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Elena felt like she was in a rock and a hard place.
She wanted Klaus gone. Death would be preferable, but she would be thrilled with gone . Rebekah, too. Hair in a high pony as she sat on her knees on her bed, she eyed Bonnie and Caroline warily as she recounted why she was interrupted from her meeting with Esther. She wasn’t too thrilled about being alone with the Original Witch, but she also had to admit she was curious, and curiosity was both a vice and virtue for her in equal measure. She had hoped that maybe, just maybe, Esther could offer insight into how to make Klaus go poof.
He’s her uncle, a voice reminded Elena.
The water of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb, she paraphrased back to herself. She wasn’t going to feel guilty for wanting the person who killed her and terrorized her dead. Or gone. Or just far, far away from her and hers.
Which was why they were having this meeting, at 8 AM on Saturday morning, instead of sleeping in like her body oh-so-wanted to do.
Caroline’s hair was left in her natural waves, still wearing pajamas from the night before, and the same with Bonnie whose hair wrap was almost as green as her eyes. “Remember when I said that Meggie’s birth mother, Zoey, came to town? Before Jeremy went to Denver?”
The girls nodded, interest piqued. It wasn’t like they had a chance to talk about the dance last night; Caroline and Elena were both exhausted for a myriad of reasons, and Bonnie needed her friends to ease her through reconnecting with her mom. She’ll make a note later to ask Bonnie if she could help Meggie with more super safe and age-appropriate spells. They could be sounding boards and, while Elena never played favorites, her little sister thought the world of Bonnie.
“She was at the ball last night and super pissed Meggie was there.”
“Why was she there anyway?” Bonnie knitted her brows together. She was curious, not accusatory. “It seemed a bit too grown-up for a little girl, and in a room full of Originals? Didn’t you say that she had nightmares over some of them?”
That was accusatory but deserved. At Elena’s wince, Bonnie softened some, but those eyes told the teenager that the point still stood. Her being there was stupid and, honestly, if curiosity didn’t decide to be a vice last night, she wouldn’t have been. No matter how persuasive Esther could be.
“Esther said she’d only meet with me if Meggie was there,” Elena began, and, without preamble, she decided to rip off the proverbial band-aid before Caroline or Bonnie could butt-in: “because Meggie, biologically, is a Mikaelson. Damon and I–when we were looking for Stefan–found Zoey and apparently vampires aren’t as sterile as everyone says.”
Silence. Two seconds of silence, before–
“Seriously?”
–Caroline.
Caroline hopped on the bed and sat on the other side of Elena, reminiscent of the three of them being little girls, then preteens, and then once seemingly normal teenagers having sleepovers and talking about boys and the girls on the cheerleading squad they didn’t like. Well, that part was mostly Caroline and Bonnie; Elena enjoyed being the sounding board. “Are you sure one of them is Zoey’s baby daddy and not, you know, her being just a descendent?” Elena shook her head. “It’s Klaus, isn’t it? What!? Meggie is a gremlin and, regardless of his Cinderella fetish, Klaus is, at the very least, super gremlin-y. Gremlins beget gremlins.”
“Actually,” a deep breath. “Elijah.”
Bonnie mouthed a ‘get out’ and if she had pearls, Elena could imagine the witch would be clutching them. It was much better than Caroline’s shocked ‘Elijah fucks’ under her breath.
“So Esther wanted to know her granddaughter?” Elena nodded. “She could’ve just taken her to McDonald's, but given her family is–”
“Crazy?” Caroline offered. “Homicidal? Totally checked out of reality? Has the empathy of a flea?”
Bonnie raised a brow and Elena, being Elena, translated: “Klaus kicked her out last night.” Bonnie gave a knowing ah because, even if Caroline didn’t like someone, she still hated being slighted. Neither were privy to why she was kicked out, but the only thing Caroline told her friends were the words “bastard” and “daddy issues” so they left it at that. “That’s not the point. Zoey was there and when she found out Meggie was there, she was pissed, and before I could meet Esther…”
Caroline finished for Elena without missing a beat: “she totally pulled a daytime soap move and told Elijah, didn’t she?”
Elena nodded. “It was a bit of a commotion. And then Meggie was found by Matt putting gorilla glue–don’t ask how she got it; I’m pretty sure Damon or Ric let her have it–on the toilets, and Kol and Damon started to fight, and…” she trailed off with a noncommittal wave of her hand. “No meeting. Lots of chaos. And a very formal, but very much a demand , from Elijah that there would be a meeting to discuss–well. The gremlin .”
Two beats, both girls allowing the information to settle in before both of them pull Elena into a hug. She didn’t need it. She knew Bonnie needed it more and, even if this was imperative information, she felt guilty because of course she was connected to it. Of course, she would be the center of everything. She hated it. She hated being the protagonist and wanted–needed–a reprieve for a day or two. Let her be the supporting role for once. “How is Meggie handling it?” Bonnie asked.
“--Frankly, Miss Specter, any concerns you have about my or my family’s involvement in Margaret’s life ceased the moment you signed away your rights.” Elijah’s voice was calm; it was as if he were speaking about teas and not being withheld knowledge that he fathered a child, a daughter, for the past nearly eight years. Elena knew better. Elena could feel the heat in every syllable and how his jaw clenched like a lion about to open its mouth and devour its prey. Doe's eyes turned to Zoey, the product of such venom, who sat with near-perfect posture in her blue blazer and fishtail braid to the side. Elena saw how she swallowed, her throat bobbed as she did, and was thankful that this woman wasn’t dumb enough to both show her cards and also not be afraid of the apex predator that sat across from her.
Elena, only eighteen but reasonably still a legal guardian of the subject in question, sat in the middle of the sofa, nursing a cup of tea that was all but cold by now.
She didn’t need to be a vampire, or witch, or psychic, or whatever to know that the subject in question was listening in. Meggie might be several things– gremlin, brat, taxing, loveable, and hers –but she was not subtle in the least. She could see the part of her head and the still wet strands of golden that curled from her recent bath. She could see those tiny fingers gripping the wall as she listened. If Jeremy was there, she knew he would be listening in, too. Younger siblings tend to do that. Elena was the one who wrote the book on eavesdropping: she remembered going through a Nancy Drew and Harriet the Spy phase when she was six and treated every private conversation like it was precious intel that could either save or end, life as everyone knew it. It stopped being cute when she was ten but, instead of grounding her, her mom bought her a journal and encouraged her to write. It was how Elena grew up to love the written word.
Zoey’s scoff brought Elena back to the topic at hand. Her cheeks flush in embarrassment for zoning out when she was supposed to be the mediator. It was either her, or Ric, or Damon and the latter two wanted neither birth parents near Meggie and there was the tiniest part of Elena that agreed. Zoey, who made it clear in writing she wanted the adoption to be closed; Elijah, who was noble and the best of his family, but still a killer and still dangerous. Her sister had nightmares about him. “I made the best choice I had for her at the time. I had to hide her from your mother, the Original Witch, and once I found out what you are I knew she had to be far, far away from your kind.”
“My kind?” Elijah’s dark brow raised challengingly. He didn’t move a muscle, but Elena stilled herself for him to pounce anyway. His control was iron wrought but it was frayed. Sometimes Meggie had the right idea about him; he was scarier than Klaus because he was unpredictable. Almost like Hannibal Lecter. God, she needed to stop being around Damon. “No one–not my siblings, my mother, my father, or anyone–shall lay a hand on Margaret’s head and live. Not within the stretch of my arm. My nature simply allows me to better protect her. She is a Mikaelson; she belongs with family.” At the word family did his voice slightly break, “we stick together. Always and forever.”
Elena’s brown eyes flit toward the sound of a gasp. Then the stomping of little feet and, what caused her to jump, the slamming of a door–Meggie had heard enough. It took hours this morning to coax her out of the bathroom when she found out. Elena had told her. She didn’t want Esther, Elijah, Zoey, or anyone else to tell her about her birth parents. Just like she didn’t want anyone but her and Jeremy to tell her she, just like Elena, was adopted. The sound alerted both of them and Elijah stood up, a picture of a doting father clad in Armani, with a full intent to rush toward Meggie and comfort her. Zoey, although visually pained, sat in the chair with her hands in her lap. “I’ll go check on her,” Elena offered, placing down her chilly cup of tea on the coaster before her sneakers marched up the winding steps. Before reaching Meggie’s door with numerous childlike drawings and a letter art for M in the middle, she turned to make sure she was alone. Thankfully, neither decided to follow. Good, Elena thought. She may have fallen short in her big sister duties the past year, but she was still Meggie’s big sister. Elena had loved and wanted Meggie since Christmas Day when mom and dad brought the baby home and told her and Jeremy this was their new baby sister. This new development did not, nor will not, change that.
“I’ll get to take care of her?!” Elena remembered her ten year old self asking, sitting in the middle of the couch holding the bundled newborn, making sure to hold her head because she wanted to impress mom and dad so much that maybe they wouldn’t always supervise her. That she could take care of the baby on her own. Elena remembered how those gray eyes–all babies have gray eyes, ‘Lena–squinted up at her and she knew she would do anything she could for her. “Can we call her Meggie?”
She remembered her dad’s laugh, bemusement making his eyes twinkle; “what’s wrong with Maggie, or Margaret?”
Elena had shaken her head and–very gently!–squeezed the infant to her protectively, almost possessively. “Meggie is better.”
“Margaret is better off away from you! From me! She deserves a normal life!” Elena’s trip down memory lane was interrupted by Zoey’s impassioned plea to Elijah, who stood firm in his stance on family. Being a mediator for the witch and an original vampire was the least of her concerns. What concerned Elena was the sound of broken-hearted sobs. Meggie was so wild, arrogant, flippant, and brave. She was all iron, while Elena felt like the finest of porcelain most days. It made Elena forget how she was still so small, so young, and her heart was far more fragile than she’d ever show. Instead of knocking, Elena twisted the doorknob and entered the bedroom. On the bed Meggie lay, her back facing the door, in a fetal position and holding a picture frame. It was a photo of their parents and her when she graduated Pre-K. When she was mischievous but more so curious and full of wonder. Not now. Not when she felt she had to scream just to get a scrap of attention.
The sound of hiccups and seeing her shoulders shake made her choice clear: Elena wasted no more time in crossing the bedroom to sneak on her sister’s bed behind her, wrapping her up in her arms. To testify how distraught Meggie was, she didn’t even shove her away or bite her. She held that photo to her chest and cried so hard it gave her the hiccups. “You’ll always be my sister. Mine and Jere’s, okay?” She whispers atop the golden and damp head, hugging her closely. Meggie was no more a Mikaelson or Specter as Elena was a Pierce or a Flemming. Meggie was Margaret Emily Gilbert and her parents were Grayson and Miranda Gilbert. Just like they were her parents, not Isobel or John. Hers. Just like Meggie was hers. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”
And for a while, it was enough.
“He didn’t want me before,” Meggie whispered, a bit calmer than earlier but her face was blotchy and red and puffy; she couldn’t hide the fact she was crying even if she tried and, oh, her prideful little sister would try. “He was scary before. He wanted to hurt us before.”
“He didn’t know,” Elena soothed, but only tightened her hold on the little girl all the same. The reasoning was sound. Elijah considered her sister an afterthought. Nothing. She was safe from his wrath, but she knew if she ended up a casualty between him, Klaus, or Katherine he wouldn’t bat an eye. He was the best of them, but Elena wasn’t stupid, and she was glad that Meggie wasn’t stupid either. “And I think he didn’t really want to hurt us; I think when someone is super, super old like him, kinda like Damon, they stop seeing people as people. Because they forgot how to be one.”
The little girl turns over to face her sister and Elena raises a hand to push away errant strands from her little face. A cherub’s face with the lightest splattering of freckles. Her eyes, though–those eyes were Elijah’s. Intelligent and being able to see things most miss. “He scares me. Klaus scares me. I like Rebekah; she’s pretty.”
‘Lena, she’s, like, the prettiest girl in the entire world! She remembered the little girl declaring, tugging her sister’s hand to get her attention. Way prettier than you or Caroline!
Caroline didn’t bother to hide how offended she was; Elena, to her credit, masked it well… but it hurt. And it dealt a significant blow to her self-esteem.
“Stefan and Damon used to scare you, too,” Elena reminded her gently. “Now you make fun of Damon, and I'm pretty sure Stefan is kind of scared of you.”
“I taught him to fear me.” Meggie agreed easily enough, sniffling.
“You’ll teach them to fear you, too–or maybe you can be friends?” Elena respected Elijah. He betrayed and terrorized, yes, but he had a good heart when he wasn’t ripping others out of their chest. “Family is important, but it’s also chosen. And I will stand by you, no matter what. Jere too.” After a pause, Elena’s eyes squinted and her face became far more mischievous than the somber one she’s had since the fiasco at the ball. “Besides, I’m pretty sure Elijah sleeps in suits. Or maybe onesies with bowties. And Klaus totally wets the bed.”
It was juvenile and silly, but Meggie’s grin showed her missing two front teeth and her eyes sparkled with something other than tears. It was worth it. Elena allowed her oval face to blossom into a full grin, too, before softening once again for a more somber approach. “You don’t need to talk to them by yourself, but I think it will make you feel better if you come downstairs. You might be a kid, but you still have a choice, okay? If they love you they will respect that.”
And so the two Gilbert girls who weren’t Gilberts by blood, but in every way that mattered, marched down the stairs and into the living room where Elijah and Zoey thankfully hadn’t killed each other. Instead, the two stood up when they realized Elena wasn’t alone. Zoey gave Meggie a small, kind, and patient smile while Elijah looked at her as if she was the most precious thing on earth. He looked at her in awe. Meggie, wearing her Pikachu onesie and was previously ready for bed, stood behind Elena’s legs. Elena would be her shield. It was the least she could do for her sister. “This is about her. She should be here.” Elena felt ten feet tall and braver than she ever did. She would be the hero for the little girl who clung to her as if her life depended on it. She would. She made a promise to always take care of her, after all.
“Of course,” the two adults agreed in tandem, before returning to sit in their respective chairs. Elijah couldn’t take his eyes away from Meggie and Zoey couldn’t stop looking at the floor, but Elena eventually had Meggie on her lap, cuddled close, in the middle of the couch where she held her that first day so many years ago. The tension in the air was thick, but everyone waited for the little girl to make the first move. Elena was grateful neither pushed it, because she would not scold her little sister for retaliating as she saw fit. She would even join in.
Meggie’s brown eyes flit toward Elijah who, with his mouth partially agape, was the picture of awe and wonder. It was possibly one of the few times Elena had ever seen him bothered and taken aback in the best of ways. Meggie’s voice was quiet and hoarse from crying when she asked the man who gave her nightmares the most innocent of questions: “Do you really sleep in your suits?”
Zoey would eventually head to her hotel with her head hung low. Ever the gentlemen Elijah, despite the heat between the two earlier, opened her car door outside the Gilbert residence. The child in question and the teenage doppelganger resided inside, probably scrounging for something to eat, and Zoey had a thought that in another life she would be the one making sure the little girl had dinner. She would be the one to see her bath. Looking at the seemingly stoic face of a man that had lived one lifetime too many, she tried to imagine a life with him if she chose differently. Could she have fallen in love with him? Maybe. Could she have co-parented with him easily enough, regardless of her family's beliefs against associating themselves with vampires? Maybe. Too little too late.
“I tried to find you,” she admitted once she slid into the driver’s seat. “When I was pregnant… I had dreams. Awful dreams about starlings. I tried to find you, but I was warned about your brother.”
She could see his adam's apple bob and noticed how his hand gripped onto the car door. The heat might still reside in him, but she was far too tired. It might be the very last time she’d ever have a frank conversation with the Original and actually live, so she swallowed pride and fear and did the brave thing. “I wanted you to know, but the deeper I got the more scared I was.” She was twenty-two, in college, still grieving over a mother that had been buried five years before. She wasn’t a virgin and she wasn’t uneducated, but she was naive enough to think she could go through those nine months without something left over. “I know I made the right choice. You might hate it, but I did. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry, but I would still make the same choice.” And just because she knew this, knew it in her bones no matter what-if scenario she had allowed herself to daydream here-and-there the past near-decade, did not mean it was easy. It did not mean she left the experience without bruises that covered her spirit.
Grief. It was all-encompassing.
“I believe this just might be the last time we cross paths, Miss Specter.” Elijah did not raise a voice nor did a single muscle flinch to give away his poker face, but Zoey could hear the threat underneath. He had threatened her all evening without specifically stating as such or even lifting a hand to her in anger. It was deserved, but it was also not deserved. She felt guilty for withholding the truth from him but was grown enough emotionally to understand she did all she could with what she had. She was alone and at the end of the day, the choice was hers, and she only hoped he’d come to accept that someday. “I trust you a safe journey to your hotel.”
She shut the door. Locked it. And drove off.
Starlings.
When he was a little boy, much like his siblings, the birds were that of a comfort; while his mother wasn’t the warmest of women, she was affectionate in her own way. She would promise that whenever they were scared, alone, or lost–look for the starlings. They would lead them home to her hearth and in the safety of her arms. For a thousand years every single time he’d pass that very breed of bird his heart would clench in both pain and bloom with love. A very strong, all-encompassing love a grieving son held for a woman that taught him the importance of words and the importance of how one presented themselves to the world. And now she was back, miraculously alive, and how she cupped his cheek like she used to as a boy made him want to believe her words more than anything in the world.
I want us to be a family again, she had said, standing in the middle of the ostentatious lounge room Niklaus had orchestrated. He was too in awe–too in shock–to notice a skip of her heart, a hitch of her breath, to betray the words that slipped from her mouth. The same mouth that kissed his forehead when he fell ill, and the same mouth that laughed in delight when Niklaus presented another carving, but before he made his way to the Gilbert residence with the one-time affair he had heard that heart skip when she spoke to him. It shook him to the core.
Odd, it would be, that the same nightmares Miss Specter confided in him that plagued her pregnancy, were of starlings. Odd, it would be, that his small child would be invited to an all-adult gala when the youngest there was all but eighteen years old. And even odder that, he recalled walking into the Gilbert residence and closing the door softly behind him, his mother held a private meeting with the little girl while most of her children were far from earshot. Too many variables and while the little boy, the human man who adored her, wanted to cry paranoia–experience said otherwise.
Margaret looked like his mother. He rested his shoulder against the archway of the kitchen-slash-lounge area where the little girl held a bowl of macaroni and cheese–processed powder was not cheese. Her diet would be amended swiftly.–while watching some cartoon musical, more than likely Disney, on the television. Legs folded underneath her like a pretzel as she ate and entertained herself. He could tell she had his nose, though; while it was premature to tell, he could see it forming on her face, as well as the cleft of his chin. Eyes, too. She had his eyes. The spark is all Kol, he reasoned. The twinkle was Henrik. If she noticed his presence she said nothing. Simply blew on the cheap version of pasta before raising the plastic spoon to her lips. He had thought he had known love, absolute love, in Tatia or Cecily. Maybe even Katherine if she had trusted him and not herself. He had thought his love for his family was so great, he would–and had–move mountains for their survival and happiness. He even remembered Tatia’s little boy, Bjorn, who he had prepared to call his own son the very moment his betrothal to Tatia was cemented; before he would become deathless and ageless by her blood and, therefore, by the blood of the vampires after him.
He was wrong.
This little girl, this extraordinary miracle, was the closest thing Elijah Mikaelson ever felt to a belief in a god. Not even as a human did he believe, but he played the part of a devout worshiper of the Allfather and Allmother like the rest of his family. This was stronger and far more powerful than any story the town skald would tell. Unconditional, absolute, resplendent love that transfigured his very being; the Elijah before was merely a shell, while the Elijah that stood watching the girl slowly wear a “cheese” mustache as the movie enraptured her so was whole. He was blind, now he could see; he was lost, now he was found. In that very moment, he knew he would forsake always and forever, any love past or present if it meant several tomorrows would be promised for his daughter.
His presence did not stay undetected. Her eyes were round, her heart thudded with fear in her small chest, and while he could positively feel the little girl wanting to call her older sister as a safety net she did not. No. With shaking hands she placed the empty bowl on the coffee table and, with free hands, grabbed a pillow on the sofa while those intelligent brown eyes surveyed him suspiciously. She’s afraid of you, he reminded himself. Apparently, Damon fed her stories about ripping out hearts from less-than-innocent’s chest and embellished his arrival at Mystic Falls as if he were some sort of Krampus ready to steal her and eat her. Or was that Baba Yaga?
No. If his suspicions about his mother were, in fact, correct, then Baba Yaga would be a title fit for her.
“Forgive me,” he managed with a soft grin. “I only wanted to see what you were watching. My intent was not to frighten you.”
You already did that, his human self scolded him. The man that hated who he became with every single fiber of his being. And the thing was he knew it wasn’t only the elder Salvatore brother who was at fault; he knew how he loomed near her sister, her family, like an omen with threats and promises of harm if crossed without lifting a finger. He swayed Jenna Sommers well enough with good conversation and an easy grin, but the little girl with his very eyes was more of an afterthought; merely a person Elena had requested to be protected once their deal was struck. He wasn’t rude or intentionally cruel, per se, but he was curt enough and made it clear of her insignificance as he did with the brother, Jeremy. And he remembered how his hearing had picked up her small voice upstairs.
He didn’t want me before.
Oh, sweet, sweet girl; he was so focused on hate that he could not see his absolution in the form of a nose-picking, quick-witted, fiery child that Elena had affectionately called Meggie.
She made no comment. She only blinked long, thick, dark lashes as she hugged the pillow even tighter. It was only after a beat or two did she respond in a small voice: “it’s Sleeping Beauty.” And, a true testament with how much of a brave soul his little girl was, she scooted toward the end of the couch and gave him a pointed look that told him to sit.
He obeyed. Respecting her space, of course, in allowing a divide between the two, and while the need for a tidy space urged him to pick up her discarded bowl and place it in the sink, he fought the urge. She allowed him a large boon in sitting in the same room as her without the safety of Elena. He would be damned to throw that away on a compulsion. “Ah,” and now he could see it clearly; how the two fairies argued over the color of a dress–blue, pink, blue–and the familiar waltz of the ballet the musical score was inspired by–yes. He remembered watching it in theaters upon its release. Now his little girl was watching it, although not as enraptured as she had been, years later. “I was always more inclined to Cinderella, myself.” He offered it as an olive branch. Show the little girl he was more than her supernatural boogie man that shared her blood. He was more than a monster that went bump in the night. He would spend the rest of his days–and the rest of her life, to which he would do all he could to make it as long as possible–earning her trust, if not love. “The Jungle Book was another favorite. Yet, I can see why you like Sleeping Beauty. You favor this Aurora.”
Her cheeks flush pink and he knew he said the right thing. A true thing, but the right one altogether. Her smile, the first she would ever offer him, took his breath away. It was settled.
He would earn his daughter’s trust.
He would find out what plot his mother was brewing and hopefully, if her intentions were to harm than heal, he would be able to thwart it before it befell on the little girl with Henrik’s twinkling eyes.
And finally, and perhaps less honorably as he would like, snap Damon Salvatore’s neck for scaring his little girl half to death.
“And to answer your earlier question,” lips quirk upward in his own mischievous smile, leaning in only so close as to seem conspiratorial rather than threatening. “I do, in fact, own pajamas. Boxers, too.”