After the Fire, But Before the Flood

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.
Summary: In a post-apocalyptic world, Elena and Klaus learn to symbiote. With sex.
Spoilers: Everything through season 2.
Rating: R
Warnings: Explicit sexual situations, character death

A/N: Multi-chapter fic exploring a scenario in which Klaus and Elena have only each other and what might come of that. Plays a lot with the idea of looking for something that's not there. Content will become more explicit in future chapters.

When everything is said and done and dead, Elena and Klaus are the only two left standing.

She sees him across the field, a figure emerging from the pre-dawn mists like a primordial battle god, daubed in the blood of his enemies.

He draws nearer as he stoops to examine the rent bodies strewn across the blood-soaked earth.

Elena herself would be unable to pry her own eyes from the two at her feet, were the instinctive fear she felt at his mere presence not keeping her attention riveted to the angelically beautiful demon before her.

Klaus pauses on the last of the bodies longer than he did on all the rest. It's not regret that plays across his features, but perhaps the feeling is somewhere in that family. He reaches out and freezes a hair's breadth from the face. His arm goes slack and drops across his knees as he continues to stare.

Finally, he abandons the corpse and, for the first time, addresses Elena. "How is it," he drawls with faint reproach, "that in all this, you survive?"

The hand curling in the mud next to her ankles draws her attention. She kneels down next to it, ghosting her fingers just above the limb. She memorizes its features, the almond shape of the nails, the exact webbing of skin between the digits.

A shadow blocks the light.

Hazy as the morning sun is, she can no longer make out the hand's features with Klaus's dark silhouette looming over it.

Elena glances up into her old nightmare's eyes, notices the way the irises swim like golden islands in a swamp of black.

There's no clear answer to his question. Before, perhaps she could have told him, My friends protect me. But now…

"Luck, I guess."

She holds his gaze for a long minute before he slowly nods.

He turns to leave but pauses, as though reconsidering. He looks back at the tableau she presents, and sighs. "It's a pity that you didn't stay dead like a good girl. I wouldn't have had to go through all this trouble that way."

"I didn't think—" she begins.

"You're a lucky girl, Elena. Let's just leave it at that."

This time, when he turns away, he makes no indication that he ever intends to look back.

Elena scrambles to her feet.

"Wait."

"Do you think of them ever?" she asks him one morning in lieu of nothing, except the tracery of blond hairs spiderwebbing across his back.

The spread of sunlight across their bed tells her it's past midmorning. Not that time is even relevant anymore.

"Of whom?" he asks, though they both know he asks only to be a bother. His voice is slightly muffled by a pillow.

Elena digs her nail a little into his shoulder, watches as the bloody crescent left by her thumb knits itself into clean white flesh.

Klaus sighs and grabs her before rolling them over. His hips sink against hers, momentarily distracting her from the morning's wash of memories.

He slinks down her body, leaving open mouth kisses from the tip of her chin down the swell of her right breast. From there, he maps a perfect meridian past her navel to the hot flesh of her inner thigh.

She jumps when he nips her just there.

As Klaus begins peeling the clothes from her limbs, Elena forgets about her question altogether.

It can wait, as everything does these days.

As a girl, Elena's ideas on love glittered like gemstones in her mind's eye—She did not have a particular prince yet, but when he came, she knew she would love him—and stay with him. Always. And she would have what her mother had with her father.

Even as a staggering, wild-hearted sixteen year old, she still held those convictions safe, locked up in the most secret part of her. She knew she was just waiting for the right boy to bring them out.

Well, the right boy turned out to be a vampire.

But after everything that had happened in the last year?

She took it in stride with disturbing ease.

And Stefan was everything.

Which leaves her with the difficult question— What does that make Klaus?

Contrary to everyone's fears, the world doesn't end when the sacrifice goes down and not a single one of them is able to stop it. Similarly, it doesn't end when Tyler bites Damon, or when Stefan leaves with Klaus, or even when Jeremy dies, again, and starts seeing ghosts.

The world ends when Elena awakens Elijah in a vain attempt to find Stefan, and Elijah, in turn, awakens his family.

Awakening Elijah had always been a bad idea—and it had always served her purposes when she brought it to fruition.

Except this time, Elijah's agenda doesn't swing anywhere near hers, and although he looks at her with something akin to awe when he gasps life back into his lungs and sees her leaning over him, his family comes first.

"Elena?" Caroline calls from the door of the warehouse where she's keeping watch. "Did it work? Are my vampire-best-friend-accomplice duties complete?"

Elijah seems to answer the question for her when he sits up and turns to glance at Caroline, then at the wreck the two of them have made while searching through boxes to find him.

As he swings his legs out of the crate, Elena chooses to remind him, "You owe me."

He plucks at his suit. "What for?"

"Remember that whole—You go through with the sacrifice, I'll kill Klaus— deal we had? I got the post-mortem Cliff's notes from Damon. You betrayed me, and now Klaus has Stefan, so it's really your responsibility to help me find him." She takes a calming breath. "Also? I'm getting tired of pulling that dagger out of you."

He cocks his head to the side as he considers her. At length, he responds, "Alright. But know this, Elena," he continues as he stalks toward her. "I don't regret my actions. If I had to do it all again, I would do it all again. My allegiance is to my family." His face softens, ever so slightly, as he steps close enough for her to feel the heat radiating off of his skin. He seems to be weighing his words carefully, because finally he admits, "I never meant to hurt you, Elena."

"I believe you."

She feels like there is something more he wants to say, something else he wants to do.

The moment passes.

Caroline clears her throat and gestures at her watch. "If we're here much longer, Damon's going to get suspicious, and no way am I gonna be the one dealing with that when I get home. So… are we done here?"

"Not quite."

Faster than Elena's eyes can track, Elijah slips past her. He stands in front of a stack of shipping crates, identical to the one he rested in, and starts pulling them out.

"What are you doing?" Elena asks.

"Reviving my family."

"Don't you think that's a bad idea right now? With Klaus on the loose? Didn't you tell me he's unstoppable now that he's broken the curse?"

"That's exactly why we need them," he tells her as he pulls the first dagger free. "Trust me. This is best."

She does. It isn't.

A/N: If you enjoyed the first installment, please let me know what you thought! Also, as always, if you have any critiques, questions, thoughts of the day, those are always welcomed and appreciated as well.