Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

                                         'And, Lord, she found me just in time

She's gonna save me, call me "baby"

Run her hands through my hair

She'll know me crazy, soothe me daily

Better yet, she wouldn't care

We'll steal her Lexus, be detectives

Ride 'round picking up clues

We'll name our children, Jackie and Wilson

Raise 'em on rhythm and blues

Lord, it'd be great to find a place we could escape sometime

Me and my Isis growing black irises in the sunshine

Every version of me dead and buried in the yard outside

We'd sit back and watch the world go by.'

May, 2011

"Elena, love, we're going to be late," Klaus Mikaelson reminded his beloved girlfriend as he stood at the bottom of the winding staircase of their family mansion, attention unevenly split between adjusting the cuffs of his newly-tailored navy blue suit and the texts blowing up his phone every few seconds with mounting desperation and persistence. Caroline Forbes was a force of nature, one to be reckoned with and handled with the utmost caution and delicacy, and he really didn't feel like getting into yet another row with her, not today of all days. Not on Elena's day, the one she'd worked so passionately and patiently and tirelessly to achieve all year long, and even more so the last few months, which had mercifully been mostly absent of supernatural shenanigans and magical mischief -to the couple's mutually delighted surprise. 

Except that one time when Kol almost blew up the house teaching Bonnie a new spell. And when Esther and Finn came back to Mystic Falls and tried to finish what they'd started and kill them all, but were of course unsuccessful and the former was sent back to the dark, desolate plane of the Other Side while the latter was reunited with his former paramour, Sage, who were now off living in Florida of all places, but Klaus supposed that after spending the better part of nine hundred years trapped in a coffin, an abundance of sunlight would not be a luxury one would be inclined to readily spurn, even if it meant enduring an overabundance of Hawaiian shirts and cargo shorts. 

"Is Caroline texting you every twenty seconds again?" He heard her voice call somewhere from the depths of their bedroom, light and warm and mellifluous, and Klaus privately rolled his eyes at the fact that she was obviously unoccupied enough to respond to him and yet couldn't just hurry the hell up so they could get this over with and start the rest of their lives together as he was so eager to do. 

"If only she were so magnanimous. Really, sweetheart, I know my penchant for making dramatic entrances has somewhat rubbed off on you -don't pout, you know I speak only truth- but since I really would prefer to keep my head attached to my shoulders..." 

Thankfully, seconds later the hinges of the door squeaked shut and the hybrid trailed off, letting out a relieved breath when the click of her heels against the polished mahogany flooring picked up soon afterwards. It was something he hadn't tired of, the simple domestic intimacy of hearing her footsteps in the hallway or the sound of the shower first thing in the morning, the steady hum of the coffee maker at two in the morning when she was up late studying for her SATs and he had the pleasure of carrying her back up to bed when he found her asleep at the table, cheek creasing the pages of a biology textbook or an overly dense history tome. Nothing major or earth-shattering in the grand scheme of things, but to him...they were the precious pieces that made up the picture of their life together, the one he'd never expected himself to want, let alone physically achieve. The one where was granted the supreme wonder of knowing he was truly and completely loved for who he was, scars and snarls and all. 

In all honesty, he'd thought it would be far harder, sustaining a healthy and loving relationship. Not because Nik doubted her capabilities, of course, only himself, and the hope that he hadn't removed himself from the human being he'd once been so much so that he couldn't even remember how to love one properly, that the darkness of being turned and having his wolf suppressed for centuries combined with the merciless violence he had so naturally gravitated towards had stripped him of such capabilities and that he would be unable to love her in the way that she deserved, deeply and wholeheartedly. In the way where he woke up every morning and felt like he should be thanking some deity out there when he saw her head still resting besides his on the pillow. But it was easy. So, so easy, because it wasn't really all that different from when they'd been friends, only now there was the added mind-blowing sex and hand-holding and the anniversary-remembering and lavish weekend dinner dates to Paris at the drop of a spontaneous, impulsive hat. 

It hadn't been so much as an adjustment as a reawakening, an unfurling, an extension of what they'd already had into something even more treasured and wonderful. 

That was, of course, when the darling love of his life was on time. 

But, as always, every thought and feeling and idea took flight like a flock of raucous starlings from his brain the instant his eyes landed on her, struck as always by the lighting bolt that was her beauty -her beauty, not anyone else's, not Taita or Katerina or whoever else might have been both blessed and cursed to share that same face, that same fate, no, it was all her, it was always her, and every time he looked at her, he felt like a boy again, huddled on his bedroll of furs, giddy and lovestruck as he discovered a new mix of colours, knowing there really was magic in the world beyond that in his mother's dusty grimoires. 

In the grey sea of humanity, she was the brightness, the lightness, the rainbow that illuminated his shadows and changed the ugliness into something oddly beautiful, imperfect and yet painfully honest and raw, stripped away of frippery and pretense. A difficult process, yes, but one Klaus was endlessly grateful for, and he enjoyed showing her just how grateful he was at any and every opportunity. 

And that cap and gown were not going to have a long life, not if he could help it. 

"Sorry, sorry, I know I kept you waiting but I couldn't find my earrings and I swear I left them out for today so that I wouldn't have to go hunting through all our boxes...It appears you've lost your tongue instead of your head," Elena teased him playfully, leaning her bare forearms casually against the railing as she gazed down at him, the mischievous grin dancing across her red lips drawing a similar and immediate one from his own. 

"You are fantastically radiant, as always; any other reaction would be unjust. It seems Caroline actually knew what she was doing when she insisted on the red rather than the blue." He did have a particular weakness for his girlfriend in red, it was true, ever since his birthday when her present to him had been nothing but her in a fitted red dress and a signature bottle of cherry wine. 

"And you are a consistently shameless flirt, Niklaus." Descending the steps, she paused before the bottom, the elevation combined with her heels giving her an unexpected but welcome height advantage, especially when she sank her fingers into the golden curls at the nape of his neck and anchored her mouth to his, leaning them both into the honey-warm shaft of sunlight cascading down from the skylight above. 

Growling low in his throat, his arm came around her waist to pull her closer, fingertips brushing against the satiny fabric at the small of her back. "Weren't you worrying about Caroline having your head thirty seconds ago?" Elena inquired breathlessly as he trailed kisses along the slope of her jaw, and Klaus merely shook his head in response, teeth nipping at that spot below her ear in that way he knew she couldn't resist before reclaiming her mouth once again; he could hardly respond in full sentences, not in a moment like this, too engrossed in the feeling of her lips, the sugary-sweet slide of her tongue against his, this feeling that he chased all day and that nothing else could ever satisfy but her. "It'll grow back. I think. Don't know; never tried. I also don't care right now." 

Elena let out an amused hum, fingers knotting in the material of his silk-printed tie, but there was something in the tilt of her head, the shine of her eyes, the way her pulse was hammering in her neck... His fingers folded around here, restraint a long-forgotten notion as he brushed a lingering kiss to the heart of her palm. "Caroline can damn well wait, my love, especially when something is bothering you as it is now." 

She pulled away, but only slightly, a bare sliver of space that allowed them both to catch their breath and resume cognizant thought. Her dejected sigh fogged his lips like condensation on a mirror, that same feeling hollowing out her expression as she screwed her eyes shut tightly like she could keep her secret from leaking out of her magnetic irises through sheer power of will alone, and the sight of it made him howl inside, made him want to crush whatever the source of it was under the heel of his boots and smash it's loathsome face in...but he was trying to be better than that, didn't particularly even like being that anymore. Yes, sometimes it was necessary when various enemies of the Mikaelson family came knocking, but otherwise...he had more to fulfill him these days than needless, endless bloodshed. 

Besides, Nik also had the feeling that this wasn't the sort of problem he could go out and fix with his fists, or that he himself could fix at all. 

In a blink, Elena was dropping down onto the stairs, graduation gown pooling like a crimson puddle around her, the hem of her pretty white dress just peeking out shyly underneath. She didn't say anything for a moment, and Klaus was more than happy to wait for her, knowing she'd speak in her own time. So he took up a spot beside her, finger stroking ever so slightly against hers in their shared space, unable to resist the urge to try and provide some sort of comfort for her, to her. For so long, she had been such a stoic presence in his life, even more so than Elijah, given the fact that he had the advantage of a thousand years of seeing through his brother's every facade and faked expression. Yet Elena...she had always been so guarded with him, and rightly so, after everything he'd done to her, that she'd endured because of him. But now, he knew her like he knew his own heartbeat, like the curve of the sunlight glittering over the falls, like the feeling of holding a paintbrush in his hand, and all three came him the same incomparable feeling of peace that could not be replicated by anyone or anything else.

Once, Niklaus had seen such admittances as vulnerabilities, a tactical error that opened you up to attack and eventual defeat, just as Mikael had always taught him, as he had passed on to his son Marcel in his ignorance and paranoia. Now, he saw it as a strength, a victory to have earned the privilege of being the one Elena turned to and shared her secrets with, as he shared his, and how she kept them safe as she did everything else in her life; with steadfast determination, unwavering patience and the most infinite supply of generosity and tenderness. 

"I'm...nervous, I guess," Elena breathed out in the sunshine-filled silence hanging between them, her head coming to rest comfortably, comfortingly, against his suit-clad shoulder. "Not about us, just...well, everything but us, to be honest. Out of all of this, that is the one thing I'm absolutely sure of." 

He knew that. Taking a look across the foyer, at the steamer trunks stacked high like ancient monoliths and crowned with cardboard boxes scrawled in her  Sharpie-d hand with things like Poetry Books and Family Heirlooms and Miscellaneous Knickknacks, she didn't have to tell him she was sure.

But he appreciated it all the same, insecure hybrid that he was. 

"Before all this, before we all learnt the truth about vampires and witches and werewolves, there wasn't a lot holding us together outside of school and the general expectations that came from living in Mystic Falls and upholding our ridiculous familial traditions. Life was about who was dating who, what was going on with the football team, partying out in the woods 'til the crack of dawn and copying each other's notes to pass our weekly pop quizzes because we were too busy staring at some guy or too hungover from the night before to pay attention. And then when we did...it's like we found the heart of who we were as people. That when you brushed everything else aside and focused on all the things that really mattered, we would always pull together, always be there for each other, no matter how hard that might be. And I know I ruined a lot of it with my choices this past year and a half, what I put people through with my Salvatore tug-of-war. And we've all worked so hard to fix all that these last few months...but what if it doesn't last? What if it didn't mean anything? What if, with time and difference and a warped outside perspective, it doesn't hold up and we go back to quietly resenting each other for things that we can't change? What if, in five years time, ten years time, it'll be like we never even knew each other at all, let alone would have laid down our lives for one another? What if we're like strangers, vague recollections of searingly heartfelt moments floating around like ghosts in the backs of our minds, passing each other on the street and just keep walking?" 

"Do you feel like you'd ever do that?" 

The brunette gave an emphatic shake of her head at his query. 

"Then you shouldn't have so little faith in your friends, Elena. Some of them are...somewhat decent, I will begrudgingly admit. At the very least, I will always be grateful that they kept you safe for so long, long enough for us to meet." 

"And for you to kill me at the proper moment. And then for us to fall madly in love."

A smirk pulled at his lips, softer than its signature predecessor. "That too. Truth be told, I've never been particularly good at maintaining connections myself, not if it didn't benefit me in some tangible way, be it support or secrets or some other profitable medium. Even as a human, I was never like you, didn't hold out my hand to everyone I met. There were children I knew in passing from the village, those of the men my father would go hunting with, but I always preferred my own company or those of my siblings to anyone else's. I always felt different, and I often resented them their happy lives, their sense of completeness and contentment, no lingering sense of otherness residing in their souls. But you..." 

Fingers floating like in a dream, Klaus brushed the pad of his index finger along the smiling curve of her cheek, resting it against the ridge of her chin to tilt her face closer to his. "You, my wonderful Elena, are with the effort of friendship. You are worth fighting for, and worth the love of your friends they always so ardently and unreservedly displayed. You could never be forgotten, not by anyone, nor could anyone who truly loves you ever forget any part of you, past or present. You are who you always have been, and the supernatural has and could never change it, only amplify it and draw your bravery into starker focus, your compassion in colours of greater clarity. And if not, I'll compel the ever-loving daylights out of them until they remember how bloody grateful they should be to even have their numbers in your contact list." 

"Bonnie's immune to compulsion, though," his girlfriend reminded him, to which he patiently parried back with, "But not to bribery. I'm sure she'd be plenty amenable after a year's less student loan fees and some Taylor Swift tickets." The Bennett witch and he would never be friends. Too much bad blood, a whole sea of it, none of it under the bridge so much as engulfing it in a crimson tsunami wave, unbreachable. But they endured each other's unwavering presence in Elena's life, how the love of a friend was just as important as the love of a...well, lover, and vice versa. Neither were going anywhere, so they had little option but to get on with it and try not break any furniture in hearing range of Elena. 

He just hoped that if Kol and Caroline ever decided to tie the knot, he wouldn't be best man, or in that eventuality, the blonde vampire didn't pick Bonnie as her Maid of Honour. If the two of them had to dance together, a conflagration would be as guaranteed as the scathing exchange of banter. 

"True. And you're right. I know you're right. And for the record, I like to think that if I'd been around rather than Tatia, I would have made an effort to be friends with you." 

"Just friends?" Klaus quipped with a lascivious wink, her subsequent chuckles wrapping around his shoulders like a warm blanket, but unfortunately his phone started chirping in his pocket once again, puncturing their perfect moment like a pin lancing through a soap bubble. Growling low in his throat at the interruption, the hybrid fished it out of his pocket, anger subsiding when he saw who it was ruining their sweet bliss. 

Elena wordlessly lifted a brow, intention clear. 

"A selfie from Jeremy, pointedly reminding me of the vacant seat beside him," Klaus explained, a chuckle of his own escaping his lips at the boy's cheek. He really was so much like Kol. 

"Jeremy saved you a seat next to him and Ric?" 

He nodded in confirmation, touched at the small gesture but also its larger implications. That he was accepted as someone important in Elena's life, and therefore in theirs. That he had earned his place to be there on Elena's big day. That they wanted him there. "Apparently. I'm just glad that I won't have to sit in the general vicinity of my trickster brother. He has been nauseatingly insufferable since it was announced that Caroline was in the running for Valedictorian. Rebekah still has her money on you, by the way." 

Elena huffed lightly, nearly all traces of earlier uncertainty wiped away like clouded breath on a mirror. "I appreciate the show of familial support, but you know that stuff doesn't matter to me anymore. I was thrilled when Bonnie was named Prom Queen. The only queen I'm interested in being is yours. And I can't believe I just said that out loud; all this nostalgia and sentimentality is corrupting my brain and making me corny. Thank God none of your siblings heard that; they'd tease me forever, and that's a very long time with you lot." 

"Indeed it is," he agreed, taking her outstretched hands and pulling her to her feet, using the proximity to swoop in a quick kiss to her cheek before linking his arm with hers, ever the gallant gentleman proud to be seen with his lady. "I remember one time when we came across our dear brother Kol in the most compromising position with the Dowager Empress of..." and launched into another family tale of intrigue, scheming, stolen royal jewels and an unfortunate incident with a copper pot from a castle's kitchens that lasted them well into the drive there.

By the time the SUV pulled up into the Mystic Falls High parking lot, the sun was cresting high in the sky, a cheerful yellow marble amidst the enamel-blue sky. Streamers and banners wrapped around every available doorway like autumn ivy, signaling a true changing of the seasons, adolescence into adulthood. While the spectacle seemed a little overwrought for Klaus's tastes, he could admit there was a certain American charm to it, the blurring masses of red and white and blue, the high school marching band serenading away from one corner of the field in their polished livery, drums and trumpets attempting to compete with jubilant explosions of laughter tinged in defiant relief. 

Still, he much preferred the Decade Dances. Not that he'd ever tell his sister that -or Caroline for that matter. 

The pair had barely set a foot out of the car when the former Miss Mystic descended upon them, a riotous display of perfectly cultivated curls and a harangued expression. "Took you guys long enough! Couldn't you have just vamp-sped over here? It would have been so much quicker and saved me almost getting a stress ulcer!" 

"And miss the chance to annoy you, Caroline? Never." 

Elena not-so-subtly elbowed him in the ribs, the motion undone like an unfurling ribbon by the fact he could see she was holding in her laughter like a breath. 

In an attempt at expediency -and to shield his girlfriend's privacy- Klaus capitulated, and lied. "Fine, fine. Yes, we're late. Yes, it's my fault. Yes, you can pick something from the family vault in recompense for my crime -later. I believe we have a ceremony to be getting on with, do we not?" 

Caroline bobbed her head, blue eyes now a calming sea. "We do. But we have something to take care of first," she said, ensnaring Elena's arm and trailing her behind her like a kite, calling breezily over her shoulder, "Don't worry, she'll be seeing plenty of you later!" before he could offer up the proper protest. Huffing in annoyance, Klaus had little choice but to get to his seat and try to make 'small talk' with other people -joy of joys. However, he soon found his footsteps shadowed by someone else, a presence at his back like a hand on his shoulder. 

Klaus turned without prompting and exclaimed, "My girlfriend has just been kidnapped." 

Elijah frowned, suited form eclipsing the bright sun at their backs. "Friend or foe?" 

Nik chuckled dryly at the question, how they were the kind of family that needed clarification on such a thing. 

"You can't blame me for asking, brother, given both our family's track record and Elena's own," Elijah postured, smoothing a hand down his cherry-red tie, the only sort of fanfare he'd indulge in to show his support for their little sister's first ever graduation. Klaus knew that he'd probably bought it just for today and would likely never don the silken neckwear again, its colour too much like spilled blood for his tastes. He'd always favored the darker, moodier colours as the centuries rolled by and it became less in fashion for men to wear summer greens and sunshine yellows and russet reds in their brocade jackets and hose, lines sleeker and sharper like those of a predator. 

He knew that Rebekah would appreciate the gesture though, the fact that he'd tried something different for her sake. That, and the fully-stocked private jet awaiting her use at the Richmond airport once she was done with today's celebrations, destination anywhere and everywhere she wished. 

"Touché. Caroline. I think they're doing some sort of 'Hey, guess what, we're all still alive! Sort of,' group hug experience. Ugh." Klaus shuddered in distaste. "I really won't miss this place." 

Elijah clicked his tongue, omniscient as a god of old. "Yes, you will, Niklaus, and you cannot convince me otherwise. No matter what happened, this will always be where our story truly began. Yours, and that of your love for Elena. That will always make it special to you. Not quite as special as New Orleans, perhaps, a different kind of story for a different kind of love, but a home all the same. He reached out to Rebekah, did you know? Invited her to spend the summer in New Orleans." 

A tip of the head, an acknowledgement of an invisible presence, a long-believed ghost. "We talked about it yesterday. She has yet to make up her mind on the matter. And she is still very smitten with the Donovan boy. I don't think she has quite forgiven him for allowing her to believe him dead, even if only for a handful of years. To be completely honest, Elijah, neither have I. If I had known Marcellus still lived, that one of the rare and wonderful things I loved that I did not destroy with my own two hands had lived...perhaps I might have been a different man for all those decades." 

Niklaus faced his brother, let some of the mask bleed away and crumble, far less of the hybrid now than there was of the man who had died too young, too violently, lived too cruelly and yearned for more too desperately to be seen as anything but other. "Perhaps I might not have let our bond suffer so. Wouldn't have fallen into paranoia and outrage and neglect if I'd still had him to hold on to. But you should have been enough. My stalwart guide, brother and confidant and best friend. The fact I still had you should have been enough, and yet it wasn't. And for that, I'm sorry. I raged so much about you and our siblings abandoning me, but in truth I abandoned you as well to save myself the burn of a possible rejection. Because I was petty and selfish and thought I could and should control everything." 

It was hard to admit, even now, hard to admit that he wasn't always right, that ultimate power did not come with it ultimate perfection, that Mikael had been right in some of his vitriolic musings on his bastard son, but Elijah deserved the truth from him all the same. Without him, he wouldn't be where he was at that moment, standing in the sun with love beating in his heart and a smile on his lips as he heard the melody of Elena's laugh on the summery breeze. 

"Be careful, Niklaus, you are frightfully close to sounding like an actual human being, and a sentimental one at that," Elijah warned him with a smile, a rare gem of a thing, incomparable and priceless. It seemed the hybrid wasn't the only one who had been softened these last few months. 

Which was great for Nik, because that meant he could make fun of him for it. 

"Well, we can't have that, can we? Hmm, how about..." Klaus affected a high-pitched, swooning tone, "'Oh my God, Elijah, you're so annoying, and stuffy, and your song-and-dance with Katerina is so tedious, and if you were a real man rather than a robot you'd go to New York and profess your undying love, perhaps with flowers and a box of chocolates or a dripping human heart or something...'" 

"And now you sound like Kol. I have no intention of pursuing Katerina, brother. That ship, as the children say today, has long since sailed." 

"Bloody crashed and burned like the Queen Anne's Revenge more like. Are you sure, brother?" Klaus probed at the subject like a broken tooth, an architect checking for structural damages, a general assessing weak points in a strategy. "You seemed so happy to see her when she blew into town looking to barter with the location of the cure." An experience he was all-too willing to forget, the way she'd materialized in the Mikaelson mansion like a summoned genie not two days after Klaus and Elena had gotten back from their winter vacation, telling the family that she had information on the cure and was eager to negotiate with it, her price being her immediate freedom from his wrath, of course. She'd known that Rebekah wanted it, in that uncanny way she seemed to know everything, but after a family meeting it was ultimately decided that she be turned away, a few broken bones dearer. But not before Elijah disappeared for an entire day, whereabouts unknown. 

Regardless, Klaus never would have agreed. Not for her transgressions against himself, or even Elijah, but for Elena's sake. For the aunt she'd compelled to stab herself, then helped him trick to get to the sacrifice. The mind games she'd played with her and Stefan. The fact that she'd ever made Elena doubt who and what she was, made her feel like a cheap copy when her soul was as original as they came, no other equal to it. 

Elijah picked his words carefully, every sentence an intricate puzzle, telling much and yet showing so little. "I was happy to end things with her, for good. To make peace. I will always love her, I think, some small part of my soul carved out just for her, but it has no bearing on the larger whole. That is reserved for other, better, brighter things." 

Their family liked secrets too much. "Dare I ask what, exactly?" 

"That's for me to keep to myself for now, I believe. It'll be nice to surprise you for once." His brother tilted his chin, eyes the brown of sun-warmed soil. "I believe your precious cargo has been returned to you," he said, just as Elena came bounding over the grass, feet barely touching the ground as she gave a brief wave at his brother. 

"Hi, Elijah! I like the tie. Now you, Mister, better get to your seat," she ordered him playfully, poking a finger into his solar plexus. "You don't want to miss the show." 

Klaus sighed but dutifully obliged. Not without reminding her, though, "Your surname is in the middle of the alphabet, my love. Even if I was ten minutes late I wouldn't have missed you." 

She smiled affectionately. "Aww, that's sweet." And then abandoned it. "Also, I don't care. You will sit there, and clap, and pretend like you're actually invested just like the rest of us. Okay? Now, you. Seat. Go. Elijah, I'll see you after?" 

Elijah's mouth curled in amusement at her no-nonsense handling of him. "I look forward to it, Elena." 

Hand in hand, she dragged Niklaus over to the array of seats as he quietly murmured to her, "Did Caroline drag you into some kumbaya group hug?" 

Elena nodded, rolling her eyes in an action he presumed was more reflexive rather than born out of any true annoyance. "Yes, she sure did. But it was nice. It felt like an ending, but a beginning, too. Closing the book on life as we know it. But the great thing about books is that just when you think you've found one you couldn't love better, you suddenly do." He knew what she was talking about; she knew that he knew what she was talking about, because they were Nik and Elena, two halves of the same whole, simultaneously opposites and mirrors existing within the very same heartbeat. 

Klaus squeezed her hand, just once, fingers pressing into hers, meshed knuckles like the intricate lattice work canopy of trees that presided over the Falls they had both grown up playing in, centuries apart, and agreed, "Life does tend to surprise me that way. And I hope it always will." 

Caroline Forbes hated endings. She hated saying goodbye, to anyone or anything, and her bedroom was a testament to that, a shrine to adolescent boy band CDs and jewelry she hadn't worn in years that she thought was still pretty so she kept it around for nostalgia and to aid her shiny aesthetic. Now, sitting on her plush purple comforter, the room around her looked barren, stripped-bare, a house that had once been a home, rather than just a pile of bricks and flicks of paint, naked like a mannequin with no clothes. 

And it was all Kol Mikaelson's fault. 

Because he just had to give her a room at the mansion two months ago that, in hindsight, she hadn't even really used since she always ended up in his by the end of most nights anyway. And then he just had to mention that since Klaus and Elena were moving to jolly old England and Elijah was taking up residence in one of their apartments in Paris and Bekah was going on vacation with Matt so he was going to take a trip of his own to Italy...and that he didn't want to go alone. Specifically, not without her.

Like she'd ever be stupid enough to turn an offer like that down. 

But it meant that everything was moving so fast, and there were so many goodbyes and last-times and well-wishes, and she wanted to remember them all, didn't want to forget one single thing about this town that had raised her and killed her, where she'd emerged from the ashes of her former self like a blond-haired phoenix, becoming the person she was always destined to be...

Just because she had forever didn't mean that everyone else did, however. In five years' time, ten years, she might not be able to come back to this place, this point in her life where no one noticed that she hadn't aged and had a sudden affinity for wearing the same gaudy blue ring every day without fail, that she always winced whenever she had a cup of coffee or an iced tea from the Grill when the water supply was laced with vervain. People would begin to notice, and suddenly, she wouldn't be Caroline Elizabeth Forbes anymore, former cheerleader and Miss Mystic, the Sheriff's daughter who organized charity drives and raffles, disposition as sunny as their acclaimed Virginia weather. She'd be Caroline Forbes, a vampire, a monster, a predator who preyed on the innocent to perpetuate her immortal existence, a scourge to be eradicated, a blight to be removed like a slug off Mystic Falls' otherwise idyllic vista. 

And that day scared her. 

Caroline knew, rationally, that this wasn't the end, wasn't the be all and end all. She would see everyone here again; of course she would. But it would be different. They'd be different. She'd be different. And that was a hard thing to come to terms with. She'd already changed so much in the past eighteen months; she wasn't sure if any more would be a good thing. 

"Just what is going through that darling head of yours to make you wear such a serious expression on such a joyous day?" Kol's charming voice teased her, posture easy and languid in the doorway, smile wide and brimming with mirth like an overflowing cup. But if she looked closely, she could see that his eyes were serious, intent, and it was one of the things she'd come to love most about him, how there were so many angles and facets to him, that he only let people see what he wanted them to see, and hid the rest away behind walls and layers of nonchalant humour. 

And that, despite the fact he was over a thousand years old and she was still a baby vamp, despite all the no-doubt hundreds upon hundreds of women he'd been with throughout all that time that he'd never lasted with, never looked back for, he wanted her to see everything, all of him, completely and truly and without guile or facetiousness. 

And she did. 

Pursing her lips, Caroline dragged her fingertips down the tassel at the end of her discarded mortar board, wrapping the shiny golden cord around her ring-clad index finger as she told him honestly, "I'm just thinking. About endings. And things changing. And how many more dresses I can fit in my suitcase before it gives up the ghost and rebels on me." 

"That's an easy fix, sweet Caroline: we'd just get you a bigger suitcase. You can never have too many dresses, only too little room to put them all," he said, pushing off the doorway and crossing the room in an easy step before claiming his usual place beside her, his presence an immediate balm to her troubled mind. Taking the cap from her hands, Kol situated it on his own head, cocking it at a rakish angle, one of those impish grins curling up the edges of his mouth. It always made her happy to see him smile, never failed to send a thrill racing through her when she happened to be the cause of one, too, the novelty of someone *wanting her around never losing its luster. 

She'd always kinda hated when people called her that, though, 'Sweet Caroline.' The immediate assumption that just because she was blonde and liked floral sundresses and strappy sandals and still knew all the words to 'Part Of Your World' that that was all there was to her, that she could be so easily and stereotypically defined, that there wasn't a thing of claws and teeth and wanting that existed inside her, that ached for adventure and newness as much as she now needed blood. (Also, she found the song super annoying and didn't even get English football, it all seemed so dumb and boring to her.) Coming from Kol, however, she'd never minded it, knew that he actually meant it, not as a degrading, trivializing remark but as a genuine compliment. That he saw all of that, all of her, and liked it, too. The sweetness and the bitterness, the sass and the softness, and wanted it in a way he never had with anyone else before, or so he'd confessed to her early on in their relationship, those early days where they'd been trying to figure out how this might work, the Trickster and the Perfectionist, before realizing just how simple it all was, that they both wanted the exact same thing: to be seen. 

Kol Mikaelson hadn't believed in love and goodness for a long, long time. Until he met her, and she did what she did best, and changed his mind.  

A laugh bubbling from her lips, she rescued her hat from him and scooted back against the headboard, making room for him on her lavender bedspread. In seconds, his head was in her lap, her fingers winding through the strands of hazelnut-hued hair, the silver band on her finger peeking through like a shy deer in a forest glen every few seconds. 

"Are you having second thoughts about agreeing to go with me?" 

Something else she'd learned about the Mikaelson's since she'd started dating one: they acted all tough and monstrous on the outside, but in reality, they were just as vulnerable and tender as anyone else on the inside, harbouring a soft and gooey inner center like a chocolate chip cookie. They needed reassurance just like humans did, and certain blonde vampires, too. 

"No, Kol. No second thoughts," Caroline promised him, fingers still sliding through his hair. "Just happy first ones. It's just...I only ever left Mystic Falls for the occasional visit to see my dad or to the Richmond mall when our one here didn't have anything I liked. It's a big change. And then I'll be going off to Whitmore with Bonnie and Elena will be thousands of miles away for the first time in our entire existence." She paused, took a breath she didn't need, admitted cautiously, "Everything's changing, but I'm still the same. I'll always be the same. And everything is so perfect right now. I have you and I'm happier than I ever thought I could be for a person who's gonna be a perpetual teenager and have to compel themselves into every bar until I can crack the perfect make-up combo so I look old enough to know what a gin and tonic actually is, let alone order one." 

Reaching up, his fingers encircled her wrist, thumb running along the pale blue network of veins currently pumping around someone else's blood, voice a low, soothing rumble as he replied, "I understand where you're coming from, dear. I was only nineteen when I turned, lingering on that uncertain and frustrating cusp between manhood and adolescence, never taken seriously either way." 

"So how did you get over it?" 

Something else she'd learnt: Kol was far more perceptive than people gave him credit for, most of all his idiot siblings. While they all compared him to a jovial, flippant prankster, there was a well of genuine and heartfelt emotion resting below the surface, a wisdom and a sense of experience that, whilst might not have exactly been garnered from living a choir-boy lifestyle, didn't make any of it less true or insightful. 

"By trying to forget about it, or feeding when I couldn't. Not exactly a coping mechanism I'd want you to replicate, my sunshine girl. You shine far too brightly for such darkness. And I have the utmost faith in you: you can handle anything, Caroline Forbes. There's not a single thing in this world you couldn't conquer if you set your mind to it, and I'd be more than happy to stand on the sidelines and watch you do it, preferably in one of those delectable miniskirts of yours.." Kol trailed off, face lighting up with one of those deliciously wicked smirks that Caroline just couldn't get enough of. 

"Hmmm, I do like the sound of that. You know, my mom won't be home for at least another two hours," she informed him slyly, opting for a tone of idle nonchalance even as her fingers toyed with the jet buttons on his black button-down, a knowing glint in her own eyes. 

"There's lots of things you can do in two hours. Watch a film, read a newspaper, indulge in a little light piracy…or make out with your unfathomably gorgeous girlfriend," he grinned, before his mouth moved to cover her own, melting away the last of her worries along with it.

Yes, she was going to be just fine. Because, for the first time in her life, not just as a vampire but as a human being, too, she had someone who loved her absolutely for who she was, was not even a first choice but an only choice, a one-and-done. As he was hers. 

Which was lucky for her, since he was a really, really good kisser. 

And being in his arms…it was the safest place she'd ever known. 

Somewhere ahead of her, perched on one of the branches on one of the many trees that made up the fairy-tale-like forest, an owl was waking from its slumber, feathers ruffling on the summer breeze, it's gleaming gaze no doubt drawn over to survey the once-grand, now thoroughly dilapidated house in front. It was a desiccating behemoth of a thing, and like so much in this soul-sucking town, it had been left to rot and ruin and no one had ever cared to fix it, content to let it be consumed by nature, as was only natural. After all, who would claim such a house, where witches long since passed walked the cobwebbed hallways, gauzy and ghastly like spectral Miss Havishams, frozen in time and in death? There had been rumours floating around that the Mystic Falls Building Commission had wanted to tear it down and open up a new summer attraction sight, one of those pop-up carnival things with sticky funnel cake and rigged water gun games and dizzying tilt-a-whirls. She couldn't imagine anything more horrible -except owing Klaus Mikaelson a favor when he inevitably compelled the money-gluttonous lot to leave the house be, and signed over the deed to entire property and surrounding lands to her, pressing a key and a set of signed documents into her palm with a smile he'd no doubt intended to be friendly, and yet had made her conscience feel anything but eased. 

It had felt too much like a bribe, a placation, a cheap toy from the gas station to soothe the irate toddler on the way home from a long drive. Here, take this and shut up. Keep your stupid and entirely valid opinions to yourself and leave us all in peace. You're not needed anymore. 

There was a bag perched on the passenger seat beside her, full of incense and candles and sage, her family grimoire and a half-empty bottle of sunscreen, her phone charger and the empty CD case of The Cranberries reflecting the light of the waxing full moon above. The car in question was brand new, a joint graduation gift from both her parents as Bonnie Sheila Bennett embarked upon her newest -and hopefully the first of many- adventure. 

After all this time, after so many deaths and dastardly deeds and wicked schemes, Bonnie had gotten the memo: she was finally leaving Mystic Falls. For the first time in forever, for no other reason than simply that she could, that she wanted to, Bonnie was letting this crazy town fade in her proverbial rearview mirror and was going to drive down to Whitmore to begin the process of going through Grams's office there, followed by an impromptu road-trip to look up some of the other covens out there that her cousin Lucy had recommended she get in touch with to help her explore her powers further. After everything that had happened with Shane, the way he'd tried to take advantage of her magic and manipulate her…she never wanted to be in a position like that again. Never wanted to feel so helpless and vulnerable and used like that. She'd come so close to giving in, so close to abandoning the values that Grams had taught her and embracing the dark arts of Expression. If she'd been in a different place, if her friends hadn't fought so hard for her…she might have. 

For all the years she'd witnessed first-hand what compulsion could do to a person, the way their will could be so entirely subdued by another being, their sense of self wiped away like taking bleach to a wall, she'd always felt safe and protected by the knowledge that no one could ever do that to her, the security blanket she cocooned herself in like armor that had allowed her to go toe-to-toe with some of the worst creatures the supernatural world had to offer without flinching. 

Now she knew what it was like, though, what Tyler must have endured, being sired to Klaus. How Caroline must have felt, being compelled to do Damon's bidding what felt like eons ago but was only eighteen months prior. 

And it terrified her. 

But as it was, the psycho had failed in his mission to resurrect Silas and had his memories of anything relating to the supernatural completely erased thanks to some compulsion courtesy of Elijah. She'd deemed it a more fitting punishment than death, having his entire personality obliterated, his magical raison d'etre little more than a distant dream like a long-forgotten song. The memory of him still lingered, though, a stain on the beauty and wonder that her powers had always been, a source of strength and comfort -an unbreakable connection to her ancestors, the many Bennetts who had come before her so that she could be here now, staring out the front window of her shining silver Lexus at the looming house beyond, surrounded by the mixed perfume of new-car and summer-blooming wisteria and night.  

She hadn't been back here since the incident with the coffins, since Damon turned her mo-Abby (don't forget, she always winced when you called her mom, she didn't like it, couldn't handle the guilt of what she had done) into a vampire. And while it was indeed very spooky and creepy and some of the floorboards sagged with bloodstains old and recent…she still had a tether to this place that she just couldn't let go of, at least not without saying goodbye first. Because this house wasn't just built in bad memories; she'd spent nights with Jeremy here after faking her death, the two of them hunched over grimoires like crooked saplings that hadn't grown straight, teenagers bent by the weight of fate and responsibility as they pressed their bony hands into their shoulders and urged them to hurry, to find a way to save everyone -Elena- before it was too late, sharing kisses and take out coffees and stress, everything made heavy and romantic by the light of a hundred burning candle wicks, back when fire used to mean heat and pretty shadows rather than watching her best friend get trapped before a sacrificial altar. 

Bonnie had been thinking about it a lot lately. The sacrifice. Elena and Klaus. Klaus and Elena. Kol and Caroline and Matt and Rebekah. All her friends, her family, who she had fought and bled for and died for, all moving on. Swapping indignation and disgust for diamond bracelets and ski trips to the Alps and summering in Italy or whatever the hell Caroline thought she was going to be doing while her boyfriend, the vampire, sunk his fangs into some innocent tourist's neck while she was preening over espresso martinis and gelato, gazing at him wistfully from the back of a moped like she was Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday. There used to be sides, for God's sake, a clear Us V Them mentality that had served them just fine! Back in the beginning, Elena had dumped Stefan because he was a vampire that fed off of bunny rabbits, and now she was a hop, skip and nanometer jump away from being Mrs Klaus freaking Mikaelson. 

And yet…she was happy. So, so happy. So much she glowed with it, brighter than the sun and the stars and a million supernovae burning at once. And Caroline; Caroline finally had someone who put her first, never diminished her or ran hot and cold with her like a malfunctioning sink tap as Tyler had, someone who helped her not only accept but embrace everything about herself, even the parts of Pre-Vampire Caroline she'd been so eager to gloss over after her transition.  

Her and Jeremy were well and truly over, and he was dating April Young now, the pastor's daughter whom he'd helped save. Everybody had someone. And what did she have? A cardboard box in the trunk and a CD with a scratch in it, a lot of resentment and anger and bitterness that she wanted so desperately to let go of. For so long, her friends had been her everything, the orbit of her lonely little planet, their magnetic pull undeniable, resistance not even a thought that crossed her mind. She'd never had any other friends but them, everyone else thinking she was too weird and strange, the woman with the absentee mom and the crazy grandmother like something out of a storybook, the Bennett house that no one else wanted to play at because don't you know, that's where the witch lives? 

It was time to see who she was outside of that, what she was as her own separate entity, her distinct and unique self outside the influence of everyone else's demands. She'd do magic because she wanted to do it, not because someone else needed her to do it for them. She'd sleep in 'till noon and make sweet tea the right way, rather than the instant stuff out of the packet because she didn't have the time to stand around and brew it properly on account of his somebody was always dying or trying to kill them all or the team were plotting to return the favor. She wouldn't be washing blood out of her clothes, not her own or anyone else's. She'd dream of new cities and new adventures, rather than the monsters of old, the returning actors of her nightmares, things with fangs and fur, eyes black and red and golden and even the blue, which was somehow worst of all. 

No, Bonnie would never be happy that her two best friends had fallen in love with the Mikaelsons. And yet, at the same time, she would never begrudge the Mikaelsons for falling in love with them. 

Because, at the end of the day, so had she, a million years ago on the playground, recess whistle trilling in her ear as hands clasped, and held, and kept holding, even when wiser people would have let go, and had. Darkness was drawn to light, it was an immutable fact of the universe. 

And if anyone, alive or dead, possessed the will and the strength and the single-minded determination to bring out the humanity in a family of centuries-old killers, it was Elena Gilbert and Caroline Forbes, of that Bonnie would always be sure. 

Below her, the floorboards gave a groan as if in answer, in approval. Permission to let go. 

But that wasn't the Bennett way. That wasn't her way. 

So she'd go, but only for now. She'd be back, somehow, someday. Only on her terms, though. Only as someone new, this person she wasn't yet but couldn't wait to meet, to explore. Like the taffeta-skirted transformations of her youth, turning from six year old to princess to fairy godmother to tiger when she'd gone through her animal phase. Like donning a cloak and picking up a sword, slicing through the brambles and barbed wire that had caged her spirit so dispassionately and for so long she'd forgotten how to exist in any other way, as anything else. 

Reborn, the only way she knew how: acceptance.

If Stefan Salvatore had a nickel for every time he'd graduated high school, he'd have seventeen nickels, and while that couldn't buy him much in the grand scheme of things, it would certainly be an impressive and noteworthy collection. 

It was funny, how he both had and hadn't thought this day would come, over the last two tumultuous years of his eternal life. He'd made plans with Elena -only within the confines of his mind- way back when, and yet Stefan never really expected he'd actually be around to see it, to stand in his atrociously red cap and gown, his arms around Caroline and Matt as she made them all pose on the green for a group photo, the same stretch of lawn where Tyler had thrown a football at his face on that very first day, and here Stefan was, shaking his hand as he stepped down from the stage. Damon was in the crowd somewhere, lurking as usual, the occasional flash of sun-warmed black leather that Stefan would know even if he forgot his own name. 

The Camaro was waiting for them back at the Boarding House, freshly waxed and gleaming the same pristine enamel-blue as the cloudless Virginia sky, bags packed neatly into the trunk like the flower beds their mother had once meticulously presided over, like the gravestones of all the dead they were responsible for in this town. 

Elena was right, as always: they needed to get out. Needed a fresh start, if they ever wanted to find their way back to being not only brothers, but best friends again. And they'd really tried since last winter, tried to repair some of the holes they'd clawed open in their relationship, wounds left unattended and hodgepodged together with the metaphorical duck-tape that was uniting over a common cause, usually that of self-preservation or scheming schemes against the next Big Bad, but there were only so many bottles of bourbon in the world and trips to the Mystic Grill for soggy french fries dipped in milkshakes, so many silences you could fill up with idle chit-chat before you sounded like Mrs Lockwood at one of her garden parties. He hoped that by getting clear of Mystic Falls they could clear the air between them, make the necessary apologies without any of the unnecessary excuses, their reasons always so crystal clear to each other and yet never any less hurtful because of it, this merry-go-round of fights and betrayal and spilled blood and spilled secrets and stolen kisses and twisted lies. 

But Damon would always be the first person he wanted to call if he had a problem, just like he always had since he was four years old, right down the hall rather than a continent away. He would always be the big brother that taught him how to tie his shoes so he didn't trip and snuck him extra dessert when he was sad. His first memory would never be of Mother or Father but of him, blue eyes and scruffy black hair and an embrace he'd always felt safe in, even if it was one that'd been used against him, used to hurt him. Over and over again. So was he, though, he was no blameless angel, no Michael to his Lucifer. They were both abominations of nature, and they'd both broken by all they'd done, just in different ways. They might have both endured the trials of vampirism, but their scars did not align, weren't two butterfly prints on a page but two entirely separate tales written in ink and blood, blood of the innocent and the blood of family, the people they'd loved and lost and let go of. 

Or at least tried to. 

Because it still hurt, seeing Klaus spin Elena in his arms, laugh like the liquid gold of ambrosia, like the warmth of the home he had always been searching for and only found once for a flickering heartbeat of time. Seeing the smile painted on her face, a true work of art, and being able to admit such an expression had never been cultivated by his hand in all their time together. That he'd never seen Elena Gilbert so completely herself, so effortlessly content and weightless as she was with the Mikaelson Hybrid. 

He'd planned to be the one to hold her like, from the moment they met until the end of time -either his or hers, it wouldn't have mattered. He'd wanted that casual affection and glittering spark and the way she always tipped her head back right before she kissed him. And he'd ruined it. Ruined it all, as he was destined to. Katherine had said to him when she'd sailed into town a few months back that there was a rumour within her people that the doppelgängers were fated to be together throughout the long and complex dance of time. He wasn't sure why she'd mentioned it in particular, or why she'd felt the need to suddenly reveal that she came from a distant line of witches called Travelers, whoever they were, if it was out of some half-hearted ploy to insinuate they would forever be in each other's lives in some distant, unspoken capacity or because she just found the tidbit interesting, but personally Stefan didn't hold much stock in it. Because even if it was true for him…it wasn't true for Elena. 

She was meant to be with Klaus, simply because out of all the men that had paraded in front of her -himself included- laid themselves prostrate and vulnerable at the altar of her goodness, he was the one that made her the happiest, and that was exactly what she deserved. Their own relationship had been tense and dramatic, epic in scale and soul-crushing in its propensity for despair, the dominoes that fell in the wake of their love, the wheels they set in motion that clambered over all they held dear. And whatever had or hadn't happened with her and Damon…Stefan liked to think he knew Elena well enough to know that she couldn't love someone who wouldn't own up to who they were, all of it, that didn't have a line they simply wouldn't cross, no matter what. Someone who would hurt her in the name of trying to save her, when the only person Elena needed was herself, as she'd been telling them all along.

Stefan finally got the message, but he doubted that Damon ever would. He was still glaring at Klaus like he was imagining all the ways he could rip his head off and watch it grow back like a slow-motion nature documentary, and that would likely always be the case. He couldn't find happiness in her happiness, not if it wasn't with him, and not if it was with Klaus of all people. 

He hadn't known him back in the twenties though, hadn't known him in the wake of New Orleans and Mikael. Klaus had filled a void in his life that his brother had made, a hole in the plaster foundation of his soul that even all his Ripper bingeing had done nothing to minimize or mitigate the ache of. Nik deserved this, too, the lonely guy clapping him on the back in the booth of a bar, eyes a little too real and a little too raw, underneath it all still the boy wishing someone would or even could love him, or at the very least accept him for his faults and foibles and attempts at fratricide. 

Maybe that was why he wasn't all too surprised when he got back from the Post-graduation party at the Grill to find the Original there, lounging beside a lit fireplace in spite of the sweltering May heat, inspecting a bottle of Scotch with an aficionado's eye. Speak of the devil and he shall appear and all that. Think of old friends and they shall emerge, raiding your alcohol and looking at you with the smuggest expression known to mankind. 

"What are you doing here?" Stefan asked dimly, not enough energy powering the statement to give it an edge of any conviction because deep down, he knew. He knew why he was here, and, truthfully, he didn't mind. Not saying goodbye might have been his brother's style, but it wasn't his. 

(He never got to say goodbye to his father, or to Zak, or to Valerie or Lexi or even his own self, the boy he'd once been, the innocence he'd lost and the innocence he'd taken from his own brother.) 

(Maybe he really did need a drink if he was already this maudlin at four thirty seven in the afternoon.) 

"Technically, felony trespassing. Existentially, the only way I know to make peace: get everyone drunk. It works wonders at the mansion whenever someone has a hissy fit, although of course I won't go naming any names," Klaus offered with a lilting grin, and it was still such a shock to the system, like a bucket of vervain-laced water, just how human Klaus looked these days, that customarily hunted, predatory gait he'd carried around like he'd forgotten the weight of it after a thousand years of constantly looking over his shoulder had melted away, thawed out by something as simple and simply wonderful as the discovery of true love. 

"The only way to bury the hatchet is to unearth the alcohol," the hybrid continued on, the sharp points of his face softened into tempered fragility, and Stefan could almost pretend it was ninety years ago, framed not by firelight but hand-blown glass lamps, the spray of a champagne bottle and the catching comet-tail spark of a cufflink replaced by an amber-glistening Scotch and a Cartier watch worth more than the living rooms' furnishings put together. "I should put that on a T-shirt," mused the Mikaelson ruminatively, and just like that, the spell was broken and Stefan was staring down a man that had betrayed him with the mere act of making him forget him, even if it had been for his own good. Not to mention making him turn off his humanity, feed on his girlfriend and drive him to the brink of insanity after a whole summer of following him around all because Damon had needed his stupid magical blood. 

Was there anyone in the world he could have a normal relationship with? Someone he couldn't bear the sight of and yet still opened the door to let them in every time, where feelings were clear-cut and well-defined as a zebra crossing, telling you not to walk there lest you want to tempt fate. And that was what this was, tempting fate, pushing the boundaries, inviting the monster in and not even telling him to wipe his feet on the door mat. "Come on, Stefan, you know I won't take no for an answer," as if he ever needed a reason to remember, as if he'd ever forget it. 

Fine. Maybe he was angrier at him than he'd realized. 

"Won't you?" Stefan replied darkly, arms crossed and brow pinched, crease deep enough to drop a dollar in like an old couch cushion. 

The threat vaporized in Klaus's repentant chuckle, the diligent dip of his head as he acquiesced, "Fine, I will, but I will be most aggrieved about it and ruin everyone else's evening and you will be entirely at fault, old friend." 

Scoffing -a thing he never used to do until he first heard the last name Mikaelson- the Salvatore ventured over to the bar cart, fully stocked as always, and held out a set of glasses almost half his age, uselessly expensive and just the sort of thing he knew the blond would approve of. Better to ply him with alcohol until he'd given whatever inevitable, grandiose, verbose speech he'd cooked up and then left for his big mansion full of family -that weren't out drinking with their sort-of ex's sort-of father- and then off on a grand adventure with said ex likely never to be seen again…

"Okay, Magneto, I'll have a drink with you. For old time's sake." 

Klaus didn't miss a beat. 

"How magnanimous of you, Charles." 

It was confusing. 

"What? Don't look so surprised, Stefan," Klaus drawled as if such a reply had been perfectly reasonable and not totally out of character for a man who, last time he checked, was still using a stylus for his smartphone. "Kol has spent the last three months systematically watching ever superhero movie ever made and trying to rope in as many of us as possible into sharing the 'life-changing experience,'" he explained with exaggerated air quotes before adding a moment later, "I didn't have the heart to tell him that I actually watched Batman and Robin when it came out. The things we do for family, eh?" 

Stefan rasped thickly, "Yeah, I'm familiar," like it wasn't the biggest fucking understatement of the last two centuries -his two centuries.

"I see Damon isn't around to spend your last night together," the hybrid mused with misplaced cherubic innocence and damn, Stefan was such an idiot, shouldn't have let his guard down like that, he'd forgotten how well Klaus could read him, or was he just making a big deal out of nothing, it was obvious that Damon wasn't in the house otherwise there'd be broken bones and bottles and furniture and someone's zygomatic arch would be crushed to pieces and Stefan would be cleaning blood out of the rugs before they left and…

"He's still at the Grill with Alaric, no doubt spending his time in a much similar fashion." 

A vague, disinterested nod. "Right." Accompanied by a casual shrug. 

Far too casual. 

Before he knew it, Stefan was already reprimanding him with an exacting, "Klaus…" sharp like the tip of a dagger, of fang piercing flesh, of the hundreds of thousands of times he's had to defend his brother and his decisions, soothe away betrayed stings and venomous jabs insisting and insisting and persisting and praying and hoping that Damon was more than the weight of their disappointment and judgmental stares, and his, for he was not blameless either, and never could be, could never be faultless or pristine in the tale of his brother's destruction and desecration of humanity, of his humanity, not when his fingerprints were smeared all over the blueprints of his vampirism, his hand the one that dragged him to the proverbial poisoned well and did not stop until he'd drunk deeply from it. 

He'd thought, once, that love could save them both. That so long as there was something to fight for, to be for, then they would not wholly be monsters. Yet here they were, Stefan enduring the condescension of the Mikaelson Hybrid rather than face the grueling emptiness of a hollow silence, absolution and admittance in alcohol and the way he couldn't quite reach Klaus's gaze, knowing there'd be too much there to see, too easily decipherable: even with his switch flipped, Stefan Salvatore had never perfected the torturous art of casual blankness, expression scrawled with devastating detail like the pages of his beloved journals, every tragedy written there stark-faced, unforgettable. 

The blond held his hands aloft, glass pitched precariously between two crooked fingers, beckoning the invisible. "No judgment," he assured hastily, and for once Stefan thought he might actually mean it with a degree of sincerity, consequently knocking him off-kilter as if he'd had five bottles rather than half a glance, surprise compounded with his continued, "It's just…if you were my brother, I'd respect how important today is for you. You're leaving, Stefan. Finally letting go of the teenage pretense and putting your own needs first: Damon can get drunk with History teachers whenever he wants," tone walking the dubious high wire of softness and determination, eliciting and enticing him to see his own worth. 

A very dangerous thing for him to consider, in his own mind. 

"I thought we weren't allowed to come back here for a while though," he said reflexively, reflectively, content to stow away the flash of kinship kindness and parcel through it as he was watching Mystic Falls fade in a freshly-polished rearview mirror.

A sweeping, unconcerned amendment of, "Correction: Elena said you couldn't stay for over-extended periods of time. And Mr Saltzman is, of course, more than welcome to get in his car and cross the town line to see you both whenever he so wishes. Elena is already talking about having him and Jeremy over for Christmas." 

"In London? I'm sure he'd like that." And because he apparently couldn't help himself, he just had to know…"He hasn't tried to say anything to her, has he?" Stefan doesn't insult him with a clarification; Klaus's mouth took on an unsettled edge, pinched and grim, harsh as memories best left forgotten -or have been tried to, at someone else's behest. "I haven't noticed him go up to her…but I'm not exactly around twenty four seven like you are." 

A belligerent, dimpled grin. "Quite. And no, he hasn't. Thankfully. I'd hate to divest him of anything important after maintaining the peace around here for so long." 

Moments without Klaus threatening someone: right back down to zero. And to think he'd been doing so well. "Nik…" 

"Stefan…I can never forget what he did, nor can I ever forgive him, never forgive him for what he did to Elena, how he treated her." His tone was like polished steel, adamant and slicing, pearls of blood beading up from a surface as liable to inflict pain as it was to invite and excite conflict in others. A tone that immediately raised hackles, yet also lulled the accused into compliance, knowing there was no real hope of a rebuttal in the face of such gut-curdling rage. Inexplicably, though, it changed, all that vitriol being directed internally as he murmured, confession-both soft, "And I'll never forgive myself, either, for I know I'm equally guilty of inexcusable behaviour. But I try to make up for it. Every minute of every day, I try to show her that there is no single thing in this whole world that I care about more than her. That I'm still just as narcissistic and machiavellian and frustrating as I was the day she met me, but now that's not all there is to me. She is my heart and my humanity, my love and my soul and my conscience, and if someone offered me a redo on my life but it meant changing even a single moment of the last seven months we've spent together…I wouldn't take it. I wouldn't take it," Klaus repeated devoutly, "because it wouldn't be worth it." 

A moment passed. Two. Collecting on his fingers, the transparent, ardent sentiment of Klaus's words settling on his shoulders like a dusting of snow, or something heavier like stone, encasing him in the emotional severity of the moment and weighing down his limbs with a particular flavour of guilt that only the mention of Elena could manifest. "Careful there, Klaus," the youngest Salvatore cautioned him impossibly, improbably, the million-to-one jackpot that no one with such blood on their hands as they would ever dream to win. "You're beginning to sound as sappy as me."

The hybrid shrugged and replied simply, "There's no shame in having feelings, Stefan. Besides, if you repeated it to anyone, who would believe you?" 

A scoff lodged in the other vampire's throat, an apple pip of incredulous disbelief. "Um, anyone who's seen you look at Elena or been in the same room as the two of you for over ten seconds?" Stefan drawled, swirling the bourbon in his glass and observing the way it refracted the bonfire-bright spark of flame. "I hate to say it, but you're pretty obvious when it comes to her. It's actually very sweet, you know," he continued to ruminate with less animosity than he'd anticipated, so infinitesimal it was virtually negligible, a non-entity of what had once been a full-bodied, live apparition, a specter that beat in his breast more ardently than any heart. "She deserves it, the way you look at her. I'm just sorry it took her so long to find it. That she had to deal with so much grief and trauma, mostly because of Damon and I. Bet you're glad to see the back of us." 

Hindsight was twenty-twenty, and a bitch, and he'd love to think he would have done things differently if he'd known how this production would play out, but like Nik has said, he didn't regret what he'd felt when he'd felt it, and for whom, and all he could do now was try to find a way to live with it. 

As was his way, the Mikaelson pulled out a surprise at the last second like a magician's scarf, a sincere unwinding of thought and explanation and accountability, of generosity in the form of honesty. "Not as much as I'd thought. You were there for me at a point in my life where I had lost almost everything, Stefan. I don't know if I ever told you this, but back in New Orleans…I had a son, Marcel. Elijah and Rebekah and I -and sometimes Kol when he behaved- raised him like our own, as one of our own. And Mikael killed him, burned him alive right in front of me. Or so I'd thought, because now apparently he's alive and attempting to woo my sister from across state lines. But that's not the point." 

Right, because a secret son was so obviously worth skipping over. 

"The point is…I never thought I'd be happy again, after that, that all my capacity for it had died with him in that fire as we fled the home we'd forged and fought for. And then I met you. And you were the absolute worst sort of vampire and I thought you were an absolutely deplorable match for my sister, and then I got to know you properly and realized what a rare soul you were, and still are, Stefan. Your passion and verve for humanity is unequalled, even by your bloodlust. You care. You care about everything, and that is no small feat, old friend. No small feat at all. You could have kicked me out today, but you didn't."

Stefan shook it off with all the inebriated dignity he could muster, offering up an unflappable refrain of, "Honestly, I didn't want the karma. Starting off my new life right and all." 

"Are you sure that's all it was?" Klaus asked with a thickly probing blond brow. "No lingering fondness for our prior friendship?" 

"You mean getting black-out drunk and insulting people and toying with humans for our own entertainment? Now what would I miss about that?"

"The company?" he ventured, and, oh, if he'd ever used that same look on Elena, it was no wonder she'd fallen for him, that kind of stark, hungry, soul-sucking loneliness that only she -and maybe Stefan- would ever understand. They were souls that could not exist in solitude, had been born to belong as part of a pair, a matched set, a linked hand, with siblings and then with lovers. 

(Atomus: could not be divided.)

"It was certainly memorable," Stefan agreed, before throwing caution and duplicity to the wind and saying outright, "Maybe I do miss it, a little. Caroline's going off with your little brother and she's the only other person still alive that I've ever felt at peace with what I am when I'm around them. Who I never felt like was judging me, despite being on opposite ends of the vampire diet control spectrum." 

"It is one of the most remarkable things I've seen, how strong-willed she is. Our family is lucky to have her." 

"Not that you'll ever tell her that, of course." 

Klaus inclined his head, conceding and condescending all at once. "Of course. At least not until Kol gets it into his head to marry her, then I might be magnanimous enough to slip it into my best man speech. So long as Elijah doesn't beat me to the punch. I mean, I have set more fires with him than our resident stick-in-the-mud, that must count for something." 

No other answer seemed applicable except: "You people are so weird." 

"So we've been told. Multiple times, in fact. Elena says it because they're jealous of our free-spiritedness." 

A bitter, darkly sarcastic drawl. "Well, then she's clearly lying to you, isn't she?" The sound of a door closing that he hadn't even heard open, for once not attuned to every threat and nuance of his surroundings. Letting his guard down, for once, and forgetting what always happened when he did that -or, more accurately, who happened. 

"Damon," Stefan said, rising to his feet, insides constricting with a sudden onslaught of red-faced shame like a child caught doing something they shouldn't -not that such a feeble simile could measure up watching an R-rated movie against hanging out with your former murder buddy who was dating your former girlfriend. "You're back." 

"Top-notch job stating the obvious, Stefan." A hazy, drunken blink of blue eyes, calm waters turning frosty and arctic as they surveyed a similar design. "Baby bro, you know you're supposed to take the trash outside, not leave it in the living room and paw through our stash." 

Like the needle of a temperature gauge on a nuclear reactor, the muscle in Klaus's jaw ticked, and ticked again, warning of imminent and catastrophic meltdown as he remarked with corrosive savagery, "Was that a dog joke?" 

"Woof," His brother intoned, utterly deadpan. Needlessly mocking. Hurting just to hurt, just because he was in pain and wanted everyone else to feel a modicum of it, too. 

And Stefan was tired of it. So, so tired, too tired to keep that moral exhaustion at bay as he pleaded, no doubt pointlessly, with his brother, hands clenched into fists he knew he could and would not use to strike. "Damon, please don't start. Not tonight. We're leaving in the morning. Do we really have to mark our time here with some useless fight where we'll both inevitably and deservedly lose? Is that what you really want?" 

"Maybe," Damon uttered, mutinous and churlish, opening his mouth once again to no doubt compound on the tension of the situation with an unnecessary sentencing of the many and varied ways Klaus had betrayed them, the many reasons why there was such a fine demarcation between the two vampire families of Mystic Falls and make everything so overdramatically Shakespearean…until someone else slipped on to steal his moment. 

"What's going on here?" 

It was habitual, to turn at the sound of her voice, the echo of her heartbeat. The action was written in his bones, perhaps encoded in his very DNA, a programme he could not disobey simply because he'd never found a reason to, even after all this time. They were still friends, after all, and nothing would ever change that, both because Stefan had so few and Elena was extraordinarily stubborn and refused to quit, even on lost causes such as himself. 

With seamless grace, Stefan fell into his usually-assigned role of defender and apologist, rising from his chair and moving towards Damon as if he could shield him from the consequences of his own idiotic actions. "I can explain…"

"Does the situation really need explaining?" Elena mused ruminatively, hair sliding over her shoulder as she rose up onto ballet-flat tiptoes to plant an innocent kiss to Klaus's cheek, gaze so far away and starry-eyed it suggested she'd forgotten anyone else was in the room entirely; they were on a planet all their own, colonists and cultivators and curators of the other's dreams. And it hurt to look at them as much as it did to stare directly at the sun, but Stefan still did it anyway, either out of warped masochism or the unending, forever-intact urge to see her smile. 

"Hi, honey, you ready to go home?" 

A smile that reached equally besotted blue eyes. "Definitely."

Behind him, Damon slammed a glass down on the sideboard -God, Stefan hadn't even heard him pick up the bottle, they really needed to get this sorted out, it was getting so out of hand- and pushed his hair back in one sweeping, choreographed I-don't-give-a-fuck (but really I do) move. "And that's my cue to be anywhere else but here…" 

"No, wait. Stay," Elena requested, mindlessly entwining her fingers with Klaus's, eyes wide and beseeching, the look she always gave them, because they were always doing something she didn't agree with, something she felt she needed stop, to put right, and it seemed she wasn't done doing so, even on her last night here in the town that had raised and razed her, born and reborn and reforged into someone capable of standing at the side of an Original and exuding just as much carefully controlled dominion -or perhaps she had always been like that, had merely not had the right outlet and the right opportunities and the right hand to hold, no less blood-specked than his but infinitely more capable of living with it. 

"Just for a minute. Just one. Please? I want to say this while I still can, while we're all still in the same place." 

He'd guessed rightly, then. The brothers shared a glance, marred and matted and braided with so much history, with old hurts and fresh wounds and sharp guilt and the many reasons this wasn't the best idea, especially when neither was sober, but ultimately knowing one simple, impenetrable and irrevocable fact: Elena had asked, so they would say yes. 

They'd both wanted to be with her forever; they could give her five minutes. 

Damon said brusquely, "Get it over with, Elena," and parked himself in the chaise across from the fireplace, Stefan returning to his earlier seat, wood offering up minor protests as he attempted a posture of similar ease. 

She didn't join them. She never let go of Klaus's hand. But neither did she raise her voice as she told them, with all the beautiful, unabashed and spontaneous eloquence and sincerity of her heart, "I miss you. Both of you. I miss us, the way we used to be, when I wasn't dating or involved or whatever with either of you and we were friends, as brief a period as that time was. And I wish you all the best with whatever you both decided to do next and I hope that, one day, we can be like these two over here," a flick of the chin at him, then at Nik, "and get together and share a drink and remember how much we used to like each other rather than how many pieces we'd like to chop the other into or anything -myself included." 

Damon's expression flattened, rolled out and pulled taught, liable to split at the slightest provocation and spill out God knew what. "Still mad, then?" 

"I'll always be mad," Elena said in reply with startlingly little inflection. "But that will also never stop me being glad I met you both, because otherwise I wouldn't be here, and I wouldn't have this," a pointed pull on someone else's hand, a squeeze from someone else's fingertips, a loving blink from under someone else's lashes, "and this means more to me than I could ever hope to explain in just words. And I hope you find something just as powerful and meaningful in your own lives. That you can go back to being brothers, just as I've always wanted and you've always wanted to be, deep down. Family matters. Love matters. Being happy with yourself and your life and your choices matters. And it's hard, and that is exactly why it's worth doing, and worth doing right. It's why we're leaving, why I'm leaving. It's too much and not enough, too many ghosts and not enough kindness."

She always did hand in the best essays in their English class. 

"Goodbye guys. I wish you all the best." 

When it became obvious Damon would remain silent, Stefan spoke up for the both of them, knowing he would regret it if he didn't -and he already had so many regrets when it came to her, tottering like the perennial tower of books he usually kept by his bed, now all packed away or donated, handed out for others to love and find joy in. Was there a metaphor in there or what? 

"Bye, Elena. Take care." 

The couple was almost gone by the time Damon got to his feet, frame rippling in the firelight, spilling over his face…and his outstretched hand. "You must be Elena." 

Elena paused, shifted her weight to pivot on her heel, mouth curling like the smile of a private joke, an in-house quip no one else was privy to -it was easy to forget that once upon a time, he had been her touchstone, her anchor in a thickly churning ocean of uncertainty, of a summer spent worrying and hoping and chasing shadows and ghosts alike, that there were things and experiences Stefan would never know about, a history he had no part of, haunting the narrative of an ephemeral, indistinct what-might-have-been. 

Ultimately, it was not abandoned, was grasped, and held, something soft and restorative in the gesture, and Stefan could almost imagine one of the many, many fissures standing on both sides coming together, just the tiniest bit. Just enough for hope, hopefully, to one day slip through, not a weed scourging a sidewalk but a prison break, a rescue attempt, winding through the cracks and the bars and the hard truths and saving something that had once been so precious and powerful, as friendship always was. 

"And why's that?" wondered she, whisper-soft, whittling away at the sourness of his expression until all that remained was a resigned sort of acceptance, a placating peace. The only thing either of them could give her, and know she'd willingly accept. 

"Only you could rip my heart out and put it back together in the same breath." 

If Elena was alarmed by such a declaration, she did not show it. "Sounds painful." 

Damon agreed with brittle transparency, "It is. But it's worth it." By some mutual, unspoken agreement, the two pulled apart, rearranging back into proper, natural form, of Elena holding onto Klaus and Damon holding his arms crossed, as if his forearm were a barricade for his broken heart, a humanly futile exercise of self-preservation. Rounding on the hybrid, his eyes narrowed with a thunderously scorching intensity, like he could burn his promise right into the Original's flesh so he would be physically incapable of forgetting it, an invisible Mark of Cain to haunt him for the rest of time. "You hurt her, you die. Capiche?" 

"If such a thing ever comes to pass, I'll hand you the stake myself." 

Not that anyone had to worry about that, of course. 

Playfully, Elena rolled her eyes, reaching into Klaus's pocket with the casual kind of possessiveness that only came from true and implicit trust as she tossed out his keys. "So dramatic, honestly. I'm moving to England with the world's biggest drama queen." 

"More like a drama king, love. We all know Miss Forbes holds the title of drama queen in an irrefutable white-knuckled grip." 

"...I hate it when you're both funny and right." 

"Do you? Do you really?" 

The ruse didn't last long. "No. Not even a little bit, not even at all." 

"Elena, my love, you'll make me blush."

"Good," she said, in love. 

After they'd gone, Damon didn't hang around to ask, "Wanna open another bottle, brother?" 

Why not? 

Stefan shrugged, angling himself away from the closed front door, the interchangeable traces of Elena and happiness whispering around in the balmy early-summer air. Letting go was hard to do, but it had to be done. They'd meet again, someday, maybe a decade or two or five from now, when hover cars were real and nobody remembered what it was like to stand in a queue for a CD, when she was old and grey and he was always the former but never the latter, she would still be the love of his life, in love with someone else, but maybe he'd have stopped looking for her everywhere in other people, and started trying to find some of her innate goodness in himself, if he possessed such capabilities. Maybe they really all could be friends, and the memories would no longer hurt so acutely and would simply serve their ultimate purpose of reminding him that for a time, Stefan Salvatore had been loved, and it had been epic. 

"Sure." 

And that was definitely something worth looking forward to.

Kol had a nose for unrest, a fact that had forever held true, even as a fresh-faced mortal. Like a bloodhound, he could scent the odor of trouble from miles away like the piercing electric tang of ozone from an oncoming storm, so it was no wonder when his 'Spidey senses' began to tingle and he followed his whims from the bedroom where he'd been packing away the last of his belongings to the kitchen, he found his sister in the middle of a tectonic-sized freak-out, blonde hair astray around her shoulders and screeching like a banshee that had stubbed it's foot, "The canapes aren't done yet!" 

Time for a stupid question. "The what?" 

"The canapes, Kol! The ones I specifically put in the microwave and cooked for twenty to twenty five minutes like it says on the bloody box but they're not done yet! Elena promised to do all the decorating and was leaving vague hints all week about Klaus patching things up with Stefan so he'd be out of the house and we could get on with everything -and I think so shed have an excuse to say her final piece, too- so I said I'd handle the food and I wanted it to be something special and make it all perfect but now this whole thing is a bloody fucking disaster and I don't know what to do!" 

Throughout the centuries, it was an unwritten rule of the Mikaelson household that no one except Elijah was ever entrusted with something like this -read: open flames or electricals- and why the matter of food was usually covered by private catering staff or they just didn't bother because they were vampires or weren't even worrying about eating because they were desiccating in a polished mahogany coffin with a silver dagger in their chest, but Bekah was obviously upset, and Kol had some decency beating around in his thousand-year-old chest, so he pulled his sister into a hug, smoothing out the manic strands of her hair and tucking them behind her ears as he soothed, "Alright, alright, no need to elevate your non-existent blood pressure. We'll just…think of something else, alright? I mean, who's going to be paying attention to the food, Elena and Nik will be making moon eyes at each other as usual and Caroline will be so blindingly dazzled by my radiant self she won't even notice if the…kitchen is on fire," he trailed off, watching in frozen dismay as smoke began to appear from the closed door of the oven. 

"Shit!" Running for a tea towel, Rebekah swatted at the thing until the flames abated somewhat, pulling out the metal baking tray and surveying the black hockey pucks that had once been expensive roundels of filo puff pastry. "Oh, this is a mess." 

She was crying. His sister was crying, and while it might have been over something as meaningless as dinner, it still genuinely unnerved him, to see his big, strong sister, who had run after the boys at every opportunity and finagled her way into every game because 'I'm just as good as you, in fact I might actually be better, you'll see,' was never far from her lips, who had been daggered and subsequently reawoken more than any of them and never wavered in either faith or love, struck him more than any vase over the head or saber to the chest. That had been his fault, after all, he should have known better to tease her when she was holding a blade. "Bekah, what is this about?" Kol attempted to puzzle out, leading her away from her culinary disaster and onto one of the breakfast bar stools still remaining. "Really? And don't say anything food-related or I might just clobber you with those Prada heels of yours." 

She didn't answer right away. She'd always been much like Elijah in that regard, choosing her words with care, mindful of their impact and import whereas he and Klaus had always been kin of speaking first and apologizing never, rushing headlong into angry tirades like tornado chasers, uncaring of the winds or the ruin. 

Eventually, however, Rebekah managed to explain it to him, laying it all out with bleakly morose clarity, "What if this is our last night together? What if this is it, and in a year or a century we go back to hating each other and plotting to kill Nik every other week and Elijah is always glowering at us with disapproval and you're trying to set something on fire and I'm the one that's left to pick up the pieces if Elena dies and Nik is still here and…" 

Oh. Um…"You're worried about 'Lena?" 

That was, apparently, the wrong thing to say. 

(At least he'd known for next time, which with Rebekah there invariably would be.) 

"Of course I'm fucking worried about Elena! She loves our brother so much, and we all know he'd go to hell and back for her. Mortal life is so fleeting, and they treasure it all the more so. But we're Mikaelsons: we treasure each other being here. Together. As a family. And I can't bear to lose anyone else, not after what happened with Mother." 

Thinking about the woman who had birthed them was very much like what he remembered of pressing a bruise, an ugly, bloated, rotting purple that made the insides of his mind beg for a clean-out like a kettle full of scale, which was apt given her cold-blooded, lizardy attitude, and Rebekah was at her peak of emotional volatility so it probably wasn't best to ask, "Have you spoken to Finn?" but Kol did it anyway. It wasn't that he was particularly concerned with how his oldest sibling was getting on -Elijah would always be their big brother, no matter the differences in age- yet he knew it would serve the dual purpose of both distracting Bekah and clearing him of any allegations of familial disinterest. 

"He won't answer my calls. Sage keeps me updated. Supposedly she tried to get him to go surfing and he sulked the whole day because he slipped over as soon as he put his foot on the board despite having enhanced vampire coordination." 

"God, I hope there's pictures. But on a far more serious note…Elena might choose to transition one day. Nothing is set in stone. But even if she doesn't…that doesn't mean we'll love her any less, or that she will be any less a Mikaelson. One of us, always and forever. And whether the canapes are burnt or the creme brulee is soggy won't change that. It doesn't have to be perfect, Rebekah. Lord knows that none of us are," he said, darkly comic, and nonetheless able to pull the minutest of smiles from his sister, flickering with gentle sweetness like the flame of a lighter, mesmerizing in its realism. Not the vapid curl of the cheerleading co-captain or the Original who stained her lips with men's heartblood, but his baby sister who fretted and worried and had insecurities like anyone else, who wanted to love and be loved and hold on to those who's affections she coveted, rather than watch them die in an angry haze of red, shades of violence and betrayal and abrasive jealousy, the ropes of family that had once chafed so direly and constricted them all to the Mikaelson name but now felt more like tethers, like twine, twining them together to reassure them they were never alone, no matter how far apart they settled. 

That family was as constant as the tide, that they always had a place to come back to, one full of light and laughter and decidedly limited slaughter than previous incarnations and failed configurations of familial units. They'd been playing pretend before, dressing up, acting out when it inevitably and prophetically fell apart, but this…this was the right combination, the correct alignment of personalities and humours and ideas and morals, finding similar pieces of themselves in the people that had miraculously chosen to stand by them, like finding beautiful shells at the beach, glistening with a nacreous sort of hope that after a thousand years of loneliness was too irresistible a temptation, too enticing an offer -to be happy, complete. Completely happy. 

As if their hypothetical ruminations had summoned her, Elena came breezing into the kitchen with a cheerful hello, waylaid by her usual route to the fridge by the landscape of utter chaos Rebekah had unleashed in her well-meaning Martha Stewart delusions, mindful of landing her humidity-waved hair in the mess of a mixing bowl situated just by her elbow. "I smell burning and a heartfelt conversation going on here." 

"We were just talking about you," Kol informed her unashamedly, figuring there was no point in hiding it. Besides, if the shoe was on the other foot -a great saying, he really loved that saying, it made so little sense and was hilarious when the debate of sizes and logic came into play- he'd want to know if his sister (or just anyone) was discussing the particulars of his personal life behind his back -as she often did, although he believed it was something the kids referred to as 'trash talking,' whatever that meant. 

Rebekah, however, obviously seemed to think that was a misstep, like doing the snake hips in the middle of a waltz.

"Kol! Shut! Up!" She hissed vehemently, punctuating each word with a swipe from the charred tea towel still clenched in her fist, smearing muck along his luckily black shirt which would therefore not show up any noticeable stainage. 

"Bekah! No! Never!" 

"I'm really gonna miss moments like this. The house on fire, you two squabbling like five year olds. Really warms the heart," Elena ruminated wistfully as she calmly reached for the fire extinguisher waiting on the wall, installed perhaps not for this very purpose and for something more prudent such as Kol setting fire to the absolutely horrid pink shirt he'd found in Elijah's wardrobe the other week and had no choice but to burn on sight in the back garden; the fate of the fashion industry had been depending on him, time had been of the essence and pesky things like highly flammable fibers and hedgerows hadn't seemed like much of a priority. 

But, like now, it had all been fine. 

(Because Elena had put that fire out, too, although with far more swearing and harangued gesticulations in Kol's general direction and vague mutterings on the integrity of his psyche which, out of the infinite goodness of his heart, he chose not to take offense to. Or a fence, seeing as she was human and fallible and all.) 

Waving away the last of the clouds of carbon dioxide, Kol continued to explain to her, "Rebekah's worried about you dying one day and leaving us all alone to deal with a grief-stricken Nik." 

Rebekah kicked him in the shin. Hard. And declared scathingly, "I am never telling you anything ever," voice as sharp as her heels. Ouch. 

"What? She deserves to know." 

"He's right, Bex. I do. If something's bothering you, I want to know about it, okay? Especially if I can help. And with this, I can." Always so rational and level headed, the epitome of patience and empathetic concern. Her and Nik should have been like oil and water, like fire without a spark, and yet it was that very same compassion that had put the light back into his eyes, the one they'd all thought had died the day he found out that Mikael was not his father, and what followed in the wake of it. But both revelled in rebelling and defying expectations, so maybe that was all that was needed to make such diametrically opposing forces come together as one singular, often nauseatingly affectionate, entity. 

Taking a seat across from the pair and completing the angst-ridden triangle, Elena nervously twisted the heart charm on her necklace and took in an audible shaky breath. "So. I know that I'm well-known for my stance on becoming a vampire. And I've always made a big thing about arguing against it, especially after meeting Katherine and already having too many similarities with her as it is, but lately I've been thinking about it and…"

"Really? What the devil? You're seriously considering vampirism?" It didn't seem possible for Rebekah to appear any more shocked. Kol, however, since he'd seen this very thing coming, was not shocked, and was instead trying to see if there was anything salvageable left in any of the other bowls laying about, poking suspiciously at a lump of what might have been chocolate as Elena hastened to add, "Not right now, no, but…I'm moving on with my life, Rebekah. I'm going to university and pursuing my writing career, letting go of this town and all its expectations both of me and for me. Finally, I'm building a life for myself, one I actually like and want to live, am excited about living. I wake up every day, knowing that the people I love the most in this world are safe and happy, or at the very least working towards it. And ever since Klaus told me that we could have kids…all I can think about is the future, the future I want with him, and all of you. And I'd be lying if I said that six or seven decades would be enough for me. I'm not sure if six or seven hundred years would be long enough either…" a flash of her teasing, wicked grin,"...but just think about all the more trouble we could get up to if I did."

Kol took a bite. 

It was definitely not chocolate. 

Kol put it back and pretended like he'd been listening very, very intently to something anyone with enough patience and accumulated run-ins with the two of them in various states of decency could have figured out. 

"Your mother said that the Petrova line isn't just special because of the doppelgänger anomaly, that I have magic of my own. Any child that Klaus and I had would be part witch, part werewolf and part vampire. Virtually indestructible. And I was so young when I lost my parents…why would I put a child of my own through something like that when I know how it feels, what it feels like to have grief completely ruin you? When Klaus never got the chance to know his biological father? I'm not saying I'd do it for that reason only…but it is something I've definitely been thinking more and more about." 

"And does Nik know about this?" 

Elena nodded, shoulders loose and easy. "He does. There are no secrets between us, Bex, you know that." 

"And no clothes most of the time," she grumbled, indicating that, no, it wasn't just him and, yes, Nik and Elena really needed a place of their own. 

"I'm so getting you back for that!" 

"You're more than welcome to try!"

"Our darling sister: the world's biggest meany-pants."  

"God, who let you watch Cartoon Network?" 

"Like you could stop me. Well, if you do plan to go through Nik knocking you up and me finally getting to prove my chops as Best Uncle In the Galaxy, 'Kol' works great for either a girl or a boy, just so you know. I'm diverse and equal-opportunity like that," the Original supplied helpfully, going into the adjoining pantry and rooting around; he had a sudden craving for chocolate chip cookies. 

Elena threw her hands up, apparently able to handle kitchen fires but unable to handle a conversation full of such complete fabulousness (it was alright, he knew his sheer level of brilliance could be overwhelming at times). "No. Thank you, but no. I'm not naming my -currently completely hypothetical- child after you. For one, it would be so confusing and, let's face it, you'd be jealous that someone with your name was getting all the attention when you weren't." 

Kol hadn't considered that, but now that she mentioned it, it did sound like a reasonably atypical response from him, so he graciously (or so he thought) conceded around a mouthful of biscuit, "Fair. Brutal, but fair," and switched onto the topic of other things he could name after himself. "Maybe a cat, then. Or a motorbike. People still name their cars, right? I think there's a famous one called *K.I.T…" 

"I'm never letting you near a TV remote again. Here, hold this," she instructed, thrusting both the used mixing bowl and the tray of calcified canapes at his chest, already moving for the kitchen cupboards where they kept the 'normal people food.'

His wonderful girlfriend chose that precise moment to sneak up on him, wrapping her arms around his waist from behind and propping her chin on his shoulder, surveying the carnage laid out before them and the top notes of seriousness in the air. "What's going on in here? Kol, babe, did you leave toast crumbs in the toaster again? Because I keep telling you that you need to empty it out after every use so that-" 

"For once, my dearest ray of sunshine, I am not at fault," Kol assured her, leaning backwards into her touch. So what if he was a hypocrite? At least he was a happy one. 

"I tried to cook dinner by myself," Rebekah supplied by way of explanation, and therefore nothing more needed to be said. 

Because she was a peak beyond price of equal, Caroline flounced out of her white cardigan and pulled up her hair into one of those flippy ponytails Kol liked because they seemed to have a (sassy) mind of their own. "Right. Okay. Time for a Forbes & Gilbert Plan™ then." 

"Did we really trademark that term?" puzzled Elena over her shoulder, already in the process of procuring several cutlery implements that Kol couldn't have named for love nor money, of which he had both. (And still couldn't believe the former.) 

"If we didn't, then we totally should. Elena, you're on savory duty, I'll do dessert and the appetizers." 

"You mean because you're such a snack?" He couldn't help it, she was just so gorgeous when she took charge -which was all the time- and he'd be a fool of the highest and hideously ordained caliber to ever let her go a single moment without finding an opportunity to either show or tell her, or ideally both. 

"And you are such an idiot," Caroline replied like she was thinking of getting a child lock on his mouth -but like she was going to kiss the life out of him in private. "Alright, get to your stations people: we have a dinner to save."

The formal Mikaelson Mansion dining room looked lovely, bedecked in an understated sort of elegance that Elijah's minimalist sensibilities vastly appreciated, silks and stargazer lilies in crystal vases and bishop-fold napkins, and which told the Original a myriad of things. 

One: Elena must have decorated (for although he loved his sister unceasingly, subtlety was not among her repertoire of attributes). 

Two: This was not going to be a casual dinner. 

Ergo Three: He had best wear one of his better suits. 

Brushing off one of his more refined three-piece ensembles in a softer shade of grey and a complimentary cerulean tie, a present from a new acquaintance who enjoyed haranguing him about his lack of sartorial colour diversity. Her exact words had been, 'Why do you always look like you're dressed for a funeral?' and so, naturally, Elijah had replied with, 'Because in my family, it's best to be prepared for any eventuality,' to which the werewolf had predictably rolled her eyes even as she smiled at him. 

It was a very nice tie. He liked it even more because every time he saw it folded in his armoire, he thought of her. 

"Elijah!" Caroline greeted him warmly, backing into the room, arms laden with a heavy silver serving tray. "Good, you're early. We had a slight um…dinner emergency, but everything's fine now. Totally fine. Couldn't be finer, honestly," she rambled, setting down the tray with a reverberating thunk before surreptitiously dusting off her mint-green skirt. If he squinted, he could detect the faintest hint of char on her forearm, and thus, the mystery was solved. 

"Rebekah tried to cook dinner, didn't she?" 

The younger vampire blushes guiltily. "Maybe…but in her defense, canapes are hard, okay? Puff pastry is one persnickety bitch, and it's the thought that counts, right?" 

Elijah inclined his head, smile pleasantly amused as he replied, "I'll take your word for it, Caroline." 

Within minutes, his various siblings swaggered in, all dressed with varying degrees of formality. His sister in a pomegranate-hued cocktail dress, Kol in a shirt that mercifully had all it's buttons and wasn't covered in anything nefarious, Elena looked beautiful in her periwinkle summer gown and Niklaus was actually wearing a proper jacket and actual cufflinks in a shade that wasn't red or black. 

Wonders truly never ceased. 

So far as Mikaelson dinners went, it was one of their better ones, since nobody perished, there were no diabolical plots at work, no ulterior motives simmering away below the surface or hostile grudges being hidden amongst placid requests to pass the salad dressing. While of course it wasn't the entirety of their family, all together in one room like they had been at Esther's ball…Elijah wouldn't have changed a thing about it. Finn had made his choice, after all, and if he did not wish to be here, to be amongst them, to share in the laughter and the jokes and the quiet teasing, then that was his loss. He would always be their blood, always be a Mikaelson…but this was Elijah's family, all around one table, all sharing one last meal. And there was a definite mien of sadness to it, as there was in all partings, there was an underlying thread of hope and celebration, an unbreakable chain of certainty that this wouldn't be the last time they shared in such happiness. A concrete assurance that, for once, their family really would endure, just like this. 

And as was his way, he wanted to share the thought with them. So just before Elena and Kol went off to bring out the cake, Elijah procured the room's attention with a subtle clearing of his throat, all eyes immediately landing on him as he rose from his chair. "If I may, I'd like to make a toast." 

Down the line to his right, Kol inscrutably slid a hundred dollar bill Elena's way across the starched table linen, surreptitiously hiding it in the folds of her napkin. Klaus gave her a conspicuous wink, and Elijah would have groaned in exasperation where he not both a) in the middle of a toast and b) secretly amused by their childish shenanigans and most importantly the fact they thought they could keep anything a secret from him. 

"For over a thousand years, our lives have been full of partings and goodbyes. We have said goodbye to each other, to people and places, homes and friends and loved ones we have been lucky enough to know. And for a very, very long time, I never dared to hope that I would ever have the privilege of dining with you all like this, of being with you all like this. My siblings, my blood, my dearest and most frustrating companions in all things." 

A collaborative, corroborating laugh from them all; the brimming success of a joke well told, even if it wasn't a joke, not to him. 

"If someone had told me this time a year ago that we could all come together like this, I would have thought them deeply misguided and utterly delusional. But so much can change in a year, and for the most part all those changes have been for the better. Elena, Caroline," he caught their gazes in turn, holding them, praising them, thanking them, "our family would not be what it is today without you. How you both manage to put up with my brothers is one of life's greatest mysteries, one that even if I never learn the answer, I can still be eternally grateful for it. And although this night marks the end of an era for us all…we will always be a family, and I will always love you all with everything I have, and continue to do so until my last breath." 

Elijah raised his glass, finding his eyes suspiciously and traitorously damp. "To family, always and forever." 

As one, they raised their glasses. "Always and forever."

Later, Elijah found Elena in the kitchen, still in her dress, only this time her accessory was a pair of rubber gloves rather than a seventeenth century diamond tiara that once belonged to a Belgian princess, up to her elbows in soap suds as she washed up the dishes and the detritus from Rebekah's earlier cooking attempt. 

"Lovely Elena, haven't I told you on innumerable occasions that we have professionally hired people for tasks such as this? And a fully-functioning dishwasher as well," Elijah reminded her wrly, yet still flicked off his jacket and rolled up his own sleeves to set a stack of plates on the drying rack as she handed them to him. 

"And as I tell you every time, I like doing it myself. Besides, did you ever consider the fact that maybe I wanted an excuse to talk to you?" 

Not this again. 

"Elena, I'm going to be quite well on my own in Paris. It is not the first time I have led a solitary life, as you very well know." 

Rinse. Dry. Repeat. "I do, but this is different, Elijah. We've all been together for so long now…" 

"I will confess, the thought of not having you all around is a strange and disquieting one," Elijah said, finding the experience of unveiling that singular speck of honesty akin to the mortal experience of going to the dentist or the immortal one of cleaning up a sibling's accidental cult: supremely uncomfortable, and best approached with exacting swiftness until the situation had passed. 

"See! I knew it! Doesn't it feel better to finally admit it out loud?" She quipped at him, compounding it all with a teasing poke to the arm. And Lord help him, but Elijah actually found himself saying, "Perhaps. But I am only saying so to you because I know you would never do me the discourtesy of holding it over my head for the next millennia or so." 

"Because you think I won't turn or because I'm so morally sufficient?" 

"Either. Both. You tell me, Elena." 

There were no more dishes left to dry. No menial chores left to barricade herself with or excuses to hide behind, and they both knew it. And because, as ever, Elena Gilbert never ran from a fight she knew she could win, she pulled the plug out of the sink and watched the soapy water dissolve down the drain, waiting until it all vanished, and then…."I'm thinking about it." 

"A considerable step forward, given your previous adamancy on the subject, your complete and total opposition to ever transitioning." 

"Things have changed, Elijah, just like you said in your speech," she insisted with shake of her head, peeling off her gloves and hanging them over the tap handle to dry, filling the sink with the occasional plink of pattering water. "I've changed." 

Elijah was not going to disagree on that front. "And so you have. So have we all, because of it. Because of you. You brought this family back together, back from the brink when we did not even consider ourselves a family, merely a collective of individuals who happened to share blood and similar life experiences and grudges and foibles. The irony of it all, how the doppelgänger is what first divided us, and is yet now what makes us whole. You are the beating heart of this family, Elena, and it has woefully little to do with you being the sole wielder of mortality amongst us, and everything to do with your nature. Your compassion is a gift, Elena, and you will carry it with you for the rest of your days -however many you decide on enjoying," he promised, pausing with poignant emphasis. "No matter what happens, there is no sin or secret or vice or vendetta could transmute you into a shape where you do not fit as perfectly into this family as if you have always been here, always belonged here, with people who value you and cherish you as you deserve." 

In one heartbeat, she was standing in front of him. The next, she was putting her arms around his shoulders and guiding him into a hug, not their first and definitely not their last. "I'm really going to miss you," Elena murmured thickly into his shirt front. 

Dropping a kiss to a brow, Elijah returned the embrace with brotherly affection, voice just as soft and endearing, words ringing with resounding rightness -after all, he had spent his entire life missing her, missing out on what his family might look like we're it happy and whole, every puzzle piece filled in and every heart full. "I'm really going to miss you, too." 

There was, after all, sweetness still to be found in bittersweet endings.

At the back of the Mystic Grill, behind the shelving unit where the tubs of extra bar pretzels and napkins refills and paper towels were kept, was a secret storage cupboard that nobody knew about. Well, no one except Rebekah and her boyfriend, who was currently in the process of pouring her a strawberry milkshake fresh from the cooler under the utility sink, a greasy plate of fries balanced between them on an upturned soft beer crate. For someone so accustomed to lounging in the lap of luxury and sampling every fine thing life had to offer, there was something enduringly charming about sneaking out at midnight, a secret thrill in the knowledge that Matt had closed down the Grill early just for her, just for one more night of artificial-strawberry-sweetness. 

She'd had men throw stones at her window and wage duels in her name, write ballads and bards and try to cut away at her barbs with rusty swords they didn't know how to hold, much less wield correctly; she didn't need any of that with Matt. She didn't want any of that with him. 

For once, Rebekah didn't need grandiose declarations of love: she just needed someone to be there, which Matt invariably was. Blonde hair and blue eyes like something out of a Taylor Swift music video, the boy next door who never, in his wildest dreams, would imagine himself falling for the baby sister of the oldest and most revered vampire family to ever exist. He was kind and gentle and loving, and he had declined her invitation for dinner for the very same reason she was sitting here: because they both knew this wouldn't last. And for once, Rebekah was okay with that. She was content to enjoy what she had when she had it, rather than scrabbling and scraping and scratching at love, trying to hold on to it even as it slipped through her fingers or she watched through her hand as her intended suitor got beheaded or poisoned or pushed off a balcony.  

Matt would never chose to turn, and Rebekah had no intention of ever changing that. If what Katherine had said was true, and a cure really did exist, somewhere out there in the world, maybe she could take it and come back one day, and see if the spark was still there. But for now, it was bright and alive and shining in twin blue eyes as they clinked their plastic cup together, tipsy with laughter as she giggled out a bubbly, "Cheers." 

"Cheers." 

Oh, she so loved his smile. It made her feel warm and safe like a woolen blanket, like sitting in front of the fire pits as a girl while the other villagers danced and braided her hair with wildflowers. Like being in love, wanting something for herself, was okay. 

"So." Grinning, he set down cup, fingers running over the knees of his jeans in a noticeable pattern of nerves she'd come to recognize. It was plain as day, settling in the corner of his mouth like an unwelcome visitor, twisting his lips into a warped bow of apprehension as he stuttered out, "I, um, I did some research-" 

"A phrase I never thought I'd hear you say-" 

"Hey, I like books plenty, thank you very much, just not textbooks and cramming like my whole life depends on remembering the difference between osmosis and diffusion…anyway, as I was saying, I did some research, and I made a list." 

"A list?" Rebekah laughed, popping a fry in her mouth and delighting in his squirming flush. "Now I'm thinking I just be dating Elena-" 

"Shut up, would you? So. Me. List. All the places I want us to go. Sound like something you'd be interested in?" 

It was. "Let me take a look at it," said Rebekah gingerly, so as to let him know that she was taking this seriously, that she didn't think it was stupid or silly or whatever worries he had gotten himself so het up about. It was, if anything, amazingly touching, that he'd taken such time and effort for her, on her. That he was just as excited to go as she was; even though she'd been to Europe a million times, stood at the sides of the metaphorical cradle of so many countries in their infancy and witnessed their trials and triumphs, their successes and sorrows and everything in-between…it felt new to her, imagining it with someone else, having someone to share it with. Being able to stay at a hotel for a week or six months without having to look over her shoulder anymore, without having an overbearing brother breathing down her neck and critiquing her life choices. 

She was free, free to do whatever she pleases with whomever she pleased, and she was going to take lots of pictures and buy out lots of boutiques and make everyone else very, very jealous of her Bohemian lifestyle. 

Carefully, Matt extricated a piece of paper from his shirt pocket, marred with creases like the laugh lines of a fruitful poet and spattered with a few errant blobs of grease, handing it over with all the fragility of cradling a newborn. 

"It's just a start, I didn't have much free time what with graduating and all, so I mainly did it on my breaks…" 

Rebekah gazed up at him through her lashes, over two empty milkshake cups with striped straws and a plate of fries that would inevitably go cold once she was through with him. "It's perfect, Matt. I love it. Actually, have you got a pen on you, I've got a couple suggestions to make…"

He'd picked a white dress shirt and a matching suit jacket, the kind of thing that was almost begging to be stained by something, something sharp and red like lipstick or wine, lasting and pigmented with permeance. His gaze had never strayed far from hers for the entirety of dinner, and she had held his just as tenderly, buzzing with good champagne and even better company and too many wondrous prospects to name.

When he pulled her out into the garden once everyone else had gone to bed, Elena did not protest. 

When he kissed her under the light of a thousand swimming summer stars, she felt the earth stop, unfold, time unwinding like thread on a runaway spool, holding them in the moment as long as possible. As his lips spilled against hers and her hand slid into his hair, Elena thought about magic, and fate, about longing and love and poetry, about heroes quests and daring pilgrimages, about walking until your feet were bloody, wondering what everything was for and then, inexplicably, realizing some rewards are daring to reach for something greater than yourself to begin with. Holding out your hand, not knowing who will take it, who will shun it, who will draw first blood and who will promise to never spill yours and forever break it. About the shapes fate could take in, obstacles and disguises masquerading untold, untouched wonder. How the world was weird and strange and unpredictable, the one of the supernatural even more so, that she'd never been clairvoyant like Bonnie, but from the first moment they'd touched -the first real moment, she amended in her mind, not the sacrifice, or Prank Night, but when Stefan pulled her into a car and pulled out her heart and left her stranded like a marooned damsel at the side of the road, his blood still coating the back of her throat and burning her all the way down, scarlet rivulets like the scratches on her chest, when Klaus took her hand foe the first time, was the first person promise that he wouldn't ever tell her how to feel, that it was okay to be angry at the people who had hurt her, especially when they had always preached and promised the complete opposite. 

When she pulled him up the stairs, there was a mark on his collar, and Elena licked her lips in satisfaction, knowing it would never come out. 

Knowing that some things are meant to stay. 

(And she was one of them.)

They said their goodbyes in stops and starts, falling away like leaves on a tree, singular clumps of swirling colour departing and scattering to the four corners of the world. Elijah was first, a teary and bleary-eyed goodbye on the steps of the Manor at a truly ungodly hour of the morn. He had unsurprisingly little luggage, so Klaus didn't have that as an excuse to linger as he pulled his older brother and closest friend into what would be their last hug for quite some time. Even to an Original vampire, seven months could be a long time. Maybe he'd have to sneak a visit in somewhere, should the fates allow, fly out to France and see what excitement his brother was getting up to. 

By the way Elijah clasped him just as tightly on the shoulder, it seemed he was vacillating on a similar, therefore familiar wave of thought. 

Next came Kol, arm in arm with Caroline for one last lunch at the Mystic Grill, surrounded by the patrons of Mystic Falls, not a dry eye in the house as Sheriff Forbes gave a inspiringly heartfelt speech that sang her daughter's many praises. Rebekah and Matthew followed soon after, and Klaus was worried that for a moment he'd have to separate his sister from his person with a crowbar, but her smile when she pulled away was more than worth it. It always was, whenever he saw his sister truly happy. 

Then, it was just the two of them, lingering in the emptying doorway as dusk drew its thick curtain over the sky, the final curtain call on their time in Mystic Falls. 

"Are you sure this is everything?" Alaric asked Elena one more time, hands on his hips as he attempted to catch his breath. Klaus didn't blame the man: Elena had a lot of books, all of which she'd insisted on taking in the move. After living with Elijah so long, Klaus knew better than to get between a bibliophile and their books, so he gladly left them to it, knowing the good-natured griping was part of the process, their own way of saying goodbye. 

"Yeah, because don't think we're shipping you anything if you accidentally leave some super obscure book behind that you haven't read in like, three years, and just suddenly need, okay? Unlike you guys, us mere mortals aren't made out of money." 

"Very funny, Jeremy. And yes, I'm sure I've got everything." 

It was odd to see the Mansion so bare. Even when he'd been in the midst of constructing the place it had never been so quiet, nor so empty. Dust sheets draped over the furniture so they stood out like malformed and misshapen ghosts, icebergs floating in a lonely sea. He couldn't even hear the refrigerator going, now that everything perishable had been disposed of. It was Tyler Lockwood of all people who had agreed to check in on the place every now and then -who he was thankfully on much better terms with, especially after he and Elena got stuck working on an English assignment for three weeks and was therefore drawn into the Mikaelson orbit and gave Klaus a chance to make his apologies- so there would still be electricity and running water and such, but the rest…all.gone. This haven, this home that he had painstakingly crafted with his own two hands, was empty. 

And it just meant he had the chance to make a new one all over again, this time as a far better man than he was before. And it was for that very same reason Nik pressed a kiss to his girlfriend's temple and proposed, "Why don't you check anyway, sweetheart, and then you can rub it in their faces when you come back?" 

Elena hummed, kissing along his jaw while her brother pulled a faux-disgusted face behind her back. "An excellent suggestion. I knew there was a reason I kept you around." 

"You know me, love: I aim to please." 

"Oh, I'm well aware," she beamed before darting under his arm and heading up the steps, the sunset catching in her hair like a coronet for the briefest second, and all he could think and feel and breath was, I am so lucky to love you. Shaking his head in recrimination of his own sappiness, Klaus turned to face the two gentlemen hoisting yet another trunk between them, sculpting his expression into something he hoped was appeasingly open. 

"Alright, I could tell you wanted a minute. What's on your mind?" 

It was Ric who spoke first, letting Jeremy take the weight of their load and coming to sit on the staircase, just a step down from him so he could look him straight in the eye, presumably. "I just wanted to say thank you, I guess," was his simple yet emotive opener, stark with a sort of unrefined genuineness Klaus could and did appreciate; the fact he was speaking from the heart, and hadn't planned out what to say. "For everything you've done for Elena. For giving us back Elena, by helping her find herself again, who she really is. What she wants out of life. I know we haven't always seen eye to eye-" 

Klaus couldn't help but quip with a wicked grin, "Maybe that's because I'm taller than you-" 

Ric pretended like he hadn't been interrupted, which was probably for the best, "But I've always known that when it comes to Elena, you and I are on the same page. I've never seen her so happy, not since the day I first stepped foot in this town, and honestly I'm so happy she's getting out of it. Not just because of everything it's done to her, but because it's so obvious to see she deserves something bigger, greater. And you're giving that to her, because she wants it, and you want her to be happy." 

"I do." It was hardly a state secret, after all. 

"And I think, so long as she's with you, she will be. So, I guess…thank you for taking care of my daughter, for loving her and protecting her ." 

"Nothing in my entire existence has ever brought me so much joy as seeing her smile." Nothing he could ever say to the man that had had a hand in raising and guiding and protecting the woman he loved beyond reason would ever be true than that. 

"You know, we should have seen you two coming from the start; Elena can never resist all the Mr Darcy fancy talk." 

"Hey, I told you that in confidence!" Elena shouted down unexpectedly from the balcony, reappearing half a minute later with her hair every which way, leading Klaus to deduce she'd stuck her head under the bed to check for any waylaid belongings. Gods, she looked adorable. "When I was thirteen!" 

"So five years ago then," Jeremy smirked, narrowly dodging a stub of half a pencil lobbed in his direction. 

"Almost six, actually. Don't worry, that needed binning anyway. Honey, I can't believe how many pencils we had under our bed," Elena lectured him lovingly, sliding onto the hardwood beside him, resting her head on his shoulder in a charming mirror of their pose from yesterday. "It was like they'd multiplied and built their own fully-functioning arts and crafts city with motorways and teenage hangouts!" She exclaimed, handing him a bunch of pencils tied together with one of her hair ties. "You're welcome." 

"What would I -and my art supplies- do without you?" 

She tossed him a quarter-shining wink. "Get very dusty, I'd imagine." 

Elena glanced up at her brother (that was really technically her cousin) and her father (who was more a pseudo-parent and almost-uncle). For so long, Klaus had never had to contend with mortal parents, and even when they had all been human, his mother had seemed larger than life, completely fearless, while his father dominated so much of his it seemed he was incapable of frailty of any kind, that he would always be there, a permanent shadow blotting out the sun of any potential happiness for Niklaus. But Elena…she had almost lost them both so many times, and Alaric only recently when she learned it was he who was behind the murders in town, that the Gilbert Ring was actually cursed and could only be used so many times, and how Esther had tried to use that to her advantage and turn him into a vampire Hunter like Mikael. She'd been unsuccessful, of course…but the fear lingered, now that she knew she wouldn't be here to protect him. 

Good thing there were plenty of teaching jobs in London, should it come to that. 

What was precious to Elena was precious to him, her burdens were his privileges and her loved ones were his to protect, too, because Nik knew she'd do the same for him in a heartbeat. She might have -both purposefully and inadvertently- daggered his siblings, but she'd never hurt his family. Klaus, however, could not say the same. And perhaps that was what propelled him to reach out and take Alaric's hand in his own, the memory of Elena up at five that very day, saying goodbye to her family of graves, the fact that some wrongs, no matter how much he loved Elena, Klaus could never make right. 

But he could, at the very least, apologize for them. 

"I'm sorry," he began, and when the words choked his throat, he said them again. "Im sorry, to both of you, to all of you, for what I did to Jenna. I know I can never be absolved of that, and quite frankly I don't deserve to be. What I did was unforgivable, and all I can say is, if I had the chance now to fix it, I would. All I can promise you is that I'll love Elena until I die and whatever comes after death, and that she'll never be alone." 

A heartbeat. Two. Ten. Then, so quiet he hardly heard it…"I think that would be enough for her. Seeing Elena so happy, I think that would have been enough for her to forgive you. You're right, Klaus, you can't fix it, but you can make it hurt less, make it mean something, by making sure that you never forget this version of yourself, no matter what happens," and it was enough. 

"I promise," Nik replied, and meant it with everything he had. 

After that and a barrage of bone-crushing hugs on Elena's part, they were alone once again. From somewhere in the ether -or perhaps right behind him, hidden by a truly garish vase he definitely didn't remember buying- Klaus pulled out a bottle, tipping it Elena's direction and topping it off with a magnetic, irrepressible grin. "Fancy one last drink before we go?" 

"I believe I could be persuaded, yes," she smiled around a mouthful of laughter, giggling further as he pulled her further into his arms, allowing a closer vantage point of the bottle. 

"Oh my God, is that…" 

"Cherry wine? Like anything else would do. Same vintage, from the very same batch, in fact. Right next to our first down in the cellar." 

"Let me guess, waiting for the perfect moment?" Like a match, her hand struck out to capture the fabric of his shirt, fingers digging into the dangling v-shape as she reeled him in for a bruising, intoxicating kiss, far stronger than anything out of a bottle. "Oh, my Nik, you do know how to charm me," Elena breathed, and Klaus was five years old again, learning the names of constellations, realizing there were entire worlds out there that he didn't know -but he had the most important one here, standing right in front of him, pushing back his hair with a hand he planned on making sure wasn't bare of adornment very, very soon. 

"A talent I intend on thoroughly perfecting to my fullest capabilities, I'll have you know." He pressed the promise into the seam of her lips, knowing she'd keep it safe for him, caring for it with the humility and diligence and generosity she did everything else. 

She somehow managed to find a set of glasses somewhere, along with a picnic blanket to spread out over the grass, and it was déjà vu and déjà vecu all over again, past and present overlapping like waves crashing into the shore, the cork of the bottle flying and getting lost like a memento, an artifact of their ardently unexpected love story, proof that it was all real. "I don't think you could get any more perfect than this," Elena mused, tone as heavy and prominent as her pour. "Than us, right now and this moment that I feel like I've been waiting my whole life for. Like I was waiting for you." 

He took the glass, then her hand, dropping kisses along the back like a trail of fireflies alighting on a branch, paltry luminance compared to her unending brightness. "I was waiting for you, too. In fact, I think I win at the Waiting Game, since I had to go a full thousand years without you whereas you only had to put up with a measly less than two decades…" 

Swallowing, she tipped her head back, laughter ringing through the field like a bell. "That's how you wanna play it? Okay, I can take it. I think I win because…" 

And they talked and they laughed and they joked, they kissed and they cuddled and they debated what colour wallpaper to put up in their new bedroom and whether or not they should get a pet, she asked him for stories of his past adventures across the pond and he told her of misty mornings and double-decker buses bright as cherries, of debutante balls and world wars and that time he was pretty sure he bumped into Kit Kennedy and her brother. 

After a while, Nik found himself saying into the dark, "I can't believe that only half a year ago, I didn't even know what your favourite colour was. That I didn't know how you take your coffee in the mornings, that you hate and love. I can't believe there ever existed a point in the sordid tapestry of my existence where you weren't so dependably and desperately woven into every part of me. I can't believe I didn't know you, but I also…can't believe this is real. What did I ever do to deserve you, Elena Gilbert?" He asked her, genuinely and not rhetorically, because if anyone could give him an answer, if anyone could make sense of all this wonder, she could, he would always believe that. To him, she was omnipotent, the keeper of all sense and logic, viewed through a lense of irreplaceable and beauty and optimism. 

She told him, "Love isn't always about who deserves what, Klaus. It's not about keeping scores and hoarding mistakes to throw in someone's face in a bad moment. It's not about who's done what to who, who's gained and who's lost and who's left standing in the rubble. It's about who holds your hand when you need someone, who sits with you in the dark when you're scared. It's about opening up a piece of yourself and having no clue how it will be received and perceived but deciding to do it anyway because you feel like it's right, like it's the most natural thing in the world. As natural as, for example, sharing a drink with someone you know you're supposed to hate, but in reality, when you get right down to it, you can't blame them for the way they act. That you can hate what they've done to you, to people you care about, but hating them…seems so incredibly impossible, when you look over and see someone so human it takes your breath away. And who makes you feel it, too. Not a doppelgänger, not a toy to be thrown around and back and forth, not wrong or unloved or unsure. Just you. 

"I love you because when I'm with you, I'm me. I'm every version of myself, the best version of myself, the truest version of myself. Someone flawed, yeah, but someone I'm proud of, considering how long I spent trying to perfect this persona where everything was fine and like I couldn't make it through a single day without breaking down. And you've never made me feel lesser because of that. Your own parents treated you…God, there aren't even words for what they did to you, but you still get it, more than anyone else I've ever met. You get me, which is why you have me, always and forever. You have me, Niklaus, and you don't ever, ever have to doubt that." 

She wiped away his consequential tears with her thumb. He held her close, grateful beyond measure, beyond thought, beyond everything. 

For so long, Klaus Mikaelson had been no stranger to trying times, and while he really hadn't expected his stay in Mystic Falls to be so rife with difficulties, neither had he expected to find true love, either. 

And so he swapped the glass against her lips for a kiss, whispering, "I love you," as he tasted every cherry-wine sweet inch of her mouth. 

"I love you, too," said Elena Gilbert, threading her hand through his and leading him into a bright and brilliant tomorrow.