Chapter Text
“So what exactly does the ancient cure-all hocus pocus do?” Damon asked through a deep scowl. “You know, since we’re all pretending that whatever faith, trust, and pixie dust in that thing will actually work.”
Elena withheld her sigh if only not to antagonize him and make him think twice about actually listening to her wishes.
A thick tension had taken root in the day as the approaching deadline of her sacrifice loomed. The morning with Stefan had been a dream. He had picked her up at her house and took her on a walk to the Falls. It was the perfect last sunrise and mundane ease. She had been a girl, and him just a boy. They talked, and she cried, and Stefan held her as she told him about her not wanting to be a vampire when he offered. He had accepted her desire for mortality, and then they had returned from the Falls and Alaric turned up to announce the sacrifice.
Now Elijah had arrived to discuss the completion of the deal they made what felt like a lifetime ago. For her to go to her death willingly in just hours.
“The elixir, as you so eloquently put it, Damon, was designed by a witch I knew five hundred years ago to be taken by Katerina before the sacrifice. It is made with the doppelganger specifically in mind. Once Elena takes this,” he intoned as he opened the small wooden case and took out a small, ornate glass bottle, “she will have the ability to return from death, whole in health, for the next twenty four hours.”
Damon scoffed as Elijah handed the bottle over to Elena.
“Look, if you want to come back to life a-la-human, what about John’s ring?” Damon asked Elena.
She couldn’t bring herself to look at his imploring gaze.
Instead, she focused on the elixir. The glass was cold against her fingers and the elixir was a dark brown. It appeared rather sluggish as it left behind an opaque film as she rolled it slowly back and forth between her hands. It looked about as appetizing to Elena as two weeks old tuna salad. She was hoping she could put the same trust into the elixir saving her as she could in the tuna salad giving her food poisoning.
“The ring only works on humans, Elena’s status as a doppelganger makes her a supernatural occurrence. Odds are, the ring will not work,” Elijah refuted.
“Well I take those odds over your elixir,” Damon said.
When he looked at her again, Elena steeled herself.
“What if it doesn’t work, Elena?” Damon asked.
She pressed her lips into a firm line. It had been the same thought she had the first time Elijah had mentioned the elixir when he couldn’t promise that it would work. It hadn’t been made before Katerina, nor after. It was singular in purpose with no trial and error rate.
But she knew the risk and had told him as much in private.
Klaus needed her for the sacrifice. He had come to town and tormented her friends and family because of her. And Elijah had offered a potential way for her to protect everyone and for her to make it out the other side.
It had to be enough.
“Then I guess I’ll just be dead.” The words were heavy, but Elena wasn’t afraid of them. Not any more. If it came to her what if versus her loved ones, she knew which one she would pick. It wasn’t even a choice, really. “It’s my choice, Damon,” she still said. “You agreed to do this my way, you trusted me , and I’m not changing my mind. I go to the sacrifice, Bonnie gets to live, and come morning, hopefully so do I.”
Stefan squeezed her knee in reassurance and silent support.
“And it will bring her back tomorrow, just like that?” Stefan followed and asked Elijah.
“Just like that,” he confirmed as he closed the box. “Elena, to the best of her ability,” he continued with a side-long look at her, “has been very agreeable to our deal. It’s only fair that I try to uphold my end.”
She barely managed to keep the grimace off her face. She had done things she wasn’t proud of, but she had been desperate to cling to the last few things within her control.
“And you trust the witch that made this five hundred years ago? Witches aren’t exactly known for their vampire hospitality,” Damon snarked as he shoved off the far wall and properly joined them in the room.
The single arched eyebrow Elijah raised at Damon was an expression Elena didn’t think many survived long after seeing.
“That, Damon,” he now said the name like a curse, “might be your personal experience and shortcomings as an individual, but I myself have never been short of friends in witches.”
“Iー”
“Thank you, Elijah,” Elena finally said, cutting Damon off before he could say anything more. “For everything. I,” she swallowed as she thought about Jeremy and Jenna and the possible After of it all, “I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done.”
She looked at the ancient vampire before her. The Original. The brother of her soon to be murderer. Her partner in quid pro quo to achieve their own ends.
Her heart hammered in her chest as he watched back at her. His brown eyes assessed her as she rose to her feet and decidedly ignored the anxious wobble in her legs. She had made her bedー if those she loved would survive, even if the bottle in her hand was nothing more than a kind lieー and she was willing to lie in it.
She glanced at the window and the afternoon sun was making its slow retreat. He wouldn’t be staying much longer, she knew. He didn’t want to encounter Klaus and ruin their planning.
Alaric’s earlier message echoed in her mind: The sacrifice happens tonight .
The glass stopper came off with more ease than she thought it should, as if she were twisting the lid off a water bottle. The smell was quick to permeate the room. It was earthy and pungent, like molded molasse and steeped mugwort.
The taste was somehow worse than the smell and left her gagging.
Stefan ran his hand over her back in comforting circles. When she was certain she wouldn’t be emptying her stomach contents on the carpet she righted herself in full.
It was fine, as she internally assessed herself as the others looked her over. She thought maybe she’d feel different, feel the magic in her blood and bones and the energy of life at her fingertips. Instead, she felt her stomach clench around the intruding substance as if she’d swallowed a stone.
“Well, I believe that’s my exit,” Elijah announced when he completed his look over her.
“Woah, woah, not so fast,” Damon interjected, because of course he would.
“Damon,” Elena finally snapped.
“No, Elena, I’ve followed this insane plan of yours as you wanted even if I seem to be the only one that thinks this isn’t going to work, but I want to hear it from Dracula himself,” he snapped back. “I want to know that you,” he glared at Elijah, “are going to follow your role in this disaster of a play tonight. That we can trust, come midnight, Klaus is dead with you ripping his heart out.”
For the third time, in just as many minutes, Elena was certain that Damon would have had his own heart ripped out by Elijah. But a treacherous little voice in the back of her mind whispered that Damon was right to press.
When Stefan didn’t chide his brother for the demand either, well, Elena felt like he was too polite for her own sake to have done so instead.
Elijah turned back to Elena and focused on her alone.
The attention was weighted and felt as if the very world was frozen before it.
“Klaus has taken everything from me. My family is lost and I no longer consider him deserving of the title. So I will follow what is needed of me tonight. I am a man of my word, Lovely Elena. Until we meet again.”
And then he was gone between one blink and the next and Elena felt reality crash back down upon her mortal world.
“Well if you two are going to pretend everything is right in the world, I’m going out for a drink,” Damon muttered before taking his own exit from the room.
Stefan stood from the couch and walked the length of the room. Elena felt her heart ache at the sight and willed herself not to cry. It was just them now and she didn’t know how to face the last few hours they had together.
“I want to go to the cemetery,” Elena found herself saying.
It felt right, she thought. She couldn’t say her goodbyes to her friends, or Jeremy, or Jenna. Not without consequence, but if she were to die tonight, properly, she wanted to say goodbye to her parents. To apologize for what she was about to do.
Stefan paused in his slow pacing and turned to look at her. His eyes were kind and his small smile solemn.
“Of course, Elena,” he said.
Elena swallowed the lump forming in her throat.
“I’m sorry, Stefan,” she whispered.
She hadn’t said so at the Falls earlier, but she felt it was needed.
Elena was sorry that she couldn’t bring herself to allow for the safe option, to be turned and be done with it. She was sorry that she couldn’t bring herself to want to be with him forever. She was sorry that she might leave him alone, again, to have to live on without her sooner than he thought he would.
She was sorry that she couldn’t bring herself to want to live.
Stefan crossed the room and pulled her into a hug. She rested her head against his shoulder as he held her close.
She wanted a lifetime of choices, she had told him that morning as the sun crested over the trees as they stood on the hilltop.
“It’s okay, Elena,” Stefan murmured as his hand slowly brushed through her hair. “I understand.”
The worst part was Elena knew he was telling the truth. Stefan hadn’t asked her lightly about taking vampire blood that morning. He said it hadn’t been the first time he thought about their future together either. That now was enough for him.
“Tomorrow,” he continued in the same soft tone, “you’ll wake up and Klaus will be dead. You’ll go home and spend the day with Jenna and Jeremy and we’ll face whatever comes next, together.”
The cemetery left Elena with a floating lightness she hadn’t expected. Stefan had been kind enough to accompany her to her parents' graves, but also to leave her to sit before them by herself.
Elena thought the feeling was how people with terminal illness might feel when they’ve finally accepted that they were likely to die. It was a morbid sort of comfort.
When the sun had started to properly set and the grass began to leave her skin itchy and her legs had long since grown numb from sitting on the hard ground, they left. Stefan took the side roads and twisted routes back to the Boarding House as he held her hand in his. Neither spoke and her heart was all the better for it. The silence had been a welcome comfort she hadn’t expected either.
As possible last days go, Elena didn’t think she could ask for anything more.
“Thank you, for today,” Elena said to Stefan when he rounded the car to meet her. “I,” she could do this. “It was perfect.” And it was.
And then Stefan looked.
Klaus stood before them and Elena hadn’t even noticed.
The first time they had met, Elena had been surprised how almost human he seemed. Her first meeting with Elijah had been a whirlwind, a scene of bloody chaos and intimidation that, if she had to choose, she would have originally picked him as the more dangerous of the two.
Now, as she assessed Klaus, in his deep red v-neck and leather jacket, the air around him had taken on a suffocating quality. Imposing and domineering as his blue eyes bore into her like it wasn’t even her he was looking at, but his future. His victory.
“You had me all nervous,” Klaus said, his hands clasped casually in front of him. The small hint of a smirk fell from his lips as he studied her. “I thought maybe you’d done something stupid.”
Elena thought of Elijah’s warning, then. The tale of Katerina Petrova and her five hundred years of running. The harsh mock of Katherine talking about how Klaus slaughtered her family when she had run and how their bodies and blood decorated the home she had been shunned from and how Elena could make the very same selfish choice.
She thought about how neither of them could fathom that the same action never crossed her mind.
“You ready, my dear?” Klaus was kind to phrase it as a question. Allow her the illusion of choice in the matter the way she thought guards might ask death row inmates if they are ready to leave their cell for the last time.
“I’m ready,” she said.
Her heart stayed steady as she started to walk toward him only to be stopped by Stefan’s arm blocking her way.
“No,” he said with a shake in his voice.
Klaus finally looked at him.
“I wouldn’t.” The previous lightness in his voice had disappeared as his expression hardened. “No reason for you to die too.”
Elena realised this was her last trial. The last thing she had to chip away to protect the ones that she loved. Her final goodbye.
“No, Stefan,” she whispered as she moved in front of him. His eyes dropped to her face and all she could hope was that she was his sole focus as he was her. For one last moment, they were just a guy and girl. “It’s fine,” she breathed out as her treacherous heart gave a small flutter. She placed her hand on his cheek. “I’ll go, and you’ll be okay. There’s no reason for you to get hurt.”
She felt the tear on his cheek as she kissed him her last goodbye. Delicate and soft and a mere moment to encompass their everything.
It had to be enough.
“I love you,” Elena whispered against his lips.
“I love you,” he answered with one last kiss.
It seared against her lips; hot and heavy and aching. Stefan’s hands were warm and feather light where they held her.
“Close your eyes.” A last mercy was that her words came out smooth as she made the first step back that felt as if she had crossed a chasm. “Close your eyes,” she repeated.
When he did, finally, Elena looked upon him with tears now in her own eyes.
She took another step back and another. As Stefan’s hand fell from hers she felt Klaus take hold of her and then the world was moving.
Elena attempted to keep her footing as she continued through the woods. Klaus had been quick to part ways with her once he was certain none of her friends would be following. Other business, he had easily explained away when she dared to ask. She wanted his attention on her going forward. It was the best way to keep everyone safe.
That plan had been short lived but she’d managed an amused chuckle out of him. Nothing had ever felt more condescending.
“Where are we going?” she finally asked the witch.
“This way,” was the eloquent response she got.
“You’re Luka’s sister, aren’t you? I heard about you,” Elena prodded because she could. “He and your father were looking for you.” The night seemed all about familial guilt and betrayals, so maybe she wanted the witch about to help kill her to feel bad too.
“They were wasting their time,” Greta said without care. “I wasn’t lost.”
Elena didn’t think she could ever shrug information like that off about Jeremy. No matter their differences or issues, family was family. But then again, Elena thought as she continued after Greta with hurried steps, she didn’t think she would ever be choosing to side with someone her family so adamantly opposed.
When Elena stumbled over another rock after several more minutes of walking, she decided she had it.
“God, I can’t see anything,” she grossed, barely keeping herself upright.
The heat and light were instant. It felt nothing like Bonnie’s magic as the fires sparked to life with a violent swoosh. There was something harsh about the weight of it as the magic permeated the very air with Greta giving nothing more than a glance at their surroundings.
The clearing was vast, and she realised where they were: the quarry. If it had been another time under different circumstances, Elena thought maybe the place might be nice. Somewhere to watch the stars away from the town lights and be alone. But as it was, it made her skin crawl.
Then her world was focused on the body laid in the centre of the clearing. A motionless heap laid on their side, but in a very familiar jacket and favourite pair of jeans that she had been asked for the location of more than once during a hectic morning.
“Jenna?” Elena asked before hurrying to her. “Jenna, Jenna,” she fell to her knees and attempted to shake her awake. “Jenna?”
Her hand shook as she pressed against her aunt’s throat. Jenna’s skin was cool and still beneath her panicked hand.
No.
No.
Elijah had promised to protect loved ones.
Jenna was meant to be with Alaric at the house and waiting.
“No, no, no, no,” Elena repeated in a mere whisper.
This wasn’t supposed to be what happened.
“He killed her?” Elena asked, looking up at Greta with tears in her eyes. “I did everything he asked.”
That was the whole point.
She listened.
She stayed.
She went willingly.
No tricks, no take backs.
Then Jenna sat up with a gasp and Elena felt as if her own heart was stopping.
“She’s not dead,” Greta explained with a gleeful grin. “She’s in transition .”
Greta walked away from them and Jenna groaned.
Elena felt like she couldn’t breath as the reality of what that meant set in.
“The moonstone is one of the keys to Klaus’s curse. The Sun and Moon curse was never real. It was a story we spread to make the search for its location two fold.” Elijah explained as they walked through the woods. “The stone is only one element of the sacrifice though. He needs a werewolf, a witch, a doppelganger ー”
“A vampire,” Elena murmured.
She had done everything.
Klaus had Katherine.
“Oh my head, what’s wrong with me?” Jenna asked in a daze.
Elena had to believe what she thought was wrong.
“Do you remember what happened?” Elena asked in as steady as a voice she could muster. Her nerves were running out and she wasn’t sure how much more she could manage before truly breaking apart.
“You called me,” Jenna said after a moment through panting breaths, “you were so scared.” She groaned as her body gave a shudder Elena would have wanted to attribute to a chill. “I should have realised that it wasn’t you. As soon as I walked out of the house someone grabbed me, a vampire.”
Klaus had Katherine , her mind supplied again.
“Klaus,” she realised. “It was Klaus.”
The defeat was utter and vast as it rooted in Elena’s very core.
“He made me drink his blood and I don’tー I don’t,” Jenna struggled through another breath. “Remember anything after that part.”
Elena felt numb as Jenna looked around the clearing for the first time since waking up.
“Where are we? What happened?”
“We’re at the quarry,” she gingerly took Jenna’s hands in hers. They were as cool as the air was against Elena’s cheeks. “Klaus brought us here.”
Jenna continued her search around them.
“I don’t remember anything,” she reiterated with mounting panic.
Elena looked at their hands together as tears misted over her eyes. It was Jenna that had held her at her parents’ funeral. Jeremy had sat motionless as he stared dead eyed at their caskets and hadn’t spoken a word in the week since their death. Jenna had been the one to hold them together. Elena remembered how warm her aunt’s hand had been in hers. How strong and unyielding it was when Elena thought she might collapse to her knees from fatigue.
“Jenna, do you remember what I told you about how,” Elena swallowed the bile in her throat, “about how someone becomes a vampire?”
Jenna nodded as if not understanding why Elena was asking.
“Yeah, if you die with a vampire’s blood in your system…”
The tears didn’t fall when Elena saw the realisation paint over Jenna’s face. Instead, she held Jenna’s hands and waited for her aunt to gather her thoughts. Elena remembered how disoriented Vicki had been even after transition, she wouldn’t rush Jenna through understanding what had happened to her.
“Oh god,” she said with horror. “He killed me.”
“Everything is going to be okay,” Elena soothed as she glanced at Greta as the witch was slowly making her way back to them. She could only hope that Jenna couldn’t hear the lie. “I’m going to get you out of here.”
“I’m a vampire,” Jenna continued in her spiral.
“And I bet you’re hungry.” Greta slowly walked behind Jenna with the same twisted grin.
Elena couldn’t lose anyone more. It was a stupid though, the moment she saw the branch on the ground. But Greta couldn’t kill her, that was Klaus’s role for the night.
Apparently, mildly maiming Elena wasn’t out of the question though.
The magic was forceful and sharp as Elena hit the ground. The breath was knocked from her lungs and all she could do was gasp as the words died in her throat with no air to carry them.
Fire raged to life between her and her aunt as Elena pulled herself to her feet.
“Don’t bother trying to get through, I spelled the circle. You’re trapped no matter what you do.”
“Greta,” Elena struggled to say.
The plea fell on deaf ears as Greta made a cut on her wrist
“Klaus chose her,” was the only explanation Elena got before Greta gave her attention to Jenna. “ Drink.”
“Jenna, don’t,” Elena tried weakly.
The hunger, she knew, was fathomless. An instinctual urge ingrained in a vampire’s very being as breathing was to all living creatures, even when held below water with no oxygen to be had. Reflexive even to the point of suffering more for it.
“I can’t,” Jenna whispered as she watched the bloody wrist.
It was a fruitless effort as Elena gave a pained shout when Jenna latched on to Greta’s wrist. She couldn’t fight the tears any longer as Greta pulled from her aunt and a new circle of flames imprisoned her.
“It's going to be okay,” Elena whispered as tears rolled down her cheeks. She wasn’t sure if Jenna could even process what she was saying.
Elena thought about Jeremy and what would happy tomorrow. If Jeremy would be left alone with only John to call family. He would hate her. Elena kind of wanted him to. At every turn, it always seemed to be her fault that someone was getting hurt or killed. Even when she planned and tried to keep people safe, it always seemed to go wrong.
Doppelgangers were a curse to those around them. It seemed to be a theory with mounting proof as Elena’s life continued to flounder. From Tatia, to Katherine, to her. There was never anything happy to say for those in their lives.
“Everything’s so bright,” was the first thing Jenna said when coming out of her transition stupor. “The fire is hotter. Part of me is terrified, but another part of me doesn’t want to feel anything.”
Extremes , Stefan had explained just that morning. How vampires feel everything so powerfully and with an equal desire to feel nothing at all.
“Vampires can turn off the part that's human,” Elena said. “That’s the part that hurts.”
Jenna wouldn’t look at her as she cried.
“I’m going to die, aren’t I?” Jenna asked.
Elena didn’t think she intended it as a question as the tears fell down her aunt’s cheeks.
“No, Jenna, I’m not going to let that happen. I don’t care what I have to do.”
And she didn’t. Elena would give anything for Jenna to leave. She’d let someone else die instead.
It was a cruel thought that whispered to her. A twisted piece of hurt that had festered for a year and through all the challenges she had faced.
A pained scream tore through the clearing as Elena’s thoughts spiralled.
“Who’s that?” Jenna asked.
“Must be the werewolf,” Elena explained as an afterthought.
A third circle of flames surrounded the woman as Greta moved away again.
“You’re a witch, Greta. It’s their duty to keep the balance. To keep Klaus bound.” The last ditch effort tasted sour on Elena’s tongue as Greta glared at her.
“My duty is to Klaus. A new order,” she sneered.
“Glad to know I still have a dance partner.” Elena had to keep herself from jumping at the sudden sound of Klaus’s voice. He appeared just as silent as he had a mere hour ago to collect her. “Ready, my lovelies?” The easy grin was back and he appeared in his element.
Like Bacchus before his bacchanalia in his worship. To revel in the chaos of ritual sins at his pleasure. A bestial god a destined plague upon the earth.
Klaus plucked the moonstone from his pocket. He looked at it with reverence. “Five hundred years I’ve waited to find this stone. It’s almost hard to part with it again.”
He placed it in Greta’s waiting palm.
“The moon is past its apex,” Greta spoke, delight dripping in her voice. “Remember everything you need to do?”
Elena grimaced at Klaus’s wide smile as the chanting began.
The werewolf woman groaned as a concerning crack cut through the air. Elena forced herself to look at the woman about to die with her. One that didn’t have a chance of coming back.
“Everything I did,” she winced, “I was just trying to help Tyler.”
The pit in Elena’s stomach returned.
“Are you Jules?” Elena dreaded to ask.
“I didn’t want him to be alone,” Jules whispered.
The Gilbert Family was not the only one to have dwindled in numbers in the past year, but the Lockwoods as well. If Elena survived to tomorrow, she would have to apologise to Tyler for another of his pack dying because of her existence.
The fire around Jules died before Elena could say anything further. It had been mere minutes and they already seemed ready for one of them. She couldn’t say what she had expected from the ancient ritual beyond the obvious, but she at the very least thought it would take longer.
Klaus prowled towards Jules like a seasoned predator. His steps were slow and even as his eyes trained on her. Elena swallowed when she was faced with Jules’s golden irises.
The short attempt at escape failed miserably as Klaus’s hand embedded itself into the woman’s chest with a sickening squelch. Elena watched wide eyed as Klaus softly ran his thumb over the woman’s cheek before pulling her heart from her chest.
The energy in the air immediately grew palpable. Her skin prickled and a shiver rushed down her spine as if the very magic of her existence could sense the slow unbinding of the curse.
Elena thought about the night her parents died as Klaus squeezed the blood from Jules’s heart into the bowl Greta was chanting over. She had fought with them that very morning to go to the party. Her mood had worsened when she caught sight of Caroline trying to get close to Matt because Elena had fought with him earlier in the week about everything being too much. She had gotten drunker than she ever had before.
Her parents were good parents. Her mom hadn’t even told her off when she drunkenly called to ask for a ride home while crying.
It would have been sad for Jeremy if she had died that night too. If Stefan hadn’t come across her and saved her all because of the face she was born with. But he would have survived and probably have less hurt than he did now.
More people would certainly be alive if she hadn’t survived then.
“The day that the lawyers called to tell me that I was going to be your guardian, you know what my first thought was?” Jenna suddenly asked as she wrapped her arms around her knees in an attempt at self comfort.
Elena could only shake her head as she was brought back to the present. “Isn’t there someone else who can do this?”
Elena’s heart clenched at the admission, but nodded. “There was no one else that could have gotten me and Jeremy through that.” She wished she could hold Jenna’s hand again as she crouched down. The flames were hot on her cheeks as she looked through them. “You put your entire life on hold for us.”
Jenna grimaced.
“Look around, Elena, I failed you.”
Elena wanted to scream that Jenna wasn’t the one that failed.
Instead,
“No, you didn’t, I failed you.” Elena had failed everyone. “I'm so sorry.” Now wasn’t the time to spiral though. She still needed to try and save her aunt. She had wallowed for a moment, and a moment was too long of a distraction from the now. “Listen,” Elena glanced at Klaus and Greta, “being a vampire makes you stronger, faster. You can fight back. I’m going to get through this. I’ll be okay,” there was even a chance that Elena was telling the truth, “I need you to believe that.”
Jenna barely gave a nod.
“But when you get the chance,” Elena lowered her voice. “Run. And don’t look back.” It was all she could ask for.
It was another few minutes when Klaus was approaching them again. Elena’s heart hammered in her chase as he watched her aunt.
“Hello, Jenna.”
Elena got as close to the flames as she was willing.
“Let her go,” Elena pleaded. “I agreed to everything. I stayed, and waited, and came when you called. I understand that I have to die, but she doesn’t.” She dared another step forward and the flames roared in opposition.
“Careful,” Klaus chided her.
“Please,” Elena begged.
The tension hung between her and Klaus. She had nothing left to bargain with except her past actions. He was close enough that he could get another person and make them a vampire. And Elena, horrifyingly, would be okay with it.
The reality of oneself is a grotesque mirror to be faced.
But the spell broke as something caught his attention.
“I don’t recall,” Klaus spoke as he looked up at the cliff, “inviting you here.”
Bad went to worse as Elena spied just who he was speaking to: Stefan.
“Oh my god,” she whispered.
“Elena,” Jenna called for her as she began pacing the small circle.
“What are they saying?” Elena asked as her thoughts raced at the implications. She wasn’t stupid and if Stefan was here he knew that Jenna was too. And Elena knew why he would be there with that information.
“What?” Jenna asked.
“If, if you focus enough, you can hear them. You can hear anything.”
And Jenna did and Elena felt herself breaking all over again. No other person, just two bad choices to be faced with.
When the two descended, Klaus looked almost giddy as he stood before her. As if the moment he was forced to face his intentionally cruel actions with no apparent reason had left him temporarily ill at the reality. But now he could make it her choice, again.
Ask her a question she couldn’t readily answer or refuse.
Bad choices and worse choices.
“All this talk of saving family,” Klaus mused, “and here is Stefan granting your very wish.”
Elena wanted to cry, again. She felt like she’d cried for a lifetime that day.
“Well, who’s it going to be, Elena? Decisions, decisions.” He gestured back and forth between Stefan and Jenna with the stake as if he were looking between two different coloured tops.
“No,” she said.
Klaus’s smile dropped when she didn’t play along.
“Well, no matter. It wasn’t a real choice anyways.”
Elena screamed as Klaus drove the stake into Stefan’s spine.
“I have other plans for Lover Boy. I want him alive.” The sound of Stefan’s neck breaking echoed in the clearing.
Greta lowered the circle of fire around Jenna with the mere breath of her name by Klaus.
“No, no, no,” Elena repeated as she tried to grasp anything that was going on.
It wasー
Her mind and heart couldn’t keep up it all ー
The flames almost burned her when she went to walk through them without thought.
“It’s okay, Elena, I know what I have to do.” Elena looked at her aunt wide eyed.
Greta’s scream was visceral as Jenna tore into the witch’s neck in the next moment before Elena could even think. But it wasn’t enough as Klaus stabbed the stake into Jenna’s back only a second later.
Greta collapsed to the ground in a heap as Klaus pulled Jenna away and let her fall with her own thud.
“Turn it off,” Elena frantically begged as Klaus prowled nearer. “Just turn it off, Jenna. You won’t be scared anymore.”
The sound of the stake entering Jenna’s heart rivalled the sound of Damon breaking Jeremy’s neck. Elena shrieked at Jenna’s gurgled bloodied moan as the second stretched and the ash black veins crawled along her skin.
Elena stood still as the world continued to turn around her. Klaus had helped Greta to her feet and the spell resumed. Minutes ticked and nothing mattered as she watched Jenna’s corpse laid upon the altar. Already forgotten and ignored by her murderer.
It was Stefan’s waking groan that pulled her attention to reality once more. He struggled for the piece of wood stuck in his spine, but he wasn’t able to reach it.
But he was alive, and that was the only thing left that Elena could hold onto.
“They’re going to kill him?” Elena mouthed when she had Stefan’s attention.
He gave a weak nod.
That was enough. That was all that was left she could hope for.
Klaus’s approach for her was slow, but a new hunger blazed in his eyes. She was the last key to his freedom.
“Come.” He had the nerve to offer her his hand.
Elena walked to the altar of her own volition, Klaus ignored and forgotten behind her. She looked at Jenna on the ground and thought about how her aunt wouldn’t be able to have an open casket service. Not that there were many Sommers or Gilberts left to attend. But her aunt was social. She thrived in her master's program and Elena would want to invite her friends to the service. Jenna deserved to be mourned and remembered. Celebrated.
Deceptively soft fingers gripped her jaw to turn her head.
Klaus stood before her a mere breath away and for the first time that night, the first time since meeting the Original, really, she thought that he was finally seeing her. Elena Gilbert in all her defeated, angered glory.
“Thank you, Elena.”
She glared.
“Go to hell.”
The world was a haze of grey as Elena sat up. Twigs shifted under her as she took in her surroundings to realise she was still in the forest. Her heart hammered as she glanced quickly around for her friends. For Jenna.
It was only then that she realised she wasn’t at the quarry any more. It was another part of the forest, but she was confident that it was still Mystic Falls that she was in.
She climbed to her feet and turned in a slow circle. Nothing gave any obvious indication of the direction she should start walking. So she picked.
Elena was certain she walked for hours by the time she came across the small building. It was a generous word to call the wooden shack, but she was fairly certain someone lived there if the small pin of goats out front were an indication.
“Hello?” she called out hesitantly. “Sorry to bother you, but I think I’m lost.”
Her hand barely connected with the wood of the door before it was opening.
“Come in,” was the greeting Elena was given by the woman.
“I, thank you,” Elena rambled as she followed her in. “I’m really sorry to bother you, but I’m trying to get back to town. I haven’t come across anyone else and was hoping you might be able to point me in the right direction? Or if I could use your phone?”
Elena had checked minutes within her walk and realised her phone was missing after trying to call out to her friends. She couldn’t imagine what had happened after sheー
Nothing came from her shouts and with no phone, her aimless wandering had brought her here.
The woman seemed kind as she placed two wooden cups on the table with a gesture for Elena to sit.
“Oh, Iー”
“Please. You’re a long way from the town proper of Mystical Falls and a bit of rest and drink will do you good.” The idea of drinking anything made Elena hesitate, but soon after she realised how parched she was, a drink sounded amazing.
“How far away from the town centre? Maybe I could call one of my friends to come pick me up if you give me your address?” Elena tentatively posed the questions as the woman continued about the room.
She held an unusual opaque jug that Elena would have thought to be a vase rather than a container for drink.
“Oh I don’t have a phone, unfortunately. No lines reach this far out and I have no signal for a cell. And I would say we are a long enough way that it would be ill advised for you to attempt to venture on foot. But I’m sure someone will be along soon enough “
Nerves began to ball in Elena’s gut as the woman continued to speak. Something felt both familiar and unsettling about her as she pushed Elena’s now filled cup before her.
It was a juice of sorts. Wild berries, maybe, that the woman gathered. Given the location and homestead appearance, Elena didn’t think store bought was an option. The smell was sweet and rich as Elena gave a tentative sniff when she lifted it.
“A car,” Elena realised belatedly, setting the cup done without sipping.
Why hadn’t she thought to ask sooner?
“A car?” The woman asked as if she had to contemplate the word itself as she sat in the chair opposite Elena at the small dining table. “No, no car either, I’m afraid.”
Now that Elena really looked. The house was bare in necessities. No apparent appliances and the place was only the four walls she saw outside. Small enough for her to cross in several long strides. It wasー
“But, while we wait, I thought it might be nice to have a discussion,” the woman continued.
Elena looked back at her and gripped the small cup between her hands a bit tighter if only to feel something concrete.
“I’m sorry?” Elena asked.
“Why were you out wandering in the woods?” Elena’s checks flushed in embarrassment.
Of course, she thought. She’d be curious too if someone showed up at her house deep in the woods. Not that she’d want a house like that, to begin with. But hadn’t she said that she was expecting someone else?
“I understand it must have surprised you to wake up out here, Elena,” the woman continued.
Elena gave a small nod as she swallowed. Her mouth was dry and now with the drink in her hand, the problem was glaring. She wasn’t typically one for sweet drinks. If she wanted a fruit drink she was partial to lemonade or orange juice where it left a fresh taste on her tongue.
She lifted her cup again, but paused.
“How do you ー”
“I would have been frightened, too, given the whole of it. But I’ve been waiting a long while for your visit, you see?”
Elena, in fact, did not see and moved to push from the table only to find that her seat wouldn’t budge.
“Who are you?” Elena whispered as her panic rose.
What had happened after Klaus hadー
“My name is Ayana. An ancestor of your friend Bonnie.”
No.
No.
That meansー
“You’re not dead, my dear, no need to fret. Just consider that the elixir and the sacrifice has made some things more abstract in possibilities. And this was something needed face to face.”
“What does any of that mean?” She could barely even bring herself to whisper.
Emily had not been fun to encounter and the witches in the old house didn’t appear to be friendly with anyone beyond Bonnie and even that was a stretch on the word. Greta ignored her so-called calling of the universe and her father and brother were more than willing to use Elena as a piece in their own plans. Witches, in her personal experience, had a poor track record in wanting anything good with her.
“There are rumblings on this side. Some of my sisters are less than pleased at the revelation of the Hybrid officially awakening and are attempting things that go against the balance.”
Elena frowned at the word.
“I thought Klaus breaking the curse went against the balance?” she dared to push.
Ayana gave her a kind smile as she raised her cup to her lips.
A throbbing dryness in her throat called Elena’s attention back to her own drink.
“Balance is a complicated idea when people go disrupting the grand scheme of things. Curses themselves adapt to the ecosystem that is the supernatural world. First the witches, then the wolves, then the vampires, then theー”
“Hybrid,” Elena finished.
Ayana gave a pleased nod at Elena’s observation.
“Think of it like mundane nature. One day a fish decided to go on land, to breathe air, to evolve. There are those on this side and yours, that do not enjoy the idea of such growth, such magical evolution that makes them feel all the smaller for it. But Magic always balances for Her children’s mistakes. Sometimes cruelly,” Ayana said with an assessing look at her.
“Like the doppelganger curse.” The confirming hum did little to settle Elena.
“Something new is brewing, Elena, and I thought it time to put a stop to those wishing to halt its progress. So I took my own hand to the challenge that Magic is nurturing. I whispered in the ear of one of my descendants some time ago to make an elixir, not dissimilar to one made once before.”
There was a way that she said it that left alarm bells going off in Elena’s mind, but she couldn’t remember why.
“You had the elixir made for Katherine?” Elena asked instead as she wracked her brain.
It was important. Essential. Telling of what happened next. She needed to remember.
“I’m thankful for her impatience,” Ayana said instead with a fine press of her lips. “And thankful for Elijah’s equal in opposition disposition.”
There was more there, too, but she didn’t know where to start.
“As I said, Magic has a way of adjusting for Her children’s mistakes. I was too early in my actions, but they have now bore such generous fruit in time for harvest.”
Elena looked back down at the berry juice in her cup. There was something wrong with it as her mouth began to water at the sight. She shouldー
"What does any of that have to do with me? Or the sacrifice?" Elena asked.
"It has everything to do with you, Elena Gilbert." She shivered as Ayana spoke her name in full the way Elena had heard Bonnie's voice cradle the delicate words of a spell.
“Drink your fill, please. You’ll need your strength for the future.”
Elena furrowed her brows as she lifted her cup nonetheless.
She shouldn’t ー
“But this isn’t real life,” Elena said, evasive and hesitant.
“Who’s to say this isn’t real?” Ayana asked with a single arched brow.
Against Elena’s better judgment, she drank.
The drink, while sweet, had a richness that quenched Elena’s dry mouth and settled the twisted pit of her stomach. There was nothing in memory that she could fathom comparing it to. Almost like the feeling of drinking cool iced water at the point where one felt they could almost taste the very concept of hydration upon their tongue.
A jolt ran through Elena as the weak wood door to the house clattered open. Ayana only smiled wider at the developments.
Wide eyed and taking labored breaths, Lexi Branson stood in all her blonde glory before them. Elena had met Stefan’s friend once and had held him when Damon killed her the very same evening.
“Where,” Lexi gave a quick glance between Elena and Ayana, “the hell am I?” she demanded in the commanded silence.