It's so painful, the feeling of betrayal. Its wounds wreak, bleeding a sickening mixture of tears, agony, and hate. The wounds too often get infected, for no one cleanses them. They leave nothing but the burning, gruesome image of a trust broken. Many a times, the infection seeps into the veins of the victim, runs through his vessels, and attacks his heart. It changes its color from the radiant red, to the unholy fragment of a broken vase. And into oblivion the heart once known is thrown.
Betrayal can't be answered with anything but another treachery. The cycle keeps on going, with no clear image of who should be blamed. No one is the winner in such a scheme, only the uncleanly knife, protruding from one person's flesh into the other's, gathering a mixture of viruses on its surface, and gaining satisfaction with every pain it causes.
Niklaus Mikaelson is no stranger to betrayal. Many a time he has been stabbed, and with the force of each wound his heart was misshaped into its current ugliness. With the force of each shredded cut his answer became more brutal.
He runs in a vicious cycle that knows no escape, from one stab into the other he greets each decade. From one heartbreak to another he transitions through his long, sad years. One thing, however, has always left him in wonder, why does the burn of each treachery is not soothed when payback is delivered?.
So he should not be surprised. He should not be at all surprised that watching the life leave his own sister brings nothing that remotely resembles gratification -not when it is his doing that sets her body on fire.
They say betrayal aches more than any wound because it comes from those who we love most. And Niklaus has loved none more than his sister. The devastation of her knife as it strolls through the flesh of his back cannot be described as something that merely aches. He would rather to have an aching hole in his flesh rather than a gaping, agonizing, sickening hole in what's left of his heart. What he feels, the pain that seeps through his veins cannot be answered with anything but death. And oh dear God, he loves her so much that he hates her and it's all too easy for him to drive the stake into her heart. It's all too easy for his hatred to burn her as he watches her body become nothing but ashes.
So why isn't he relieved? He's wanted nothing more than to feel water putting out the fire in his chest. But as her body burns before his eyes, the burn in his chest only intensifies. A dull ache in his chest rises. And he waits for the ache to stop as her body is reduced into nothing but ashes, but it keeps eating away at his heart, nibbling torturously slow at what's left of it.
And for the first time in his long life, Klaus feels it.
Regret.
Foolish, foolish, Niklaus Mikaelson.
He wanders on. For decades or for centuries, he wanders. A single wish in his heart, a single quest in his mind -to bring her back. But some dreams are too far-fetched. With each opened door a million slam shut. And all hope is lost for her to return again.
His single relief is found in an old dagger, one that has started the feud to begin with and one that shall end it. When he drives it into his heart, blinding agony greets him. But oh how welcomed it is. His relief is beyond words as his body begins to throb with pain, as he collapses into a heap on a cold hard, ground, as his muscles die down and his senses are only fueled by the single feeling of pain.
He smiles. The last conscious move that he makes is smile. The gratification he's been looking for finally washing over him.
Klaus has never thouhgt that his peace can only exist in such acute agony.