What's At Stake, Part 20

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Since a couple people have pointed out how hard Elijah has been on Stefan, I should probably make the following disclaimer: The thoughts and opinions expressed herein by Original Vampires belong to the Vampires involved, and do not reflect those of the author.



As for the moonstone thing: I had that planned before "Know Thy Enemy" aired, based on Damon's flippant remark from "The Dinner Party." Just sayin.'
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Elijah knew from experience that he had perhaps a second, no more, before the pain incapacitated him. He used it to surge upward and drive the palm of his hand into the warlock’s chin, snapping his head backward and ripping it clean off of his shoulders. His second up, he dropped to his knees and elbows beside the still twitching body as his torso went super-nova.

The syringe – glamoured to look like the dagger – had pierced his heart and delivered nearly all of the vervain concentrate directly into it. That organ pumped once before it blistered and burst, shooting acid through his veins and into his extremities. With the heart ruptured and burning, the vervain oil invaded and coated his lungs, burning through those in turn and leaking air into his chest cavity so that he couldn’t even scream in agony. Nerves on fire, chest devoured by acid from the inside out, he could do nothing but cough and gag and retch, spewing blood and fluids and pieces of his internal organs onto the ground, where the whole mess flowed into the river of blood that coursed from the warlock’s body. Some small, detached part of his mind remarked snidely that he had been the one to tell them to concentrate the vervain, and had asserted that it would provide only a momentary distraction at best.

It was one fucking hell of a distraction.

He had no way of judging how long he was down, but the first thing to enter his awareness as the pain subsided and his insides started to pull themselves back together was the sound of rifle fire. He looked across the clearing toward the center, where the altar stood, and saw Klaus’s body jerk from the impact as three darts pierced his back, in rapid succession. Alaric’s aim had been true.

Taking advantage of Klaus’s distraction as he reached to pluck the projectiles from his back, Andie spoke a few words and gestured; when Klaus turned back toward the altar and Elena, he came up hard against an invisible barrier. He turned, only to fetch up on all sides, Andie’s shield apparently walling him off from everyone.

At the other end of the clearing from Elijah, Caroline roused herself from whatever the witch had done to her and charged toward Stefan, where he still fought to keep the werewolf’s jaws from closing on any part of him. Hurling herself on top of the writhing animal, she got one arm locked around his neck and fought to pull him back off of Stefan, screaming at him, “Tyler, no!!”

Greta was still standing across the altar from Klaus, seemingly unaware of his imprisonment as she chanted her incantation. She stopped suddenly and her eyes jerked open. She reached for the moonstone and took it into her hands, closing her eyes for a moment as she held it. With a shriek of frustration, she opened her eyes again and broke it in half – not the moonstone at all; just a bar of soap. She looked ready to attack Elena, bleeding and unconscious on the altar, until Bonnie grabbed her arm and turned her around.

Not Bonnie. Jonas.

Bonnie’s hands grasped Greta’s face as she stared intently at her. “Greta, what have you done?” she asked, her voice showing that odd tone and inflection that it had the last time Jonas had taken her over.

“What the hell! Get off of me!” Greta yelled, trying to push Bonnie’s arms away from her, but Bonnie held on.

“We thought he took you. We were trying to save you, baby girl. You need to stop what you’re doing. You need to stop him.”

Greta shook her head. “Who the hell are you?”

“It’s me, Greta. It’s Dad.”

“NO!!” The witch kicked out hard, pushing Bonnie away from her with a foot to her abdomen. Bonnie lurched backward, her head snapping back painfully as she landed. Greta whirled and grabbed the knife from the altar. Bonnie’s eyes went vague for a moment as she battled with Jonas’s spirit for control of her body, leaving her wide open and vulnerable to Greta who, in a rage, swung the knife down to impale her.

A blur shot over Bonnie from somewhere to the left, and Elijah heard a loud crack as Damon snapped the witch’s spine in half. He didn’t even wait for the body to fall before extending his fangs and ripping his own wrist open. He pressed it to Elena’s mouth, lifting her unconscious body into a semi-sitting position with his other arm. “Come on, Elena. Drink it! Drink!”

Andie went to her knees as Klaus continued to batter against the walls of his ersatz prison; with each punch that landed on the invisible confines, Andie flinched and sank down a little further, as though each blow pummeled her and not the walls of her spell. Unable to sustain the onslaught, she collapsed finally to the ground, freeing Klaus, who spun toward the altar, where Damon was still trying to revive Elena.

Hurting, but functional, Elijah gathered his legs under him and launched himself at Klaus, jumping over Jeremy’s body, which shimmered where it lay, once again taking on the boy’s appearance rather than Katerina’s. He struck Klaus mid-body, hurtling both of them several yards away from the altar. More or less on top when they rolled to a halt, Elijah drove his fist toward Klaus’s face. Klaus deflected the blow and grabbed Elijah’s arm, pulling him forward and off balance, using the opportunity to flip Elijah onto his back.

As he rolled, Elijah saw Alaric enter the clearing from the cover of the trees, a pistol in hand. He fired, and the warlock who held Katerina dropped to the ground. Distracted by that scene, reflexes alone – battle-honed over a thousand years – made Elijah dart his head to the side a fraction of a second before Klaus’s fist plowed into it. The force of the blow drove Klaus’s hand several inches into the soil, sending the displaced dirt up in a plume around them.

Elijah grasped the momentary advantage and flung Klaus off of him, crouching into a fighter’s stance as Klaus followed him upright a split second behind him. “Bonnie, now!!” he shouted.

Klaus snapped his attention back to the center of the circle as Bonnie pulled herself together and started the incantation to the spell that would bind Klaus’s blood to Elena’s blood inside of him, her life-force weakening him as it countered the death magic. With a snarl of rage, Klaus lurched toward her; Elijah caught him by the collar and landed a vicious punch to his kidney. Klaus kicked back, his foot connecting with and shattering Elijah’s shin.

Elijah held onto Klaus as that leg collapsed out from under him, keeping him from reaching Bonnie. Klaus let the momentum combined with his weight carry him down, so that his knee landed hard right on the broken bone. Elijah let out a yell of pain and tried to flip them so he was on top, but with Klaus crushing down on the break, he couldn’t gather himself enough to get the upward thrust he needed. Grinding his teeth together, he shot a hand up to grab Klaus around the throat.

Taking advantage of his exposed side, Klaus plowed a fist into Elijah’s ribs, shattering each and every one on that side of his body. He brought his other hand down on Elijah’s collar bone; when it snapped, Elijah’s fingers went numb, and his hand dropped away from Klaus’s throat. Klaus was on his feet in a blur, sneering down at Elijah. “This was your brilliant strategy, Elijah? Your master plan? Engaging me in a bout of fisticuffs?” He drew one foot back and aimed a vicious kick at Elijah’s uninjured side, shattering those ribs too.

Despite the pain of the blows, despite the desperation of the situation, a thought occurred to Elijah: That kick should have broken me in half and launched me into the woods. He’s getting weaker. It’s working!

Movement from behind Klaus drew his gaze. Elijah had to crane his a neck a little to see, shooting a sharp lance of pain through him from the broken collarbone. Moving silently as a ninja, Katerina had her hand raised to strike Klaus, a vervain syringe clutched in her hand.

He gave it no thought whatsoever, just gave way to pure reaction. He would be utterly horrified with himself later, when he realized just how close he had come to losing everything by thwarting his own master plan at the very moment of its culmination. And even then he wouldn’t dare examine his motivation too closely. Drawing on his last reserves of strength, he hurled himself sideways and intercepted Katerina before she could strike.

Her momentum carried her down as Elijah took her legs out from under her, and she landed on him, driving the broken ribs into his already abused lungs. The syringe went skittering away as she fell, sprawling. Her knee in his side as she tried to stand only added insult to injury. “What the hell?!” she hissed at him, bringing a smirk to Klaus’s lips as he looked down on the two of them.

“Well, well, well. Elijah and Katerina: at odds even when they are supposedly working together.” He reached down and took Katerina’s chin in his hand, helping pull her upright. Once standing, she swatted his hand away. Klaus merely stood smirking at her, daring her to attack. She stood her ground, her body limned in a quivering rage. Its impotence in the face of his power had to be maddening.

“You disappoint me, Katerina. I had hoped for a warmer welcome.”

“You shouldn’t have. Not after what you did.”

“What did I do, pet? Other than plan to sacrifice you?” He leaned toward her. "It was nothing personal, you know."

"Was murdering my entire family personal?"

"That?" He tsked at her. "You accuse me falsely. I'm afraid I can’t take the credit for that little endeavor."

Lying there, battered and broken, his body working sluggishly to try and heal this latest round of damage, Elijah closed his eyes and waited for Klaus’s words to indict him, trying vaguely to figure out when that particular tidbit of information had gone from being something he had planned to taunt Katerina with himself to a secret that he wished to keep hidden. But the words seemed to die on Klaus’s lips as an electric charge stole over the circle. Bonnie had finally tapped into the power drenching the burial ground. Suddenly released, it rushed up and into her from everywhere at once, strengthening her voice as she finished her spell, her last incantation almost exultant. A palpable snap whipped through the air as the spell finished.

As the charged feeling faded, Bonnie slid bonelessly to the ground, dropping out of sight behind the altar. Klaus shook his head, falling to his knees as what had to be an unfathomable feeling of weakness stole over him. As he dropped, Elijah saw Andie standing behind him. She had the dagger, unglamoured now that Bonnie was unconscious, grasped firmly in trembling hands. She must have retrieved it from where it had skidded when Elijah had tackled Katerina. With a look of grim determination, she brought it down through Klaus's shoulder and into his heart.

Klaus jerked as though someone had run a live wire through him. Elijah tried to sit up, failed. He locked eyes with Klaus, though, as his flesh started to grey, the veins standing out on his skin. Klaus moved his lips as he tried to speak, but no sound escaped save for guttural noises as he swallowed and breathed his last. It seemed like forever before he finally pitched forward, dead.

Elena, wobbly and pale but somehow conscious, made her way over to him, holding onto Stefan for support. She knelt down next to Elijah, wincing at the twisted mess the injuries had made of his torso. She kept reaching her hands forward as though to touch him, then pulling back, uncertain of how to do so without causing him more pain. He coughed to try and clear his throat, and tasted blood. "Just like that," he whispered to her, letting his eyes drift closed, and his body start to knit the pieces back together.

                                               ~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dealing with the aftermath had taken most of the rest of the night, and it wasn't until dawn stole over the landscape that Elijah arrived back at the Salvatore house.

Bonnie, unconscious and unresponsive despite being fed Stefan's blood, had been taken to the hospital by Alaric under some pretext of having been at a sleepover with the girls when she fell ill. Privately, Elijah suspected that medical intervention would be no more effective than the infusion of vampire blood had been, if the cause of her fugue state was what he feared.

Elena and Jeremy had accompanied her to the hospital, along with Caroline; despite her struggles with Tyler Lockwood in his werewolf form, the baby vampire had come out of the experience unmarred, as had Stefan. "I got through to him, I know I did! Maybe I’m, like, a werewolf whisperer or something!" she had enthused. It was as good an explanation as any for why the wolf would suddenly turn away from its quarry when he had it pinned, and bolt back into the woods.

Andie, looking utterly spent, had begged him to call those who held her son. He had done so, alerting them that she would come to retrieve the boy. She had left the clearing as soon as he'd hung up and given her the location.

That had left the four remaining vampires to clean up. They had gathered fallen wood and broken up trees to build a funeral pyre in the clearing, burning the bodies of the witches Klaus had brought with him. Once she'd reverted to human form, Damon had added Jules to the body count and tossed her onto the fire, too.

Klaus lay where he had fallen. Once the bodies were well on their way to burning, Elijah had closed the distance and knelt down beside him, turning him over onto his back. He had straightened his limbs as he waited for the rush of victory, or at least of satisfaction that a foe had been defeated, but none had been forthcoming. The man had, at various times, been his inspiration, his best friend, his leader, his confidante and, on rare occasions, his lover. He had also been a cruel and selfish taskmaster, unreasonable and outrageous in his demands, the murderer of the first – perhaps the only – woman Elijah had loved since he had become a vampire. Perhaps the triumph would come later, when he wasn't so beaten down. Or perhaps he would feel only sadness, for what had been, and what had never been, for what he had only thought existed. But at that moment, staring down at Klaus's lifeless body, there was nothing. Just a weary, bone-deep, aching emptiness. Reaching down, he had pressed thumb and forefinger to Klaus's eyelids, and slid them closed forever.

                                                     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Damon took one look at Elijah as he entered the living room and sank into a chair, and left the room without a word, returning a few moments later with an oversized mug full of blood. He had at least thought to heat it. Elijah accepted it and drained the mug without comment, which was probably a good indication to Damon of just how wretched he felt, and how low his reserves were.

"Where are Stefan and Katerina?" he asked, setting the empty mug aside.

"Showering and sleeping, respectively."

He sent up a silent thanks to whoever was listening that he wouldn't have to deal with either of them right then, and wished fervently for a shower himself. He had shed his shirt, fouled beyond retrieval with gore from his own body, and thrown it onto the fire. He would need to go over to the Gilbert house to collect his things and change, but he dreaded the thought of encountering Jenna right then, no doubt on her way home after being released from house arrest.

"Is he dead?" Damon asked at length. "Or just... you know."

Elijah leaned his head back against the chair and closed his eyes. "I'm not certain. If the spell weakened him the way we hoped, he should be. But we're not going to take any chances."

"Which brings us to the next question: what exactly are we going to do with him?"

He opened his eyes and picked his head up, gazing out the window. "You seem to have an area in need of landscaping. How would you like to extend the terrace and put in a swimming pool? One that is set on a nice, deep bed of concrete?"

Damon considered for a moment, nodded. "That works."

Elijah sighed deeply and dug out his phone to start the chain of calls he would need to make in order to have a contractor lined up and ready to work within the next few hours.

                                                        ~~~~~~~~~~~~

He remained at the Salvatores’ through the day and into the evening, unwilling to leave without seeing Klaus’s body, dagger intact, safely interred in several feet of concrete. He winced at the astronomical price he would have to pay to have the work done ‘on demand,’ but he would not chance the dagger somehow being removed and Klaus reanimated.

Caroline, perhaps at Damon’s behest, took pity on him and brought some clothes over from the Gilbert residence so that he could shower and change. He couldn’t remember the last time he had enjoyed a shower so much. He had a bad few moments, though, when he turned the shower off and heard tearing noises coming from the room below where they had stashed Klaus’s body. Wrapped in a towel, he bolted down the stairs and careened into the room.

Caroline and Damon were wrapping something around Klaus’s body. Caroline looked up and clapped a hand over her eyes. “Oh my God, you’re naked!”

Damon merely raised an eyebrow at him. “What?”

Elijah sighed and closed his eyes in relief, trying to fend off the encroaching feeling of foolishness. ‘I heard noises. I thought…” Well, it was perfectly obvious what he had thought. “What are you doing?” he asked, securing the towel a little more tightly.

“I brought duct tape,” Caroline non-explained, not quite looking at him.

“A little added insurance. Don’t want anything coming loose when we dump him in the hole,” Damon said, pulling another strip off of the roll and nodding his head in the general direction of the back of the house, where noise from the excavators had set up a constant din.

“With that?”

“Hel-lo,” Caroline said. “It’s duct tape. You can fix, like, anything with it. Didn’t you ever see the book, 101 Uses for Duct Tape? My dad even fixed the engine of our car with it, once.” She tilted her head. “Although it did catch on fire a couple of days later.” She shrugged. “He’s gay.”

Elijah rejected any of the possible rejoinders that offered themselves up for consideration, and changed the subject. “What’s the word from the hospital?”

“Bonnie still hasn’t woken up, at least she hadn’t when I left. They’re doing a bunch of tests. One of the doctors told her dad that they can’t find anything wrong with her, like an injury or anything, but she’s in a coma.”

It didn’t sound good. “Keep me posted,” he said, turning to go back upstairs. Only to find Katerina standing there, grinning impishly.

“Nice towel. You should take it off,” she suggested.

Caroline rolled her eyes and groaned. “Oh my God, get a room!”

“Excellent suggestion,” Katerina agreed. “I happen to have one upstairs.”

“Why are you still here?” Damon asked her, straightening up.

“Where else would I be?”

“Anywhere but here. Leave.”

“Before the big victory celebration?”

“There’s a victory celebration?” Caroline perked up.

“No, there is not a victory celebration,” Damon assured her, somewhat testily.

“Oh, don’t be such a bore, Damon. You sound like Stefan,” Katerina whined.

“Well then, you should love that, hmm?”

Elijah backed out of there and went back upstairs to the bedroom whose en suite bath he had used, leaving them to their bickering. Katerina followed him out, though; he was in the room but a moment before she gave a perfunctory knock and let herself in.

He sighed deeply. "Katerina, go away."

Katerina, of course, ignored him. "You gave me the dagger on purpose, so that I would use it on Klaus. Two birds, one dagger. What changed your mind?" she asked, without preamble.

He couldn't even explain it to himself. How was he supposed to explain it to her? "I don't know," he admitted. "Maybe I figured we should see what kind of a life you might build if given a chance."

She didn't look entirely satisfied with the answer, but she let it go. "You should feed," she said, looking him over appraisingly. "You look wrecked."

"I did feed."

"Not enough. That was quite a beating you took."

"Your point?"

"My point," she said, brushing her fingers over his ribs, across his back, as she walked around him, "is that, beating or no, you won. You should celebrate a little." She came back around in front of him, her hand resting suggestively at his waist, just above the towel. "We could make it a private celebration."

The thought occurred to him, unbidden, that perhaps he should just give in. Lose himself in her, stop thinking, surrender his mind to his body and let it rut away the pain, the loss, the emptiness. The indulgence was certainly long overdue. After the ordeal of the last twenty-four hours – hell, of the last several weeks – would it be so wrong if he allowed himself to simply fall, to find some soft place upon which to land?

But this was Katerina; there was nothing soft, or simple, about her. And if he lost himself in her, he might never come out again, not unscathed. Too many had fallen before.

"Katerina," he said, not unkindly, "Go away." Taking her shoulders, he turned her toward the door and walked her out, closing it quietly behind her.

For the first time, it was with a little regret.

                                                                 ~~~~~~~~~~

It was well after dark when the first strata of concrete was poured. Consequently, Elijah didn’t pull up to the Gilbert house until after 11:00 p.m. He had held out some small hope that everyone would be asleep so that he could grab his things and slip back out with 'them' – meaning 'Jenna' – none the wiser, but luck was clearly having none of it; the downstairs lights were all on when he pulled up in front of the house. He briefly entertained the thought of just going home and coming back later, but he wanted his laptop, and that was in the house. May as well face the music and have it over with.

He opened and closed the door quietly and zipped past the archway into the living room, heading into the den where he had set up during his brief occupation. He heard footsteps behind him, though, and turned to find Jenna leaning against the doorway, arms crossed. “Seriously? You were just going to sneak past me and not say anything?”

He sighed. “I’d given it some thought, yes.” God, he was so tired. “Are Jeremy and Elena still at the hospital?”

“Jeremy is. I talked Elena into coming home and getting some sleep. Well, I convinced Stefan to talk her into coming home and getting some sleep.”

“That’s good.”

Barefoot, she ran her toes over the fringe edging the carpet, pulling the strands straight. “There’s no change in Bonnie’s condition.”

For which she no doubt blamed him. He did. “I know. Caroline checked in a short while ago.” He gathered some of the paperwork he had scattered on the desk and dropped it into his briefcase, waiting for the castigation to begin. She just stood there, saying nothing. When he had everything tidied up and more or less packed, he turned and faced her head-on, bracing for what he was sure would come next.

She studied his face. “Wow. You look like… Would it be too on-the-nose to say ‘death warmed over?’”

"So I've been told." He snapped his briefcase shut, perhaps harder than he needed to, and pressed his fingers against his eyelids. “Let’s get on with it, Jenna. Say what you have to say. Rail at me for kidnapping you, blame me for Bonnie, yell at me for endangering Elena… whichever it is. I'm not up for getting my ‘ancient evil vampire’ game face on tonight, so let’s just have it – ”

“Thank you,” she interrupted.

He stared at her blankly. “What?”

“That’s what I was going to say. Thank you.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I was good and ready to tear you a new one. Let's see... I spent the first night at your house trying every single door and every single window, only to have Marcus peel me off of them. I spent the next day trying to get one of their phones away from them. The third day, I just up and made a running dash for the door.” She rubbed absently at her ribs. “That didn’t go well. Then I just had a full-on tantrum.” She glanced down, screwing her mouth up to the side. “I, um, hope none of that fancy glassware was worth a lot of money.

"Once I had that out of my system, though, I started to actually think about everything. About having been so clueless, and then just being helpless. I'm not sure which of those was worse, by the way. And about the fact that, even after Isobel showed up on my freaking doorstep, the only one who would tell me everything was you." She crossed her arms, shifting her weight to her other foot.

“I talked with Elena for a long time at the hospital today. She told me about the ritual. I don’t know if she told me everything, but if she didn’t, I don’t think I want to know what she left out.” She pulled away from the door frame, coming a few steps into the room. “So: as mad as I was that you locked me up for a week, and as much as it might piss me off to accept it, you were right: I couldn’t have done anything to protect her and Jeremy. You did. So thank you.”

And a hell of job I did of it, too, he thought bitterly. Elena had nearly died; Jeremy did die. Bonnie might still yet. It had been good luck, more than good planning, that had turned things around in the end. He’d seen enough conflicts to know the difference. Not trusting himself to speak, he swallowed, nodded to her, lifted his briefcase. “I should go.”

Jenna stopped him with a hand on his arm as he tried to pass. “Wait. Elijah... Before, when I was at your house… why did you kiss me?”

“Why?"

“Was it just to keep me distracted while you waited for my babysitters to arrive?”

“No," he told her, reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ear. "That wasn’t why.”

“Oh.” She looked down at her toes, blushing. “Well, in that case…” Jenna took his briefcase and set it on the floor beside the desk, and slid her hands up along his arms until they locked behind his neck, and her lips touched his, warm and gentle.

It was, he thought, a lovely, soft place to land.