not even telling her why.

It must be a sickness, for her to do what she does next.

Matt works late on Mondays and Thursdays, and she's gotten into the habit of going to the Grill to do her homework in his section on those nights, just for the excuse to see a friendly (if somewhat aloof) face for a little while. Just for an excuse to forget about the dark, empty house awaiting her when she returns. Sometimes Matt feels like talking to her. More often he seems unhappy with her, but she's not entirely sure how to fix that. She doesn't know him well enough anymore to slip through his armor.

Maybe that's the problem. None of them know each other anymore as well as they used to.

She's there barely fifteen minutes before she senses someone slide into the booth across from her.

Damon or Stefan, ready at last to make an overture.

Excitement leaps in her breast, but she hastily smothers it, pretending not to feel it at all as she finishes a calculus problem. She won't give them the satisfaction of knowing how badly she yearns for them to accept her back into their confidence.

At length, Elena shuts her binder and looks up—

Directly into Klaus's intense blue gaze.

"Not the company you were expecting?" he drawls.

Elena glances around. No allies in sight. Matt must be in the back.

"What do you want?"

"Ah, straight to it. How refreshing." Klaus gives her a lazy smirk that menaces more than it puts at ease, folding his hands together and leaning across the table to lowly warn her, "Tell your boyfriends to leave off, or I'll be forced to retaliate."

He says it all like she knows exactly what he's talking about.

She doesn't.

Elena purses her lips. "You've come to the wrong person. Stefan and Damon no longer involve me in their schemes."

"Come now, you don't expect me to believe that."

She leans back and shrugs. "I don't care what you believe. It's the truth." She pulls her books back in front of her and begins work on the next set of problems.

Long minutes tick by.

Then—

"You truly aren't going to warn them then?"

"How can I?" she responds without looking up. "They've been stonewalling me for weeks. Everyone has."

"Why?"

"How should I know?"

"Perhaps it was because you brokered my sister's return? I don't picture anyone in your camp being particularly keen on surrendering such a prize for such small returns."

"Maybe." She's certainly had more than enough time to consider the possibility.

"Or perhaps they've simply realized that you're irrelevant."

She snaps her books shut and shoves them in her backpack. "Don't you have someone else to threaten?"

"Oh! I touched a nerve."

"Yes, fine, you touched a nerve. I'm sure Stefan and Damon are up to something, but I really honestly couldn't tell you what it is, or who else is involved, because all of my friends are suddenly avoiding me, and I have no idea why, except that somehow, you're to blame. You're the reason my life has gone to hell in a handbasket. Why my boyfriend cares more about getting even with you than he does about me. Why I have to live completely alone, without any family at all, day after day, in this enormous, empty house, living an empty life."

"You're lonely."

The statement hits her like a sledgehammer to the chest. For some reason, it's very hard to breathe. All at once she becomes painfully aware of the tears pricking at her eyes.

Damnit, she will not cry in front of Klaus.

She focuses on very slowly zipping up her pack, the reassuring zwoop of the teeth locking together.

"I can keep you company," he offers, astonishingly.

Elena pauses. "You're not serious."

"I am, perfectly."

"Why?"

"Because I understand a portion of the isolation you're feeling. It's why I wanted to make the hybrids. So as not to be alone anymore. It's a curse I wouldn't wish on anyone, least of all you."

"No, why would I want to spend time with you? I loathe you."

"Because this is the most exciting evening you've had in ages. And because of the way your heart skips a beat when I look at you."

"I'm not afraid of you."

"I never said you were."

She considers him. Considers the very, very insane leap she is about to make.

"Okay. Fine. Let's say we do hang out. You better buy me a drink."

That's the first time she really learns what Klaus's true smile looks like.

He's right. Now that he's pointed it out, she can feel the way he makes her heart stumble in her chest.

She thinks she might be in trouble.

There's no one around to tell her to stop.

Chapter Text

Klaus waves Matt—who has finally reappeared from the back— over to their table.

Her friend shoots her a concerned look when he arrives, and makes a discreet gesture with his thumbs—their shorthand for, Do you need me to text for help?

She shakes her head, just the barest twitch of her chin, hoping Matt catches it before Klaus demands his attention.

He has Matt bring them a bottle, and she can't help but feel abstracted from her body as she watches Klaus's strong, elegant hands pour amber liquor into her glass. This can't be real. None of this can possibly be real.

This isn't her who takes a sip, who suddenly feels warm for the first time since she awoke from her death last April when she catches Klaus watching her with a singular sort of focus that almost makes her think he sees her.

Because if this were real, then the hunger she feels for this time out would be unthinkable. She'd have to feel guilty that Klaus is right, that the past half hour toeing the line of red hot danger with him has revived her flagging spirits in ways that she really, really doesn't want to analyze.

"On the bright side," Klaus says, cheerfully interrupting her thoughts, "I shan't have to warn the Salvatores away from you if they're already leaving you well enough alone."

"Why would you warn them away from me?"

"To ensure you have a normal life."

"I don't see how that's any of your business."

"Of course it is. You'll want to settle down, won't you? Stop consorting with vampires so you can go to college, become a nurse or a secretary or a school teacher? Get married? Have children?"

"You just want to make sure I continue on the Petrova line. That I live to see old age to keep your blood supply going for as long as possible while you wait for the next Petrova doppelganger."

"But doesn't my version sound so nice?"

Elena swirls the ice in her drink, listening to their gentle clink against her glass, considering. "What if I don't want a normal life?"

Klaus takes his time to respond. "Then I would say that you're both far more interesting and far more foolish than I had thought."

"So how do you spend your time when you're not out menacing my friends?"

Klaus refills her drink, a smile on his lips. "How do you imagine I spend my time?"

"I don't. Imagine you, that is."

"That red stain on your cheeks says otherwise, sweetheart."

She wants to stop that line of inquiry as fast as she can because the terrible terrible thing that she doesn't ever ever ever even let herself think about is that he's not wrong.

"What do you even need an army of hybrids for? You're not conquering anything. You're just hanging out. They seem to mostly be doing your dry cleaning and watching over the construction on your new mansion."

"Which is nearly finished, by the way. Perhaps you'd like a tour."

She ignores that. "My point is, they're not really your friends, either. I don't think anyone is. There haven't been any attempts on my life, so I know you haven't awakened Rebekah yet." She squints at him, as though that will bring him into clearer focus. "You're not even planning to, are you? You don't have any family, or any friends at all. Just… these hybrids who are blindly bound to serve you."

At her words, all of Klaus's warmth and amusement slip away, like a cloak falling from his shoulders. Without any guile or bluster at all, he says, very quietly—so quietly she cannot help but lean closer into his space so she can hear him better—

"I told you I was lonely."

There's a new kind of intimacy that opens between them in the steady way he holds her gaze as he says the words that she had not absorbed as truth until that moment. Not just as truth. As his truth.

For the first time, she thinks she might really understand him.

Might see herself mirrored in him.

That same hopeless loneliness that has sunk so far into her bones that she doesn't think she'll ever emerge from it also resides in him.

"So how do you fill the time?" she asks him helplessly. "How do you keep yourself going day after day? Keep yourself caring?"

"You have to find a way to live for yourself." He pauses, then—almost hesitating. "I paint. For me, that has been my salvation."

"You're an artist." She can't help the flat incredulity with which she states it.

"Don't sound so astonished."

"I'm not. I'm just— recalibrating."

"Why least of all me?" she asks later, when she feels brave enough.

"Hm?"

"Earlier. You said that loneliness is a curse you wouldn't wish on anyone, least of all me."

Klaus shrugs. "You've been exceedingly generous to me, over all. You came willingly to the sacrifice, you've given me blood whenever I've requested it, you were the only one with enough honor to return my sister to me. You even had the foresight to arrange for your resurrection after the ritual so you could help me create my hybrids. Besides all of those very persuasive points, I find your pluck… appealing."

The explanation unsettles her. It had never occurred to her before that Klaus might actually like her.

"You know I planned the attempt to take you out at Homecoming."

"Yes, and handed me one of the things I've wanted most these past thousand years. Brava."

"That doesn't bother you? That I tried to kill you?"

"It's a moot point, seeing as you now never can."

"Where there's a will, there's a way."

"You don't really mean that, though."

"How do you mean?"

"You wouldn't dream of killing me when you're enjoying my company so very much."

"You're flattering yourself."

Klaus watches her with dark eyes. "Am I?"

Matt comes back by their table at eleven. "We're closing," he tells them without preamble. "Elena, can I give you a ride home?" He's been nervously watching them for hours, hovering, but no one else has arrived to break their evening up, so he must have taken her word that she didn't need him to call in the cavalry.

"I'll see her home, thanks," Klaus cuts in before she can respond one way or another.

Except, outside, she tells him, "I don't want to go home."

"No?"

"If I go home, that means tonight has to end, and I'll have to go back to being on my own again."

"Then don't. Come home with me instead."

"That sounds like a terrible idea."

"I never said it wasn't. But think on it: We've established that you no longer number amongst the conspirators plotting against me, and that I wish for you to live a long and fruitful life. And I think that you rather enjoy my company. There is no reason for us not to spend our time together if we so wish."

She swallows. Thinks about going home to curl up in her cold and empty bed. That sickness opens up inside of her, an abyss with no bottom. If she goes home, she'll be plunging into that dark cavern inside of herself. She doesn't know how much longer she can bear to keep treading through this by herself.

"Is that tour still on the table?"

"I think something can be arranged."

Chapter Text

The thing about being alone, truly alone, is that you can live in the most exquisitely beautiful and luxurious mansion, and it can still feel like a prison.

Klaus lives in the most exquisitely beautiful and luxurious mansion Elena has ever stepped foot in. Even the Lockwood mansion is put to shame by the rich materials and fine craftsmanship contained in the imposing compound that has sprung up faster than normal means could ever accomplish.

He leads her through marble foyers and halls, gorgeously paneled studies, an oak floored ballroom studded with mirrors and chandeliers. Galleries with black marble fireplaces and empty rooms she thinks must be intended for bedrooms. Everything is empty.

She feels very sad for him. Sad for herself, because this is where she's at: feeling sorry for Klaus.

"Why did you build all this?"

"I wanted a home for my family."

He doesn't say anything about undaggering them.

"Why don't you awaken any of them?" She doesn't actually want him to—she can barely calculate the ways in which that would invariably make her life a million times more complicated—but she can't help but ask.

"That's not possible right now."

"Why? Because of what they might say?"

He stares at her for a long time.

She tries to imagine what that would be like—to have her entire family near to hand, asleep, and to be so afraid of their rejection that she chose never to wake them up at all.

Insight curls through her, sharp and bright.

That's what lies at the bottom of Klaus's loneliness. Fear. A great deal of it.

"You really don't know," he marvels. "I keep expecting you to know, but they really have kept you out of it."

She frowns at him. "Kept me out of what?"

"It doesn't matter right now." He takes hold of her hand, and the contact shocks her through and through.

She lets him lead her through a pair of imposing double doors, into a part of the house that finally looks lived in—if only barely. At least it's furnished, and the opened crates in which she glimpses leather-bound books and statuettes and odd knick-knacks speak to the fact that Klaus really has moved in here. Really does plan to stay.

He hadn't been lying about the painting, either. She sees, tucked into a corner next to a huge table covered in bowls and plates and marble slabs slathered in dried pigment, several easels, each holding a painting in a different state of completion, and stacked behind those easels, several more paintings.

She can't help but desire to look at them.

Klaus draws her back. "Those are personal."

She looks up into his eyes. "I want to see you."

He opens his arms wide, indicating himself. "Look your fill."

"No—I want to see who you are when you're not performing the role of someone else's villain. I want to see who you are when you're just you." This might be the most brazen thing she's ever said to him.

"Careful. I never claimed I wasn't still a villain when no one is watching me."

"But you're more than just that, aren't you."

He opens his mouth as though to respond, but then thinks better of it. He turns away from her, then, and, pausing for only a moment at the doorway to glance back at her from over his shoulder, leaves her alone in the room.

She thinks she hears him say, almost more to himself than to her, "As you are more than just a pretty face."

It's the closest to a blessing as she is likely ever to receive from him.

She could spend ages trying to analyze his motives for leaving her alone to sift through his work—his salvation, he had called it—instead of overseeing the process—which, until just now, she would have assumed he would have preferred.

She thinks this has something to do with that new strange intimacy that had sprung up between them at the Grill. That although he may extend her the trust, at least in this moment, to look through his private thoughts spilled out on canvas, he cannot bear to watch her reaction. Not when he has let her in past his shield, to see how similar they really are.

But it's him who's done this to you. It's him who's murdered your family and threatened Jeremy and severed your friendships with just the hope of his demise. It's him who's made you like him.

Elena takes a long time to look through his work. This morning, she wouldn't have bothered. Now, the paintings spellbind her.

Looking through Klaus's paintings feels like wielding the kind of power that the Salvatores had stripped from her when they cut her out. It's a heady thing, picking through an immortal creature's art, filling the hungry cavern inside herself up with these fragments of his soul. Her blood thrums with the thrill of it, her body waking up, remembering.

Later, she slips through the house in a daze. Goes room to room until she finds him, ensconced in a black leather sofa, staring sightlessly into a crackling fire in the hearth, a fresh drink seemingly forgotten in his hand.

Elena sits down next to him. It feels like taking her rightful place.

"Satisfied?" he asks her, finishing his drink in one long swallow.

"Yes."

He doesn't ask her anything about what she thought of his artwork.

Instead, he says, "It hardly seems fair that you should see so clearly inside my head, when you've not offered me anything remotely the same."

"Are you asking to read my diary?"

His eyes sweep over her, lingering on her mouth, her throat. He can probably hear the way her heart speeds and trips as their eyes catch.

"Tell me a secret about yourself you wouldn't dare commit to paper."

Elena's mouth falls open. Maybe it's the way the flickering light of the flames catches Klaus's face, triggering her most visceral of memories. Maybe it's the alcohol, still swimming hot in her blood. Or perhaps, simply, it's that Klaus has found her in a moment of weakness, and lured her through the happiest hours she has had in months, and the result is that when he asks, she surrenders the only possible answer.

"You asked me what I imagine, when I think of you. I dream about your bite. About that night. I can't get it out of my head." Her voice is rough with longing by the end.

Klaus stares at her for long seconds. His lips part, and, drawn by the slight movement, she glances down—Klaus notices.

It's that moment, small as it is, that is her undoing.

Between one breath and the next he surges forward, cupping his hands around her face to pull her into a searing kiss. A terribly amazing, bone-melting, desperate kiss that she really, really should end right this second. Except that then Klaus tilts her face just so, deepening the kiss, and his fingers stroke along her jaw, trailing their way down to the scars he left on her last spring, and every thought she ever ever had promptly flies right out of her head.

Klaus kisses her like a drowning man fighting to hold onto a slim branch even as the rapids sweep him away. He kisses her like she's all that matters. Like she's the only thing that can save him. He kisses her, and she knows that he'll never forget her.

When he scoops her up, carrying her bridal style into his bedroom, she never even thinks to tell him to stop, to slow down. If he does, she'll be lost.

Everything happens so quickly. His mouth on her makes her feel desperate, insane with the need to feel his body pressed against hers. She doesn't remember when she lost her shirt, or how she got his belt unbuckled or his shirt over his head—she barely registers the sound of her jeans and panties ripping at the waist in their hurry to get them off of her. All she can think about is the feeling of his hands, mapping her body, of his mouth as he presses his kisses into her throat, her breasts, her eager mouth.

It somehow shocks her when he enters her, and for a moment, she remembers who she is supposed to be with a dazzlingly sharp clarity that sends shivers rolling down her spine. She can't be doing this. She can't. She can't.

"Stay with me," Klaus murmurs in her ear. He wraps his arms under her shoulders and hauls her closer, so that the whole scorching length of his body is pressed against hers. He rests his forehead against hers. "Stay here, with me."

She wants to. Oh God, she wants to.

The urge to roll her hips, to feel the pleasure only that slick friction can provide, nearly overwhelms her.

And—

and—

She can feel his heart beating against her own. Can feel him inside of her, hot and full. Waiting.

Here with her.

It's that, that breaks her, in the end.

Urgently, Elena searches out his mouth again and draws him to her, winding her hands through his hair and wrapping her legs around his hips, entwining their bodies as completely as she can.

It must be the sign Klaus had been waiting for.

Shallowly, carefully, he begins to move within her, his mouth brushing against her own all the while.

Slowly, they search out a rhythm together. Her whole world narrows to the feeling of Klaus laboring between her thighs, of the slippery slide of his cock, re-entering her again and again, of the delicious drag against her inner walls as he thrusts himself inside of her. She cannot help but try to chase that feeling, to roll her hips and groan as her body fights to keep him inside of her.

Her whole body hums with desire. Sweat slicks her skin, practically glues her against him. Pleasure bubbles and fizzes in her veins.

And she is close—so close—

One of Klaus's hands slips down, briefly caressing her thigh before circling over her clit, tender and swollen with need. Clever fingers coax her higher, out onto a precipice with a very long, terrible fall. Elena thrills to his touch, even as it frightens her. Her thighs tighten around him, heedless of the way her encouragement only makes him buck harder into her. She'll have bruises dotting her thighs and hips like an obscene necklace when she awakens.

Klaus pulls his mouth away from hers and trails kisses down the side of her throat. She's so distracted by the maddening way he strokes and circles her clit that she doesn't feel the elongation of his fangs against her throat until he bites her, directly over the scar he'd given her last year.

Elena's vision whites out. Her body clamps down around his cock and she might actually scream—she doesn't know.

Everything gets obliterated under the battering ram of the orgasm tearing through her body. Under the feeling of his teeth piercing her skin, of her blood leaping into his mouth.

In the days that follow, as the details start to come back to her, she'll conclude that it must have been the taste of her blood that ultimately does it for him—the illicit thrill of revisiting their fateful night together—because he comes after only three pulls from her throat.

Elena falls asleep in Klaus's bed, tangled up in his embrace.

It's a simple sort of happiness, to hold and to be held.

She's alone when she wakes up.

It's late—almost 8 in the morning—there's no way she'll make it to school before second period.

She gathers her clothes and struggles into her ruined jeans in a total haze, functioning on harried autopilot as her mind shies away from analyzing the previous night in too much detail.

That can wait. She's bound to run into Klaus sooner rather than later. They can talk it out then. Figure out what it meant. If it meant anything. She's not sure. This is the first time she's slept with someone she wasn't in love with. With someone who wasn't her boyfriend.

She checks her phone on the way out the door.

A calendar notification reminds her that today is Caroline's birthday.

Chapter Text

Planning Caroline's birthday party is just barely enough to distract Elena from the much much much more consuming desire to fixate on the night before.

She should be disgusted with herself. Fourth period already, and the guilt should be eating away at her by now.

It's not. She feels fine… Normal, in a way that she hasn't for weeks and weeks and weeks now.

Maybe she's in shock, she reasons. She's gone and crossed a line she should never ever ever have crossed, now that she's slept with her aunt's murderer and her own personal demon determined to haunt her for the rest of her life, and the emotional backlash of selfishly acting on her desperation for connection with anyone, even Klaus, has stunned her too much for her feelings to have caught up to her yet.

She refuses to consider the alternative, because if those feelings never arise… then that will mean something about herself that she's not yet ready to face.

(Just as she'd predicted, the night before lives on in her body in the way her muscles groan when she stands or fidgets in her desk seat, in the smear of deepening bruises staining her inner thighs and hips.

Klaus had played her body with an expert's exacting finesse. She hates to consider precisely how he seemed to know exactly how to touch her so as to render her senseless with pleasure, but she can't help but dwell on the memory of him between her legs, touching her, filling her, consuming her.

Whenever her mind wanders back to the sensations he'd wrung from her, her stomach twists and a needy twinge pulses between her legs. Her whole face heats to what must be a glaring red, and she can't help but shift her hips under her desk in sheer frustration. Twice, she has to excuse herself from class before anyone can catch on to how flustered she really is.)

One thing that she cannot deny is that she is happy to have a secret. It makes it easier, somehow, to pass notes with Bonnie and Matt about tonight and pretend everything is okay when it so obviously isn't, when she, in turn, is keeping something from them.

They end up throwing Caroline a funeral.

Surrounded by the friends who have so purposefully been keeping her in the dark, Elena feels a strange mixture of happiness and alienation. On the one hand, it feels so good to be with them again. To take this time to just be a teenager having fun, even if that now means ritually saying goodbye to Caroline's old life so that they can celebrate her life as a vampire. That all tracks in Elena's mind, somehow. But on the other hand… On the other hand, the whole time she is with them, there is this little voice inside her head whispering that they don't trust her.

That they've been pushing her out because they think she'll screw this up. Have pushed her out because she's a loose cannon.

And they're right.

She's sure whatever they're planning is some grand scheme to take down Klaus.

She's no longer sure she wants that.

No longer sure she won't stand in their way.

Not for the first time, she checks her phone, just to be certain she hasn't received anything from Klaus. Not that she really thinks that she will, after he was absent this morning. But still. It's not like it's a big town. And it's not like he doesn't factor her into all of his plans in one way or another. (If she's being honest with herself, she likes that he so consciously includes her when he's writing the equations for his future. She never would have noticed that if her friends hadn't excluded her.) Eventually, they're going to run into each other, or he's going to need her for something, and they're going to have to talk.

"Will the two of you put your phones down for just a minute?" Bonnie asks, startling Elena into tucking her phone back into her pocket. She frowns. "Who are you two even texting?"

Caroline bites her lip, looks anywhere but into any of their faces. "No one."

"Care, you're a terrible liar, and an even worse one when you've been drinking."

She actually blushes, just a little, and the misty smile that curls over her mouth is the same one that secured her her Miss Mystic Falls crown. "It's Tyler, okay? I can't help it, I miss him. And it's my birthday."

This, luckily, is an explosive (if predictable) enough response that Bonnie forgets to ever ask Elena who she had been hoping to hear from. She claims a headache and storms out just before Tyler joins them.

It's all downhill from there.

"So what was that last night with Klaus?" Matt asks her, as soon as Caroline and Tyler leave to hash out their romantic drama.

Elena fiddles with the label on the tequila bottle. That's the million dollar question, isn't it?

"He was just bored, I guess. He wanted someone to pass the time with."

"You left with him."

"If letting him drive me home keeps him too occupied to dole out any commands to his hybrids or threaten any of our friends, then I'm happy to do it." She tears the label off and folds the strip into smaller and smaller squares. "It's not like he'd ever lay a finger on me."

"He's a bad guy, Elena. Don't forget that."

"I never have."

But he's more than that. Now that she's seen that, she doesn't think she can ever unsee it.

More fool her.

They give Caroline and Tyler fifteen more minutes before they head out in search of them.

They find them just in time to witness Tyler sink his teeth into Caroline's shoulder.

There's hardly time to react. The horror and the confusion in that moment turn everything on its side. Make everything dim and faint.

Elena races over to Caroline's side and pulls her hyperventilating friend into her arms. She just vaguely registers Matt shoving Tyler out of the way, and that Tyler lets him. The way Matt looks at him like he's broken his heart.

"It's okay," she tells Caroline. "It's okay. Klaus can cure you."

"Why would he?" she gasps into her shaking hands. "Why would he even care?"

"I'll ask him. I'll get him to do it. I swear."

Behind her, she hears Tyler laugh—a high, thin laugh, bordering on hysteria. "Why would he? He's the one who ordered me to bite her."

Elena looks up, into Tyler's wild eyes. Very carefully, she asks him, "When did he ask you to do that? A while ago?" She holds her breath. Hopes.

Tyler shakes his head. "No, this morning."

Elena's stomach drops into her feet like a block of ice. 

He did this. She'd held him close to her, opened up her body to him (her heart), and he'd slithered out of her embrace and planned her friend's attack. 

Every fantasy and stray thought she'd entertained about him comes rushing back in on her. 

She'd hardly had time for more than a precursory rinse this morning. His sweat is probably still dried to her skin. 

She's going to throw up. 

Tyler continues, totally oblivious. "I told him I wouldn't—I refused, Care, you have to believe me—I would never hurt you!"

"You just did," she says, pulling out of Elena's arms.

"I'm taking you home, Care," Matt interjects, over a second impassioned plea from Tyler.

"I have to make a phone call," Elena tells them. No one seems to hear her. She steps away, into the dark shadows of the wood, and lets the moonlight guide her over the rough terrain until the fraught voices of her friends fade to an indistinct murmur on the wind.

She has to talk to him. Has to know. 

Gathering herself, she pulls up Klaus's phone number. Hits dial.

Stefan grabs her before he picks up.

Chapter Text

The love of her life drags her through the worst thing that ever happened to her like she means nothing to him. Like she really is just the means to Klaus's end.

All she can think as Stefan punches the accelerator, the metallic taste of his blood still cloying in her mouth, is that somehow, she is not worth as much to him alive as Klaus is worth to him dead.

Seconds later, she's reminded that she's not worth as much to Klaus dead as she is to him alive.

She's not prepared for how hurt she is to discover that, even after last night, nothing has really changed.

She really is just a girl alone.

After— after Klaus has caved and saved her life, after she has told the one person she used to trust the most to stay away from her and meant it, after she has brushed past Damon, waiting for her on her front porch with empty platitudes yet again—she seeks Klaus out at his big empty mansion.

She'd had a long time to think on her solitary walk home from the bridge.

He doesn't seem the least little bit surprised to see her when she barrels through his front door three hours after he hung up from Stefan before even bothering to find out if she was actually alright, satisfied merely to ascertain that she would survive as a human.

She's not alright. Can no longer remember what alright even looks like.

"You should go home," he tells her immediately, when she storms up into his studio and interrupts his painting. "You look a bit strained by this evening's events."

"Not until we talk."

He puts down his paint brushes and turns to face her. Leans back against his palette table and crosses his arms over his chest. "Is this the part where you ask about last night?" he asks her lightly. "What it meant, and what you are to me?" He gives her a knowing look before turning back to his painting, dismissing her without even waiting for her answer. "It was a good time, nothing more, sweetheart. Something to pass the time. Don't make it out to be something that it wasn't."

She'd known he was a coward. Realized that he'd crept out of bed this morning because he must have found himself unable to face her in the morning, after he'd let her in, after he'd let her see him just a little bit, but this—

(Maybe that's what immortality really did to you. Made dying so abstract that you never learned to live with the primal fear of death, let alone the other fears that everyone else learned to bear up under—heartbreak, rejection, and abandonment. To experience those things is to live. But he had neither truly lived nor died in a thousand years, caught instead in that vampiric half-life.)

Whatever. She's had hours to think about this, and she'd known, before she'd ever stepped foot in here tonight, which tack Klaus would take with her. All that time it had taken her to get home had given her the space to smother whatever spark of excitement, of empathy, that Klaus had ignited in her the night before. To clear her head.

As always, Elena is here to make a deal.

"I'm not here to talk about last night."

This causes him to pause. Just the slightest hesitation as he drags a brush across his canvas. He cocks his head without looking to her.

"To what, then, do I owe this occasion?" Something in his tone alerts her: he's displeased that she's brushed off their night together as cavalierly as he had just done. He hadn't been prepared for her to be able to play at his table.

"You ordered Tyler to bite Caroline."

"So I did."

"Why?"

"I wanted to remind that merry gang of wayward assassins that they live on my sufferance."

Not so long ago, he might have called it her merry gang of wayward assassins.

She pushes the wave of sadness that thought brings with it to the side.

"So it was a warning." She takes a deep breath. Steals a step closer. "You could cure her."

"I could, were I so inclined."

"What would it take, to persuade you?"

"Nothing you can offer me."

She's close now. She can feel the way he tenses as she places a hand on his arm. Tries to draw his sympathy to her. Sympathy she knows he has, somewhere. "Please, Klaus. She's my best friend. I'm begging you."

"Bold of you to assume I care." He never takes his eyes off his painting, like Caroline's life really means so little to him.

She really really really would dearly love to drive a dagger through his heart right now, and she would, she totally would, if she didn't need his help so very badly.

"Why this morning?" she finally snaps. "Why not order Tyler to do this weeks ago? What made today special?"

Klaus selects a palette knife and drags it over a section of the painting, scraping paint away under its edge. Hardly paying any attention to the conversation. "What makes any morning any more remarkable than the last, when you've experienced over a millennium of them?"

"You did it because you let me in last night," she declares, rolling right over his infuriating response. "You let me see a part of you that you'd prefer to keep secret, and you regretted it in the morning. I get it. We can go back to being enemies. Keep things just as they were before. I won't bother you. Just, please, leave Caroline out of this."

He turns around to face her again, and gives her a long, cold stare. "She's the one who's chosen to involve herself. If she dies, she'll have no one but herself to blame. And I really think it would be wise if you followed your own advice and removed yourself from this affair entirely. You'll live longer." He doesn't say a word about her offer to stay clear of him.

"I can't do that. I can't just walk away."

"Your so-called friends have abandoned you to whatever your fate may be. Why fret over theirs?"

"Because I love them, Klaus. There's no turning your back on the people you love."

"Isn't there?"

"Have you really never loved anyone at all?"

"Don't presume to know me."

"Then prove me wrong. Please."

He shakes his head. "I told you I was the villain of the piece. I cannot help it if you did not listen."

Elena trudges home in a state of total defeat.

She crawls into bed, her mind racing with how she can acquire a phial of Klaus's blood in the next 48 hours or so.

She'd promised Caroline she'd find a way to save her.

It all feels so hopeless.

There's a part of her that knows, that night, even if she isn't ready to acknowledge it yet, that she's going to have to find a way to put him down. That even if she saves Caroline tomorrow, it's still only a matter of time before he sets his sights on Damon or Stefan or Matt, and that there's no telling whether he'll choose mercy or wanton bloodshed when that time comes. It won't matter, then, how he'd made her feel warm and wanted and excited for the first time in ages, or how his honest smile had lit up his face and made her heart skip a beat. It won't matter that, for a few hours, they had come so terribly close to achieving a sort of uncomplicated happiness, of a sort that she hadn't really thought could exist anymore for her. None of it will matter at all. Nothing she feels really seems to matter anymore. Just the question of whether she is living or whether she is dead, and whether Klaus lives or dies.

In the morning, Caroline calls. Klaus had swept in out of the blue and cured her. Wished her a happy birthday.

Later, he'll tell her that he hadn't done it for her.

Chapter Text

She interprets his curing Caroline as a tacit agreement to the terms she had offered. She would pretend that night never happened, and go back to treating him with the same wary distance as she had before.

She does.

It's easier than she had thought it would be.

When Tyler up and leaves without a word to anyone, it's Bonnie's shoulder Caroline cries on.

It's obvious this is Klaus's fault—that Tyler's either running from what Klaus forced him to do, or worse, that Klaus has sent him on some dark secret mission bound to end in bloodshed— but she never hears Caroline blame Klaus even once.

That's fine.

Elena can blame him enough for the both of them.

At night, she tosses and turns, wrestling with her memories of that night. Forcing herself to forget what his mouth on her had felt like, to repress the weight of his body. To push out the illicit spark of power she'd felt, looking through his most personal expressions of self. The sick-exciting feeling of confessing her most guarded secret to him, the rush that had felt like the moment when you first leap from a very great height, and your body is still arcing up and up and up, before the inevitable fall.

She doesn't know why a few hours of foolish abandon could leave such a mark on her, when there are entire weeks she spent with Stefan that she can hardly even remember.

During the day, she never lets herself think about that night at all.

October slips into a cold, wet November.

The days are very short now, and the nights are long.

She stops visiting the Grill to do her homework. Stops bothering to ask Bonnie and Caroline what they are doing after school, too restless to listen to any more excuses.

After the incident on the bridge, she avoids the Salvatores altogether.

Bonnie goes on a trip to find her mother, taking Damon along with her.

She finds out about it later, when they return with Abby Bennett in tow, without any explanations asked or given.

Sometimes, she calls Jeremy, just to check up on him. Most of the time, he doesn't pick up. He's joined the baseball team at his new school, and between sports practice and a new circle of friends, he's too busy to spend too much time talking to the sister he's been compelled not to worry over.

That had been one of her stipulations. That Jeremy wouldn't worry.

She considers, in an abstract way, whether Damon would do the same for her if she showed up on his door step.

It's not a fantasy she can ever make true.

If she doesn't worry, doesn't keep a sharp eye trained on her friends, then they'll get themselves killed.

Not that they notice she is watching their backs.

They're too busy planning a murder.

She lets them.

Her life settles into a routine again, loathe as she is to admit it.

School and the dull necessity of eating and breathing and sleeping, of brushing her hair and washing her face and doing her laundry, take their toll.

Slowly but surely, Klaus stops frequenting her dreams.

She hardly ever sees him, and he seems content to give her as wide a berth as possible. They haven't even spoken since that night she begged him to save Caroline.

Some days, she forgets that those stolen hours together ever happened.

She should have suspected that something would inevitably happen to break her uneasy, monotonous peace.

The house is dark just like every other night. She doesn't even bother to turn on the lights before stumbling toward the kitchen, which is how she manages to trip over Alaric, bleeding to death in the front hall.

There's no one there to help her. No one but herself to save him.

The knife pierces his heart, and Alaric screams, and Elena grits her teeth through the déjà vu stirred up by driving a blade between the ribs of someone who trusted her.

After, she sits on the front steps. Her hands are bloody up to the wrists, the knees of her jeans and the front of her shirt soaked through with it.

She'd left Alaric slumped where he died. He'd been too heavy to move by herself, and she'd been too much of a wreck to do more than leave him and wait for him to revive. She's not entirely certain that he will. Not really sure that she had connected the dots the right way when she'd surmised that a death at her hands would count as supernatural.

She may have just murdered the last bit of family she has left.

More than anything, she wants someone to hold her in their arms and tell her it will be alright. To tell her she'd done the right thing. The only thing.

It's a moment of weakness, but she can't help herself. She fumbles her phone from her pocket, heedless of the red stain she leaves on the keys, and dials Damon.

The phone rings and rings and rings. He doesn't pick up.

Alaric does awaken, finally, late the next morning.

It's a hollow victory, with his blood dried on her hands.

Neither of them ever talk about the incident again.

He stops sleeping over after that. Drops the pretense of playing guardian for her altogether.

She does try to bring the killer up when she spots Damon and Bonnie conferring in urgent whispers in the school parking lot, but they bottle up as soon as she draws near, and don't pay her too much mind. She can hear them resume their whispering as soon as she's out of earshot.

Rebekah tries to kill her one night in the CVS parking lot. Only Elijah fortuitously swooping in out of the blue to throw his sister off of her saves her life.

"How are you here?" she asks, her voice rough from the still-yet invisible bruises Rebekah had left when she crushed her throat.

Elijah raises an eyebrow. "I'm surprised you hadn't heard. Your Damon Salvatore was the one to reawaken me." He pauses. Offers her a wicked half-smile that thrills a part of her she had thought was dead. "Though, I must confess, the last time I awoke from my enchanted sleep, it was to a much lovelier face."

"I had nothing to do with this," she tells him, regret threading through her words. She would have liked to be the one to wake him up.

Suddenly she cannot help but wonder how different the past few months would have played out if he had been here. If they could have worked through her problems with him, the way she had last year. They'd been a formidable team, once.

"And he's not really my Damon Salvatore at all, anymore," she adds. "I don't really have anything to do with them lately."

"I doubt either of the Salvatores see it that way. They both speak of you as though you are their primary concern."

She can't hear this right now. The idea that they still dare to speak for her after everything they have and haven't done simultaneously infuriates her and leaves her sick with longing for them.

They still care.

Just—not in the way that she needs.

Elena shakes her head to clear it. "Let's not talk about them. Tell me about you. Tell me what's going on. Please."

He regards her with dark, penetrating eyes, deeper and older than eternity. "Very well," he murmurs. "I suppose I must start from the very beginning."

When he offers her his arm, she takes it without hesitating. Lets him lead her away from her car, so they can stroll through the empty late night streets together.

Eventually, he pieces together for her why everyone has been so cagey around her.

Klaus's elusive comments about his siblings make a lot more sense when she discovers that the Salvatores had been suicidal enough to steal Klaus's entire family out from under him, and that Bonnie and Caroline had been aiding them.

Somehow, they'd lost possession of the coffins, but not before managing to reanimate the entirety of the Original Family. Including Klaus's witch of a mother.

All of them confronting him at once. That must have been his worst nightmare.

Elijah walks her to her door, but doesn't press to come in. Even now, he is a gentleman. From his jacket, he produces a heavy envelope with her name scrawled across the front in flourishing script.

"What's this?" she asks as she delicately thumbs open the wax seal on the back.

The smile Elijah bestows on her is so soft and gentle. The opposite of his brother's.

"It's an invitation. My mother is throwing a ball."

Chapter Text

The doors sweep open, and the room seems to hush and go still, just for a moment, to watch Elena Gilbert delicately step past the threshold in a shimmer of sequins and hand-stitched beading.

She hasn't stepped foot in this mansion since the night of Caroline's birthday. Has avoided thinking about it.

It is, she notes, no longer empty at all.

She's there only moments before she has both of the Salvatores materializing at her side.

"Why are you here?" Damon hisses at her.

Elena gives him a long look. "I was invited."

"You should go," Stefan says without looking at her.

She follows the line of his gaze to where it is settled firmly on the back of a familiar head of dark blond hair.

She ignores the way her stomach knots when she spots him.

"I don't see why. I've only just arrived."

"You don't understand what's at stake tonight," Damon insists. "You'll get hurt if you stick around."

"No, I understand completely. Elijah told me last night, after he stopped Rebekah from tearing my throat out. You thought you'd found a weapon against Klaus, and instead you just handed him back his loving and forgiving witch mother." She pats his arm. "You're here for damage control, but you don't have any leverage to keep Klaus from killing you. Does that sum it up?"

Damon's eyes narrow. Reads the resolve in her face. Her ambition. "No. We're not talking about this. We're not using you for leverage."

She slips past him, out onto the dance floor. Over her shoulder, she calls, "I never said you were."

Elena knows an opportunity when she sees one.

That there will be one, tonight, eventually, is inevitable. There always is, at parties like this.

She just has to find it.

She thinks she has it.

And so she dances. Catches a bewildering glimpse of Matt with Rebekah, only to shove the sharp spike of anxiety the sight of him here, in the lion's den, produces down down down until she can't feel it.

There are no shortage of dance partners for her. There are enough town dignitaries here who know her by name, enough suave favorite sons who teased her when she was a child but cannot take their eyes off of her now, that she has a new vaguely familiar partner at every turn.

And then, of course, there is Elijah.

He, also, cannot take his eyes off of her.

Hope quivers in her breast when he asks her for a dance.

She had hoped for this, as she sat in front of her mirror, staring into her reflection.

His hands are so very gentle as he leads her through a complicated pattern of steps. He touches her as though he is holding a delicate bird in his hands and fears crushing it between his fingers.

Elena's not delicate, but she doesn't mind being perceived as such by him.

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see the Salvatores on opposite ends of the room, both of them watching her as the pattern of the dance twirls her across the ballroom. They're positively glued to her every move, both of them, and the knowledge fills her with a vicious exultance.

"I'm glad you're back," she tells him, affecting a shyness she doesn't really feel. "Klaus needs someone to balance his worst impulses." To keep him from murdering her friends.

Surely, Elijah's honor must compel him to do that much for her, after he betrayed her last spring. The idea had come to her last night, as she held the fine invitation in her hand, that Elijah is just the ally she had been waiting for. Just the person strong enough to save the Salvatores from their own snares. He owed her that.

Except, Elijah looks away from her, a familiar expression playing over his face. Guilt. "I don't plan to stay. I'm merely here until everything in my family is… settled."

"You're leaving?" She can't keep the disappointment out of her voice. "You're just—going to walk away, and let Klaus have his free rein over me, over my whole town?"

He frowns at her. "I cannot possibly stay. Niklaus and I do not get along as we once did. We do not… see our purposes similarly enough to co-exist in harmony."

"You know how he's using me, right? For my blood? How he's held my friends and family hostage against me?"

"My brother has always been difficult."

"You won't even try to stop him."

He doesn't deny it.

An immense disappointment in Elijah shudders through her. He's really no different than he was last spring, when he'd spared Klaus's life after she'd already gone through with her end of the bargain and died for the sake of their scheme.

Jenna had died for nothing. John.

Slowly, bit by bit, Klaus has taken everything else from her. Her lover, her brother, the trust and confidence of her friends. All because Elijah had this weakness for him.

The music lulls, and the both of them are saved from having to say another word to each other by a new partner stealing her away, swinging her abruptly into the next dance—an intimate waltz.

She looks up into Klaus's stormy expression.

She had hoped to wring a promise from Elijah tonight and be done with it. Hoped that it could be so simple as that.

She had hoped to avoid Klaus altogether.

She doesn't account for her body's reaction to him—for the way her blood pounds and her breath hitches when he takes her into his arms, for the surge of adrenaline in her veins that accompanies a spike of something else, something primal—fear, or attraction. Maybe both.

Klaus glares at her. "Is your presence here an attempt to garner my attention?"

"Hardly. Elijah invited me. I enjoy his company."

The hand resting against her waist tightens, for just a fraction of an instant, before loosening again to a normal grip. He offers her a cold, sharp-toothed smile that does nothing to dampen the burning in his gaze. "My brother ever was susceptible to a familiar, pretty face."

Alarm bells scream in her ears. She has to get out of this as quickly as possible. Get back on track.

"Are you jealous?" It's the last question she should be asking. One she cannot stop herself from asking.

She came here to find a way to save the Salvatores from Klaus's wrath, but it seems like she's incapable of controlling herself around Klaus.

"Why should I be? I've already tasted you. Twice."

"You haven't answered my question."

He gathers her closer. "You think very highly of yourself."

She glances around the room. At her power to pin every eye to her as though she is the lone star shining bright in the night sky.

It's an unnatural power. One she's only recently begun to notice that she wields. It's the sole outward sign of her status as a supernatural being, and on nights like tonight, when she does nothing to diminish herself, instead doing everything that she can to amplify her charms—

Tonight, even Klaus cannot help but try to gather up some of her starlight.

She tilts her face back, so that their mouths are very close. The long cascade of her hair over her shoulder hides the bite scars he's left on her neck, but she can see the way his eyes drift down, to the hidden soft skin of her throat, as though drawn by a magnet.

The memory of his bite fissures through her again.

"You cured Caroline for me," she breathes.

He brushes her hair away from her shoulder. Touches a trailing finger to the column of her throat. "I didn't do it for you."

"No?"

Klaus drops his hand. "I thought we were agreed you were to stay out of these functions." There's a current of anger in his words.

Elena remembers herself.

"I'm a founding daughter of this town. The last of the Gilberts, thanks to you. If you really want to establish yourself in Mystic Falls, you'll have to get used to my presence at society events."

He studies her. "What's the real reason you're here tonight? Did you hope to strike another bargain with me? I can tell you, I'm not in the mood to hear you out."

"Believe it or not, I'm not here to seek you out at all. I was actually hoping to get through the night without even having to say a word to you." The lie comes so easily to her lips that she nearly believes it. She's been lying to herself every day about Klaus for so long that reality and fantasy are starting to blend inseparably together in her mind. In her heart. There are days and days at a time when that night between them really does slip her memory altogether. "Remember, you're the one who came to me. Not the other way around."

"Only to offer you a word of warning: do not try to intervene in my dealings with the Salvatore brothers. Even my patience for you has its limits, useful as you are."

"What are you planning to do to them?"

He smiles at her. "Something spectacular, I should think."

She stumbles out of Klaus's arms and hides herself away in an oak-paneled study until she can get herself under control.

Something spectacular.

She knows Klaus well enough to know what that means.

She'd been such an idiot, to show up here, bedecked in this ridiculous ball gown, and expect that she could flutter her eyelashes and flirt and somehow pull a victory out of nothing, when she has been pushed off the playing board for months now.

Of course no one will bother to negotiate with her. Klaus doesn't care about her, not really, and the Salvatores have apparently all but sworn her off. Any hope she'd felt by Elijah's reentry into this sick cat-and-mouse murder game everyone has been playing all year had been well and truly smothered by his words tonight.

It feels like a miracle, then, when one of Klaus's brothers—Finn—finds her, and explains that his mother is eager for an audience with her—alone.

Esther bargains that with just a drop of Elena's blood, she can condemn all of her children to the grave. A drop of her blood, for all of their deaths.

The price is very dear.

She doesn't know Finn or Kol. She might pity Rebekah, but she's not blind. She sees the way that she's looked at her since her awakening, and knows that she will be coming for her throat again at the first opportunity.

But Elijah. She feels the weight of his death as a physical pang.

She has always wanted him to be her white knight, and she thinks there is a part of him that has always regretted that he has never been able to be that for her. Now he never will be.

Her heart rebels against thinking on Klaus for too long.

She has known for weeks now that she would have to find a way to kill him once and for all before he could destroy even a single person more on her list.

She just hadn't been prepared for that night to be tonight.

If only she'd never spoken to him that night, this decision would be so easy. If only she had never grasped something integral about him—never seen beneath the lies he projects with every double-edged smile.

They are both solitary creatures, doomed in their own ways.

She had never thought to find her mirror in him.

She is a doppelganger. She must kill all of her reflections if she wants to be the one to live.

If she wants anyone she loves to live, for that matter.

Sometimes, she feels like her daring is the only thing standing between any of them and the abyss.

She pricks her own finger, and watches the blood drip ruby into Esther's goblet.

Elijah stops her in the hall, and she lies as easily as breathing.

At the champagne toast, she even smiles for him as she watches him drink down his death.

She catches Klaus's eye across the room. Watching them. He hasn't taken a sip from his flute yet.

Elena raises her glass in his direction and nods.

Slowly, Klaus raises the glass to his lips, and drinks.

"So are we going to talk about why you're really here?" Stefan asks her as she accepts a second flute of champagne from a passing caterer.

The dancing has recommenced, by now, and although she has received several offers, she cannot bring herself to join them. What she's done still sits too heavily inside of her, a stone of guilt as she watches Elijah laugh with his mother.

She purposefully doesn't look for Klaus at all.

Elena takes a sip and lets the bubbles fizz in her mouth, tilts her glass and takes her time before responding. "I'm not blind, Stefan. I've known you and Damon were up to something for months."

"Your involvement would have ruined us. You make Damon weak."

"Just Damon?"

He ignores the jibe. "What's the plan, Elena?"

She takes another sip. "Who ever said there was one?"

"I can't help you if you don't tell me."

She spots Caroline tip-toeing into the party from across the room, swathed in a brilliant blue gown strewn with delicate crystals. A diamond bracelet Elena's never seen before glitters on her wrist.

"You brought Caroline here?" She's furious. It's one thing for the Salvatores to insist on running headlong into danger, but it's unacceptable for them to constantly endanger Caroline and Bonnie by involving them.

"This wasn't me."

A moment later, as she spies Klaus crossing the room to Caroline, attention riveted to her friend the way he had been riveted to her while they danced, she believes Stefan. Terribly, terribly, she believes him.

I didn't do it for you.

She can't watch this.

"Let's take a walk, Stefan."

Damon catches up to them outside.

She tells them what she's done.

Damon's furious, of course, but Stefan appraises her with new eyes.

"You're different," he tells her, later, as they say goodnight on her front porch. "Stronger."

She kisses him on the mouth, and he doesn't pull away.

That night isn't like every other night they passed together last year. He's different with her, distant from her even when he's inside of her. She's distant, too.

They've grown cold over the past year. Starved for warmth, but unable to give it to each other.

He's gone when she wakes up, but she doesn't mind.

She showers, drinks a mug of black coffee, and heads straight to the Salvatore house.

Damon pauses when he sees her, but makes room for her on the sofa. It feels, for a shimmering moment, as though she has never left this space between the two of them.

They light the fire to keep out the chill, and they lay their plans.

Chapter Text

Of course, nothing ever goes to plan.

Elijah kidnaps her, trapping her deep underground with Rebekah, and by the end of the day, Abby Bennett is a vampire and Klaus is still very much alive.

Her hair smells like gasoline for days afterwards. No matter how many times she washes it, she cannot purge the smell of it from her skin.

The sharp scent of it roils queasily in her gut.

Stefan doesn't say anything about it when he comes to her at night.

His silence makes her worry that it's all in her head.

And yet, the incident drives home the truth for her, in ways that had sometimes felt difficult to grasp onto: She had been right to do all she could to strike Klaus down.

She chants it to herself, a catechism that drives away her unease whenever her mind brushes against that night.

Bonnie leaves town to take care of her transitioning mother, taking Caroline with her.

Neither of them will answer her calls. It hurts—it always hurts, how no matter what, she ends up being the one pushed out—but maybe it hurts a little bit less now that the Salvatores have decided to let her back in.

At some point, the Boarding House began to feel more like home than the empty white house she grew up in.

It takes her days and days to realize that Klaus has gone, too.

Sometimes, she squeezes her eyes shut and thinks that if she concentrates hard enough, she can feel her blood moving inside of them. Linking her to each of the Originals. Tying her to Klaus.

It's a fantasy, of course. She can't feel anything at all.

Despite the darkness in Stefan's eyes, the hunger with which his mouth maps her body, breathing in the scent of her skin at the base of her throat and the inside of her thigh like an addict, she isn't afraid of him.

She's so far past that now.

"You're back together with my brother," Damon notes one afternoon.

That's a strong word for what they've really been doing—trying to wring some sense of comfort out of each other, clinging desperately to the last shreds of a past they shared, lest they both tumble into the abyss alone.

Despite the nonchalant way he says it, Elena knows that deep down, he's hurt that she's chosen Stefan over him. Except, she hasn't. Not really. If she were to do with Damon what she's currently doing with Stefan, it would be something entirely different. It wouldn't be huddling for warmth; it would be building a fire.

When she doesn't respond, he continues, "He's stopped drinking human blood."

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

"If he falls off the wagon and you're the closest live blood source near to hand, it will be. I prefer your pretty head attached to your body."

She considers his words seriously. "I could feed him my blood, just a little bit every day, like last year."

"Not good enough."

His phone rings, interrupting them.

Alaric's been arrested for murder.

Damon insists he and Stefan need a brothers' day out while they fruitlessly brainstorm the identity of the real killer, and no one will answer her phone calls or her texts—even Matt tells her, stubbornly, that he has a shift tonight, since he actually has to work for a living—so it's up to her to break into Meredith Fell's apartment by herself and figure out why she's framing Alaric.

On her way home, she stumbles across Stefan and Damon feeding on some poor woman in an alley.

Both brothers freeze.

Stefan looks at her like he's waiting for her to strike out at him. Damon, with narrowed eyes, like he's waiting for a self-righteous accusation.

She doesn't have the wherewithal to push them away right now.

Without either blessing or condemning them, she walks away.

The next day, she turns up at their house as though the scene in the alley had never happened.

She's been reading Samantha Gilbert's journal, and the Salvatores have been investigating Rebekah's suspicious interest in their family's lumber business, the mystery of the killer promptly shunted to the side upon Alaric's release.

It's then that she discovers that Damon has a new friend. A redheaded vampire named Sage that Elena takes an immediate disliking to.

It's a confusing time.

Alaric is sick with some supernatural affliction that no one else other than Meredith Fell seems overly worried about, and Damon has that look in his eyes like he's planning something catastrophic.

She walks in on Damon one night, naked and wrapped only in a low slung towel, burning a thick ledger in the parlor fireplace. An equally disheveled Sage lounges in Elena's favorite place on the leather sofa, wearing a sated little smirk like a cat that's ate the canary and drank all of the cream. She intuits from their brief exchange that Rebekah is asleep upstairs in Damon's bed, fucked into blissful oblivion.

Red hot anger potently mixed with hurt lashes over her as she stands awkwardly in the doorway—feelings which she ruthlessly crushes until her heart feels as blank as her expression.

It's not her place to feel this way about Damon.

Not her place to be upset that there are other girls here, invited to conspire with him.

Sage brushes past her, giving her a lascivious once-over before making her way upstairs.

When Damon catches sight of her, it's clear that none of her efforts to control and smother her true feelings have been successful. He raises a dark, knowing brow at her before telling her, "It's a school night. Isn't it past your bedtime?"

When she gets home, she finds Meredith Fell dead in her bathroom.

She moves the body herself. Buries her in the woods where no one will find her. Damon's taught her that much, over the years.

The past few months have taught her how to do it alone.

It's only later, as she's stomping the mud from her boots and scrubbing the dirt from beneath her nails, that it occurs to her that the Salvatores probably would have answered if she'd called them about this. That they would probably want to know that Alaric's serial killer alter-ego is still a threat, even without him wearing his ring.

She never questions why her first instinct had been to protect Alaric rather than calling Sheriff Forbes.

She wakes up sick the next morning. Not surprising. Even she has her limits.

"Alaric's killing again," she announces when she arrives at the Boarding House, at the same time as Damon announces with wicked glee, "Guess who found a secret stash of white oak?"

She has another piece of news.

She'd spotted Klaus crossing the town green with Rebekah and Finn that morning.

They find Alaric at his loft, bleary eyed and confused. No memory of skewering his girlfriend with one of her stainless steel kitchen knives.

With reluctance, and at Alaric's insistence, Damon agrees to lock him in the Salvatore dungeon while they handle the more urgent matter of the stakes.

The Salvatores call a meeting in the woods. It's the first time Elena's seen Caroline, much less heard from her, since Damon turned Bonnie's mother. It hurts, a little bit, that Caroline will come for Damon's summons and won't even text her back.

Even Matt shows up, despite his loudly proclaimed desire to stay out of the supernatural.

There is a brief mention of Bonnie not showing up, but that's quickly swept aside when they drop the bag of freshly whittled stakes down in front of everyone. The sight of all of those impossible weapons fills her with a surge of unbridled hope. A lot of hope. When Klaus is dead, she'll be able to put this entire time in her life behind her. She'll be able to stop struggling with herself.

That's why she's so startled when Caroline whines, "Why do I always have to be Klaus bait?"

"Because he's obsessed with you," Damon says, like it's a fact that everyone just knows about.

Elena stares hard at her circle of fellow conspirers. No one looks the least bit surprised by Damon's assessment. Everyone does know about this.

With everything else that's happened, that moment she'd glimpsed between Caroline and Klaus the night of the ball had slipped her mind completely.

She's not prepared for the dark wash of ugly emotions that rises within her as she realizes that, during all those weeks she had been cut out, something had apparently been growing between Caroline and Klaus without her notice.

It's just another example of all of the myriad ways she had been abandoned and pushed to the side of the road, and it shouldn't upset her the way that it does.

Klaus fixating on Caroline is a hell of a lot less personal than her various maneuvers to put him in the ground.

It doesn't stop it from feeling that way.

They do kill an Original, in the end. Just not the one she had hoped to.

An hour later, she has the satisfaction of watching Sage bleed out and shrivel up on the Salvatores' Oriental rug.

Bonnie calls her in tears, adding another tally against Klaus.

"You were jealous of Sage," Stefan notes, that night, from between her thighs.

Her whole body feels tender to the touch, especially her chest. She'd landed hard when Sage had shoved her. She expects she'll find bruises coming up by morning.

"Why would I be jealous?"

He regards her heavily, his chin resting at the crease between her thigh and her hip. "It's my fault," he says at last. "I don't blame you."

She shifts away from him to sit up. "Let's not talk about this."

"How much longer do you think we can keep not talking about how you're in love with Damon as well as with me?"

His words twist inside of her. She can't confirm or deny any of them. Doesn't know why.

The next day, she and Damon leave for Denver to collect Jeremy, and, hopefully, to find out who the originator of Rose's line had been.

She can't explain what possesses her to kiss him on the motel balcony that night, as though in kissing him she could draw his spirit and his conviction into herself, as though his fire could cleanse her of the fog within her heart.

It's the same reckless hunger for a time-out that urges her to draw him closer, to hook her fingers into his belt and let him push down her pajama pants, to haul her up and wrap her legs around his waist so he can fuck her against that hotel pillar, out in the open, where anyone at all could see her.

Damon rocks into her slowly, only freezing when he is fully seated inside of her, as though only in that moment realizing what they have done, how fast they've raced past any definition of right or wrong. He looks at her, and she can see in his wide-eyed gaze and unsteady, hitching breaths the way that his love for her utterly devastates him, leaves him bare and defenseless to her, slowly but surely destroying him until nothing is left but her inside of him.

She wants to consume him. To eat his heart, in hopes of understanding her own.

Nothing is any clearer in the morning.

They find a new home for Jeremy, somewhere harder for Klaus to find, and Damon compels for him a new life. A safer life.

No one tells her not to do it. No one is left to draw the lines for her.

She's sick again on the way home. The guilt is driving her body to reject nourishment, to punish itself. The guilt, or the stress of constantly running and scheming and bargaining for her life, for the lives of everyone she loves, of living so constantly in the shadow of unnatural death.

She's looked it up online. This isn't an uncommon symptom. Lots of people respond like this.

At least, in this, she is normal.

Both Damon and Stefan avoid her, after Denver.

She goes to the Decades Dance stag, and watches from the periphery of the room as her friends dance and enjoy themselves.

She's not alone for very long. Klaus appears at her side like an apparition, hair slicked back, a distant, easy smirk on his face that she remembers so well from last spring, and asks her to dance. Reluctantly, she takes his hand, hating the way she trembles when he touches her.

"I thought you'd rather be dancing with Caroline," she tells him.

"I would."

"Then why bother ruining my night?"

"You didn't take my advice."

"Which bit?"

"The bit about staying clear of the Salvatores and their little plots."

"They perform better when I'm there to supervise."

"I don't understand why you insist on trying to kill me. It's growing tedious."

"You're the one forcing my hand. Every time you threaten or hurt someone I love, you're forcing me."

He considers her, head tilted to the side. "You don't sound like your heart is very in it."

"There are some who would say I don't have a heart."

This draws a real smile from him. She's dreamt about that smile. She hates how it makes her feel.

"I've been accused of much the same."

"Why are you here?" she asks, redirecting the conversation.

"My sister begged me to come, and I was hoping for a chance to speak with Caroline."

"Why bother me then?"

"Because I'm leaving town tomorrow."

She pulls out of his grasp, and he lets her. She's dreaded this moment, this threat hanging over her head, for months now. "I'm not leaving with you."

"I don't want you to."

This deflates her. "Oh. Why are we having this conversation, then?"

"Because we're going to come to a new arrangement. I'll be sending a nurse to take your blood every three months. I plan to leave a contingent of hybrids behind to watch over you. If they should wind up dismembered or missing, I shall be very displeased."

"Fine. Is that it?"

He studies her, hard. "Yes."

She watches as he interrupts Caroline and Tyler, before deciding even she isn't enough of a martyr to stick around for this.

Naturally, she's immediately kidnapped by Esther, so her blood can serve as the key ingredient in a dark ritual to turn Alaric into another Original vampire, only to be saved in the last instant from participating by Damon and Stefan bursting into the tomb.

Damon breaks Alaric's neck, but not before Esther flees with the white oak stake imbued with the powers of the Gilbert ring.

After, she stands in the empty crypt with Damon and Stefan, Alaric's body crumpled and broken on the ground. She wants to look anywhere else than at Alaric's blank-eyed stare, his poor twisted neck.

She cannot look away.

And it's worse, because Damon won't speak to her and Stefan won't look at her, neither of them have since Denver, but it's all worse now than ever, so much heavier, and yet, she stays. She stays.

Later, after they've dug Alaric's grave in bursting silence, she follows them back to the Boarding House like a lost little ghost, and the three of them pile onto the sofa.

Damon won't speak to her and Stefan won't look at her but they speak and look at each other, tense little statements and searching, significant looks between brothers. She refuses to abandon them, even now.

And when the three of them fall into that familiar pattern on the sofa, they both cling to her, her boys, her vampires, burrowing into her sides with needy, clinging hands and swarming, starveling mouths. She stays with them both all night long.

In the morning, something has shifted between them, but she doesn't understand what it is until it's too late.

They leave town together without saying goodbye to her.

Chapter Text

Everyone looks at her like they expect the Salvatores abandoning her to destroy her.

It doesn't.

Elena's grown accustomed, over these past 18 months, to losing the ones she loves the most. To being the one who remains. The one left behind.

She keeps all of the grief inside of herself, bottled tightly, lest she fall apart completely. Caroline shoots her worried glances over Alaric's grave, and no one dares bring up the two missing from the funeral, or what part Elena may have had in driving them away.

If she feels grief for Damon or Stefan, for the place in between them that had felt like home, she doesn't let herself show it.

She would be lying if she said that Stefan and Damon leaving town doesn't simplify her life.

That doesn't mean she doesn't miss them.

Doesn't mean she's not thinking of them, always. Wondering.

Doesn't mean they haven't broken her heart.

Grief makes her tired, irritable. Sometimes her whole body feels like one steady ache. She finds herself no longer able to stomach so many foods. She's still sick often, a psychosomatic response to the trauma of the past few months that she's determined to ride out.

Life goes on. Homework, meetings with her college counselor, the bills she's suddenly completely responsible for… a million little things that keep her distracted, keep her breathing one moment to the next.

Autumn slowly dissolves into a gray, foggy winter, and Christmas lights start to pop up all over town.

She feels the turn of the season and feels the weight of her mortality.

Fifty years could pass and she could be old and gray before either of them decide to roll back into town.

One of Klaus's hybrids—a girl whose name Elena can't remember—rings the doorbell.

When Elena answers it, there's a nurse waiting to take her blood.

Slowly, Caroline and Bonnie begin talking to her again. Without any Originals to scheme against or witches to battle—without Damon and Stefan actively campaigning to push her out of their circle—her two oldest friends take her back into their confidence. Never about anything big, of course. There's nothing big going on. Just… life. Tests and boys and compulsory shopping trips and school planning committees and occasional awkward pleasantries with her hybrid sentries.

Even Matt begins to smile at her again, and Elena resumes her old habit of going to the Grill twice a week to do her homework.

During the day, everything almost feels back to normal.

And then, she comes home for the night.

Her house feels bigger and emptier than ever. It echoes with a vast, overwhelming quiet that rings in her ears.

This, she thinks, is the sound of a Klaus-free life.

She almost wishes he would come back, just for something to keep her mind off of how truly alone she is.

Wishes are dangerous things. Make them, and inevitably they'll come true, one way or another.

Tyler roars back into town like a hurricane, bringing with him a group of werewolves he met on his travels while he overcame his sire bond and a blazing ambition to save the rest of the hybrids from Klaus's control.

She notices him in the bleachers, tensely discussing something with her hybrid bodyguard of the week, one afternoon while she jogs around the school track.

After the hybrid—Jason, she thinks, or maybe Jake—has left, she catches up to Tyler before he can disappear.

"You're recruiting," she begins without preamble.

"Yeah. Obviously."

"What's the point? Klaus isn't even here anymore."

"You really think he'll stay gone forever?"

"Why not? He's got no reason to come back."

"He's left most of his hybrids here in town. Why would he do that if he weren't ever planning to come back?"

Elena stops in her tracks. "What?"

Tyler raises an eyebrow. "You didn't know?"

"No. I thought it was just the couple he'd left to watch over me."

Tyler shakes his head. "See—that's the problem. What's he doing watching over you? Like he has the right." He takes a deep breath. "Look, the way I see it is this. I was the first of Klaus's unlucky hybrids, and the first to break the sire bond. It's my job to try to save the rest. You get that, right?"

Elena stares hard at him, taking his measure. He could forget about all of this. Choose to be happy with Caroline and finish out his senior year without any of these responsibilities weighing him down. But he could never do that, any more than she could, if she were in his place.

She's being paranoid, she's sure, but she winds up at Klaus's mansion that night. Spends ten long minutes parked out front before she musters up the nerve to trespass.

And it is trespassing. She has to smash a window with a rock to break in. She's actually a bit surprised to find there's no security system—but then, it would never occur to Klaus that he would have to protect himself against anything.

Elena eases in through the window and wanders through the house, body tensed, senses straining.

She's not sure what she expects to find. Just… something. Some hint that what Tyler had said was true. That Klaus really does plan to return.

She drifts through the halls, up the stairs. Pauses in the threshold to Klaus's bedroom, caught in a reverie, before catching herself and hurrying from the room.

There's nothing here. This place is as much a mausoleum to the departed as the place where she falls to sleep each night.

She's too sick to make it to school the next day. Caroline brings her her homework, but she doesn't stay long. Too much to handle with Tyler intent on stirring up trouble.

She's sick a lot after that.

December comes around, and with it, the specter of exams merely weeks away, college applications due before the end of the month, and a potential hybrid revolution set to erupt at any moment. As though all of those things are not enough, she's finally started to wonder if it's not just anxiety making her ill after all.

It's been a few weeks, maybe longer, that she's been sick and achy, and the possibility that she's actually come down with the stomach flu or some other illness has finally become too hard to ignore. She drags herself to an urgent care center, hoping there'll be an easy solution.

"No temperature," the nurse remarks, tucking the thermometer into a drawer and confirming what Elena already knew. "How long have symptoms been occurring?"

Elena bites her lip. "A few weeks now, off and on?"

"Any change to your diet? New foods of any sort?"

She shakes her head. She's practically been living on black coffee and dry toast for weeks now. Hasn't had the appetite or the energy for anything more daunting than that.

"Any other symptoms?"

"I've been headachy, I guess. Tired."

The nurse pauses. Asks, very delicately, "Any chance you may be pregnant?"

Elena actually laughs.

The nurse waits, pen hovering expectantly over her clipboard.

Realizing she's supposed to give an answer, Elena pulls herself together and assures her, "No, no possible way."

Not when the only guys she's sleeping with have been undead since the Civil War.

"Are you sexually active?"

"Well… yeah. Or—I was."

"What birth control are you on?"

"…None."

At this, the nurse, launches into a well-rehearsed spiel on contraceptives that Elena mostly tunes out, before eventually winding back to the symptoms for which Elena came in.

"With the symptoms you're describing, I'd recommend a pregnancy test, if even only to take that possibility off the table. I can run a flu test too, just to see if you have any of the common strains going around right now."

"Just the flu test," Elena says, definitive.

It comes back negative.

Any chance you may be pregnant?

The idea of it sticks in her mind. Impossible to brush off, in the dark permeating silence of her room, with only the swooping circle of her thoughts for company.

Of course, there's absolutely zero chance that she is.

Pregnant, that is.

That would be… absurd.

Elena tosses and turns for what feels like hours before she finally gives up. Drags her laptop up off the floor and runs a google search for the symptoms.

It's like a mudslide from there. Catastrophic damage to her sense of reality as she notes the symptoms, recalls how out of sorts she's been physically. Her aversion to so many of her favorite foods, the vomiting, the aching chest she'd attributed to getting shoved by a vampire but which has never really subsided, the headaches, the exhaustion.

She snaps the laptop shut. Throws open her journal, ripping through the pages, until she finds the last note in the calendar marking the beginning of her last period, sometime in September. She's been so preoccupied she hadn't even noticed.

No no no no no.

She's being crazy.

There's only one way to prove to herself that everything is fine. That she's just having one of those neurotic middle-of-the-night anxiety attacks, that will seem completely bonkers in the morning.

Elena pulls an overcoat over her pajamas and drives over to the 24/7 CVS, where Rebekah had nearly killed her six weeks ago.

Half an hour later, locked in her bathroom, she feels like an idiot, waiting for the test result.

She snatches the test stick up off the sink the second her timer goes off. Stares in total incredulity at the false positive.

She takes the test three more times, each time expecting it to read negative.

Every single one of them trumpets the inconceivable.

Elena wanders across the town square in a daze.

She'd left the house before dawn, and had been walking ever since, trying to wrap her mind around this.

It wasn't possible for four tests to be wrong, was it?

No. Definitely not.

Except, this just isn't possible. Neither Stefan nor Damon could father children. She's positive of that. No vampire could. And they were the only possible—

She freezes, her mind skittering over that night again, before barreling over it, brushing it aside. Same problem as with Damon and Stefan.

A car blares its horn at her, startling her out of the street. She'd been so preoccupied, she'd wandered halfway across without noticing. Could so easily have been struck dead.

Regaining a sense of her surroundings, her heart hammering in her throat from the near miss, Elena looks straight up into the town's nativity display.

Tentatively, she rests her hand against her flat stomach.

Does she really believe that there's a life in there?

There's no possible father, just… these symptoms she can't explain. These symptoms, and a creeping certainty about this which she cannot suppress.

She stares hard at the nativity scene before her. At the vivid reminder of another young girl, inexplicably carrying a child with… dare she think it… supernatural origins?

That could be it. This could be supernatural. A doppelganger thing, maybe. Some mystical failsafe to carry on her bloodline, with or without a human father to contribute.

She's heard of crazier things before.

She goes back to the urgent care, where they confirm the news: She really is going to have a baby.

It's terrible timing. A huge problem in the making. It's probably going to complicate her life forever.

But, despite all of those completely rational thoughts running through her mind, Elena cannot suppress the thrill of real happiness that courses through her at the prospect of this unexpected miracle.

It seems, somehow, against all odds, that she won't be alone for much longer after all.

Chapter Text

"What do you mean you're pregnant?" Caroline gasps the next morning, dropping her mug with a clatter and a splash onto Elena's kitchen counter.

She'd invited Caroline and Bonnie over for Saturday morning coffee on the pretense of planning some Christmas shopping before working on exam outlines. She can be honest enough with herself to admit that it feels good to be here in this warm kitchen with the cool wintery early-morning light streaming in through the French doors and her two best friends gathered close to her again. It feels like old times.

It feels like the end of her exile.

Elena pours a new cup for Caroline and passes it over along with a dish towel to clean up the mess. "Well, I was having all of these weird symptoms and feeling awful, so I went in to the urgent care, and one thing led to another, and I ended up taking a pregnancy test. It came back positive." She tells them all of this very factually, suppressing the urge to smile with supreme effort. This is all dramatic enough as it is. They'd flip if they caught even a whiff that she was actually happy about this.

Scratch that.

Secretly thrilled.

"That can't be right," Bonnie says, leaning heavily on her elbows and staring hard at Elena, like she could see under her skin straight into the truth of the matter. "It must've been a false positive."

"I took four tests, Bon. And they confirmed it with a blood panel."

Caroline narrows her eyes at her. "Who's the father?"

"There isn't one."

"No, seriously. Who did you sleep with?"

Elena sits down at one of the breakfast bar stools, and motions for them to do the same. As calmly and reasonably as she can, she tells them, "The reason I don't think there's a father is because I haven't slept with anyone alive since I broke up with Matt. It's just been Stefan… and one time with Damon." At Caroline's appalled expression and Bonnie's long-suffering sigh, Elena holds up a hand to forestall any questioning. "Let's not get side-tracked on my terrible decision-making over the past few months, okay? That's not the point. The point… is that I think this pregnancy is supernatural. Like, a doppelganger thing, maybe." She knows even as she says it that this is kind of a big leap, but it's the only explanation. And when all plausible explanations are ruled out…

Bonnie drums her fingers against the counter. "Is there any chance you were compelled? That this could be a normal pregnancy, and maybe someone preferred for you to forget making the love connection with someone nice and normal?"

"Damon wouldn't."

Caroline rolls her eyes. "Please, there's nothing Damon wouldn't do. You all do remember what he did to me, right?"

"I wasn't compelled," Elena tells them firmly, preferring not to swim into those waters just now. She just can't. It's too muddy in her head, and Damon's probably gone for good anyway. "I've been on vervain ever since my necklace was taken."

Bonnie frowns and holds a hand out toward Elena before freezing mid-motion. "Can I feel?" she asks, after a short hesitation. "If it really is supernatural, maybe I can get a read on it."

Elena agrees, and holds her breath while Bonnie presses her palm to her stomach.

"You really are pregnant," Bonnie says after a moment, surprise coloring her voice. She shifts her hand over Elena's belly and focuses, her frown deepening as the minutes lengthen.

"Well?" Caroline asks, hovering at Elena's shoulder. "Anything?"

"There is something… strange," Bonnie admits after a moment. "Something… out of tune with Nature." She pulls back, absently rubbing at her hand and staring hard at Elena's stomach. "How far along did you say you were?"

Something like fear unfurls in Elena's chest. "A couple of months. Is there something… wrong?" Catastrophic possibilities race through her mind. Already, the urge to protect her child, this little thing that's barely more than an idea right now, which she's only even known existed for a little more than a day, surges bright and hot within her.

Bonnie shakes her head. "No, not wrong. Just—off. Strange."

"Maybe that's to be expected if this really is a magical pregnancy," Caroline offers, before Elena's fears can gallop ahead of her. "How are you taking this? You must be so freaked out."

Elena wraps her arms around herself. Around the child growing within her. Pushes all of her worries down, down, down. Caroline's probably right. She has to be. Elena tries hard to focus on Caroline's question. "After the initial shock?" she muses. "Pretty well, actually. It's… unexpected, and I would be lying if I said I wasn't daunted by the idea of actually having the baby—"

"So that's it?" Bonnie breaks in. "You're keeping it, no questions asked, no options weighed?"

"Yeah, basically."

"What about college? A career? How are you going to raise this baby on your own? Or afford it?"

"I guess that's the perk of everyone in your family dying horrible, premature deaths," Elena snaps, instantly rebuking herself for her tone. She'd invited them here to make nice, not to pick a fight. If she's going to go through with this pregnancy, she's going to need them. Already she needs them, if Bonnie's comments about the baby being "out of tune with Nature" are anything to go by.

Calming herself, she explains, "I've been left the bulk of the Gilbert fortune, including all of John's assets, as well as life insurance pay-outs. I can make this work."

"But do you want to?" Bonnie presses. "Just because this might be supernatural doesn't mean you have to go through with this."

"Bonnie's right, Elena," Caroline adds. "We'll support you, no matter what—"

"Because this isn't like the sacrifice, Elena," Bonnie continues. "I know you get it in your head sometimes that you're fated to go through with these things because you're a Petrova doppelganger, and everyone puts all of their expectations on you because of that, but this isn't the sacrifice. You can say no, for your own sake."

Bonnie's vehemence takes her aback. She hadn't expected Bonnie to object so strongly to her having this baby.

Hadn't expected Bonnie to care so passionately about what happened to her.

She takes a deep breath. Shares the first real truth amongst the three of them that anyone's offered in months. "It's not like that. I am doing this for myself. After everything that's happened this past year and a half, after all of the people I've lost… the idea of having this baby feels right. It feels like the first hopeful thing that's happened to me since I found out my face wasn't entirely my own. So… I am going through with this. But I could really use some support from my best friends. So… will you?"

Bonnie softens, and gathers her up into a hug. "Of course. Of course I will. I'll do some research, too, see if I can find anything more on supernatural pregnancies."

Thank God.

She had hoped, of course, that Bonnie would offer to help figure this out. That she'd step in and help Elena find an answer about the baby, and whether she had anything to worry about. This morning had only highlighted how essential Bonnie's help would be.

Caroline, of course, cannot resist joining the group hug.

For a second, Elena forgets whatever motives she might have had in inviting them over. In sharing her secret with them.

She closes her eyes and pretends that she's somewhere back in time. That she still trusts these two girls with her heart the way that she used to. That they trust her not to break their hearts first.

It's so good to have them here, she thinks, gathered close, in this bright, warm kitchen, where nothing bad has ever happened or ever will happen.

"Oh, guys! It's like a Christmas miracle," Caroline declares, sounding oddly wistful—almost as though her thoughts have taken the same track as Elena's. Then, as though trying to clear away the mistiness in her eyes, Caroline pulls back and asks, "Does it count if you're not a virgin, though?"

Chapter Text

The three of them become close again, after that morning confession. Bonnie spends her free time poring over her Grams's old library of supernatural texts, searching for anything that might explain the life steadily growing within Elena. Caroline, too, finds ways to help—she blusters into her house the morning after their meeting with bags of groceries and jars of vitamins, and a stern admonition that she needs to start eating properly and taking care of herself, or, if not, then at least let her take care of her. They even both go with her to her first official prenatal appointment (where the doctor informs her that everything so far looks absolutely normal).

It's the most attention either of them have given her in months.

Part of her thinks that the only reason she's been able to seize their attention in this way is that the Salvatores are both gone. That this is possible only because she no longer has to work against their seductive persuasions and addictive plot hatching just to get Bonnie and Caroline to slow down for a moment and listen to her.

The other part is certain that no, this has nothing to do with either of her exes—that this newfound camaraderie has everything to do with the power of keeping a secret together.

And it is a secret.

Right away, the three of them had decided that the best thing would be to keep this quiet for as long as possible. Beyond the supernatural complications, the idea of facing the questions and small-town gossip is just too much. For that reason, she's never told Matt, and Caroline has sworn not to mention anything to Tyler. Even Jeremy doesn't know.

She's still vaguely hopeful that she'll somehow be able to hide this with some baggy clothing until graduation.

"One: I get that no one wants to feel like the teenaged-mom cautionary tale, but why are you so eager to be a fashion victim?" Caroline asks as they sit together after school in Alaric's old classroom, assembling enormous paper snowflakes for the Winter Wonderland festival coming up in just a couple of weeks. "And two," she continues, before Elena can respond, "Aren't you more worried about Klaus finding out?"

Elena shrugs. "How would he? My bodyguards have mostly stopped tagging after me ever since Tyler started trying to sell them on their freedom. I've only seen them like twice this week."

"It won't be long, though, before any vampire or hybrid within 30 feet will be able to tell you're pregnant right away. If they can't already. And that's even if you somehow manage to disguise the bump."

"What? You can sense it?"

"Now that I'm looking for it, I can hear the baby's heartbeat. I feel like an idiot for not noticing that. And…" She cocks her head like a bird's and considers her. "You smell different. Tangier."

Elena places a guarded hand over her belly. "Great, so I'm going to be a walking, talking advertisement for What's Happening to My Body! I was really hoping to keep this a secret for a while longer."

"If you're worried about Klaus coming back and being weird, don't," Caroline hurries to reassure her. "Tyler's really making headway with the hybrids. I don't think any of them are going to be sired to him for that much longer— If we can keep them distracted from reporting on you for just a few more weeks, you'll be in the free and clear, I promise."

"Actually… I don't think Klaus would care."

"Really? You don't think he would be weird about it?" There's something odd in the way Caroline poses the question, almost like she's a little too interested in the answer, that Elena chooses not to linger on.

Instead, she shrugs and picks up a pack of metallic streamers that need untangling. "He told me himself that he wanted me to have kids one day. If anything, he'd probably be pleased that I'm moving ahead of schedule."

Caroline takes a few moments to respond, choosing instead to meticulously tweak the arrangement of the snowflakes Elena had just assembled. "So, if not for Klaus, who are you worried about? The little old ladies on the Town Council? Because who cares what they think."

"Honestly? I'm mostly worried about this somehow getting back to Damon or Stefan. I'm not sure how they'd take this." She fiddles with the end of a streamer. "And I'm not sure I'm ready to see them, right now," she admits. "I'm actually in a good place for the first time in forever, but I know that'll all go down the drain the second I'm with either of them."

Caroline puts a hand over hers and squeezes. "Don't worry, Elena. Bonnie and I've got you."

It's nice to hear, even if she still remembers how recently they didn't.

Bonnie swings by her house after school, her book bag laden with old grimoires.

"Any luck?" Elena asks, placing a steaming mug of tea down in front of Bonnie.

"Does not finding anything bad count as luck?"

"Maybe no news is good news?"

She beckons Elena to sit down on the couch next to her, and reaches out her hand to lay palm-down over Elena's belly, just as she had done the first day. And just like before, Bonnie's eyes slide closed, although, Elena can see them moving rapidly under her lids, as though she were dreaming. Finally, after what feels like forever, Bonnie opens her eyes and pulls away. "It's just so frustrating, you know? I can feel that there's something going on in there, but what?"

Elena picks up one of the books Bonnie's spread out on the den coffee table and flips through it. From what she can tell, it's a philosophical treatise on Natural Balance and various methods of interrupting or subverting it. Elena quirks an eyebrow at her.

Bonnie throws up her hands. "I know, not very relevant, but I'm having a tough time with this! I thought maybe since the doppelganger was originally created as a way to ensure the Balance remained intact, that maybe that could be a useful road to go down, but, so far, nothing helpful. I'm not used to hitting dead ends like this."

"Maybe there aren't any answers to find," Elena admits, even though she doesn't want to. Already, she can feel herself becoming resigned to the mystery of it all.

No.

The miracle.

Bonnie picks up her mug but, instead of drinking from it, chews on her lip with a thousand mile stare. "I got an email from Grams's replacement at Whitmore out of the blue, the other day," she finally tells Elena after the silence has grown long, expectant.

"Oh. What about?"

"He says he has some of Grams's things, wanted to know if I'd like to swing by and grab them."

Elena sits up a little straighter. "Maybe she has something in her collection that could give us a lead."

"Maybe."

"Why do you sound so hesitant?"

"I dunno. Just a feeling, I guess. The timing feels odd. Why didn't he reach out before this? Why now, when exactly what I need most are some more books in my collection?"

"Maybe it's just good luck?"

"Maybe."

"Email him back. Tell him you'll meet."

"Elena—"

Elena grabs hold of Bonnie's hand. Practically pleads with her. "I'll come with you. We can make it a day trip. It'll be fun! And besides, aren't you applying to Whitmore anyway? It'll be good to see the campus."

Bonnie pins her with a knowing look. "Don't get your hopes up too much. For all we know, all Grams left behind were a few Stephen King novels and some old microfiches."

They go up the next Saturday, even though it's cutting it awfully close to exams.

To be honest, Professor Shane gives her the mega-creeps. Something about his smile and the intense way he takes both she and Bonnie in when they meet him for coffee makes her skin crawl.

He looks at them like he knows all of their secrets.

For all her initial reticence, Bonnie doesn't get the same vibes from him at all. When he smiles at her and asks if she practices like her grandmother did and calls himself a true believer, she smiles back, as though he's charming.

Later, Elena's grateful to finally get into Professor Shane's office, so they can grab the stack of books that Sheila Bennett left behind.

"It's not much," Professor Shane admits. "Just a couple of anthropological studies on supernatural communities here in the Americas, a couple of mythology books, and a first edition Kujo. I'm not sure what happened to the rest of her rare text collection."

Bonnie picks up the Stephen King novel and shoots Elena a smile, but her attention is diverted by the books and artifacts artfully displayed throughout the professor's office. "Are all of these yours?" she asks him, a little breathlessly.

That's it.

Elena takes the books from Bonnie and nudges her toward the door before this can turn into a full-blown flirtation.

Two more weeks pass.

However promising the books they picked up from Grams's office seem, Bonnie inevitably gets sidetracked from her research project by the impending pressure of the study schedule Caroline implements for the three of them. Which is fine. Maybe even good. Bonnie's doing her a huge favor taking this on, and Elena doesn't need answers right this moment, anyway.

For now, it's nice to live and breathe and just be a senior in high school for once. To forget about the strange parts of her life.

She trudges through her exams and even debates putting up a Christmas tree in the living room, where her parents used to place it.

She takes to wearing a little too much of her mother's old perfume, to disguise her changing scent. Takes care not to get too close to Tyler or any of the other hybrids.

Caroline swears its effective.

The only time she runs into any of her hybrid shadows is when she goes over to Tyler's house for a little post-exam celebration. They hang out with the rest of her friends from school like everything is normal—and maybe it is. She finds out they're actually kind of nice people, when they're not following her around.

By the end of the night, she almost feels like she's made new friends.

The only close-call she has is about halfway through that party. Everyone is getting ready for a round of shots, but when Elena refuses one, the werewolf girl Tyler had brought back with him from his travels—Hayley—quirks an eyebrow and drawls, "What? You having a baby or something?"

A few of her classmates—Tyler included—pause to stare at her.

Elena's saved from having to respond by Caroline, who tactfully spills her drink down Hayley's shirt.

"Oh! Did I do that?" Caroline asks, as she drags Hayley away. "Let's get you changed!"

Later, Tyler texts her.

it's true isn't it?

She doesn't respond.

He doesn't mention it the next time he sees her at Caroline's holiday party, but he doesn't offer to spike her hot chocolate the way he normally would, either.

He does whisper into her ear, as they hug goodbye, "Your secret's safe with me."

This is the darkest time of the year, and yet, Elena feels more filled up with light than she has in months and months and months. She feels like she's come out of the abyss. That she is swimming up, up.

She calls Jeremy. Talks to him about his Christmas plans.

"You sound really good," he tells her.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Happy. I don't remember the last time you sounded so happy."

"Must be some good old-fashioned holiday cheer."

He laughs—actually laughs!— and the sound warms her through and through. "Oh yeah? Send me some of that then, will you?"

Once the tree is complete, she decides she's not nearly finished. She strings up Christmas lights all over the living room, in front of the mantle, around all of the windows.

At night, she curls up on the floor and basks. Lays her hands on her belly and imagines the life growing within her. Glowing.

An adamant pounding on the door wakes her.

Elena rolls up from where she had fallen asleep on the sofa, in front of the Christmas tree, and rubs at her eyes.

The pounding continues, more insistent than ever.

Blurry-eyed and groggy, Elena wraps the throw blanket around her shoulders and shuffles to the door. "Hold on," she calls, the words warped by an enormous yawn.

Fumbling with the locks, Elena swings open the door.

Her jaw goes slack when she finds herself face to face with a fuming Klaus.

It's only been a couple of months since he left town, but the sight of him hits her with the same impossible force as she had felt when her parents' car crashed through the bridge's side-rails. The impact that signaled not the end itself, but the beginning of the end. She feels all the oxygen burn out of her body. The room. The universe.

All the while, his gaze rakes over her, his jaw clenching as he takes a deep, evaluative breath. Without preamble, he holds up a bag of blood neatly printed with her name, and orders her, "Invite me in. We need to have a little talk."

Chapter Text

Elena tries to slam the door shut, but Klaus casually intercepts it with an open palm, throwing the door wide open again. There's an inauspicious crack when it rebounds off the wall before slowly creaking forward, the wood quivering in its frame.

They stare hard at each other, Elena breathing raggedly, trying, trying, trying to pull herself together, to not fall apart at the sight of him standing on her doorstep, the nightmare, the dream, the memory made real and whole and very very dangerous again. Every tense line in his body screams threat. Barely bridled fury.

Somehow, she had begun to tell herself that Klaus wasn't real. That he really had gone away, and she would be safe to box him up into an abstraction, part of a vague recollection of a time when she had had to think faster and dare more than everyone else around her, when she had been more, somehow, fiercer and brighter than the remote and gravely silent woman she's become.

And oh, God! She had wished for him to return. It had been so easy, when she'd forgotten that being with him was like sprinting headlong into the howling eyewall of a hurricane. How impossible to think that in those quiet, drifting weeks after Alaric had died and Damon and Stefan had left her she had wished that Klaus would come back and give her life meaning again. Give it interest. She had wished for him to return with the wistful carelessness of someone who didn't really believe anymore in the possibility of obtaining her heart's secret desires, and so had never really seriously considered the consequences of what would happen if her wish came true.

How perilously foolish she had been.

(She is always foolish. One of the many things she has in common with her forebears. She can strategize and maneuver her way through any battlefield, but her reckless heart will always find ways to trip her up.)

And it had been reckless to let herself be so complacently happy. To put him so firmly behind her. As though she ever really could. How could she forget that it's always when he finally slips her mind that he always finds a way to creep back in and ruin everything?

"Invite me in, Elena," Klaus repeats, tearing her from her rapidly spiraling thoughts with the lure of his soft, persuasive words.

As though he is not asking her to do the most deadly thing of all.

(As though she hadn't already invited him in once before to somewhere she should never ever have let him tread.)

There is a terrible, small part of herself that wants to.

"I thought you were supposed to be anywhere but here," she says, still too stunned by his presence to come up with a more substantial remark.

Klaus is all false cheer as he replies. "Oh, I was, and I had a lovely, interesting time away from this flyspeck village. I spent six weeks in Greece, then another two in southern Italy, where my courier delivered this blood packet to me." He tosses it to her, and she catches it on reflex, the blanket around her shoulders spilling onto the floor.

She shivers from more than just the sudden chill as she juggles the bag around in her hands. Now that she's holding it, she can see that it's already about half empty. "What does this have to do with anything?" she asks him carefully as she puts the bag down on the entrance table, dread curling in her stomach. Hoping against hope that this sample was taken before the mystical conception took place. As certain as she had been that Klaus would be fine with this pregnancy were he to ever even find out about it, she now senses how misguided her assumption had been.

"Don't play naïve. I could smell it in your blood the moment I unsealed the bag. Subtle, nascent, yet unmistakable all the same. You're with child."

Elena closes her eyes. "Yes." There's no point in denying it now that she knows for certain that he's onto her. He can probably smell it on her body even as they speak. Can probably hear her baby's heartbeat.

Klaus presses in as close to the threshold barrier as the magic repelling him will allow. "Who's the father?"

Startled by the soft menace infusing the question, Elena opens her eyes to gape up at Klaus. "Excuse me?"

"Who. Is. The. Father?"

"Why do you care?"

Something calculating enters Klaus's expression. "Perhaps because it might have something to do with why each and every one of the wolves I attempted to turn in Tuscany bled out and died rather than completing the transition. I lost an entire bloodline when I tried to use that most recent batch." His eyes sweep over her from head to toe. "In light of your predilection for inviting the supernatural into your bed, whoever sired your offspring is undoubtedly at fault."

Elena wraps a protective arm around her middle. "So my blood isn't effective while I'm pregnant. That's not even that surprising, when you think about it. My blood and the baby's blood are bound up in a circuit, right? That's probably what the problem is. Why are you assuming this pregnancy is supernatural at all?"

"Is he a witch? A werewolf? Something else?"

Elena frowns at him, offput by his insistence on discovering her child's paternity. "None of the above."

Klaus glares at her the way Rebekah often would when she fantasized about tearing her throat out. "What do the ever-so-dashing Salvatore brothers think of this?" he asks. "I'm surprised they haven't already relieved the culprit of his vital parts."

She shrugs uneasily. "No idea. They left the same day as you."

This surprises him. "Oh? My hybrids never mentioned." He pauses, considering. "Nor did they ever report your condition to me."

Hell. "Did you specifically order them to?" she asks, hastily drawing up a smokescreen for Tyler's rebellion before Klaus can dwell too much on this informational gap. "They seem kind of literal to me. Anyway, I've been disguising my symptoms."

He cocks his head to the side. Takes his time looking her over. "Indeed."

She tries very hard not to react to his scrutiny, no matter how much she wants to. She wishes she hadn't dropped the blanket, that it wouldn't be so obvious that she wanted to use it as a shield if she bent to pick it up now. No. She doesn't dare move a muscle. To do so would be to admit her many weaknesses.

The moment stretches on in potent silence. They both watch each other with the intensity of a predator and its prey regarding each other across a short distance, one waiting for the right moment to pounce, the other for the right moment to bolt. The charge between them becomes unbearable.

There's something about him today that's throwing her. Something in his expression and his general aura of hostility that she can't quite put her finger on. It's right there, in the heavy silence hanging between them, if only she could grasp it.

"I thought you wanted me to have children," Elena finally ventures, when she can't take the silence between them any longer without crumbling under Klaus's oppressive regard.

"I do."

"Well, I'm having one, and you don't seem particularly happy about it."

"You speak as though you know me so well."

She does, though. It wouldn't be possible, to go through what he had put her through, to surrender herself to the death he had offered her so completely that she still yearned to return to it, without coming to know him more intimately than she had ever known anyone else in her life. Doubly impossible to make his death her mission without bringing him close to her heart. Even when he had been gone for months, even after she had tucked him away into a part of her past she never let herself dwell upon, it had only taken a few minutes resubmerged in his presence for everything to come rushing back to her. For she had discovered the loneliness that lay at the bottom of his wretched, violent heart like a wild black ocean, deep and endless… and a perfect reflection of the loneliness within her own heart. A mirror where she had never expected to find one.

She knows him well enough to understand that she can never tell him any of this. He would never forgive her for seeing him so clearly.

Instead, she does something she very rarely does. She cuts to the heart of the matter. "Why are you really here, Klaus?"

"Obviously to discuss your condition."

"You could have done that over the phone, or had one of your hybrids deliver the message. And unless you're going to tell me to end this pregnancy—which I'm not going to do, by the way—then there's nothing to be done, other than wait for me to have the baby." She takes a step closer to the threshold, so she is right there. Squints up at him. "Why are you really here?"

He looks away first. Off to the side, as though there could possibly be anything of interest on her parents' covered porch "I never thought I'd see the day when someone could tempt you free of the Salvatores." He says it like he's changing the topic. Like he's hoping to distract her. Somehow, Elena gets the feeling that he's actually doing neither of those things.

Insight grips her.

"You're jealous."

Klaus's attention whips back to her in an instant. "Don't be absurd."

"You're unhappy that I'm having this child you yourself told me you wanted me to have one day because you're jealous. You want to know who the father is so you can—let me guess—kill him? Make a big production of it by saying it's about the hybrids who wouldn't turn, just to hide your real feelings?"

"If you'd simply indulge my curiosity, then I could be on my merry way and you need never concern yourself over my motives ever again."

"I thought we were through indulging each other."

He clenches his jaw. "Are you going to tell me, or must I resort to other means of persuasion?"

"I don't even understand why you care," Elena huffs. "You've been crystal clear that you don't want anything more to do with me. Not personally, anyway. So what gives?"

His expression freezes over. "You're right. I don't care. Forget I asked." He turns on his heel and stalks away.

Elena watches him storm off, lingering at the door for long minutes after he had gone.

No matter what he'd said at the end, she knows she'd had the right of it. Klaus had been jealous. She just doesn't understand why, after the way he'd treated her last fall.

No. She can't afford to wander down that path. If she gets to understand Klaus's twisted mind any more than she already does, she may never be able to kill him when the time inevitably comes round again.

She shuts the front door on their conversation and any Klaus-related thoughts altogether. Trudges back to the living room, where the Christmas lights are still twinkling merrily, oblivious to the winter storm that just blew in, and picks up her cell phone.

Bonnie answers on the fourth ring.

"Get the gang together," Elena tells her without preamble. "We've got a problem."

Chapter Text

Except the gang doesn't seem to think so.

"Did he threaten you?" Bonnie asks from her perch at the kitchen island. "Or the baby?"

"Well, no," Elena admits, frowning. "But he was upset."

"About what?"

Elena turns away and busies herself throwing dishes into the sink. "You know, the usual," she answers vaguely, turning back to her friends. No way she can possibly answer that with any honesty. That would require letting on about that night, which is a no-go zone.

Caroline, who has been jittery and nervous ever since Elena dropped the news that Klaus was back, bites her lip and asks, "Is this definitely something we need to do something about? Or is this one of those situations where it's best to just let sleeping bears lie?"

Bonnie nods along, like Caroline's being completely reasonable here.

Elena gapes at the two of them. She can't believe this. She calls a group meeting to discuss Klaus, Enemy Number One, and Tyler and Matt don't even show up, while neither Caroline nor Bonnie seem to see the urgency.

"No way. If Klaus is back, we have to get rid of him."

"Elena," Bonnie says her name like she's about to break some bad news. "Unless you have any idea on how to get rid of Klaus, I've got nothing." Her phone rings, then, and after glancing at it, she tells them, "I have to take this. I'll catch you both later," and heads out the door.

Caroline taps her nails against the counter. "Don't look so worried, Elena. If Klaus tries anything, we'll think of something, like we always do. But in the mean time I think we have more important things to worry about—like the Winter Wonderland fest, which is only one week away. I sure could use an extra pair of hands?"

Elena agrees—she always agrees—and Caroline lets herself out.

She gives Tyler a call, thinking to give him and his cohort at least some forewarning, but his phone rings through to voicemail. She leaves a message but doesn't hear anything back until later that afternoon, when he texts her a simple thx.

She watches the sun set through her kitchen window, her hands curled around a steaming mug of vervain tea, and considers whether she's overreacting. She replays her conversation with Klaus over and over again in her mind, dissecting it for any hint of a threat to anyone she loved. The conversation had been charged, and she'd been unnerved at the time, but could that have just been the surprise of seeing him? Could she have misread the whole thing? It was true, he'd never said a word against the pregnancy itself. Had seemed primarily preoccupied with discovering the identity of the father, which, joke's on him, there isn't one, so no need to worry over much about him finding and eviscerating an ex-boyfriend.

Except, she can't shake the feeling that she's right about this. That she has every right to be freaked out and suspicious and that it's her friends who are wrong to dismiss the danger so quickly.

Two, three days go by, and she doesn't see any more of Klaus. If he hadn't come by her house, she wouldn't even know he was back.

That all strikes her as patently odd.

She notices one more thing: her hybrid bodyguards have all stopped trailing her.

It's just not possible that Klaus has stopped monitoring her altogether.

It's so quiet that she begins to wonder if it had all been one of those pregnancy dreams. The idea that she had called up her friends and worried so much over a nightmare fills her with so much embarrassment and anxiety that she actually drives by his house, just to double-check that she hadn't actually imagined the whole episode.

There's a black SUV in the driveway that she unfortunately remembers from that night and a steady stream of hybrids crisscross the property, looking as agitated as a nest of kicked ants. The sight reassures her that Klaus is definitely back while also completely unsettling her in the process.

She drives away as fast as she can, hoping no one saw her.

"It's the weirdest thing," she confides to Caroline over coffee at the Grill while the other girl reviews her to-do list. "I haven't seen him at all since he showed up on my doorstep. I think he's up to something."

Caroline peers up at her over the top of her planner. "Klaus? Oh, no, I saw him yesterday. He's donating a painting to the festival."

"What?"

"Yeah, I saw him here last night and he agreed to make a painting for the auction. I told you he's just decided to move back into that mansion he built. You know how he is." She makes a birdlike gesture. "Flighty."

"Did he say anything to you? Ask you any leading questions?"

"Other than the usual terrible pick-up lines? No." She goes back to writing notes in her tiny, careful script. "Don't borrow trouble, Elena, or trouble will borrow you."

Klaus. Making a painting. Ha!

Before she leaves, she asks Matt for a favor.

Days more slip by.

Nothing.

Maybe she had misread him. No. Not possible. But maybe—

The one time she sees him, he's stepping out of City Hall, locked in conversation with the mayor.

She stops, and watches him as they cross the street together, as they pass within twenty feet of her. He never even looks her way.

It makes her suspicious.

That night, on a hunch, she goes to the window, and very, very slowly, draws back her curtains, just a fraction of an inch, so that she can look outside onto the moonlit street.

She wakes up the next morning to a text from Tyler.

Seen Bonnie? Need 2 talk 2 her.

Elena lies awake staring at her phone. Realizes she hasn't seen Bonnie since that morning she'd called her and Caroline over to tell her about Klaus.

When she calls, it rings through to voicemail.

She's very careful not to say anything that could incriminate her or any of their friends.

The day goes by without Bonnie calling her back.

Elena grows more uneasy as the day goes on. It's not at all like Bonnie not to call her back, or at least text. The last time she'd avoided her like this, they ended up barely talking for months.

Dutifully, Elena goes over to the town green that afternoon to help Caroline string up decorations. The festival is the next day. Caroline, predictably, is flipping out as she orders hordes of volunteers around.

"Have you heard from Bonnie lately?" she asks her as they unpack boxes and boxes of lanterns.

"Oh, she's gone to Whitmore to meet with that Professor again." Caroline turns to a volunteer. "Why are you setting up those tables so close to the booths? People need to be able to walk!"

"Again?" Elena echoes.

"Huh? Oh, yeah, he's been helping her with her research about the—" Caroline gestures discreetly over her midsection. "You know." When Elena doesn't say anything, Caroline rushes on. "But don't worry! She hasn't told him anything specific that could connect her research back to you. Professor Shane doesn't really know anything."

The fact that Bonnie's been seeing Professor Shane and keeping it from her—but not from Caroline—stings more than a little. She'd thought the three of them were past keeping secrets from each other.

"I wish she'd mentioned this to me," Elena says, to cover her hurt. "That guy gives me the creeps."

Caroline shrugs, undisturbed. "Bonnie doesn't seem to get them from him. And besides, she's a big girl. She can take care of herself."

Elena glances behind her, for just a second, before pointedly turning her eyes back to the decorating at hand. "Yeah, I suppose we all are."

Matt finally comes through with that favor later that afternoon.

Just walked in, he texts her, alerting her that Klaus had just arrived at the Grill.

Elena makes her excuses to Caroline and wastes no time in racing over to his mansion.

If there are any clues or any information to be had that will help her get a handle on the situation with him, then they'll be there, in his home.

The front door isn't even locked. It's so easy to sneak inside that part of Elena wants to turn back, in case this is a trap.

But no. Klaus is at the Grill. His hybrids aren't really even his anymore. Everything is fine.

Without knowing what, exactly, she's looking for, rifling through his house is challenging work. She finds a ream of hand-written letters from across multiple centuries that all seem completely disconnected yet are kept bundled meaningfully together, a stack of grimoires, none of which are written in English, a few weapons stuck randomly into drawers here and there, and a number of necklaces and odd pieces of metal or bone or stone that make her skin crawl when she runs her fingers over them. None of it tells her anything useful.

She finds the painting Caroline had mentioned on her way out, and frowns at the snowflake motif. So he really had made a painting, just because Caroline had asked.

Unable to help herself, she takes another step closer, to examine the palette table strewn with heaps of runny paint, the chemical odor going straight to her head, the brushes soaking in some sort of solvent, the rags and dishes and powdered pigments in unmarked jars. Her heart pangs a little bit as she studies Klaus's work table, the place where he works his alchemy.

Yearningly, she reaches out, and touches her fingertips to the surface of the painting. They come away wet. Her fingers smudge the brushwork as she pulls away, and as she stares at the muddied section of the painting, the urge to ruin the rest of it rises up inside of her, sharp and unappeasable.

She smears her entire palm across the surface of the painting in one harsh slash, taking savage satisfaction in wrecking Klaus's work. She imagines herself wiping her hands over his life, his soul, warping everything he knew about himself in the process, the way he had warped her that night he'd let her look through his paintings and begged her to tell him her deepest darkest secret. She should never have let it happen. She knows that now.

It had happened, though, and no matter how much she tries to bury it all under denial so thick she could choke on it, she can't take it back. Not any of it.

That night, she opens up her curtains and spots him watching her window from beneath the shadow of the spreading oak. She wraps a shawl around her shoulders and slips outside, onto the porch. Sits down on the porch swing, drawing her knees up under her, and watches him watching her.

Chapter Text

"Why are you following me, Klaus?" she calls into the cold night air.

Slowly, he draws nearer to her. "You're hiding something from me. I want to know what."

"The identity of my child's father?"

He doesn't respond, just continues his steady stare.

"I thought you didn't care," she reminds him.

"Tell me why you broke into my home and ruined my painting."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

He leans against the porch column. "You're usually a better liar than this."

"Oh?"

"But your scent was all over my house. As it was, coincidentally, when I returned last week. Have you whiled away many hours there in my absence?"

"Only to confirm that you were really truly gone. I guess some things are too good to be true."

His mouth tips up into an amused little half-smile. "Come now. You've probably been more entertained the past week playing cat-and-mouse with me than you have been since my departure."

"Actually, I've been kind of preoccupied since you left. Doctor's appointments, setting up the nursery, pre-natal yoga. I'd forgotten about you completely."

He maneuvers into her space in an instant, crowding her back against the porch swing as he leans over her and examines her face closely, his gaze razor sharp upon her. "I shall endeavor to remind you then." He opens his mouth as though to say something more, but the wind shifts, cold and flavored with woodsmoke, and Elena shivers, and it's that, just that simple little moment, that catches him up.

She can see the moment his thoughts shift, the way that moonlight changes the shape of things in the dark. One moment, he's furious, and the next, he's ducking forward to capture her mouth against his own, the heat of his lips moving against hers searing through her brain like a lightning strike. Whatever she might have said next disappears as her thoughts white out and all she can focus on is the overwhelming immediacy of Klaus grappling her body up against his own.

Kissing Klaus again is like tumbling back into a dream. Falling endlessly into a memory that she's more than half-convinced herself cannot really be true, a recollection that had to have been mostly fantasy, something invented by her intimacy-starved heart, because there was no way any two people could achieve the kind of profound intimacy they had achieved that night.

And yet—and yet—she can taste the same hunger in him that she feels in herself. The same loneliness on his lips that had first drawn her in. The power of that remembered flavor draws her in with a crushing, seductive urgency. With the intimation that if she only stays here with him long enough, he'll devour her again, offer her that death she still dreams about—

No.

No. She doesn't want that anymore. Doesn't want him.

She has other, brighter things, now.

She tears herself away from him and scrambles over to the other side of the porch. Watches as Klaus remains frozen, clenching his empty hands, before turning to face her, his face carefully blank but his eyes blazing.

"What the fuck, Klaus."

"I wasn't aware that Southern ladies used such language."

"What the fuck! What is this? You give me the cold shoulder for months after we sleep together, and then you come back here and act like a jealous boyfriend because why? Because I'm pregnant and you can't stand the idea that someone else played with your toy? Well fuck you! I'm not yours, not now, not ever—"

He wraps his palm around her throat and pushes her back against the wall between one second and the next. Her head cracks against the wood siding, the pain lancing through the back of her skull feeding into the fury bubbling through her blood. She claws at Klaus's hand like an animal, kicking out as hard as she can and taking vicious satisfaction when her nails draw blood and her feet strike flesh.

"You have always belonged to me, sweetheart," Klaus hisses in her ear, ignoring her struggling and bucking against him as completely as though she were a gnat. "You belonged to me before you were born, and every day since."

"No. I fulfilled my part of that bargain last spring," she spits. "Whatever connection might have existed between us ended when you killed me—"

He releases her. "Then how is it I cannot get you out of my head?"

Elena rubs at her throat. "What?"

"You. I've thought of near nothing else since that night—"

"That night." She laughs at him, bitterly. "You think I'm going to believe that you cared at all about any of that? As far as I can tell, you were just playing with me."

"You know that I wasn't."

God, he has to be delusional if he thinks she's going to fall for any of this! Whatever game he's playing, he's apparently deemed it necessary to gaslight her, and she would applaud the effort if she wasn't so direly insulted that he would try to play with her emotions like this.

"You told Tyler to bite Caroline the next morning," she points out. "And you were horrible to me the next night! Why would you do any of that if you cared?"

"Because you made me weak, and I couldn't stand it."

She narrows her eyes at him. "I don't believe you. You're just trying to manipulate me into something, but guess what? It won't work."

Klaus reaches for her again, but she flinches away from him.

Dropping his hand back to his side, he tries to persuade her. "I could already see how this would play out—you in love with each of the Salvatore brothers, and the two of them using you to get at me, just as Stefan did the very next night. I couldn't allow that. Better far to keep you at a distance. For myself, and for you."

Elena stares at him. He'd hurt her badly last fall. Had come into her life in a time when she'd been isolated from absolutely everyone, when she'd needed someone, anyone, to connect with, only for him to rip apart whatever fragile happiness he'd given her the very next day. It had been cruelly done. Had affected her worse than she could ever bear to let on. Thinking on any of it now, on Klaus, on the things he's just said to her, makes her head spin. How dare he press her on this. How dare he sound so convincing? Her breaths come in short, ragged pants, as though she'd just run a long, hard race over harsh terrain. She can't do this. She can't have this conversation. She can't let herself believe him even for an instant, because no matter what, he's lying and she just has to remember it—

She stares into his face, and she knows. He's telling her the truth, as selfish and screwed up as it is. In his twisted way, he had pushed her away and preferred for her to search out his death rather than remain close to him, because he had felt it to be the better option for them both. Because he was too afraid of the intimacy she had offered him. She looks at him and she knows he's telling the truth, because she knows him, even though she wishes she didn't. Even though she has regretted letting herself come to know him with every fiber of her being.

Reeling, she circles around him, so she doesn't have to see his face as she asks him lowly, "Even if I do believe you, am I supposed to just forgive you now?"

Klaus turns with her, tracking her every movement. As though he can sense her weakening toward him. "Have I not forgiven you for worse?"

"Like what?"

"The murder of my brother. Your numerous attempts to destroy me."

"I'll give you a list of the things you've done as bad or worse to me. Between the two of us, it's still you who's in the red."

"I'm sure you'll find a way to amend that."

Elena comes to a pause and leans back against the cool solid wood of the front door. "Don't force my hand, and I won't." She presses her cheek into her shoulder. "I don't want this kind of life anymore," she admits. "I just—I want to be quiet, and to know that everyone I love is safe, and to go to bed at night and only worry about normal things—"

"You're not a normal girl."

"But I want to be."

"You just told me not three months ago that a normal life held no interest for you."

"Things change."

"Because of the child."

"Yes."

He reads it for what it is. A rejection, plain and simple.

A storm passes over Klaus's face. "Who is the father of your child, Elena?"

"This again?"

He stalks forward and plants his hands on either side of the door, pinning her in the cage of his arms. "Who was it who pleased you enough to finally tempt you free from the Salvatores?" Naked jealousy, worse, somehow, in its clarity than it had been last week, now that she understands him better, drips from his voice. "Who do you prize so highly that you persist in shielding him from me?"

She could tell him now. End his jealousy. But that would be a kindness, and she can't find it within her heart to give him even the smallest portion of her kindness. She has so little of it left. The last time she had offered it to him, he had slapped her hand away. She couldn't bear if he were to do that to her again.

She's more afraid of what would happen if he didn't.

Elena's fingers fumble for the door latch. The door swings open behind her, and she practically throws herself back over the threshold—but not fast enough. Klaus catches her by the front of her shirt and drags her back over the threshold before she can make a clean escape.

"Did you think that was subtle?" he asks.

"Not really," she tells him, her heart racing madly. She yanks a bottle of distilled vervain water from her pocket and upends it on his hands.

He startles enough when his flesh boils that he drops his hold on her, just long enough for her to stumble back across the threshold.

He gives her a withering look as she straightens up within the protection of her home. "Are you going to hide inside your home forever instead of facing me?"

"I came outside to meet you tonight, didn't I?"

Klaus tilts his head. "Listen to your heart go. You're afraid. Though, you weren't, until just a few moments ago. Why is that? Are you afraid for your lover… or afraid that you may want what I'm offering you?"

Hurriedly, she slams the door in his face.

"Elena, we're not finished here," he yells through the door. "Come out and talk to me now, or better yet invite me in, and we need not involve another soul."

She puts her hands over her ears and races up the stairs. Dives under her covers and pretends she can't practically feel Klaus malingering outside, under that tree, his eyes burning in fury as he stares up at her bedroom window.

It's an empty threat, she assures herself. There's no lover to speak of, so there's nothing to worry about.

Chapter Text

Like every other morning, Elena rises and begins her day with a mug of vervain tea, and at least a token effort at a nutritionally square breakfast. The nausea hits her before eight, and she's recovered enough by eight-thirty to brush her teeth and her hair and prepare for a day of following Caroline's doubtlessly increasingly harried orders.

She peers cautiously out the living room window before stepping outside, concerned that Klaus might be waiting for her, even though hours and hours have passed since she'd fled from their conversation.

No Klaus in sight.

She vacillates between scolding herself for paranoia and scolding herself for not being paranoid enough as she slips out the door and hurries to her car. She's filled her coat pockets with more of those flimsy little bottles filled with distilled vervain water, and has one of Alaric's spring-action stakes hidden beneath each of her sleeves. She's as ready as she can be without bringing an actual crossbow, or putting together a fresh batch of vervain grenades, which she's been reluctant to risk since finding out about the baby, but she still can't help but feel both completely unprepared for whatever Klaus might have in store for her after she ran off from him last night and also completely ridiculous for acting like she's charging into battle when really he probably just wants to corner her into another conversation she's not quite ready to have.

Will likely never be ready to have.

Nope. If he tries to corner her again, the best thing would be to throw all of her bottles of vervain at him and run. And if he tries to kiss her again she should just stake him and skip town before he wakes up.

Elena arrives at the town green to find a complex feat of organizational prowess already underway, as Caroline directs caterers to their booths, the band and myriad technicians to the stage, and a swarm of volunteers to unpacking the charity items and arranging them on tables. Caroline herself flits between the tables, conferring with her clipboard before writing out lot numbers and starting prices for each item.

The sight of all of those people instantly relaxes Elena. Far better to keep herself busy in a public space where Klaus wouldn't dare try anything than to stay at home where she would be easily accessible.

"Elena!" Caroline calls, catching sight of her. "Thank God you're here. I need you to oversee the bar set-up. Matt is a darling, but he's way too pressed unloading the deliveries to get the specialty menus set up." She points her off in the direction of the bar booths, and Elena dutifully trudges off to see what she can do.

Matt strolls over to her with a case of liquor fifteen minutes later. Unloading the bottles onto the bar, he turns and asks her in a low voice, "Elena, are you really pregnant?"

Elena straightens up from where she'd been writing out the specialty drink menu in her mostly-adequate calligraphy and stares at him. "Who told you?"

Matt slumps against the bar and rubs at his eyebrow. "So it's true."

"Yeah. Who spilled? Caroline?"

"Klaus did." Matt shoots her a glare. "I would say I was mad you never told me, but I think only the fact that I had no idea what he was talking about saved me. I hope you warned whoever the father is."

Elena shoves down hard on whatever guilt Matt's admonishment inspires. "That's not an issue."

"Not an issue? Elena, whoever he is, Klaus is gunning for him."

When she doesn't respond, he hunches close, suggests in a low, concerned voice, "If you don't feel like you can risk contacting this guy, then let me. I'll get in touch with him, let him know to watch out."

Elena squints at Matt. "You don't have to worry about this." She lays her hand over his, and despite how his anxiety over her situation tenses his shoulders, his pulse is steady under her fingers. Just like Matt himself.

"I just can't stand the idea of someone I know being in that kind of trouble," he says.

When was the last time it had occurred to Elena to worry over someone who wasn't on that list she had given to Elijah last spring?

"It's no one you know. Really, you don't have to worry."

He shakes his head. "You don't know what it's like having to face this kind of stuff when you've been kept in the dark. When you're just an ordinary person."

"That's not what's going on—" She clamps her mouth shut. It would be so easy to confide in Matt. To tell her old friend everything, especially when he looks at her like this, with so much concern for someone whose identity he doesn't even know. He cares the way she should care. The way she used to care. It would be so easy, to tell him, to let him in, but all her confession would do is get them both into future trouble. The less he knows, the safer he really is. The safer she is, and her baby. "Look, I swear I have everything in hand," Elena concludes, capping her calligraphy pen and backing away. "I have to help Caroline now. See you later?"

She takes off before she can let anything more slip.

Caroline has about a thousand more jobs for her, and for once, Elena is glad to do them all.

They mostly keep her mind off of last night, and if she occasionally cannot help but flash back to the devouring heat of Klaus's mouth against her own, or the sound of his voice, calling after her as she fled up the stairs… If she cannot help but look over her shoulder, each time expecting to find him watching her, the way he had for the entire past week… Well. She's learning not to feel guilty for things she just can't help.

Some things really are just inevitable.

Klaus is never there when she looks over her shoulder.

She does feel guilty for the spike of disappointment that lances through her each time she looks and doesn't see him.

Matt finds her again at the sandwich table set up for the volunteers.

Before she can ask after how his morning has gone, he immediately launches into her again.

"Look, I get that you don't want to talk about this, and I mean, I get that, 'Lena—"

"Do you?"

"But c'mon! You're setting someone up to get hurt. You must know that."

She's a little taken aback. She hadn't expected him to dwell on this, the way he apparently had, even after their conversation this morning. She tries to reassure him.

"Matt, I can handle this—"

"But you don't have to handle this alone," he tells her quickly. "You're always doing this—going your own way. Let me help you."

Elena steps back, offended despite the fact that Matt's offer assuredly comes from the right place. "I'm going my own way? That's rich." She looks around, makes sure no one else is listening. "I thought you wanted out from all the supernatural drama? Isn't that why you've been so fair-weather with me lately?"

"This is different."

"Oh? How? Because I called you last week when Klaus came back and you didn't answer—"

"I can't let someone innocent get hurt because you'd rather play games with an Original vampire, Elena."

Only Matt still has the power to stop her up short with his plainly-spoken condemnation. Everyone else who'd had that power is in the ground.

She averts her face. Her throat feels thick as she asks, "Because I'm certainly not an innocent in all of this, right? I'm just as guilty as they are."

He doesn't deny it.

Somehow, deep down, she had never expected him to agree with her very worst assessment of herself.

"You know what? I don't want your help, Matt," she tells him. "And I definitely don't need it."

"Elena, wait, I didn't mean—"

"But you did. You always say what you mean." Unlike her. "That's just who you are."

He looks at her a long time, like she's the one breaking his heart. "I don't feel like I even know who you are anymore," he finally tells her.

"You'd have to have been there to get it."

She hears Caroline frantically yelling her name then, thankfully, and turns away from Matt to see what she needs.

If it feels like turning away from a lifelong friendship, she doesn't let that stop her.

At two, townies begin filtering into the festival, and it becomes harder and harder to keep a sharp eye out on her surroundings as the green begins to fill with boisterous winter cheer.

Finally, reluctantly, she stops searching.

Chapter Text

As she meanders through the merry grounds, dotted with fragrant fir trees and already softly illuminated by twinkling white lights, Elena cannot help but reflect back on years gone by. How she'd come here with Bonnie and Caroline, when the three of them truly had been inseparable. How they'd giggled over boys and drank hot chocolate and shopped for last-minute Christmas presents, never knowing that their time together just being kids would be over years early. And before that, to her childhood, when she'd raced through this festival like a wild hare, her brother toddling after her, her parents laughing and warning her not to wander off too far.

She had, though. She had wandered very, very far.

About an hour in, she spots Tyler speaking to his mother, before breaking away to whisper something to Caroline that immediately sets her off. Elena watches as she storms off in the direction of the stage, her clipboard clutched furiously to her chest.

It's probably nothing. Probably just relationship drama, which Elena has no business prying into. And she wouldn't, she totally wouldn't, except for that tingle of intuition up the back of her neck that whispers that this is something else.

Elena hurries to intercept Caroline.

And promptly knocks straight into Klaus, who catches her about the shoulders before she can trip on her ass.

"Steady on," he murmurs, a smile creeping over his mouth as he looks her over in her wool party dress and knee-high boots. "Don't you look good enough to eat."

Elena claws her way out of his grasp and quickly puts a few feet of space between them. Anything to break contact from his warm grip. Anything to block out the intensity of her body's reaction to him. The jolt of desire she'd felt at his words. Her hands dig into her coat pockets, where the vervain presses cool and reassuring against her fingertips. Grounding her.

"What are you doing here?" she snaps.

He gestures in the direction of the charity auction table, totally unperturbed by her tone. "Dropping off my painting. It's a tad bit late—there were some unexpected delays—but better late than never, I suppose."

Elena glares at him. "No, I mean: What are you doing here, with me? I thought I was clear last night that I don't have anything else to say to you."

"Indeed. It's what you're refusing to say that so interests me."

"You're sounding like a broken record."

He grows serious on her. Crosses the distance between them like it's nothing and studies her seriously. Caught in his regard, Elena looks up into his face and studies him in turn.

He's so close, like this. Close enough that she can smell his cologne, that she can feel the unnatural heat blazing from his body. Feel all of that immense power, crackling under his skin, straining to be unleashed. He's the most lethal thing of all, but more dangerous still is the threat that if this moment goes on even just a few seconds longer, Elena will break. Will lift her hand to his cheek, or bury her face against his throat, or press her mouth to his, and then it will be game over. Klaus will know exactly how much power he has over her still. How much her indifference to him has been nothing more than smoke and mirrors ever since that awful night.

"You're afraid of me," Klaus observes.

"I am not." The words spill too fast from her lips.

He tilts his head knowingly, before pointedly drawing her hand from her pocket.

Elena stands there frozen, unable to stop him, as he delicately turns her palm up and gently peels back her fingers to reveal the little bottles of vervain she had been clutching.

All in all, it's more than an admission.

Her heart flies as she watches him, waiting for him to lash out at her, to snatch away this tiny little defense. Nearly the only thing she has against him.

He never does. Instead, his fingers stroke over her hand, almost like he's trying to soothe a skittish animal. He pauses when his fingers trace over her wrist—where he must feel the straps of her brace—but he doesn't comment on it. Instead, he runs his thumb over the back of her hand one more time, and closes her fingers back up over the vervain with a tenderness that makes her head swim.

The weapons she's brought with her are enough to seriously injure or even kill a normal vampire, but he's not a normal vampire. Against him, they're nothing more than a security blanket.

He doesn't call her out on it. Doesn't call her foolish or laugh at her.

For the first time, Elena worries that he might see through her as well as she sees through him.

"You never used to be afraid of me," he muses as she tucks her hands back into her pockets.

"I was. Of course I was," she says, recalling those bone-wearying days before the sacrifice, when her march toward death at his hands had been an implacable, inescapable fact. The unbounded terror she had felt on first seeing him again, months later, in her school hallway. The damning admission that she still yearned for his bite mere weeks after that. She had been afraid every step of the way.

He waves her off. "Not really."

"I think you're misremembering things."

"Am I?" The way he asks the question tells her exactly how much he doubts the possibility.

Elena looks past him, into the distance.

She'd wandered so far off the path of the life her parents would have wanted for her. Had wandered so far from the path of the living, into the land of the dead, that she had believed herself to be truly and forever lost. And yet, now, miraculously, she has this life growing within her. This future with a child and a chance to reclaim the life snatched away from her by her parents' deaths. By her own death at Klaus's hands (no—by his mouth) last spring.

She dares to imagine herself five, six years from now, here with her child, watching as her daughter or her son races through the crowd— happy, safe.

"Do you remember when I told you that I still dream about your bite?" she asks him slowly. She doesn't miss the way his eyes darken as her question lingers between them.

"Yes."

The way he utters that one syllable makes something hot and vital clench inside of her.

This is the problem. Everything tracks back to that one moment, when she, the liar, had told him something true and secret about herself that she should have died rather than ever reveal, especially to him.

She reveals another truth to him now.

"I think… I think it was because I had gotten all twisted up inside. When I first found out about the curse, about my role in breaking it—my death—I was relieved. I'd had this feeling hanging over me, ever since I didn't die in that car crash with my parents, that something had gone wrong. That I had gone wrong. There was this huge part of me that really honestly yearned to die—that wanted what you were so insistently offering me. Even last fall, I still wanted it." She takes a deep breath. "But I don't, anymore. I think—I think I was just… grieving."

"Grieving."

"Yes."

The air vibrates between them as Klaus absorbs her words.

"How convenient for you."

"That's the point, Klaus. You were convenient. I was lonely and sad and I didn't realize it, but I was still mourning for so many people, for so much. And you were… just there."

Everything she says is absolutely true, except for the part that she omits.

(He never needs to know about everything that came after.)

"It's not so easy. You can't just pretend none of it ever happened," he warns her.

But she can. She can. She can do anything at all, if she must.

(Even cut him out.

Him, her heart's reflection.)

That future she wants for her child is only possible if he's not in it.

Elena gathers all of her anger, her jealousy, and her monstrous loneliness into a cruel little ball of neat indifference and throws it in Klaus's face. "None of what, Klaus? A one night stand? Because, yeah, basically, I have. You don't mean anything to me." She swallows. Forces out this one final lie. "You never did."

Her arrows hit their mark. She can see the way her carefully worded degradation razes him, burns him out. She knows him well enough, understands him deeply enough, to grasp how much he fears his own loneliness. His own irrelevance in the lives of others. It feels like cutting herself open as well, to do this to him, even as she feels the keen relief of having it done.

"And the father of your child?" he asks her at last.

"What about him?"

"Was he also so convenient?"

She doesn't answer him.

He clenches his jaw. Gathers himself. "Fine then. Allow me to show you how inconvenient I can be." He turns on his heel and slips into the crowd.

She watches him go for a long time.

Chapter Text

A flash of blonde a few yards away snags her attention, and suddenly, that little moment between Caroline and Tyler comes hurtling back on top of her like a freight train.

Shit. She'd been totally distracted.

"So what's up with Tyler?" she asks casually as she sidles up to Caroline.

Caroline turns and raises both eyebrows. "Tyler?" she asks, for all the world distracted and flustered. "Did he say something to you?"

"You tell me."

Caroline laughs, but it's not her real laugh. "Oh, did you see us arguing back there?" She writes something on her clipboard. "He's trying to get out of a date he promised me, that's all."

Elena grabs Caroline's wrist. Looks around, makes sure Klaus isn't lingering anywhere nearby. "He's not… planning something, right?"

"Why would you think that?"

Because I know the crowd I run with, she wants to snap.

"If there were something, you'd tell me, right?" she asks instead.

Caroline puts down her clipboard. "Nothing's going on. I promise."

"You know Klaus is here, right?"

"This again? He's just bringing me the painting he promised. Late, I might add." She pats her on the shoulder. "You shouldn't stress out so much. It can't be good for the baby."

"The baby's fine. I just need to make sure you and Tyler are."

"We're totally fine. Better than fine." Her eyes trail away from Elena, to a point behind her shoulder, and she pauses thoughtfully. Glances down at her schedule. "Actually, do you think you can man the auction table? I'm too busy putting out fires and I don't have the time I thought I would."

Elena frowns at her. "Yeah, sure—just—if something is happening, you'll let me know, right?"

"Yeah. Of course."

She watches from the auction tables as Caroline flirts shamelessly with Klaus over glasses of champagne.

Fires indeed.

She wonders if Caroline is doing this to distract Klaus from something or if she simply enjoys his company as much as she appears to.

She refuses to acknowledge the feeling roiling in her gut at the sight of their easy, companionable laughter. Klaus is never like that with her. But then, he never needs to worry when he raises his glass for a sip that Caroline has slipped him his death at the bottom of his glass.

And the worst part is that it's his real smile which he flashes for Caroline, over and over—that smile Elena has only seen a bare handful of times, which Caroline apparently receives so effortlessly, with no strings attached. No wonder she'd fallen for him.

Klaus catches her watching them. Quirks his brow—a question, a challenge, who knows—before returning his attention to Caroline.

The sun gets low.

She cannot look away. Marks them doggedly as they take a slow circuit around the festival.

Elena's interrupted from her vigil by the mayor, tugging at her sleeve. "Elena, dear, are you listening?"

"Hm?"

"The auction winners, dear. I was hoping you could make the announcements."

"Oh, I'm not sure about that. I'm not really feeling very well—"

"It's just that your mother used to always do this, and I thought it would be nice for you to carry on the tradition as a founding daughter—"

Elena glances back, to where she had last seen Klaus and Caroline. They've both disappeared.

"Fine, yes, okay."

She lets Mayor Lockwood lead her to the stage.

On the steps leading up to the stage, Elena pauses. Frowns. "Why did you say you wanted me to do this again?" she shouts over the din of the live band wrapping up their set.

Mayor Lockwood smiles blandly up at her. "You're a founding daughter of the town. It's what's to be expected," she shouts back.

Founding daughter. She shakes her head. There's something familiar about that phrase, but what?

The mayor says something else, but Elena doesn't hear it as she turns the phrase over in her mind.

A vague memory tumbles loose.

I'm a founding daughter of this town. The last of the Gilberts, thank you.

Her heart clenches in her chest.

She clutches Mayor Lockwood's arms. "Who suggested I give the presentation?"

The mayor frowns, her expression a little misty, now that Elena knows to look for it. "I don't understand, dear."

Elena lets her go and searches the crowd.

Klaus had done this. She's certain of it. He'd engineered for her to be up on this stage at this particular time, stuck announcing the auction winners while he—what? Why did he need her up there? To get her out of the way, so she couldn't interfere? Or to get her up high, where she'd be forced to witness—? Her mind grapples blindly trying to fill in the blanks.

She sprints up to the top of the stage and scans the crowd. Races through possibilities as she searches. Whatever this set up is, it's got to involve someone she cares about—someone on her list he can use to hurt her. That's Klaus's M.O., right? Hurt him, he uses the ones you love to hurt you back?

Caroline, Tyler, and Matt are the only ones here—unless—a cold sweat breaks over her skin—unless the reason Bonnie hasn't been answering is that he's kidnapped her again? No, no, that doesn't make sense, no way he could be holding her for days on end—which means it's got to be one of the other three, right?

She doesn't see Tyler or Caroline anywhere, but her eyes lock onto Matt on the edge of the town green. Just an indistinct silhouette against the setting sun, but she would know him anywhere. He's carrying a crate, balancing it precariously as he looks both ways before crossing. Mid-step into the street, someone must call out to him, because he turns back.

Premonition screams through her blood. She knows what's going to happen before the car comes barreling around the corner, roaring through the red light.

Elena leaps from the stage and barrels through the crowd, shoving people out of the way as she sprints headlong toward the far end of the green, ignoring the way that people shout after her. Her lungs burn and her blood pounds in her ears, louder than the music, than the surprised screams of mothers and children as she charges past them. She breaks from the crowd in time to see Matt, prone on the ground, a slick puddle seeping out from under him with each passing second. Shattered glass litters the ground around him, from where the contents of the crate had gone airborne when the car struck him.

There's no car in sight.

The detail sticks in the back of her mind as she rushes to him, her hands hovering over him as she searches for something she can do to fix this—

But fuck, this is bad. There's blood everywhere, and she can't even figure out where it's coming from. It's like Matt is just one gaping wound—

Caroline appears out of nowhere and ducks down to Matt's side. "What happened?"

"He was hit—Care, I don't think he's going to make it—"

"Not if he gets taken to a hospital." Caroline looks around. "I'm moving him inside, so I can take care of this. Help me cover."

Elena nods. Turns back to the members of the crowd who are starting to gather. "Everything's fine!" She calls. "It looks much worse than it was!" She forces a laugh. "Must be a Christmas miracle!"

It's literally the stupidest lie she's ever come up with—no one could look at the ocean of blood on the street and believe it.

Except, this is Mystic Falls, and she's wholesome Elena Gilbert, and everyone knows her. No one would ever suspect her.

She doesn't wait to find out if anyone's willing to put two and two together today, rushing inside the closed Grill hot on Caroline's heels, slamming the lock on the front doors behind her.

By the time she's turning around, Matt's already sitting up near the bar, rubbing blood out of his eyes.

"What happened?" he asks.

Right now, Elena doesn't care that they'd been fighting just this morning. Doesn't care that he's drenched in blood. She throws her arms around him and holds on tight.

After a moment, he returns the embrace. "Seriously, what happened?" he asks as he pulls away.

"You got hit by a car?" Caroline supplies.

Matt shakes his head and mutters that he can't remember any of that, while Elena works furiously over the events of the past few minutes.

The timing of Matt's accident. The hit and run driver. Why put her up on stage? To witness, or to hold her up?

"Matt. Are you on vervain?" she asks.

"Yeah, of course."

"You drink it, every day?"

"Well, no, I have a bracelet—" He holds up a bare wrist.

All three of them stare and stare.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

She'd known Klaus was up to something. She'd known it, all week, and yet she'd never thought—

He'd compelled Matt. Probably yesterday, when he stopped by the Grill. She clenches her jaw, seeing Matt's third degree this morning in a totally different light.

Except, she'd seen Klaus talking to the mayor days ago. Setting this—this—this whatever it was supposed to be up. Making sure she'd be up on that stage. But what for? To watch Matt die? Had he lined this up, some kind of preemptive revenge in case she turned him down? But how could he have known she would?

None of it makes sense.

"When did your bracelet go missing?" Caroline asks. "Elena, what's going on?"

Elena stands up. "Have you seen Klaus?" He's the one piece missing from this puzzle. Why would he do all of this and then not even show up to watch her suffer?

Caroline pauses for a damningly long minute before she responds, "I think we're going to need a drink for this." She marches around to the bar and selects a bottle of Jack.

Everything about the way she does it reads guilty wrong guilty.

"What? Caroline, where's Klaus?" Elena repeats.

"Remember how I told you nothing was going on?" Caroline takes a shot. "Well, I lied!" She says it in just the way she would say ta-da!

Matt rubs at his face and slumps at the bar. "I have no idea what's going on."

"What do you mean you lied? Where is he?"

Caroline frowns at the intensity in Elena's voice. "The coup's happening tonight. Tyler's friend Hayley found a witch to do that body-swapping spell Klaus likes so much, except this time, he's going to get swapped into Tyler's body… and buried in concrete."

"What? That's insane—I asked you earlier—"

"I know, and we decided to keep you out of it, okay? You get so—so keyed up about him, so frightened, and so Tyler and I thought it would be better if you just didn't know." Caroline takes another drink. "Tyler's sacrificing himself so the others can escape." She sounds equally furious and aggrieved.

Buried in concrete. "How long?"

Caroline doesn't answer.

Long, then.

A wave of dizziness closes in on her. That's it, then. He really will be cut out of her life.

She's getting what she asked for.

Wishes coming true.

"Where are they?" She doesn't even recognize her voice when she speaks. It feels like the words are coming from someone else.

"The sun's set, Elena. I think it's probably already done."

"I have to go," Elena mumbles, hurrying from the bar, ignoring the way that both Caroline and Matt call after her. Neither of them follow her, though.

Already done.

He may as well be dead.

To her, for all practical purposes, he is.

The tears burst from her before she even makes it to the green, scalding tracks down her cheeks as she stumbles through the debris of the disbursing crowd.

She's such an idiot. Crying over Klaus, like she can't read his fingerprints all over what happened to Matt tonight, like she hasn't been in a state all week worrying over him and trying to find ways to push him away. All because there's this knot buried at the center of her chest that she just can't untie, no matter how hard she picks at it.

And she cries harder because she knows she'll get over this loss, just like every other.

She's Elena Gilbert. Death has no hold over her.

And when Klaus emerges, years down the line, she'll just be a memory. He'll think back on their last conversation—how she told him he'd meant nothing to her—and—and—

And that will be how their story really ends.

And that'll be fine.

She won't even let herself think about Tyler just yet.

She huddles up by the empty auction tables and watches all of the happy families leave the festival.

That'll be me in a few years, she tells herself. I won't even remember this then.

It's a pretty lie. Her favorite kind.

It's late when she finally stands, her body numb from the cold, especially in the places where Matt's blood had soaked through her dress and turned icy.

The only people still about are Mayor Lockwood, seated on the lip of the fountain, cellphone in hand, and a lone figure approaching from the other side of the green.

Elena frowns as the figure draws closer.

Recognition seizes over her, flooding her with relief sharp as the knife she'd stabbed herself with last spring.

"Klaus!" She's calling his name before she knows what she's doing. Running toward him without even thinking about it.

If there's something disturbing about his slow, deliberate gait as he drifts toward Mayor Lockwood, she doesn't register it until she's already careening into him, hands reaching out to catch at his arms.

"Klaus, you're okay," she pants, her hands roving over him.

He blinks down at her, as though noticing her for the first time.

There's a look of such raw anguish on his face that it strips Elena down to the bone. Scours away the last of her defenses against him.

Pity stirs her heart. And with it, an unfurling softness.

The moment stretches long as they take each other in.

Klaus's gaze sharpens upon her. He steps out of her reach. "Tell me where your friend Tyler Lockwood is hiding," he demands, his voice low and steady like the roll of a drum. It dawns on her that he's absolutely covered in blood and gore. 

"I don't know. I haven't seen him in hours."

He nods, like he's not surprised.

"Your hybrids. You killed all of them, didn't you?" She should be horrified. Instead, she's just glad that Tyler had escaped.

He closes his eyes, briefly. "Yes." Somehow, covered in the blood of the family he'd attempted to create for himself, he looks even lonelier and sadder to her than usual.

She's unprepared for how deeply the sight of him like this moves her.

She also knows what it's like, to be completely alone. To be so sad that each breath aches.

"I had no idea what they were planning."

"It doesn't matter."

"It does, though." Tentatively, she reaches out, and when Klaus doesn't pull away again, she threads her arms around him and holds him close to her. He doesn't return the embrace, but he doesn't shove her away, either. "I'm so glad that you're okay," she confesses into his sodden dress shirt.

He doesn't respond, but the words seem to seep into him, little by little. Slowly, Klaus's arms come up around her and draw her close against him.

She stays with him the whole night.

Chapter Text

By the time she pulls away from his embrace, they're the only two left on the town green. The clean up is scheduled for bright and early the next morning—her name is on the list, and it's fully possible that she will show up to help despite the hard stone of anger she feels for Caroline for keeping this monumental thing secret from her—but for now, the lights are still up, strung between trees and booths and decorative arches, and so there are twice as many stars in the sky as usual when Elena takes hold of Klaus's hand and leads him to sit with her by the fountain.

"Why are you here?" he asks her after a few more minutes have trickled by, the splashing of the fountain the only sound louder than their breaths.

"Don't you need me to be?"

He leans back and looks up at the inky smear of the night sky.

She looks with him.

"I thought you didn't care." He says it so lightly she could almost believe that her answer doesn't matter to him. That's his tell, though. For when he cares more than anything.

"I was lying."

She can feel him turn to her. Can feel the weight of his evaluation, quieter and heavier, somehow, than it was before. She has the uncomfortable feeling that the incident in the woods with the hybrids has peeled back another layer, revealed Klaus to be this somber, exhausted creature, grievously wounded, that only pretends to be so carelessly cruel, so frenetically cheerful.

The sight of him stalking toward Carol Lockwood flashes through her thoughts, and she has to swallow down the sudden lump in her throat. No, not really carelessly cruel at all… but cruel, still, all the same. It's in his nature.

She doesn't care.

She should. She knows that she should. But—

She just. Can't find it in herself to leave him. Not now. Not like this.

(She wishes, even once, that there had been someone who had refused to leave her.)

"Were you?" he asks her quietly. "You were utterly convincing, earlier today."

"I was lying to myself too. I—You were right. We do have something between us." She twists her hands. Frets with her bloodied dress that is in likelihood stained beyond repair. "I can't help it that that scares me."

A long time goes by before he speaks, Klaus watching her while she looks anywhere but at him.

"I forgive you," he tells her at length, gravely serious.

That answer—so very Klaus—should rile her, but her pride has no place here tonight.

That's why she tells him, before the mood between them shifts, and she loses her nerve, "I have something else I have to tell you."

He waits silently for her to go on, with an air of patience more ancient than the uncut primordial forests out by the falls, more abiding than stone and colder than the deepest waters.

"The thing about this pregnancy—the thing about it is—well—" She falters. Regathers her courage. "The thing about it is that there is no father."

"You mean to say that it's the result of a passing dalliance," he reasons slowly.

"No. I mean… this pregnancy is sort of supernatural. As in, there literally isn't a father."

"You're joking."

"I'm completely, utterly, one thousand percent serious."

His expression falls completely slack. She has the feeling that if she had told him this any other day, he would have laughed at her, but tonight, now, when he is so very drained, it's all he can do to stare at her in blank bewilderment.

His response eats at her nerves. "Klaus, say something."

"What you're suggesting's just not possible. Takes two lives to create a new one. That's just how the Balance goes."

"But I'm the doppelganger."

"So?"

"So normal rules about Balance and Nature don't apply to me. And it seems to me like what Nature really requires of me is that my line continue, no matter what, so there can be another one of me in 500 years. Hence: supernatural pregnancy for a supernatural being."

"The curse has been broken. The conditions that led to your line's creation have already been met. There's no need for such loopholes."

"And yet I'm still supernatural."

"This never happened to Katerina."

"Are you positive? How would you know?"

He scrubs his bloody hands over his face. The movement leaves a trail of red behind. "Say I do believe what you're saying. Why are you telling me this now? Why not last week, when first I asked? Did it amuse you, to watch me chase after a rival that may not exist?"

"I can't go on being enemies with you like this, Klaus. I just… An hour ago I thought you were dead. And now you're not, and I don't want to keep going on like this with you, over an issue that doesn't even exist."

He sighs. "Fair enough."

They watch the moon rise together.

"I don't understand what you were trying to do with Matt," she tells him later, as she picks out constellations.

"Is he dead?" He sounds merely mildly curious, as though the answer doesn't really matter to him one way or another.

She glances at him. Looks away. "Is he supposed to be?"

He shrugs. "I hadn't decided yet."

"He's fine. Caroline was there." She fidgets with her coat buttons. "What do you mean, you hadn't decided? What were you planning?" It doesn't really matter, she supposes. All's well that ends well. And yet… she can't stop wondering what Klaus had hoped to accomplish with that little stunt earlier.

"Either to let him bleed out while you watched or to save him for you. I've been back and forth for days on which it would be. Was distracted, in the end, so it all comes to nothing, I suppose."

"If you were trying to impress me by saving him, it wouldn't have worked. I saw through your scheme before I ever took the stage."

"Clever girl. Were you very angry with me?"

"No." The truth falls from her lips before she can wonder if it would be wiser to not to give it.

This admission thaws something in Klaus that had been cold and hard since she'd found him. She can feel the intensity of his interest ratchet up like a sunburn on her skin as he drawls, "How disappointing. I thought you cared for your friend more than that."

If Klaus had been withdrawn and unhappy before, all of that recedes under the force of what Elena recognizes faintly to be a wild and fierce excitement kindling within him.

She shakes her head, flustered. "No, it's just—I knew something was wrong as soon as I got there, and I couldn't find you. You would never set something like that in motion without showing up to watch it play out. And then I heard…" She trails off, not quite willing to name names in front of him.

"My demise must've been a relief," Klaus muses.

"It wasn't."

"You've been trying to kill me for months now, off and on." He says it so fondly.

"I've told you my heart was never in it."

"No, you told me you didn't have a heart."

"That's not true."

"So what is your heart, then, Elena?"

She dares to glance up at him from beneath her lashes. Finds herself transfixed by the hungry, intent way he looks at her as he waits for her response. Notes that unmistakable spark of hope burning in him, brighter, brighter still as he marks her reaction to him.

She takes a deep breath. Recollects herself. The cold from the fountain radiates into her back, a solid wall of ice that seeps into her, keeps her grounded in this moment.

"That depends," Elena says. "Are you going to keep threatening my friends?"

"Can you truly call them your friends?"

"What about my child?"

He frowns at her. "You know that I wouldn't."

"Swear it."

"Will you answer me if I do?"

"Klaus—"

In a trice he has taken her hand and gotten down on one knee in front of her. His voice drops down into a formal register as he vows, "I swear unto you that I will neither harm nor ever allow harm to befall your child, through action or inaction, else let me be stricken down on the instant." He holds her gaze the entire time he speaks, even when he takes hold of her hand and presses his mouth against it.

Fever races over her skin at the touch. She draws her hand back sharply.

"You didn't think I would be willing to do that," Klaus observes. "And yet, it seems to me that you've driven a bad bargain, if you thought this would get you out of answering."

"I just don't understand where you think this is going. I get that you're attracted to me, and that maybe if things were different, we could have a shot. But I'm having a baby, Klaus."

"Maybe I haven't made myself clear. I'm not merely attracted to you."

"Okay, you have feelings for me—"

"I'm in love with you."

The words stun her. "That's not possible."

"Would that that were true."

Elena stands up and backs away from him. His eyes trace her every step.

"Klaus, that's insane."

"Is it?"

"Besides, what would you do with a baby? You won't want to be with me in six months when I've gained thirty pounds and I'm waddling, let alone when I have a toddler clinging to me—"

"I've raised a child as my own before."

Elena pauses, all of the gears in her head grinding to a halt. "What?"

"I had a ward once. A boy I raised as my own. I'm not daunted by the task. If that's part of what it would take to have you, then I accept that."

"You were mad with jealousy about this pregnancy mere hours ago."

"That was over the putative lover—never over the child itself. If there truly is no father, then you have no need to worry," he rejoins smoothly, rising to his feet with leonine grace and stalking toward her. He cups her face. "Tell me what's in your heart, Elena."

She squeezes her eyes shut. "I can't."

"Tell me."

"I'm afraid."

His fingers stroke over her jaw. Trail possessively down to the scars he'd left upon her throat. "There's no need for that. I could be good to you."

"You hurt me so much last fall."

"I thought I could shut you out of my life if I simply willed it strongly enough. I was a fool."

"I can't just forget that."

"I'll make you forget."

"I don't love you," she whispers, opening her eyes.

He brushes aside her tears. "You will, though."

"How can you know that?"

"Because we're inevitable, you and I. Fated." He sounds so certain.

"That's ridiculous."

"I'll prove it to you."

"How?"

"By loving you."

"Lots of people have loved me. That never stops them from leaving me."

"I came back, did I not?" he asks her, all seriousness.

She nods, lets him pull her close, into the sheltering embrace of his body wrapped around her own.

She doesn't know if that's enough for her.

He takes her back to his house, and she lets him. She lets him lead her upstairs, into his bedroom. Lets him sit her down on the edge of his bed. Lets him kneel down to take her shoes off. Peel off her ruined dress and running tights and lay her down into the soft and inviting warmth of his bed. Lets him treat her well.

And God, she's too tired, too emotionally wrung out, to say no when he kisses her. When his hands stroke over her sides, her breasts. She's dreamt about his kisses and his caresses for months now, longed with painful regret for the feeling of his mouth upon her skin, her throat, her sex. It's so easy, to turn off all of her many, many valid reasons to protest this and instead to part her thighs for him, to soak in the way he murmurs pet names against her flesh as he tastes her and tastes her, his mouth unspooling her until she is left with nothing but the terrifying crater of her yearning for him.

She cries out his name when she comes. Cries harder after, the tears streaming down her flushed face as all of her pent-up feelings for Klaus, so carefully contained and hidden away where she hardly had to ever look at them, come spilling out in unstoppable, full-body tremors.

Her lover takes no pity on her. Watches her tears fall with a sort of intense, mesmerized scrutiny, only to lick them from her chin, her throat, her collarbone. He bites her before she really understands what's happening, the sear of his teeth piercing her throat sudden and acute. It's an animal bite, a claiming bite.

She thrashes against him even as she drags him closer. Feels his hand at her knee just before he pushes her back, drives inside of her in one smooth stroke that feels like too much too soon despite her orgasm. Maybe that's just how it's going to be with him. Maybe it will always feel like too much. Maybe what's between them is like an exposed nerve, quivering in ecstatic agony every time they let themselves brush against it.

When Klaus pulls back from her throat to kiss her mouth, it's with the copper tang of her blood on his lips. She splays her fingers against his breast, feels his heart slamming wildly against his chest, and kisses him back.

After, she tells him again, "I don't love you."

Klaus traces a path from her navel to her hip with his finger, marking the way she shivers at his touch. Smiles at her knowingly. "Not yet."

Chapter Text

The red light of the creeping dawn, bright as a jewel, or a bloody heart, pulls her awake. She recognizes the shape of the room, the softness of this bed, the way her body aches and throbs with every shift of muscle and bone, because she has dreamt herself here on more cold, sleepless nights than she can count. Part of her thinks she might be dreaming herself here now. Prays that she is.

Klaus leans against the wall by the fireplace, shirtless and barefoot, hair mussed, watching her with half-lidded eyes.

Elena swallows. Definitely not a dream.

No dream could make her heart hurt the way it does now, as she takes in how beautiful he is to her like this.

“You weren’t here the last time,” she croaks. Anything to break the spell his simple presence casts upon her.

Klaus smirks. Crosses the room the way a jaguar crosses between dappled patches of forest floor. Pins her beneath his body with her wrists above her head. “A mistake I’m eager to amend.” He pours the words like honeyed liquor into her mouth.

She should stop this now. Should wrest herself free and slip from this bed now. Tell him it was all a mistake, a terrible, terrible mistake.

Except how could a mistake make her feel like this? Like she’s soaring, flying high above all of the troubles that had weighed her down only yesterday. Like nothing else matters, except the taste of him, the shape and feel of him against her, melting into her. She opens up to him like a lily unfurling under the morning sun. Invites him into herself, the way she had months before—the way that she had only last night—heedless of the dangers of inviting a vampire in.

It’s like it’s impossible to reserve any of the wild, ravenous passion she has for him now that the surface of it has been tapped.

For months it had sat within her, a deep, still pool, silent and dark. So silent and dark that it had been easy to forget about it. Months she had spent learning to ignore it. To forget.

It had been the work of moments to make her remember.

There is a very, very small part of herself, smothered by the immediacy of Klaus’s overwhelming presence, that is railing against her with every breath, every heartbeat. That is screaming that it is not too late to run.

She doesn’t pay it any attention.

They kiss for a long time. Languid, searching kisses that bring the blood right up to the surface of her skin. That demand her surrender.

Her throat burns where Klaus had bitten her the night before. Her hips ache with the bruised ghost of his touch. Everywhere he touches her feels licked by flame.

Elena rolls her hips against his, demandingly, yearningly. Desperately. Groans with the unbearable weight of her raw need. She wants him inside of her now.

He smiles against her mouth, enjoying her impatience, the ready evidence of her need for him, now that she can no longer hide behind a mask of indifference.

His mouth moves along her jaw, her throat, her collarbone, sucking deep bruises into her skin. Marking her.

“You taste divine,” he murmurs worshipfully into her skin.

“Do I taste the same?” she asks breathlessly, distracted by the feel of his lips and deceptively sharp teeth grazing against her nipple. Her flesh is taut with need and tender, always tender, even, maybe especially, now.

He pauses. Runs a considering tongue along the tip of her. Laves carefully at her breast. Tasting her. “You taste like more,” he says after a long moment in which Elena had forgotten her question. “Before you tasted like potential. Like smoke whispering in the night air.” His fangs prick her breast, the movement precise, barely more than the bite of a needle.

Elena watches, enthralled by the sight of her blood welling dark and shining against Klaus’s lips.

He pins her to the spot with a searing look. “You burn like fire, now. I wouldn’t have expected death to make you more.”

She doesn’t know what to say to that. Is not prepared for the complicated nest of feelings, denials and hungry avowals, that this assessment inspires within her.

Isn’t prepared for the moment when Klaus takes her again, sliding into her with a slow intensity that makes her eyes sting for reasons she cannot parse.

If only they never had to leave this room. If only the sun would never fully rise, and they could remain, suspended in this hazy cusp between night and day, while the same stars that had shined down on them so gently the night before still stud the soft sky. Then she wouldn’t have to question herself. Wouldn’t have to leave her lover’s arms, and consider the blood on his hands. The blood on her own. The friends whom she must always, always protect.

“Stay with me,” Klaus orders her, sensing the drift of her thoughts. Implores her as he moves inside of her in slow, delicious, compelling thrusts, like the rolling of a wave. Singing that siren’s song she cannot help but to blindly follow. It’s an echo of his request from their first night together. Whether it is deliberate or not, Elena cannot tell.

For answer, Elena wraps her arms and her legs tighter around him, presses herself flush against the length of his body so that they are entwined as thoroughly as two people can be. “I’ve never left you,” she says, gasping as he changes angles, striking something deep inside of her. “I wanted to but I never could.”

“Then you know the agony that I have endured.”

He kisses her again, then, savagely, possessively. Kisses her like she’s something precious, something rare and impossible. There is so much tenderness in his kiss, so much hunger, that she thinks she may die from it. That she may find her death in his mouth this second time.

A flurry of incoming texts awakens her hours later.

Groggily, Elena stumbles from the bed, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and searching out her cell phone, carelessly tossed on the other side of the room.

It’s a series of reminder texts from Caroline. Clean up for the festival starts in less than an hour. She just barely has enough time to make it home and shower, and even then she’s inevitably going to run late.

She glances over to Klaus, still asleep in the rumpled bed. The sight of his face, for once uncomplicated by his turbulent, unnavigable moods, strikes a painful chord within her chest.

She doesn’t love him, but she’s terribly afraid that he had been right when he had predicted that she would. That she is already well on her way to falling in love with him.

After all, she’s a girl who falls in love with monsters. And history has a way of repeating with her.

It would be so easy to leave now. To slip out, and pretend that last night hadn’t happened. To treat him exactly as he had treated her last October. To bury the feelings Klaus had clawed and coaxed to the surface the night before.

Except, there is no going back. Klaus will not grant her that mercy. Has never shown her an ounce of mercy as he hunted her, either last spring when he sought her death, or this fall, when he sought her heart. It’s not his way.

Just because she knows he will chase her forever, though, doesn’t mean she can’t run. Just for a little bit longer.

Hastily, Elena finds a scrap of paper and a pen, and scrawls Klaus a note.

Please don’t kill anyone before we have a chance to talk.

She hesitates. Signs the note with a simple Yours.

Chapter Text

She's more than an hour late to the clean up, but eventually she does show, bundled up in a turtle neck and cream colored wool coat to cover up the marks Klaus had left on her.

Caroline descends upon her immediately. "Elena! Thank God, I was freaking out when I saw your car still here this morning."

"I lost my keys. I had to walk home last night." The lie bubbles out of her in an instant.

"I called and texted like a dozen times. Why didn't you pick up?"

Because she was too busy scrubbing the blood and sweat and sex from her skin.

Not that she could ever explain any of those details to Caroline.

Or… she squints at her, remembering how she had flirted with Klaus the day before. She'd sullenly concluded that he must like never having to worry Caroline had plans to kill him, but that isn't really true about Caroline. She's as cold a plotter as Elena under the right circumstances. In retrospect, Elena can see that she'd flirted with Klaus in order to distract him from the near-death blow Tyler had had planned for him.

And it had been more than a mere diversion. From everything Elena had observed, Caroline hadn't just flirted. She had liked it, too.

Maybe Elena could tell her everything after all.

For a moment, she plays with the idea of just confessing. Of letting Caroline see just how screwed up she has become, withering away in silence and exile. But then she remembers the way Klaus had smiled so openly at Caroline while they strolled together through the festival, and a jagged bolt of possessive jealousy twists in her gut.

"Unplugging is supposed to be good for the baby," Elena replies shortly.

If Elena's tone takes her aback, Caroline doesn't show it. "Next time warn me, okay? I was really worried.

A tendril of guilt worms its way into Elena's heart. "I'm okay."

A deep frown creases Caroline's brow as she hands Elena a contractor's bag and guides her over to one of the more secluded tables to begin trashing empty cups and unsalvageable decorations. "Tyler found me last night," she explains in a low, urgent voice. "The plan didn't work. Klaus is still out there."

Unable to bring herself to come clean to Caroline about Klaus—to admit that she already knows, and to recount all of the necessary details to explain her relationship with Klaus—Elena instead feigns surprise. "What happened? Is Tyler okay?"

"He's laying low. Elena… Hayley betrayed us. She told Klaus everything. He killed all of the hybrids. If he finds Tyler, he'll kill him too. I'm certain of it."

Not if Elena has anything to say about it. Yet… she can't protect her friends if they keep sneaking behind her back. She needs to know what they're planning so she can head them off.

"So what's Plan B?" she asks. "How do we save Tyler? Have you talked to Bonnie yet?"

"Bonnie's still out of town. She's coming back early, but she won't be back until late tonight at the earliest." Caroline bites her lip. "I'm going to talk to Klaus this afternoon."

The fact that Bonnie's out of town is news to her, but she pushes that revelation aside for now.

"Only talk?" she presses. Does Caroline have an ace up her sleeve Elena doesn't know about? "What would that accomplish?"

"You know he likes me. Maybe I can convince him to spare Tyler."

You know he likes me. Caroline delivers this like an obvious truth of the universe. The same way Damon had said it when he'd told her she should be bait because he's obsessed with you. Somehow, in all of the chaos and frantic desperation of the night before, this little factoid had slipped her mind. She'd completely forgotten that Klaus has feelings for Caroline as well.

Hot tears spring to her eyes as she realizes what a mistake she'd made sleeping with Klaus last night. Again. God, she's such a fool. Always making the same mistakes.

Elena blinks back her tears. Shoves an entire table's worth of used cups and plates into the contractor's bag, cursing under her breath when a splash of yesterday's mulled wine lands on her coat. It's going to stain. "Does he like you that much?" she asks as she scrubs at her coat. She can't bear to look at Caroline right now. The jealousy and the hurt and shame would burn her alive if she did.

"He says he does."

"That's a Damon move. Manipulating someone like that."

Caroline looks away. "Maybe we need a Damon right now. Or a Stefan." There's something in her tone. Something very close to blame. It's always been an open-secret why they both left.

Elena ignores it. She feels awful enough about their abandonment of her without adding the crush of Caroline's feelings to the mix. "Maybe if you'd included me in your plan from the beginning then it wouldn't have gone so off the tracks."

"That's not fair, Elena. Look at how you reacted last night just finding out that there was a plan. You freaked out and ran off. You're just not level-headed when it comes to Klaus. Just the idea of me going to face him alone has you in tears. You're too afraid of him."

Not level-headed when it comes to Klaus. Caroline's absolutely right about that part, of course.

"I could surprise you," she grinds out, abandoning the fight with her coat. "So, you talk Klaus into saving Tyler. And then what?"

"I don't know! As far as I'm concerned, I wish everyone could just leave each other alone. I don't really see why we have to kill anyone. Klaus doesn't want to kill you, or anyone else, or even probably Tyler if Tyler would stop goading him, so I don't see why we can't just all learn to live together."

"You really don't want to kill him," Elena says slowly as realization dawns.

"Obviously if it were easy, sure. But it's never easy, and it always goes the worst possible direction."

"I saw the way you smiled at Klaus yesterday. You like him." Once she says it, she knows it to be absolutely true.

Caroline throws her trash bag to the ground. "Don't say it like that!"

"Like what?"

"Like an accusation!"

"I wasn't."

"You were. Look, I know he's a bad guy, alright? I know he's done really terrible things. But when he looks at me, it's like he's the first person to see me for who I really am and value me. I can't help it if I respond to that." The words begin to flow so quickly from Caroline's lips it's as though in admitting part of this secret, she cannot contain the rest. Her confession is a raging river bursting free from the dam. "I can't help it if he makes me laugh and if it's impossible not to notice how handsome he is when he smiles at me, or how good his arms feel around me when he dances with me, or how much he pours his soul into the drawings he gifts me. So yeah: I like him. I have feelings for him. But it's never going to amount to anything more than that, because I love Tyler, and Tyler's decided he's Enemy Number 1. Even if sometimes I think he's the only one who truly knows me."

Caroline's confession sweeps Elena's breath away. Not because of what she confirms—that the attraction between Klaus and Caroline is mutual—but because of how she describes Klaus. The intimacy of her knowledge of him. The feeling of being singled out by him, individually. Seen in a way only he is capable.

For all that Elena's feelings towards Klaus are unique— the strange, deep, lost feelings of attachment, of emotional resonance, of her soul's own craving— it seems that his feelings for her are just the opposite. The idea that she could have abandoned all of her morals, could have conquered all of her aversions, in order to surrender herself to him—to give herself to him, to sign herself yours yours yours when she had argued just last week against that very thing—and that Klaus might feel just as much for Caroline if not more twists inside of her like a snake pouring venom into her blood. She feels sick with the knowledge, the certainty that she is nothing special to Klaus after all. She doesn't understand how she could be so alone, even in this, when she had felt that in Klaus she had inexplicably found her counterpart. That she would fit with him, because he had made it so that he was the only piece she could fit with.

"Oh God, you're looking at me like I've just ripped your heart out. Elena, I swear, this has nothing to do with you. It just—it just happened."

"It's fine, Care." It's not. But nothing has been fine since the night her parents' car drove off the bridge. What's one more empty assurance? "I understand completely."

Of course she does. She cannot blame her for falling for him, because she knows just how easy it is.

Caroline pulls her into a tight hug. "It's been so hard bottling this up. I've felt so guilty," she admits against her shoulder.

Maybe if the two of them had just been honest with each other, then neither of them would be in this position. Caught up in vicious knots over Klaus.

"You can tell me anything," she promises Caroline. Wills herself to mean it as the caring statement it sounds like. Wills herself to be that person, even though she knows she's really not.

The rest of the clean up passes in a blur, Elena lost to her own thoughts as she and Caroline split up.

The thing is, everything had seemed so terribly easy last night. Klaus had been alive when she had thought she had lost him forever, and the potency of her relief had fueled her to admit things to him that now feel foolishly impossible in the cold morning light.

How stupid she had been, to tell him how she feels about him. To assume that his feelings could possibly match her own. He had told her he loved her, but what does that even mean?

He probably loves Caroline as well.

She knows what it means to love too many. What happens when a heart cannot commit to just a single other. She's lost everything because of that.

She can't go through that pain again.

And it's more than that. Her wringing jealousy over Klaus's relationship with Caroline merely opens the door to all of her other doubts wide enough for her to realize just how ridiculous she had been last night to succumb.

For all that she had told Klaus the truth the night before when she admitted her feelings for him, she cannot imagine having that conversation again now. Cannot even imagine the simplest elements of a relationship—including him in her daily life, school work and cooking dinner every day and helping out with various town events—let alone how he would fit into her life once she has this child.

Klaus isn't boyfriend material.

Hell, the last morning after they spent a night together, he'd immediately orchestrated a murder plot against Caroline. She'd still been covered in Matt's blood when she'd allowed him to take her to bed last night.

Her stomach turns.

He definitely isn't father material. Which, she needs to really think about more seriously going forward. Fuck.

Except, her thoughts circle back to the way he had looked when he told her he loved her. She had believed him. When he had sworn to never allow harm to come to her child, she had believed him then, too.

Being with Klaus is a terrible idea—possibly her worst one ever—but there is a huge, undeniable part of herself that wants to try anyway. That wants to try to win him, for herself and herself alone. She had smothered that part so far down inside of herself that it may never have risen to the surface again if her friends hadn't forced it to the surface with their assassination attempt. But there is no undoing the past, as she has learned, the hard way, over and over. She can no longer deny that her feelings for him run deep and true.

There are a million ways Klaus could break her heart if she lets him.

A million ways she could break his heart, too.

She frets.

Makes absolutely no decisions.

At some point, she tells Caroline that she has a doctor's appointment as an excuse to leave.

She finds herself behind the steering wheel of her car and on the highway forty minutes outside of town before she knows it.

Running away like this is stupid, but the rev of the engine as she presses her foot harder to the accelerator grants her a false sense of freedom from her problems. On the open highway, she can pretend to escape the inevitable confrontation coming with Klaus. She can pretend that her problems—her supernatural pregnancy, her friends constantly throwing themselves into mortal peril, her murderous inconstant lover, everyone who has died or cut her out or left her—recede into the distance, just like Mystic Falls.

And oh, she wants to pretend, if only for a little while.

Chapter Text

Elena drives for hours without a destination. She turns her phone off early in the drive, eager for the chance to really think. The only company she keeps is herself, and the child growing within her. There's a stark happiness in that which she had not anticipated.

The winter sun sets early.

Elena exits the highway, drives through little towns she's never visited before, cheery Christmas lights strung up on trees and fences and along roofs and front porches. It's a beautiful, comforting sight that fills her with a sharp pang of longing for the solace of home. Family. The things she had almost thought were out of her reach forever, and yet… miraculously… are not.

It's then that she knows that she's going to turn around. That she's ready to stop running.

Because, no matter what, she is not alone. Even if things go horrifically sideways with Klaus, and he leaves her just like everyone else has, she has her baby. The one gift ever given to her by her cursed fate. That knowledge gives her the courage she needs to return.

It's hours after midnight when she finally pulls back up to her house. The temperature has plummeted since this morning. There is a milky weight to the air, presaging the possibility of snow.

"You didn't return any of my calls," Klaus calls out to her from the shadows on her front porch, his words an echo of Caroline's earlier complaint. "I was beginning to think you'd run away from me."

She can barely see Klaus in the dark, just his shadowy silhouette, yet even that—even just the sound of his voice—is enough to slice through her carefully arranged thoughts, leaving her in emotional disarray. "I did." Elena leans against her car. The cold of the metal sinks immediately into her back, freezing and head-clearing.

"Why?"

"I needed to think."

"You asked me not to kill anyone until we had a chance to talk."

"Did you? Kill anyone?"

"I know better than to tempt you with a reason to leave me." His tone is wry. Knowing. He understands exactly how precarious her capitulation truly is. "You're shivering," he notes as he draws near to her. "Let's get you inside."

She ignores his concern. Braces herself for a blow. "Did Caroline talk to you today?"

Klaus pauses. "She told you of her plans?"

"This morning. She filled me in."

"Then you know that your Tyler Lockwood is lucky I choose to let him live."

"I thought I would have to talk you into that."

Klaus shrugs. "Caroline is persuasive."

Of course she's not disappointed that Caroline had apparently succeeded. If anything, she's relieved that Tyler is safe from the most immediate danger. It's just— Part of her had hoped that it would take her intercession to save him. Had thought that if only she possessed the skill to persuade Klaus, then that might mean something. Instead, she finds that Caroline also holds sway over him. Her very fears confirmed.

She hates how selfish those feelings are. Hates herself for twisting her friend's fate into just another test for Klaus to prove himself to her. It's so messed up.

He reads the conflict on her face. So gently it hurts her, he touches her cold cheek. "Is that why you were so late returning? You didn't know how to persuade me? I can think of a few ways that would have proven effective." His smile sparks something hot and unwilling within her, even as it pierces her heart. She feels like she's being torn apart. All the while, his fingers trail over her skin, and she wants she wants she wants to lean into his hand. To let him hold her. Maybe she will, no matter what she finds out tonight. But only once she knows the score.

"What's going on between you and Caroline?"

Klaus freezes. Then, like the smothering of a candle flame, his mood changes. A slow, sharp smile spread over his face. He nearly vibrates with glee. "Are you jealous, sweetheart?"

Elena struggles with herself. Her pride demands that she deny it, but Klaus has stripped her of her pride, of all of the lies she used to tell in order to defend herself. All there is left is the unbearable truth. "Yes."

"There is no need. I want none but you."

"You're a pathetic liar. I know there's something between the two of you."

Another man might pull away from her, but Klaus only crowds closer, drawing her into the heat of his body. "What precisely did Caroline say to you earlier?"

She sinks into his embrace. She cannot help herself. She is weaker than she ever thought. "That she has feelings for you."

"I cannot help it if all find me comely and charming."

"You're obsessed with her though."

"By who's account?"

"Everyone's."

"The only woman who has ever obsessed me is you."

She pulls back to look at him. "Somehow you've turned my entire world inside out and now the only one for me is you, Klaus. I need to know whether the same is true for you, or whether you have feelings for one of my best friends as well. I can't… I can't fight through every reason I know we shouldn't be together if it's just going to turn out that you'd prefer to be with Caroline the second she'll have you. I need to know, right now, if you're going to do that to me."

"I'm in love with you."

"That doesn't answer my question." Her voice cracks near the end, raw emotion and doubt seeping through the words. Lots of people had claimed to love her and left her anyway.

Klaus lifts her chin so that she must look him in the eyes. His other hand grips her shoulder, as though afraid she will disappear like winter smoke on the wind if he unhands her. "Precious girl. Haven't I made myself clear by now? I love you and only you. Caroline Forbes is who I consoled myself with when I foolishly determined I should keep you at a distance."

"She makes you smile."

"You could make me smile were you not so difficult."

"Am I too difficult to love?"

"No, you're too easy. It's conquering your love which is difficult."

She scoffs. "Hardly."

"The price for your love is very dear. So dear I have not yet thought of a sum high enough to tempt you. But I will. I am nothing if not persistent."

"That's what scares me."

His grip on her tightens. The way he looks at her though. Like she's the most extraordinary creature he's ever encountered. He, who has encountered everything. "You leave out the most interesting part: Your fear excites you."

She gazes into his eyes, dark in the uncertain moonlight, and sees herself reflected in their depths. She lays her palm against his cheek. Tracks the way he tilts his face, leaning into her touch. "When did you get to know me so well?"

"I told you I've thought of nothing else since that first night I had you beneath me. Since then I've had many long hours to consider your many facets."

His words render her helpless. Irresistible to the predator within him. He strikes then, kissing her with that luxuriant hunger she is coming to crave the way the ocean craves the moon.

She responds with a desperation that shocks her, reeling him in as close as she can. At some point he wedges the hard length of his thigh between her own, and she grinds herself against him, seeking a release for her doubts and her frustrations. Her anxieties over Caroline aren't really soothed, but she is willing to forget them so long as Klaus keeps kissing her like this. Keeps working so hard to convince her that he loves her and her alone.

It's only when his hand creeps up under her shirt, the ice of the night air a stark contrast to the fire of his palm stroking over the exposed skin of her belly, that she remembers herself. She bats his hand away, somehow manages to duck out from under his arm as well and throw some distance between them. He lets her.

"This is crazy, Klaus! We can't do this."

He sighs, the sound so frustrated that she could almost mistake him for a human male. "Why not? I've already confessed my love for you, above all others. Already sworn to protect your child, consented to even raise the creature with you. What more shall I promise you? Would you like an oath of fidelity as well? A crown of rubies and firestones for your pretty head? The gift of immortality? I would give you any of those things freely."

"It's not about what you can give me. It's about the fact that our lives just don't fit together."

"You're wrong."

"I don't exactly see you helping with homework or reading bedtime stories."

He rolls his eyes. "You're not going to scare me off with visions of little league games."

"What about my friends then? They're going to have a fit."

"Let them. Besides, Caroline doesn't mind me."

"Klaus, I'm serious. They almost killed you yesterday. You almost killed them. How am I supposed to tell them we're involved?"

"Tell them the truth."

"Which is?"

"That you cannot live without me, nor I without you."

"You wish."

All of the play drains out of him, replaced with an air of ancient solemnity, eternal and unshakable as the oldest mountains. "I do." She hears the truth in his words.

Elena bites her lip. Wrestles with herself. "You really won't leave me again?"

He closes the distance between them. Clasps her hands between his own. "Never. I want you with me always."

She gazes down at their joined hands. "Will you take me home with you?"

He looks over her shoulder, to the front door of her home. "I can see your Christmas tree in the front window. Wouldn't you rather stay here?"

"Please?"

She's not ready to let him into her home. Not ready to lower that final guard she has against him.

He reads it in her face. Relents. "Alright."

He brings her to his home, where she wanders through the rooms with a growing familiarity and possessiveness. In her memory, she's haunted these halls since the first time Klaus took her here.

If she notices the two glasses of half-finished bourbon set aside in Klaus's personal study, she doesn't comment on it.

Instead, she drags him over to the black leather sofa. The place where they first kissed. Pulls him on top of her, until he is covering her, blocking out the entire rest of the world. His hands on her body are a revelation, opening up entire new vistas of pleasure and warmth to her that she hadn't even known existed. Despite the fact that this connection between them was sparked months ago, everything is still so bright and new between them. She feels like a detonating star each time she comes under his touch.

He peels her jeans midway down her legs, not even bothering to undress her completely before his fingers are circling, teasing, dipping between her legs. She's greedy for this. She can't help but grind into his fingers, opening her thighs as wide as she can with her jeans still frustratingly half-way on, hoping he will relieve her and fuck her with his fingers at least, if not just rip the jeans off of her altogether. And oh, how he loves to prolong her agony. That's the way with him. It's not enough to hurt her, to love her. He has to make her suffer for it first. To long for his body as much as she had longed for the death he had once offered her.

She cries out and bucks when his fingers finally delve inside of her. Immediately, he finds that special place that with just the right pressure, just the right rhythm, can make her writhe and twist. As in everything, Klaus is relentless as he screws her tighter and tighter toward an ecstasy she can only find in his embrace. It's entirely plausible that when she kicks the table over, smashing the two glasses against the parquet floor, that it's an accident. She can't tell. She's coming, crashing, burning, her whole world narrowed on to the taste sight feel smell of him as he fucks her up and over the edge again.

Klaus doesn't even notice the broken glasses. All of his attention focuses in on her. His eyes are glued to the strip of skin revealed by her disarrayed sweater, the expanse of her exposed thighs, the place at their juncture where his fingers disappear inside of her.

He looks up into her face, maintaining eye contact as he slowly curls his fingers within her. It's as though he's found the string that will unravel her, and he is slowly, maddeningly tugging it loose.

"You feel this too," Klaus murmurs as he watches her unspool. "I know that you do."

"I do," she admits, dizzy with want. It's as though the more she has him, the greater her need for more of him.

"You see how right we are for one another? Who else could make you come apart like this? Who else could make your heart fly so fast with just a glance?"

"I could ask the same of you," Elena counters, biting back a moan.

"No one," Klaus swears.

Later, he lights the fire, and curls up behind her on the sofa. They watch the fire in contemplative silence for a long time, and she is nearly asleep when Klaus speaks next. "Why did you stay with me last night?"

The question catches her off-guard. She searches for an honest answer he will understand.

"I couldn't bear for you to be alone."

Klaus combs the hair back from her face. "You understand loneliness."

"Yes." He had taught her her final lessons on the topic. Molded her in his shape in fire and blood.

"We understand something fundamental about each other. That's rarer than you think."

"I think that's the real truth between us," she dares to tell him. "Not our history or our physical attraction. The real thing that binds us together is that we're just the same in this one, profound way."

Klaus takes her hand, twining his fingers through with hers and kissing each knuckle. "Not so lonely anymore."

Elena turns to look at him. Dares to hope. "No, I suppose not."

Chapter Text

"When shall I see you again?" Klaus asks her, a note of suspicion creeping into his voice, as he watches her dress in yesterday's clothes and finger comb her hair.

She grins fiendishly at him over her shoulder. "Afraid I'm going to disappear on you?"

He sits at the foot of the bed, his hair curling and tousled still from sleep, wearing nothing more than a silk sheet slung low across his hips. The temptation to return to him and spend the whole day in bed is profound.

"You have a habit of slipping through my fingers when I would much rather keep you close."

She slinks over to him and climbs into his lap. It's still a strange sensation, this closeness between them. The fact that she can crowd him like this and he will welcome her touch. How did this happen, that she had won over a heart such as his? Who is she, that the villain in her story should look at her with such starved longing?

"You have a habit of catching me though," she points out, mesmerized by the feeling of his hair between her fingers. That giddy brand-new-relationship-joy bubbles through her.

"I've already caught you," Klaus growls, wrapping his arms around her and drawing her down into his lap where she can feel his desire for her.

A hot shiver rolls through her. It would be so deliciously easy to let Klaus take her again, right here. Not even the persistent soreness pooling in her thighs, her wrists, and, pleasingly, between her legs, can countermand the bolt of lust that strikes her when Klaus pins her beneath him.

Elena strokes along his face. Traces the features that are so familiar they may as well be branded behind her eyelids. She sees him whenever she closes her eyes, whenever her thoughts wander. Has been since April, if she's completely honest with herself.

Klaus nips at her finger. A bead of blood dots the fragile skin.

She watches, mesmerized, as he draws the digit into his mouth.

"Do you want to know the secret?" she asks him, her voice trembling with excess. Excess desire. Excess fear. Excess hope.

"I want to know all of your secrets."

"You didn't catch me at all. I ran straight to you."

It's already midday when she finally says her goodbyes. It's a gray, overcast day, the sky still threatening a winter storm.

"You're certain you won't stay?" Klaus asks her at the threshold.

"Not unless you want to help me with my college applications."

"I could always tie you to the bed. I think you'd enjoy that."

"Applications are due in just a couple of weeks and I really don't feel like explaining to all the teachers writing me rec letters why I didn't make the deadline."

"Tell me where you want to go and I'll compel you a place."

Elena frowns at him. "You know, I had to take the SAT three times because of you. I'm not going to let that score I cried blood to earn go to waste."

Klaus shrugs. "I fail to see how I have any connection to your scores."

"As though I could study with the sacrifice on the horizon, and the threat of you always looming in the background!"

This pleases him. He reaches out to rub the fabric of her lapel between his fingers. The heat radiating from his hand brushes against her face. "Seems then like I owe you some recompense."

"Reimbursement for my test fees for certain," she breathes. God, this is absurd. She's never going to get home.

Klaus gently pushes her back a step, out of his doorway, just when she's ready to lean in for a kiss. "The offer remains on the table, dear heart."

Bonnie's waiting for her on her front porch when she pulls up to the house.

"Elena! I was just texting you to see where you were."

She really hopes she doesn't look too obviously mussed. She's not ready to explain the whole Klaus may sort of maybe be my boyfriend now—ta da! situation to her friends—least of all Bonnie, who had never approved of any of her vampiric boyfriends. She can't even imagine the apoplexy this little revelation would incite.

Honestly, it's a stroke of luck that Caroline isn't here too or else Elena would have to explain why she's still wearing yesterday's clothes.

"Did you get back in town last night?" Elena asks, hoping to cover her fluster by bombarding Bonnie with questions. "Where'd you go?"

Bonnie blows past her inquiries, offering her a smug smile instead. "I think I've got a lead on your pregnancy."

Immediately, Elena brightens. "Really? That's amazing! Did you find something in one of your Grams's books?"

"In a manner of speaking."

Elena ushers her inside, and the two settle on the den sofa.

"Okay," Bonnie begins. "I'm going to extend a net of my magic around you, just to get a clearer diagnostic—"

"Haven't you already tried that?"

"Not like this. This is different." She places her hands, palm down, over Elena's womb.

"Different how?"

"You know how I've been going up to Whitmore a lot these last few weeks?"

Elena pulls back, out of Bonnie's reach. "Bonnie, is that where you were this weekend? With Professor Shane?"

"Why are you saying his name like that?"

"Like what?"

"With a tone."

"You know he gives me the creeps."

"Well, it's a false alarm. He's perfectly lovely and thoughtful and kind." She blushes bright pink as she says it. The only descriptor missing from her list is handsome.

"So are half the vampires we meet."

"He's definitely not a vampire." There's something a little too knowing in her tone. "And it's not like I've been visiting to socialize," Bonnie hurries to assure her, although, the denial does anything but. "He's been helping me. Helping us both, really."

Despite herself, Elena caves. "How?"

"You know how I sensed there's something out of tune with Nature with the baby? Well, the problem's been that because of that, I haven't been able to get a more specific read on the baby—it's like there was something about it that smothered all the spells I tried using."

Elena places a protective hand over her middle. "Go on."

"I told Shane about the issue—relax, I was super vague, I swear! He has no idea about the baby—and he told me about this other type of magic called Expression. He's been teaching me how to use it. I've gotten really good. He says I have a knack for it."

She feels like she's been hit with too much information. "There are different kinds of magic?"

"Oh, lots!"

Huh. "What makes this one different from what you usually do?"

"It's not bound by the forces of Nature, or the Spirits for that matter." There's something odd about that, but Bonnie reaches for her hands, then, distracting her from that line of thought. "So I was thinking: I could try a diagnostic spell using Expression, see if that turns up anything?"

Elena worries her lip. "You're sure it's safe?"

"Trust me."

The thing is, it's Bonnie. Even after they'd fallen out this past fall, even after all the lies and all the secrets that had passed between them… she still trusts her more than anyone. Or, at least, she still wants to trust her more than anyone.

"Okay. Let's." Impulsively, she squeezes Bonnie in a quick, tight hug. "And thank you—for everything."

Bonnie pins her with an earnest, concerned look. "You're my best friend, Elena. Of course I'm going to look out for you."

Elena takes a deep breath. "Okay. Where do we start?"

A few moments later, Bonnie has her hands pressed against the bare skin of Elena's belly. Her palms are freezing against her skin. She shakes off the discomfort. Focuses instead on Bonnie, who has bowed her head and shut her eyes as she mutters under her breath.

An unnatural breeze stirs the air, ruffling the pages of her open history textbook. The lights on the Christmas tree blink lazily on and off.

Bonnie's grip abruptly tightens against her stomach. The temperature in the room drops. Their breaths stir clouds of white mist in front of their faces.

The spell feels—strange. Like a net, just as Bonnie described, only unlike before, she can feel it cinching tighter and tighter around her. Around her womb.

She fights the claustrophobic panic the feeling inspires. Reminds herself over and over again: Bonnie's helping. This is for the best. Bonnie's helping. This is for the best.

Something shifts inside of her.

"This doesn't feel right…" Elena gasps as a sharp lance of pain rips through her. It feels like there are a pair of tiny hands pressing against the inside of her skin, trying to tear their way out.

The air in front of Bonnie's face fogs as she begins to pant. She gives no sign that she can hear her. Elena tries to push Bonnie off of her but she clamps on, impossible to remove.

The lights on the Christmas tree explode, scattering colored shards all over the room.

The stabbing pain in her side roars into an open inferno that engulfs her entire abdomen. Gasping, sobbing tears leak down Elena's face, and she hears someone begging, begging for it to stop, only to realize that it's her begging—

Just when Elena thinks she can't take another second of this hideous spell, Bonnie throws herself back, flinging herself to the other side of the couch.

The pain lessens, slightly, receding to a mere knife-wound intensity. Elena doubles over, clutching at her stomach. Sick with dread. What does it mean what does it mean is her baby okay?

"What did you do to me?" she moans.

Bonnie doesn't answer her.

The longer her silence goes on, the more unbearable it becomes.

"Do you know?" Bonnie asks at last.

Chapter Text

"Know what?" Elena bites out. The pain in her belly sears and throbs.

Bonnie stares at her hard. Jumps to her feet. "I have to go." She rushes over to the front door before Elena can stop her.

"Wait, Bonnie, I think something's wrong—" Her voice hitches. "I feel awful—"

"Drink some water. It'll help with any residual discomfort." And then she's out the door.

"Fuck!" Elena pounds her fist against the sofa. Takes huge, heaving breaths. Drink some fucking water. Don't panic about whatever spell was just cast on her. That had been nothing like any of the spells Bonnie had tried before.

Cursing still, Elena drags herself over to the kitchen sink and pours herself a glass of water. She's been through worse pain before, she tells herself. Much greater discomfort. Hell, she'd inflicted worse upon herself last spring with a kitchen knife.

She sips the water slowly, and waits, praying for the pain to subside.

Lies down on the sofa, thinking maybe that will help. That's what they tell women to do when they're worried about their babies, right? Don't move? Rest?

She frets about whether she needs to go to the emergency room. What would she even say? I let my friend do some black magic on me, and now I'm worried it's hurt the baby? 

Maybe she should call Klaus.

No. He'll only grow angry with Bonnie. Probably track her down to—what? Threaten her? Seek revenge? Elena's not certain. Neither option would be very helpful. She shunts that idea off and doesn't reexamine it.

She'd been absolutely completely right when she'd decided he wasn't boyfriend material. She can't believe she's decided to ignore her common sense on one of the rare occasions it had actually made itself known.

Maybe Bonnie just hadn't realized how wrong the spell had gone.

Elena glances at her smoldering Christmas tree.

Well, maybe Bonnie just hadn't realized that the spell had affected her so adversely.

She tries dialing her, but she doesn't pick up.

She tries again.

Nothing.

She shoots her a text. CALL ME ASAP!

She lies back and waits, trying to think about anything other than the tight fears that build in her chest. She's sure this is nothing. She's just panicking. Probably.

After about twenty minutes, the pain does recede, lessening to a mere ebbing discomfort.

As the pain lessens, Elena begins to think less on the clusterfuck of the spell itself and more on Bonnie's strange response once she had withdrawn from the magic.

Do you know?

Know what?

There had been something urgent in her tone… as well as something… accusatory. As though Elena might be keeping secrets from her.

That doesn't make sense though.

Bonnie's tagged along to all of her doctor's appointments so far. She's been the point person helping Elena with all the research too. From the time Elena broke the news to her and Caroline just a few weeks ago, Bonnie has known everything she has.

She texts Caroline.

Have you talked to Bonnie today?

Thirty seconds later, her phone dings.

No, why?

Elena considers whether or not to fill Caroline in. Thinks about how Caroline had kept Tyler's suicidal assassination attempt from her. How she had never thought to mention that she and Klaus had a… connection before Elena called her out on it.

Just wondering, she hedges.

Caroline replies right away.

Want to work on apps together later? Your house?

Does she feel up to this?

Does she really want to push Caroline away, when she's trying to include her? (Hadn't that been what she had wanted all along?)

Maybe some other time

She does her best to stay quiet the rest of the day, working on her college applications at her kitchen counter while she sips on a mug of steaming vervain tea. She even bakes chocolate chip cookies to cover up the scent of roasted tree and fried plastic. It's all so cozy that she can almost trick herself into focusing on anything other than the great heap of unanswered questions and anxieties brought up by Bonnie's visit.

Hours pass before the fact that Bonnie hasn't texted her or called her back really gets under her skin.

Whatever Bonnie had discovered, Elena needs to know. There can't be any secrets kept from her about her own child.

She tries Bonnie's house first, then, finding no one home, tries the Grill, her favorite coffee shop, and every other hangout she can think of. She even drives by Caroline's house, just in case the two of them are together.

The whole afternoon feels like a tired repeat of last fall, when everyone had been hiding from her.

She wonders where Bonnie hides now. With Shane?

That seems like an awfully long way to drive.

On a hunch, she swings by the Boarding House.

There's a light on inside.

Elena sits in the drive outside, clutching her steering wheel, for a very long time.

Her mouth feels so suddenly dry that it burns when she swallows. Her blood rushes in her ears.

They're not back, she tells herself firmly. Neither of their cars are parked out front.

Even though she knows that they're not, there is still a soft, vulnerable part of her that hopes that they are. That they'd come back for her. Her jelly legs still barely hold her up steady as she wobbles toward the front door.

Her hand grips the latch of the front door, and she has to take a huge, deep, steadying breath before pushing herself in.

She hasn't been back since that fateful night she spent with both of them.

For a brief few hours, she had thought that the three of them might weather all the ways they'd hurt and betrayed each other in the fallout from the sacrifice.

Even now, soaked in the glow of a new relationship and all of the (impossible, terrifying, exhilarating) possibilities it opens up, she's scared. Scared to face the past. Scared to face the future where this house remains empty forever.

There will always be a remnant of who she used to be who will haunt this place. Who will wish that things had been different. That her love for them could have been enough.

It wasn't, though, and so she has shed that remnant, left her here, in these halls that still feel like home, and she's bandaged up the parts of herself that remained and done what she always has: she has found a way to keep on living.

The first thing that strikes her when she steps inside is the smell. The rich earthy scent of the oak and mahogany, beeswax, the hint of smoke from their last fire—the combination batters into her, so much more visceral and immediate in its impact than she could have imagined. Tears sting her eyes as she wanders further into the house.

She knows, absolutely, positively, that it's not going to be Stefan or Damon she finds lounging in the parlor.

Instead, her intuition from earlier proves correct.

Bonnie sits at the long table on the other end of the parlor, surrounded by a mountain of old texts.

A floorboard creaks under Elena's foot, and Bonnie startles.

"What are you doing here?" she asks.

Elena crosses her arms and leans against one of the massive pillars at the entrance to the room. "The deed to this house is actually still in my name, so if anyone has the right to ask that question, it's me."

Bonnie shuts the tome she'd been studying and regards her. "I like the quiet." It's an infuriatingly evasive answer, especially on the heels of how she'd been dodging her all day. The fact that Elena had had to track Bonnie down to this place, which she must realize is the last place Elena would ever want to go, only riles her emotions even further.

"Tell me about what you found out this morning."

"Are you feeling better? You said you didn't feel too great."

"That's an understatement. I preferred skewering myself to what you did to me."

Bonnie frowns and clambers up from her place at the table. "It hurt? That doesn't make any sense. It was just a diagnostic spell. Are you feeling better now?" She strides over to Elena and reaches up to touch her, but Elena darts out of her reach.

"Well enough to track you down, since you've been avoiding me."

"You're mad at me."

"Look, I can accept that you lost control of that spell you did earlier, but I know you well enough to know that you found something and it freaked you out so much you ran—"

"How about we sit down?" Again, Bonnie tries to take her arm, but Elena yanks herself out of Bonnie's grasp.

She marches to the sofas, trying hard not to think about happier times on these sofas, and waits for Bonnie to settle herself. Several minutes pass in painful silence as Bonnie stares and fidgets on the sofa directly across from her.

"This isn't fair. You can't keep secrets from me about my baby. If there's something wrong I need to know—"

"It's not a baby."

"Of course it is. I've seen it on the ultrasound. We both have."

This time, Bonnie approaches her slowly, kneeling down on the rug in front of her and clasping her hands between her own. Her grip is uncomfortably tight.

"No, Elena. It's not. I was finally able to figure out why your baby is out of tune with Nature." She squeezes Elena's hands until they ache. "The baby isn't human."

All of her thoughts stall. She slumps back against the sofa, not even bothering to withdraw her hands from Bonnie's grasp. "How is that possible?"

"You really don't know? You're not…" Bonnie hesitates. "You're not lying, are you? Maybe… protecting someone?"

This again! It was frustrating enough fielding these accusations from Klaus. She's insulted hearing them from Bonnie.

"I told you. I didn't sleep with anyone who could have possibly gotten me pregnant. This is purely supernatural."

"I'm worried about the reaction you had to the spell earlier."

"Yeah, me too. I'm not comfortable with you using any more magic on me. Especially not—" Elena gestures expansively, trying to summon the name of the magic Bonnie had used. "Expulsion."

"Expression."

"Fine, Expression. Are you sure you should be using it?"

"It's perfectly safe. Look, Elena. If the baby were something benevolent, why would it respond so violently to my probe? Why would it try to hurt you?"

"It didn't hurt me, you did."

Bonnie moves to sit next to her on the sofa. She never lets go of her hand. "We have to consider the possibility that whatever that is you're carrying is something malevolent."

Elena pulls away from her. "What are you saying?"

"That we need to consider what's for the best. That maybe it would be better to terminate the pregnancy."

Her rage nearly chokes her. Elena bounds to her feet. "I can't believe this. You said you would support me!"

"That was before I got a look at that thing inside of you. Elena, it made my hair stand up on end. Every instinct I have is screaming at me that that thing is wrong." Bonnie's voice rises and falls like the shriek of a gale wind. It's a tell tale sign that she's fighting to keep her cool against an overflow of passion.

She backs away, her hands pressed against her belly. "It's not a thing though. It's my baby."

"Elena—"

"I have to go."

"We don't have time to push this off. I've been reading and every mention of this I've found says—"

"I don't care." She heads for the door.

"It's not just your problem, Elena! It's going to be everyone's problem!"

Elena slams the door behind her hard enough to rattle the window glass.

Chapter Text

She winds up at Klaus's mansion without consciously thinking of it. Bites her thumb for a long time, weighing her options.

She's not sure she has any.

She has to protect her baby. She has to protect her friend.

She turns the car around and goes home.

The house still smells like roasted tree and fried plastic. Colored glass from the exploded lights crunch under her boots as she trudges through the house.

She throws herself down on her bed and presses her hands to her belly.

How could it be possible that her miracle is anything other than an innocent? That the child whose discovery had returned her joy and her hope to her could be anything other than good?

Good, but inhuman. That's the part she has trouble wrapping her mind around. How could that be possible? Elena herself, supernatural though she is, is still decidedly, stubbornly, merely human…

She stays up late, speculating, churning over everything Bonnie had said to her. It's frustrating, because she just doesn't have a lot to go on. Bonnie had been vague, and very fast to condemn the life growing within her.

Not a baby! Ha! Elena would like to see Bonnie go through a few rough mornings herself and then try to tell her it's not a baby she's carrying.

"It's okay," she whispers. "I'll always protect you. Always."

And I'll love you even if you're a monster.

Not that she believes it. It's just that Bonnie had been so certain that her baby would turn out dangerous.

Maybe she should have played along, extracted everything Bonnie knew from her before finding an excuse to flee. She had just been so blinded by the tsunami of protective fury that had swept through her. Anything other than the raw, primal urge to defend her baby had been completely subsumed. There had been no room for thinking, no room for scheming.

Honestly, she's ashamed. If she had played her hand better, had played it cool, she could have protected her baby much more effectively. It's just so unlike her to let feeling get in the way of playing the roles she needs to play to survive. She scrubs at her tearing eyes, her flushed cheeks. Stupid pregnancy hormones. She was a much better liar before they got in the way.

The more she thinks about it, the more she realizes there's really only one thing to do.

Early the next morning, Elena creeps through the Boarding House grounds, her fingers clenched around the straps of her backpack. Dead underbrush crackles under her feet. She wonders if it's somehow her responsibility to hire a groundskeeper in the Salvatores' absence. She flicks that thought away. Later.

Very carefully, she sidles up to the parlor windows and peers inside so she can confirm no one's home. Coast looks clear. Better, just like she'd hoped, Bonnie had left her books behind, piled high on the table, just like how she always sets up book forts when she has a research paper. She just needs to sneak inside and have a look—

"What are you doing skulking around here?"

Elena whirls, heart in her throat, to find Klaus, hovering right behind her. She presses her hand against her pounding chest. "Are you following me?"

"Obviously."

She squints at him. She should probably say something about boundaries, but neither of them have ever been particularly good at honoring those, especially where the other is concerned, and anyway, she doesn't entirely mind that he's shown up out of the blue like this. The sight of him is more comforting than she could have anticipated.

Part of her wants to ditch this and just step into his arms. Let him wrap her up and murmur his bizarre affections into her ear and make love to her until she feels warm and safe and forgetful of all of her troubles.

Part of her.

Reluctantly, she looks back in the window. "You don't hear anyone in the house, do you?" she asks.

Klaus's brow quirks, but instead of commenting, he cocks his head and listens. "Silent as the night."

"Okay. C'mon." She takes his hand without thinking.

Klaus pauses, for just a moment, before tightening his grip on her and following her lead, a solid, steady presence at her side. "You haven't answered my question about what you're doing, here, at the Salvatore house."

Is that jealousy she detects?

Caution prevents her from explaining herself to Klaus. Not yet. Whatever they have between them is still too new for her to trust it. "Bonnie's been hanging out here and I want to know why." There. A nice, vague lie that also addresses why Bonnie's scent might linger in the air.

"Isn't the Bennet witch your dearest friend? Why not ask her?"

"She's been spending a lot of time lately with this guy I don't trust. I'm not sure she'll tell me the truth."

"I'll be happy to remove the louse for you," Klaus offers.

Elena wrinkles her nose. "Not necessary, thanks."

"You should call me next time."

"I'm just snooping through my friend's things. Didn't seem like something you'd be interested in."

"Just snooping through a powerful witch's effects while she's away. Whyever would I prefer to be present."

"Sounds like a normal day to me." She lets them both inside with her copy of the key, ignoring both the way Klaus's eyes linger on that key as well as the sensory assault of the house as she slips down the familiar halls, and pretends to look around.

Immediately, Klaus pulls her over to the table where Bonnie had been working the day before. "Here. These books belong to the witch."

She cringes, thinking about what he might find as he rifles through the grimoires and other tomes spread out all over the table.

Elena drops her bag at her feet and joins him in sifting through the stack. There are at least a dozen books here, and a lot of them are in… Latin? Great.

Apparently the contents don't hold too much interest for Klaus. After a couple of minutes, he drops the cracked leather-bound tome he'd been scanning and wanders off, peering at the artwork and randomly picking up various knickknacks to examine more closely. It feels a lot like Klaus examining her, which she knows is silly. This isn't even her house—

Except for the part where, in the most important ways, it was her home.

She shakes herself. She doesn't have time for these distractions.

One of the books is thankfully written in English—on the topic of trans-dimensional beings and demonology. She shoves that one aside.

She only finds a few more written in English—a treatise on Nature's Balance, a book of mythology, and an historical account of women who had undergone strange pregnancies and births.

She glances up. Klaus is all the way over in the library on the other side of the parlor, busy picking through the Salvatore collection.

Quickly, she shoves all three books into her backpack before Klaus turns back around.

A text dings in her pocket. Elena checks it. Caroline, wanting to hang out later.

She sets her phone aside and continues flipping through the books.

One of them shocks her. She curses and sticks her fingers in her mouth. In an instant Klaus is at her side, pulling her away from the table. "Careful, now. It seems some of these might be cursed."

"Why would Bonnie have a cursed grimoire?"

He doesn't answer her, instead taking her hand and gently examining her fingers. "It's just a light burn."

The low burr of his voice rumbles through her. Does delicious things to her. She can't help sidling closer to him. Leaning into his space. "Why are you being so sweet to me?"

"I told you I would be good to you."

"You also took pains to remind me that you're the villain here."

He nips at her burnt finger, drawing blood.

The sting of his bite comes with a bright frisson of pleasure.

"Your villain?" he asks her.

Yes. Exactly. That's the issue. He's a villain, and she doesn't even mind very much, simply because he is hers.

Helplessly, Elena grabs him by the lapels of his coat, pulling his face down to hers and tilting her hips so that she can maul him with her mouth the way that he mauls her heart out, so that she can thrust against him with as much claiming passion as he had unleashed upon her the first time he took her to his bed and held her so close she has never been able to escape him since.

In a flash he has her perched on the edge of the table, her legs wrapped around his hips as he stands between them. They tear at each other's coats, at Klaus's heavy belt and the buttons to her jeans, trying to strip each other without pulling away from each other.

Oh God. In a moment Klaus is going to have her stripped and perched on the edge of this table. She's absolutely going to fuck him in Stefan and Damon Salvatore's parlor.

They would roll over in their proverbial graves if they knew about this.

Doesn't mean she's going to stop, though.

The front door bangs open just as Elena's figured out the buckle on Klaus's belt.

She freezes, staring up into Klaus's wild blue eyes, uncomprehending for valuable seconds as the sound of her friends' voices penetrates the lustful fog in her brain.

Fuck.

She scrambles out from under him and snatches up her coat, jabbing her arms through the sleeves and frantically doing up the buttons on her jeans, tearing her fingers through her hair.

Klaus, God damn him, is much slower and much, much more cavalier about putting himself to rights. "What's the hurry, sweetheart?" he asks her in that deep, smooth voice that feels like a finger stroking up the length of her spine. He still looks… ruffled when her friends round the corner into the parlor. Not good not good.

Elena stares like a struck deer as Bonnie, Caroline, Tyler, and Matt all spill into the room.

They all freeze when they see her, wild-eyed and frantic, standing in Klaus's shadow.

Bonnie is the first to recover. "What are you doing here?" she calls out to Klaus, stepping to the front of the group and approaching them.

"He followed me," Elena blurts out, her explanation oddly completely truthful, before Klaus can respond with something doubtlessly unhelpful. "The better question is: what are the four of you doing here?"

"Hanging out?" Tyler ventures.

Klaus actually laughs and throws himself onto one of the sofas that Elena so cherishes. "I grant you a stay of execution and you waste your time by hanging out?"

Tyler sputters. "You enslaved me—"

"You were perfectly willing."

"And murdered me—"

"You seem hale and whole now."

"And tried to steal my girl—"

"Look, I'm not dumb," Elena cuts in before Klaus can come up with an inevitably infuriating response to this little gem. "You're not hanging out, which leaves—oh yes, conspiring."

Bonnie glares at Klaus. "I think you should leave."

"I'm quite comfortable where I am."

Caroline comes to stand by Bonnie. "Please, Klaus? We really want to talk to Elena. It's personal."

He meets Elena's eyes. "If it concerns my Elena, then it concerns me."

"She's not your anything," Matt retorts.

"I heartily disagree."

"Actually—maybe Klaus is right," Bonnie interjects. "He cares about his precious doppelganger's well-being so much, maybe he can force Elena to see reason on this." She takes a seat across from Klaus and gestures magnanimously. "Consider this your invitation to the intervention."

Chapter Text

Elena scoffs. "My intervention? That's rich. If anyone needs one of those, it's you." A moment ago she'd felt trapped. Frantic. Now all she feels is a righteous, prickling anger.

"Intervention is way too strong a word," Caroline rushes to assure her. "We just thought we should all talk."

"I for one think we should hear Elena's side of the story before we all jump on her," Tyler seconds.

"Excuse me," Bonnie says. "Why do I need an intervention?"

Elena cannot believe this. "You're the one practicing dark magic."

"Expression isn't dark magic—"

Klaus lifts his hand. "I must have misheard. You're practicing what sort of magic now?" Incredulity drips from his words.

Bonnie raises her chin. "Expression. And you should be thanking me. If I hadn't used it, I never would have figured out there was something wrong with Elena's pregnancy."

"Wait, no one's told me anything," Matt breaks in. "What's wrong with Elena's pregnancy?"

"Nothing," Elena snaps.

"I'd like to hear what Miss Bennett has to say," Klaus decides, leaning forward to stare Bonnie down.

Elena knows the power of that stare. Has faced it with fear and longing both more times than she can count.

"What isn't wrong?" Bonnie asks. "I'm not sure it's even a pregnancy. The baby—or whatever it is—isn't human."

Klaus turns that calculating stare on her, and Elena cannot help but stumble a step back under its weight. His eyes sweep over her from head to toe, zeroing in, finally, on her womb. The blood drains from her face. She feels sick and cold, like maybe she needs to throw up again. A complete turnabout from how safe and warm she had felt by his presence a mere fifteen minutes ago.

She crosses her arms over her belly. A pathetic shield for her child, but the only one she has.

She has always made do with what she's had.

(And lo: behold how she has always come out on top.)

Caroline sits down next to Klaus, shock clear in every line of her body. "If it's not human, what is it?"

"It could be anything," Bonnie begins.

Play it cool, Elena chants to herself. This is your second chance. Find out what Bonnie thinks she knows. Her hands tighten around her middle as Bonnie continues.

"It could be a demon. A possessive spirt. Something using Elena as a vessel to cross over from another dimension—"

She hurls the book on demonology at Bonnie's face. The book smashes into her shoulder, shoving Bonnie back and snapping the binding. Loose pages flutter to the floor in the wake of Elena's eruption.

Everyone gapes at her.

"It's a baby," she repeats. She gulps down huge, ragged breaths as she fights to rein in her storming emotions. "An innocent baby. The only thing supernatural about it is it's mine."

Stunned, crystalline silence engulfs the room. Elena's never physically lashed out at any of them before. For several protracted seconds, they all watch her, and Elena forces herself to meet each of their stares.

The only one she doesn't quite dare lock eyes with is Klaus, whose attention licks against her skin like the scalding, shimmering heat of an open blaze.

"What evidence do you have that the child isn't human?" Klaus asks Bonnie, finally breaking apart the unbearable tension.

She can feel the exact moment his gaze leaves her body to focus on Bonnie instead.

"No one's going to address that Elena's throwing torpedoes now?" Tyler asks the room at large. When no one answers, his eyes bug for a second and he stares hard at the floor, like he's bottling his thoughts before he strides over to the sofa table and helps himself to a glass of Damon's bourbon.

Matt shifts uncomfortably by the parlor entrance while Caroline fidgets on the sofa. No one knows how to handle her. How to handle this.

God, she would kill for some bourbon right now.

Meanwhile, Bonnie addresses Klaus's question. She leans forward, intent. "I performed a diagnostic spell—"

Klaus's eyes narrow. "Using Expression?"

"Yeah. Spirit magic wasn't cutting it."

The temperature in the room plummets as Klaus blandly states, "You could have harmed her irrevocably."

This is surreal. They're all talking about her, but now that her outburst is over, none of them are actually talking to her. She wonders if she can sneak out while they're otherwise engaged.

"I'm trying to save her. The results of my spell were definitive. That thing Elena's carrying—"

"I think we should still call it a baby," Caroline softly suggests.

"—isn't human, isn't natural." Bonnie pins Elena with her fierce focus just as Elena sidles toward her bag. "You said yourself there isn't a father," Bonnie calls out to her, "but you must see how wrong that is. It takes two lives to make a new one. That's a non-negotiable rule."

Elena clenches her jaw. "It's also impossible to be two types of supernatural entity at once, and yet we have two hybrids here in this room. My blood changes the rules. Or—no—my blood makes it so that there are no rules."

"Elena, I've never felt anything like what I felt yesterday when I delved your womb. It terrified me." Bonnie stands as though to approach her, but Klaus rises with her, lithe as if he were Bonnie's own shadow, blocking her path forward. She frowns at him, briefly, before urgently pressing on. "I spent all day reading about other accounts like this. The women who brought those pregnancies to term—even some of the ones who brought them only halfway—were torn apart by the creatures they carried. I know you want this baby, but it's not the miracle you think it is. It's something using you as an incubator because you're special and when it's finished growing or traveling through the veil between worlds and manifesting inside of you or whatever it is it's doing, it's going to kill you, and then it's going unleash itself on this world."

"Wait, so Elena's kid is the antichrist?" Tyler asks.

Matt shrugs helplessly at him. It's glaringly obvious that all of this is way over his head.

Elena grabs her bag and swings it up onto her shoulders. "Thanks for the intervention, but I've heard enough." She tries to push past them to the front door, but some invisible force bolts her feet to the ground. Elena fights the spell in mounting frustration before she screams and slams her bag down. The books inside of it crack ominously against the floor.

"We need to end this now, Elena, before it's too late," Bonnie persists.

Elena twists as best as she can to face her. "No! You think you know everything, but you're just groping in the dark, just like always." She tears at her boot zippers. Maybe if she can get her feet free she can escape.

"Elena, maybe there are some more tests we could run," Matt suggests. "A way to check out Bonnie's findings."

Elena whirls on him. "Are you on her side then?"

When he doesn't answer, she looks to the others.

"What about the rest of you?" she asks quietly, looking to them one by one.

Caroline, who would rather stare at her own feet rather than meet her eyes, Tyler, grimacing into his glass. Klaus, who has gone so still and so quiet since Bonnie's little speech that she knows, deep in her blood, that an explosion is building up inside of him.

Whatever.

"It's not about sides, Elena," Caroline finally says. "The reason we're here is because we all care about you. We don't want anything bad to happen to you."

"That's bullshit. You only care about me when it's convenient."

Caroline recoils as though she'd physically slapped her.

She wishes that she could.

"Too far, Elena," Matt says.

"Okay. Fine. So where were any of you all last fall when I needed you? Where were you all when Stefan tried to drown me, or Rebekah tried to set me on fire? What about when I had to stab Alaric to death, or when I had to drag Meredith Fell's body into the woods and bury her myself? Oh right, you were shutting me out. And do you know what the worst part is? I let you all back in! I thought we could go back to how we were! Well guess what: now I'm shutting you all out." She yanks with mounting fury against Bonnie's spell.

Bonnie steps forward again. "Elena, you could die if we don't address this now—"

"I've heard enough," Klaus declares. "Witch, release her."

"I don't answer to you."

Instantly Klaus has her by the throat.

"Release. The. Girl," he enunciates with razor precision. His fingers clench around Bonnie's throat.

Caroline tenses as though she's about to pounce on Klaus, even though any physical blow she might land on him would be as noticeable to him as the patter of rain against his skin. Tyler freezes too, and even Matt shifts onto the balls of his feet. Not a single one of them is strong enough or fast enough to pluck Klaus off of Bonnie, yet all of them are ready to try.

At Klaus's words, Bonnie's jaw sets tellingly and she narrows her eyes.

The only tell that she is working some sort of magic against Klaus is the way his fingers spasm against her throat. Unlike every other vampire she has seen endure Bonnie's wrath, he doesn't cry out or crumple.

His fingers tighten around her throat, and Bonnie's eyes bug, and then, between one breath and the next, the magic restraining her disappears.

Klaus drops Bonnie, who lands, wheezing, on the floor. Caroline immediately darts to her elbow to help her.

Fuck this. She's out of here.

Elena flings herself past Matt and out the front door without looking back.

A second later Klaus catches up as she stomps over to her car. He grabs her by the elbow and spins her around to face him. "We need to talk."

"Like hell we do. Let go of me." She thrashes against his hold, but his hand on her elbow is as implacable as iron.

He looks behind them, to the front door where the others are starting to spill out. "Not here," he tells her tightly. That's the only warning she has before he absconds with her.

Chapter Text

Klaus sets her down in his study back at his mansion mere minutes later.

Elena swats at him as soon as he releases her, still stumbling and dizzy from his breakneck pace. As soon as the blow lands she turns on her heel and marches for the door.

Klaus cuts her off. "This isn't how relationships work, love."

Elena scowls at him. "How would you know anything about it." She tries to shove past him, but he catches her wrists in his hands as easily as though she were a child, and walks her back until the back of her legs catch the edge of the sofa and she has no choice but to fall back into it.

He follows her down, until he is kneeling before her. He never lets go of her wrists.

"You lied to me," he tells her, the accusation frighteningly factual.

"I did not."

"You're lying now. And not very well. I can smell the fear on you." He licks at her wrist. Takes a deep inhale of the skin right above her pulse point. His shoulders heave, as though he is trying, with great difficulty, to restrain himself. "You told me in no uncertain terms you were merely suspicious of your friend. You breathed not a word of her using dark magic on you, or plotting to destroy your child, or the fact that you were there at the Salvatore house clearly searching for evidence amongst those old books."

At his use of the word child rather than that thing, she relaxes an infinitesimal amount. "I didn't think you would care."

His eyes flash. "I care very much where you are concerned."

"You believe Bonnie, don't you." It's not really a question. She's not sure why it feels like such a betrayal. How three days in Klaus's bed could erase the memory of months of terror and heartbreak at his hands.

He sighs with something very much like regret. "I've already told you that it takes two to create a new life." He searches her face. "Are you certain there's not a father you'd like to tell me about? I shan't be angry if there is."

"No! Why do you keep circling back to that?"

"I can't protect you if you're keeping anything from me."

Tears press at her eyes. "You swore to protect my child, too."

It's why I let myself have you.

He lays his palm against her belly. "You'll hate to hear this, but your witch friend is correct. If there's truly no father, if this… child is so truly out of tune with nature's song… then the precedent is grave."

Bitterness cloys in her heart. "You're just like the rest of them," she spits. "You make promises and you tell me you love me but when I really need you, you abandon me."

"The witch says your child isn't human, Elena. How do you explain that?"

"I don't care."

The declaration snaps the thin thread of his composure. He shakes her hard enough to rattle her teeth. "Well I care if it leads to your death!" he cries. "You've torn a hole in me," he tells her raggedly, "and where I used to be whole, now there is an empty space within me that only you can fill. I won't be parted from you, Elena, not for anything." He touches her face, her throat, her collarbone. Bewilderment shadows his expression. "You can't do this to me and then leave me for the sake of this idea of a child."

"I told you we were a package deal. You're the one who's insisted, over and over, that my baby wouldn't scare you off."

"I won't let any harm befall you. I would rather you hate me forever than live in this world without you."

How passionately he burns for her, to say such things.

She wonders if he's ever been in love before, or if, somehow, gravely, she has had the ambiguous fortune of being his first.

Tenderness and pity swamp her. Elena nudges him until he releases her, but instead of pulling away from him, she slips into his lap and embraces him. "You say you want to be in a relationship, well, here it is: I need you on my side. I need you to stand by me. I'm not going to give this child up, Klaus. I don't care if it's a monster any more than I care that you are. But I can't do this alone." Her voice breaks on the last word as she admits the one truth she has always, always pretended to be untrue.

She is so tired of doing everything alone.

It's why she needs this baby, more than she needs air, food, water.

And also…

"I need you," she whispers.

He shudders at her confession. As though she has run him through with lightning.

"Then at least let us verify that the child truly is no threat to you," he tells her at last.

Elena draws back to gaze up into his serious face. "How? Bonnie could never get a clear read on it until she tried using Expression."

Klaus's expression darkens. "Did she hurt you when she tried it?"

"I'm fine."

His eyes narrow, but he doesn't comment further on her evasion. "Your friend is gifted, but still young. There are more experienced witches whose opinions I would trust a great deal more. Let me make some phone calls. Arrange some tests."

Fear grasps her heart. It's really easy to be stubborn and believe what her heart wants about her baby when it's just what Bonnie says against what she's experienced… but the idea of allowing older, more experienced witches to examine her… to maybe unearth something devastating about her child…

"I'm scared."

Klaus softens. "I'm going to take care of you, Elena. Let me." He hesitates. "Please."

Putting herself in someone else's hands is one of the hardest things she's ever done. She's not used to letting others care for her. Take care of her. She's used to being the girl alone, fighting the battles that are too hard for everyone else around her to fight. Winning even if she has to lose. She always loses. Even when she wins.

"I want to," she tells him slowly, testing the idea the way that fresh snow tests the ground to see if it will melt or cling. "Just… don't break my heart."

She lies down on Klaus's big, soft bed, listening to him make phone calls in the next room, wondering how her life had gotten this strange.

A year ago, she had never even heard of Klaus.

Since then, he had embodied her greatest fear, her inevitable fate. Her hunter, her lover, her prey, her protector. The shadow that haunted the back of her thoughts. It's almost too much. Her heart can't keep track of how she feels about him any more than her body can stop craving his touch.

She twists and turns, sweaty and uncomfortable even though her hands and feet feel like frozen lumps of ice.

The door creaks open. She feels Klaus sit on the edge of the bed. Lay his hand on her hip. "It's going to be a few days before Thérèse and her sisters can meet with us. Possibly a week. She was vague on the phone."

Elena sits up. "So we have some time to kill."

"Indeed."

"I don't want to be here when my friends come looking for me."

"They won't disturb you, I guarantee it."

"No. I want you to take me away. If we have to wait to find out any more answers anyway, then I want to be somewhere where it can be just the two of us, and we can forget about this for a little while." She crawls over to him to loop her arms around his neck. "I want to just be happy, while everything is still okay."

Just in case it isn't.

Just in case she has to leave him when the witches he had contacted tell them more.

Klaus smiles. The expression is so soft and so revealing that it opens like a red, weeping wound within her. "That would be easy to arrange," he murmurs, taking her hands and kissing them. "Where should you like to go? Paris? Laos? Somewhere warm and private—a beach in the Caribbean perhaps? I can always call Thérèse back and change our rendezvous point."

Elena wrinkles her nose. "No, I want to be somewhere I feel safe."

It's late afternoon when they pull up to the lake house. She hasn't been back since last spring. Since that night.

Everything is just as she left it. The same plaid blanket on the sofa. The ashes from the fire she and Stefan had lit still in the hearth. Photographs from her childhood lining the walls and cluttering the tables.

Klaus lingers at the doorway.

"Come in," she compels him, and holds her breath as Klaus steps over the threshold, and one step closer into the part of herself she still cannot help but to guard.

Chapter Text

More than anything, Elena wants to forget for a little while.

Forget about the anguish surrounding her unborn child. Forget about this betrayal by her friends—all the more painful for only being the most recent. Forget about the fact that somehow, Klaus is the only person she can stand to be around. The only person who understands this strange, love-greedy creature she's become well enough to extend her any hope for keeping her baby at all.

Most of all she doesn't want to think about the fact that the stark peace she finds in her lover's embrace might have an expiration date. If the news from the witches is bad… she doesn't plan to stick around long enough for anyone to persuade her to kill her baby.

She's already had his promise during the car ride over that they won't talk any more about what's to be done about the baby until they have more answers, but right now, Elena needs something more.

And so as soon as Klaus steps inside the lake house, she throws her arms around his neck and drags him down for a ravenous kiss. By now they've learned each other well enough for Klaus to know what she wants, what she needs from him so badly she thinks she may explode into ashes if she has to wait much longer. He has her pinned against the wall by the front door before she knows it, his body her only ballast to prevent her from falling. Crashing. She doesn't care. That's not a fate she fears.

He gives her long, deep, soul-scouring kisses that obliterate everything but the heat of his skin under her fingers from her mind, and she responds in kind, giving him as much of herself as she is able. Even just that small amount, that trickle of her love which she holds in check so bravely with her back up against the dam, stirs him in ways that thrill as much as terrify her. Klaus snarls against her mouth, slicing her tongue against his fangs and pulling deep on the wound as he impatiently peels at their clothing. Elena whimpers from the pain and the echoing throb of her desire for him, intermingled and inseparable, and Klaus swallows her groans, trailing kisses over her face and whispering his devotions into her skin.

Elena lets herself get lost in Klaus's burning eyes, his devouring mouth, in the strength and possession of his caresses. Wants to be lost, to forget herself. To reinvent herself as the dark, shining creature Klaus professes to worship.

The open front door flaps in the wind. Elena had pounced on Klaus so fast that they had forgotten to ever close it. Her eyes land on the spot where she had driven a knife into her side, only to fell Elijah a moment later.

She's still looking at that spot when Klaus thrusts himself inside of her hard enough to rattle the picture frames on the walls.

The combination of looking at that spot while Klaus fucks into her gives her a crazy rush. She feels powerful. She, who has slain gods. Who has dominion over another, right here, as she clasps him fast between her thighs. Who has conquered even death, and lived and lived and lived when her only fate was ever to die.

She turns her attention back to Klaus. He may have her pinned, held tight by wrists and hips, yet she knows with startling clarity that she is the one fucking him. Desire rips through her, and with it, a wave of pleasure. Her body responds, tightening around him.

His mouth parts, then, as he sucks in a trembling breath, and for a moment, the memory of that mouth on her throat, the intimacy of her death, rushes over her again. Her body quivers with need, tumbling toward that dark edge of oblivion. A pang of longing strikes through her, all the more painful and jarring for how forgotten and buried that longing had become these past few months.

She wants her death, craves it, if only so she can conquer it again.

He must read in her her grave longing.

She sees the recognition blooming in his mind, like seeing the bottom of the river when the water is particularly clear. A vast alien wilderness where before there had always been mystery.

It's unbearable to know that as she sees him, he sees her.

She comes hard, then, as soon as the thought sinks into her, and she thinks she really will fall, then, down into an abyss from which there is no climbing up. Yet, even in that murky darkness, Klaus holds onto her, never letting her go.

They slump, boneless, against the wall after, the cold country air raising goosebumps all over Elena's naked flesh. She huddles against Klaus's side for warmth, her face pressed into the crook of his neck and he strokes the length of her spine.

"Haunt me forever," he breathes into her hair. His voice trembles with that terrible, consuming love he bears for her. That love that would burn the world down for her, if she ever allows it. "Drive me mad, ruin me, destroy my fortunes and my ambitions. Yet stay with me. Do not go where I cannot follow, and I will not mind your torments."

It should frighten her more, the way that he loves her.

Except that the dimensions of her need are vast, and he has made himself the only one who can fill them.

Eventually, she drags him into her parents' bedroom and pulls him down into the bed with her.

He's quick to divest her of her remaining clothing, his hands trailing over all the places newly exposed to the chill of the air. She cannot tell if he is trying to steal her mortal warmth or lend her some of his excessive heat. She doesn't care. Either way, she is happy to lay stretched out like a cat beneath him, savoring his closeness. The way he covers her like a cloak. Like a shield.

It's more than that, though.

She feels safe and warm here, in this bed where she used to crawl in with her parents when she was too frightened to sleep.

How she had wished she could do just that last year. How often she had imagined traveling back to the time when she had parents to love her and hold her and take care of her while she had counted down the days until her inevitable tryst with fate.

She tries to imagine a life like that with Klaus. Tries to picture how he could fit into her life long term, when she has a six year old she will take here for long summer vacations, who might wake up from their own nightmares and want to seek her out for comfort. She cannot quite imagine Klaus as a father to her child, and yet— she wants it. Wants to think that there is really a future for the two of them. For all three of them. That there is some way for her to get everything that she wants.

Because oh, how she wants this man.

They spend all afternoon in bed, only venturing out after sunset when Elena's growling stomach demands that she rummage through the non-perishables in the cupboards.

Klaus drifts through the house while she heats a can of soup on the stove, looking through old family photos, inspecting the liquor decanted at the sideboard, flipping through the books on the shelf.

He disappears at one point, but she hardly notices as she sits down to dinner at the worn table by the wall of windows and looks out at the immense expanse of the night sky flecked with silver stars.

Looking out into that endless sea of possibility, it's impossible not to feel hope flaring within her chest. Hope for her miracle to be true.

After washing up, she goes looking for Klaus. Finds him standing in the middle of her old bedroom, a stunned expression on his face.

"What's wrong?" she asks.

"It's just occurred to me how very young you were."

Maybe she misreads him, but that is the closest he has ever come to acknowledging the hell he dragged her through when he cometed into her life.

She tilts her head. "You're not the least bit sorry, though."

That flicker of doubt disappears. A ripple in a vast ocean. "For laying my claim on you? No. Never."

In the morning they watch the sun rise from the dock.

Later, Klaus lights a fire and lays her out on the rug in front of it, where the delicious heat of it can lick at her skin. The ashes from the last fire scatter in the grate.

"I'll bring you back here in the summer," Klaus murmurs, kissing her thighs. "When it's warm and I can lay you out just there on the dock and worship you naked in the sun."

"I'll be third trimester next summer," Elena points out, as though none of it is in question. "Not exactly swimsuit model material."

"You'll look like Venus herself," Klaus argues. "A luscious, ripe goddess." His clever fingers pluck at her aching breasts. "Ready for me to taste here," he promises with a wet lave to each sensitive peak, "and here," he swears to her belly, her hips, "and here," he finishes with wicked satisfaction, just before he plunges his tongue into her slick sex.

He is so certain of that future together. Of the three of them.

She curls up against his side and stares up at his profile for a long time, fighting against her body's desire for sleep.

"How do you know I'll ever love you back?" she asks, just before she falls asleep.

"I saw the way you looked at me, when you ran up to me on the green."

"How was that?"

"You looked at me like I was something miraculous. No one's ever looked at me like that."

The hours stretch into long, dreamy, timeless expanses spent tangled up in the feel of each other's bodies, the sound of each other's voices, the richness of the satisfaction and connection Elena feels when it's just the two of them, building their own little world.

A potent wave of déjà vu crests over her as she curls up on the sofa with Klaus, telling him stories from her adolescence—stories that are only a little over a year old and yet feel like they're from her girlhood, which she has left indelibly behind—and listening in turn to Klaus's stories, strewn at random over the centuries yet all of them filled with his family, again and again.

It's only later, when the sound of her own laughter startles her as though she had been asleep for all these months and she is only just waking up, that she recognizes the déjà vu for what it is—that these days here with Klaus are like the continuation of that night at the Grill that they should have had, if their wariness and mistrust of each other hadn't smothered the fragile, unlikely spark that had ignited between them that night.

Klaus freezes at the bright burst of her laughter.

"What?" she asks him, trying to understand the expression on his face.

"Nothing. I just don't believe I've ever heard you really laugh before."

"This is where I daggered Elijah," she tells him that night, huddled up in the old plaid woolen blanket, mug of steaming vervain tea pressed between her hands as the two of them sit together on the front steps watching the night. Her belly aches in phantom pain. In memory.

"You sound so wistful."

"It was the night of my greatest triumph," she explains.

Carefully, he sets her mug down on the porch and takes her hand. Kisses the back of it. Her palm. Each fingertip. And, finally, the pulse point in her wrist. "Your greatest triumph is still yet to come," he promises her, his voice seductive as black water under the moonlight.

For two whole blissful days Elena forgets about Mystic Falls, about the danger to her baby, about everything. All of her uncertainty falls away as she allows herself to rest in this quiet lull with Klaus. To let him woo her and dare her to be happy with him.

To let him be good to her, the way that he promised he could be.

On the morning of the third day, Elena throws on one of Klaus's sweaters, wraps the plaid blanket around her shoulders, and pads out onto the porch.

The forest around the house emanates an immense, unshakable quiet that resonates within the deepest parts of her.

Inside, Klaus is asleep, finally, after at least two full days of wakefulness.

(When she had called him on it yesterday morning, a small, secret smile had twitched at his mouth. "If I sleep, I may wake to find myself back in Italy, and all of this a dream."

She had grimaced. Told him, "That's a terrible line.")

Elena watches the sky brighten from pale lavender to pink to winter white. She is just about to head back inside when a familiar car pulls around a bend in the trees and winds up the long drive to the house.

Inevitability sinks into the pit of her stomach as she watches Caroline park and get out of the car.

All happiness is transitory, one way or another. Eventually, reality always catches up.

Chapter Text

Elena retreats behind the safety of the threshold as Caroline slowly walks up to the house.

Her heart knocks against her ribs. For the past two days, she's been able to put all of this off. To pretend that massive betrayal at the Boarding House had never happened, that her so-called friends hadn't all gathered behind her back to push her into killing her child. Now, faced with one of those friends, the anxiety floods her full-force. Only the strength of her instinct to protect her unborn child's life at all costs keeps her back straight and her expression cool as she watches Caroline's approach.

Caroline cocks her head and stares at her for what feels like a very long time. Her eyes linger on Klaus's sweater.

"So it's true," Caroline blurts out. "You're sleeping with Klaus."

Elena bristles. "So what if I am?"

For a second, some unquantifiable sadness rolls across Caroline's fair features, but it disappears as quickly as it arose, like the swelling of a wave before it breaks on to the beach. She steps right up to the edge of the threshold to assess her. "Are you okay? Is he compelling you?" Her eyes dart to the closed bedroom door behind Elena. "Is he in there?" she whispers.

"Of course he's not compelling me," Elena snaps. "I'm on vervain."

"Are you certain?"

"Bite me and find out."

Caroline rears back, startled. Really looks at her. "I'm not here to fight with you," she tells her in that soft, sad rasp of hers that always goes straight to Elena's heart.

Elena swallows back the urge to comfort her. Too many years have bred the instincts too strong in her. "Then why are you here?"

"Because I'm worried about you. I know we left things badly, and you were hurt by it, and now you're off in the middle of the woods with Klaus. I just need to know that at least one of my friends is really okay." She sounds exhausted.

Elena stares at her, at a loss. She can't remember the last time Caroline was exhausted. She doesn't look good, Elena realizes. Despite the immaculately curled hair and the carefully applied makeup, there's a drawn quality to Caroline's face, a minute dishevelment to her clothes, that points to some underlying stress.

"I'm surprised it took you so long to track me down," Elena says at last, feeling like she's reaching for an answer that should be obvious but is instead still shrouded in mist. She glances over Caroline's shoulder, just to make sure she's really alone. "Where are the others?"

Caroline fidgets. "We sort of had a huge fight after Klaus took off with you. Bonnie wanted to go after you both right away, but Tyler insisted you needed space—Elena, she did something to Tyler." She blanches. "It was—it was awful."

"I told you she was doing dark magic now." She wrestles with herself. Her anger versus her love. "Is he okay?"

"Eventually." She hesitates. "Can we talk? In private?"

Elena looks behind her, toward that closed bedroom door.

Caroline catches the look. "I'm on your side, Elena. I've always been."

Elena stares her down flat. "I must have misunderstood you trying to kill my baby the other day."

A fresh lance of pain bolts across her face. Her eyes shimmer with unshed tears. "You're my best friend, Elena. Please. There's so much going on and I'm so worried about you, worried about Bonnie, worried about Tyler—even worried about Klaus. I can't do this alone." Her hands open and close helplessly as she speaks, like she wants to do something with them, but doesn't know what.

I can't do this alone.

It's that, more than anything, that stirs Elena.

She can't condemn another person—a person she loves, deep down, no matter how furious she is with her, no matter that she doesn't know if forgiveness is even possible at this point—to the same fate she had been sentenced to herself.

Elena takes a deep breath and steps over the threshold. "Let's take a walk."

Together.

The two of them wander down the drive and veer toward the lake. The sun peeks out from behind the clouds, and pale buttery sunlight dapples through the treetops as they trudge along in silence.

If Elena wonders what on earth Caroline could possibly have to say after the fiasco that was the other morning, she doesn't press her on it.

There is, it seems, still a part of her that is terribly hungry for the love and support of her oldest friendships—for the people who had seen her through the storm of grief that had nearly destroyed her after her parents' deaths. (For the ones who had mourned with her in devastated silence at the second Gilbert double funeral in less than a year—no, Elena can't bring herself to think on that bright clear morning placing roses over freshly dug graves—not while her body still carries the shape of Klaus's mouth on her skin, not while she can still feel him in the way her inner muscles twinge when she walks, in the sticky chafe of her thighs against her jeans—not when she has taken their murderer as her lover—she might never be able to think of them again and still hope to keep her sanity—)

For the ones who had known her in the year that shaped her. Who remembered who she had been before death and grief and cruelty and alienation had turned her into the woman she only sometimes recognizes when she examines herself in the mirror.

They walk for nearly half an hour before Caroline finally, finally speaks. "I'm really sorry about the other day. That got… completely out of hand." She wrings her hands. "It's just—Bonnie was so certain something was wrong, and she insisted we were just going to talk to you—and—did you really mean what you said, about how we're never there for you?"

Elena can't look at her, not right now, so she just keeps staring at the brightness of the lake as she confirms with brutal honesty, "Of course I did. You all cut me out completely last fall. You blamed me for things I had no control over, like Damon turning Bonnie's mom, and you put Damon and Stefan ahead of me when you kept their secrets for them and purposefully hid what you were doing from me for months. You cast me out with no explanation." Perhaps this is the only kind of honesty she's capable of anymore—the kind that wields a knife and aims straight for the heart.

It's less satisfying than she would have thought to watch Caroline take the hit.

"We wanted to keep you safe," Caroline insists. In the strong morning light, her excuses feel weaker than ever. Caroline seems to hear it too. "We thought—after you gave Rebekah back to Klaus, we thought you'd never be able to go through with killing him because you'd never be able to pay the necessary price. We thought you were afraid of him."

"I came closer to actually killing him than any of you ever did."

"Which is what I don't get," Caroline says. "How does trying to kill Klaus turn into screwing him?"

Elena frowns, crossing her arms under her blanket and tightening the fabric around herself like a shield. "Is this the moral lecture?"

"No—Elena—I told you how I felt about him. I'm not here to judge you. I'm just…"

A thought occurs to her. "Wait, when you got here you acted like you already knew."

Caroline fumbles whatever it was she had planned to say. "Well—sort of. Bonnie and I went by Klaus's mansion looking for you after he took off with you—I thought I smelled… well. And then I got here and…" She pauses. Hesitates. "Elena, you reek. You smell like—you smell like you've been marinating in sex for days—oh my God, have you?"

"Sort of?"

"Seriously, explain this to me," Caroline cries. "You were literally just saying you were upset with us for excluding you from our plans to kill Klaus last fall, but here you are now. You swear you're not compelled, which means, what, is he your boyfriend? How does that add up?"

"You've tried to kill him much more recently than I have, and you've admitted you have feelings for him too."

"Yeah, because he's nice to me."

Elena drums her fingers against her biceps. "Is it so hard to believe that he's nice to me too?"

"Is he?"

"He's good to me."

"When did this happen though?"

"Around the time you were all excluding me from everything." She shrugs. "We've been off and on since October."

"October." Caroline makes a high, strained noise that eloquently communicates her distress and frustration. "He's been flirting with me since about that time. Tell me he wasn't using me to make you jealous or something." No matter how accomplished and beloved Caroline is, she will always be so vulnerable.

That same impulse to comfort rears its head again, and this time, Elena doesn't fight it. She grabs hold of Caroline's arm. Forces her to pause. To listen. "No. It's been—complicated. He compelled Tyler to bite you the morning after we slept together the first time, and we broke up for a while." She hesitates. Admits, "He really does like you."

"You've talked together about his feelings for me."

Elena drops her arm. Gathers the blanket close again. "He wanted me back. It wasn't the sort of thing I could just ignore."

The sun climbs high in the sky. Wind whips at the branches overhead.

"Well, this is awkward," Caroline finally says.

Elena laughs. "Tell me about it."

"What does he say about the baby?"

"He's insistent that it's not a sticking point for him. Apparently he had a kid he raised back in the 1800s."

Caroline shakes her head. "I can't process that mental image right now. What about what Bonnie said? What does Klaus think?"

Because somehow, whatever Klaus thinks holds weight with Caroline. Maybe more weight than whatever she herself has to say.

Elena squashes the petty seed of jealousy threatening to sprout into a choking vine. "We're waiting on a second opinion."

"That—that makes sense."

They round a bend and Elena spots a familiar stone marker up ahead indicating the property line. They'll have to turn around soon.

"We've talked about me, but we need to talk about you," Elena says. "What happened after I left the other morning? You can't be here just to grill me about my love life." If anyone else is planning a surprise visit, she needs to know.

"Well, I told you. We all got into a massive fight. Bonnie wanted to chase after you straight away, but Tyler was adamant that you should be left alone."

"And that's when she dropped him."

"Yeah. Bonnie's never frightened me before. This magic she's using…"

"I told you—"

"Elena, I know, okay? You were right about Professor McCreepy."

Rather than respond, she takes a deep, calming breath. "So what happened next?"

"I don't know—she took off for a while, and Matt and I stuck around with Tyler until he felt better. It… took a while."

"Yeah. She did the same thing to me when she cast that diagnostic spell. I was sick all day."

"Oh, Tyler's furious with her. Between bailing on him for his failed coup the other day and steamrolling him the other morning, he doesn't want anything more to do with her right now."

Elena frowns. She'd had no idea Bonnie was supposed to be part of that botched scheme.

Caroline continues before she can formulate the vague question tugging at her thoughts. "It took me a while to catch up to her—she was looking all over for you—but after we searched the mansion I started thinking you might not have been kidnapped so much as… run off. That's when I figured you might be here."

Elena worries her lip. "Does she know about me and Klaus?"

"I didn't mention it—she's way too keyed up about the baby. She's certain Klaus has you hidden somewhere." Caroline pauses by one of the ancient trees whose thick branches stretch out far over the lake. Two summers ago they were still climbing that tree together, all five of them, to jump from its heights into the lake. "I've been with her the past couple of days, trying to get her to calm down. She's really upset."

She clutches the blanket tighter around herself. "How long do you think we have until she looks for me here?"

"Probably not very? I sabotaged the locator spell she tried that first day, after I realized you probably weren't a kidnap victim and just needed the space. She's bound to think of this place when she starts thinking clearly again. It's sort of Elena Hideout Number One."

That might be true. Elena takes a deep breath. Searches her feelings.

"I need to know where you stand with all this."

"What do you mean? I'm here now, apologizing."

"If push comes to shove, are you on my side or Bonnie's?"

"There shouldn't have to be a side. Bonnie's trying to protect you, she's just going about it the entirely wrong way."

"Have you considered that it's not my baby that's the problem, but the magic Bonnie's using? She said it operates outside both the realm of Nature or the Spirits. What fuels it then? How do we know what scared her so much wasn't just her own spell?"

Caroline doesn't have an answer for her. All she offers, after several long minutes, is the conclusion, "I'm on the side that gets everyone through to the New Year in one piece."

Elena assesses her. "Does 'everyone' include my baby?"

"I'd like it to. I was really looking forward to being Fun Aunt Caroline."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"I'm not saying I can forgive you right now, Care. You've hurt me really badly, and after the other morning, it's going to take time for me to trust you again."

"You've hurt me too, Elena. You say I've been keeping secrets, but yours is the biggest one of all."

"Who would I have told? None of you were speaking to me."

Caroline doesn't have anything to say to that.

"I'd like to invite you in, though, and maybe we can cook breakfast together and we can figure out a way to talk Bonnie down and get her away from McCreepy. Does that sound doable?" Small steps.

Caroline swallows hard against a veil of tears that threaten to fall. "Yeah, I'd like that."

She doesn't hug Caroline or link their arms together like she might have in the past, but as they walk back to the house, she feels a hope with Caroline that she hasn't felt in a very, very long time. A small, soft hope, but a hope nonetheless.

Chapter Text

Klaus is waiting for them on the wide covered back porch, a glass of her father's bourbon held loosely in his hand as he reclines against one of the column beams.

Elena has the distinct feeling that he's been listening in to their conversation. That he's been here, waiting, keeping unobtrusive tabs on them, just in case she needs him to intervene.

It's a protectiveness that verges on overbearing. She should be appalled. She had always fumed at Damon for being the same way, had always glorified Stefan for always, always giving her the choice, the freedom, to act as she felt she must.

Instead, she feels a faint tickle of relief. Klaus is on her side. Ready to jump in to help her. It's so much better not doing everything by herself.

As she draws closer, she notices how mussed he looks, as though he'd rolled directly out of bed to come watch her back. Warm fondness unfurls in her chest.

"So I hear you're Elena's boyfriend now," Caroline calls out as they approach the house together.

Elena stumbles, her mouth totally agape as she turns to gawk at Caroline.

A scalding blush rips across her cheeks.

She and Klaus haven't discussed their relationship in terms of any labels so prosaic as boyfriend or girlfriend. He's going to think her such an idiot.

Pleased surprise flickers across Klaus's face. "Is that what Elena said?"

"Not in so many words, but I can read between the lines." Caroline tilts her head back and gives Klaus a steady once over. "So do you deserve her? Because I don't care how charming you are, I will come after you if you let her down."

If you let her down like the rest of us.

The unspoken words hang in the air, loud as a gunshot.

Klaus takes a long, slow swallow from his glass. Really considers Caroline's question. "I intend to spend every day in the attempt to deserve her, yes." He pauses thoughtfully. "Though I think she would tell you she doesn't deserve me," he adds, tossing a wink in Elena's direction.

"You mean all the trouble you've caused me?" Elena retorts as she blusters past him, still painfully aware of how red her face is. "Definitely not." She pivots in the door. "Caroline, won't you please come in?"

She can't help but watch Caroline and Klaus out of the corner of her eye as she makes coffee.

The warmth in her chest from just a few minutes ago has evaporated entirely, replaced with a queasy anxiety and a sick festering feeling she's sure is jealousy laced with a heavy dose of insecurity. Now that the three of them are in a room together, she finds she's lost her appetite.

There's a weird carefulness about the two of them as they circle the dining room table—as though they don't quite know how to exist with one another in this new context. Yet all of the chemistry and attraction toward each other is still there—Elena can see it in the way that Caroline's mouth keeps tipping into a smile whenever she catches Klaus's eye, in the way that Klaus's shoulders imperceptibly relax and he smiles right back at her. It's still so much easier for Caroline to draw out his smiles than it is for her. The silence stretches full to bursting with all of the things they are so clearly not saying to one another because she is in the room with them.

Their smiles drop the second she turns around to face them, three mugs of steaming hot coffee balanced precariously in her hands.

She tries to ignore the way her stomach twist as she joins them. It would almost be better if neither of them felt the need to hide their affection for one another from her. It would feel more harmless then.

No, that's not right.

Klaus has told her, repeatedly and in no uncertain terms, that he wants to be with her.

She can't possibly begrudge him some ultimately superfluous feelings when she herself has enough leftover feelings to drown herself twice over.

She repeats that to herself until she can almost believe it's true.

"How much of our conversation did you actually overhear?" she asks Klaus, staring into her untouched mug.

"Mostly the tail end," he says, idly turning his cup round and round. He doesn't drink from his, either. "You think the Bennett witch needs to be dealt with."

"Don't say dealt with," Caroline rebukes. "That makes it sound like we're going to do her in."

"Isn't that your intent?"

"We're going to figure out a way to talk her down," Elena firmly corrects him.

"Oh! Talk!" Caroline cries. She paws through her purse. "I almost forgot—I brought you your cell phone. You left it at the Boarding House the other morning." She hands the phone over to Elena.

"Does Miss Bennett realize Elena left her phone?"

"No, why?"

Klaus holds his hand out to Elena. "Give it here."

Elena clutches her phone tighter to her chest. "Why?"

Klaus rolls his eyes. "Don't look so suspicious. I have an idea."

This doesn't alleviate her misgivings in the slightest. She knows exactly what shape his ideas tend to take. "Share with the class then."

Klaus flicks a glance over to Caroline. "Now that Caroline is here to watch over you, I'm free to leave and talk to Bonnie myself."

"She won't agree to a meeting with you without proof of life," Caroline tells him. "She's convinced you're holding Elena against her will."

"But would she agree to a meeting if she thought it was with Elena?"

Elena stares at him. "You want me to set up a meeting so that you can go in my place?"

Klaus smiles. "Simple enough."

"What are you going to do when you get there?"

"I'm going to bombard her with my excessive charm and persuade her to leave you alone until we can get an opinion from witches far more experienced than she."

"That plan assumes Bonnie can be reasoned with right now," Caroline points out. "She sees you, she's likely to drop you the way she did Tyler."

"She tried it the other morning. Judge for yourself how successful her powers are against me."

"You're just going to make her dig her heals in," Caroline insists.

Klaus turns to Elena. "Let me have a shot at this. She invited me to listen in on that Junior League meeting for a reason. She chose me out as her potential ally because she believes that I want you hale and whole more than anything in the world and she is right in that. Let me try."

The thing is, watching Klaus divide his attention between the two of them this conversation has been hard for her. It shouldn't be, of course it shouldn't be, but it has been. So between herself and Caroline, if there's a distinction to be drawn, she wants to be the one who believes in Klaus.

The one who has faith in him.

"Okay," she agrees. "Let me type the message though, so there aren't any obvious tells that it's really coming from you. Where and when do you want to meet her?"

Bonnie replies right away.

Of course she does.

She's worried about her.

Despite everything, Elena's worried about her too.

She takes a shower as soon as the meeting is set up, needing a minute to herself after the emotional turbulence of the morning.

After, she lets the hot water keep running and steaming the bathroom while she towel dries her hair.

The sound of Klaus and Caroline's voices filter in from the main room through the closed bedroom door. Elena pricks her ears, unable to help herself. She doesn't think they know she can hear them.

"You were leading me on," she overhears Caroline say.

"No, I wouldn't do that to you." He says it so sincerely. As though the accusation pains him.

What does that mean, that Caroline can affect him like this? That she has the power to wound him?

There's a long pause after that.

Elena stares hard at her hands, clenched around the towel. Waits, all the while wondering why she's torturing herself. If she goes out there now, they'll stop talking about this.

But then, that doesn't mean they won't have this conversation again. If she goes out there now, she'll lose her one chance to hear what they say to each other, how they talk to each other, when they think no one else is there to overhear them.

"Elena says you begged for her to take you back." There's jealousy in Caroline's voice.

Elena realizes, suddenly, how much Caroline must have been smothering it for her benefit all morning.

She had always assumed that nothing would ever come of this attraction between Klaus and Caroline. That Caroline would never seriously consider Klaus.

She catches sight of her own reflection.

No one could have predicted where her heart would stray either.

(Least of all herself.)

"Is that how she phrased it?" Klaus asks.

Caroline ignores the question, instead admitting, "This is going to sound incredibly stupid, but I felt so special when you started paying attention to me." She can hear the tears in her voice.

"You are special."

The simple kindness of that response tears her up inside.

She's seen Klaus in all sorts of lights she had never expected to see him in. Had shared an intimacy with him unlike any other in her short life. Had peered through his artwork and seen into the lonely, frightened heart of him.

Yet she has never known him to be kind. Not like he is to Caroline in this moment.

He had promised to be good to her. Had been good to her. But to be good is not to be kind— It's not even to be nice, like she'd implied to Caroline that he was— If anything, he had been cruel, forcing her out onto the edge of the cliff until she had no choice but to admit her feelings for him or face the long brutal plummet onto the rocks below—

She had almost chosen the drop.

And yet—and yet—

It is she whom Klaus loves.

"Not as special as Elena," Caroline cries out in the other room.

"What you and I have—it's different than what I share with Elena." Different—

"What we had, you mean."

"Surely we can still be friends? It would be a relief to know I have at least one of those."

"Elena isn't your friend?"

"Elena makes me battle her for every scrap of affection she bestows upon me. She doesn't gift her smiles easily." He sounds equally fond and resigned.

There's another pause, short this time, before Caroline murmurs, "She used to."

"What did she used to be like?"

And Elena listens, her heart thumping hard against her breast, as Caroline spins out a fantasy of who she used to be.

"She was—she was fun. And she was wild. Braver than the rest of us. Always the first one to jump, from so much higher up than the rest of us ever dared go. She used to laugh a lot, and she liked to play games, and she loved to tease everyone."

It's unbearable.

"What changed?"

"Her parents died and nearly took her with them. You know about the car accident? Sometimes I think I never understood Elena at all until after the funeral. I didn't know she could be sad. I didn't know she could keep secrets, or that she could lie, or that she could hurt someone else. I didn't realize her heart could ever go cold."

"A cold heart wouldn't be so eager to forgive you, or invite you in."

His confidence in her does something funny to her throat. She feels like she can't swallow properly, and her eyes burn, and she needs a minute to compose herself so that she can shut the shower off and rejoin the others.

She's heard enough.

Klaus kisses her goodbye before he goes. "Promise me you'll stay safe until I return," he demands against her lips. "Promise me you'll wait for me here."

Elena's fingers curl in his coat. His love for her isn't kind, or gentle, or any of the qualities she had envied him giving to others. It's the kind of love that will run you down until you collapse gasping for a breath of air. The kind of love that will tear you open and spill your hot blood into the night. The kind of love that consumes.

That same fear that so often prickles through her at the recognition of that love fissures through her as she assures him, "I will."

She sits out on the front porch, watching the bend where his car had disappeared for a long time after he leaves, mulling it all over.

Caroline comes after a while to sit beside her.

Klaus's love isn't kind. Could never be kind.

She knows that, because she knows that hers could never be, either.

It had been that realization, while she listened to the two of them talk, that had finally soothed the aching, jealous uncertainty within her.

She turns to Caroline. They still have so far to go before they can trust each other again. Before they can be good again. She understands a little bit better now that Caroline's relationship with Klaus is in some ways as complex as her own. That they had both unwittingly tripped the other up.

"We haven't talked about Shane yet," Elena says.

"Bonnie really looks up to him. It's going to be a hell of a time convincing her he's bad news."

Elena leans back on her hands and considers the problem. "Bonnie's all about logic, though," Elena says slowly, thinking of the innumerable times Bonnie had jumped straight to research, to hard evidence and common-sense. "If we can bring her proof that Shane is up to no good, she'll listen."

Caroline frowns, considering. "Do you think he keeps anything incriminating locked up in his office?"

A memory of Shane's shadowy office, piled high with books and notes and all sorts of strange artifacts trips through her thoughts. Elena shivers. "That's where Bonnie goes to meet him, right? Where he's been teaching her dark magic? Sounds like a solid bet to me."

"Semester's out for winter break," Caroline muses. "He probably won't be there… I mean, it's three days before Christmas. He must have a family or something, right?"

Elena seriously considers this. If she goes, Klaus is going to be furious with her. But… she and Caroline might be able to dig something up to convince Bonnie that Shane isn't who she thinks. That the Expression magic he had taught her is dangerous. That she had been wrong about her baby… just in case Klaus is unable to convince her otherwise. It's too good of a chance not to take.

She hasn't gotten this far by being afraid to dare.

"Whitmore's, what, 90 minutes from here?" Elena asks. "Think we'll have time to make it there and back before Klaus returns?"

Caroline grins at her. "I can make it in 60. We'll be there and back before he ever knows we're gone."

Chapter Text

For a while, the drive up to Whitmore passes in silence, broken only by Caroline's fingers fretfully dancing over the radio controls, by the occasional line of pop music Caroline sings under her breath.

The familiarity of the situation casts Elena back in time. Like this could be any morning from the two years since Caroline had gotten her permit. The two of them could be out for a joy ride, or sneaking into the city to dance with cute college boys, or on a mission to scope out a rival school's cheer team. Simpler times. Happier times.

She glances over to Caroline, golden and young in the winter sunshine. Just as she remembers her. It strikes her then how she will always remain the perfect picture of the girlhood friend who had done those things with her. She'll never grow older—never finish becoming on the outside who she's so busy becoming on the inside.

Suddenly Elena wonders what this will be like ten, twenty years down the road. Will they still be doing this when she's thirty or forty? Or will time inevitably pull them apart, Elena rushed downstream by its current while Caroline remains where she is, a green branch caught forever in the river's bend?

The thought stirs up other things which she hasn't had a chance to think too much about.

Things like, where does Klaus think our relationship is going? They've talked about their relationship in the face of her impending motherhood—but what about in the face of her mortality?

For all that Elena's been romantically linked with vampires for nearly a year and a half, she's always firmly avoided this question. Never really settled on what she would choose if it came right down to it, because that decision has always felt so far down the road.

Now, with this baby on the way and everything so in flux, the decision bears down on her.

She wonders how long she'll be able to continue avoiding it. A year? Two? Five? She frowns and tries to recall if anyone had ever mentioned how old Klaus was when he turned. Late twenties, maybe? Probably? Maybe she can put off thinking about this until she's closer to his age. Maybe he won't care what she chooses. Maybe—

Elena scrubs her hands through her hair. It's way too early in this relationship for her to be having these thoughts and panicking like this. She and Stefan had been together for months before ever discussing it, and only had then because it had looked like an impending reality.

Because the thing is, no matter how much she... has feelings for Klaus, they're still so very new. He could easily grow bored with her and leave her in a couple of years, returning to the impersonal arrangement they'd had last fall. Or she could wake up one morning and realize she's sick of him smothering her and she wants out. Or they could just… not work out. Most relationships fizzle. All of her relationships have fizzled.

"I can hear your heart rate picking up," Caroline notes beside her. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah," Elena replies. "Just suddenly realizing how little I've thought things out with the whole Klaus thing."

"For what it's worth, I think his feelings for you are real."

"I know," she says. "He's just—it's all so intense. This whole fall has been such a rollercoaster, and I feel like I keep trying to get off the ride but it keeps taking me for another loop instead, and I never know when the next drop is going to be." Elena tries to twist in her seat to face Caroline, but the seatbelt jerks and tightens against her throat. She yanks on it, but it only cinches tighter.

"You have to relax and pull it out slowly," Caroline advises. "It's only going to pull tighter if you keep fighting with it."

"Yep, got it." She focuses on taking deep, calming breaths as she forces herself to submit to the seatbelt so that she can pry it loose. Finally, she's able to get enough extra length out of the belt to turn and face Caroline, one leg pulled up under her on the car seat.

"So you were saying?" Caroline prompts.

"It's just that this thing with Klaus has happened so fast. Like, we had this great night together last October, when we really connected—"

"Tell me about that night."

"What?"

"Tell me about how it happened." Her hands clench around the car wheel. "Elena, I thought I knew what to expect when I drove out to the lake house today, but it turns out I had no idea. Like, I thought maybe you were sleeping with him, and I wanted to make sure it was… you know, consensual and not a weird…" She trails off, flustered and uncertain. "But I got there and it turns out Klaus—Klaus!— is in love with you. So tell me how that happened."

"I never said he was in love with me. Did he tell you he was?"

"Please, Elena, I have eyes. And… I know him too." She clears her throat and sets her shoulders back. "So. That night."

"Yeah. Last October." Elena closes her eyes for a moment. Lets herself drift back into the memory. "I was doing my homework at the Grill and he just sat down across from me—he was trying to pass on a threat to Damon and Stefan," she begins. "He didn't realize no one was talking to me." The story of that night spills out of her, bit by bit, as they roll ever closer to the school. How they had talked and Elena had laughed and felt warm and excited for the first time in longer than she could recall. How that little edge of danger had only spurred her on. How hungry she had been for the challenge. How eager to jump into the fray. She describes the tour of the house, the experience of looking through all of his paintings, one by one by one. "Like looking into his head and seeing all the pieces of him I was never supposed to," she says. "I could never unsee him then." How afterwards, she had sat down beside him, not even thinking to question her place right there at his side, and she had made the mistake of telling him something true and secret about herself. The way he had kissed her, and asked her to stay with him, and she had understood with perfect clarity what he really meant by that. How even though she woke up alone the next morning, she had felt alive and aglow all throughout the next day, and into the evening—until the horrible events of that night had spun out of control.

She's rehashed that night to herself, tossing and turning and unable to sleep, more times than she dares admit, even to herself. But being able to finally unburden herself heals a wound in her she hadn't even been aware had been festering until she feels it begin to close.

She had not appreciated how much keeping all of this secret and hidden— so much of it hidden even from Klaus, so often all of it even from herself— had truly harmed her. How carrying this had sickened her until she could no longer remember what it had felt like to be free of it.

"That was when we agreed to pretend it had never happened," Elena explains about their confrontation the night after their encounter. "The thing was, I realized that no matter how much I had connected with him that one night, he would always be a danger to everyone I loved, and I couldn't allow that."

"So you decided to try to kill him instead."

"Yeah. Pretty much." Elena shrugs. "But then he left town, and, you know, things were confusing with Stefan and Damon, and they ended up leaving too, and just when I thought I'd hit rock bottom, I found out about the baby."

"And Klaus came back—"

"Yeah, demanding to know who the father was and declaring himself to me in almost the same confusing breath."

"That's such a typical guy move," Caroline says, taking the exit for Whitmore. "I bet he assumed you'd slept with someone right after he blew you off and he was eaten alive with jealousy just thinking about it."

Elena frowns. There's something about what Caroline had just said that has alarm bells ringing in her head—not the full siren blare that Klaus had so often triggered in the past, but a fainter albeit no less persistent buzz, like hearing an alarm clock going off several doors down.

"Yeah, he was super jealous," Elena agrees, only half-hearing herself. "Good thing I chose to rebound on Stefan and not on Matt—no possible father in the picture for him to vent his jealousy on."

I bet he assumed you'd slept with someone right after…

No possible father…

A moment later Caroline pulls onto the campus, and the process of searching for the right building and finding a parking spot completely distracts Elena from her train of thought.

(She lets herself drop it.)

Of course, once they're there, there's some finagling to be done. First Caroline has to compel security to unlock Shane's office ("Better than breaking the lock and leaving a trail," they both agree), but no sooner is that accomplished than the guard throws them for a loop by asking, "Which one?"

"Which Professor Shane?" Elena asks carefully. Internally, she scrambles to try to remember Shane's name. Andrew maybe? Addison?

"No, which office?" the guard clarifies. "He has one in the Anthropology department and another in the History department on the other side of campus."

She and Caroline exchange a look.

"Both," Caroline answers with a smile. To Elena she says, "You take the Anthro office since we're already here. I can hurry back from the History department after I'm done and we can meet back up in front of the Anthro building in half an hour."

"Text me if you have any problems."

"Same."

Shane's office is a mess. There's a stack of half-graded papers spread out all over the desk, a half-full coffee cup perched atop them. There are books left face down and open on the desk and on top of the file cabinet, plus a few stacks on the floor so precariously balanced that it looks like a soft breeze could knock them over. A heap of cardboard boxes shoved into the corner by the closet door takes up most of the open floor space. Candles litter every available surface— Weird—

Elena shakes her head and picks her way over to the desk. She rifles through the papers and glances at each of the books in turn just in case any of them are Evil How To manuals.

Something vibrates against her hand.

She shoves all of the essays out of the way and unearths what can only be Shane's cell phone. The display screen reads HM.

Elena swallows a curse. If he's left his phone, then he'll probably be back for it any minute.

She may only have a few minutes to search. This could be a major distraction from her mission. Or it could be the very clue she needs.

She makes sure to lock the office door and to keep an eye on it as she plucks the phone up and swipes the answer button.

"Are you done avoiding me now? I've been trying to reach you for days," a somehow familiar voice snaps across the line. The voice is female, young, low, and manages to convey a distinct air of boredom, even in her anger. There's also something else about it—like the boredom is a cover for insecurity—

She's definitely heard this voice before. But where? The answer is right there at the edge of her fingertips—

(Just like earlier, in the car—)

There's a tense silence while the woman on the other end of the call obviously waits for a response.

Crap.

Improvising, Elena grunts into the phone, pitching her voice as low as she possibly can. She's going for an "affirmative listening" grunt, but it mostly comes out sounding like a dismissive gorilla. Oh well. Close enough.

It at least manages to further rile the woman up on the other end of the line, which is great, because it gets her talking very, very fast, and very, very furiously.

"Listen, Shane, I did my part. You told me that if I could deliver a sacrifice of twelve hybrids to you that you would help me reunite with my family—well, I got you the hybrids, but you still need to follow up on your end of the deal."

Realization smacks her upside the head. HM. Hayley Marshall. Who'd apparently betrayed Tyler to Klaus because she was… working with Shane? Her thoughts scatter like beads of water on a hot skillet as dots start to connect. Bonnie had been supposed to help Tyler that day, but she had apparently bailed. Had Shane kept her out? To… what? Ensure that the hybrids could be…

Sacrificed.

That had been Hayley's word. Sacrificed.

By Klaus.

"I can hear you breathing through the line, Shane. Really lame of you." There's a pause. "Fine. If you won't talk to me, I'm going to come find you."

Should she grunt again?

The line goes dead before she decides. The phone autolocks again as soon as the call ends.

Elena tosses the phone back onto the desk and slumps into Shane's desk chair.

Damn. She had come here hoping to find some evidence to separate Bonnie from Shane. She just hadn't expected to stumble into a conspiracy.

She wishes she'd put the phone on speaker and recorded the conversation using her own phone. It would have made it so much easier when the time comes to present evidence to Bonnie—instead she can already predict the fight they'll have when she tells her, on top of the massive fight they're already having, and how it'll take days for Bonnie to follow up on what she tells her and figure out that she's right about Shane, about the Expression, about her baby.

Well. Hindsight and all that.

She cracks her knuckles and gets to searching through the rest of the desk. All she finds are notebooks filled with what looks like lecture notes, a few cheap thumb drives, a pipe and lighter, and some broken pottery pieces in a Ziploc. In other words: nada.

Elena drums her fingers against the desk. If she were a nefarious Anthro prof, where would she hide her incriminating evidence? Probably not the boxes full of statuettes and disks and urns—from what she saw from that one lecture she attended, she assumes that stuff's probably for his class. Probably not the file cabinet either, because he'd want to keep any paper trail close to hand and hard to find. Unless he'd decided to hide it all in plain sight, like Damon with the moonstone in the soap dish… except Shane doesn't strike Elena as subtle enough for that. No, he'd choose a true hiding place, somewhere he could stuff everything out of sight quickly…

On a hunch, she reaches under the desk and feels along the bottom of it. Her fingers brush against a metal latch. In moments she works it open. Something solid thumps out of the hidden compartment to land at her feet. What looks very much on first glance like a leather bound journal.

Elena scoops it up. A quick examination confirms that it's a journal alright—she compares the handwriting to the grading on the papers left on the desk—and it's definitely Shane's journal.

As she reads, her eyebrows climb her forehead.

It's Shane's bonkers journal.

The sound of voices drifting down the hall corridor snags Elena's attention. She freezes.

"Thanks for meeting me here," one of them says as they approach the office door. "We can talk in private in my office. I have it sound proofed."

Shane. Here. Now.

Elena jumps up from the desk and frantically scans the room for an exit or a place to hide. Maybe if she can get the window open she can crawl out on the roof.

Through the door, she can hear the jingle-jangle of Shane's keys as he searches out the right one. The doorknob jiggles as the key inserts into the lock.

No time to try the window.

Which leaves only the tiny closet behind all the boxes.

She dashes to the corner and shoves the boxes just far enough out of the way to cram herself into the closet and shut the door behind her.

She makes it inside just as Shane steps into his office.

Chapter Text

It's pitch black in the closet, and Elena has to hunch awkwardly to fit into the tight space between the various shelves and random junk stored inside of it. She doesn't dare fidget lest she knock something over. Hardly dares to breathe. She clutches Shane's journal against her breast, willing herself to stay calm and alert.

"Some place you have here," the man with Shane notes. "I have to admit, I was skeptical when you reached out to me."

"Oh, I think you'll find, Connor, that you and I have much to discuss." There's the sound of chairs scraping back as the two men—Shane and this mysterious Connor—take a seat. "How's your tattoo progressing?"

A tattoo? That seems… probably not inherently evil.

Carefully, Elena digs her phone out of her pocket. Logically, she knows she should text Caroline, and ask her to create some kind of diversion so that she can slip out. She stands for a long minute with her fingers frozen over the keyboard. Something has her hesitating though. Some instinct that tells her to linger just a little longer. Just in case this tattoo thing turns out to be important.

She hits the record button instead and slides the phone back into her pocket, lest she drop the thing and create a racket. She leans as close to the door as she dares.

"You can see it?" Connor asks, clear surprise coloring his voice.

"Unfortunately not." Shane laughs, then, and the easygoing sound raises the hairs on the back of her neck. "You know, I've been looking for you—for someone like you for years. You're not easy guys to track down."

"This is a waste of time." Connor's chair screeches against the floor as he stands to leave.

"What if I told you I could help you finish that tattoo in one fell swoop?"

Connor barks a laugh. "What, do you have vampires caged up downstairs as lab rats or something?"

Elena strains at the door. What could vampires have to do with a tattoo?

From the bits and pieces Elena had gleamed from her brief perusal of Shane's journal, she knows he's obsessed with the Other Side. The journal had been bursting with notes on death and resurrection and meandering comments on various forms of dark magicks. She doesn't see how this piece can possibly fit with either the twelve dead hybrids or with Bonnie.

"Even if I did," Shane says, "it would still take you years to complete the mark if you were to take them out one by one. No, I have something better: I know a witch who knows an Original vampire. It would be easy for me to point him out to you. Kill the Original vampire, and his entire bloodline dies with him within the hour."

He means Klaus. He must.

A hand seems to reach out from the shadows, dig into her chest, and squeeze hard on her heart.

"I've never heard that before," Connor says.

"That's because it had never happened before just a few months ago. Apparently some amateur vampire hunter got a hold of the right weapon and got a lucky shot in on one of the brothers. I've been gathering the testimonies for months now, confirming the veracity of the incident—it's all true. Kill the originator of the line, and every vampire in that line dies with them."

If she shuts her eyes, she can still see the way those unholy flames had consumed Finn just a few months ago back in that alley. Can still hear his screams. She grinds her teeth against the memory. Against the image of Klaus suffering that fate.

On the other side of the door, she can hear Shane stand and walk closer to the center of the room. In her mind's eye, she can picture him leaning against the desk, so casual, so approachable, so reasonable and persuasive. "A thousand years," he muses. "That's a lot of time to make new vampires. Think of how many you could eliminate in a single stroke."

"I've never heard of any weapon that could truly slay an Original," Connor argues. "What kind of weapon did this kid use?"

"A white oak stake."

"Those are just myth."

"Not myth. Just impossibly rare."

"Where's the stake then?"

"I don't have it yet. But I've been in touch with someone who does. Someone with a vested interest in helping us."

Someone who has access to a stake. There'd been so many on the loose last fall. Who was to say that Damon had ever even shared his whole stash with the group? Anyone could have gotten their hands on one.

She's sick with the possibilities.

It had been so much easier when she had been the one plotting to kill Klaus.

Suddenly, all she can imagine is an endless future of these sorts of assassination attempts. The infinite line of assassins waiting to take him out for reasons ranging from the personal to the pointless.

"You've never said what's in it for you," Connor notes.

"I can't be interested in ridding the world of one of its most prolific murderers?"

"My gut tells me you don't actually care about murder."

"I'm sure you've noticed by now that your tattoo isn't just a mark. When it's complete, let me have a look at it."

"Why?"

"I'm an historian of the occult. This is the research opportunity of a lifetime."

Silence looms between the two men.

"Fine," Connor says after a long beat. "You get me the stake, I'll kill the Original, and then we'll see about the mark."

Shane cannot keep the smile out of his voice. "That's all I ask."

A moment later, she hears Connor leave, followed by Shane taking his seat behind the desk and the energetic shuffling of papers.

She fishes her hand into her pocket for her phone, intent on ending the recording and shooting Caroline that Rescue me! text, but her elbow jostles something in the dark. Whatever it is rolls off the shelf behind her and thumps heavily onto the ground at her feet.

Elena holds her breath, daring to hope that Shane hadn't noticed the sound.

No sooner does she think maybe then a loud creaking fills the closet, and a second later the entire precariously balanced horde within the closet comes crashing down.

Immediately Shane jumps to his feet, the chair squealing against the floor and his footsteps thundering toward the closet.

She really has only one option with her cover blown like this.

Elena bursts out of the closet, bowling Shane over in the process, and darts out the door. She sprints headlong down the deserted hall, cursing under her breath, barely daring to steal glances over her shoulder to make sure Shane isn't following her.

She rounds a corner, spots the stairwell next to the elevators up ahead just past a confluence of hallways.

She's nearly there when Shane cuts her off, twisting her arm up behind her back until she cries out and drops the journal into his waiting hand.

His jaw ticks for just a moment as he examines which book she'd tried to steal. Then he looks up at her and recognition flares in his eyes. He pastes an affable smile onto his face. "You're Bonnie's friend, aren't you?" he asks her, his voice pitched low and reassuring. "How about we go back to my office so you can explain to me what you were doing in my closet, and why you were just trying to make off with my personal journal."

She shakes her head. "It was just a prank," she tells him even as she struggles to shake him off of her. "We all know Bonnie has a crush on you, so I was supposed to steal your journal to see if you'd written anything about her."

Shane studies her. "You're lying, Elena."

A pair of hands appear on either side of Shane's head and viciously twist. His neck snaps so loudly she could swear it echoes.

The body collapses at her feet, and she's left instead staring into Klaus's livid blue eyes.

Immediately Klaus reaches out and cups her jaw, turning her face from side to side so he can examine her. "Are you injured anywhere?" He grasps her hand and draws her arm out in front of her.

Elena hisses through her teeth. "It's sore. From the twisting…" She trails off. "You didn't have to kill him." She'd wanted him out of her friend's life, not dead.

"He was threatening you. He sealed his fate from that moment onward."

"Lots of people threaten me."

"And I mean to make slaughtering each and every one of them a point until that pattern ceases."

He means that. God, he really, really means that.

She can't think about that right now.

A swarm of questions tumble from her lips. "What are you doing here? Did everything go okay with Bonnie? How did you know where to find me?"

"As well as can be expected." His fingers flex around her wrist. "I tracked your phone."

"You're spying on me?" Hunt her, stalk her, chase her to the ends of the earth, fine. She can deal with his obsession. But this lack of trust—

"You promised me you would remain at the lake house."

She bridles. "Sometimes plans change."

His eyes narrow. He yanks her closer. The warmth from Shane's body bleeds into her shins.

"You've told me repeatedly that this man made you uneasy. Why would you run right into his hands?"

"Because it seemed like a great chance to find out what he's really up to."

"That man was already planning the most efficient way to murder you."

"Caroline's going to be back looking for me any moment. It would have been fine—"

"How can you be so reckless?"

"Because these are the risks that I have to take, okay? This is what I have to do to keep everyone I love safe."

"But who keeps you safe?"

"I do."

Klaus stares at her with something like pity. "No, you don't," he tells her, releasing her wrist so he can trace the slopes of her cheeks with his thumbs. "You don't have to play this game anymore. You're not alone."

His declaration stuns her like a blow to the chest. She gasps for breath but every time she opens her mouth, there's just nothing. Nothing, except this feeling, hurtling up inside of her, the one that she's too afraid to say out loud even though Klaus keeps telling her, over and over and over again.

Klaus lifts her up and crushes her to him. "Breathe, sweet girl" he mutters, pressing his cheek against hers. "There you are. Breathe."

She breathes.

Chapter Text

"We have to talk," she tells Klaus some minutes later. They'll have to do something about the body, too. They're lucky the campus is basically empty this time of year. "I overheard some things—"

The elevator dings and the doors slide open.

Bonnie steps out of the elevator, a huge stack of old books cradled in her arms.

There's a moment where Bonnie sees the two of them, locked in their intimate embrace, where confusion, anger, and suspicion all play over her face, one after another after another. Then her eyes sweep down, inevitably, to land on Shane's corpse. At first, she just stares and stares and stares, frozen, as though she can't understand the totality of what she's seeing—the friend she's been searching for, entangled with their enemy, her mentor dead at their feet. An afterthought.

Just thinking about it all makes Elena ill. When had she grown so callous?

(That morning she dragged Meredith Fell into the woods and buried her all by herself, and she hadn't even thought to ask for help.)

(That night she gave Esther her blood and condemned all five of her children to death.)

(No. Earlier than that. When she welcomed Klaus into her bed, their pasts be damned.)

The books tumble from Bonnie's hands and she dives forward to land on her knees at Shane's side. "What have you done?" she croaks. She closes her eyes and lays her hands over his heart. The air around her ripples with the current of her magic.

Klaus draws Elena into his side, out of the way. "What I had to," Klaus tells her. "He intended to harm Elena."

"You're lying," Bonnie seethes, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Shane was a good man. Passionate and curious and altruistic—he wouldn't hurt anyone." She climbs to her feet, misery twisting her beautiful face into something broken and unbearable. "Not like you, though. You hurt everyone."

Klaus pushes Elena behind him. "I haven't hurt you, hm? There's something."

For answer, Bonnie throws her hand up and twists, her fingers contorting into claws as she slams the battering ram of her power into Klaus.

An unnatural wind shrieks down the corridor. The fluorescent lights flicker and burst, one after another. The locked office doors creak on their hinges, and the all the glass in the windows spiders with fine cracks before they too shatter and explode inward—

Klaus drops like a shot, screaming all the while.

Elena drops with him, heedless of the glass shards littering the floor, her hands frantic over his face, his shoulders, his chest as he convulses and howls. A few days ago, Bonnie had barely been able to touch him with this magic—Now she devastates him.

"Stop it, you're hurting him," Elena shouts over the wind.

Overhead, the fire sprinklers hiss on. Cold water rains down over them.

"Get out of the way, Elena. I can't contain the radius of the spell much longer."

"No," Elena cries. "I won't leave him!" She throws herself in front of him, as though she could possibly hope to protect him.

An instant later, Bonnie's magic blasts into her as well.

She can feel every cell in her body and every single one of them shrieks. There's a firework exploding in her chest, all fire and smoke and terror as it screeches ever faster and brighter and higher, higher, higher. Monstrous claws rip through her, gashing her throat, clanging in her ears. There's screaming, screaming—

And then silence.

Bonnie's magic dissipates as suddenly as it had manifested.

Elena collapses atop Klaus. Takes deep, ragged breaths, her hands clenching protectively over her belly.

She barely processes Bonnie pulling her away from Klaus, tears streaming down her face as she mumbles, over and over like a mantra, "Oh God, Oh God, I didn't mean—I didn't mean—" Drained of her rage, she's never looked so helpless. So afraid.

Elena pushes herself out of Bonnie's arms and crawls over to Klaus, who stares up blindly at the ceiling. Fine tremors wrack his body, interrupted only by sporadic, violent muscle spasms. He looks gray as death. Mere seconds experiencing the backlash from that spell had been pure torture. Klaus had endured the direct onslaught of Bonnie's magic for much longer. Tenderly, she cradles his head in her lap. "What did you do to him?"

She glances up, and catches Bonnie looking at her like she's a stranger.

"How could you, Elena?"

It's not fair that Bonnie can sound so heartbroken, when she's the one who's hurt her so badly.

"How could I what?" Elena cries. "How could you?"

"He's the enemy. He's poison."

"Not to me."

"I can't believe this." Bonnie lets out a single, staccato laugh, the sound sharp and high, the way the wind wails late at night. "I've been searching for you for days, worrying myself sick, and you were with him. I bet you didn't even want to be found."

"No, I didn't." She strokes slick, curling strands of hair back from Klaus's face. "Not while you were so busy planning to murder my baby."

Bonnie clambers to her feet. "It's not a baby, Elena!" Her foot catches on Shane's arm as she yells, and she trips, falling hard, her hands and legs tangling with Shane's. Bonnie shudders violently, a raw, wounded groan escaping from her lips as she scrambles to disentangle herself. Emotion makes her clumsy. She stumbles as she pries herself away from Shane, her face awash with a fresh surge of tears.

When she finally frees herself, she turns again to face Elena. "It's not a baby, Elena. And no matter what you think, Klaus isn't a man. A man wouldn't have done this." She jabs a finger at Shane's body. Her voice wobbles over every word. One little push could lay her flat.

Elena gathers herself. Pushes. "And a friend wouldn't hurt me the way you just did. A friend would give me the benefit of the doubt."

Bonnie's face crumples. "I loved Shane," she tells her. "How could you take him from me?"

"I didn't mean to."

"I'm always losing everyone I care about because of you—my Grahams, my mom, Jeremy—"

"That's not fair."

No more fair than the way that Klaus had stripped everything from Elena.

And yet that has never held her back from him.

He quivers in her arms, something like her name trembling from his lips.

"—and now I don't even have you, Elena."

"No. I'm only here because of you. Because I was worried about you. Shane isn't who you thought he was."

"I can't hear this right now."

"I have it all on tape—"

Bonnie shakes her head. "I can't. I just can't." She flees.

Elena lets her. What else can she do?

The minutes tick by. Bit by bit, Klaus's color improves as the aftershocks from the Expression wear off of him. He grips her hand, hard enough to ache.

(She always aches where he touches her. Aches as though her whole body is one tender, raw wound.

That's okay.

She'd rather ache than feel nothing at all.)

She lays her hand against his face. "Hey there. Do you think you can move?"

He blinks up at her like she's the sun and he's made the mistake of looking right at her. Slowly, he sits up and shakes his head, hard. Water droplets spray from his damp hair and trickle down his throat. Tiny beads of glass fall loose from his clothes. "The witch is a fair deal stronger than I anticipated," he observes.

"I think if you'd been anyone else she would have killed you."

He pins her with a look of utter wonder. "You tried to protect me."

"I've told you there isn't a risk I'd hesitate to take for the ones I care about."

He turns his face against her hand and kisses the middle of her palm. "Don't do that again—please, don't ever do that for me again."

"I can't promise you that."

Whatever he might have replied, the words are lost when Caroline arrives.

"Sorry I'm late!" she calls. "Oof, this building's a mess," she says, picking her way through the detritus of Bonnie's spell. "Why are you two sitting in a puddle on the ground? And wait—why are you here, Klaus?" Her eyes land on Shane's corpse and she pauses. "Oh."

"Bonnie was here," Elena explains. She fills Caroline in on the utter catastrophe of the past twenty minutes. It had all happened so quickly.

Caroline cringes. "What a disaster. Did you find anything out about Shane before—" She gestures with a sharp slicing motion against her neck—"you know, his timely death? Because all I found were these painted amphora shards—they were about this creepy myth—"

"Elena's very tired," Klaus breaks in. "Perhaps we could compare notes later?"

She doesn't even realize how true that is until he says it. The memory of Bonnie's magic still sings in her bones, a constant, weary sear that drags on her almost as much as the accusation that had limned Bonnie's eyes.

Nothing sounds better right now than curling up in bed and sleeping for a thousand years.

Caroline starts. "Oh! Right! Sorry." She turns back to the corpse. "Well. First thing's first," she declares with her uncannily sunny pragmatism. "Let's bury the body."

What does it say about her that she knows from intimate, personal experience that it's infinitely better to bury a body with friends than to do it alone?

She's not sure. She's just relieved not to have to do this by herself anymore. 

The car ride with Klaus back to Mystic Falls passes in quiet. He holds her hand the entire time.

Chapter Text

There's no point in returning to the lake house—whatever peace Elena had bought herself, she's sure that her latest run in with Bonnie has put an end to it—so Klaus takes her back to his mansion instead. They bring Bonnie's books she had dropped and Shane's journal with them as well.

"You don't look very well," Klaus observes as he helps her out of her coat.

"I feel miserable."

"Physically or emotionally?"

"Is there a difference?"

"Sometimes." He lays a hand over her heart. "I can hear your blood moving through your body," he murmurs. "Can feel it's potency. Your heart is as strong as ever."

She moves his hand, to rest against her abdomen. "Can you feel the baby?"

"…Yes." He pauses, his expression darkening. "Are you still in pain from what your witch did to you?"

"Her name is Bonnie, and no." Really, she barely feels any lingering side effects from the spell anymore at all. "I'm just—it can't be good for the baby to keep having these brushes with death."

He relaxes. A devilish glint flashes in his eyes. "I could swaddle you up in silk and feather down quilts until the child is born, if you'd like."

"You mean keep me in bed with you. Pass."

"But you're tempted."

Elena leans into him. She doesn't raise her arms to embrace him, just presses herself against him, silently asking him to support her. To take the weight from her and hold her, until she can find the strength to hold herself up again all by herself.

Klaus does. Somehow, he always understands what she needs.

"How am I ever going to make things right with Bonnie?" she sighs into the fabric of his shirt.

His hands tighten around her. "She won't be able to harden her heart against you forever. It will crack, and you will slip in."

"You make it sound so inevitable."

"Everyone who knows you loves you."

"Everyone who loves me leaves me."

Klaus draws her away from the foyer. Leads her to a parlor and coaxes her to sit down. He kneels at her feet. "You keep saying that."

"Because it's true."

"I will never leave you."

"How can I trust that? You might mean it now, but you don't know it."

He studies her seriously. "I've lived a very long time. My heart is not so easily swayed, and yet, you have changed me. It's your blood that runs in my veins. Your soul that shadows my own. How could I leave you, when you are as much a part of me as my own hand?"

"You could cut off your hand if it displeases you."

"I would never." He twines their fingers together. "Do you mark how perfectly we fit together?"

Elena stares at their joined hands. "You dagger your siblings when they displease you." What makes me any different?

"And you plot my murder when I displease you."

His words remind her. "Shane was conspiring to murder you." The conversation she had overheard in the closet comes rushing back in on her. How could she forget?

"A pity he was so slow to act then," Klaus says without any particular concern. His finger traces a blue vein on the underside of her wrist.

"No—wait—I recorded the conversation." Elena breaks away from Klaus's grasp and fetches her phone from her coat. She plays the recorded conversation for him.

The sound quality is pretty terrible, but the bulk of it is audible.

At first, Klaus obviously only listens to humor her, but his demeanor changes as the conversation progresses.

He replays it twice more after it ends.

"How many white oak stakes did you have last fall, exactly?" he asks her after a couple of tense minutes.

"I don't know—Damon passed a bunch out to us, but who's to say he didn't keep some in a private stash?"

He looks at her narrowly.

Oh. He thinks she's to say.

Elena scoffs. "That's hilarious if you think Damon would have confided anything in me by that point. Remember, the whole reason we hooked up in the first place was because I was on the outs with the rest of them?"

"Fair enough." Klaus throws himself onto the sofa next to her. "What else can you tell me about this man on the recording?"

"Not much. I never got a look at him. His name was Connor—and of course, he has some sort of invisible tattoo that somehow shifts when he kills vampires. I think."

"It's a Hunter's mark."

"A what?"

Klaus explains it to her then—the story of his first run in with the Five, the origin of the white oak ash daggers, how with each vampire slain, the Hunter's mark would grow. How exactly he had discovered the consequences for killing a Hunter. Just thinking of Klaus going through that kind of torment twists her up inside.

"But what's the point of growing the mark?" Elena asks, pushing aside Klaus's revelation of how he had passed the fifty years after he had destroyed the original Five.

"There's an old fairytale that's existed nearly as long as I have," Klaus says, his tone utterly dismissive. "Legend says that a completed mark will lead the Hunter to a Holy Grail of sorts—to a potion containing the cure for vampirism."

"It doesn't exist though."

"Oh, it most certainly does. It's just not accessible to anyone living."

Elena frowns at him, but files that away. "How does any of this have anything to do with teaching Bonnie Expression though? Or with the hybrid sacrifice?"

"Pardon? The what?"

"I answered Shane's phone before he returned with Connor. It was Hayley Marshall—that werewolf girl who warned you about the coup?"

"Go on."

"Well, before she hung up on me, she launched into this tirade about how she'd delivered the hybrid sacrifice to Shane—twelve hybrids. She was really specific about that. It's got to tie in somewhere, but how?"

Klaus taps his fingers against his knees, obviously lost in thought. She can tell from the expression on his face how much the idea of being used by anyone for anything riles him. He has never enjoyed playing anyone's puppet. If he hadn't killed Shane already, then he certainly would for this insult.

"Shane's the one who taught your friend Expression, is he not?" he says at last.

"Yeah. That's why Caroline and I were suspicious of him."

"If Bonnie were to tap into those deaths—into a mass sacrifice of such powerful, unnatural creatures like that—then that would explain why she has grown so much exponentially stronger than she was even just a few days ago. Shane might have taught her that while we were dallying at the lake house."

Elena recoils. "Expression is death magic?"

"The sort that uses up the spirits of the dead until there's nothing left, yes."

She thinks about everything she'd learned today.

"We're so stupid," Elena marvels.

"How particularly?"

"Shane's been pulling our strings, and none of us have been able to see it because none of us are talking to each other—not really. We're all keeping secrets from each other and that's what's made us such easy targets." She pulls out her phone. "No more secrets."

"Who are you dialing?"

"Caroline. We need to compare notes—"

Klaus plucks the phone out of her hands and hangs up. "It can wait until morning."

"No, I'm onto something— I need to go grab those books—"

"I know how frustrating it is to discover yourself a dupe, but Shane is dead now."

"Yeah, but who was pulling his strings? That's who we need to worry about."

"Why do you think anyone was?"

"Did Shane strike you as particularly cunning or subtle? Someone capable of manipulating everyone so easily?"

"No, he struck me as little more than a slimy weasel." Klaus pauses. "Point taken."

"There's a trap here, and someone's waiting for it to spring shut on us. Who knows us well enough to lay it?"

"Perhaps whoever has the stake," he reasons.

"Someone who wants the cure?"

Klaus shrugs. "It's probably one of my siblings. Kol is often cross with me. Come to bed."

"Why do you care so little? I just told you you were set up and someone is out to get you."

"Someone is always out to get me. My own father attempted it for centuries. I've learned not to lose any sleep over it." He smiles then, sudden as a summer storm, and sweeps her up bridal style into his arms. "I can think of much more pleasant reasons to lose sleep," he breathes against her throat.

Despite her anxieties, Elena loops her arms around his neck. Lets him carry her to what she is already starting to think of as their bed.

"But we'll talk about this in the morning," she presses one last time as Klaus peels her shirt over her head.

"The topic will have my undivided attention."

It doesn't, of course. Yet she cannot find it within her to fault him for it.

Chapter Text

She tries reading through Shane's journal the next morning in bed, but it's terribly hard to focus while propped against Klaus's chest, his arms banded around her and his chin hooked over her shoulder so he can murmur his commentary in her ear as he reads along over her shoulder with only vague interest. Doubly hard when he's still naked, his skin glowing with delicious heat, his hair mussed from her own hands and his voice bedroom deep.

The sound of his voice distracts her. The low rumble of it hums against her skin, reverberates in her bones. Calls to the deepest, hidden parts of her that had remained slumbering at the bottom of her soul until he first spoke her name and woke her up.

She cannot help but to melt back into him, to succumb to the patient, wandering caresses of his hands over her arms, her ribs, her belly and her hips. She's wearing nothing but one of his tee-shirts. The slow drag of the shirt as he pushes it up past her hips so he can palm at her breasts feels unbearable. Inch by inch, he hitches it higher. The anticipation of waiting for his touch, all the while feeling his breath stir her hair, feeling the restrained strength of him as he holds her close and safe against him, ignites her. Impels her. She feels the rushing tongue of cool air against her skin like an actual stroke against her body.

The touch of his mouth against her pulse shocks her to her core, even though it also feels so inevitable that waiting for him to fasten his teeth against her throat had become a sensation unto itself, at once smothering and keen. Her toes curl as dazzling lust careens through her, sharp and hungry and insistent.

Elena drops the journal and arches against him, reveling in the feeling of his desire, hard and eager against the swell of her ass. Reveling in the power she has over him. The power he gives her.

Klaus's fangs prick against her throat just as one of his hands slips between her thighs to torturously skim over her sex.

His teasing is more than she can bear. She tangles her hands in his hair and tugs him closer, simultaneously rolling her hips, pressing herself needfully against his hand. Klaus growls against her throat and yanks her tightly to him, an arm slipping across her chest to hold her just as he did the night of the sacrifice as that hand dabbling at her clit slides lower and plunges inside of her, the fingers scissoring. And it's good—it's amazing—this primal feeling rising up inside of her, this current sizzling between them as Klaus penetrates her with fangs and fingers. Maybe she should worry about Klaus drinking from her while she's pregnant, but she doesn't, because she trusts him to take care of her. Them. She can feel the leap of her blood into his mouth, matched by the rippling of her body as she clamps down hard on her lover's fingers. It's too much—too good, too right between them. She comes panting and clawing at his neck.

He kisses her afterwards, her blood still tangy on his lips. Rolls her onto her back and slides inside of her like coming home.

Maybe this is home, she thinks, staring up into Klaus's face as he works himself inside of her. Maybe home isn't a place, but a person.

It's a dangerous thought to pin on Klaus. And yet—

"Where are you, right now?" He breathes the question into her ear. Kisses the wound on her neck.

Elena wraps her arms around him. Tightens her legs, just a little bit, but not too much. It's so good just to lay here and let him love her. Let him have her, since he keeps insisting that he will.

"I'm with you," she replies.

He strokes back the baby fine hairs at her temple. "In body, perhaps."

"No." She takes his hand. Lays it over her heart. "Here."

Elena wipes the fog from the bathroom mirror and studies herself in the reflection. Fresh from the shower, her hair hangs in damp waves down her back and curls around her breasts. Speckles of water dapple her skin. There's a definite thickening to her belly that had not been detectable a week ago.

She examines her throat. The puncture marks are delicate and neat, just two little pinpricks, really. Unlikely to scar, unlike the horrific imprint Stefan had left on her in August.

She wonders how many lovers Klaus had practiced that move on, to be able to bite her so cleanly, with so little pain. How many others he had bitten in just that very manner.

She pushes the thought away. Here and now, it doesn't matter.

In the mirror, she watches Klaus step out of the shower and approach her, pressing his damp body against the line of her back. His hands slide down her shoulders, over her arms, leaving a trail of goosebumps in their wake.

Helplessly, Elena leans back against him.

Stares at their reflection in the mirror. At the way that Klaus looks at her, like he wants to worship her, devour her, adore her.

That fear from yesterday, that they are moving way too fast, and she's not sure how to slow them down, shimmers at the back of her thoughts.

Klaus displaces it with his mouth against her nape. A moment later he finds that sensitive place behind her ear. Scents her deeply there.

Her legs tremble. She feels faint, pliant. Like she needs him again, right away.

"Does it bother you that I'm on vervain?" Elena asks, trying to distract herself. "When you drink from me? Does it affect you at all?"

She can feel Klaus smile against the back of her neck. "I hardly notice it next to your flavor." He plays with the damp ends of her hair. "There is a bite to your blood that is new from when I tasted you last spring," he allows after a moment.

Tasted. Strange how the understatement ruffles her.

"You mean when you drained me."

He flips her around and sets her atop the cold marble bathroom counter so fast she can't process the movement. She simply blinks, and she's no longer watching them in the mirror but staring up into his face instead.

Klaus pulls her mouth to his, his tongue dipping into her mouth to slide languorously against her own. "When I killed you," he confirms when they break apart.

The stark truth of those words batters against her self-control. Thrills her darkly. There it is, the very crux of their relationship. Their shared date with destiny, when Klaus had murdered her, and nothing had ever been the same since. The knowledge of it infuses her with a terrible need for him, to strive toward the kind of completion she had found in meeting her fate last spring.

(She had dreamt of nothing else that whole endless summer afterwards.)

Desperately, Elena spreads her thighs for him and urges him inside of her. She leans back, the cold of the marble pressing into her ass, the slick cool of the mirror against her shoulders. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see herself and Klaus doubled in the mirror.

"Would you do it again?" she asks him when he is buried inside of her to the hilt. She wraps her legs around his waist tight and pulls him to her. "If you could go back, knowing me like you do now, would you still put me through that?"

Klaus pulses inside of her. She can feel the way the question intrigues and ignites him. The way that the fantasy enthralls him. He's harder and hotter for her in that moment than she can recall him ever being.

"Yes," he swears to her. He braces a hand against the mirror behind her and uses the other to shift her hips to a new angle and hitch her closer. "In any life, under any circumstance, I would mark you out and I would bind you to me."

His answer both fascinates and repels her. She wants to escape him and she wants to crawl inside his skin. She hopes he never lets her go, even as the instinct to run makes her legs quake.

"I can hear your heart fly. Does that frighten you?" he asks. He leans forward, and nips at her earlobe. "Or does that excite you?"

Her stomach flips. "Both."

She hears a sharp crack just behind her, and realizes that Klaus must have broken the mirror with his fist. When she glances over her shoulder, she can no longer make out their faces in the glass.

He guides her face back to look at him instead. Kisses her until she forgets.

"Your life would be so much easier if you simply moved in here with me," Klaus sighs as she hunts through the bedroom for her missing boot.

"Normal people offer a drawer before asking their girlfriends to move in with them." The label slips out of her mouth before she has time to think about it.

"I'm not a person," he points out. "And you're not merely my girlfriend."

"We've never talked about labels before," Elena hedges. She finds the missing boot kicked halfway under the bed.

"I thought declaring my literally undying love and devotion to you and offering to raise your child with you would be sufficient. Perhaps I was mistaken."

Elena crawls out from under the bed and tugs on the boot. "I'm only eighteen," Elena says without looking at him. "There's just—there's a lot happening really fast for me, between the baby and everything going on with my friends and—well. And us."

"And yet I'm well over a thousand, and I can avow that what we have between us is something rare. Something extraordinary. Whether you're eighteen or thirty doesn't change that."

"Do you plan on letting me reach thirty?"

Klaus pauses. "Obviously."

"As a human?"

He doesn't answer her right away, which is answer enough of what fantasies have been unspooling in his head these past few weeks while she's been indulging herself with frankly spectacular sex and romantic daydreams.

"I have to go," she murmurs, gathering up Bonnie's book and Shane's journal into her arms. "I want to compare notes from yesterday with Caroline."

Klaus catches her arm. "Elena. We don't have to have this conversation now, but we will need to have it eventually."

"I know." She leans into his touch, just slightly. "Just not right now, okay?"

Klaus pulls her close. "You're the one for me," he tells her. "There can be no one else."

His words make her eyes sting. She glances down at the books in her arms. Thinks about the threats against him which she had discovered only yesterday. She doesn't know what she'll do if she loses him.

Doesn't like thinking about how she's losing herself in him.

She presses a kiss to the pulse point in his throat. "I'll see you later."

She begins typing out a text to Caroline on the way home, asking her to come to her house that afternoon to discuss their findings from the previous day, before changing her mind and sending the invitation to the entire gang instead—Bonnie included.

Until they all start to work together and keep each other in the loop, all they'll ever be is easy targets.

Elena lets herself into the house for the first time in nearly a week. The Christmas tree which she had so relished looks sad and deflated after all that time with no water. A layer of colored glass shards from when Bonnie had blown out all the lights coats the floor, and the scent of burnt plastic and tired evergreen still mingle faintly in the air.

She's just placed the books down on the coffee table by the tree and taken her first step toward the kitchen to grab the broom and dust pan when a flash of movement catches her attention.

She glances up, straight into Damon's blue eyes as he emerges from the back of the house. Stefan shadows him a moment later, as though the two of them are ghosts drifting in from her past.

Chapter Text

Shock spills over her.

It's only been a couple of months since the last time she saw them—since their night together, when she had felt whole and hopeful and absolutely right pressed between their bodies—but it may as well be another lifetime altogether.

When they had left her without so much as a goodbye, they'd taken the last part of her innocence with them.

She's not the same girl who had kissed them and prayed for them to envelop her in their love. She's not the same girl she was even a few weeks ago.

And yet, right now, there is an unignorable part of that wants to be that girl. That cannot help but to reach for their shared past.

They are both still so beautiful that her entire body aches with repressed longing.

"What are you doing in my house?" she asks them when she at last finds her voice.

"Looking for you, obviously," Damon begins. "Bonnie called us and said you were in trouble. Something about Klaus." He eyes the room. "Whatever magic was used in this room still reeks, by the way."

"Bonnie called you?" she collapses into the nearest chair. She can't believe this. Can't believe that all this time, when she had been mourning them, knowing in her heart that she had lost them, that they would probably never come back to Mystic Falls during her life time, or else would only return when it would be too late for them all, when she would be old and gray and nothing like the girl they had loved— all that time, Bonnie had apparently had the power to reach them when she, Elena, could not. It hurts. So much.

"Two days ago," Stefan confirms. "We came back as fast as we could."

"You answered for her?" She's not sure why that fact stands out more than any other. Not with Stefan and Damon both here, the two missing pieces of her soul standing right here in her living room.

It occurs to her that the three of them are all teetering on the edge of a precipice. The distance between their past and their present is both so infinitesimal that any little word they speak has the power to wound her in a way no others could. At the same time, the abyss between them is so distant and daunting that she knows that if she ever tries to jump the distance and meet them again, the way she had so thoughtlessly been able to do in the past, that she would surely fall.

Memory flashes through her. That morning on her porch, Alaric's blood still hot and cloying on her hands. Of dialing and holding her breath and hoping that if she reached out, then someone would take her hand. "You never pick up for me." Her voice sounds so small.

"You never called," Damon says.

It hits her then—they had left her… and she had let them.

No, she'd never once tried to contact them in the months they'd been away. By that point, she had become so accustomed to abandonment that she had accepted it as another grief and pushed forward. And then—and then she had found out about the baby, and the pain of their leaving had shrunken down into a point within her heart so small that it had been easy to ignore. Like a needle embedded so long in the flesh that so long as she never prodded it, she could go on about her life and forget that it was there at all. It's been especially easy not to think of them with how wrapped up she's been with Klaus, and everything else that's happened since—

Damon approaches her, slowly, like she might spook at any moment. "Elena—" He freezes a few feet from her. His eyes widen, and he recoils as though she's a snake.

At the same time, Stefan cocks his head and squints at her. A moment later, naked disbelief plays over his face. "You're pregnant?"

She gapes, caught off-guard by the question. Before she can respond, Damon snatches her up and hauls her tight against him, wrenching a startled scream from her. He buries his nose against her throat and inhales hard. His fingers clench around her wrists hard enough to bruise. She knows what he must smell on her skin.

She hasn't been afraid of Damon in a long, long time. She's afraid of him now, though. "Damon, you're hurting me." She tries to tear herself away from him, but his grip is implacable.

"I don't believe it," he snarls, pulling away to glare down at her, completely heedless of her attempts to twist out of his grasp. "Are you off your vervain?" he demands. He clenches his jaw, the familiar light of murder glinting in his eyes. "I'm going to kill him."

Stefan jumps between them, breaking Damon's hold on her and shoving his brother to the other side of the room. Damon lands hard against the fireplace, all of the framed photos on the mantle crashing to the ground and the iron fire screen crumpling in the wake of the impact.

Off-balance from Stefan abruptly freeing her, Elena trips and lands hard on the coffee table. Cursing, she rubs at her tailbone and then her wrists. Deep fingerprint bruises are already blooming against her skin.

"Lay off of her," Stefan orders his brother.

"Don't you smell it?"

"Yeah, she's pregnant, you prick. Stop rattling her around."

Damon pushes Stefan out of his way. "Yeah, well, she's also fucking Klaus."

Elena shoves herself to her feet. "You both left me. It's none of your business whom I sleep with."

"She's obviously been compelled," Damon tells Stefan, like she's not even in the room.

Stefan doesn't rush to agree. There's something terribly knowing in his eyes as he examines her. Something she can't quite put her finger on.

How many nights in those first few weeks after they'd left had she lain awake imagining their reunion? Somehow, she'd never imagined this. How ridiculous of her. "I'm not compelled," she repeats, heat creeping into her voice. "And I'd appreciate it if you stopped looking at me like I'm broken. I'm not." Not anymore.

"You're not stupid enough to climb into bed with Klaus," Damon says.

"I was stupid enough to climb into bed with you, so I guess the jury's still out on that."

Damon storms over to her and grabs her again by the shoulders. Not gently—never gently with him—but not exactly rough, either. "I never would have left you if I'd thought you'd end up with him."

The judgment in his tone stokes her anger. Deep down, Elena's relieved. It's easier to be angry at him than to feel the crushing weight of her hurt. Than to deal with the maelstrom of feelings their sudden reappearance has rekindled inside of her.

"Of course not," she hisses. "You and Stefan both put your revenge against him before me time and again."

Damon lets her go. "So, what, is sleeping with Klaus your revenge?"

The question catches her. She thinks about everything she's shared with Klaus these past few weeks, and beyond that—to the secret moments between them all throughout last fall, and the bigger moments last spring that had rocked her and defined her as nothing else ever had—as nothing else may ever be able to again. She thinks about the way he had lurked in her head and her heart, a shadow that had fallen over everything, its shade somehow transformed into a comfort and a respite rather than a thing to fear—

"My relationship with Klaus doesn't have anything to do with you," she finally tells him.

Damon must read the truth of it on her face. He looks away first. Falls into the arm chair and glares in the direction of the melted Christmas tree.

"Who's the father of your baby, Elena?" Stefan asks her, breaking through the silence.

Elena watches him warily. "You're not going to lecture me about Klaus?"

He sighs like he's exhausted. "He's always been obsessed with you. It's our fault for not anticipating this."

"Yeah, he has been. But this was my decision, and I don't regret it." She brushes past both of them to the kitchen, where she sets the kettle on to boil and knocks back her prenatal vitamins.

Stefan follows her in. Pins her with that dark, arresting stare whose power she has never been able to resist. "He murdered Jenna, Elena."

He may as well have stabbed her.

Elena clutches at the edge of the kitchen counter as her knees nearly buckle out from under her. No, no, no, no, she's sworn to herself never to think of this—Never ever ever—because if she does then she'll have to face the fact that she's let Jenna's murderer into her heart, and all she'll ever be able to see ever again is Jenna's fear in those final moments, that cold gray face, pinned beneath her lover, a bloody stake in his hand—

"If sleeping with him is really your choice, then I'm surprised you can forget that," he continues.

He's right. He's right. Of course he is. She had just been so happy to forget—to forget—and what sort of a monster does that make her?

The same feeling as the day before rises up inside of her, smothering her—She tries to breathe but it's like her lungs are frozen— She wants Klaus desperately right now, to anchor her, to hold her, but that urge only makes her swelling misery that much more unbearable. Her vision swims.

Stefan catches her before she can faint. "If he's forcing you in any way, Elena, we can help you," he tells her. "We can free you."

His arms come around her, and for a moment, Elena slides into the peace of memory. She knows these arms. She knows this scent. She knows that voice, calm and quiet and always, always assuring. It's enough to clear her thoughts, to wipe away the nightmare of her guilt.

"He's not forcing me," Elena mumbles, pushing herself away from him. "He's just… The only one who never seems to leave me."

For a moment, Stefan looks absolutely stricken. "Everything I ever did was to keep you safe from him."

"That's not true, though."

Behind them, the tea kettle shrieks.

Elena turns away from him then to take the kettle off the stove. Sets her vervain tea to steep in one of her favorite mugs. One of the ones Jenna had brought with her when she moved in after her parents died. Her heart twists. Carefully, she scoops it up and holds the hot ceramic cupped between her hands. Focuses on that, on pushing down all of the ugly roiling feelings of doubt and shame which Stefan had dredged up only moments ago.

"So then who's the father of your child?" Damon asks, emerging from the living room to lean in the doorjamb. Obviously, he's been listening to their entire conversation. "Someone Klaus arranged? Or was it a rebound lay right after we left?"

"Damon, that's enough," Stefan chides.

"Inquiring minds want to know." He still has that knack for sounding utterly cold and indifferent when really he's burning up with jealousy and hurt beneath the surface. The intimacy of the insight rips at her mangled heart.

"Would knowing change anything?" she asks.

"Depends on the answer."

Elena shuts her eyes. Casts herself back, to that night they had all three of them come together in Damon's enormous bed. She's spent so much time trying to imagine what she could have possibly said to them that night to have made them stay. What she must have said to them that had made them leave her. Wondering why Katherine could keep them so effortlessly, when she just couldn't, even when it was what she wanted with every grasping inch of her soul.

"I can't do this with you two," she admits, sagging against the counter. "I can't keep having this conversation like the two of you care about me."

"We do care," Stefan says. So reasonably. So definitively.

She explodes. "You still left me, though! You still carved my heart out when you did, and I was alone, bleeding out, and it was up to me to put the pieces back together all by myself! You can't just show up here like that doesn't matter and demand answers about my life."

The ensuing silence grates against her nerves. She blows on her steaming tea, her temper turning the gesture into an irritated, staccato huff. She scalds her tongue on the first sip anyway. Her belly twinges sharply.

"If it makes you feel better, we had a good reason for leaving," Damon says after an excruciating minute passes.

"Fuck you."

The doorbell rings, then, startling the three of them. Elena fumbles the mug, hot tea scalding her hands, but Stefan catches it before it cracks against the floor.

Absolute exhaustion sweeps over her.

"Elena?" Caroline calls from the front of the house. "The door was open so I let myself in—I saw you invited Bonnie so I thought I'd come over a little early so you two wouldn't have to face each other one on one."

"Oh, great, Vampire Barbie," Damon mutters.

Caroline obviously hears the comment, because a second later she zips into the kitchen. "You two are back? What the hell? Since when?"

"Since a couple of hours ago," Stefan replies. "Bonnie warned us Elena was in trouble."

"Yeah, she said it was about Klaus," Damon says. "She failed to mention the problem was she's fucking him." He pauses. "Or that she's gotten herself knocked up."

"Knocked up's kind of a strong word for it," Caroline replies, sidling next to Elena and examining her burnt hand with a concerned frown. She hisses and pulls away as soon as her fingers come into contact with the tea on her skin.

"Sorry," Elena whispers to her. "I spilled the vervain tea on myself."

"What does that mean?" Damon asks, interrupting them.

"Hm?" Caroline barely spares him a glance as she wraps a handful of ice in a dishrag for Elena to hold against her hands.

"You said 'knocked up is kind of a strong word.' What does that mean?"

Elena attempts to subtly shake her head at Caroline, to signal that she doesn't want to share.

Damon catches it. Of course he does. He's always been hyper aware of her, even when he was cutting her out. His eyes narrow. "Were you attacked? Is that it?"

"Look, if I tell you, will you back off about it?"

They don't agree—of course they don't—but she's too wrung out to bother keeping this secret. If she doesn't tell them, she's certain Bonnie will, and she'd rather at least head this off now when she can control the narrative.

So, Elena takes a deep breath, and brings them up to speed on What's Happening to Her Body, take three.

Chapter Text

They sit in stunned silence around her kitchen table as she walks them through her situation.

"How is that possible, though?" Damon sputters.

Elena shrugs. "Biological imperative? Magic? A Christmas miracle? Pick one of the above."

"It's like immaculate conception," Caroline adds.

"No, that was the Virgin Mary's conception," Stefan corrects her. "You're thinking of the Virgin Birth." The words come out distant and foggy. He sounds like her revelation has broken his brain.

Caroline wrinkles her nose at him. "Obviously you know what I meant."

Damon jumps to his feet. "I got it now. Bonnie called us because she sees you've completely lost your mind."

"Bonnie's into dark magic now," Elena informs him. "She needs help. Not exactly the source you want to be getting your information from."

Damon waves her off. "Bonnie's into dark magic? She won't even switch lanes without using her turn signal."

"It's true," Caroline murmurs.

"That mess in my living room is her fault," Elena says. "She used some sort of dark spell on me—last week and again just yesterday. Believe me when I say it hurts."

For response, Damon roots through her cabinets for a glass and helps himself to one of Alaric's leftover bottles of bourbon tucked into the bottom of one of the kitchen drawers. Drinking never makes Damon any less tense or distressed, but the motion of pouring himself the drink always gives him an action with which to deflect from his emotions. To play it cool.

For some reason, it stings to watch just how intuitively he still navigates her home.

Stefan drums his fingers against the table. "She must have called us in because of the situation with your pregnancy though." He still sounds a little distant, as though his thoughts are thousands of miles away. "What's the deal with Klaus? How does he fit in?"

"Other than bedroom acrobatics," Damon throws in.

"He's fine with it."

Stefan shakes his head. "That's too mild an emotion to ascribe to Klaus. He's never just fine."

"No, he really does seem okay," Caroline backs her up.

"What, have you been taking notes?" Damon asks.

"I visited them at the lake house. I had lots of opportunity to see for myself what was really going on." Caroline pauses. Then, quietly, she says, "He's in love with her."

Damon snaps. Hurls his drink against the wall, shattering the glass. The bourbon oozes down the wall. "I didn't give her up so he could have her."

Caroline lays a hand over Elena's wrist, holding her back. Tells Damon, in that decisive, definitive tone of which only she is capable, "No, you gave her up for yourself. Now you get to live with that. Both of you do."

Pain fissures over Damon's face. He closes off around that crack, turning in on himself, hiding it away the way he always does.

Stefan merely fastens Elena with that dark, penetrating stare of his—the one that always strips her down until she is nothing but her bare self, helpless and honest. He knows what it means that she brought Klaus there. "Do you love him back?"

There's no judgment in the question. Just a steady acceptance, as though he has already braced for the worst. The sky is raining fire and Stefan is standing out in the inferno, patiently waiting to be burnt to ashes.

The answer rises in her throat and catches there. Impossible to articulate.

He sees that.

Both of them do.

How could they not, when she had once given herself over to the two of them so completely? The communion between them had been so utter and sincere, once, that it would be impossible for them ever to mistake her, just as she cannot ever mistake them. They know one another, for better or for worse.

For worse, she thinks, more often than not these days.

The doorbell rings. At the same time, Caroline's phone dings.

"That's Tyler and Matt," she says. "Here, I'll go let them in." She hurries to the front of the house.

Stefan sighs and rises to go pour himself a drink, shaking his head all the while. He wanders out into the foyer a moment later to greet the others.

With no one left to guard her, Damon sits down across from her and takes her hand.

She's not sure why the sight of his fingers wrapped around her own brings tears to her eyes.

"I can't let you throw your life away, Elena," he tells her, so earnestly she almost thinks she might want to die. The desire to fall into him again is as strong as that old yearning, as familiar and haunting. As much a part of the past.

"I'm not," she mumbles. "I haven't made any decisions about anything yet."

"Don't," he urges. "You don't have to decide anything right now."

"Just how to get us through the next day, and the day after that."

Damon's eyes rove her face. Like he's been starved for her but hasn't let himself admit it to himself until just this moment. Like he's realized that he will probably have to abstain anyway. "That's what you do though, isn't it? You survive. I just want to make sure you also live."

Caught off guard, Elena blinks at him, the tears drying from her eyes.

Everyone else files into the kitchen before she has a chance to formulate a response.

Damon drops her hand.

"I see you've called in the cavalry along with the troops," Tyler remarks. His foot crunches on the broken glass from Damon's outburst. He pauses. "Good to know nothing much has changed."

Matt clears his throat. "Look, Elena, about the other day…"

Elena holds up her hand. "I'm not interested in rehashing any of that. That's not why I asked you all to come over." She glances at her phone. No word from Bonnie. Impossible to say whether or not she'll show up. She may as well dive in. "I asked you here because we've all been manipulated, and we need to work together if we're going to figure this out."

When she sees she has their attention, she carefully lays out everything she's learned so far.

"Wait," Damon interrupts her a few minutes in. He twists in his chair to look at Tyler, perched on the countertop. "You came up with that plan to get rid of Klaus by yourself?"

"Yeah, so what? Are you going to make fun of me?"

He shakes his head. "No. I'm impressed."

"But here's where it gets interesting," Elena says. "Bonnie was originally supposed to help you, right?"

"Yeah," Tyler tells her slowly. "That was where the plan started falling apart."

"That and Hayley," Caroline murmurs.

"Exactly. Guess whose orders Hayley was following?"

Caroline's mouth twists like she's swallowed something sour. "Shane's?"

"Coincidence? I think not."

The silence drags as Elena lets that sink in.

"Who's Shane?" Stefan asks into the silence.

By the time Elena finishes explaining about the reconnaissance mission yesterday, what a Hunter is, and then her theory that Shane had in turn been manipulated by someone else—whoever had the stake, maybe—Damon is leaning back in his chair, hands limp at his sides as he stares at the ceiling, Stefan has poured himself another drink, Tyler hasn't blinked in like four minutes, and Matt's face is screwed up in such utter consternation that she wonders if maybe she should go over this again for him. Only Caroline seizes on any of Elena's intel.

"Why do we think Shane was teaching Bonnie Expression though?" she asks.

Elena grabs Shane's journal from the front of the house. "He has this major obsession with the Other Side."

Caroline peers over her shoulder as Elena flips through the journal.

"Hold on—I recognize that symbol," she says, taking the journal from Elena and setting it on the table. She takes out her phone and flicks through the photo album. "He had this whole box of amphora shards—remember, I mentioned them yesterday?" She holds up her phone next to the journal. "Look, it's the same symbol."

Elena studies it. As far as she can tell, the symbol doesn't seem to be related at all to the journal entry next to it. In fact, when she flips through the journal, she sees it over and over again. A mindless, compulsive doodle scratched into nearly half the pages.

"Wait, how does any of this have to do with Elena's pregnancy?" Matt asks at last.

"I don't think it does," Caroline replies.

"But isn't that what Bonnie's most worried about? Isn't the baby really a demon or the antichrist or something?"

Damon sits up. "Wait, what?"

"I told you Bonnie was paranoid," Elena says without looking up from the journal and photos.

"Why does it matter what Shane was obsessed with?" Tyler puts in. "He's dead."

"But we need to figure out what plans he might have set in motion before he died," Caroline points out. "Like, is the Hunter going to be our problem? What do we do if we encounter him if obviously we can't kill him?" At the last part, she looks hopefully at Matt.

Matt holds up his hands as though to ward her off. "I'm not going to kill him."

"Oh, so you'll kill a vampire but you won't kill a bad guy if he just happens to be human?"

"Yeah, exactly."

Elena cuts in. "Look, we have bigger things to worry about. If that Hunter succeeds in staking Klaus, then there's a chance that nearly everyone in this room could die with him." Briefly, she locks eyes with Tyler. She swallows hard. "That's not a chance I'm willing to take."

"You all still don't know which Original started your line?" Matt asks, incredulity thick in his voice.

God, he really is way behind.

Maybe they should start writing briefs, or taking minutes during these meetings.

Elena shakes herself off of that line of thought and presses on before Damon can complete whatever quip she can see forming on his lips. "The most important thing we therefore need to figure out is: who might have the stake, and do we think that's the person pulling the strings? If we can figure out Shane's motive in all of this, then maybe that will help us figure out who might still be out there aiming to harm us."

A look passes between the Salvatores.

Elena's phone rings, Bonnie's name scrolling across the screen.

"Give me a minute," she says, holding a finger up and taking the phone into the other room.

"Elena?" Bonnie asks over the phone. "Are you there?"

The sound of her voice grips Elena by the heart. Even as angry as she is with her—even with her trust in her snapped—she still longs to find a way back to their friendship.

"I was hoping you'd come over," Elena tells her softly into the phone. She'd hoped that by working together, they could find a way to repair their shattered relationship.

"I can't—Elena—I've been—I can't stop thinking about yesterday. I need to talk to you."

Elena pauses in front of one of the living room windows. She traces her fingers over the cold glass, drawing aimless patterns in the condensation. "I'm sorry about what happened with Shane." She realizes after a moment that she's drawn Shane's symbol, over and over again. Quickly, she smudges her fist against the glass to erase the marks.

"No—it's not about that—Elena, I'm scared." Her voice sounds so small. "I need your help."

"Where are you?"

Caroline drifts into the room, her head cocked as she listens in on the conversation.

"I'm so sorry about what I did to you," Bonnie says, completely ignoring Elena's question. "I never meant to hurt you. You believe me, right?" Tears strain her voice.

"Yeah. I know. Just tell me where you are, and Caroline and I will be right there. I promise."

"I can't face the rest of them right now, Elena."

"Okay, then I'll come. Where are you?"

"Can you meet me at the Grill? Please? And we can just talk?" She sounds so desperate.

Hope stirs within her. An ember, nearly smothered, glowing bright again as she senses her chance.

"Yeah. Of course. I'll be right there."

Caroline's shaking her head when Elena hangs up. "I should be there too."

"No, I think I need to go alone."

"Why would she want you there but not me?" Hurt laces through the question.

Elena tucks her phone into her pocket and slips her coat back on. "Because you're not the one she's almost lost. You heard her—she sounded like she's realizing how bad things have gotten. She's horrified. My heart is telling me that this is my chance to help her." Because, deep down, she still loves Bonnie, no matter what. She can't and won't turn down this chance.

"You're probably right…. But what if she lashes out at you again?"

"In a public place?"

"Maybe I should come with. I could stay in the car, and only come in if you need help."

She can hear the guys beginning to argue in the other room.

"There's only, what, a one in four shot that Klaus is our vamp-daddy?" Damon asks.

"Please never use that term again," Stefan begs him.

"Don't you think Klaus would have gloated by now if he were really the one?" Damon reasons, ignoring Stefan's plea. "I say we let the Hunter take him out and take our chances."

"Except that gets me killed for sure, dick," Tyler cuts in.

"Worth it if it keeps Elena from boinking Klaus," Damon murmurs.

"She's what?" Matt hollers.

"Oh, you haven't heard?"

Elena grimaces. "I need you to hold the fort down here, Care. Keep everyone focused on finding answers. We have to figure this out."

Caroline blows a harsh breath out through her lips. "Okay, yeah. But be careful, alright? Bonnie's really emotional and she's obviously got next to no control over her powers."

Elena scoops Caroline into a brief, fierce hug. "Thanks for having my back, Care."

She slips out while the guys are all distracted.

Bonnie's waiting for her at a booth at the Grill.

When Elena slips in across from her, she's startled by how much of a mess Bonnie really looks. Her hair is wild, yesterday's makeup clumping in dark circles under her eyes, runny tear tracks visible on her cheeks. Worse, she looks like she never slept the night before. Her hands skitter nervously across the table when she sees her.

"You came," Bonnie says, dismay overflowing in her voice.

"Of course I came. I know things have been bad between us—you've hurt me so much—but I think you're in trouble and you need help—"

Bonnie grabs hold of her wrist. Her next words rush from her lips like a river breaking from the dam, low and urgent and devastating. "Elena, you have to understand, I didn't want to call you, but she was in my head, forcing me—"

Disturbed beyond measure, Elena leans forward, trying to pry Bonnie's hand off of her even as she tries to understand what she's telling her. "Wait, slow down. Is someone putting you up to this? Who is she?"

At that moment, Elena becomes aware of a woman approaching their table, as though her question had summoned her.

Slowly, dread curdling in her stomach, Elena raises her eyes to meet Esther's calm, measured appraisal.

"Hello, dear," she greets her. "Long time no see."

Chapter Text

Elena stares at her, her mouth agape, as she struggles to formulate an intelligent response. It's very difficult. She feels as though she's been hit over the head with something big and heavy.

"What are you doing here?" she finally manages. Terrible. Totally weak. She swallows hard and tries again. "What have you done to Bonnie?"

Esther smiles, that sweet, wise smile that makes the hairs on the back of Elena's neck stand on end. "Your friend will be alright. I've merely exerted my influence on her, with the help of the spirits, so that she would do as I bade her." She pats Bonnie on the back of the hand, heedless of the fresh tears that trickle down Bonnie's cheeks and drip onto the table.

Mind control. Just like compulsion.

Esther has more in common with her children than she would ever admit.

Despite her obvious distress, Bonnie doesn't say a word. All she does is stare and stare and stare at Elena. As though trying to communicate through look alone what she cannot say aloud.

It occurs to Elena that maybe Bonnie can't speak, now that Esther is seated right beside her. That maybe the older witch had stolen her speech along with her free will.

Somehow, she needs to warn Klaus about his mother's return, and she needs to get Bonnie out of here. She wrestles with different ideas for how they could escape.

If only she had a knife of some kind. She's awfully good at stabbing.

"I wouldn't hurt a witch so promising," Esther continues, turning back to study Elena. "As for why I'm here… I should have hoped that would be obvious. I'm here for you."

"Me," she repeats, somewhat stupidly. Of course. Just, of course. Under the table, Elena reaches for her phone. Maybe she can shoot a text off, to Caroline or to Klaus or someone. God, Caroline had been right. She should never have come alone. That's her heart though. Always dragging her into peril. No, no, this is okay. They're in public. Esther won't make a move here. She wouldn't dare. Elena tells herself this, over and over, fighting for any scrap of confidence as she tells Esther, "I have it on good authority that my blood's not useful for very much right now. I'm afraid I can't help you with any murders at the moment."

"Foolish child. I'm not here for your blood."

Ice fills her veins. She clambers unsteadily to her feet. Shoves her way out from the booth without a word and rushes for the door, her phone in her hand, already dialing Klaus. She'll have to come back for Bonnie once she has reinforcements. Once she's safe, and her baby's safe.

She hears the phone click as Klaus answers. Relief pulses through her.

A cool hand brushes her temple.

Rips her from consciousness.

Darkness overtakes her.

Her head is on fire and the rest of her body feels absolutely numb when she eventually swims up through the black haze bearing down on her and regains consciousness. For a dizzying minute, she's not certain that she has—it's so dark that at first she can't see a thing. Only the sharp lance of agony at the base of her skull convinces her that she must have awakened.

In those first few hazy moments, everything is such a confused blur in her head that she can't remember how she'd gotten here. The last thing she remembers is going to find Bonnie at the Grill, and then—Snatches of emotions—surprise, fear, panic—flash through her, but she can't place them.

Disoriented and blind, there's nothing for Elena to do other than wait for her head to stop spinning and splitting, and to try to clamp down on the fear that threatens to engulf her.

Slowly, slowly, her eyes adjust, and she realizes that, wherever she is, hours have passed since the Grill. The sun is already completely set, and the night stars stud the winter sky.

The stars. She's outside then.

The realization brings with it a creeping awareness of the cold. Shivers wrack her body.

Ordinarily, Elena never worries too much about the winters in Virginia… but she's never found herself out in the woods on a December night without more than a jacket to keep her warm. Already, her hands are so numb that she can barely bend her fingers. Worse, the cold has seeped into her limbs. Into her chest. The temperature is bound to dip below freezing tonight. If she doesn't find shelter soon, she's in serious trouble.

She fumbles through her pockets, her hands clumsy with the cold, hunting for her phone. If she's lucky, she'll have reception and can call someone to come find her. Worst comes to worst, she can use the compass on it to navigate to a road and she can walk until she gets in range of a cell tower.

This would be a great plan, except that her pockets are empty.

Stubbornly, desperately, Elena keeps searching. She definitely brought her phone with her—she'd had it out when—

The memory of that last instant before she'd passed out sweeps over her.

Esther must have done something to her. No doubt the phone is lying somewhere on the floor of the Grill, dropped and forgotten about when Esther had bespelled her.

Esther. Esther had been at the Grill—had told her she wanted her for something other than her blood.

There's only one possible answer as to what that other thing could be.

Elena will never let that happen.

Esther's not here now, and she'll be damned if she doesn't use this time to escape whatever nefarious plan Klaus's mother had schemed up.

Gritting her teeth, she tucks her hands into her armpits for warmth, praying that they're not already damaged, and tries to catch her bearings by studying the stars.

It's hopeless. She never paid attention to her dad when he tried to teach her how to navigate on any of their family camping trips. Frustrated tears prick her eyes. She's not even sure which star the North Star is. There are too many trees blocking her view. Maybe she can't even see it.

No. No. She's not going to give up. Better to get away in the wrong direction than just sit here. Anything is better than letting Esther have her baby.

That tempest of her protective fury warms her the way no fire could. Lends her the strength and determination she so desperately needs.

Slowly, fighting down a crashing wave of nausea, Elena sits up. The change in equilibrium proves to be a terrible mistake. Her gorge rises, and she vomits into the loam and dead pine needles by her hands.

It helps. The pain in her head recedes to a mild drum. Her thoughts clear with each passing pulse.

The cool, silvery light of the stars seems to shine all the brighter.

Elena pulls herself to her feet and looks around her. She has no idea which direction to go in. It doesn't matter.

She walks and she walks.

It's slow, treacherous going at first. Shadows pool like inky ponds in the trenches and hollows of the forest floor, and she trips more than once, barely avoiding a sprained ankle or worse.

After a while, though, the gibbous moon peaks out from behind the clouds, casting the forest floor in a pale glow. Her eyes still strain to pick out potential obstacles and pitfalls in her path, but the going gets much easier.

Her ears strain for the sound of the highway. Twice, she adjusts her course when the wind carries the sound of traffic through the woods.

The walking at least warms her, enough that she can clearly feel the knotted muscles in her shoulders from lying on a bed of rocks and roots for hours. Enough that her back and her belly cramp from the exertion.

Her thoughts wander as she picks her way through the underbrush.

Why had Esther kidnapped her just to leave her alone and unguarded in the woods?

The uglier question of what Esther might want with her mystical, unnatural child preys on her. Probably as fodder for some sort of dark sacrifice, she broods. Maybe as fuel to help her murder all of her children.

Why her plan had seemed so reasonable just a couple of months ago, Elena can't even begin to understand. Her own child is hardly more than a dream and a bodily discomfort, and yet she loves it so fiercely. So entirely. Just the idea of giving her baby up for harm feels like a spike to the chest.

But then, Elena also can't imagine laying a blood curse on her child and then calling it a protection spell, either.

Anxiety for Bonnie clings to her like a spiderweb, settling claustrophobically over every other thought. While she fumes about Esther's assassination schemes, she worries about what had happened to Bonnie. Is she with Esther now? Or had Esther let her go? Had Esther been telling the truth when she told her she wouldn't hurt a such a talented witch? And how long had Esther been controlling Bonnie, whispering into her thoughts and twisting them inside out? She'd been in Alaric's head for months before anyone had detected her.

Elena finds no answers in the tangle of her ruminations, only further questions.

The sound of rushing water drags her from her circling thoughts.

Elena freezes as she realizes where she's wandered.

It's so dark that she cannot make out the sheer drop-off she knows is there just past the line of trees.

For a moment, she cannot help but imagine herself, oblivious and exhausted, stepping through that very line of trees and plunging into the icy black river below.

Carefully, she makes her way forward. Once she nears the edge of the woods, lights from the newly constructed Wickery Bridge prick through the treeline.

Relief saws through her. She's on the wrong side of the valley, but so long as she keeps the bridge in sight and is careful not to walk too close to the bank, she can follow the river back to a road.

(If there's a part of her that wonders at what instinct led her here, she squashes it down down down.)

"There you are. I'd wondered where you'd wandered off to."

At the sound of Esther's melodious voice, Elena shuts her eyes and internally screams. She'd come so close.

She has only two choices. Face Esther while attempting to stall for time and praying like hell that someone comes to rescue her, or throw herself into the river.

If it were only her own life at stake, she just might make a dash for the water.

But that's not an option anymore.

Turning to face Esther, Elena raises her chin, doing her best not to appear the least bit cowed. "Did you think I was just going to stay still like a good pawn?"

"I set a barrier spell on the circle I left you in. Did you truly pierce it without even noticing it was there?" Esther cocks her head, assessing her. "How fascinating. I can feel your child's spirit—she whispers to me across the void—the interaction of your blood with her gifts have made her stronger by far than she should have any right to be at this stage. She's lending you a good deal of unconscious power right now."

Her words pelt against her like hail—Elena's sure they portend something awful, but at the same time, she can't focus on this particular line of ominous gibberish right now. She keys in on the one detail she can absorb.

"Why isn't Bonnie with you? Where is she?"

"I've let her go for now. She'll come again when I call."

"Why go through the trouble of involving Bonnie at all, though? Why not just grab me like you did that time outside the school?"

Esther takes a step toward her. Moon shadows shift over her face like claws as she approaches. "When you already have a tool in hand, you may as well use it," she explains. "Even if it's not for the purpose for which you originally intended it."

Déjà vu whispers over her as she watches Esther in the dark, more wraith than witch as she slips through the eerie night. A memory sparks. Esther in the moonlit graveyard, fleeing with the impervious white oak stake wrought with the magic from Alaric's ring.

Insight crashes through her as all of the pieces snap together.

"You're Shane's contact," she realizes. "The one who was controlling him."

Esther snatches at her arm and drags her into the woods.

"How clever of you. Just like your predecessors."

Elena struggles against her, but a wave of Esther's hand has her slumping into Esther's grasp, suddenly nearly too weak to stand.

"Why manipulate us though?" Elena asks through gritted teeth. "Why go through the trouble?"

"Why does any woman do what she must? For her children."

Instead of forcing her back to the clearing she had awakened in, Esther brings her to a deeper place within the woods.

A familiar place.

The site of the sacrifice last spring.

Esther loosens her hold on her. "Do not try to run," she warns her. "I've erected a barrier spell around this whole meadow. This one is more than strong enough to hold you."

Elena barely hears her. Her eyes skitter over the clearing.

The earth still bears the scorch marks from the fire that had engulfed and imprisoned them all that fateful night.

To her left, the place where Jules had had her heart ripped from her chest. And to her right… the circle where Klaus had murdered Jenna.

Her gorge rises.

She's fantasized about this place in the dark still of the night, all alone in her bed. Reenacted it again and again in Klaus's embrace.

She's never let herself think about what had come before the bite. Never faced it.

"Why'd you bring me here?" Elena asks. The question tears at her throat. Her soul.

There's a flicker of movement in the distance. The wind rustling through the trees.

Esther guides her to the circle where she had stood last spring, awaiting her death. "The magic is still strong here," she whispers into her ear. "Where the barrier between what is and is not possible is at its thinnest. The place where you and my son unmade reality." A flutter of her hand is all it takes to reignite the fires that have burned at the back of her every thought ever since.

The entire clearing leaps into overpowering brightness as heat explodes from the flames.

Elena crosses her arms over her belly. "I won't let you hurt my baby."

She has no weapons, no friends, no plans.

And yet, she refuses to give in to hopelessness. Refuses to back down from this fight.

Esther pauses. "Hurt your baby? Why would I want to do that?"

"I don't know. I assume you have some sick plan."

Esther grips her by the chin and tips her face up so that she is forced to look her in the eyes. "Do you truly not realize the significance of the child you carry?"

Another flicker out of the corner of her eye. This time she realizes what she sees. Elena fights the urge to turn, to look, lest she tip Esther off.

Nervous, heart hammering, Elena licks her lips. Hazards, "I know my baby's special."

"The first of its kind, it's true."

There's something about Esther's expression. About the light in her eyes. She knows something about her baby. What had she said earlier?

I can feel your child's spirit.

Despite the danger, Elena cannot help but ask her. Cannot help the desire in her heart to know, fervent and violent as a bolt of lightning.

"Bonnie says my baby is unnatural. Is that true?"

"Yes. Of course it is."

"Because I'm the doppelganger."

Esther's gaze sharpens on her face. She lays a hand over her belly.

It should be impossible at this stage, but she swears she feels her child stir within her.

Responding to Esther's magic.

"Not at all," Esther murmurs, ducking her head to focus on Elena's abdomen.

Elena stares out into the night, searching out the familiar silhouette she had glimpsed out of the corner of her eye.

Nearly immediately, she locks eyes with Klaus, prowling at the edge of Esther's barrier as he carefully tests it for a weak point. An entryway through which to rescue her.

She has no idea how he's found her. Doesn't care.

She has to fight to keep the relief from showing on her face, even as that relief is quickly followed with a very real jolt of fear, heightened all the more by their surroundings.

She swallows around the lump in her throat. The ache of her racing heart. She has to keep Esther distracted.

"Then why?" she asks. "Why is my baby special?"

In the distance, Klaus seems to find the weak spot he needs to push inside the barrier. She witnesses him tear through its walls as though he were tearing through an actual wall of stone with his bare hands.

Abstractly, Elena thinks this should not be possible—she has seen witches keep him out on more occasions than she can count—except—this is the place where the barrier between what is and isn't possible is thinnest. Where Klaus and she had remade reality. Where he had drunk down her life and her power and absorbed it into himself. The power to disobey Nature and remake the world in their own image.

It's the work of mere moments before he is within, creeping through the night like a phantom so as to avoid summoning his mother's attention.

"Because of who the father is," Esther replies to her question, oblivious, her attention still diverted to the baby.

"There is no father." The words by now sound as robotic as they feel.

This actually elicits a laugh from her. "Of course there is. It takes two lives to create a new one. Even your blood cannot override that law."

Elena stares uncomprehendingly at her. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that my interest in your child is solely because of its paternity."

"What?" Elena asks, barely able to hear herself over those alarms from the other day, blaring now at full strength inside her head.

Esther straightens, and strokes a hand down the side of her face. "Dear child, do you truly not realize? The father of your child is Niklaus."

The wind howls, and the fire all around them leaps.

Reality tumbles out from under her feet and lands on its side.

All at once, she finds herself staring directly into Klaus's wild, incredulous eyes, huge and gleaming in his otherwise ashen face. He stands just behind Esther, arm raised, poised to strike his mother down. Frozen by the meteor strike of his mother's words.

Mere seconds stretch into an eternity.

Elena stares and stares and stares, and she knows.

This is the moment when her life changes forever. The moment where there really is no turning back.

Chapter Text

For the second time in less than a year, her entire world shatters and reforms within the confines of this blazing circle, trapped by the maelstrom of the very same strange creature's regard. This creature—Her lover and her murderer. Her fated one.

The father of her child.

The words clatter through her, sharp and dissonant.

Only a couple of seconds have passed since Esther's explosive declaration, but nevertheless she catches on that Elena's attention is not where it should be—

She frowns, twisting around to see what has Elena frozen and pinned in place.

The abrupt motion breaks Elena from her stupor. Her survival instinct triggers, daring her to use this distraction that can finally give her an edge.

The second Esther turns, Elena strikes out, throwing all of her weight behind the punch just like Alaric had taught her, and coldcocks her. The blow crashes against Esther's temple and knocks her out in an instant. She crumples to the ground in a heap.

The force of the impact shoots from her hand up into her wrist. Elena curses, shaking her throbbing hand.

Klaus merely blinks at her, at his mother sprawled on the ground, and back at her. His mouth gapes. His arm, still poised to wrench his mother's neck from her shoulders, slowly falls to his side.

A dark intensity sweeps over his face as he absorbs the sight of her, standing in their circle.

He steps over his mother and joins her in that circle as though magnetized by some supernatural force.

Perhaps he is.

Perhaps that's why Elena feels rooted to the ground herself, like all she can do is wait for him to capture her, when what she really wants is to run, far away from this place, from him, from what she's just learned.

Klaus's arms come around her, scooping her up and swinging her into a bridal carry. His eyes rove over her face. The heat of his body bleeds through his shirt, into her chilled skin.

There's a possessive intimacy to the way he looks at her for which she is not prepared. The way he looks at her now makes every other look he's ever given her seem pale and mild by comparison.

It's all she can do to link her arms around his neck. To meet his stare and try not to drown beneath the sweeping tide of him. Of everything that look promises.

He kisses her, a brutal, claiming kiss. "Close your eyes," he murmurs.

Relieved for even this small escape, she does.

The wind rushes and the night howls around them as Klaus takes her home—a phantasmagorical reversal of last spring, when he had stolen her from her home to take her to this circle of fire and death and despair. When he had first united them.

Now, it seems, she must face a far more irrevocable union with him, somehow so much more enormous and doomful than anything she had agreed to last spring.

Klaus takes her back to his mansion. Settles her down on the leather sofa in his favorite study and kneels at her feet. His hands circle her waist, his touch light. Reverent. His eyes flick up to her face, before darting back down to the firm expanse of her belly. He peels her shirt back and lays his fiery palm flat against her skin. A wild, fierce light blazes in his eyes, transforming every familiar contour of his face as incredulous joy sweeps over him. When at last he looks at her again, his features are radiant with an emotion it takes her a moment to name.

Victory.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she asks him, her voice fluttery and weak with an overabundance of feelings—confusion, apprehension.

(Terror.)

"I've just learned that the woman I love is miraculously carrying my child," he tells her slowly, an irrepressible smile tugging at his lips. The dark intensity she had noted earlier seeps into the words. "You're truly bound to me forever, now."

"How can you be so certain it's really yours?"

She doesn't like the idea at all. Viscerally loathes the notion that this cherished miracle—her miracle, her hope, her bright, unlikely light in the dark—is something she will have to share with anyone else.

Even Klaus. Maybe especially Klaus.

He's already taken so much from her.

Klaus presses his hand more firmly over her womb. "I can feel it," he says. "I cannot comprehend how I overlooked it before—that tiny, fierce glimmer of power. So akin to my own…" He trails off in mute wonder.

Elena shoves his hands off of her and surges to her feet. "The baby's not yours. She was lying."

"What reason could she possibly have?"

She paces the room. "I don't know. To distract us, or to throw us off our game, or to make me trust her—any number of possible reasons." Her heart slams against her chest. She feels shaky, like she might need to throw up again.

Slowly, Klaus rises to his feet. Recaptures her in his embrace. "My mother is many things—a ruthless, scheming murderess, and a powerful and resourceful witch not least amongst those things—but she is merely a middling liar. The babe is ours."

"Listen to yourself! That's not even possible. You're a vampire."

"And a werewolf."

"Well, has this ever happened to you before?" she demands, knowing very well what the answer is going to be.

"No, but I've only been free of my curse for a few months." He cups the side of her face with devastating gentleness. "Your blood freed me, Elena. Remade me into what I was always meant to be. Released me from the shackles of the vampire's curse. Could it not stand to reason that I am simply a bit more alive than I was last year?" How swift he is to accept these conclusions!

His thumb strokes over her cheekbone.

It's hypnotic, soothing.

Tempting.

Elena shakes herself out of his hold. She can't allow him to distract her. Not now. Not with her child on the line.

"What about all the other women you've slept with since you've broken the curse?" she asks. "Should I be worried that there are a gaggle of other women carrying your children then?"

"What other women? You're the only woman I've had in years."

Elena blinks, unable to summon a response to this admission.

"Doesn't it strike you as romantic?" he presses. "Or at least auspicious?" Again, his hand slips between them, to rest against her stomach. "Our very first night together, and we manage to forge this bright new life together."

Elena gazes up into his face. His familiar, comforting, handsome face, so etched with love for her, with longing for her.

"It can't be true," she whispers.

"Why are you so set against this?"

She opens her mouth, but no words come out. Tears sting her eyes. She doesn't know what she can possibly say to him to make him understand.

She's so afraid. Afraid to face what this might mean if it turns out to be real. Of all of the incalculable ways this will set her future in stone.

Klaus had been right. If this child is really their child, then she is already bound to him forever.

There will be no other choice for what her life might be. No other choices for her baby. All of her anxieties about moving too fast with him will feel like a hollow joke.

She can feel everything she needs to know about her future in the proprietary weight of his hand against her belly.

And then there is the past, absolutely crushing to think of now after so long hiding from it. Between her conversation with Stefan calling her to bitter account and actually revisiting the place where Jenna had died, she doesn't know how she can fall so easily back into Klaus's arms.

(And buried deep beneath all of these fears is the small voice in her head, whispering a truth into her heart which she can neither acknowledge nor ignore:

She doesn't get to have happy endings like this. It's too perfect.

One way or another, this is going to end horribly.)

"It's too much," she finally struggles to tell him, trying to push him away. He doesn't let her. Without his acquiescence, he is as immovable as a mountain. "I can't handle all of this."

"Then let me."

"You always say that. Maybe I don't want you to."

"But maybe you need me to."

He has her there. She does need him. In so many ways.

She hates that, because she can no longer hate him.

Elena slumps against him. "I don't want to be together just because we have a child together."

"Happily for us, we decided to be together before we had any inkling that was the case."

He picks her up again and settles into the sofa with her in his lap.

She shivers in his grasp.

"Are you cold?" he asks. "I could build a fire."

"How did you find me before? In the clearing?"

"Bonnie found me. Utterly distraught. I had her track you with a locator spell."

Surprise ripples through her—faint in comparison to the shock of discovering her child's paternity, but affecting nonetheless.

Klaus frowns. "That reminds me—I was to text them once I'd recovered you."

"Them?"

He pulls his phone out and taps out a quick message. "Bonnie and Caroline."

Klaus is on a text chain with her two closest friends. Immediately she shoves the thought away. She can't possibly process that right now.

"Your mother's been controlling her," Elena tells him instead. "She's the contact with the stake, and the one who was influencing Shane." She explains everything she had figured out about his mother's involvement. "I just don't understand how it all fits together."

"I should have killed her when I had the chance," Klaus murmurs. He considers her. "Why did she bring you back to the site of the sacrifice?"

"Something about the magic still being strong there."

"What did she want with you?"

"Not me, the baby. And she didn't say." 

Klaus strokes her hair. "You're exhausted. Let's get you to bed."

It's not what she wants.

If she had her way, she'd go somewhere distant and remote where she could be quiet and have a long, uninterrupted think about her options, and where she could try to wrap her mind around her baby's true heritage.

Not that she thinks Klaus will let her out of his sight long enough for that.

Reluctantly, Elena agrees.

Tomorrow, she thinks against the clawing panic in her heart. She'll figure this all out tomorrow.

Chapter Text

She's sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed for sleep in one of Klaus's long-sleeved shirts, examining her bruised knuckles, barely keeping her racing thoughts in check, forcing herself to take deep, even breaths and slowly, slowly release them, when she feels Klaus's attention on her again.

He'd wandered over to the fireplace to work on the fire he'd promised her while she had mechanically prepared for bed. Now, he leans against the carved mantle, his profile illuminated by the warm glow of the crackling flames, watching her with that still, predatory focus that in the past had both thrilled and unsettled her. Now, it only ratchets up the trepidation building and buzzing like hornets in her chest.

"I didn't know you could throw a punch like that," he observes.

"That's me. Full of surprises." Her voice sounds strained to her own ears, but Klaus doesn't seem to hear it.

An odd expression flickers across his face. "Marry me."

Elena startles. Every single one of the doubts she's been spiraling under falls right out of her head. "What?"

Klaus strides over and sinks to one knee in front of her. Takes her left hand. "I want you to marry me."

She looks down at his hand clasping hers. That's not my hand in his, she thinks. It can't possibly be. "I literally just told you this morning that we were moving too fast."

"And I told you the pace of our relationship is irrelevant in the face of what we are to each other."

"You're not thinking clearly."

Klaus's eyes narrow. "You're unhappy to learn that this child is mine."

The possessiveness of his tone snaps her out of her shocked abstraction. "You mean ours."

"At least you admit I have some right to it."

Anger seeps through the fear and the anxiety and the distress. It feels like Klaus tricked her into admitting that the baby may not solely belong to her.

She tries to pull away, but he won't let her.

Elena huffs, desperately trying to hang on to her reserve. "Look, I'm completely drained. Can we not have this fight right now?"

"Who's fighting? I've just asked you to marry me. If anything, I'm attempting to woo you."

"No, you're trying to claim me."

"Yes, exactly." Klaus traces the pulse point in her wrist. "Marry me, Elena. Be my wife, my queen, my goddess."

I kind of like the symmetry of three women, three goddesses.

All of the fight drains out of her once again at the memory, leaving her with nothing but wrung out truth.

She doesn't know how long she can keep fighting him. It's just too hard.

It always has been.

When she doesn't respond to his entreaty with any more than a hopeless stare, he climbs atop the bed with her and pins her beneath him. Automatically, her legs spread to cradle him against her.

Like this, her body is so open and vulnerable to him.

"Marry me," he coaxes for a third time. "Let me make you happy." His lips brush against her own as he speaks. The weight of him— comforting, familiar, and yet utterly electrifying— nearly compels her to assent.

Nearly.

"I'm not ready for that," she tells him. Confesses to him, speaking from the part of herself so tremulous and uncertain that she can barely raise her voice about a whisper, "I'm not sure I'm even really ready to be in a relationship with you, let alone commit myself."

Her words break the illusion of tenderness he had spun for her. Between one blink and the next, Klaus's whole countenance shifts to one of cruel calculation.

"It doesn't matter what you want or what you're ready for," he declares with implacable certainty. "You need me."

She does, she does—she had told him as much only last week—but cannot help but reject him when he treats her this way. "No I don't."

"Pray tell, how then do you plan to protect the child?"

"What do you mean? It's a baby. I think I can handle that."

"An unnatural baby. A supernatural baby. My mother is just the first to take notice. Others will come for it. Think of Bonnie's instinct to murder it within your womb. How much danger the child has been in before it's even been born. You'll need me if you stand any chance of keeping it safe."

"Her," she replies faintly, her thoughts racing over the threats Klaus has pointed out. He's right of course. She's in way over her head. "Your mother said it's a girl."

Delight gleams in Klaus's eyes. "A daughter," he breathes. "How splendid."

She resists the way his reaction makes her heart melt. Cuts straight past the danger of lingering over Klaus's response to discovering the baby is a girl—that way can only lie danger. Straight past the dangers Klaus has enumerated as well.

"You're trying to pressure me, but it won't work," she informs him.

"Yes, it will. Deep down you already agree with me. You know I'm right, just as you know I'm right about us."

Elena writhes beneath him. "Let me up. I want to go home."

He rolls off of her, but he restrains her from leaving the bed with a hand pressed firmly to her shoulder. "You can't possibly be thinking of leaving."

Elena glares at him. "I just said I was."

"My mother's still out there. Your Bonnie, too. Innumerable other threats. You're safest here with me."

"What, are you planning to abduct me? Hide me away forever?"

Klaus's eyes darken and his mouth sets into stubborn petulance. "Possibly."

Elena draws away from him. "You're really tempted, aren't you?"

"Yes."

She watches him like the wolf he is. "You won't though, right?"

"I'll do whatever I have to to keep you safe, Elena. You and our daughter. I've told you this many a time before."

He had. Over and over again.

This is the precise reason she'd decided she would run if Klaus's witch contacts decided her pregnancy should be terminated.

She can't trust him not to make these decisions for her. Not to trap her.

If she knows him (and she does), he's already planning to take off with her.

An idea sparks in the back of her mind, a bright ember in the darkness.

Elena licks her lips. Shifts closer to him. Her breath flutters in her lungs. Each breath somehow makes her feel more lightheaded, not less. There're knots in her stomach that only tug tighter when she asks, "Do you mean that?"

"With everything I am or will ever be."

Fear, desire. They are so similar at their heart. So intertwined in her history with Klaus to begin with.

It's easy for her to climb into Klaus's lap. To stare down at him like she belongs there, above him, cold and imperious as the winter stars. "Tell me you're mine," she demands, her hand on his jaw, fingernails biting into him as she offers him this one final out.

He searches her face. "Telling you what you want to hear will not make it so," he says at last.

She slaps him. It's good and satisfying, especially when she sees the mark her hand makes on his pale cheek before fading away into nothing.

He snarls at her, but before he can retaliate with word or action, she hauls him in for a kiss. Her mouth slides over his, rough and demanding and messy. She shoves her tongue into his mouth, hissing when his fangs slice it open, groaning when he grapples her closer to suck at his tongue.

Frantically, ill with anxiety bordering on dread, her hands work at his belt buckle and fly. It's the work of moments to shove her underwear aside and impale herself upon him. He growls against her mouth when she sinks down upon him, the vibrations rumbling through her chest as she experimentally rises and falls against him. She has to hold onto his shoulders to keep herself steady as she rides him, but she likes that. Likes the feeling of her hands near his throat, of pushing him down further beneath her as she rises above him—no matter that she inevitably sinks down to his level. No matter that this display of power over him is all an illusion at his sufferance.

In his mind, their relationship is so very clear. She belongs to him, body and soul. Has since the very beginning. It's his divine right to do with her whatsoever he pleases—to fuck, marry, or kill her, she thinks half-hysterically. The fact that he loves her is only another set of chains with which to ensnare her. The fact that this baby is his is just proof of his dominion over her.

That ownership has never stretched both ways.

She is his mirror, but he is the one staring into his reflection, not her.

Klaus's hands dig into the flesh at her hips, clutching her to him. There will be bruises spotting her like a leopard the next morning.

The image makes her groan. Her body tightens around him, wicked heat blooming low in her belly. Even with her breaths tight and shallow in her lungs and her heart pounding in her throat, she's still so slick with desire and need and sick thirst for the monster beneath her that she feels it manifest within her as a physical pain.

She can't help herself. Can't even blame herself for this. A leopard can't change its spots. And she'll do anything for this baby.

When she feels herself getting close, she leans forward, pressing her body flush against him. By now she's sweaty, Klaus's shirt sticking to her damp body and her hair plastered to her neck and starting to curl. Each grind of her hips sends a delicious wave of friction against her breasts, her sex. She buries her face in his throat, inhaling the tangy, primal scent of him.

Faintly, she can hear Klaus mouthing his adoration against her collarbone—"My precious girl, my queen, my love, my perfect goddess divine—"

Her body hitches, inner muscles seizing down hard as she surges toward her climax. It's the work of an instant to press her mouth against Klaus's throat and sink her teeth into him as she comes. His blood slicks her teeth, hot and coppery and so potent she feels her tongue go numb.

Klaus shouts something when she bites him, his hands locking around her and crushing her to him as he batters into her, as violent and possessive and wild as she has ever experienced him.

(Caroline has told her what it does to a vampire when their lover feeds from them like this.)

She takes two, three strong pulls from his neck, her fingers curling like claws into his shoulders as she rides him through her orgasm and into a second, racing high that ripples through her entire body. She's still soaring, hurtling toward that free fall, when Klaus shoots hard inside of her, calling her name.

He's so terribly careful with her afterwards. He traces the lines and curves of her face with his fingertips, smoothing back her hair and watching her with a sort of half-stunned expression. His thumb traces her lip, catching and smearing a stray droplet of blood outward along her cheek. "What did I do to deserve you?" he asks, marveling. "The mother of my child." He laughs, then, suddenly. Pulls her from his lap and settles her into the bed with him, securing the blankets high around their shoulders. Inevitably, his hands wander back to her waist. It's as though now that he has discovered the origin of her baby, he just can't stop touching her, stroking her, petting her. "To think how jealous I was when I first learned of this creature's existence." He offers her a confidential smile, slow and hot and slippery and savage. "I tormented myself with images of you giving yourself to another. Spent my idle hours envisioning a slow, cruel death for whoever the father turned out to be." He presses a line of kisses against her jawline. Against the scar he'd left her last year. "To discover I had only myself to blame—I cannot fathom the depth of my fortune."

"Why do you really want to marry me?" she asks him muzzily, her eyes only half open.

Klaus is quiet for a long, long time.

"Because I've never been so certain of anyone before," he finally tells her.

Something in the simplicity of the declaration strikes her harder than any of his lofty declarations of love and devotion.

She can't remember the last time she was certain of anyone.

Can't remember the last time she was truly deserving of such trust either.

She lies in bed with him for what feels like hours, waiting to be absolutely certain that he'd really fallen asleep.

Only the deepest sleep will be sufficient for what she needs to do.

Fighting for composure, Elena slips from the bed. The sex had been a great distraction, for her as well as for him, but whatever diversion it had provided is long since passed. She has only the terror and the sheer gall of what she is about to do.

The oak floors immediately creak as soon as her feet touch them, and she freezes, waiting in the dark for Klaus to stir and ask her why she's up. She doesn't even dare to so much as breathe as she waits out the long seconds until she's certain it's safe to keep moving.

That first step is the hardest. The most frightening.

After that, her fear fuels her as nothing else could. She steals through the house on snow soft feet used to stalking through vampire lairs.

Swiftly, she navigates to Klaus's studio, where he has a pile of lumber already cut and prepared for stretching canvases.

For a moment, she wavers, staring hard at the pile of wood, not at all certain she can do this.

The moon creeps out from behind the clouds, casting the room in a pale gray luminescence.

The moment passes.

Illuminated by moonlight, a prime contender pops out at her from amidst the stack of options. Already sharpened to a near point.

In her hand, the stretcher bar becomes a stake.

Elena drifts back to Klaus's bedroom as though in a dream. A very bad dream from which she is about to wake up.

(Only she has the power to end it.)

She stands over his bed, watching him sleep. He's so beautiful in the dark that she longs to let the stake drop from her fingers and mold herself to him, cleaving so tightly that they'll become one flesh, as surely as the child knitting itself together within her is the union of their flesh made real and whole and so very permanent.

Every instinct in her body is screaming at her that she needs to escape him though. That she needs time to rally, to think, to figure out what she needs. What her baby really needs.

If he won't give it to her, then she'll have to carve it out for herself.

Yet, the price of carving that freedom for herself is so high.

He's going to be incandescent with rage when he wakes up. Especially when he realizes that she'd only fucked him like that to throw him off his guard.

Well. It's his fault for falling for it.

(It's not as though he isn't familiar with her family history of seduction and deceit.)

Deep within her, she knows that if she doesn't leave now, then it'll be too late. She'll never have the chance again.

She's too afraid to stay.

Elena steels herself.

Takes a deep breath.

And sinks the stake into Klaus's heart.

It takes all of her puny mortal strength.

All of the strength in her untempered heart.

(She must kill all of her reflections if she wants to be the one to live. And for her child, she will do anything.)

Klaus's eyes snap open the moment the stake pierces his heart, but by then, it's too late.

She's won.

He's looking right at her as his face turns gray, confusion and fear twisting his features before they fall slack. A single tear leaks from his eye, rolling slowly down his cheek. The sight of it transfixes her.

Slowly, Elena falls to her knees, and presses her lips against that tear, tasting the bitter salt of it. And then she leans forward, so that her mouth is at Klaus's ear, and tells him a secret. "You've been mine since long before I was ever born," she whispers to him. "You waited for me for a thousand years. Your whole immortal existence comes down to me. Your love for me. Your desire for me. Your obsession with me. In that way, I own you as you will never own me." She cards her fingers through his beautiful golden hair. "That's power."

Rising to her feet, she takes a moment to gaze upon his deathly features. She imagines his soul, bound up tight as an oyster's pearl in some deep, murky place where she cannot reach, searching for a way back to the living world. She hopes wherever he is, he heard her.

There's not much time to waste. From what she understands, a regular stake to the heart will only temporarily incapacitate an Original. No one's ever told her how long that state persists for. Hours, she thinks—hopes—based on the time Elijah had been staked at that old decrepit house Rose had brought her to. Only minutes if she's astonishingly unlucky.

She tears a page from a notebook and scrawls Klaus a note.

I'm sorry.

There's not much more she can say.

Dressing quickly, Elena fishes Klaus's car keys out of his jacket pocket and locks the door behind her.

A minute later she's slipping behind the wheel of Klaus's shiny black SUV, peeling out into the fading night.

Chapter Text

The sun is just beginning to lighten the eastern sky by the time she veers up to the Forbes house and slams the car into park. A moment later she dashes around the side of the house, over to Caroline's first story bedroom window.

The familiarity of rapping against the glass, waiting for the lights to flick on in the bedroom and Caroline to let her in, unmoors her. Adds to the night's pervasive aura of unreality. She hasn't snuck up to this house like this since before her parents died.

When Caroline doesn't come to let her in right away, she knocks louder. She's a moment away from sprinting back to the front of the house to ring the bell, even though it would wake Caroline's mom up, when Caroline finally throws the curtains back to stare down at her.

In a flurry, she cranks the window open and steps back so Elena can crawl through. The room is dark, but as always, it's compulsively tidy, the bed neatly made. Warm light spills in under the closed bedroom door from the living room beyond.

"Elena?" Caroline whispers. "What are you doing here?"

"I don't have a lot of time—I need somewhere I can hide out—"

"What's going on? Are you okay? Where's Klaus? He said he rescued you."

"I staked him."

Caroline pales. Her hand flies to her throat. "What?"

Elena waves her off. "Just with a regular stake. He'll bounce back. I need to be scarce when he does though."

"Why would you stake him?"

Elena collapses on the foot of Caroline's bed. Braces her hands on her knees, her fingers clenching spasmodically, uncontrollably, as she in turn braces herself for this impact. "About that. Care, I need to talk to you."

Caroline glances to the closed door. "Okay." Beyond, a tea kettle whistles, only to be cut off a moment later. Sheriff Forbes is up early. "Okay, but first I have to tell you—"

"Klaus is the father," Elena blurts out, before she loses her nerve.

At the same moment, the door handle turns, and Bonnie ducks into the room, clutching two mugs of tea by the handles in her free hand.

The confession dangles between the three of them like a balloon with its string cut, floating up up up into the atmosphere, all of them helpless to stop it, to do anything more than watch.

"I can't have heard that right," Caroline exclaims, her voice overly loud in the deafening silence that looms between them in the wake of Elena's revelation.

She feels like her strings have been cut. Like she could float up just like that balloon, so far outside of her life and her body that no one could ever reach her again.

"What are you doing here?" Elena asks Bonnie, hearing herself say the words but really feeling like she's listening to someone else speak. This is the first time that she's been in a room with Bonnie without some terrible threat in what feels like ages. She has no idea how she feels about running into her like this. Can barely process anything right now.

"She's been here since Klaus left to go save you," Caroline supplies. "We've been talking."

Gingerly, Bonnie sets the two steaming mugs down on Caroline's dresser. Approaches Elena where she sits on the edge of Caroline's bed.

"Klaus is the father?" she repeats.

Elena swallows hard. Hearing those words from Bonnie somehow makes this real. Pulls her down to earth as nothing else could.

"Esther told us. It's why she wanted me—my baby."

"This makes total sense though," Caroline mutters to herself, leaning against the window on the other side of the room. "Sleep with a guy in October, eight weeks later discover you're pregnant, of course he's the father." Her hand chops through the air, illustrating the logic of the sequence.

Bonnie speaks over Caroline, her voice quiet yet strong. "You believed her?" She stretches a hand toward Elena, but Elena flinches back.

"I wish that I didn't." Because there's no way to hide from this. Her baby… is also Klaus's.

"If Klaus is the father, why'd you stake him?" Caroline breaks in.

Bonnie's brows climb her forehead, but Elena bursts before she has a chance to say anything.

"Because I panicked, okay? This whole thing with him has been so fast—so intense—so overwhelming—and you should have seen the way he looked at me when he found out."

"How was he looking at you?" Bonnie asks, a shadow passing over her expression.

Elena shivers. Doesn't exactly answer. Doesn't dare say, Like I was his.

(Or, even worse: that he is hers.)

"I knew I had to get out, right then and there," she tells them instead.

"Wait, are you skipping town?" Caroline demands.

Elena sighs, the breath leaving her lungs in such a rush that it's like her whole body deflates. She's just so tired. Tired of running around desperately just to keep one step ahead of whoever has it out for her and her beloveds on any given day. Tired of fighting her feelings. Fighting the inevitable. Tired of proving again and again that her only fate is the one she makes. "What's the point? I wouldn't get very far before he'd hunt me down. I just need somewhere to think where he won't come searching for me right away and where he can't get in. I was sort of hoping I could hang here for a while."

Caroline shakes her head. "Here's no good— my mom invited him in when he saved me from Tyler's bite."

Elena looks hopefully to Bonnie. If there's one place a vampire would avoid, it would have to be a witch's abode.

"My dad's in town," she says. "I can't endanger him like that."

And it would be. Everyone around her is in danger from Klaus.

From her.

"What about the lake house?" Bonnie suggests.

Elena scrubs her hands through her hair. "I've already invited him in there."

Bonnie frowns, a distant look in her eyes. "That's where you went to hide from me, isn't it?"

"Yeah, it was."

She looks like she wants to say something else, but Elena feels each passing minute like the edge of a knife scraping against her nerves. Klaus will surely wake up any moment.

"I guess I'm going home then," she announces, resigned.

"That's going to be the first place he looks," Caroline points out.

"Yeah, but at least he can't get in. I just need somewhere I can sort myself out in peace without him pressuring me."

Somewhere she can find a path to something that feels like victory, and not just capitulation.

Somewhere where she can sort out what she really wants.

Part of her almost wishes for Damon and Stefan, so that the three of them could spin out some gem of a plan. Maybe there will always be a part of her that instinctually reaches for them.

Even though she's learned to stand on her own two feet, alone.

"You invited him into your lake house but not the house here?" Bonnie asks.

Elena shrugs.

"Fine, let me just grab my purse," Caroline says.

"What?"

Caroline rolls her eyes. "Obviously if you're going to camp out inside Fort Gilbert, we're coming with you."

The first thing Elena notices when they spill into her home together at dawn is how clean everything is. The residue from the fried lights has been swept up, the floors freshly mopped; the framed photos Damon and Stefan had smashed during their row have been salvaged and restored to the mantle, awaiting a time when Elena can replace the frames; and someone has attempted to straighten out the warped iron fire screen as best as they can. The whole house smells like fresh lemon and pine. Heavenly.

"I was anxious," Caroline explains, a note of defensiveness in her voice as Elena looks around. "And it's not like you've had a chance to straighten up with everything going on."

"Thank you," Elena says, truly touched.

Bonnie clears her throat. "I'm going to put up a perimeter spell around the house. Just to make sure no one who means you harm can cross the property line."

Since Klaus doesn't have an invite, she can only mean Esther.

God, she's not even ready to think about Esther.

Who may as well be her mother-in-law, whether or not she marries Klaus.

Nope. Can't think about that right now.

"Are you sure you should be doing any magic?" she asks Bonnie instead of dwelling on how she's accidentally stumbled into the family dynamics from hell.

"I can handle this."

She doesn't have the energy to pick this battle right now.

She's still only human. There's only so much she can handle at a time.

"I'm going to go upstairs, if that's okay."

"Go rest," Caroline urges her. "We'll be here when you need us."

Chapter Text

She tosses and turns in her bed, staring up at the ceiling, at the horse drawing above her bed, out the window at the branches of the magnolia tree outside, the leaves gleaming in the early morning light.

There are so many thoughts, so many feelings, churning over in her chest.

Just a few days ago she had yearned for a way to fit Klaus into her future, to get to have both him and her child. To make the three of them somehow work, as more than just a fantasy born from Klaus's feverish imagination—a fantasy she had never been able to truly believe in, no matter how many times he had passionately declared himself.

Now, it seems that fantasy has come true.

There could be no simpler resolution than for Klaus to turn out to be the unlikely father of her child. No other path that would so seamlessly ensure Klaus's devotion not just as her lover but as a true part of the family she's envisioned building with her baby.

And it terrifies her.

Terrifies her, because it all seems too perfect. Too simple.

She might've been able to be happy, if only it weren't so easy.

Because this newest twist steals from her any chance she might have had to really make these decisions for herself.

To decide, with time and perspective, whether Klaus is truly the right fit for her, or whether this primal attraction she feels toward him is just that—an animal, hormonal response to him, urging her to give herself to this strong, handsome creature so capable of protecting her, of sheltering her.

For all she knows, this connection between them is just some supernatural spark, lighting her up so she can't help but welcome him into her arms and her bed. Some instinct urging her to mate with him. Conditioning her to make babies with him.

The thought crushes something fragile inside of her, something that had long been smothered but had begun to softly glow again this past week with Klaus.

No. She won't think of that.

A knock sounds against the bedroom door.

"Come in," she calls, sitting up and pushing her hair back from her sweaty face.

Bonnie steps hesitantly into the room. "Caroline made tea," she offers. "Since we never drank ours earlier."

Elena accepts the mug from her. The scent of jasmine wafts up to greet her. Her stomach flips as something occurs to her. "Do you think all the vervain tea I've been drinking is bad for the baby?"

"Because the baby is part vampire?"

It sounds insane when Bonnie says it aloud. Utterly absurd.

And yet, here she is, a vampire-werewolf hybrid baby growing within her. A baby Esther had implied who has magic. Which would mean… A vampire-werewolf-witch baby. A tribrid? No, that sounds dumb. But… regardless of what the right term for her is, her baby is still something unique. Something exceptional, that will draw danger like a magnet.

Elena swallows hard around the tightness in her throat. Takes a deep sip of the jasmine tea, willing it to calm her.

"You didn't know," Bonnie says, sitting down next to her. "None of us did."

"How could you? It never occurred to me, and I was the one who'd slept with him."

Bonnie looks anywhere but at her. "I wanted you to kill it," she says. "I was so certain that was the right call. So certain that it wasn't even a baby. But it turns out it's just an innocent little life." Something in Bonnie's face crumples. "I'm so sorry, Elena."

Carefully, Elena takes her hand. "I was so furious with you. I didn't know if our friendship would survive this. I knew that you were wrong—" She presses her free hand against her belly. "I knew this is a baby—my baby... But you wouldn't listen to me."

"I screwed up," Bonnie chokes. "I listened to that recording of Shane you had on your phone—Caroline showed me the journal, too. He was using me—manipulating all of my worst impulses— and I let him."

"No," Elena tells her fiercely. "No, this is the part where I have to own up that I let you down. Look at me—Please." When Bonnie does, Elena finds she can barely meet her eyes. Forces herself to anyway. To stare straight down into Bonnie's mangled soul. Into the hurt, the betrayal, the grief that matches her own. "I'm the one who's sorry. I was so wrapped up in my personal life—in my baby, in Klaus, in my own self-pity—that I didn't even notice what had happened to you until it was too late. You're my best friend, and I didn't even notice when you were being swallowed by the darkness. I was so selfish." Her voice cracks over the end.

"But I hurt you," Bonnie insists, tears welling in her eyes. "How can you forgive that?"

An answering swell of emotion blurs her vision. "You told me the other day that I've taken everyone you love away from you… and you're right. I don't mean to, but does that even matter? If anyone needs forgiving, it's me."

Bonnie shakes her head. Grips her by the arms. "No. That wasn't true. You're still here, Elena. I love you, too. I can't stop feeling like I almost lost you, and it was entirely my fault that I did." A sob wracks her. "I can't stop hearing you scream the other day. It's still echoing in my head."

Elena pulls her into a tight hug. The kind of hug that feels like a lifeline. An anchor in a raging sea. "Don't think of that. We've made it, and we're all still here. That's all that matters."

And really, there is nothing more to say.

"We'll be downstairs if you need us," Bonnie says sometime later, when their tears have dried and the last of the tea has been drunk. "I finished the perimeter spell, and I added another spell to prevent anyone from eavesdropping on us so long as we're inside the house, so we should be okay. At least for a while."

"What if Esther gets in your head again?"

Bonnie pulls a cord out from under her shirt which heretofore Elena had not noticed. There's a little sachet tied to the end of it. "I made myself an amulet, to guard against any witches or spirits attempting to control me."

"You must have been so afraid."

"Not for myself."

"If Esther comes back… and you have to choose between yourself and me… I want you to choose yourself."

"You always think I'm just going to let you waltz off and sacrifice yourself."

"I wouldn't do that."

"You realize why I don't believe you right?"

"It's not just my life on the line anymore. I have to protect my baby too… which I'll do at any cost," she tells her with grim certitude. "But I want to know that you won't sign up as Esther's prisoner-apprentice for my sake."

"Whatever happens, we're a team, Elena."

She leaves Elena to her thoughts, shutting the door firmly behind her before Elena can argue.

The sun drifts higher over the horizon.

Her fears circle like vultures. Claustrophobic, ever present. Ready to pick clean the bones of all of her hopes and dreams.

She drifts downstairs, where Caroline and Bonnie hunch over Shane's journal at the breakfast table.

"Anything interesting?" she asks, peering into her empty refrigerator. She hasn't grocery shopped in ages.

"Depends. Is a legend about the cure for immortality interesting?" Caroline asks.

"The cure for vampirism. Klaus mentioned something about that."

Caroline's eyes narrow. "Before or after the baby daddy reveal?"

Elena joins them at the table. "Before."

"You didn't think to mention it yesterday?"

"I was distracted. What's in the myth?"

"A whole bunch of weird stuff," Bonnie says, taking over. "It's part of that Silas myth Shane mentioned that day we sat in on his class." She briefly rehashes the main points. "It seems… from his journal… that it's all connected. He needed a Hunter with a completed mark to find Silas's tomb, and he needed a witch proficient in Expression—me—in order to perform the spell to get in."

"Esther confirmed for me last night that she was Shane's puppet master behind the scenes all this time."

The three of them let that sink in.

"What does she want with the cure?" Caroline wonders.

"And how does your baby fit in?" Bonnie adds.

Elena frowns. "I don't think it's connected," she reasons slowly. "She said something about her plans changing—that she'd had another purpose for you in mind to begin with, other than using you to lure me out." Her fingers draw idle patterns on the table while she thinks aloud. "Maybe… maybe she set this whole scheme up to cure all of her children… at the sacrifice of only one of them. As part of her whole vampires are a plague that must be eliminated vendetta." She knows it's true the moment she says it. Everything about this plan has Esther written all over it.

The sacrifice of only one of her children, in exchange for the rest.

Klaus, in exchange for Elijah, Rebekah, and Kol.

The unfairness of it all swamps her.

Unbidden, a violent protectiveness rears up inside of her like a dark wave, as shocking in its abruptness as it is in its unrestrained, brutal power. Even now, in the face of all of her uncertainty regarding what she wants from Klaus, that instinct to protect him, that pure rage against everyone who threatens him, promises to sweep her under. To obliterate her.

Somehow, at some point when she wasn't paying attention, Klaus had made it onto her list. She'd realized it last week, wandering through the town green, when she'd thought he was so far out of her reach that he may as well be dead and the misery had swelled up inside of her, pressing in on her until she could no longer hide from what she knew to be true.

She feels that now.

If someone is gunning for Klaus, then she's gunning for them.

"So she'll use the Hunter to get rid of Klaus, so he can complete the Hunter's mark," Bonnie summarizes. "And try to use her mind control to force me to help." She clenches her jaw. "That's typical of her—never wanting to get her hands dirty herself."

"Are we sure it's Klaus she plans to kill?" Caroline asks.

"Do you see any other Originals around?"

"Unless her plan has changed because of the baby," Elena says.

"Don't you think she's probably got one plan for the baby and an entirely different plan for her children?" Bonnie asks.

"I'm going to pick up breakfast," Caroline announces out of the blue, hopping to her feet and completely derailing their conversation in the process.

"What?"

"It's no good discussing doom and gloom on an empty stomach. Besides, your stomach growling is getting distracting, Elena. And you promised me that if you didn't take care of yourself that you'd at least let me take care of you, so by God, that's exactly what I'm going to do."

They both blink at Caroline as she tugs on her coat. There's something so determined about her demeanor, about how bravely she covers up her fragility. Her fear. For Tyler. For herself. For Klaus.

"We'll figure this out," Bonnie assures her.

Caroline smiles brightly. Too brightly. "Of course we will. Over pancakes. Hold down the fort, okay?"

"So when are you going to tell me about Klaus?" Bonnie asks her as she rinses out the mugs and takes her vitamins.

"Which part?"

"The part where Caroline says the two of you are in love?"

Elena freezes. "That's not how I would describe it."

"Then how would you? Describe it, that is?"

That's the million dollar question.

"We're an unanswered question," she replies, without explanation.

She's sick again, just like every morning, except this time she can't help but think about how this is Klaus's baby doing this to her—making herself known. Klaus inside of her, becoming.

She stares at herself in the bathroom mirror for a long time, the water from when she'd rinsed her mouth out still damp on her chin, her cheeks.

Wondering if she is making this baby, or if this baby is making her.

After, Elena retreats to her bedroom, to curl up in the window seat, her forehead resting against the cool window pane.

The shadows shift on the ground beneath her, flickering and quicksilver as her spinning thoughts, like minnows scattering in the shallow end of a pond.

She's looking right out the window when a new shadow emerges, darker, somehow, than all the rest, despite the fact that the sun shines right on him.

Klaus meets her eyes through the window glass.

Slowly, she lifts her hand to wave to him.

Chapter Text

A moment later, the house reverberates from the thunderous pounding against the door.

"Let me answer it," Elena calls out to Bonnie, scrambling out from her place at the window seat and dashing down the stairs.

"Is that Klaus?" Bonnie hisses.

"Yeah—"

"I thought you didn't want to see him?"

"I don't, but this will go easier if I talk to him. Besides. He's crossed the property line, so we know he doesn't mean any harm, right?" He might be absolutely boiling over with rage, but apparently not the murderous sort.

And, maybe now, with him unable to physically overpower her, she can make him listen to her.

She shoos Bonnie into the back of the house, out of sight. No need to set him off any more than she inevitably already has with the whole staking him in his sleep thing. If he discovers she's locked herself inside this house where he can't reach her, alone with Bonnie, who's been less than stable lately, he's likely to go ballistic. More so than he undoubtedly already is.

Taking a deep breath, Elena swings the door wide open.

Klaus glowers at her from the front porch. "I'm surprised you didn't flee town after that little stunt." The words are sharp, clipped, like he has to fight to rein in every syllable.

"Why would I?"

"I assumed that was the point of that little note you left me."

"I'm not trying to hide from you," she tells him quietly. "And I was sorry to stake you."

The words sooth the beast in him, just a little.

Only a little.

"Why would you do it then?" Underneath all of the ire lies a kernel of pain. He sounds so lost. So bewildered.

He'd thought she'd left him, the same way she has feared he would leave her.

Elena catches herself shifting closer, unconsciously drawn to him.

It's only when Klaus tenses that she realizes how close she had come to accidentally inching over the threshold. To putting herself in range of where he might grab her.

And he had been about to. She can see it in every line of his body, in the rueful way his shoulders relax when she takes a huge, deliberate step back.

She takes a deep breath. "Because you weren't interested in giving me space, so I had to take it for myself." She presents it to him completely unvarnished, as calmly as she can.

Inside, she's rattled by how close she had come to putting herself in his power without even thinking about it. How instantly seduced she'd been by the lure of his closeness. By the instinctual desire to step into his arms and hide herself away from all of her problems.

He clenches his jaw. "Must your actions towards me always tend towards murder?"

She gives him a tight smile. "I've learned from the best."

"Indeed." He drinks her in, his eyes roaming over every inch of her. Searching for something.

The wind rustles through the clinging, brown leaves on the winter trees. The sun pours down white light through the bank of clouds.

He is so still. So intense. Like a storm brewing in the distance, rolling thunderheads and crashing lightning that is utterly breathtaking in its raw power until it bears down upon you. Then it is another story entirely.

Her story. The story of a storm-chaser.

"I'm not your enemy," Klaus tells her lowly.

"I know that you're not."

"My mother is though, and she's coming for you. The only way I can protect you is if you let me in."

"There's more at stake than just whether or not you can protect me." She winces at her choice of words. Presses on. "You're asking for so much more than that."

"I only desire your safety. Our daughter's safety."

"No. You desire me. That's very different."

"Is it?"

In the distance, a mother pushes a stroller down the block. An older couple walks their dog.

That could never be her and Klaus.

Klaus glances over his shoulder, to whatever has distracted her.

"That's not the sort of life that you want, sweetheart."

"How do you know that?" she snaps.

"Because I know you. You'd shrivel up from boredom in mere weeks."

"No, you don't know me. If you did, you wouldn't be asking me to marry you."

Klaus braces his hands around the molding framing the front door, effectively bracketing her in, the way he no doubt wishes that he could contain her in truth. If only she were not so very good at slipping free of him.

"What are you so afraid of?"

She opens her mouth, the words piling up on her tongue.

He nearly vibrates with anticipation of what she might say.

And—

She can't answer him.

"Did you hear me last night?" she asks him instead. "When I whispered in your ear?"

His eyes go flat. "Do not trifle with me."

"After I staked you," she continues, right over him. "As you lay dying. Do you remember what I said?"

"The last thing I recall was your face leaning over me in the dark."

"Oh." She drifts further from the door.

He marks her every step as she pulls away from him. His fingers curl around the wood frame of the door. "Elena, whatever it is, you can tell me again, and I'll gladly listen." His voice is low, coaxing, like he's trying to soothe a spooked animal.

She responds to it, in ways that frighten her very much. When had she let Klaus learn how to call to her like this?

"Only step outside," he continues, "or let me in, but either way, lower the bridge."

"Aren't you angry at me for staking you?"

"Furious. But I'm also impressed. Enchanted. Astonished." His fingers twitch as his eyes travel covetously over her body, the wood straining and cracking beneath them. "In a thousand years, you're the only one who would have ever dared such a thing. You're my only equal."

She shivers. Just the wind, she reassures herself.

"Only because I'm so good at throwing up obstacles to slow you down," she hedges.

"You're the only one who's ever been nimble-minded enough to accomplish that."

"That's not a foundation for a steady relationship."

In the distance, an engine roars. Something about the sound of it tugs on Elena's attention, but she bats it away, narrowing her focus down to just Klaus.

Her whole world, just Klaus.

That's what she's up against.

"Did you hesitate?" he asks her, the question intent as a caress. "Before you staked me?"

"No," she lies.

He recognizes the lie for what it is.

"Wicked creature. Why won't you be mine?"

The sound of two car doors slamming punctuates the question.

"Sounds to me like she doesn't want to be," Damon calls from his parking spot right in front of her house, hurling the words like a spear. He prowls around the familiar blue Camaro, until he's shoulder to shoulder with Stefan. "Why don't you take a hint and scram?"

Chapter Text

Klaus's face twists with black rage. He doesn't even turn to acknowledge Damon as he skewers Elena with the blade of his suspicion. "So they're back." The words are venom from his lips.

"Missed us?" Damon taunts.

Her heart pounds in her ears. Adrenaline spikes through her. She can hardly think, hardly stand under the drum of danger danger danger booming through her entire body.

Klaus has all of her focus. She can spare absolutely nothing for Damon and Stefan. Not right now. Not like this.

Klaus notices. Pieces together what that must mean.

"You're not surprised," he realizes. "You already knew."

"Since yesterday," she confirms, because what else can she do?

"Yesterday," he repeats, his voice a dangerously soft rasp. "Precisely when you started getting cold feet."

Damning accusation glitters in Klaus's eyes as he stares her down— eyes that gleam an unnatural, phosphorous shade of yellow as he appraises her with predatory intent.

She doesn't dare look away.

A snarl rips from his throat. "I understand now. You've chosen them over me." The doorframe snaps apart as his hands curl into claws around the wood. The whole frame collapses, raining debris.

Elena has to dodge back lest it strike her.

"Back off, Klaus," Stefan warns.

Klaus ignores him, all of his attention fixated on her. "Let's see how you like this choice," he says, a hideous smile stretching across his face.

He moves so fast he literally disappears from her porch and reappears at the car. In an instant he has both Salvatores by the throat, has wrenched all three of them around to face her. That stomach-clenching rictus of a grin is still plastered onto Klaus's face as he regards her with an ancient and profound intensity that makes the air itself seem to throb around her.

"As a special consideration from me to you, dear heart, you get to decide which of your beloveds I end right here, right now," Klaus calls to her, dragging the Salvatores up to the bottom of the porch, "and which of them gets to limp away. I'll even let you keep the heart of whichever one you choose to die. That's what you've always wanted, yes? To capture their hearts?"

A flash of movement flickers at the corner of her eye.

Damon, his hand wrapped around a lethal white oak stake, twists against Klaus's hold. Ready to plunge it into Klaus's heart, the potential consequences be damned.

She screams. Tries to throw herself through the door, flinging aside her sole safety net, but Bonnie appears out of nowhere and wrenches her back. At the same time, Bonnie flings an arm up and hurls the three vampires apart.

Everything is a blur of violence after that. Her eyes sting, trying to process what she sees—Damon rolling to his feet, stake in hand, charging Klaus—Klaus turning the stake an inch from his heart, only for Stefan to grab and twist his arm until it snaps—Klaus throwing them both off of him—the stake going flying. All the while, Elena fights to break free from Bonnie.

If she could get down there, she could end this—

"You're playing into his hands," Bonnie yells.

"Did you call them?" she demands. "Are they here because of you?"

Is that why he's in danger?

She's not even sure who she means.

"What else was I supposed to do?"

The brawl outside settles into an abrupt stand-off.

Klaus grips Damon by the jaw with one hand while the other pins his arms behind his back. One quick jerk, and he could take Damon's head off like this. The only thing that stops him is Stefan, who'd gotten ahold of that deadly stake in the midst of all the chaos, poised to strike Klaus down the instant he moves.

Damon claws at Klaus's arms, his feet scrabbling at the ground.

How easily Klaus overpowers him.

She's never quite understood the difference between Klaus and a regular vampire until just now. Never quite understood how he looms over the rest of his kind.

For her, a mere human, there's not a great deal of difference between a bull shark and a great white. Both would be equally lethal should she be caught in their jaws.

Klaus flashes Stefan a mouthful of fangs— that same cruel, taunting facsimile of a smile he had thrown at her moments before. That Klaus feels the need to arm himself with smiles while perpetrating such grisly acts breaks her heart, even now.

Especially now, because she knows him. Recognizes herself in him.

How easily that could be her, bestowing Katherine's crocodile smile.

"Now, Stefan, relinquish the stake to me," he commands with utter authority.

Stefan laughs in his face.

"Perhaps this is a good time for the three of us to unequivocally get on the same page," Klaus informs them, pitilessly at ease in the face of Damon's frenzied struggling. He's always at ease when he surrenders to his bloodlust. It's such an effective vent for him. "I created your vampire bloodline. You use that stake on me, you'll both be dead within the hour. Along with sweet Caroline, and Tyler and…" He cuts a calculating glance over to where Bonnie grips Elena's shoulders. "Oh yes. Abby, was it? Your former witch of a mother? I hear it's not a pretty death."

"If you kill my brother, what makes you think I'll care enough to stay my hand?" Stefan retorts.

Elena rubs at her temples. "Klaus, killing Damon isn't going to persuade me to take one step outside of this house, and it's not going to persuade Stefan to give you the stake."

"But it will improve my mood considerably."

"I won't forgive you for it. Not ever."

"You will. You always do." He pauses. Makes a show of letting Damon slip free. "Come out now, though, and we can forget about all this."

Damon shoves himself to his feet, his hackles raised like a spitting cat's as he silently demands the stake back from Stefan, only for Stefan to push him away.

Elena shakes her head. "No. I haven't made any decisions."

"No? I can easily thin your options, hasten the process for you…"

"See, this is the problem," she snaps. "Your immediate response to seeing Stefan and Damon again is only proving why I was right to run from you."

"Need I remind you that time is short? My mother's eyes are upon you. She shan't waste long before she sets her next trap."

"Then we'll deal with that when it comes," Bonnie asserts.

"What does Esther want with Elena?" Stefan asks, weary and wary.

No one answers him.

"You can't play roulette with your safety," Klaus insists, prowling up to the ruin of the front threshold so he can gaze directly into her eyes. "I won't let you."

"It's not roulette when I have my friends to back me up."

Bonnie's hand clenches around her shoulder. "She's right." She raises her chin. "If anything, Elena's betting on the house. And the house always wins."

Klaus's eyes narrow to slits as he sizes Bonnie up. "Charming. Yet your track record fails to inspire confidence."

In the background, the Salvatores are still covertly arguing over the stake.

They're still mid-row when Klaus yanks Damon back into his clutches. "Surrender now, Elena, or I relieve Damon of his heart."

She locks eyes with Damon.

Slowly, he shakes his head. Because he doesn't want her to throw her life away. Even now.

Not unless it's on her own terms.

She shakes Bonnie off of her, and takes a huge step forward. Hope blazes in Klaus's eyes as she lingers at the edge of the doorway.

"You can't win me with threats, Klaus. If you hurt Damon, I'll never be yours."

"Never is a long time."

"I know."

She stares him down, willing him to believe her.

Willing him to believe—

He curses savagely and viciously breaks Damon's neck.

He steps over Damon's body the instant it hits the ground and stalks back up the porch. "I don't care if you'll have me or not. You're coming out."

Behind him, Stefan hoists Damon's limp body into a fireman's carry and darts with him around to the back of the house. Distantly, she registers the sound of the back door opening as Stefan slips inside.

Bonnie shifts from foot to foot beside her.

"Go," Elena murmurs. "I've got this."

Bonnie hurries to the back of the house.

Elena turns back to the nightmare hovering in her doorway. "What are you going to do? Burn me out?"

"If I must."

"I'm stubborn enough to stay and you know it. If you really care about me, you wouldn't risk me."

"Care," he sneers. "I'm in love with you and you know it. At least do me the dignity of not diminishing my feelings for you."

"But all you do is diminish my feelings."

"What can I do then to encourage your affections?"

"You already have my affections."

"Yet that is not good enough." He pauses. "How can I set things back to the way they were between us when we were at the lake house?"

Elena leans hard against the cool expanse of wall by the door. "That wasn't real. That's not what our lives are really like."

"Why not? I see no reason why that couldn't be real. More real. Now we know the child is ours. Our flesh, our blood." He hovers his hand over the invisible wall between them. "What could be more real than that?"

"I need time."

"Time."

"To think things through. To wrap my hands around this."

"To see if the Salvatores will still take you even though you are spoiled goods."

She clenches her jaw. "Can you cut the jealousy crap out, please?"

"Your former lovers show their faces and immediately you demonstrate a troubling reticence—"

"I've always been reticent with you—"

"Two days ago you threw yourself as a shield in front of me and last night you staked me in the heart. What ought I to think?"

She is so, so tired. Right in this moment, she wants nothing more than to lie down on the floor, filthy as it is with debris from the doorframe, and sleep until this is all over. Maybe, if she just curls up into a little ball, then the world will pass her by and when she wakes up all will be peaceful and quiet and blessedly, blessedly dull.

"I need time to sort out my feelings for you," she says. "Nothing you can do can change that."

He growls. "How will time help if you do not know the answer already?"

"I don't know," she tells him somewhat helplessly.

(Her heart: the one thing she has ever truly been helpless against.)

"Then it seems we are at an impasse."

He watches her for a long, weighted moment.

She doesn't break eye contact as she shoves the door shut in his face.

Chapter Text

She stares at that closed door for a good while. Through it, she can feel Klaus seething. Can feel his hurt and his jealousy and his anger and his lust for her. His covetous love.

Very nearly, she opens the door and throws herself into his arms.

Very nearly.

Only the realization that he had become too much of a crutch for her these past couple of weeks stops her.

If she has only learned a single lesson this fall it has been this: She is strong enough to stand all by herself. To withstand all by herself. She doesn't need anyone to hold her up.

Even though it had been nice.

More than nice.

Miraculous, in its own way, to have a pair of strong arms to hold her close. To lift her up.

But that's not what she wants.

She doesn't want to rely on anyone.

Doesn't want to need anyone.

All she wants is this: someone who will stay with her, quietly, day after day, so that while she is doing the hard work of standing on her own two feet, she doesn't have to do it all alone.

Chilled from the cold house as much as from these thoughts—from the catastrophe between Klaus and the Salvatores that had been so narrowly averted—Elena flicks the switch on the gas fireplace and watches in silence as the flames slowly burst from the gas jets and dance within the hearth. The sight of the fire mesmerizes her, the way it always does. Not quite the way that a real wood-burning fire would—the way the fires she's grown so accustomed to do. The way the fire in her memory burns. But when she stretches her fingers out to feel the heat tickling along her skin, she thinks that this fire is warm enough.

There's a ruckus in the back of the house that eventually draws Elena to the kitchen, where Damon is laid out on the breakfast table, his head twisted at a nauseating angle.

Stefan and Bonnie confer in low voices over by the sink. She catches a few words, enough for her to realize that Bonnie is explaining the various protection spells she'd put up around the house.

The white oak stake is just lying there on the counter.

Behind her, Damon groans and sits up. "I think I need a chiropractor," he grumbles, rubbing the side of his neck.

"Loosely speaking, the argument could be made that that's what Klaus is," Stefan observes.

"Then I need a less hands-on one." Damon groans. "What did I miss?"

Stefan and Bonnie both join Damon over by the table to fill him in. For a moment, their backs are turned, and no one is paying her a bit of attention.

She grabs the stake and marches into the living room, over to the fireplace. Casually tosses it in.

She watches in grim satisfaction as her flames devour this tool that could so easily destroy her whole world in an instant.

Naturally, the rest of them smell the burning wood, but by the time they all swarm into the living room, it's too late.

Cursing, Damon reaches into the flames to extract the stake, but it disintegrates in his hand. "What the hell, Elena? That was our only weapon!"

Elena holds her ground. "A weapon that would kill you and everyone else I care about."

"And Klaus," Stefan sighs, exhausted and bitter from something more than mere jealousy. "Can't ever forget about Klaus." He says it like it's the singular fact of his existence.

"No, I can't," she agrees. "And I'm not going to let you two martyr yourselves just to make sure he's out of my life."

"When were you going to tell us that he's the father?" Stefan asks.

"What?" Damon looks utterly poleaxed, but somehow manages to sound outright apoplectic at the same time. "Klaus is the mystery dad? How?"

"Hybrid loophole?" Bonnie guesses.

Damon shudders. Grabs Elena by the arms, so that he can look deeply, searchingly into her eyes. "And you destroyed the stake? You'll never be rid of him now." There's a raw desperation in him for which she had been wholly unprepared.

Even now, he wants so badly to save her.

And because of that, she is so, so gentle with him.

"I know," she tells him softly. "But I didn't have any other choices. I can't lose any of you, and I can't take the chance that you'd be willing to pay that price just to get rid of him." She reaches up to wrap her hands around his wrists. To brace herself. "And—maybe I don't want to be rid of him. Not like that anyway."

"You've got to be nearing your second trimester," Stefan says, off to their side.

Elena frowns, trying to see where he's going with this. "Yeah. So?"

"So if Klaus is the father, that means you were sleeping with him last fall. While you were involved with us."

A stricken expression crosses Damon's face. He drops his hold on her.

Wisely, perhaps, Bonnie makes herself scarce.

Taking the two brothers in, Elena wants to scream.

Somehow, in all her angst and misery, she'd totally forgotten how maddeningly frustrating these two are.

"Just the once," she confirms tightly. "Around the time you were kidnapping me and threatening to drive me off the bridge." Or don't you remember? She doesn't bother to hide her pain from them. Her anger or her betrayal. "Everything else has been recent, after you two left me without a word of warning or explanation."

Stefan, at least, has the grace to look abashed.

"We had a good reason," Damon mutters.

"You said that yesterday."

"We were chasing down Esther. For what she did to Alaric. And to you."

At this news, Elena actually laughs at him. She can't help it.

"What?" Damon asks.

His lack of self-awareness only makes it worse. "Some job you did!" Elena gasps between sawing gales of laughter that she can't for the life of her seem to control. She collapses onto the sofa, clutching at her sides.

God. What had they been doing? Running in circles all this time? Esther must have led them on a merry chase indeed, considering all of her schemes had been focused on Mystic Falls all along.

Stefan eyes her carefully. "Elena, I know you're upset—"

"Upset! Ha! No, I'm just shocked. I've been assuming all this time that I needed the two of you to help me outthink all of this, that without you, I was useless, but it turns out without me, the two of you are the useless ones!" She's laughing so hard that tears roll down her face. It feels an awful lot like sobbing. "You two realize that Esther's been here, right? Manipulating Bonnie, Shane, this Hunter?"

"And going after you now," Stefan says. "Is it because of the baby? Because it's…" He trails off, like he can't bear to call it what it is. Klaus's.

This, at last, stoppers her laughter.

"Yes," she confirms, sobering. She hiccups just a little, coughing to cover it, as she explains, "I never got the whole picture on what she wanted, exactly, before Klaus came to rescue me from her."

"Nothing good," Damon muses. He studies her, his eyes trailing over her from head to toe, before turning to peer out the window. To wave and smile, no doubt at Klaus. It's a relief, not to have him watching her so closely. Clocking her every thought. "We should cut and run," Damon says, turning back to face them. "The three of us, the way we should have done it last November."

She can imagine it so clearly—what might have happened if they had only asked her to come along with them.

She would have said yes.

She would have followed them anywhere. To the ends of the earth.

Maybe, somehow, she wouldn't have had to choose. Could have selfishly had them both, and been content in that, nestled between them, the way she always preferred to be.

And she would have been happy. Would have basked in their love.

Would have been, could have been.

Can no longer be.

"No. I'm not going anywhere," Elena declares. She leaps to her feet. Backs straight into Stefan's stone hard chest.

He catches her around the shoulders. "It's a good idea," he tells her.

"It's the smart idea," Damon corrects.

"Then I'm not smart." She twists, and Stefan lets her go. "I'm not running away with the two of you."

"Why not?" Damon asks. "We've got to be more fun than Klaus. Way cooler. Funnier, too."

"Because I'd only be running away for a little while. Taking five minutes. Esther will eventually catch up. Klaus will find me." She swallows, hard, and gathers the courage to tear open all of her only partially healed wounds for them to see. "We'll remember why the three of us didn't work the first time we tried it. Why our love wasn't enough." Her voice breaks on the end. But she forges onward. "So… I'd rather face everything head on." Face her heart, no matter how stormy and frightening.

They both look like they want to argue. Like they want to prove her wrong.

She knows hearing any proclamations to the contrary will only hurt her.

Neither of them have ever been afraid of hurting her.

She's spared from having to hear whatever doubtlessly heart-rending reply her two beloveds would doubtlessly serve up by the front door clattering open as Caroline trudges inside, her arms loaded down with shopping and to-go bags.

"You could have at least helped me with these," she hollers over her shoulder, down to Klaus, whom Elena glimpses leaning against his car, arms crossed, a sour expression twisting his face.

How Caroline can muster this level of ease around him when no one else can is beyond her. More than that, there's an intimacy to the way Caroline chides him that Elena doesn't have the energy to pick apart right now. To the way Klaus had apparently let her breeze right past him without raising any significant fuss about it.

She smothers that little seed of jealousy before it has a chance to take root any further.

Caroline pauses in the open doorway, absorbing the sight of the Salvatores, the debris on the floor, Elena's fluster.

"I was gone an hour. Why is everyone like this?"

Chapter Text

It's obvious that Damon and Stefan haven't given up their attempts to persuade her to just skip town with them, but Caroline and Bonnie do a great job of running interference so that they don't actually have the chance to talk to her about it anymore.

Truthfully, she barely trusts them not to just kidnap her in exactly the way she had feared Klaus would.

The thought gives her pause.

She really needs to think critically about her taste in men.

Over breakfast, Bonnie steers the conversation to discussing the threat from Esther, and her probable plan to have the Hunter execute Klaus to get to the cure for her other children. Every time the Salvatores look ready to spring another emotional confrontation on Elena, Bonnie veers the topic right back to the Esther Problem. Speculating what she might want with Elena and her baby. Brainstorming ideas to lure her out, to stop her from killing Klaus and therefore killing the rest of them.

At least the Salvatores have plenty of ideas on how to kill Esther. Apparently they'd spent a great deal of time discussing it while on the road together.

Afterwards, Caroline drags out the shopping bags she'd brought in and produces box after box of fresh Christmas lights. "It's Christmas Eve and your tree is max pitiful," she explains. "I thought we could at least cheer the place up."

Damon rolls his eyes. "Spare me the Martha Stewart roleplay."

Caroline sticks her tongue out at him. "Since you're not interested in helping, you can stay here and do the dishes. You can even mope while you do them." She turns to Stefan. "You're welcome to help him."

With that, she gathers up the bag of lights and grabs Elena by the arm and pulls her into the living room.

"Fort Gilbert was definitely more fun before the boys crashed," Caroline mutters. "How long do you think they're going to stick around?"

"I doubt they'll leave before the Klaus-threat is resolved, one way or another."

"Is Klaus a threat?"

"No, not really." She sighs. "He's just… complicated."

Caroline begins plucking ornaments off the tree, which bristles and sheds a waterfall of needles at every touch. "How long's he been out there?"

"Honestly, it feels like forever. Like he's always out there, waiting for me."

"He's always been fixated on you," Caroline agrees.

Elena glances over her shoulder, to where Stefan and Damon are clearly eavesdropping despite Bonnie peppering them with questions about their time tracking Esther.

"I just want to know that it's all my choice in the end. That I'm not being pushed or prodded into a certain direction by fate or Klaus or anything else. That I still have some kind of a future that's mine, you know?"

"What about the baby?"

"The baby's part of that."

Finished with the ornaments, Caroline begins unwinding the blown strands of lights. "No, I mean… let's play devil's advocate here. What if having Klaus in the picture is best? What if he's right, that he's the only one who can protect the baby?" She passes Elena the strand and begins working on the next.

"Care…"

"More than that. He's the father. Doesn't your baby deserve to know her father?"

"But what kind of father is he?"

Caroline shrugs. "I think you need to give him a chance to find out."

The idea is crazy.

Who would give Klaus a chance?

(Maybe the girl who'd seen the good in the same vampire who'd broken her brother's neck, and found it in herself to forgive him. Who'd forgiven her own aunt's murderer because she understood herself in him.)

(Maybe.)

Outside, the clouds gather overhead.

Inside, the tree twinkles merrily.

When this is all over, she should call her brother. Wish him a Merry Christmas.

She retreats upstairs for a nap, excusing herself with the explanation that she'd been up all night and couldn't go on for another minute without rest.

The real reason is more that she just needs to be alone. To close everything else out while she mulls things over.

On her way up the stairs, she overhears Caroline and Bonnie relating to Stefan and Damon how she'd staked Klaus the night before. One of them—Damon, probably—lets out a low whistle. The sound of it follows her all the way to her bedroom.

Inside the sanctuary of her room, she wanders to the window.

Spies Klaus still outside, inhumanly still, waiting as only someone who has stepped outside of time is capable.

Uncannily, he glances up at her only a few seconds later—as though he had sensed her watching him. His eyes fix right on her, his gaze heavy as a cloak.

She doesn't wave this time, or do anything at all to acknowledge him before she steps back into the dark of her bedroom and sprawls upon the bed. Nevertheless, she can feel his eyes on her, tracking her, as though he can see her through the walls.

It's not this that she minds. There's something reassuring about Klaus's attention on her. It means that all is right with the world. That she is fulfilling her place in the supernatural sphere.

It's the question of whether or not she has any say in what happens next that hunts her.

Somewhere, lost amongst the clearing muddle of her thoughts, cushioned in the soft warmth of her bed, lulled by the quiet murmur of her house full of people once again, sleep pulls her under.

Golden sunlight pours into her room from the Eastern window. It's the sunlight of a winter dawn, all false warmth and misty nostalgia.

Esther perches on her window seat, bundled in a tailored charcoal wool coat, hands folded in her lap, one ankle tucked primly behind the other. The sun bounces off of her golden hair, pulled back into an elegant chignon.

Elena scrambles up on the bed. "How did you get in here?"

"Where is here?" Esther asks, cocking her head.

Elena scans the room. Takes in the strangeness of the light. The way the edges of the room seem to shift and blur. When she glances at the alarm by her bed, she cannot read the face. All at once, she realizes that the babble of voices drifting up from downstairs has ceased as well. A deep air of stillness permeates the house. As though this room is all that exists.

"I'm dreaming," she realizes.

A small smile from Esther. "Quite astute. I can see why Niklaus likes you so."

Elena takes in Esther, sitting so calmly in her favorite spot. "You're really here, though, aren't you?"

"This is the only way I can get around that barrier spell in order to communicate with you directly. I hope you don't mind the intrusion."

The barrier spell meant to keep out anyone who means her harm.

"Since you've gone through all this trouble to talk to me, I assume whatever you say must be important," Elena hedges, keeping her tone as light as she can, surreptitiously pinching herself in case that will wake her up.

"Indeed, what I have to say to you is of the utter most importance." Esther's eyes flick to the pincer of Elena's hand. "I'm holding you under, right now. You won't be able to awaken until I release you."

"That's supposed to make me trust you?"

"It's vital that you hear me out, in full, without my son or the talented Miss Bennett or anyone else disrupting us."

"Okay. Fine. Shoot."

"Your child—my grandchild—is in grave danger."

Elena sits up so that she is resting against the headboard. Crosses her arms protectively over her middle. "So far, primarily from you."

"You misunderstand my intentions—"

"Knocking me out and kidnapping me weren't clear enough?"

"Expedients which I regret. Time is short, but it would have behooved me to remember that you are a rational young woman in possession of a great deal of practicality and resolve. Just like your ancestress. You're willing to make sacrifices for the greater good, so I trust that you will see reason as plainly as I do when I tell you…" She trails off, her brow creased, as though searching for the right words. The ones that will make her listen.

Elena already does. If she hangs on Esther's words, she cannot help herself. Her curiosity has always been a living creature prowling under her skin, equipped with a ravenous appetite. She has long since grown accustomed to feeding it.

"By now you must realize that your child is special," Esther at last continues. "That she has inherited not just the cursed lineages blighting my son's bloodline, but that she has also been blessed through my line with rare talents. With magical gifts magnitudes beyond the reach of an ordinary witch." No acknowledgment at all that whatever curses the baby may have inherited from Klaus had been at least partially her own doing. "It's a trait of my bloodline," Esther explains, "that the eldest child in each generation is born with this extraordinary power. Your doppelganger blood only magnifies the potency of this triple inheritance. Has only awakened her gifts all the sooner. I was half the world away, and yet I could feel the whisper of my granddaughter, could taste her power rippling through the very the air."

The room darkens as she speaks, the sun a blazing red eye as it sinks beneath the Eastern horizon, smothering the light with its descent.

Elena shakes her head. "None of that justifies your actions."

She holds up her hand as though holding her at bay. "Do you think I am the only one who feels the babe's power stirring? I am merely the first. The next to arrive will be far more deadly."

"Who?" Elena casts about her for any of the stray pieces her friends and her had put together. "Silas?"

"No, though the answer is just as grave. My sister."

Elena blinks. Surely her sister had to be centuries in the grave by now—

But no. Of course not.

The story Esther paints her of her sister and what she will want with the baby is grim, and gruesome, and yet, all Elena can think about through all of it is how of course she's managed to land smack dab in the middle of the one family with more drama and cloak and dagger addictions than her own.

"So what was the point of last night?" Elena asks when Esther finishes her tale of danger and woe.

Stars wheel against the velvet night sky. A sickle moon gobbles their light, dripping tendrils of inky darkness into the quiet street below.

"I was trying to mask your child's presence from my sister. To use the residual energy released from the sacrifice, the weakening of reality in that place, to hide you both. Only by drawing on the strength of an elemental circle such as that one do we stand any chance of evading her."

We.

The word whispers through her heart.

"You weren't going to just release me after the cloaking spell." It's not a question.

"No. I would be a fool to do so. I had planned to take guardianship of you."

"Why?"

"My own children are monsters. Perhaps there is a way to save some of them… perhaps… but my granddaughter is an innocent. As are you, despite the darkness you have had to walk through." Slowly, as though afraid Elena might startle if she moves too quickly, Esther eases herself from the window seat over to the edge of her bed. She takes her hand. "You are as alone in this world as I am. But together, we could be a family. I could be your mother, and we could raise your daughter—my granddaughter—together. I could teach her all that I know of the craft. Could teach you some things too, if you'd like. And I could protect you both."

She looks deeply into Esther's face. Takes in the open, earnest expression. The warmth and tenderness she exudes. For a moment, the memory of her own mother, sitting just there on the foot of her bed, holding her hand just like this when she had been upset and in need of comfort, overlays with the image of Esther before her. It's been so long since she's had a mother.

"Say I want that," Elena says at last, her voice shaky, weak. Genuine tears well in her eyes. "How would I even get to you? Klaus is waiting to intercept me the moment I step outside."

"I have ways to turn my son's attention. Your path will be clear."

"How do I find you?"

"I shall wait for you at moonrise in the sacrifice clearing."

"And then?"

Esther goes so far as to tuck the hair back behind Elena's ear. Her fingers against her cheek are warm, maternal. "We complete the cloaking spell, and we will away."

Elena wipes at the tears sliding down her cheeks. "How do I know this is really best for my baby? How can I just leave?"

"Listen to your heart. Does it not yearn for the peace I am offering you? There is a reason you have not invited Niklaus into your home. A reason you keep him at a distance. You have been searching for a safe place to land, a soft place to build a home. I offer that to you now."

"And what of the others? Won't Klaus come looking for us? Or Rebekah, or Elijah?"

Esther pats her hand. "Do not trouble yourself with them. All is in hand."

"A soft place to build a home," Elena repeat, her words soft as breath. "I do want that."

"I know, dear." Esther lingers for just a moment, hesitates for just a moment, before rising from the bed. "Speak of this to no one," she warns. The sky behind her brightens and dims, brightens and dims, like the winking of a candle flame. "Tell no one you are leaving, and pack no bag. All will be provided for, and all will be well."

She lays her hand over her brow one last time, her fingers blazing bright as the sun—

Elena gasps, bolting upright.

Her neck cracks as she whips her head from side to side, searching for Esther lingering somewhere in the shadows.

The din of raised voices from downstairs pierces through her disorientation.

She's awake.

Chapter Text

She takes a few minutes to brush her teeth and wash her sweaty, tear-tracked face and neck before heading downstairs. To compose herself in front of the mirror.

Esther had called her innocent.

Once, she had been.

The grief for that girl, who had had a loving mother, who had been trusting and warm, had rammed into her full force when Esther had attempted to persuade her to trust her.

Now, she knows what Esther does to women with a face like hers.

Knows what it means that Esther had been unable to cross the threshold of Bonnie's spell. Esther may be genuine about not wanting to harm the baby—Elena really does believe that about her—but she'd been lying about what would happen to her.

All too clearly she can imagine what that woman would do if she were to be stupid enough to go to her—she'd kidnap her and watch over her and make it seem like everything is bright and wonderful between them, and as soon as she gives birth, she'd slit her throat. Probably drain her body of blood while she's at it.

She'd murder her, and then she'd take the baby for her own.

So, Elena had let herself cry, because the lie Esther had spun for her had been so pretty.

And because… that soft, safe place… that home… she does want that.

More than anything.

"Guys," she calls, trotting down the stairs, "I've got news—I know what Esther wants with me."

Everyone pauses for just a moment. Matt and Tyler have joined the group, and are busy bickering over Jeremy's Xbox controller.

Gang's all here.

Great.

Before she can continue, Tyler breaks away from Matt for long enough to announce, "I think we ran into that Hunter guy you warned us about."

The news stalls her.

At her silence, Tyler plunges onward. "You said his name's Connor, right? Big, athletic guy, looks like an ex-Navy SEAL? He shook my hand at the Grill—turns out he was wearing vervain gloves. Who does that?"

"You're okay though?"

Tyler shrugs. "Yeah, Matt bashed him over the head with a barstool while I made my escape." He pauses. "Unclear if he still has a job."

Matt punches Tyler in the arm. "If I don't, then you're compelling my boss to change his mind."

"Anyway, that's why we're here—we figured we were all better off playing our odds if we stick together."

"Wait," Caroline interrupts, turning to Elena. "What were you saying about Esther when you came downstairs?"

Quickly, Elena fills them all in on her dream-visit as she heads for the front door.

Peripherally, she notes that the debris has all been swept up while she napped. The whole living room is supernaturally spotless. Even the tree looks full again. She'll have to remember to thank Caroline and Bonnie.

"So Esther thinks you're eager to capitulate," Damon says, heeling her all the way.

The group trails after them.

"What's the play?" he presses, wrapping a hand around her wrist and pausing her at the door. "Don't you dare volunteer as bait."

Elena rolls her eyes. "Obviously not. But—maybe we can steal the cloaking spell idea?" She looks over her shoulder to address the question to Bonnie.

Bonnie nods. "I'll work on it."

"So why are you storming out the door?" Damon prods.

Elena plucks his hand off of her. "I'm not. But—it's time to parlay with Klaus."

"Uh, wouldn't it be better to call him rather than go out there with a target on your back?" Matt asks.

Elena frowns. "What do you mean? He's been brooding out front for hours."

"He's not out there," Tyler informs her.

Elena flings the door open. "What? That doesn't make sense—" She darts onto the porch before Damon or Stefan even realize what she's going to do. Half-expects Klaus to materialize out of thin air and grab her.

Nothing happens.

"Did he say anything?" she demands, whirling on the others as they join her on the porch.

"Because Klaus is such a clear and open communicator," Stefan drawls.

Behind him, Bonnie rubs at her temples. "It reeks of magic out here," she mumbles, distracted.

I have ways to turn my son's attention. Your path will be clear.

"Esther did this," Elena realizes.

Somehow, Esther had drawn him away. Had distracted him.

She scrubs her fingers through her hair, thoughts furiously churning. He'd been determined to wait her out—had made it absolutely, abundantly clear that he would wait here until he could change her mind or nab her, that he had no interest in going after his mother instead—why would he leave after just a few hours?

She tries to get inside his head. What could have speared his interest enough that he would disappear on her? Enough that he would leave his child unguarded? What could he be gambling on?

"Guys," Bonnie calls, her voice trembling. "I feel—weird—I feel—" She swallows rapid, shallow breaths, her chest barely rising and falling as she clutches at the amulet around her throat. "Esther's calling for me."

Stefan and Caroline guide Bonnie back inside, Matt following behind, leaving Elena on the porch with Damon.

"We should head back inside too," he suggests. "You're a sitting duck out here."

She stares inside, watching as Matt helps Bonnie down onto the sofa and Caroline hovers over her.

There's something very, very wrong here.

Klaus hadn't been distracted.

He'd been ensnared.

And all the while, she'd been upstairs, asleep and oblivious.

"All the pieces are moving into place," Elena says, feeling like there is a great weight pressing down on her chest, seizing all of the air from her lungs. "Somehow, Esther lured Klaus away, or took him by force—and she's going to kill him."

Damon holds his hands up in the time-out gesture. "Slow down, what's the problem?"

Elena barrels past him to stand amongst the group. "You all see it, right? The Hunter's in town, Esther's here with the stake, and now she's calling for Bonnie… she's going to kill Klaus tonight. To get him out of the way…" So she can steal her baby.

Their baby.

"Elena, calm down," Caroline orders, coming around to put her arm around her. "You're jumping to conclusions—we don't know what it means that Esther is calling for Bonnie, just like we don't actually know what it means that Klaus has vamoosed— it's not like Esther could drag him anywhere against his will, right? So why would he willingly walk into her trap?" She tries to get her to sit down, but Elena refuses.

Could Esther capture him against his will? What if Bonnie's not the only witch she's recruited? What then?

Stefan supplies the answer to Caroline's question. "To spring it." He has a thousand yard stare when he answers. Like he's understanding Klaus the way she understands him. Like he can never unlearn the knowledge of his character.

"Does he even have enough info to think of that?" Caroline argues. "We haven't exactly shared anything with him recently…"

"He was acting all disinterested in the journal the other morning," Elena says, very slowly, putting the pieces together as she speaks. "Which I just chalked up to him not caring that there was a death threat hanging over him… But what if I was wrong? What if he just didn't want me looking into it? To keep me out of it?" To protect me? "He already knows about the Hunters. About the cure, and that his mother has the stake. He had access to the journal, too. What if he put all of this together days ago?" God, was it really yesterday that they'd been curled in his bed together, reading through that journal? He'd been eager to distract her, to make it impossible for her to focus, but had been willing enough to let her leave… so he could investigate on his own. Only for him to be completely distracted by the revelation that her child is also his. Distracted, maybe, thrown off his game— at the time when losing his focus would be most dangerous to him. He'd be vulnerable, emotionally and mentally erratic—easy to rile. Easy to lure into a trap.

"What, you think he's decided that if you won't come out, he's going to handle the problem with his witch bitch of a mother himself?" Damon asks.

"I think that's exactly the sort of thing he would do," she says. And he'd do it thinking it was his own idea. Just like how he'd been lured into ritually sacrificing all of his hybrids. His rage and volatility make him too easy to manipulate. Anyone who knows him can predict him.

And who knows him better than his own mother?

The weight on her chest becomes a mountain. The certainty that Klaus has fallen into Esther's clutches—that he's in danger—bears down on her. Smothers her.

And alongside that certainty, a seething guilt rages through her, sweeping away all of her other fears about him. It's like the week before, when she had thought she had lost him at the Winter Wonderland festival, but times a million.

It's her fault that Klaus had been so distracted—her fault that he'd become such easy prey. If she'd just found a way to work this out with him—if she'd just stayed with him—

No. She can't think like that. She couldn't have done it. Not the way he wanted to.

"So, what, are we totally fucked?" Tyler asks the group at large.

"Since Klaus is in fact our vamp-daddy?" Damon asks. "Pretty much."

Stefan groans like he's already dying. "I told you not to ever say that again."

Elena ignores them all. Turns inward.

A creeping awareness rises up inside of her. That feeling she's been trying to stomp down, that certainty that she'd grasped merely a week ago when she thought she'd lost him forever—she'd let it dissipate like mist between her fingers this past week, but she grasps it now. Now, at the moment when Klaus is so close to being stolen from her.

She swallows hard.

Who knows Klaus better than his own mother?

She does.

She's always been the girl capable of salvaging victory in the face of certain doom.

These three realizations settle upon her like a crown—heavy, so heavy, but a reminder as well. Of who she is. Of what she is capable.

She casts an appraising eye over the group assembled in her home. Her friends. Her family. If Klaus dies, she'll lose almost all of them within the hour.

Elena has always been willing to throw herself between her beloveds and the abyss.

"No one's fucked," she declares. Her heart pounds, her breath saws, and she swears she can feel her very blood pulsing through her veins.

"Oh?" Damon asks. "How do you figure?"

She throws him her wildest, most determined grin. "Because we're going to save Klaus."

Chapter Text

With all of their lives on the line, it doesn't take nearly as much convincing to win everyone—read: Stefan and Damon—over as she had expected.

"I vote to relabel this: saving ourselves," Tyler grumbles as Elena lays out her ideas.

Damon uncrosses his arms to raise his hand. "Seconded."

Elena shoots them all a glare. "Save Klaus, save all of you—does it really matter what we call it?"

Damon frowns at her. "No, what matters is that you're not coming along on this ride."

"You need me and you know it."

Caroline turns to Matt. "Unless…?"

"I already told you no," he tells her quietly but firmly, his head bowed. He won't look at Elena. Can't meet her eyes.

That's okay. She used to have trouble meeting her own eyes, too.

"Are you sure about this?" Stefan asks her, for about the dozenth time.

"If it comes down to it, I'll do whatever I have to do," she affirms.

They all turn to Bonnie, hunched over on the sofa in the other room, her arms wrapped around herself as she shivers convulsively.

"I'm going to need help," she tells them all with utter misery. "The closer I get, the less in control I'll be."

"I'll help you," Matt says. Something like relief flashes over his face. Relief that here, at least, is a job he can do. Will do.

"Tyler and I will too," Caroline adds.

Stefan and Damon glance at each other.

"Which leaves us with you, Elena," Damon murmurs.

Again, Stefan asks her, "Are you absolutely certain?"

She doesn't deign to answer him.

"It sounds like we're all in agreement," she tells the group at large. "Let's head out."

Bonnie intentionally gives in to the pull Esther exerts on her soul. Leads them out of the house, down the street, through the town, block by block, and eventually into the woods, where the sooty wreckage of the original town's ruins languishes interspersed with hundred year old trees.

No one says anything as the sun sinks lower, and Bonnie slowly, slowly leads them to Esther. They trail far enough behind her that Esther—or anyone else who may be working with her—will see Bonnie long before they spot the rest of them.

Bonnie giving in to that supernatural tug is a necessary risk—to make sure they find Esther in time, in case she plans to do away with Klaus somewhere other than the sacrifice circle.

They know that their conjecture had been right when a man and a woman step out from behind the twilit trees, their faces impossible to see clearly in the uncertain light.

"We've been waiting for you, sister," they murmur in eerie harmony. Sister—because all witches are family to each other, in a way.

As one, they gesture to the entrance down to the labyrinth of catacombs that run beneath the wreckage. The entrance yawns black and bleak as an open grave. A strange ripple emanates from its mouth— the uncanny aura of primal magic being worked deep within.

Without any need of a signal or cue between them, Damon and Stefan dart swift as death from the cover of the darkened tree line and break the witches' necks. It all happens in the space of a heartbeat. Their bodies hit the forest floor in tandem, the impact barely disturbing the leaf cover.

"That's one way to handle it," Tyler whispers.

Up ahead, the Salvatores peer into the cave, gesturing for the rest of them to follow.

Bonnie breaks through them to continue on without so much as pausing to mark the death of her two kin.

Stefan follows her in while Damon waits for them at the entrance. He jerks his chin at them, the silent motion as clear and impatient as though he had actually yelled at them to get a move on.

By the time the rest of them catch up, Stefan has already knocked Bonnie unconscious.

"That wasn't part of the plan," Caroline hisses. She kneels on the floor and cradles Bonnie in her lap. "We were supposed to hold her back, not give her a concussion."

"She's fine," Stefan says, eyes already scanning the dark. "And she'll thank us for it when she comes to and all of her friends are still alive because we wouldn't let her be used as a pawn in our deaths."

All four vampires cock their heads at the exact same moment—as though they'd heard something that Elena and Matt with their simple human hearing could not.

"This way," Damon says, pointing down one of the many branching tunnels. He pulls Elena away from the group so that they can split off with Stefan for their part in the plan.

"She'll wake up soon," Stefan warns the others before they go. "She might be herself or she might be totally lost in the grip of Esther's persuasion. Be ready for anything, but especially be ready to hold her down."

"And watch our escape route," Damon reminds them. "We might need to make a quick exit, and I don't want to find a horde of crazed witches blocking our way out."

"I'm not killing anyone," Matt reiterates.

Caroline and Tyler glance at each other.

Elena wonders which of them will do the dirty work if—when—it comes to it.

"It's fine, man," Tyler reassures him. "Everything's going to be fine."

"Don't screw this up," Damon warns them one last time. His tone doesn't convey very much confidence.

No matter.

She has confidence in them.

"See you on the other side," she breathes, before she lets the Salvatores spirit her away.

Or, rather—

Until she spirits them away.

It is her plan, after all.

The catacombs are nearly pitch black. The darkness is so heavy and so oppressive that she knows that without a pair of vampires guiding her, she would never be able to navigate her way through.

The thought of if they had refused her—if she had had to come down here on this brash rescue mission on her own—skitters over her nerves. She'd have gotten lost for certain. Would have likely gone in the wrong direction entirely, would have failed to ever find Klaus—would have likely wandered straight into Esther's clutches by sheer unlucky accident.

They walk for what feels like eternity without encountering anything, without hearing anything other than the echo of her breaths, the shuffling of her feet over the rough stone floor, the steady drip of some subterranean stream. For their parts, both Damon and Stefan are utterly silent. So silent, so tense beside her, that she wonders if their hearts even beat in their chests.

(If they could will them to stop beating, she knows that they would.

If their hearts would stop beating, then they would stop loving her.

Maybe, even, stop hurting her.

But the only true release for them—for any of them, really—will be in death. And maybe not even then.

Short of that, her refusal of them both is the only freedom she can offer them. The only freedom she can manage for herself.)

Stefan latches onto her arm and covers her mouth with his cool hand. Draws her close against his body, and presses them both flat against the wall.

Up ahead, a dim light gradually brightens the gloom. Barely perceptible as more than a flicker in the dark.

Damon dispatches the group of witches as methodically as he had the witches at the entrance. Motions for them to follow, just before extinguishing the lights.

They soldier on.

In the dark, it's nearly impossible to master her fears.

Nearly impossible not to fret about the possibility that she will be too late to save Klaus. That Damon and Stefan might suddenly drop and bleed out next to her and she may not even be able to find their hands in this abyssal dark in order to comfort them as they die.

She may have seen Caroline and Tyler for the last time and not even realized it.

Another horrible thought. What if her baby's life is somehow tied to Klaus's?

Her gorge rises at the possibility.

A hand at her back urges her forward. She's not sure whose.

They walk and they walk until Elena's thighs burn, until all she can smell is the damp rock and all she can taste is the acid in her mouth and all she can hear is her own heartbeat, echoing in the dark.

Occasionally, Damon kills another witch.

Every now and then, they come to a crossroads in the tunnels, and Damon and Stefan must silently debate which way to take.

Once, they argue for a while. Finally, Stefan flings a pebble down the direction Damon insists upon, only for the pebble to incinerate in flash of fire and smoke.

They go the other way.

Elena doesn't let herself think too hard about how many of these paths are warded like that. Booby trapped. What they'll do when they inevitably spring one.

They must be miles down. Further than she's ever ventured. She'd had no idea this subterranean network was so extensive.

Every moment is precious, but they don't dare move too quickly. Not with the possibility that they will spring a nasty surprise from Esther and these witches—whoever they are—that she's brought along to follow her.

At another fork, they test the three different paths, before choosing the one that seems safest.

They take a sharp turn only a few steps into the corridor before total chaos erupts around them.

Chapter Text

The air itself shrieks and screams, loud enough to stagger the three of them back like a physical blow—Damon and Stefan nearly buckle to their knees from the volume of that howl. Almost drag her down with them. She can't imagine what this must sound like to a vampire—can hardly account for the piercing needle of it in her brain with only her imperfect human hearing. Only sheer force of will keeps them all on their feet, shoving their way forward—

And then all at once Elena realizes she can see—that the cave they're in is filled to the brim with dazzling, blinding diamond light that shimmers in waves upon waves of white and blue and pink and lavender to eye-watering effect. The space is so assaultingly bright that her eyes ache from trying to keep them open, that her stomach swoops as she tries to make sense of her surroundings. For a moment, she has no sense of up or down. No sense of her body.

In the cacophony of that sensorial maelstrom, she almost fails to notice the man stalking straight up to them. Not a witch—she can tell in the way he moves that he's something else—a predator assured of his physical prowess.

If she had any questions as to who this stranger is, they are answered a moment later when he brandishes that deadly stake—the white oak one forged from Alaric's ring the night Esther had murdered him.

She screams as Connor lunges straight for Stefan's heart—

—Is ripped away from Stefan and Damon by a witch she's never seen before, who says something to her she cannot hear, cannot even attempt to lip read in the nauseating, trembling light. She thrashes out of her hold, managing to break free.

Before her, Stefan dodges Connor's strike, turning the stake away from his heart at the last moment. Incredibly, impossibly, Connor staves him off, moving faster than a human ever should—the way Klaus had warned her he would.

Another witch drags her further back, back, back—only for Elena to realize that the room has filled with witches while she'd been distracted and disoriented. She fights and claws and they drop her and hiss, but there is always another hand to pluck her up again. There are just so many of them—all of them closing in on her, their ranks oppressive, suffocating. They are an endless sea, and she is drowning.

Damon yanks her from the crowd and shoves her ahead. "Go!" he yells, his voice lost in the hellish wail still screaming all around them. He yanks out the heart of a witch who reaches for her, and then the heart of another.

Another witch behind Damon hurls a spell at him, but it rebounds oddly in the fractured light, and sends another witch nearby up in emerald flames. The dying witch's screams disappear into the void of the howling.

Stefan snaps the first witch's neck as she gapes at what she'd done, only for a group of them to descend upon him. Half of their spells seem to go haywire, but some of them come desperately close to landing true. Only Stefan's quick wits save him—though, he is playing a game he is bound to lose. Eventually, one of those witches will strike him down.

And in all of the chaos, Elena realizes that Connor has disappeared, her two vampires left unslain. A feat supposedly against every instinct ingrained in his very being.

Why why why would he do that?

Unless—

Unless, recognizing that they were staging a rescue attempt, Esther and Connor had set this space up not just as a trap, but as a distraction—

Damon screams something at her a second time before he turns back to help his brother.

The witches all turn their attention on the vampires in their midst.

And Elena realizes that Damon and Stefan are buying her time.

She won't waste a second of it.

Elena bolts for the back of the cave, to the tunnel entrance from which the witches had swarmed.

Another one slips into the room just as she hurtles past, but she doesn't give her the time to react before shoving her out of the way as hard as she can, not even checking her momentum in the slightest as she scrambles past her and races down the corridor.

Where to go where to go—

She sprints headlong down the corridor, her feet sliding over the slick ground, only her determination and desperation keeping her upright, careening forward. Each step forward carries her further and further into a thickening darkness through which she can barely see. Fire burns in her side. Her lungs. Her eyes ache and her ears ring, so badly that she nearly misses the first fork in the passageway, only discernible because one of those hallways appears just a smidge less dark than the other—

She barrels down that lighter corridor without letting herself question what will happen to her if she is wrong.

What will happen to Klaus. To Stefan and Damon and Caroline and Tyler.

The passageway ends in another spiderwebbing of possible turns—again she chooses the one that seems a bit brighter than the rest.

She repeats this process again— again—

Until, finally, she hears something, over the ringing in her ears—a low, vicious snarl that she recognizes all too well.

It's an inhuman sound. An animal sound.

Her monster's sound.

When she rounds the corner, she spies Connor, flipping the stake in his hand, as he slowly circles Klaus. She makes sure to keep to the shadows, out of Connor's line of sight.

After a second, she realizes that he's talking— Whatever he says, she cannot make it out over the ringing in her ears—but it elicits another one of those warning snarls from Klaus.

Klaus.

Her heart leaps at the sight of him, still alive.

It's only a moment later, when her eyes adjust to the watery, shifting light, that she realizes that he is bound at the wrists by some sort of strange, milky blue stone, fashioned into a pair of manacles and chains. A circle of shimmering scarlet powder surrounds the point of his imprisonment. She has no doubt the manacles must be supernatural, so as to hold him. That the circle must as well.

He looks like absolute hell. Blood pours from his eyes, his nose, his ears. His skin has taken on a ghastly, bluish hue, and he slumps in his shackles, his knees dragging in a puddle of his own blood. Even with his eyes turned gold and feral, and his mouth full of wicked fangs, he looks more like a trapped wolf than the savage, primordial god her soul knows him to be.

The fact that he does not seem to see, smell, or hear her disturbs her most of all.

Seeing Klaus brought so low tears at her heart. She can't accept this.

That fierce, dark wave of protective fury swells within her breast.

The thing is: she doesn't have to accept this.

Elena swallows, her hands fisting around the length of cold metal tucked into her coat. She'll have to move soon—will have to risk everything— She's only going to have one shot, so she'll have to make it worth it.

As she gathers her courage, her ears begin to adjust as well.

"Esther wanted me to wait until she arrived, but I think this dance is just about over," Connor confides in Klaus, still circling him. He pauses with his back turned to Elena. Holds his hand up to the edge of that scarlet circle, only to pull back with a grunt as though shocked.

With Connor distracted, Elena edges into the room. Carefully. Carefully.

If she screws this up, it will be over.

Only a couple of yards in front of her, still looking away from her, Connor sets his shoulders and tries again, this time passing through the circle. "Not much of a deterrent for a supernatural human," he mutters, the barrier snapping at his skin like static electricity.

She takes another step. Does not even dare to breathe. Prepares herself to strike, just the way Alaric had taught her.

Finally, Klaus notices her. Their eyes lock. He shakes his head, as though he could deny her presence here.

Connor raises his stake—

And Elena throws herself onto him, the hunting blade in her hand skewering up and into his kidney. Blood spills over her hands in a wave when she drags the blade free. He drops like a stone, just like Damon had insisted he would.

It's a cowardly, dishonorable way to kill. And yet, she feels not a ripple of guilt as she watches him drop. She knows that she should. Knows that compassion and empathy and even decency and mercy were once traits she possessed. Her soul is utterly quiet as she takes in her fallen enemy.

She's gotten so terribly, terribly good at stabbing people in the back.

On the ground, Connor reaches for her, but she doesn't have time for that. She rips the stake from his slackening grip and pockets both it and the knife before approaching that barrier. Her feet track through the spreading pool of Connor's blood.

Klaus stares up at her like she's the only star in the night sky.

Like the very sight of her, here to save him, covered in their enemy's blood, just wrecks him.

Good. He could do a little wrecking. So long as it's by her own hand, and no one else's.

(He's already wrecked her, after all.)

"You came," he breathes, like he cannot believe the evidence of his eyes.

"Of course I came for you," she tells him. "I will always come for you. You're on my list."

Without waiting for a response from him, she lays her hand flat against the barrier. Just as she had suspected from watching Connor, it emits more of a startling shock than anything else. She pushes through it without letting herself double-guess herself, ignoring the way her body flares with heat as she passes through that invisible membrane.

"Would my death not have made your life much simpler?" he asks her when she is mere inches from him.

"Of course it would have," she tells him honestly. The temptation to reach out, to touch the side of his face, to reassure herself that he is here, he is real, is nearly overwhelming. But if she gives in now—if she touches him—then she'll never get them out of here. Time is everything. So, instead, she fights the urge down and examines the manacles binding him. "How do I free you?"

"You can't," he tells her, his eyes drinking her in all the while. "Not without a witch."

"I brought one," she mutters as she takes a closer look at his wrists. Curses when she discovers the skin around those manacles is completely blackened, the bone gleaming white as the moon in some places where the skin has completely charred away.

"How are you here?" he asks her. There is some desperate emotion shining in his eyes. Something she's never quite seen in him before.

"Haven't I ever told you not to underestimate me?"

If not, let this be a lesson—

A smile curls at the corner of Klaus's mouth. He watches her with fixed devotion, in that drowning, desperate way that has so frightened and excited her. Yet whatever Klaus might have said, he never gets the chance.

"You'll find that, even should you free my son, attempting to drag him across that circle will prove impossible."

Elena whirls to confront Esther, cool and collected as she observes them from the threshold of the entrance.

Chapter Text

"You two have always made a handsome couple," Esther continues. "It's a pity the relationship has always been doomed."

"I'm not my ancestresses," Elena snaps as Klaus fights his way up from his knees.

"Aren't you?" Esther asks. "You certainly killed poor Connor with as little hesitation as your forebears would have shown."

Elena glances down into Connor's blank stare.

She hadn't even noticed when exactly he'd breathed his last. Too preoccupied with Klaus.

"Leave off of her," Klaus growls, twisting at his restraints. "If my relationships are doomed then that makes you the harbinger."

"We don't have time for this," Esther says, clucking her tongue. She addresses herself solely to Elena. "Each day your child grows stronger—her voice on the wind clearer and clearer for those who know to listen—"

"What does killing Klaus have anything to do with protecting our baby?" Elena demands.

Esther purses her lips. "It will permanently rid you of the threat he poses both of you."

Elena reads between the lines: if Esther steals their baby and murders her, then Klaus will hunt her for eternity for it. There will be no escaping him. Not ever. Not unless Esther takes him out now...

… even if she can no longer get her hands on the cure with Connor dead.

Elena reaches up to tangle her fingers with Klaus's. "I don't want to get rid of him," she states. "Everyone's been asking me to make a choice—and I've made it."

Klaus turns to her, opens his mouth—

But Esther twists her hand, and he sinks to his knees, screaming as fresh blood streams from his eyes and mouth. Smoke billows from every place the manacles touch his skin.

"I know it's a sacrifice," Esther says. "But think of your baby—"

Elena falls to her knees before Klaus, cupping his face in her hands, thumbs stroking over his cheekbones. Trying to comfort him, the best as she can. "I am."

Trying to think, to remember what she had planned for this eventuality, so hopefully she can find a way for them out of this—

"Your child is a witch," Esther persists. "She ought to be raised with her own kind."

"But my child's not a psycho, so she's not your kind either."

Esther shakes her head, as though she is terribly, terribly disappointed in her. "If you refuse to see reason, then I shall have to choose the best course for you." Esther's eyes narrow, and a moment later, Elena's hand moves of its own volition to reach into her coat pocket and grasp the stake. As Esther controls her.

"Stop!" she screams, thrashing with her whole body against the hold Esther has on her, but to no avail—it's as though she doesn't even have an arm—she can't feel anything past her shoulder— "Stop!" Any thoughts of tricking Esther, of maybe getting close enough to do for her what she did for Connor, dissolve with her fear. "I'll go with you!" she cries. "Okay! I'll go with you! Anything, just not this!"

Klaus climbs to his feet, his face set like stone as he watches her with grim determination.

In utter horror, she watches as her hand emerges from her pocket clutching at the stake— as her arm swings back to strike—

She turns to Esther, ready to beg—

In time to see Bonnie step inside the space, that awful, vacant expression plastered on her face.

Any hope she might have had of escape sputters and dies as Bonnie walks straight up to Esther—as she joins her—

Whatever her friends had attempted to keep Bonnie out of commission, they'd obviously failed—

"Good, just on time. I've been calling for you," Esther murmurs to Bonnie. "Watch closely how I accomplish this next feat."

Against her will, Elena's arm dives for Klaus's heart.

And a familiar, dread wind rips through the room, severing the spell holding her captive. The very air itself crawls under the might of Bonnie's power. With her Expression.

Elena collapses onto her back as the force on her arm flash evaporates, the stake clattering to the ground at Klaus's feet.

Bewildered, she looks to Esther as Bonnie slams her hand against the older witch's heart. Watches as Esther's confusion gives way to shock. "Why?" she breathes.

"Because I'm not a tool, or a weapon," Bonnie says with utter dispassion as Esther drops to the ground. "Least of all against my friends."

Esther's lips move, but no words form. A creeping gray pallor inches over her skin, until she is nothing but a cold, empty corpse, sprawled out beside Connor… in so many ways, her final victim.

(Esther's victim, not hers.)

(She repeats this to herself, again and again.)

At first, Elena can only stare in stunned silence.

"Since it seems you're on our side," Klaus chimes in, breathing through her shock, "perhaps a little help with these chains?"

Bonnie shakes her head. "Yeah, of course." She winces as she steps through the barrier spell. Pauses. "That's going to be a problem."

"It's tied with a blood knot, isn't it?" Klaus asks.

Bonnie kneels to examine the scarlet markings on the ground. "Yes."

"What does that mean?" Elena asks.

"Only the blood of a witch of Esther's line can undo this."

Klaus rattles his chains. "No matter. I'll take my chances crossing it."

"What about Esther's blood?" Elena asks. "Can't we use it?"

"It has to be from a living source," Bonnie explains. She frowns at Klaus. "We're not going to make it out of here alive if you blow yourself up trying to cross your mother's barrier."

"I shan't blow myself up," he says. "At worst I'll probably just smolder—"

Elena picks up the knife she'd used to murder Connor and wipes the blade clean.

"What are you doing?" Klaus asks her as she draws the edge over her palm and pours her blood over the spellwork.

"I told you," Elena says, "My blood and the baby's blood are bound up in a circuit right now—and our baby is a witch of your mother's line."

Indeed, as her blood sinks into the ground, the entire circle begins to glow, brighter and brighter, until the whole thing goes up in hissing metallic flames.

Bonnie waves away the remaining residue the way someone would brush aside a cobweb. "That's one way to do it." She turns back to Klaus then, who watches Elena with an intensity that makes her shiver.

After a moment of examining the manacles, Bonnie whispers a spell into them that releases Klaus seconds later.

Immediately, he is at her side. "Are you alright?" He tries to snatch at her hand, but she won't allow it.

Instead, carefully, she takes his hand, weirdly conscientious of the way her blood smears against his palm, hot and slick. The wound stings on contact. The pain is steadying. Cleansing. "I will be—"

Caroline and Tyler spill through the entrance, both of them looking thoroughly bedraggled.

"Thank God, everyone's here," Caroline sighs, breezing over the dead bodies and offering the three of them all a tight smile.

"We don't have much time—Damon and Stefan are holding the way open, but it's pretty hairy out there," Tyler adds.

Klaus scoops Elena up into his arms. "Lead on."

After a narrow escape, culminating in a not-so-accidental deadly cave-in that buries the rest of Esther's host alive, Elena's friends fill her in on what she'd missed— How Bonnie had awoken and insisted on going after them… and how the rest of her friends had made a game-time decision to trust her. How Matt had had to kill a witch to save Caroline. How he hadn't even realized what he was doing until it was too late, and all that was left was his guilt.

"I'm going home," Bonnie quietly tells them all at the edge of town. There's a dark, haunted look in her eyes that Elena recognizes far too well.

Bonnie had also crossed a line tonight from which she could never go back.

"Do you need anyone to go with you?" Caroline asks.

"No. I just need some time by myself. Maybe see my dad. Get some sleep." She shrugs. "It's been a while since I was alone inside my own head."

Elena makes a note to check in on her tomorrow morning. Not to let her own issues cloud her from looking after the people who matter the very most when they're in pain.

"I'm heading out too," Matt declares when Bonnie wanders off.

"Let me buy you a drink, man," Tyler offers.

Unlike Bonnie, Matt gratefully accepts the company.

Caroline shoots Elena a look.

Elena waves her off. "It's fine. Go with them."

And so her three remaining friends leave, off to commiserate over all the blood on their young hands. She wonders if Tyler and Caroline have any advice for coping. If they do, neither of them have ever shared it with her.

Not that she's ever asked.

Finally, that leaves her with just Klaus and the Salvatores. The four of them stand awkwardly in a loose circle, appraising each other.

"Give us a minute," she tells Klaus.

"I'd prefer to keep you in easy reach."

"I know. I still need a minute."

Klaus examines her narrowly, but whatever he finds in her face must satisfy him, because he slinks off to wait against the brick edifice of one of the boutiques facing the square.

"Thank you for what you did for me tonight," she tells Damon and Stefan, the words pouring up from her heart. "It means everything."

"So long as you know we did it for you," Damon says.

Stefan peers over her shoulder, into the night. "You're going home with him." It's a statement, not a question.

"Yeah. I am."

"The offer still stands, you know."

The offer to run away with them.

She gazes up into Stefan's face. Takes a moment to look at both of them. Her dear ones. Her beloveds. Her past. "I know," she tells them.

"It always will, Elena," Damon adds.

"I know that too. But—don't wait for me, okay?"

Damon looks like her answer breaks his heart.

They both do.

(And maybe that's the point. They will always break each other's hearts.)

"I'm going to be okay," she promises them, as gently as she can. Then, because she cannot suppress the hope that rises within her, nor the smile that bursts over her, she confesses, "I'm going to live."

And, somehow, they smile back at her.

For her.

Klaus walks her home in contemplative silence.

Beside her, he's practically boiling over with questions. She can feel him literally vibrating with his desire to spring them on her.

At her front porch, they both pause.

"This is goodnight then," he says, watching her beneath the yellow lamplight as she unlocks her front door.

Elena turns to face in him in her open doorway. "That's it? You don't want to talk?"

"I do."

"No demands to talk now though?"

"No. Not right now."

Behind her, the clock in the front hall chimes the hour. Midnight.

"It's Christmas," she observes.

"So it is." He turns to leave.

"Klaus, would you like to come inside?"

Klaus freezes halfway down the front steps. Returns to her at once. "You're finally lowering the draw bridge?"

"Yes."

He casts a conspicuous glance over her shoulder. "Is this a trap?"

"Why would you think that?"

His mouth twitches. "I assumed I'd have to lay siege for at least another month before you relented."

"I'm here now, aren't I? I didn't run away."

His gaze softens. "No. You saved me instead."

At a loss of how to respond, she says the only thing that comes to mind. "Merry Christmas." And, taking his hand, she welcomes him into her home.

Chapter Text

Klaus is strangely awkward as he lingers in the front hall of her house. He trails after her like a ghost as she climbs the stairs to her bedroom and prepares for bed, silent and thoughtful as he watches her. Stares blankly at the photos stuck into her vanity mirror, the framed horse drawing over her bed, the books on her shelf.

Since he does not seem inclined to speak, and she doesn't know where to begin, exactly, she focuses instead on brushing her hair and changing into a clean set of clothes, on scrubbing the residue of grime and blood and magic from her face and her hands in the bathroom sink.

"What did you mean earlier when you said you'd made your choice?" he asks her at last from the threshold of her bathroom.

Elena pauses in the middle of rinsing her face and meets his eyes through the reflection in the bathroom mirror. Water trickles from her face down her neck, into the collar of her fresh tee-shirt.

There's something entirely unfair about the fact that a man with so much blood on his hands, so much misery to lay directly at his feet, can look so vulnerable.

That's the issue. At some point she's started to see him as a man, when really she would have been so much wiser never to forget that he's a monster. (And yes, she knows that too. Can never entirely forget it. And yet—that's not all he is. Just like he's not just a villain. Not to her, anyway. Not for a long time.)

She straightens and turns to face this man, then. Her man.

"If I tell you, you can't overreact."

"I never overreact."

She frowns at him. She can't tell whether he's serious or not. Decides it doesn't matter. Not right now.

She moves past him, into her bedroom. Puts a good ten feet of space between them. Twists at her fingers. "The thing is, I'm in love with you." She can't even look at him when she says it.

There's no need. He's before her in an instant, the physical distance she'd attempted as a last desperate attempt to shield herself from him—from herself—gone in the blink of an eye. And then his hands are on her face, his fingers cool and gentle as he coaxes her, finally, to look at him.

For a long moment, he doesn't say anything to her at all, merely gazes deeply into her eyes. Reading her, the way she has learned to read him. She cannot stop herself from leaning into his touch.

"We know each other," he says at last. "I know you, and you know me."

"Unfortunately."

"You don't mean that."

"No, I don't." She's helpless to the truth.

He leads her to the bed. Sets her down on the edge of it as though she is made of porcelain. "How did this revelation come about?"

He must sense her hesitation—must hear it in the pulse of her blood.

Again, he catches her eyes. "Tell me. Please."

It's the please that does it. That crumbles that last little resolve she has to hold out against him.

She reaches out and touches her hand over his chest. Feels the thunder of his heart against her palm. "When I realized you'd been taken. I couldn't stand the idea of it. Of losing you. In that moment, I had to face how I feel about you without any denials or excuses."

"Say it again." There's so much untamed longing in the demand. So much famine. He says it like an order, but in reality, he's begging her to affirm this one, crucial detail for him.

Elena pulls away from him. "I love you."

The words ignite that fire in him that is always, always burning just below the surface. In the blink of an eye he has her tipped onto her back, his body atop hers heavy and delicious and familiar and weirdly comforting as his mouth finds her own. His hands roam her body, and the promise of his touch in more intimate, satisfying places obliterates her sense of reason. And oh—those kisses—she could drown in the taste of his mouth, the feeling of his lips and his teeth and his tongue on her. Has drowned before. Will drown again.

"You'll marry me then," Klaus declares against her throat, nipping at the constellations of scars he's left her there.

The sentence clatters through her. She freezes beneath him, all of her eager pliancy from only a moment ago now totally absent. "Let me up," she says, pushing at his shoulder. "You're crushing me."

He rolls off of her immediately, and she takes pains to straighten her clothes while she waits for the hum of desire in her blood to cool to a manageable level.

"I don't think we should be doing this," she tells him when she can at last look at him without flushing all over. Without the danger that she'll climb right into his lap.

Klaus's brows rise. "Whyever not?"

"Because I think we're on different pages about what it means when I say I love you."

"I don't see how."

"Klaus, I'm not going to marry you."

His eyes narrow. "I heard you dismiss your other suitors—"

"This has nothing to do with them."

"This should be so simple, then, Elena. I love you, and you love me. I know that you desire me."

"I do…"

Klaus takes her hand. "We have a child on the way. Marry me and let me take care of you. Provide for you both. Protect you."

Elena breaks away from him. "It's not that simple." She gets up and begins to pace. "You have a list of enemies going back a thousand years. If we're in danger, it's from our connection to you."

Klaus watches her from her bed, his eyes tracking her the way a cat tracks a mouse.

The way he watches her used to unnerve her. Used to—

"Is that why you won't say yes?" he asks, very quietly. As though he's giving the idea some serious weight.

She pauses mid-pace. Huffs out a breath. "No." Hates that she's so honest to him, when she used to be so good at lying.

Klaus holds up his hands. "Then please: enlighten me as to why you continue to refuse my suit."

She sinks down onto the window seat. "I still mean what I said earlier. This is all moving too fast between us. I need time."

"Time is a resource I can never exhaust."

"Then lend me some. Please."

He considers her in contemplative silence for what feels a very long time. He must see something in her that sways him, though, because eventually he softens, and asks her, "What do you want then, Elena? Truly."

"I want us to start over."

He laughs. "A bit late for that."

"Fine, then I want us to reverse course a minute. I'm not looking for a husband or a soulmate right now. I just want… a boyfriend."

"A boyfriend." He says the word like he doesn't understand it.

"Someone to have fun with. To get to know."

"We've just been over this. We already know each other."

"You're not listening— our whole relationship has just been one huge cataclysmic event after the other, and I need to know that we can work when it's quiet. When there's nothing forcing our hands. I want to know what it's like for you to take me out dancing, or to go to the movies together, or just spend the whole night talking—"

Understanding lights his eyes. "You want me to court you."

"Well, yeah, I guess that's one way of putting it—"

A smile curls over Klaus's lips as he slinks from her bed over to where she perches at the window seat. He sinks to his knees in front of her and takes her hand. He kisses each finger. Very distractingly. "How shall I begin?" he murmurs. "Shall I take you to prom?"

She swallows. "That's not until May."

Klaus hums against her wrist. "New Year's then. That's next week. How about New York?"

"Or you could start smaller. Take me out to dinner tomorrow."

"I could do that." His hand skims over her waist. Her thighs. "Tell me. What is the etiquette these days for intimacy between boyfriends and girlfriends?"

Her heart pounds so hard she feels it in her whole body. "You have to wait until at least the third date."

He pulls back, knowingly. "Ah. My apologies." He must be able to smell her desire. Sense how feverishly she wants him.

She resists the urge to throw herself at him. Tells herself that if things go well—which, she thinks—she hopes—they will—then there will be time for that. A lot of time.

No need to confuse things when they're just getting clear.

"So, we're agreed then?" she asks, her voice strangely hoarse. "We'll slow it down, try dating for a while before we get more serious?"

The wicked, playful cast to Klaus's expression sobers. "How do you envision our shared interest in the child?"

"What do you mean?"

"Whether or not our relationship progresses slowly or quickly, we're going to have a child together in a matter of months."

"I don't see why we can't agree to co-parent no matter what the status of our romantic relationship is."

"Co-parent," he repeats, as though he is tasting the word for the first time. "What does that entail?"

"She's your baby too. Having her father in her life is what's going to be best for her." Probably. Hopefully.

"You're proposing to separate our romantic relationship from our parental relationship."

"Yes. For now, anyway."

Klaus cocks his head, mulling that over.

"Well?" Elena prompts him when the silence stretches on long enough to stir her nerves. "What are you thinking?"

"That you'll never be merely a girlfriend to me," Klaus informs her. "You're the only woman I've loved in ten centuries, and through some miracle you're also the mother of my child. Yet if boyfriend is the role I must inhabit to have you, then I shall endeavor to inhabit it well." He pauses. "Will you go steady with me?"

That feeling from earlier—hope—bubbles in her chest. Her mouth twitches as she attempts to suppress a smile. "That's not a thing."

"Isn't it though?"

"Come to bed with me," she offers him instead.

Somehow, taking his hand and leading him to her bed just to sleep feels a thousand times more intimate than any of the times she's actually gone to bed with him for more carnal reasons.

"What do you want?" he asks her again as they settle into the bed.

"Right now, I want to go to sleep. And—if you want to, that is—I was hoping you'd spend the night here with me. That maybe you'd hold me, and I'd know that you were here, and that all three of us were together."

"I think that could be arranged." There's an odd note in his voice when he agrees, but she doesn't have much time to mull it over. Right away, Klaus pulls her close against his body, until she is warm, and safe, and comforted by the rise and fall of his chest as he takes deep, calming breaths.

She falls asleep listening to those breaths, and the last thing she sees is the brightest star hanging low in the night sky.

Chapter Text

Christmas morning dawns bright and crisp and clear and cold.

Elena stretches, luxuriating in the soft coolness of her bed, before she slowly realizes that someone is missing who is very definitely supposed to be here.

A moment later, the soft sound of conversation and the smell of fresh-baked cinnamon rolls alert her that she is very much so not alone this Christmas.

She creeps down the stairs, fully aware that there is absolutely no way that she's going to sneak up on the vampires congregating in her home, but eager to catch an unobserved glimpse while they're distracted just the same.

As she had suspected, Caroline had apparently shown up bright and early this morning, and is busy bustling around her kitchen like a general, pointing here and there with her whisk as Klaus haplessly attempts to fetch supplies and ingredients from the cupboards and set oven temperatures for her.

And it's strange, because a week ago she would have been so terribly jealous of the ease and sheer normality Caroline is able to wring out of Klaus. Elena isn't sure she will ever be able to coax him to behave like this. To be so domestic with her, even with a baby on the way. Isn't sure she could see herself in Caroline's shoes even attempting it.

But that's the thing.

Klaus isn't the only weirdo.

He makes her weird too.

The two of them will never be a normal couple.

A week ago that would have eaten at her, but after last night, after everything, being normal doesn't seem to matter very much.

And as Elena spies upon her best friend and her boyfriend (just thinking the word shoots a little thrill down her spine), there isn't a speck of jealousy within her to be found.

Instead, she looks at Caroline and Klaus (but mostly Caroline) making Christmas cookies and tiny delicate mince pies while the cinnamon rolls cool on her mother's wire rack, and for the first time, she feels utterly certain that her relationship will work with Klaus. That somehow, there is a way for him to fit into her life, without having to sacrifice everything else. That if Caroline can so easily be their friend—both her friend and his friend—then the others will follow. Eventually. Somehow.

She can't fight the grin that lights up her face when she joins them at the kitchen island.

"Please tell me it's time to ice," she says as she examines the haul of confectionary tools Caroline had brought with her.

Grinning back at her, Caroline hands her the white icing for the rolls. "I knew this would lure you out of bed."

"Is that the secret?" Klaus asks, as though he doesn't know exactly how to get her out of bed. Or how to wake her up at least.

Whatever retort she may have had dies on her tongue as she glances between Caroline and Klaus. As she imagines that future she had just glimpsed, dinner parties and holidays and warmth and laughter and possibility.

Yeah. Because maybe this is it. Maybe it's all icing from here on out.

With everything so hectic recently, Elena's cupboards are significantly barer than they usually are, and there's a whole list of sundries she needs to restock on. Eager to prove himself an exemplary boyfriend, Klaus volunteers to do the shopping for her (with only a couple of small regrets that he no longer has any hybrids to delegate to), leaving Elena and Caroline alone together to linger over the baked goods.

"So your mom's working?" Elena asks, guessing at why Caroline had shown up so early.

"Just the morning shift. Mayor Lockwood's invited us over for Christmas dinner. Matt too, I think." She pauses. "I'm sure there's room for one more if you want to come."

"No, I think after everything, I just want a night in." Or a night out with just her boyfriend. Whichever.

"Thank God. I was trying to figure out how Klaus would fit in to the dinner party."

Elena snorts. "I know how to make things easy on myself, huh?"

Caroline appraises her, head tilted, a serious cast to her expression. Like she's looking deep into the issue. Getting to the heart of things. "Sometimes the right choice for you is also the hardest possible choice."

"This is right. He's right."

"Then I'll support you, Elena."

Overcome, Elena pulls Caroline into a tight hug. "I don't deserve you," she mumbles damply into Caroline's shoulder.

"Well, nobody does."

They both laugh.

"Where're Tyler and Matt?" Elena asks a little later, licking icing from her thumb.

"Hung over. Don't expect to hear from either of them before two."

"How's he taking it?"

They both know she means Matt.

"The fact that he killed a human? About as well as can be expected, I guess. Which: it's not like he's hasn't killed plenty of vampires."

As though practice ever makes it easier. As though Caroline will ever be able to understand how Matt can draw such a distinction and still call her his friend.

They both fall silent, Caroline's words—true as they are—ringing in their ears.

"What about Bonnie?" Elena asks at last. "Have you heard from her?"

"Zilch."

The oven beeps, and Caroline flits over to it to take out the tray of mince pies. The sharp, delicious aroma of cinnamon and cloves unfurls throughout the room.

"She'll call us," Caroline says as she transfers the pies to a wire rack to cool. "When she's ready."

The call comes that afternoon—just a short question, Bonnie's voice so tired and small—Will they come over?

They arrive at Bonnie's as the winter sun sinks toward the horizon far too early, the way everything is in the winter. They bring armfuls of baked goods and a thermos of hot mulled wine and cuddle up with Bonnie on the sofa under the window in the front room, one of them on each side of her.

For a long time, they just sit together, It's a Wonderful Life playing on the television with the volume turned down so low that probably only Caroline can hear it.

"I thought I'd be more upset than I am," Bonnie finally tells them. She takes a sip from the thermos. "I've never killed someone before—I thought I'd be devastated."

Elena knows that ache of discovering just how much farther she is willing to go than she ever dreamed herself capable. Of learning how much harder her heart is than she ever realized.

Carefully, she takes the thermos from Bonnie's hand and sets it down on the table. Entwines their fingers. "All it means is that you're willing to sacrifice yourself for the ones you love," she says. "To take that burden on yourself." Whether or not this is strictly true remains to be seen. It's still the only comfort Elena has ever found. The only thing left to cling to late at night when she remembers what it had felt like to bury the knife in Alaric's heart.

(She had lost no sleep at all the night before over Connor.)

(In truth, this is the first time she's thought of him at all since she killed him.)

(Murdered him.)

(No, better not to think of that.)

"Do you really think that's true?" Bonnie asks, painfully hopeful.

"Of course it is," Caroline assures her.

Caroline, who has never to Elena's knowledge lost sleep over any of it.

Before them, the movie plays soundlessly on, and the three of them huddle close against the world.

They say their goodbyes around six—Caroline to go join her mother at the Lockwoods, Elena to meet up with Klaus.

"Are you sure you don't want me to stay?" she offers as Bonnie sees them to the door.

Bonnie shakes her head. "There's this party my dad wants me to attend with him—he says it's not political, but I think he wants to network so he can challenge Tyler's mom next spring." She shrugs. "It'll be good. I'll be too distracted trying to remember everyone's names to think about last night."

They all gather in for one more hug before scattering.

"Oh, and Elena," Bonnie calls out as Elena unlocks her car. "About that cloaking spell. Be ready tomorrow night."

Klaus shows up on her front step an hour later, looking distractingly handsome in a simple black suit, a spray of undoubtedly expensive hothouse flowers in the crook of his arm. He's made some attempt at slicking back his hair. A stray curl falls over his forehead, and Elena cannot help but brush it back when she greets him. Cannot help but kiss him as she pulls him inside.

"You're not dressed yet," Klaus notes between toe-curling kisses.

Elena pulls away, frowning. "What?"

"You asked me to take you out to dinner." He presents the bouquet to her. "This is how it's done, is it not?"

She blushes. She'd completely forgotten.

Or—perhaps she hadn't expected Klaus to take her suggestion so seriously.

Overcome, Elena takes the offered blooms, careful not to crush their delicate petals. The aroma of them, ripe and sweet, wafts up from their center. They must have cost a fortune. "They're beautiful," she murmurs, taking them back into the kitchen so she can find a vase for them. Lovingly, she places them on the coffee table in the front by the Christmas tree, where she's been spending so much of her time of late.

"I'll just be a few minutes," she promises Klaus, pressing another kiss to his mouth, before dashing up the stairs.

She throws on a green satin wrap dress she bought last year and never wore, her mother's jade earrings, and a pair of black pumps. In the bathroom mirror, she realizes that her hair is starting to curl at the ends, but she forgoes fixing it. Hastily freshens her makeup and applies some burgundy lipstick.

When she glides down the stairs a few minutes later, Klaus is slouching against the front door, absently examining the damage he'd wrought to the frame the day before. "I'll have this fixed," he says, before turning to look her way. He straightens when he sees her. Comes alert, his gaze slowly trailing the length of her body. Drinking her in.

Her stomach flips as she thinks about Klaus drinking her. Consuming her. The thought has her whole body heating.

As she steps up to his side, she sees her same desire reflected back at her in his eyes.

There's no way Klaus can't detect the bent of her thoughts. No way he isn't thinking the same things.

Her phone rings.

Jeremy.

"I have to take this," she apologizes, fumbling with her phone and taking it to the back of the house.

It's Christmas, and she's completely forgotten to call him.

"Elena, Merry Christmas!" Jeremy calls over the line. For a moment, the connection is so clear she thinks he could be right here in the room with her. Her heart aches with how much she misses him.

She swallows down the feeling. Makes her voice merry and bright. "Merry Christmas, Jer. Tell me about your day."

He does, spinning out the details with lazy good humor. There's a warm, familiar jubilance to his tone—he's been drinking, having a good time. Far away from all of the troubles here in Mystic Falls. Safe. Living the life she has always wanted for him.

"And you?" he asks at the end. "What are you up to?"

"It's been quiet here," she half-lies. "Caroline and I baked, and we watched It's a Wonderful Life over at Bonnie's. I have dinner plans tonight. You know. The usual."

Jeremy accepts her reply, tells her about his plans for the evening, and for the rest of winter break.

When she hangs up, Klaus has appeared in the kitchen with her. He takes her into his arms before Elena even realizes that that's what she needs right now.

"You miss him," he observes, stroking his fingers through her hair.

"Every day."

"You sent him away because of me." It's not really a question.

"Yes."

"I shouldn't have targeted him."

She dashes the tears from her eyes with the back of her wrist. It's far too late for apologies. Not that she's even really looking for one. "No, you shouldn't have."

"Would you like to bring him back?"

Elena pauses. Pulls away.

Somehow, it's never occurred to her that with Klaus now effectively her boyfriend, her ally, there's no reason to hide Jeremy away.

He could come home. Move back into his old room, play video games on the sofa and eat dinner with her and go to school and meet his niece.

There's no reason to hide Jeremy away anymore.

No reason, except that he has escaped the perpetual cycle of death and despair that she fears may always linger over her here in Mystic Falls like the death shroud she should never have shrugged off last April.

No reason, except that he is happy, and safe, and she would not endanger that for all the world.

"No," she tells Klaus. "I think it's best for Jeremy to stay exactly where he is."

She never tells him where, exactly, that is, nor does he question her decision.

Instead, he takes her hand, flipping it over to kiss the pulse point at her wrist, and thumbs the tears from her cheeks. "As my lady wishes."

And it's not very hard at all to tuck her regrets away, to beam up at Klaus, her handsome, strange, enthralling man, and ask him to take her out—to make her forget about everything else. Just for a little while.

Chapter Text

"This is surreal."

They've been at the restaurant for perhaps fifteen minutes. It's a beautiful, charming gem hidden away in the mountains, just a handful of linen-clothed tables spaced acres apart, each of them with breathtaking views of the falls through dramatic floor to ceiling windows. A roaring fireplace dominates the entire wall opposite them, bathing the room in a warm glow as the waiters bob between tables, dancing attendance on the guests in their glittering refinery.

"Is this not what you requested?" Klaus asks her.

Elena stares blankly at the handwritten menu. "I thought you'd take me somewhere in town."

She can feel Klaus's frown even without glancing up at him. "Would you prefer something else?"

"No—I'm just—soaking this in. You. Me. Out for a date. No gore or pyrotechnics in sight."

The frown smooths into a barely suppressed smirk. "I promise to still keep things interesting for you."

"Not too interesting."

"I can play at being a man as long as you insist that that's what you want." The unsaid conclusion hangs between them: But I'll never be a man.

She doesn't know how it is that Klaus, who has intimately explored her body in dozens of ways, can still look at her and make her flush as though he is piercing her for the first time.

The blade cuts both ways, though. As he knows her, so, too, does she know him.

"You are a man, though. You're a monster, but you're also a man."

He tilts his head to study her. "Which did you fall in love with?" He asks as though her answer isn't vitally important to him. As though he doesn't hang on her words.

"I don't know," she tells him with complete honesty. "I've stopped losing sleep over it."

The waiter brings them a bottle of wine, which Klaus takes from him in order to pour her glass himself.

"I can't drink," Elena reminds him as she watches the rich purple wine tumble into the glass.

"I recall several notable evenings that directly contradict that."

"No, because of the baby."

Klaus blinks at her. "Since when can women in the family way not drink?"

"Since always?"

"No, women have always drunk wine throughout—"

"Please don't quote medical wisdom from prior centuries. You don't think humors are still a thing, right?"

"Of course not," Klaus refutes a bit too sharply. Almost as though maybe he had thought humors were still common medical knowledge. Klaus takes a breath. Regathers himself. "I am in point of fact referring to just this most recent century—"

"Well, women don't smoke during pregnancy either anymore."

Klaus completely deflates. Takes her wine glass and swirls the liquid pensively. "Perhaps there is literature on the topic," he allows after a moment. "I don't usually have to pay too much mind to the subtleties of medical innovations."

Elena supposes that medicine, in particular, would be largely irrelevant to someone whose primary involvement with healing usually involves dark blood magic.

And also. Klaus uses a stylus to text. It would probably be asking too from him to adjust his thinking more than every few decades.

"You're ridiculous, you know," she tells him fondly.

"A fact of which you've made me painfully aware."

The thing about Klaus is that, as ridiculous as he is, he has this way of luring her in with his jokes and his stories and his thorny commentary, always pitched low as though he is telling her a secret.

Elena loves secrets. Loves listening to him talk, loves the way he strokes his thumb along the back of her hand, just that tiny point of contact lighting her up. Loves the way his eyes track the bob of her throat as she takes her first bite of dinner, the way he insists on ordering four separate desserts because she can't make up her mind.

And why not? She deserves this.

Deserves to be happy, in whatever way is still open to her.

"And what do young women study in university these days?" Klaus asks her as she vacillates between a bite of mille-feuille and peach melba.

"Whatever they like. What did women study when you went?"

"Which time?"

Elena scrunches her nose at him. "The times after the Dark Ages."

"I was actually born after the Dark Ages, thanks ever so."

"So what did women study?"

"Mostly, they didn't. Not at university, at least."

"I can't imagine Rebekah took very kindly to that."

Klaus laughs. "No, she didn't. There's a nineteenth century stained glass window in a library somewhere or other that commemorates her earning her degree back in the thirteenth century, despite considerable acrimony from her fellow scholars." He spears the last peach off of her plate. "Naturally, she commissioned the window herself."

Elena snatches the peach back from his fork. "And where do I go to find your portrait?"

Klaus eyes her. "Which one?"

She smiles sweetly at him from across the table. "The one you'd prefer to keep secret."

Klaus returns her smile, somehow painfully earnest and wistful. "Don't you already have enough of my secrets?"

"I suppose what I should have asked you is: what do you intend to study at university?" he asks her as he helps her into her coat.

"I don't know. Literature? Astronomy? Maybe I'll go pre-med."

"I didn't know you had an interest."

"My father was a doctor."

Klaus takes her hand. Plays with her fingers. "You'd be a hell of a surgeon."

"Why do you say that?"

"You forget I've seen you with a blade."

You forget I've seen you with a blade.

The words run under her skin throughout the drive back into town, an electric current, making her feel all twisted up and restless inside. Like she could run for miles if only she were set loose.

Would set herself loose.

"Tell me about a time you didn't get what you wanted," Elena asks Klaus, eager to distract herself. She keeps her eyes glued to the black road outside as they zip along the deserted country highway. The night is so dark and so close around them that all she can see is that small bubble illuminated by the SUV's headlights. She and Klaus could be alone in all the world, sailing through the vast night sky. Could be submerged beneath the Wickery River, for all she can tell, swimming beneath its familiar currents.

Klaus's voice, low and intent, like the roll of thunder in the mountains, draws her from her reverie. "As a youth, I had ambitions to enter the monastery."

The admission startles her. "Why would you want to be a monk?" Try as she might, she just can't square her image of Klaus with a life of religious devotion. With a life of abstinence. He's never struck her as one to deny himself.

Klaus's hands clench around the steering wheel. "I wanted more than a life tending my father's lands could provide. I was hungry for knowledge. A monastic life would have given me the opportunity to immerse myself in study. And—it would have given me the chance to paint. More than anything, I dearly wanted to paint." He breathes the last of this like a confession.

"Why didn't it work out?"

"My father refused to pay my entrance fee. He claimed the price was too dear."

"Were you very disappointed?"

"For a time." Klaus glances at her. "Not six months later, Tatia Petrova took up tenancy in one of the cottages on my father's estate. None of us knew it at the time, but she sealed my fate the moment I first laid eyes upon her."

Wet flecks of snow begin to spatter against the windshield. The view out the window grows even hazier.

"Did you love her?"

"I thought I did."

"What does that mean?"

"You know what it means."

"Klaus, pull over."

He obeys her with the placid solicitude of one who almost never feels the need to rush. As though time merely rolls over him.

Because it does, she thinks wildly as he parks the car.

But not her. She feels every second.

She doesn't think she'll ever live to be so old. And she doesn't want to look back on anything with regret when all is said and done.

When she is done.

She takes her seatbelt off and climbs into his lap, her knees tight against his hips. Her satin dress slips against her thighs, a cool caress that presages her desires. She links her arms around his neck and kisses him once, twice. Gentle kisses steeped in possession. Her possession of him. She leans her forehead against his, and tries very hard to articulate what she's feeling. "If you'd joined the monastery, you might have been far away when your parents laid the curse. They might have left you mortal."

"I used to think of that often."

"We never would have met."

"Your life would have been a much happier one."

She can't deny it.

Instead, she loosens his tie. Nips at the sensitive flesh beneath his ear. His arms tighten around her, encouraging her as she shifts more firmly against him. "Make it up to me," she commands him.

His hand traces her hip. "I thought you wanted to wait until the third date."

"You've met me, right? Since when is there a rule I haven't been willing to break?" Boldly, she grips his hand and guides it lower, to the center of her need for him. The green satin parts easily under his touch, revealing lacy underwear and thigh high stockings.

He shoots her a heated look from under his lashes.

She bites him on the mouth hard enough to draw blood before he can voice the comment she can already sense pooling on his venomous tongue. Swallows his groan and gratefully sinks into his worshipful touch.

At some point her underwear gets shredded—which, damn, she only has three matched sets like this, now down to two—but she hardly cares when Klaus scissors his fingers inside of her just like that, when it's all she can do to clutch at his shoulders and stare into his ocean dark eyes as he leads her through the swell of her pleasure.

They kiss for a long time, then, the taste of him bright and coppery and something more—something dark and electric lurking in the current of his blood. Everything is slow and languorous between them, like they have all the time in the world as he tastes himself in the corners of her mouth, his tongue stroking along her own as searches out the flavor of his blood on her skin.

She feels like she's sleepwalking, like every breath she takes he exhales. Like all she has to do is think it, and then his hands are obeying her desires, working free his belt clasp and parting his fly and thrusting home inside of her. The reality of that moment, the physicality of rising and falling against him, feeling the aching slide of him within her, makes her breath hitch. Feels like waking up.

"I'm glad you didn't get your way," she admits to him, her voice catching over the words as a spike of pleasure bolts through her. "I'm glad you're here now. I need you here now." It's an awful thing to say. She still hasn't entirely gotten over her horror at having fallen so in love with him. But she's also unable to lie about it anymore. And with self-deception no longer an option, all she can do is accept and move forward.

Fervently, Klaus pulls her mouth down for another kiss. "I lied earlier," he breathes against her mouth. "It wasn't laying eyes on Tatia that sealed my fate. It was the first time I ever saw you."

"And what fate is that?" she asks him with a devilish roll of her hips.

Klaus's grip on her stutters as he loses control of himself for that fraction of a second, his touch tight enough to make her groan, and she knows she will find fresh bruises on herself the next morning.

(It's a dangerous thing, taking him to her bed. She has to trust him, always.)

(Trusting him here, like this, has never been the issue.)

The question never gets answered. Maybe doesn't need to be.

He takes her home and for the second night she invites him into her bed.

In the young, still hours of the morning, he lies with his head pressed to her belly as Elena drifts on the edge of sleep in the dark cocoon of her childhood bedroom. Idly, she runs her fingers through Klaus's hair.

"Can you hear the heartbeat like that?" she asks him.

"Yes. Though I always hear her."

"Bonnie wants to do the cloaking spell tomorrow. Today."

Klaus shifts, so that he is propped up on his elbow to look at her. "Pardon?"

It's too dark for her to see him clearly, but she knows he can see her perfectly well.

"The cloaking spell. So your creepy aunt doesn't try to kidnap the baby."

"I haven't the faintest idea what you're on about," he tells her, bemusement thick in his voice.

Elena frowns at him. "I guess you missed the backstory." As best as she can, fighting a huge yawn, she fills him in on what his mother had told her.

"Are you certain Bonnie's up to a spell such as this, with so little preparation?"

"If she says she is, she is."

Klaus settles again against her stomach, his hand draped possessively over the barely visible curve. "I'm coming with you."

"Of course you are." She rests her hand atop his. "It's going to be fine."

Neither of them say anything more for a long time. Her exhaustion tugs at her, pulling her under.

She's barely awake, but she still hears Klaus when he murmurs, low, as though expelling a terrible secret, "I've never truly had to worry for anyone's safety before. I don't know what I would do if anything should ever happen to either of you."

Chapter Text

The next morning she finds out the Salvatores have left town again.

This time, they write her a goodbye.

And an invitation, left open.

She tucks the letter away at the bottom of her father's desk drawer, where it's unlikely to be disturbed.

Spends the day working on her college applications—most of them due by the New Year—while Klaus oversees the repairs to her front door.

"How long do you think the new frame will last?" Elena teases him from behind her laptop.

"Depends. Have you lately antagonized any other vampires without invitations?"

"Believe it or not, you're the only vampire who's ever put up such a fuss about getting inside."

Klaus sits down next to her at the dining room table, a thoughtful frown creasing his brow. "Obviously the Salvatores have invitations. Caroline and Tyler. Who else?"

Elena shuts her laptop to think. "Elijah. Katherine, unfortunately." She taps her nails against the table. "All the rest are dead."

"All the rest? Do you make a habit then of inviting vampires in?"

Elena rolls her eyes. "You have no idea how chaotic the first few months were after I found out about vampires. I had stalkers galore because I look like Katherine." She flicks him. "You included, must I add."

"Tell me."

"What?"

"Tell me about that time in your life. I want to hear about it."

It's not a story she's ever told before.

If anything, all she has practice in is helping others through the crisis of discovery.

And yet—He sounds so in earnest. Like he really does want to hear about what she went through. How she felt at the time.

And so she tells him. Everything she can remember, stilted and conflicting as the narrative is. It feels like reaching back into another lifetime—in some ways, it literally is. There are pieces she remembers as though they just happened an hour ago, and entire weeks that blur together. Impossible to consider that all of this had happened merely a year and a half ago. That she should have so recently been that girl, still heartbroken and barren inside from her grief. Still so innocent.

She hadn't known herself then. Not as she knows herself now.

Hadn't realized who she would be. Who her fate would make her.

But throughout the entire story, Klaus listens. Comments, occasionally.

("You had a vampire compass?"

"It was very useful. I wish I still had it."

"Surely you can spot a vampire without one."

"That's beside the point.")

Eventually, she gets to the part where Rose had kidnapped her. When she had met Elijah, and how she had coerced Katherine into telling her everything. How she had made that fateful deal.

"I always wondered why you were so eager to capitulate," Klaus admits.

She doesn't want to touch this. Not when he'd still broken his side of the bargain.

That was before she'd learned that he didn't follow the same code of honor as his brother.

Exhausted from rehashing the past, Elena slumps forward against the table, her chin in her hands. Even now, she can't help but watch Klaus, to absorb his details. His contradictions and surprises.

"You do have a sort of honor to you, don't you," she muses.

Klaus shoots her a meaningful look. "I've sworn my oaths to you. I'll swear you more if you desire it."

Till death us do part, if he had his way. Even now, when he's relented to her desires, she knows that idea is still lingering in the back of his mind.

Eternity.

She shakes it off.

"I believe you." She squints at him. Tries to reason out all of the things he's said to her since he crashed back into her life with his fuming declarations and his stormy ultimatums. "You protect what's yours."

Never mind that she doesn't always agree with how he categorizes those things. Never mind that she doesn't consider herself his at all.

She can accept that he does.

Can accept that he will always gaze out on the world from an alien perspective. That that will never change.

"I do," he agrees, sounding a bit caught off guard. "We're alike in that way."

She would never have phrased it that way, but—

"Yes—I suppose we are."

Klaus lets himself out with a promise to return later, and she spends a quiet afternoon tweaking her common app essay and cross-checking the supplemental materials for each of the colleges she has on her list. Most of them are here, in Virginia, with just a few further afield. She's had to carefully review policies for deferral, so she can take a gap year while the baby's a newborn.

It's a great distraction from her evening plans, which, if she's totally honest with herself, she is at least a little apprehensive about.

Klaus had been right that Bonnie hadn't had long to work on the spell. Hadn't had any advice from any older witches, either.

No. She can't think like this. Not when this spell is utterly necessary.

She cannot deal with an iota more of Klaus's bizarro family drama.

The moon has newly risen when Elena and Klaus meet Bonnie at the clearing where the sacrifice had gone down the spring before.

Bonnie has already cleared the remaining snow from the night before from the three circles and lit enormous fires that burn too fiercely to be anything other than enchanted.

For a moment, with Klaus pressed so close to her back, she feels as though she's fallen into the past.

A few footsteps carry her into the circle that had belonged to her on that doomed night.

She shivers, but not from the wind.

She's literally walking over her own grave.

She catches Klaus's gaze, from where he stands watch outside the circle. Not to join her this time.

Part of her wishes he would. Would be comforted, even, by him taking up his rightful role in this.

"Deep breath, Elena," Bonnie coaches her. "This won't take very long."

"Walk me through how you intend to accomplish this," Klaus prompts.

"I don't have a lot of time before the moon moves too high—"

"Walk me through it."

Bonnie takes a deep, long-suffering breath. "Fine. It's simple enough. From what Elena told me, your psychotic mother planned to do the cloaking spell here because the sacrifice weakened the fabric of reality, especially in this particular place. It's… easier to manipulate Nature here, in these elemental circles, than in other places. I'm not sure exactly what your mother intended, but I've reasoned that I can use the residual magic released by your combined essences here to mask the baby's magic signature—she's already half you and half Elena, so the best way to hide her is to camouflage her beneath your two signatures."

"What does the actual ritual involve? Any bloodshed? Explosions?"

"Elena just needs to hold still while I wrap the baby in the cloak. The rest of the ingredients are just to focus the energies." She points at the collection of crystals and incense she has set before her on the ground.

"Got it," Elena calls, really wishing they could get this over with.

"Great, then I'm going to begin."

For a long while, it feels like nothing's happening.

Sure, Bonnie gets this really intent look in her eyes as she begins to speak the incantation, her hand flung out in front of her as though searching for some vibration in the air.

Elena glances at Klaus, who shrugs and directs her attention back to Bonnie.

The moon tracks over the sky.

The snow continues to melt in a wider and wider circle around the fires. The sound of trickling water blends with the rustle of bare winter branches in the mild wind.

And, finally, something seems to reach out and touch its hand to her womb. And it pulls—tighter, tighter.

Nervous, Elena reaches a hand to her belly.

"Everything alright?" Klaus calls.

"Yes—I feel—something."

Bonnie continues her spellwork.

All at once Elena realizes how near she's come to the edge of the circle.

The spell cinches tighter. Tighter.

She can't breathe.

Tighter.

Her panic mounts—she fights for air—

Klaus looks ready to pluck her out of the circle, but Bonnie grabs his arm. Somehow stays him.

Tighter.

Elena falls to her knees as air finally, mercifully rushes back into her lungs.

That tightness remains, though less oppressive than it had been during the spell. She tells herself it will fade in time.

"Done," Bonnie tells her as she helps Elena to stand. She reaches her hand out, her palm hovering just above Elena's belly. "I can't sense her at all. She'll be safe, for a while at least."

Klaus extracts Elena from Bonnie and pulls her over to the side. Lays his hand against the base of her throat, the other over her belly. "Alright there?"

"Just a little uncomfortable." She leans into Klaus's touch. "And the baby? She doesn't sound distressed, does she?"

"Only a little. It should pass."

Elena nods. Breaks away to thank Bonnie for her help and to say goodnight.

Safe. It's all she can ask for.

She twists and turns with unpleasant dreams that night. Not that her dreams aren't often upsetting—between her actual life, supernatural incursions, and the pregnancy hormones, nightmares are almost more a matter of course than pleasant dreams.

Tonight she dreams she's been caught in a huge pincer that's tearing her in half. That she's been stung by a giant scorpion and is locked inside her own body as she slowly succumbs to the searing fire of the venom. That she's back under the river, the icy water smothering her in the endless dark.

Klaus shakes her awake. It takes a minute to realize where she is—to recognize his bedroom, the four poster bed, the dim embers of the fire dying in the hearth. In the east, the sun is beginning to rise.

Awareness doesn't lessen her distress. Doubling over, Elena clutches at her abdomen. It feels like she's on fire.

Chapter Text

"Elena," Klaus calls, trying to get her attention.

"Something's wrong—"

"Elena, you're bleeding."

She scrambles up, onto her knees, where she spots the dark red stain she's left pooling on the bedding.

A vice squeezes her heart as she stares and stares.

Klaus grabs her around the shoulders. "Elena, tell me what to do," he pleads with her.

The helplessness in his tone breaks her out of her shock. "I need my phone. I have to call the after-hours emergency number."

Half an hour later finds them in the hospital, getting triaged in Labor and Delivery, where she'd been directed to go instead of the normal emergency room.

When the doctor finds the baby on the ultrasound, she's not prepared for the sheer relief she feels at hearing the baby's heartbeat still crashing away.

It isn't until that moment that she lets herself acknowledge how afraid she'd been that they'd find nothing.

Klaus leans over her to peer more closely at the screen, a look of naked awe on his face. "That's the child? The device is capturing her in real time?"

"Sure is," the doctor replies, distracted by the diagnostics she's running on the machine.

Klaus opens his mouth to say something more, but Elena squeezes his arm. "Don't distract her."

Nodding vaguely, he slumps down on the chair next to her, his eyes never leaving the screen.

"The measurements look good, but there's some indication that the baby is in distress," the doctor finally announces.

Distress.

That was the word Klaus had used the day before when he'd listened to her heartbeat.

There's a pelvic exam, a panel of blood tests, and a consultation with another doctor, but they can't quite figure out what the issue is.

Eventually, they send her home with orders for bedrest and to wait and see if things improve.

If anything, she feels worse than she did this morning. The cramps are more persistent, and her anxiety is ratcheting as she wonders what's to be done.

"That was worse than useless," Klaus growls as he helps her into the car. He fishes his phone out of his pocket, punches in one of the speed dials, and cradles it against his shoulder as he drives. "Your spell backfired," he announces to whomever is on the other end of the line—it must be Bonnie. Which means Klaus has Bonnie on speed dial. "Elena's having complications," Klaus continues, pulling out of the parking garage and speeding through a yellow light.

There's a harried response of some sort that Elena cannot quite make out, followed by Klaus recounting the morning's events, interspersed with various complaints about the incompetency of the American health system.

As though Klaus is familiar with any country's health system, she thinks half-hysterically as her belly cramps again.

"My place," Klaus concludes, before hanging up.

"She's meeting us?" Elena asks,

"Shortly. She's going to fix whatever it is she bungled up last night and then we'll be right as rain."

"What if she can't?"

"I thought you had unwavering faith in your friend's abilities."

"I do."

He takes her hand. "Then have faith."

Bonnie and Caroline are both waiting on the front door step by the time they arrive, each with a huge stack of books cradled in their arms.

"Follow me," Klaus commands them, leading them to the study outside of his bedroom to work before insistently tucking Elena back into bed, as though if he doesn't place her there personally she will somehow slip away. "I'll be just in the other room," Klaus assures her. He's gone a moment later.

For a time, she does her best to tune out the three of them arguing, the sound of their strained voices rising and falling as different ideas are debating and tossed out. Focuses instead on the ebb and flow of her body, on the blood she wills to go to her body. Not to escape her. Not to harm her baby. After a while, she can almost imagine the pressure of her cramping syncing to the beat of her heart.

"You okay in here?" Caroline calls after a small eternity.

Elena shifts up onto her elbows. "I can't say."

Caroline sits on the edge of the bed and busies herself smoothing the covers down.

Elena doesn't want to think about what Caroline can probably sense—the smell of her blood thick in the air, the sound of her baby's distress. Her weakening.

She flops onto her back. Stares at the ceiling. "Any theories yet?"

"No—mostly, I've just been running interference so the two of them don't kill each other before we can come up with a working solution."

From the other room, Elena can hear the sound of Klaus's voice: low, urgent, threatening. Can imagine Bonnie's expression as she hisses her reply. The frantic way she flips through her grimoires.

And then the doorbell rings, the high, pleasant chime so plain and ordinary amidst the furor of the morning that everyone stills.

A moment later there is some sort of commotion at the front door.

Faintly, she can hear Klaus deep in conversation with what sounds like a group of women.

Or, as it turns out, a trio of witches.