Elijah hears some months afterwards through the Italian charter of his informants that Niklaus's ill-gotten hybrids were beginning to break free, his baby sister was lying in a box as a direct result of another one of Nik's ungentlemanly tantrums, Elena was a vampire, and if all this was not distressing enough, that Klaus had thrown out Elijah's prized antique silverware in yet another, unrelated tantrum.

He is almost about to sigh, before he refrains himself; such displays are unsuitable at the dinner table. Elijah does so hate to be rude.

"That shit," Kol says from the other end of the dining table—one of his more prized possessions, retrieved from a Merovingian castle—kicking up his feet. "Is wack."

Elijah thinks, resignedly, that the finer points of etiquette would rather have been lost on his dinner companion anyway. He indulges, and lets his breath out through his nose slowly.

"It is regrettable."

"I mean I get it, of course." Kol gestures, the Type O in his hand sloshing out of its wine glass and staining the carpet. Elijah suppresses the urge to sigh again. "What is he now, the hybrid equivalent of impotent?"

This is not a conversation that Elijah wants to have.

"Shooting blanks. Flaccid fangs. A few wolves shy of a pack." Kol pauses, regarding Elijah's impassive stare. "Erectile dysfunction. That's the joke."

Elijah gazes skywards. He feels a headache coming on.

He arrives back in Mystic Falls quietly, without fanfare or mutilated bystanders, which he feels is perhaps something Klaus would like to take notes of for future reference. Really, there are only so many times that one can hijack a body, kidnap upwards of two townspeople and sacrifice them in the woods before it all crosses the line into pure rudeness. Elijah prefers a nondescript Lincoln town car with the windows blacked out and a trained chauffeur to an entourage of pyromaniac witches.

"I'm not coming," Kol had said to him a mere twenty hours earlier. "I don't fancy spending another century in the coffin, and I am 97% sure that Nik cuts our hair when we're unconscious. Homie don't play that shit."

Elijah really wishes Kol had not gone to New York University when they left. Despite leaving because he got sick of the anthropology course after two weeks, his younger brother did pick up a few modern turns of phrases that Elijah rather wished he didn't. Besides, all that leaving NYU really meant was that Kol followed him to London. And attended RADA. And spent two weeks wearing a cape and enunciating despite all Elijah's efforts to inform him that stage acting was one of humanity's finer inventions, and would you please stop quoting Shakespearean phallic jokes at the dinner table?

All in all, Elijah was quite pleased with Kol's decision.

What he wasn't as pleased with is the distinct sounds of Klaus yelling, perfectly audible even from his position at the end of the monstrously huge driveway—good God, they are Originals, not some nouveau riche Texan family getting rich off oil money; he must really talk with Klaus about tearing down this place.

Also the yelling.

"I've done everything for you!" Klaus is screaming when he makes his way down the main hall. "You think your hair would look this good if I didn't spend an hour in here, brushing and dry conditioning every day? You think—"

His younger brother stops as he spots Elijah at the door, and the two of them regard each other silently.

"Were you just—" Elijah starts.

"No." Klaus replies, slamming down the top of Rebekah's coffin. "No, I wasn't."

Elijah regards his brother impassively. Well. This is awkward.

"I see," he says finally.

Klaus takes a second to collect himself, before he's sneering again. Elijah needs to talk to him about the sneering as well. "Come running back, huh, brother? Hasn't been long at all, has it?"

"And yet I see you've already reverted to your old ways," Elijah replies lightly. He makes his way smoothly to Rebekah's coffin, watching his brother circling out of the corner of his eyes; must be old wolf instincts. Elijah rather wishes Klaus had picked up other canine instincts—like loyalty, for instance. "This is no way to treat our little sister, Klaus."

Please, don't cry, Elijah thinks.

Please, don't throw a tantrum, Elijah thinks.

Klaus's lip trembles. Elijah sighs.

"No one understands me." Klaus whispers, twenty seven scotches and four Cubans later. "I'm alone in this world, I've been abandoned, everyone leaves me—"

Our mother was quite fond of infanticide, Elijah wants to point out. Our father believed in parental discipline a bit too strict even for a Viking village. You're the illegitimate child of an unknown man who turns into a wolf at will who likes to temporarily kill any of your family members who so much as tells you that hemp necklaces are out of fashion.

When one sees the situation in that light, things really are quite dire.

Also you ruined my Caravaggio and let Kol set fire to a sixteenth century ottoman that I salvaged from Naples, Elijah wants to add. So really, I think I had a worse decade than you, brother.

If Elijah had been a lesser man, he would have sneered right about now.

"So you daggered Rebekah in order to pursue this mythical cure with—" Elijah pauses delicately, to better imbue his words with polite disdain. "The Salvatores."

"Not Damon," Klaus waves his tumbler tearfully. "No. The better Salvatore. Stefan, my old friend."

("We're not friends," Stefan had told Elijah on more than one occasion. "Also I'd appreciate it if you'd get him to stop calling me.")

Elijah refrains from contradicting. Instead, he says, "ah."

The situation was no less dire. Elijah had been there through eight hundred years by Klaus's side; Rebekah had been there for more than nine hundred save the ninety years during which she had slept. None of them upheld the vow they had sworn on their mother's grave a thousand years ago—but Rebekah came the closest. Elijah's mouth twists, his fists clenching slightly.

In the second afterwards, seven of Klaus's thinnest paintbrushes are sprouting from his neck; his brother puts up a valiant effort, however, though the alcohol had rather dulled his senses.

"There is a specific set of rules," Elijah says calmly. "That comes into play in regards to our baby sister. I think it's time you learned it."

"I'll dagger you," Klaus retorts, wiping the blood on the antique chaise. Oh Good Lord. "Don't think I won't—"

"We do not speak disrespectfully to our sister," Elijah snaps, before he calms himself. "We do not play with her hair when she does not allow us to. We do not dagger her when she is like to disagree with our actions. And most of all, we do not abandon her for tasteless Salvatores."

In his distress, he had not noticed that said Salvatores were standing in the doorway.

Damon crosses his arms. Stefan's significant brows were furrowed. Elena, behind them, looks positively elated to see him.

Damon looks distinctly affronted. "Rude."

Elena steps forward. "Elijah," she says, and he realizes that he did not plan for them to meet while he was just about to plant another paintbrush in his brother's neck. "When did you get back?"

"Not long ago," he replies and discreetly hands Klaus a handkerchief. They are brothers, after all. He stares at her, motionless, noting the absence of a heartbeat, the lack of the quiet humming of blood. "I see the tales are true."

Her face drops slightly. "Yes."

"This is some regency novel shit right here," Damon mutters to Stefan, then steps into Elijah's line of sight. "What are you doing here, Michael Bluth?"

"Teaching my brother a much-needed lesson." Elijah murmurs. "I expect you at dinner, Klaus. Dress suitably."

"You're going to have dinner." Stefan repeats lightly. "After you stabbed him in the throat."

"Stefan—" Elena cuts in. Elijah's always liked her.

"You're welcome to join us," Elijah replies. "Please. Some social interaction will do wonders for Klaus's attitude, isn't that right, brother?"

"Eat a stake," Klaus snaps.

Rude.

"Eat your vegetables," Elijah says. Klaus is trying to make eye contact with Stefan, who is studiously looking away. Damon is jostling Elijah's feet, trying to get his attention and no doubt communicate some half thought out plan that would lead to the deaths of more friends and family. Honestly, Elijah thinks, exasperated. Elena could do so much better.

She is, after all, the only one at the table besides himself who is not fidgeting, sneering, placing her elbows on the table, or contemplating mass murder.

How, he wonders, are these people still alive?

"I don't want to eat my vegetables," Klaus snaps. "I want Stefan to explain to me why and how he could have let Tyler Lockwood run away with half of my hybrids."

"I don't like you," Stefan replies. "That's why."

Klaus's face falls for half a second, and then he has Stefan pinned to the wall by the throat.

Elijah spears a cube of steak and puts it in his mouth, chewing quickly. "And how is vampirism treating you, Elena?"

("I gave you everything, you undeserving brat—" Klaus is hissing into Stefan's ear, too close, obviously, for Salvatore's comfort.

"Klaus, stop, this is embarrassing." Stefan chokes.)

She looks startled. He can't imagine why. "G-good. Fine. I mean there was some issues with blood earlier, but—" she blinks. "Elijah, are you going to—"

("I let you near Rebekah even though you're watered down vampire blood, we got drunk together, I told you my feelings, and this is how you choose to repay me—")

Damon is drinking straight from the wine bottle. "I," he says, "have made so many bad life decisions this decade."

Elijah sighs. "Klaus, put him down."

"Not until he tells me why he doesn't like me—" Klaus clears his throat. "I mean, not until he tells me why he let Tyler Lockwood get away!"

Elijah pinches the bridge of his nose. "Klaus. They are dinner guests. We do not threaten dinner guests in the vicinity of the table; that is basic etiquette, and we have been over this."

Coup d'états and murder occurring during or after a feast is only acceptable when the table is out of sight or when the act itself is efficient and quick. Torture and threats are not permitted during dining unless one is speaking softly and initiating no physical contact. Honestly, it's as if Klaus had not listened to him even once over the centuries.

He had given up all pretences, shaking Stefan by the throat. Please don't cry, Elijah thinks. "Why. Don't. You. Like. Me."

"There's something we want you to know," Elena is saying, leaning forward. He notes with approval that her elbows stay decidedly off the table. "Now that you're back, we think—"

"We're swapping out Gob there," Damon says. "How do you like to help us find the cure?"

Elijah stares at him silently.

"I just called you the better brother," Damon winks at him. Elijah stares down at his fork, frowning. "Don't make me change my mind now."

"I'll consider your offer." He replies.

"Good," Damon grins, and slides a silver dagger across the table. "Cos your idiot brother's gonna be quite distracted in five, four, three, two—"

A Ming dynasty vase shatters against the back of Klaus's head.

"How dare you!" His sister shrieks from the doorway. "You lying piece of—"

"Rebekah," Elijah looks up, and cannot quite suppress his smile upon seeing her. "Language, please. There are guests present."

"Do you know what he did to me?" Rebekah snaps at him. "The sheer nerve of this shit-eating sack of—"

Klaus is doing the mouth thing. Please, don't cry, Elijah thinks. That would be embarrassing for all of us.

Elijah stands, and pockets the dagger neatly. "I expect both of you at breakfast tomorrow morning, eight o'clock, sharp. Giuseppe is preparing our meals from now on, and I expect both of you to pay him the respect he deserves." He pauses. "No more breaking of furniture, Rebekah. And no more murder inside the house, Klaus."

Neither of them are listening, both shouting over each other and gods, Elijah feels that headache settling in. He ushers Elena to the door. "I accept the offer," he says quietly—("I hope Caroline figures out what an idiot you are and strangles you with your stupid hemp necklaces—" "They were charms given to me by a very powerful sorceress, you brat!") —"and perhaps we should discuss the matter someplace else?"

Stefan had caught up with them, his brother's handprint red around his throat. "Thanks guys," he says, out of breath. "Thanks for stepping in, nice of you—"

"Like I'm going to interrupt the boyfriend shmang fest, no thank you—"

"Hush," Elijah says, then thinks, oh gods no.

He's picked up some more strays.