Her brother sleeps during the day, and screams in the night.
The cave is dark, the tunnels in every direction spiralling off into the unknown, like so many worms twisting and turning off into the quietest, furthest reaches of the mountain range, crawling away to the ends of the earth. On quiet days and during the stillest of hours, when her brother is lying, shaking like a straw-man in the wind, in his bed, Rebekah sits, and listens. Far away, she thinks she can hear drops of water falling from some long forgotten stream.
How long have I been here? She wonders. Time is measured differently here; a second can last for a lifetime and an hour, nothing. How long have I sat here, watching over my brother? How many years have I lost?
She shakes herself out of her haze, and remembers that Elijah goes hunting every three days; not long then. How many bodies are there, scattered in the further corners of the tunnels? Seven, eight. Twelve days, then. Thirteen. Does it matter?
"How long will this last?" She had asked Elijah once, the two of them watching Nik twitch in his sleep, his breath coming in hasty, quickening gasps. "How long will—"
Two nights ago he had mistaken her for their mother, plunged his hand into her chest, up through the ribcage, fingers gripped around her heart. I deserve to live, he had hissed. I will live, I will live, I will live.
Elijah twists the ring on his finger. "I don't know."
"I—" she says, her voice breaking. "I can't bear to see him like this; I've apologized, it's my fault, it's all my fault. If I had not—"
Elijah's hand, against all rules of nature and against the order of the universe, feels warm against her dead flesh. "Shh, Rebekah. It's not your fault. It never was. Get some sleep. I'll watch over him."
She feels as if her bones are coming apart, as if some careful craftsman has looked upon her, decided that she had been stitched up all wrong - and is now mindfully, precisely, picking her apart at the seams.
She falls asleep listening to Nik's raw, gasping lungs push and pull, listening to Elijah whispering, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here.
(Rebekah's lips are red.
This is the first thing he sees, when he opens his eyes. She is wearing a blue gown, hair long and spilling over her back, two thin strands pulling the weight back from her face.
"Hungry?" She asks, smiling, and turns the bird roasting on the open fire. "About time you woke up."
He can hear birds chirping outside, the high voices of children. Somewhere, deep inside him, he feels something disconnect, as if he is here but he is not here; he should be somewhere, he is not here, the hut looks strange around him. Where is he? Where should he be? The children are laughing outside and the birds are chirping and he smells clean damp mountain air and his sister is bright and golden in the firelight, and the bird smells so good and—
"Here," Rebekah says, carving off a leg and handing it to him on a plain clay platter. There are runes on the edges of the plate that he feels like he had not seen in years, but that's not right either. "Eat. You must be starving."
The children's laughter is getting louder and louder, and Rebekah rolls her eyes, smiling. She makes her way to the small window, gazing outside. "It will absolute hell tonight, Nik. Henrik's out there too - I swear he will be an absolute pain when midnight comes around."
The platter drops from his hands.
Rebekah turns back to him. "Eat it, Nik. I killed it and seasoned it and cooked it myself—you'd better eat it."
His hands are shaking, he sees and the corners of his vision are bleeding white. There is blood in the creases of his skin, sinking in like thin red cobwebs, spiralling across his skin, dirt and mud and flesh beneath his fingers and his hands are shaking and his breath is coming in gasps.
"Nik?" Rebekah comes and kneels by him. "Gods, you have had too much to drink."
"Henrik?" He croaks. "Henrik is here? Henrik is—"
Rebekah smiles, pushes back his hair. "He wouldn't miss the Beltane festivals for anything, you know that."
"Henrik is alive?" He whispers. "Henrik is - I have to see him, I—"
He's on his feet before he thinks of moving, half tripping, half falling over to the door of the hut, but it doesn't open, it's locked, it's as solid as a wall and he is ripping at it, his fingers digging into the wood, his nails breaking away to bloody stumps before his sister laughs, the sound floating to him. Outside, the children are giggling, shrieking, and Henrik is outside, Henrik is alive—
"No, he's not." Rebekah says, and it's not her voice. "But you knew that."
His back is cold, sweat dripping between his shoulder blades, and he can't breathe. His hands are shaking and he hasn't heard that voice in more than two centuries, he hadn't heard it since her blood was warm on his skin—
Esther stands in the spot Rebekah had been a mere second ago, Rebekah's dress too short on her long frame. She tilts her head to one side, and the light from the window falls on her pale eyes, lighting her up in sun. Her hair falls over her shoulders, and of course, of course, he's a bloody blind fool; Rebekah doesn't have hair that straight, Rebekah never wore that colour, Rebekah never—
"Henrik is dead." Esther says, and her eyes are hard. "But you knew that."
"I didn't—" his voice breaks, and his back hits the door hard. "I don't - please, mother, I—"
"I'm not your mother." Esther says, voice quiet. "I was never your mother. I took you into my home out of the goodness of my heart, I fed you, I clothed you, I bore Mikael's suspicions for your sake, I raised you as part of my family, and you killed my son."
"I didn't," He whispers, and there is a roaring in his ears, he can't hear, he can't see. "Mother, it was an accident—I never meant for it to happen—"
"Do you know about the cuckoo bird, Niklaus?" Esther asks softly, and he can smell the scent of her hair, of the herbs that clings to her dress, of the fire of the hearth, the damp of the rain. "They push themselves into another bird's nest, they eat so much that the parents exhaust themselves trying to feed the chick, and when they grow old enough, they push their false brothers and sisters out of the nest, to fall to their deaths."
"I didn't mean for it to happen," he is choking, bile rising in his throat; he wants to heave but there is nothing in his stomach. "I didn't mean for it to - I love him. I loved him, I would never have—"
"And yet you did." She whispers, leaning close. "You're a plague on this earth. You're a monster. You killed my son, and in time you'll kill my daughter too. You'll butcher Elijah, but you love them, do you not?"
Her fingers are digging into the sides of his neck, and he can't breathe. "More than anything. Bekah—"
"You best stop yourself before you hurt her, then." Esther says, laughter dancing in her eyes. "You best save her."
Her voice is a breath against the shell of his ear, and she says, softly, imperceptibly, "you deserve to die."
His fingers digs into flesh as the sound is torn out of his throat, raw like a scream and taut and stretched, his hand goes past bone and gristle and the wet smooth ridges of her innards, until he clenches his fingers around his mother's heart.
When he looks up, tears on his cheeks, it is his sister who looks back; eyes wide.)
On the twenty eighth day he goes missing, and Rebekah's world comes to a standstill.
"He's gone!" She screams, clawing through the vast cave that serves as their home. She has been through eighty nine tunnels, scoured the forest on top of their home. He's gone. He's gone. She had watched him, she had tucked him into bed, she had said I love you in soothing tones, had set him to sleep with a song. When she woke, he was gone.
Where is he? Where is he?
Elijah's eyes are hard and too bright, and he says, quietly, "the mountains. You go west, I'll go east. Keep going until we find him—you have his scent, don't you?"
She rips through the trees, the sun warm on her back. There is a spreading coldness in her stomach, in her chest, and she is thinking of a million ways he could have died but it makes no sense; he can't be dead. They can't be killed. She knows his scent, like the dampness of the cave, the dead air trapped between stone, the indistinct chaos of the blood of dozens.
"Nik!" She screams, and her voice echoes back to her, bouncing off against the trees, against the bare uncaring spread of the vast mountains. Overhead, the birds have stopped chirping. "Nik!"
There are tears on her face, and she should calm down, she should quiet down—Elijah is most likely quietly combing through every square inch, hands careful and silent; she is being hysterical, she knows this. She has to stop and think and she has to be careful, she has to find him—
On the forty first, she comes across a black unmoving heap lying amidst the grass in an open meadow, and her heart stops.
(Tatia is combing a hand through his hair, her small, delicate features gentle and kind.
"It's better this way, love." She murmurs, and her hand is cool against his forehead. He smells something burning. "Both of us know how this should end."
Did you love Elijah, he wants to ask, but his throat is dry and hot, and the words don't quite come out. She smiles, and presses her smooth lips to his forehead.
"Both you and I know that your life should have ended two centuries ago, with your father's sword between your ribs. You know, don't you?" Her fingers are small and nimble, against his burning scalp. "You know it's better this way. Cleaner, easier. Safer. In life you were a monster, Niklaus. But in death you don't have to be. You can be with me."
He closes his eyes, and wishes the sun would hurry up.)
She tears through the treeline into the meadow, where her brother is lying, barely recognizable; face blackened into patches of dead skin and burnt flesh, face in repose.
She looks around, her heart hammering in her throat, for his ring; nowhere to be found. It has to be here, somewhere, it has too, gods, where is it, where is the ring, she needs the ring, how long has he been here, is he going to die—
She tears the ring off her own finger without thinking, and her skin begins to burn, the heat rising to her eyes as she forces it on to her brother's hand, forces him to sit up. The sun is burning through her flesh, but at least it warms the coldness in her chest.
Fire purges the soul, the church teaches. She closes her eyes, clasps her hands tight around her brother, and prays for benediction.
Elijah finds them a day later, breathless, ring in hand.
A great lake in the east, he says, and pushes the ring on to her finger. He went east first.
That night, in the cave, Nik doesn't scream. He watches her through quiet eyes, and for a moment, before he begins to shake again, it almost seems as if nothing has changed.
"How long?" She asks. "How long?"
She wonders sometimes if this is the punishment for their crimes, that nature has sentenced her to be her brother's jailer, that the universe itself condemns them to a cave in the depths of the earth.
I'm sorry, he had said in one of his moments of lucidity, eyes darting from her to some phantom figure on the wall that she can't see, that isn't there. I'm sorry, Bekah. I love you, Bekah. I love you, I love you, I love you.
Everything and anything, she had said to him, words rushing out of her - she has to say this before he is taken away again. Always and forever. I will love you through anything.
Fifty two years, four months, nine days.
Thirteen hours, she adds, forty nine minutes. Fifteen seconds.
(This is what he does not tell the Gilbert girl:
He has a permanent red mark down the length of his side, where the sun has pierced too deeply for even his flesh to heal. In desert lands, where the light is particularly strong, it throbs and burns, but he does not let it show.
This is what he does not tell the Gilbert girl:
On the fifty seventh day his father had appeared to him, hissed, you're nothing, and he had driven a stake through Elijah's chest. There is a scar on Elijah's skin that will never heal, and on dark nights, when he thinks he is alone, he thinks that his father is the one illusion that has never left him; he hears the whisper humming along his skin, flowing through his blood. He thinks he sees Mikael in every shape on the walls.
This is what he does not tell anyone:
His most terrifying illusions are of Rebekah and Elijah, hand in hand, blood soaking through their clothes, whispering, you killed us.
This is what he does not say out loud, even to himself:
His most terrifying illusions are real.)
The day he daggers his sisters for the last time, he lays her in her box, and watches the gentle curve of her cheek, the full shape of her mouth.
His gaze falls to her fingers, and he lays his hand over hers, the silver on both their hands clinking.
After a long moment, he takes her ring off his finger, and gives it back.