Paginator $elements variable access

I am using VueJs in my front-end, stumbled upon pagination and noticed something after I published the paginator.

{{-- Pagination Elements --}}
        @foreach ($elements as $element)
            {{-- "Three Dots" Separator --}}
            @if (is_string($element))
                <li class="uk-disabled"><span>{{ $element }}</span></li>
            @endif 

Notice that the $elements variable that is the responsible for the mysterious elipsis ... in the pagination buttons, I dug in the classes associated with the Paginator class and saw that $elements variable is only available in the view that called the Paginator instance ie.

$things = Model::paginate();

In my case, I created an api that returns only the Paginator instance to be accessed via ajax, and because of that I lost my access to the magical $elements variable. Is there any chance that they include it the the Paginator instance's json response for easy access? Right now I edited Illuminate\Pagination\LengthAwarePaginator.php's public method toArray and added

'elements` => $this->elements()

I know changing files in the vendor is not good. Can you think of another valid way to do this? TIA