Time. There's a reason you should never play with it. Yet this is story of how the stream of time was altered and how four souls found peace with one another. Defying all that is known of the laws of time.
I wandered the streets alone lost in thought about the days to come, when Kol had agreed to help me find the tree I was ecstatic that's all I wanted now. To get out of here, I'd made a fool of myself long enough, thinking that with love in his life that he could be anything other than the man that I knew in my time. Maybe that was a harsh judgement to make but I didn't know what to think. How am I supposed to feel knowing that he went and used my best friend to find Katherine? That he killed her family to punish her for killing herself. Flashes of the way she looked when she told me what happened made chills run down my spine. The man I love did that, and I'm supposed to forgive, to forget. How could I?
I stopped walking looking on the beach, I came here everyday for the past 300 years. To think. No one noticed me, they just walked by not paying much mind to the mysterious woman in black on the beach. I didn't mind it meant that I could live near by and practically go unnoticed by the entire world. I wish that I could have had more of that, just lived unnoticed, if my doppelgangers didn't draw so much attention maybe we wouldn't even be in this situation. I would be someone else, something else, maybe find some sort of peace. That's what I'm hoping to have when I go home, some sort of peace, but I know better, there's no way I could have that, the memory of this time and the things that happened are a stain on me.
I will never forget any of it, when I get back I will have lived over 800 years and I can't even fool myself to thinking of all that time as a distant memory or dream. When I get back I know my mind will drift to him, to the man I so desperately wanted to share eternity with. Even now standing on a beautiful beach probably miles away from him I'm thinking of him, I'm missing him, I'm wishing that things were different, wondering where they went wrong. Where I went wrong. My thoughts scattered as someone came to stand next to me looking out at the sunset as I was "It's rare anyone comes over here" he said not looking at me I knew the voice but I was hoping I was wrong as I looked out into space "It is, but I like the peace I like being alone" he snickered and shook his head "Nobody likes being alone, they get hurt and deal with the cards they've been dealt, now for the real question who hurt you" I frowned and looked over at the man and saw that my suspicions were in fact true.
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"Elijah" he looked over at me and smiled faintly "I know you probably do not wish to see me but know that I am alone, Klaus is not with me" I frowned and watched him closely "Klaus was always with him, he rarely went off on his own, he can't watch Klaus if he's not with him" I tore my eyes from him looking back out at the sun "Even if you were with him it wouldn't change anything I wish to be alone" he sighed and looked down "Elena we are family and though yes I have hurt you I deserve the chance to make for it, as your brother could you turn me away" I gave him a look for pulling the brother card he knows how that pulls at my heart's strings. I sighed and closed my eyes bringing a smile to his face, he knew he won "This better be good" I said lacing my arm with his and walking away from beach.
"I know" he said simply after we'd been walking awhile, I froze unsure of what he meant, I knew what it could be but I was so hoping that I was wrong. As I predicted, I wasn't wrong "I know that you do not belong to this time" I sighed and stopped walking "Listen Eli I wanted to tell you but I didn't know how, I was afraid that the more the two times collided the more-" he cut me off "The more we'd be like the people you knew us to be" I nodded and he took my arm in his again "Elena, I'm no expert in this particular brand of witchcraft but I do know one thing, this time could never be like yours. Do you know why? Because in this time we have you, and though yes my brother did hunt Katherine and make her what she is now he is still not the man you knew before you came to us. My brother is many things but he's not a monster. And I have a feeling that's not something I would have said in the time you come from now would it?" I listened to him and the more I heard the more assured I was becoming he was right. This time and mine could never be the same.
"It's just hard sometimes to separate the two when they seem so close" he nodded "I believe this ordeal was meant to serve as a lesson these past few hundred years I've had time to think over the events that lead you to disappear and I find that you were in need of a lesson" I frowned and gestured for him to continue "Klaus will never be a purely good soul, the damage that my father has done has only been heightened with being a vampire all he can do is hope to be able to control it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't but the lesson here is not to crush him with high character expectations just because you are here. You being changed things but not everything" I sighed and looked off into the distance at the people walking by in their blissful ignorance of the secret world that vampire and witches lived in. I thought of Henrik and how beautiful his same ignorance was to me so long ago, when I thought of him I thought of his death I thought of how cruel Mikeal was to Klaus when it happened, I imagined his guilt and how it must've intensified as he became a vampire.
The rage he felt when he killed his mother followed by that same guilt, so many emotions to deal with in the mind of an abused child. My heart bled for him, I knew what he had been through and maybe the stark differences between this Klaus and the one from my time allowed to me fantasize that all of that suffering didn't darken and change him. That all that suffering disappeared because I loved him. A foolish notion almost selfish of me, I was truly surprised at myself in that moment, when Jenna died Stefan's love helped but it didn't cure the pain. It didn't soften the blow of losing all 3 of my guardians at once. I may have been harsh with Klaus but I still found it hard to allow what he'd done to be forgotten, he forced Katherine to turn, he killed her family, he went behind my back and went after another woman with my face with all intentions of killing her. How can I forget and forgive that, does that mean that if he were to find that my blood can in fact make hybrids how he does in my time that he would use me?
My face clearly doesn't stop him from acting on his darkest needs and desire for power and security. I stopped walking and cut Elijah off who was still talking about how everyone missed me especially Klaus "How can I feel safe with a man who was willing to kill a woman with the same face as me" he paused and stared at me unable to speak, I could see him searching for an answer his mind and failing "I do not know, truly I wish I did, but I'm asking you to try" I nodded and looked out at the beach "Are you asking for me or for him" he came up beside me and sighed "For him, but I do imagine that you would be much happier with him" I frowned and shook my head "Before you try to deny it tell me this Elena, why do you come to the beach, what do you come to think about" now it was I who had no answer, he was right, I did come here and think of him so often. I did miss him, I was happy, so happy, and for a moment it felt like it would never end. Like I would be happy like this forever and nothing bad could ever destroy my world. I see now that was a fantasy and it is unfair of me to punish Klaus for breaking it.
If anything I should thank him, I was living in a dream and now I know it's time to wake up "Look Eli, you're right I do miss him, I do love him, but my heart and my trust in him is broken and though my heart aches to be apart form him I can't help but feel safer with the distance between us" he nodded and sighed "If it were he who had come here himself and begged for your forgiveness for you to love him, could you turn him away" I stared at the waves long and hard before I answered, we knew what my answer was he didn't have to hear me say it "But that did not happen did it" I said brushing by him and leaving him on the beach, alone may not be the life I would've chosen but it's the one I accept. A betrayal this dark is not one he can broker from me, if he wants me back he will need to come here and get me.
