fanfiction; tvd (klaus + elena)
For softly_me's tvd comment ficathon part 3
Prompt: Klaus & Elena - I'm running low on inspiration, she's running long on borrowed time.
Title: Today is the Beginning {Today is the End}
Fandom: The Vampire Diaries
Characters/Pairing: Klaus, Elena
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 904
Disclaimer: I do not own TVD.
Summary: Today is his day; he can feel it.
Notes: Spoilers up to Episode 3x09.
________________________________________________________
Today is his day; he can feel it. For the first time in a long time, Klaus is optimistic. Last night was a hollow victory, but also a beginning. He looks in the mirror, straightens his collar, nods in approval at his reflected image. There have been setbacks to his plans, major ones, but today is a fresh start and when you’ve lived for over a thousand years, you learn to appreciate fresh starts.
He leaves his room and there she is, the key to his bright new beginning, sitting on the plush hotel sofa, legs curled under her, still in the tattered and dirty clothes from the night before, face dirty and tear-streaked, staring off into space with lifeless eyes, waiting.
“Good Morning, Elena. How’s my best girl?”
“Wishing she was dead,” she says simply, looking up at him. “Thinking of ways to kill you.”
“How’s that coming?”
He gets nothing but a glare in response, but he is far from minding. After a night of endless sobbing, silence is a nice change of pace. That single-minded courage he had so admired in her had crumbled when he’d broken her teacher’s neck and burned her witch, when he staked her pretty little friend and drained her brother dry. He doesn't blame her, of course. It’s hard to be brave with your loved ones dead at your feet, your life burned to the ground.
Compulsion keeps her from harming herself, from running away, but that’s as far as it goes. He will let her keep her grief. The hate behind her eyes is real and hers; it warms him.
“Today?” she asks. He shakes his head.
“Sorry, love. Not today.”
He tells her it’s time to move on. She asks where; he asks if it really matters.
_____________
The problem with werewolves is that they are pitifully rare. It was hard enough the first time, finding strong and healthy specimens to recruit, brothers to be made; now it was much more difficult. Before long, Klaus exhausts the East Coast with no success and begins to move west, his precious doppelganger in tow.
He’d lost all of his original comrades back in Mystic Falls, picked off one by one by his enemies until there were none left standing. He’d lit the town aflame in their memory, watched it burn to ash. He made Elena watch too, tears streaming down her face, flames mirrored in her eyes. The tortured screams of her friends and neighbors drifted up to the faraway hillside where they stood.
“Everyone dies, Elena,” he told her. “Today was their day. One day, it will be yours.”
“And what about you?”
He reminds her that he’s dead already.
_____________
When it becomes clear that there is nothing in the States but dead ends, they head to Europe, the Mideast, the Far East. Endless cities with endless hotel rooms, all lavish and plush and the same. Where ever they go, he finds nothing but rumors and false leads. Still, he keeps his doppelganger close, just in case.
At first, Elena is very dull company, silent and sulking and something of a bore. But over the miles they travel, her body grows a bit less tense, the silence between them becomes less strained and there are moments, the very briefest of moments, when he knows she forgets--forgets what he’s done, who he is, what she’s lost. But then it rushes back, and the hate in her eyes is as burning and fresh as the night he slaughtered her family and leveled her town.
She says she wishes she were dead; he tells her to be patient. She tells him she hates him; he tells her it’s mutual. But he doesn’t object when her sleepy head falls to his shoulder during transcontinental flights, or when she grabs his arm to keep from falling on uneven city sidewalks. They don’t talk about the nights he finds her in creeping into his hotel room, crawling into his bed. The nights she lets the darkness play tricks with her mind, lets herself believe she’s being compelled, pretends he is someone else.
Klaus doesn’t mind. Her warm little body curled against his is not entirely unpleasant. He knows that it isn’t real, but in this case, he makes an exception. It doesn’t really matter anyway. It’s the company that counts.
The weeks bleed into months, then into years.
Today? She asks.
No. Not today, he replies.
_____________
It’s almost three years of scouring the world before he gives up his search.
Werewolves, the entire race, extinct. Every last one dead, courtesy of the brothers Salvatore. Their last gift to their beloved sweetheart.
For once, Klaus is too tired to be angry, too spent for regret. He’d find them and kill them, certainly, but that is for another day. He has plenty of other days, but today he will morn the loss of his life's ambition, his condemnation to an eternity of loneliness.
Elena is sitting on the sofa, legs curled snugly under her, that same far-off look in her eyes. He sits beside her, leans in close, his lips against her ear.
"It's today."
He catches the smallest of smiles on her lips as she leans back into his arms. He presses a kiss against the skin of her neck; feels the softest of sighs leave her body. He closes his eyes and holds her tight against him.
When he opens his eyes again, he is alone.