There is no real point to this, just something I'd been thinking about for a while. I like to think that before Mikael was a vampire and kind of a bastard that he wasn't a terrible father.
I do not own the vampire diaries, it belongs to L.J Smith and the CW respectively.
Rebekah
She hated Mikael, she truly hated him, he had destroyed her family and she could never forgive him. She did not want to.
Or at least that's what she told herself. As much as she wanted, to she could not quite fight that part of her that protested that she loved him too.
Before he and Esther had turned them into abominations, there had been good times. Mikael had had an awful temper, he could be harsh, and he rarely displayed any affection towards anyone but her mother, but he had loved them all- even Niklaus, she knew that.
She remembered sitting on Mikael's knee as a little girl, laughing while he teased her by telling her stories of ghosts and demons.
She remembered her fury at him a few years later when he had refused to let her learn to use a sword, although he had gladly taught Elijah, Finn and Nik. She had argued with Klaus later, begging him to let her have a turn, he had playfully refused for a while until he was bored and handed it over. She had wielded it successfully for a little while, stabbing at Nik and chasing him. They were having fun, that was until she tripped and felt a sharp hot pain across her palm as the blade sliced it open, she looked down as tears blurred her vision and saw that the pale skin of her hand was stained with crimson.
She let out a quiet sob, as her brother helped her to her feet, Mikael had been furious with both of them when he found them walking towards home. His eyes had softened marginally when he saw that she was crying, he tore a strip off his tunic and tied it around her hand, he had than taken her other hand and led her and Niklaus back to their hut.
She recalled the frustration she felt when he scared away all of the boys in the village who so much as dared to look her way. She thought back to the warmth she felt when her mother told her Mikael had only behaved that way because he felt that none of those boys were good enough for his daughter.
She sighed in exasperation as she considered her feelings for Mikael, yes she had hated him, he had taken away her humanity, made her a monster, he was indirectly responsible for the death of her mother, he had been a bastard, but she loved him, because despite his faults he had loved her, and she supposed in his own way, he had done what he thought was best.
Elijah
Whenever Elijah thought about his father, he thought of strength, stubbornness, but most of all pride.
Mikael had been a proud man, he had not tolerated slights to his honour, his wife or his children.
He had often criticised his children, they were too foolish, too impulsive, too disobedient, but may God have mercy on any other who said such things.
He fondly remembered a time over a thousand years ago, he had only been about thirteen years old, but another man in the village, Thomas if he remembered correctly, had accused himself, Finn and Niklaus of stealing a handful of the herbs that grew in his garden, they of course had not, and he had not taken kindly to Klaus asking what they would want with his herbs. The large, broad shouldered man had grabbed all three of them roughly and hauled them to the centre of their small village, to where Mikael was speaking with Ayanna.
His eyes had widened with rage and his lips tightened into a tight white line when he saw the three of them in Thomas's firm grasp.
"What's going on, here?" He addressed the other man, in a deceptively calm tone.
"I caught your sons' stealing from me." Thomas boomed loudly, letting everybody in the vicinity hear him.
"Oh really?" Mikael asked sceptically with a dramatic raise of his eyebrows, "what belonging to you would my children have any interest in?"
"My herbs! The ones I grow in my garden, I need those herbs to help me sleep!" He exploded.
"So if they stole these herbs then, were are they?" He asked, mockingly looking around as though expecting to find them floating in the air around him.
"Well…" The man began a little sheepishly, " I did not actually witness them taking them, but I know it was them." He insisted forcefully, spittle spraying as he spoke the last part.
"How do you know it was my sons'? What proof do you have?" Mikael challenged.
The man squirmed in discomfort as the eye of every villager watching was fixed to him, "Of course it was them. It's always those little bastards!" He snarled viciously, giving Finn a malicious shake from where he still held him.
A murmuring passed through the audience, those members of which possessing a reasonable level of intelligence realised that the man had let his outrage get the better of him and had just crossed a line.
"How dare you, " Mikael spat, stepping forward and forcibly removing the big man's hands from his children, who quickly scrambled away from him and towards their father….
Elijah laughed once as he thought of how Mikael had pulled out his sword and in a matter of seconds had the larger man on the ground, with his foot on his chest. He had assured the man in no uncertain terms that if he ever spoke to his children again, let alone laid a hand on them, he would ensure that those hands were rendered useless- permanently.
That had been Elijah's favourite of his father's quality's- his love of, and his protectiveness, over his family, although he had not always been so open about it. Elijah had always known that if he or any of the others were ever in trouble, their father would protect them….even if he gave them Hell about it later.
Klaus
When Mikael had been alive, Klaus had spent most of the time he thought about him, thinking of how much Mikael, his "father" wanted him dead, and what an awful father he had been.
But now that he was dead Klaus could no longer always force himself to think of Mikael as a cruel father, no matter how much effort he put into it.
It had always been easy to come up with reasons to hate Mikael, he had always been disappointed in him, it did not matter how hard he tried to please the man he looked up to, it was never enough.
He worked at sword fighting until he and Elijah were tied in second to only Mikael for position of best fighter in the village, but that was not enough.
He would accompany his father and older brothers hunting, as soon as he was old enough that Esther trusted him to go along and not get himself shot. He had become an extremely skilled archer, she could shoot a deer from a good distance and bring food home to the family, but it was not enough.
As far as Mikael was concerned he was a let down, he was too impulsive, he did not do as he was told, he always got himself into trouble. Klaus did not like to admit it, not even to himself, but it had hurt.
The two of them had never had a good relationship, they had blazing rows, that could result in objects being flung around the room, or occasionally Mikael slapping him, not enough to bruise but enough to leave a stinging red mark behind.
Then Henrich had died, Mikael was not the type of man who expressed emotions easily, he did not think it was proper of a man, but Klaus had seen the agony in his eyes as he looked down at the heartbreakingly small body of his youngest child.
Then he had turned them into vampires, monsters, killers.
That had been horrific, looking down at the body of a man, a person he had known, been friends with even. But worse than that was the feeling that he would not be able to stop himself, he would kill again.
Their friends turned their backs on them, Ayanna, a woman who had been like a second mother to them, refused to look at them, and they were all alone. But at least they had each other.
That was until the next full moon after Klaus' first kill, he had been standing next to Elijah in the living room of their tiny house, when he had felt a sickening pain ripping him in half. He had fallen to the ground screaming.
He could not remember a lot after that, it was all rather surreal, like a bizarre, vivid dream.
He just knew that he had awakened the following day lying on the floor of the hut, naked underneath a blanket, covered in blood.
His whole family were sitting in various stations in the small room. Esther's eyes were bright, full of grief and worry. When she saw that he had awakened relief flashed through them for a precious moment, and then it was gone.
Mikael was not his father, that was a shock, it seemed unbelievable that his mother could have betrayed his father, she loved him too much, she was devoted to him.
He had not thought of his "real" father, or the rest of his family. He had never met them, they were strangers to him, he was content with the family he had.
Before he could express this to anybody Mikael rejected him, called him his "greatest shame." He was embarrassed of him.
He had looked to his mother to defend him, to talk reason to Mikael, she had not.
Then his father had killed his biological father, robbing him of the chance to ever meet him. He had been filled with a nearly poisonous bitterness, Mikael did not want him, but he would not allow anybody else to have him either.
He knew that he was wrong to have killed his mother, he regretted it with every fibre of his being, what he had done was a constant agony, he lived with it everyday. The look in her eyes as she died, shock, hurt, betrayal but worse than all of that- forgiveness. He only saw years later that her actions had been to protect him from Mikael, she had feared that if she did not turn her back on her son, then Mikael would kill him.
Klaus had many reasons to hate Mikael, he focused on them, because if he did not then he would remember how Mikael had taught him to fight, to hunt, had protected him from any danger that he found, had loved him, and had been the only father he had ever known, and he would feel the great ache of his loss, the guilt for plunging the stake into his heart, and the wish that he could go back and change all of what he had done after becoming a vampire.
I'm sorry if this was awful, I just had to write it. I think I might have rambled a bit too much but I just wanted to get across the idea that for all Mikael's flaws, I think he loved his children, and despite all he did to them, they all loved him too- even Klaus.
Please review.