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The dry sound of a twig snapping had Elena gasping awake. Instinctively, she pressed her hands over her mouth, silencing herself.
She'd been curled up at the roots of an ancient oak tree, her backpack an impromptu pillow. The bunches of herbs and berries she was meant to be gathering were strewn all over her.
When did she fall asleep?
No... she'd only meant to sit down and rest for a moment - but the moss-covered tree had been so comfortable, the morning so pleasantly warm.
(How could she be so stupid?)
Through the haze of her growing panic, Elena tried to get her bearings.
Which way had she walked? The trees seemed like dense wall, as the setting sun turned the thick foliage verdant, haloed in blinding gold. The little clearing was alive with shadows. (Did something move over there? Was that a fucking hand reaching out to her?)
An insect buzzed, too close to Elena's ear, and she jumped to her feet, adrenaline crushing through her veins.
No. No fucking way she was doing this. She couldn't afford to let fear take over, not here, in the middle of this unfamiliar forest. She had to keep her wits about her.
(He'd said: The moment you start seeing monsters in every shadow, you will fail to notice the real monster creeping up at you.)
Elena forced herself to relax. Slowly, methodically, she picked up the bundles of herbs and berries, put them in her backpack and then secured it on her back, strapped it around her middle. She rolled her ankles, stretched her neck. There. She was good to go. No monsters were waiting in the shadows.
Now all she had to do, was to study her compass and find her way back to the car; the way he'd taught her.
Easy. Breathe.
Out of the corner of her eye, Elena thought she saw something move once more. She refused to panic. A squirrel, she told herself, surely it was a squirrel daring through the branches.
Teeth chattered. The hellish sound of enamel clacking, grinding, unnaturally fast, that had haunted her every waking moment for the past year.
Biters.
Elena broke into a run, any concerns about compasses and directions replaced by a singular drive: Get away. Now.
A moment, and then she heard them; a single growl, and then the unmistakable sound of biters chasing her, crashing through branches, stomping on dead leaves. They had no need to worry about being quiet. They were the apex predator.
(Where the hell was he?)
Her entire world narrowed down to her next step, to the chattering teeth behind her shoulder. All she had to do was follow the setting sun. West.
(He'd said: The sun is your guiding star. Mark the passage, mark the cardinal directions.)
All she had to do was stay ahead of them; get to the road, to the car. To him. Surely he must be looking for her.
Her calves burned, every breath felt like razors running down the length of her throat. Where the fuck was he!?
(He'd said: I will not always be there, you have to learn to fend for yourself. That, Elena refused to believe. He was nothing, if not always there. Whether she liked it or not.)
Elena dared slow down for a fraction of a heartbeat. She pressed her aching body flush against a tree trunk, her eyes darting around, trying to get a glimpse of anything, a marker, a clearing. The fucking road.
Nothing but branches - jagged rocks, branches and more trees. A growl, too close, and Elena made to run once more.
Only she misjudged her foothold. Her front leg slipped and her back knee twisted out, a horrid crunching sound as it cracked against the rugged terrain.
Get up. It hurt, but it could bare her weight and that would do.
It hurt with every step. Didn't matter. Elena swallowed a curse, and forced herself to keep running towards the fading light.
Every blurry tree looked desperately familiar. Surely she must have passed through here. Surely she must be close to the road now. And yet the trees never thinned, no matter how far she ran.
(He'd said: Stick to the bloody trail. Never stray far from the car.)
Was it getting darker? How could it be getting dark, so fast?
Clouds had gathered, mercilessly taking the last of the sunlight from her. Despair gnawed at her. Had the sun already set over the Midwest Mountains? West. She had to keep going west.
Only she had no way of knowing. Only... it was hopeless now, wasn't it?
Despair weighed her down. It hurt too much to keep going. Her lungs burned. She struggled to keep moving, while her windpipe spasmed, refusing to take in air, and still her body refused to stop. She'd seen what the biters did to their victims. She'd seen how their jagged teeth tore them apart; too slowly.
(He'd said: Always keep pace. It is a marathon, sweetheart, and they never get tired.)
And then, a glimmer of hope. An errant sun ray. And ... silence. Through the thundering heartbeat, she couldn't hearing any more chattering.
Surely, Elena could afford to stop, if only to breathe.
She ducked behind a tree, let herself collapse against the rough bark, mindless to the way it ripped at the mess that was her ponytail. She drew a shuddering breath in, a forearm pressed against her mouth to keep the sound in. Always trying to keep the screams in.
She strained her ears. Nothing but the gentle breeze, whistling through the evergreen leaves.
Carefully, she ran her knuckles over her knee - trying to avoid the oozing blood, from where the jeans had ripped. She could feel her own pulse, the injured flesh already swelling. She couldn't let it get cold, she couldn't stop moving.
With a last deep breath, she peeled her aching body from the tree.
The air moved, and, detached as if in a dream, she watched a gnarled-up hand leaving a deep clawmark where her head was just resting.
She half-turned, and found herself staring into the milky white eyes of...
A Biter.
Frothy, thick saliva was dripping from its lipless mouth. There was nothing but yellowing skin covering the skull, and even that was torn around the temple, like parchment.
Its teeth chattered, so close that droplets of thick saliva sprayed her face.
Too close.
Elena kicked out with all she had, just as the biter lunged at her.
She felt something - ribs, bones, fingers - crunch as her boot made contact. She didn't stay to find out. Scrambling, she pushed ahead.
Only the kick jarred something in her damaged knee. The world became lopsided, as every other step tipped her to the side, her knee refusing to hold her weight. She kept stumbling into trees, as if she was suddenly too drunk for her body to obey her.
The chattering was deafening. Coming from all sides.
(He'd said...
It didn't matter what he'd said.)
She was crying. She used her arms to pull her leg, desperate to keep going because she could not let it end like that.
Not like that. Not in their fucking teeth, she could not let herself be torn to pieces by this... plague, that had taken everyone from her, she refused to let herself become a fucking biter.
(Her knife was in her clenched fist.)
She could see one of them, through the trees, overtaking her. Footsteps dragging behind her. Anytime now.
Fuck it.
With a scream that was torn from her very soul, Elena turned, putting all of her weight in a single downward swing of the knife.
It barely grazed the biter.
Teeth clenched, falling back on her good leg, Elena readied herself to strike again.
(He'd said, aim for the soft tissue underneath their chin. Stab all the way up, into the brain.)
Something whistled through the trees.
And then the biter in front of her, disappeared as if it was never there but for the dragmarks on the forest floor it'd left on its wake.
Elena blinked.
From the near distance, she heard a familiar sound. A skull getting crushed.
He had found her, finally. Finally.
---
All at once, the adrenaline left her body.
Elena let herself drop to the ground. Instantly, she regretted it, as pure agony flared from her knee. Distantly, she wondered how she must look, covered in mud and grime. Didn't matter. All her brain could process was pain, her knee pulsing hot with every heartbeat.
She curled up, hugging her leg the best she could.
His footsteps approached her. He was choosing to let her hear him.
"Elena."
She didn't look up. She was in too much pain to care about his moods, almost upset enough to forget how much she should fear him.
"Get up," his voice grated at her. How could she have ever found it attractive, back when he had first busted into her world? How could she had thought of him as her hero, even back then, when every word that escaped his lips was a terrible, mocking thing?
As if the hellscape the world had turned into was nothing to him. As if he felt nothing but detached curiosity, watching society collapse around them.
He was a demon, Elena thought for the hundredth time since the cursed day their path crossed.
All she wanted to do was curl up in a ball and dream of a time before he showed up. A time when all the monsters and horrors lived in books and the movies her mom would sometimes let her watch.
The air shifted. His boots crunched on the leaves, inches from her face.
"I said. Get up."
Elena smiled. There was a splatter of gore on his boot. He had gotten sloppy.
"What's the point?"
A tug, at the back of her jacket, and then she was being pulled - dragged upwards - her wounded flesh catching on the uneven ground, stinging something awful.
Desperately, she fought against the black dots gathering at the edges of her vision.
(Why did she bother?)
She blinked, her eyelashes crusting with drying tears.
Klaus was staring at her. There was nothing amused about his expression. Nothing in his cold grey eyes but disdain. He didn't need to say a word; a year of forced cohabitation made his thoughts clear to her. He looked down at her. He'd never find himself crawling, bloodied, covered in grime. He was not a weak human, not like her.
"Go to hell," Elena said.
That... that made him smile.
"That's the spirit."
He forced her to her feet, his firm grip on her jacket the only thing that kept her from collapsing. Still, she pushed at his chest. Nothing happened, of course.
"You abandoned me," Elena said and she winced at the naivety, the naked neediness of her own words.
"I abandoned you? Think, sweetheart. What did I tell you?"
It was easier to play along.
"That I should never let myself get lost -"
"Try again."
"That I should be aware of my surrounding -"
"Try again!"
He roared in her face, his eyes darkening and Elena shouted back.
"That you won't be here! That sometimes you won't be here but that's bullshit, you are a fucking vampire Klaus!"
Klaus opened his mouth, and then closed it. Something passed over his face, and the next thing Elena knew was the blur of superhuman speed, as he carried her.
It was a few heartbeats, until he forced her to stand again. This time, against, thank Lord, the side of their car.
The heady relief was cut short when Elena noticed their surroundings.
They were in that same stretch of road, littered with a handful of abandoned cars, only...
They were surrounded by corpses. No, not corpses... Husks. They were surrounded with the battered husks of countless biters, piled up as far as her eyes could see. There was the beginning of the path, down, towards the south, where they had been heading. Before they stopped for the day.
Before her stupid excursion.
"A horde," she breathed.
"A bloody horde," Klaus confirmed, needlessly.
She took him in, then. The splatters of gore - not just on his boot. All over his clothes, his hands - his face. Dried patches of blood running down his neck. His jacket - the collar was torn on one side, barely hanging on.
His eyes looked wild.
Warring desires. To slap him.
To touch him.
Her hand rested on his cheek.
"You should have fucking told me, that there was a horde approaching. Instead of ... what, letting me wander off into the woods?"
"It was supposed to be safer," he said. He didn't meet her eyes.
"Are you being serious?" Her chest hurt. It must have been all the running. "You should have told me! I should be here -"
"Doing what Elena?! Watching me fight? I can't," his grip on her was relentless, cruel, "I can't always protect you. I ... I didn't know how many it would be. What are you asking of me? Do you understand what it would be like, fighting them off while trying to keep you safe?"
It was unfair, how genuine he sounded.
"You can't keep me in the dark."
"It's for your own good."
"Turn me then. Just fucking turn me already, if I'm such a burden to you! Let me help you, fuck - if I am a vampire I can help you with your fucking quest to find that sunstone or moonstone or whatever stone you need!"
She shouldn't have said this.
Klaus looked away.
There was a whole lot of silence. Elena didn't like silence.
There had been so much silence in the days they hid in Bonnie's home.
Instinctively, foolishly, Elena took the chance to pull away from Klaus.
Klaus, a bit too late, reached out to grab at her. She side stepped his arm and crouched to swipe at his leg - the way he taught her.
Of course, that's when her knee gave up.
Elena found herself on her back, as he crouched over her.
He was staring down at her, his rusty blond hair haloed by the dusky clouds. Her battle-bloodied monster.
She reached out with both hands, digging her fingers through his hair, pulling him down to her.
He let her, for a moment, their lips almost touching, almost. And then the wind whistled in her ears and her back was pressing against the rough bark of a tree, mere feet away from the slaughter field, the open highway.
"Foolish," the menace in his voice made her skin crawl, his gaze dropping to the rabbiting pulse on her neck. She swallowed. "So bloody foolish. You keep pushing me, Elena." And then his voice went lower still, ghosting over the flesh of her cheek, a tooth grazing against the shell of her ear. "Foolish me, and foolish you."
His terrible face, his dripping fangs, took up her field of vision.
She crashed her mouth against his. She heard, she felt his whimper. He pushed against her, mindlessly, his clothed cock bumping against her, and the pure pleasure of his neediness almost took her mind away from the agony of her leg.
And then he went to lift her up, to lock her legs around his waist and Elena howled.
Klaus froze, hand dropping from her torn flesh.
Through the rush of blood in her ears, she heard the sound of flesh ripping. Something wet pressed against her lips; his torn palm.
"Drink," Klaus said. A sigh. "Don't make me regret this."
Greedily, she licked at his wound, the heady vitality, the fire of his blood on her tongue washing away the pain, the throbbing exhaustion.
Her leg itched, burned for a long moment as his blood coursed through her, his healing magic undoing the damage to her flesh. Something popped, and then the pain was gone. She squirmed, her body urging her to test the leg, to see if it can hold her weight once more.
Distantly, she noticed Klaus take a step back.
"Don't," Elena said.
"We should go." He was rubbing at the already healed skin of his hand. "It's been weeks since I heard from my witch. We can't afford another delay, we can't afford another horde -"
She was able to move fast, now.
Never fast enough to surprise him, not really. But, all the same, she tackled him, pulling his arm behind his back, her knee pressing against the small of his back, as she pressed him against the tree.
"No. I almost died."
He didn't say anything, but she could hear his breath. Heavy.
"I get it. You won't always be there," she pressed on, ignoring the knot that was swelling in her throat. "But you are here, now. You are here and I didn't die."
For a second, her grip loosened. Before she could adjust it, Klaus had taken hold of her elbow.
"Elena," he said, and then his hands were all over her, pulling her against him, by her hair, by her waist, and Elena was kissing him back, biting him with her blunt human teeth, and fuck the grime on him and the gore because she needed to - she needed to taste the blood of his, she needed to be reminded of the magic of life that burned inside this impossible creature else the chill of death would snuff her heart out.
He let her, he let her chew on the flesh of his jaw, of his neck, while he made quick work of his belt, of her zipper.
He slipped inside of her like it was nothing, like it was nature itself and Elena let a breath out, a red breath colored in his blood and his life.
She pushed against him, trapped between his body and the tree, her eyes locked in the stars letting his impossible warmth stir a response in her. They rocked together and it was almost -
Almost -
Life.
---
Afterwards, Klaus carried her to the car, and she let him, her body too numb, too raw.
He fastened her seatbelt, and Elena grabbed his arm, not willing to let the touch end. Not yet.
He studied her, humored her, for a moment.
"Messy," he chided. His thumb touched her still lips, still wet with his blood.
"Whatever," she said. Slowly, lazily, she rubbed her jacket's sleeve over her mouth.
Klaus clicked his tongue.
"You'll have to learn." He stood up, and Elena shuddered in the cold of his absence. "When you turn," he said, and she blinked slowly, her mind not quite catching up, because he'd said, the one thing he'd never do, he couldn't do, was turn her, "when I turn you, you'll have to learn how to feed neatly. Seeing as there aren't as many humans around nowadays. Can't have you wasting blood."
"When you turn me..."
She tasted the words in her mouth. A life. Of sorts. A future.
Something skirted in her chest. Like warmth.
A promise.
"Yes," his eyes darkened, and then Klaus looked away. He got behind the wheel. "When I turn you."
It felt like butterflies in her stomach. Like a beam of light through the clouds. But outside their car, the highway was still littered with biters. In the woods, they still prowled. And Elena was still a human.
"When?"
"Soon."
The car drove on, a slow trek. Every so often, Klaus had to stop and push abandoned cars out of the way. The endless trek, South. To New Orleans, to "witches".
"How soon? After we find that stone of yours?"
"We will see."
She had almost fallen asleep, when he spoke next.
"What have we learned today, Elena?"
Klaus and his stupid training. Like a dog with a bone. She sighed, hoping to get it over with, so she could get some sleep.
"You said, you won't always be around."
"Correction: You have learned that I won't always be around."
It would have been so easy to repeat the damned words.
She realized she couldn't.
"You said, you won't always be around, but," Elena stared out of the window, towards the distant mountains, "but you still came to my rescue, didn't you?"
"Elena -"
"Fine. You say you won't be around, fine. But if I want to believe that you will always be there, in the midst of this fucking horror of a life, what's the harm in that? And maybe you are a horror yourself, but Klaus, trust me, from everything that I have gone through... I need to believe in something. And you are the least terrible thing in my world, so if I want to believe in you, then fucking let me, ok?"
For a glorious moment she felt good, free, the words finally lifting something heavy on her chest.
And then, the rush of adrenaline burned out. She stole a glance at Klaus.
He was smiling.
"I am the least terrible thing in this world," he mused. He tapped a tune against the steering wheel. "I guess we'll have to live with that."
"I guess we'll have to." Elena hid a smile of her own behind a yawn.
From the east, the dawn was breaking over the horizon.