If you have read my other story the favourite son (although you don't need to read it to understand this), this is a bit like that but the other way around, it's Finn's thoughts on his siblings.
The events of my story "monsters" did not happen in this story.
I do not own the vampire diaries, it belongs to L.J Smith and the CW.
If asked which of his siblings was his favourite then Finn would probably have to deliberate for a long time. He supposed if he could say any of them were his favourite then it would be Rebekah, if only by the process of elimination.
Elijah was the most noble and moral of them all, he always had been, and he admired that but Finn was often uncomfortable in his presence. This awkwardness was not really the fault of anybody, merely the circumstances. He had been his mother's favourite son, it was not his choice but that was the way it was. He knew his older brother wanted to except this, but there was a small part of him that could not, a part of him would always wonder what made Finn so special, even if he told himself that he had grown out of it. However this was not the main source of the stilted nature of their relationship. As Esther had always put him first and Mikael had not been an excellent father on the best of days, Elijah had spent the majority of his life caring for the others, he had tried to protect them from Esther's favouritism and had been unable to. The pain their siblings suffered as a result had been, in part, due to him. For this, Elijah secretly resented him.
He had never seen eye to eye with Niklaus. He was by nature a serious man, he did not make jokes and he did not find many things amusing. He was practical, he did not see the value of "messing around", he preferred to get things done and then later he could sit back quietly with a good book.
He was a person who liked order and structure, Niklaus on the other hand was like a whirlwind. He would sweep in and disrupt everything in a few short moments, he could draw people in with his powerful personality and infectious smile.
He enjoyed being playful, teasing his siblings and making jokes. He did not take anything seriously enough, he spent too much time having fun, fooling around with the others, disappearing with his friends and worrying their parents, staying out all night with young women… the list went on and on.
However, Finn was fairly good at reading people, it was a skill you acquired when a restrained member of a loud family, with big personalities and flaming tempers. Underneath Klaus' smiles and laughter, his defiance and fury, his resentments and toughness, he could see the broken little boy who desperately craved approval from his father and affection from his mother, who wanted nothing more than to be loved unconditionally by somebody.
This was a large part of why Finn did not appreciate Niklaus' company, all he could ever think of him as was a jester, hiding behind fake smiles and laughter, when deep down he was hurting and lonely.
As for Kol, he was almost a younger and less mature, if such a thing were possible, Niklaus, except with less severe mummy and daddy issues.
Kol had always been a mischievous and boisterous child, finding trouble wherever he ventured, and generally creating mess and noise.
He was too lively for Finn's liking, he did not dislike him, he would merely prefer to ignore him.
He had not improved with age, he was still acting like an eight year old by the time he reached manhood, and Elijah and Niklaus only ever indulged him, allowing his immaturity to continue.
Once he became a vampire, Kol went from being a petulant child who caused mainly irritating, but harmless chaos, to a bratty child who could wipe out whole families with one of his tantrums.
He would flirt with women of all kinds, young, older, married, mothers, entice them into his bed and feed from them viciously, more often than not killing them.
Finn was horrified at this behaviour, what sickened him further was when he witnessed that Elijah and Niklaus still indulged him and treated him like a child. Elijah might chastise Kol for his behaviour, but rarely took any serious measures to prevent it.
Every time he thought about Kol, he thought of his once annoying and innocent little brother, and the deadly and cruel creature he became.
He had loved Henrich but he had often been plagued with guilt because he had never bothered to form any kind of relationship with him.
He was sixteen when his youngest brother was born, and already had an aversion to babies, they were dirty, smelly and fragile, with near deafening cries, when upset.
He knew deep down that these were just feeble excuses, Elijah had been eighteen and he had doted on Henrich, carrying him and holding him on his knee.
Niklaus, Kol and Rebekah had adored him also, Niklaus used to carry him around the village on his hip when he was small and talk to him about anything that came to mind. Rebekah used to plat his hair when it grew long enough, until someone rescued the poor boy from her clutches, and Kol used to playfully wrestle with him, although he never let him win.
Henrich had been quiet and sensible, rather like a younger Elijah, but he was easily led astray by Niklaus and Kol. Finn often thought that he could have got along with him, if he had ever made an effort.
He was appalled at himself every time he remembered, or rather did not remember, any occasion in which he had a proper exchange with the boy. He never spoke to him any more than was necessary, he did not help his father and brothers to teach him how to use a sword, or to hunt, or do anything at all with him.
Perhaps it was not too late, when they were reunited with Henrich on the other side, he swore to make an effort with his little brother, to allow himself to bond with him.
He thought that Rebekah was his favourite for two reasons. The first was that he was aware that she had always wanted to make some kind of connection with him, even when she was little, she would silently sit beside him while he was reading, or thinking, or eating. At first he would move away, and sit somewhere else and pretend that he had noticed nothing. This continued until one day when Rebekah was around ten years old and she positioned herself right next to him as he sat by the fire, and smiled shyly. He sighed in exasperation and moved away from her.
As he continued with his book, he heard a strange muffled, sniffling sound, he looked over the top to see that his sister was not facing him, she had gathered her long hair around her face like a curtain, and avoided his gaze.
He felt a grudging stab of shame as he realised that he had made a little girl cry for no real reason. He hesitantly got to his feet and sat down on the floor, he gradually scooted towards her, until he sat in his previous spot. He did not speak, he was not much of a talker, and neither did she, the two of them just sat together in comfortable silence.
None of the others had ever done this, they had only ever tried to bond with him by changing him, by trying to make him laugh more, or make him talk more, they had never simply accepted him, the way his sister had.
He knew that his mother's preference for him was partially to blame for his alienation from his siblings, however, he was not which way around it happened, his mother's favouritism, or his separation.
Did she always value him above the others and this caused a divide between him and his brothers and sister, or did Esther see that he was an outsider and take him under her wing.
His theory was that it was a cycle, Esther had chosen him as her favourite, and this had created the tension between him and his siblings, Esther saw the tension between them and paid him more attention because of it, this in turn had been the cause of a further distance between them all, leading Esther to show him even more affection, and so on.
He acknowledged that in part his lack of connection to any of them was his own fault, it was an extremely unusual occurrence that he would ever engage any of them in conversation, and even if he did, only ever for a particular purpose, rather than just for sociability. He did not even often want to have a closer relationship with any of them, when they had all been humans he had barely noticed their existence most days, he liked his own company, he did not have any friends by choice, the only person who's company he liked was his mother's. But occasionally while he sat alone with his latest book, he would look over at them all talking and laughing together and wish that he could join them, and partake in their fun. However, he knew that to think such a thing was silly, he did not always understand jokes, he certainly did not make them and he was not talented at conversation making.
The second reason for his preference for his little sister was that she had not changed all that much over the millennium, granted she was a blood drinking abomination now…but still.
She had always been passionate and fiery, while vampirism had certainly not improved her temper, it had not altered it, you still had to have a death wish to get on her bad side.
She was still also fiercely protective of her family, he recalled that a girl had once used Kol and humiliated him when he was fifteen, although he had not shown it to said girl, he had been deeply hurt and in a miserable mood all day. If it had been a male who had upset, hurt or shamed Kol then Elijah, Niklaus, or possibly even he himself would have done something about it. However, they could hardly attack a defenceless young girl, it was not proper.
Rebekah did not have this problem.
The next day while the girls had been playing by the river, the young woman in question had mysteriously managed to take a nasty fall into the water, leading to both pain and embarrassment. Rebekah was still the same, if you dared to hurt one of her brothers then she would gleefully peel the skin from your bones.
He liked that about her, she was consistent.
He knew that anyone who heard about his part in Esther's plan to kill her children would conclude that he did it because he hated all of his siblings, he thought they were monsters, and he had no qualms about ending all their lives.
This was not the case, not at all. He was not about to embark on some long, heart warming monologue about how his siblings were the world to him and he did not know what he would do without them. To be perfectly honest he did not particularly like any of them, never really had. He loved them, and there was a time when he would have given his life to save any of theirs in a second, and he had no doubt that this went both ways.
The truth was, he was selfish, he was helping to kill them all because he wanted death himself. He despised what he was, the demon his beloved mother had turned him into, he always had, in fact he suspected that was why Niklaus had kept him daggered for nine centuries, to keep him from spiralling further into an endless depression.
Esther was the only way he saw to die, to escape from his miserable eternity, and this was what she asked in return. He was desperate, he tried to defend his actions by telling himself that his family would be reunited on the other side, they could resolve all of their differences and be happy again.
He knew that this was a lie, he was not sure his family had ever been happy, Esther lived in a guilt ridden state after betraying Mikael, Mikael strongly disliked Niklaus for no real reason, he was their mother's favourite. They would be just as messed up and broken as they had always been.
He knew some would question how could he live with himself for committing such a heinous betrayal, the answer was simple- he would not have to.
The end.
I just thought that while in the favourite son, the others all thought that Finn had no interest in a relationship with any of them, that although that might have been true most of the time, there must have been occasions when he wished otherwise.
I also noticed, and I don't know if it's intentional or not, that Finn has never been in a scene alone with one of his siblings, he has never even had a proper conversation with any of them, and appears to have little to no connection with any of them.
Please review.