Hi everyone, I'm back on after a medio-long break and this time I will attempt with a multi chapter fic rather than those short drabbles here and there!
I'm greatly inspired by both the fire and passion that all of you (myself included) hold for our one true pairing, by all the gifsets and edits on tumblr, and not to forget: also all the drabbles and multiple full length fics out there in the world wide web Klaroline is air, right?
This story is affected by the strong and ground breaking movement in Scandinavian television better known as 'Nordic Noir', which also affected and inspired shows like British top series 'Broadchurch'. If you watched 'Forbrydelsen' - or in English 'The Killing' - and also 'Bron/Broen' then this fic will probably (I hope) be a story just for you.
Enough of my argumentation for this story now, and onto the beginning of a journey, I can't wait to share with you all!
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Info:
Title: Red Dust (inspired by my favorite singer/songwriter James Vincent McMorrow's beautiful song with the same title - give it a listen if you want to!)
Rating: M (because hello it's me we're talking about)
Chapter 1: Dark Beginnings
Family dinner. A Sunday tradition. Every Sunday they would gather around the grand table and debate about politics, history, society. They would talk about the week that had passed and the week to come. They would gossip and laugh: the definition of a good time.
Despite his deep love for his family, they always misunderstood him. And he hated them for it. It wasn't just the typical teenage reaction to the family, no, because he felt as if the hate and anger grew from within the deepest and darkest pits of him. Comparing himself to his friends, he could sense just how strange his wrath towards his loved ones was. It simply just wasn't normal.
On the good days, this dark anger inside his soul scared him. He was afraid of the trembling feeling in his fingers that longed to hurt, that longed to cause pain. Maybe he was sick? Maybe it was just phase? He didn't know. He would never mention it to his parents. They wouldn't understand it anyway. They were too busy focusing on his siblings and their perfect grades. And when they weren't praising said siblings to the heavens of how perfect, sweet children they were, they were too caught up in their own, perfect, magazine-like life, with their grand mansion, remarkable family history, and well-paying careers.
Then there was the bad days. On those days he dwelled on the thought of causing pain to anyone or anything. He even felt a kind of rush running through his body, a feeling of ecstasy running in his veins. Birds, mice and even a cat once suffered under these strange tendencies of his. Sometimes he found himself smiling as he took life away from something living, and in a few, rare moments, he realized that it was as if something or someone else took its place in his body and mind. As if he shared said body with another person, a more evil, vicious version of himself. Was that even possible? He didn't know.
He was more silent than the darkest hour of the night, as they all sat around the table. He observed each and every single one of them.
Claire Sullivan was on her regular morning jog through the dense woods of Mystic Falls, when her Springer Spaniel, Ozzy, suddenly whisked off in a different direction.
"Ozzy!" Claire yelled, continuing in the direction she was heading, expecting her dog to tag along as she moved forward. But when he didn't show up, she decided to run in his direction instead.
Minutes later she located him, snarling and barking at a young woman, sitting in a chair.
"Are you alright?" Claire asked, thinking it was a drunk teen sleeping it off (in a chair, deep into the woods).
When the young girl didn't answer, she neared the sleeper carefully. Walking around her, what met her was a horrible sight for anyone no matter how tough a stomach they would have.
The young brown haired girl wasn't sleeping at all. Her head was tilted a bit to the right, eyes wide open, looking emptily into thin air, and her jaw was crushed; torn apart so that her chin rested on the flat chest, dry blood painting her chin and upper body. A pool of blood was underneath the girl, seeping into the forest floor.
Claire suddenly noticed the ropes: hands and feet bound so tightly that the girl was black around her wrists and ankles.
Pale as a ghost, Claire backed away, a scream escaping her throat as she ran towards town. Ozzy tagged along, afraid to separate from his owner. She didn't stop screaming and shaking until she stood at the front desk at the police department, a complete contrast to the bloody corpse she had just found, her skin as white as snow. A state of shock and horror tended to so that to sensitive people.
She woke up suddenly and unexpected, tears running down her cheeks, her heart hammering loudly against her chest.
The nightmares were still the same; herself at the age of thirteen, running towards her parents bedroom to find her mother bathed in blood, dead eyes staring at the ceiling, several stab wounds collecting in stomach and chest, her father kneeling in a pool of blood by the bedside with bloodstains covering the front of his body, tears streaming down his face.
"I'm sorry Liz, I promise I won't be as mad next time, just wake up!" he slurred, the alcohol had sure done its job as well as it always did. The bloody kitchen knife always seemed so giant and sparkly in her nightmares, always giving her a sense of guilt. Her father had been violent drunk, for as long as she could remember. And every single sleepless night she was reminded that if she had just hidden the knives for him, maybe her mother wouldn't be lying in the ground of the graveyard now.
Sure, her therapist had told her not to feel guilty, and so had all of her childhood friends back in the day.
"This is not your fault, Caroline. The choice was in your father's hands and he chose wrong," people always told her. But still, that dense, nagging feeling of guilt washed over her whenever she thought of the happy memories; her mom smiling and laughing over all the lame jokes she knew as a child; her mom always praising her cooking skills despite her obvious lack of cuisine expertise; all the evenings where she and her mom had been binge watching 'Friends' because it was both their favorite show of all times, not leaving the couch unless it was to fetch more coca cola and popcorn or an allowed pee-break.
Maybe the feeling of guilt was why she chose to become a cop in the homicide department. Whenever she solved a crime, a tiny part of her own guilt in the result of her mother's death broke off and vanished into thin air. It left her with a lighter feeling in her chest and it was all worth it: despite the eternal trauma of reliving her real life nightmare over and over again.
Caroline checked her phone to see what time it was, and realized that she should have been up approximately 40 minutes ago.
"Shit," she mumbled and jumped out of bed, not giving a damn about the guy waking from his heavy sleep. Almost sprinting to the bathroom, she concluded that she did need a shower but with only 18 minutes until she had to stand at the station, she had to skip it today. Running back into her bedroom, she tore through her mess of a drawer to find some socks and underwear, grabbing yesterday's outfit in a hurry and scrambled back to the bathroom to freshen up as much as the time allowed.
Seven minutes later, she was putting on her leather jacket when the guy from the bar last night stood in the doorway to her bedroom, only in his boxers, mumbling something along the line of "Will you call me?", a rusty, sleepy tone to it.
Checking her pockets for her phone and keys, she opened the door, yelling back, "wouldn't count on it Casanova!" before slamming the door and running to her car.
While driving to the station, the sight of the bloody kitchen knife kept spinning around in her head, guilt and sorrow filling up her senses.
With a cup of coffee, his gun at its place in his belt and a flask with bourbon in his back pocket, Niklaus Mikaelson was ready for a new day at a new job at the Mystic Falls homicide department. On his already messy desk his brand new badge was reflecting the morning sun as it shone through the blinds of the small office.
He was back in Mystic Falls after several years in New York and actually this job was a gust of fresh air. After everything that happened while in New York, Mystic Falls seemed like the place to be, and Klaus couldn't wait to drown himself in work and bourbon (literally).
Unscrewing the flask, he was about to take a well earned sip, when Atticus Shane banged the door open and waltzed in, clapping his hands.
"Well, well, well, Klaus Mikaelson himself. I wouldn't have believed it even if my sweet mom Dorothea told me this."
He walked towards his desk and forced Klaus to stand up, giving him a manly pat on the shoulder, that archetype smile on his face.
"Good to see you again Mikaelson, I thought I had seen the last of you when I graduated high school. Was New York too big a pool for a big, competitive fish like you?" he joked, obviously profoundly proud of his own sense of humor.
"Sorry to disappoint, Shane, my friend. On the contrary, I find myself attracted to the peace of Mystic Falls for the time being. When I signed the papers, I didn't agree to work here for a lifetime. New York has its charms, but this is home now. And Rebekah never moved away, she married the Quarterback, remember?"
"Ah yes, the Donovan boy! They were the it couple of the freshman's when I was in senior year as far as I remember."
Klaus smirked, though was beginning to be annoyed with his new sheriff's presence. He really needed that spicy taste of his favorite bourbon.
"They were. Happily married now with two kids. And to add up to the thought of the idyllic family life, they even have a Volvo. My dear sister vowed to drive a nice car and Matt is a man who prefers security high on the list."
Laughing, Atticus was now sitting on the chair on the other side of the desk, his right foot resting on his left knee, clearly feeling himself at home in Klaus' new office. "And what about you Mikaelson, did you tie the knot like your sister? I'm sure there must have been some dashing women in the Big Apple?"
"Luckily, I haven't, Sheriff. And I'm not going to," Klaus replied dryly. He did not feel like sharing his views on love and relationships with his boss at this moment, not now, not ever.
"Ouch, Mikaelson. Someone must really have broken that viking heart of yours," Atticus replied, laughing, before getting up to leave the office. "Well, I'll leave you to it, let's hope we'll get some work our hands today so I can see my new, brilliant investigator in action, hmm?", closing the door behind him.
Klaus sighed loudly, falling deeper into his chair before digging down after the tin flask.
No better way to start your first day at work.
"Ma'am, I need you to calm down and tell us everything from the beginning. Take a deep breath," Atticus said, letting a supporting hand rest on Claire Sullivan's shaking shoulder. "Whenever you are ready…"
As the startled, young woman began to tell her story again, this time more detailed and clear, Klaus felt the wheels in his head beginning to turn. A murder this horrifying in Mystic Falls, why now? Why at all? A young girl, tied to a chair deep into the godforsaken woods, tortured and disfigured to a state that left the girl completely unrecognizable: why such gruesomeness? This sure wasn't a regular murder, Klaus just knew it.
"Where her eyes open or closed?" a light, feminine voice suddenly asked, catching his attention and Klaus turned around to get a look on the speaker.
The first thing that caught his eye was the gentle features on her face, then the golden, wavy hair that was beyond shoulder length. He felt something inside of him stir, her presence and looks igniting a spark in a dead place he'd forgotten he had. She was absolutely gorgeous, a piece of art. When he noticed the blue-ish green of her eyes, he also noticed that she was glaring back at him with annoyance printed in her look.
"And who the hell are you?" she asked, her jaw clenching slightly.
"Forbes, calm down, this is Niklaus Mikaelson, your new colleague," Atticus explained, laughing a little to ease up the tension. "And he happens to be the best in the field. See him as your yearly bonus, Forbes, you two will be the best investigator team Virginia has ever seen."
Smirking, Klaus turned around in his chair and held out his hand, Caroline taking in hesitantly.
"You can just call me Klaus, sweetheart. A pleasure to meet you," he said truthfully.
"First of all, I'm not your anything, and secondly: Shane, any reason I wasn't informed on this?" Caroline stated, crossing her arms, a bit of cleavage showing in her light blue dress shirt much to Klaus's liking.
"We'll discuss that later Forbes," Atticus said. "You seem to forget that you asked Miss Sullivan a question, so be the fantastic investigator that you are and finished the questioning," patting Caroline on the shoulder to ease her up. God, Caroline was quite tense these days.
"Right," Caroline said tightly, shaking her head to regain focus, sending this Klaus person a calculating glare before turning her attention towards the still shaken Claire Sullivan. "I'm sorry about the interruption, Claire, that was quite unprofessional for all of us. Now back to my question: the victim, her eyes, when you found her were they open or closed?"
"Open- they were wide open," Claire replied stammering, her hands shaking nervously in her lap.
"Okay, thank you Claire, that will be all for now. Go home and get some rest and we will pick you up this afternoon for further questioning," Caroline said calmly, sending Claire a reassuring smile.
Klaus instantly watched how this beautiful woman only for a tiny second showed the world another side of herself that seemed so genuinely compassionate and tender: a shred of something that was hidden behind a shield of control and hostility. And somehow that reminded him of his own shield and his own struggles, already feeling a bond to this blonde he only had know for minutes.
He sure knew one thing already: there's was more to this girl that met the eye.
Just before Caroline walked Claire out the room, she caught herself looking at her new colleague for a split second. Why the heck did that cocky asshole have to have such a spine shivering accent? Men and their dammit charm.
Okay so with this chapter a journey begins. I hope you liked it. I can't promise super fast uploads and long chapters but I'll do my best not to fail you guys!
Hugs from Nat
