Solitude

Scarring

 Every day spent cleaning the house and working in the yard felt like it was happening to someone else like she was watching her body go through the motions from about three feet back and couldn't find it in herself to care much about anything. It had been ten days since she had arrived in mystic falls and ten days since Elijah appeared.

It felt significant somehow that by now it had been ten days, that the aching hole in her chest was no longer measured out in single digits. Ten days of cloying, never-ending sympathy and news headlines of her sudden disappearance.

Elena had made a map out of every one of Klaus' features and she could see the distant but undeniable physical resemblance between him and Elijah. Other people may not have noticed the tightness in his shoulders or the relaxed expression he wore, an odd combination she would admit, but Elena saw the truth. It was staring right into his face.

Apart from having vaguely familiar physical features, the man was rather tall, dressed fittingly in a nicely shaped suit, his blazer trying it best but failing miserably to contrast his square-shouldered, with thick dark hair and superiority that only a few possessed.

Klaus didn't carry himself this way. On the contrary, Klaus' stance seemed lesser than Elijah's as if Elijah had a confidence Klaus lacked, or rather their confidence was of different nature. Though he seemed smaller to Elijah at the moment she found it increasingly difficult to describe Klaus with any term along the lines of small and humble.

That was what she managed to tell from the few moments he had appeared before vanishing. So quickly Klaus had to glance at her for reassurance that he was there that he hadn't lost his mind from inhaling her daisy and lilac presence all day every day.

The man was on edge something about the fact that the Salvatore brothers now had the coffins set him into a distant place, and she offered no help as he saw the fleeting puppy eyes she would give to the window of the manor nearest to their home. She lazed back her body loosely tossed on the couch as she peered at the ceiling trying her best to account for each cobweb she could find.

The smell of coffee stopped her and swiftly sent her on the way to the door. She found Klaus in his art room crowded with photos she had left to develop that were surely now dry he was slightly rumpled, in dark red pajamas and a robe

"Drink," Klaus said, already reaching for the mug that sat beside him. His responses had become one word but she was thankful for the responses in general.

"You have been in a mood of sorts," Elena hummed as she took a comfortable seat on the wooden floors at his feet.

"Of sorts, you are getting more British by the day the lovely Elena," His voice strained into a pompous voice one fitting of a mockery of Elijah as he spoke never once drawing his eyes from his canvas.

"Well I spend my days with a British narcissist so," She shrugged causing the large shirt she wore which he could only assume belonged to him rode up revealing faint scarrings laid against her lower half beginning at the line of her underwear and disappearing with the fabric.

'Who did that to you" He hummed his worry seeping through much to the notice of Elena.

"You," She stated simply feeling no need to lie.

"No that wasn't there before and I don't remember that happening in the ritual," Klaus began finally setting the paintbrush that moved gentle strokes against the tightened cotton canvas.

"I never said it happened during the ritual," She hadn't moved even as he made way to her.

"Then when," His voice grew louder as he wrapped his palm hands around her tanned ones his grasp so tight that he couldn't help the gasp that left her lips.

"Nik you are hurting me," She said quietly a swift palm dropped from her arm though he didn't move back invading her personal space without a care, not that she minded anyway. It just made it difficult to recall her story when the familiar pine and oil paint scent danced around her nostrils.

"When I got you the paints," She said quietly trying her best to not let any more of his intoxicating scent invade her as it was doing now. The familiar memory of him tossing her to the ground after she had simply purchased something to keep him awake stained his thoughts. She had never been expecting an apology it was something she had come to learn he would never give not in words at least.

"Suddenly I had to say goodbye to bikinis," She said snapping the fabric of her underwear onto her allowing for his eyes to follow the sound though he would admit to letting the linger for too long.

"Yeah, I bet you look terrible in them," His voice came out as barely a whisper as her palms grasped at his cheek.

"Absolutely horrifying," her voice was soft enough to match his as her lips gently grazed his ears.

"You are lying I would have noticed," He spoke slightly unsure of himself.

"Would you have?" She hummed tilting up a bit getting her dangerously close to him. "Have you actually been that close Nik had your eyes so low down,"

"I-" He had just stuttered he never stuttered she had almost exclaimed if not for the thick air suffocating her and allowing her to only release the necessary words.

"I should fix that,"