All The Miles That Separate
Synopsis: Chicago, 2010. Stefan isn't the only person Klaus presents Rebekah with when he finally wakes her from her dagger-induced slumber. Missing klebekah scenes for TVD 3x04.
Warning: Canon typical dysfunctional relationships.
For ywhiterain.
All The Miles That Separate
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Chicago, August 2010
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The room was quiet as Stefan swaggered away, leaving her alone with Niklaus for the second time that day.
Rebekah frowned, looking back at her brother. "Where's he going?"
"To write a name on a wall.'' Niklaus smiled. "It's a long story." He turned back his attention to the girl reclining in his arms.
Her skin was particularly pale and Rebekah honestly doubted she would last much longer. Her brother sank his fangs back into the girl's neck. She let out a heavy sigh. With Stefan gone and Nik drinking his fill as he wrapped his arms further around the girl, there was little to do in the warehouse. She pouted.
Stefan was clearly different from the charming young man she had fallen in love with in the twenties but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. Ninety years was a long time to forget someone. And yet here he was, wasn't he? No doubt her brother's present to her to make up for being in that bloody coffin for nearly a century.
The biggest question she still had was how Stefan was here with Nik, so many years later. He'd told her Stefan wasn't coming with them when they were about to leave and she realised now he must have already compelled Stefan to forget. Could it be he had gone back for him? No, that couldn't be it. Stefan hadn't know about Nik either until the compulsion was lifted, this partnership was more recent. What was it again that Stefan had said about spending the summer with her brother?
On the couch, Nik was still fangs deep in the neck of the blonde. From his mouth a few drops of blood escaped and ran down the rapidly paling skin. The sight of blood sparked the hunger she still felt after having been daggered and she pushed herself of the crate and walked over to her brother.
Niklaus looked up in annoyance when she made herself comfortable next to him on the couch and lifted the girl's wrist.
"She's mine, Bekah, get your own." His lips were red with blood and he looked like the very monster people whispered fearful rumours about.
"I told you, my girl is dead and so is Stefan's."
She lifted the blonde's wrist to her mouth. Beneath the pale skin she could still feel a weak fluttering pulse. The girl would probably be dead soon anyway.
Nik glanced over at the floor where Stefan's girl was lying after the younger vampire had left her.
"Besides," Rebekah said, curling up closer to her brother on the sofa, "I'm still thirsty from the dagger you stuck into my heart."
Nik let out an annoyed sigh, but moved the girl a bit so she could have better access. "Fine. Have at it."
She couldn't stop the pleased smirk as she brushed aside her hair and delicately sunk her fangs into the girl's wrist. The blood flow was weak but the coppery liquid was still warm as it went down her throat and she let out a soft satisfied moan.
Even with her eyes closed she could feel the heat where Nik's burning gaze never left her face.
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Stefan would most likely still be at his apartment and she expected her brother to lead her there too, but when Nik made to leave Rebekah soon realised he had another location in mind entirely.
His hand was deceptively gentle wrapped around her wrist as he pulled her along towards the part of the warehouse where he'd woken her up the night before.
"Where are we going?" she asked, unable to keep the whine out of her voice entirely.
"I have something to show you," her brother replied absently. He didn't stop to explain further, but then Nik rarely saw fit to justify his actions. Clearly that much hadn't changed in the nine decades he'd stolen from her.
She sighed, feigning annoyance to hide her unease.
There was a new security guard standing on duty inside, but her brother's casual orders compelled him to take up a new post on the other side of the metal doors. The blood of his predecessor had already been cleaned up from the floor where she'd fed on him.
When the guard closed the heavy door behind him on his way out, it was just her and her brother breathing in the cool air hanging in large room.
Nik dropped her hand.
He continued walking to the coffin closest to hers, but Rebekah stayed where he left her, standing in the middle of a Chicago warehouse surrounded by the bodies of her family. She'd noticed them when she'd woken up, of course. After feeding on the guard Nik had left for her she'd rested her hand on the gleaming wood for what felt like ages.
She'd settled for counting. Perhaps part of her had been too afraid of what she might find inside. To see what remained of her family after all these years.
Or perhaps she'd been afraid of Nik.
Her brother glanced back at her from where he was standing over the gleaming coffin and offered her his hand. From across the room she could almost believe his eyes were kind, in a pitying sort of way.
She took the dozen steps separating them as though in a dream, the world seeming to move around her rather than her moving through it. The coffin was at her feet by the time she caught up. The surface was shiny, polished enough to reflect distorted images of the warehouse's cheap electrical lighting.
Nik lifted his hand a fraction, shifting as she approached, and just yesterday she wouldn't have hesitated to put her hand in his. To play the part.
But yesterday was close to ninety years ago and some moments she wasn't sure she liked the man he'd become in the mean time.
Rebekah met his gaze head on, but she made no move to take his hand.
Rage flickered in his eyes. She saw his jaw clench and wondered if he might force her to comply, but he turned away, hand dropping to the coffin instead.
"He found me in the late 1920s," her brother spoke.
It seemed like a non-sequitur and she frowned, but Nik didn't so much as glance at her.
She thought of Mikael, wondered if her brother meant to show her their father's body, carried around like a trophy. Except she couldn't imagine Niklaus waiting so long to inform her of their father's death. Not even in the presence of Stefan. It would have been a victory to be celebrated, or at least not something Niklaus would ever keep from her.
If not Mikael, then who?
Unbidden, she thought of a name that she hadn't spoke for years. Not since the miserable Christmas of 1919, when she and Niklaus had dined in Arkansas and realised that since close to a month had passed since they heard anything, it would be just the two of them from then on. It had hurt too much to speak his name, after their hope had slowly died those first few weeks of no news.
"He said he'd meant to return to us sooner, but he was setting up a diversion for Mikael," Niklaus continued, and the glimmer of hope in her chest erupted into searing flames. "He bought us two decades before Father realised he was being led astray. Long enough for me to disappear."
The rest of Nik's explanation hardly registered. Rebekah felt her heart race as she pictured the brother she had not seen since the day he had shouted at them to leave. For months afterwards she could still smell the smoke from the burning opera house in her dreams. Some mornings she woke with the memory of his lips on her forehead and guilt like lead in her stomach.
Nik bend forward and unlocked the lid of the coffin with a sharp click.
Rebekah sucked in a sharp breath that had her brother glancing back to meet her eyes. An emotion she couldn't read took over his face and then left as quickly as it'd come.
For the first time since her brother had pulled the dagger from her heart, Rebekah felt grateful for Stefan's absence. There was something private about this moment, something intimate. The rage at Nik's actions still simmered beneath the surface, but it was tempered by the remembrance of shared grief.
Their brother had never made it to their agreed meeting place.
Communication was fast in the early days of the twenties, but not fast enough. They'd been reluctant to write him off as dead, but then they'd been left with little choice. Mikael had not shown any signs of being above killing his own children if they stood between him and their bastard brother.
When Niklaus opened the coffin, Rebekah could feel her heart beating fast in her throat. With one final glance at her, Nik withdrew. As he took half a step back, she finally got a glimpse of the brother resting in the coffin.
Elijah.
It was only when Nik's hand brushed her back that Rebekah remembered to breathe. She inhaled deeply. There was a stinging in her eyes that she blinked away as she slowly sank to her knees next to the coffin.
His hair was longer again. The fringe fell past his forehead and would have reached his eyes had he been standing up. It made him look younger, if that were possible. She reached out to brush a few stray locks to the side.
Nik's fingers rested heavily on the part between the nape of her neck and her shoulder. It was comforting, in a way. The warmth of his hand served as a clear reminder that she still had a living brother.
Elijah lay motionless in the coffin, yet Rebekah couldn't tear her eyes away from him. The tendons of his jaw had long since tensed in death where she stroked his cheek. The top two buttons of his brown shirt were unbuttoned, she noted absently, moving further down.
The silver of the dagger was cool beneath her touch as she wrapped her fingers loosely around it.
Behind her Niklaus tensed, the grip of his hand on her shoulder tightening as if in warning. The message was clear. He would not allow her to bring their brother back.
For a moment she contemplated doing so away, to pull the dagger back just those few inches and let Niklaus scramble for the white oak ash he no doubt carried with him. Yet it wouldn't matter in the end. If she undaggered Elijah now, Niklaus would simply dip the dagger in the ash and stab it back into their brother's heart.
And then he would turn on her.
No, better to leave the dagger in, as much as it pained her to see Elijah like this, to see him here before her, not dead but also not alive and somehow still so far from her reach. She missed him more in that very moment than she had all those years on the run.
Her fingers uncurled themselves, instead moving to straighten the cut of Elijah's suit jacket. Nik's vice-like grip on her shoulder immediately eased, his thumb now rubbing small circles at her neck. It was a twisted thing, how his hands could cause pain one moment and comfort her the next.
When she turned away from the dagger, Nik's eyes were unreadable. She glanced at him once, looked back at Elijah to imprint all the details of his face into her memory, and then rose to her feet.
Nik shut the coffin.
"I thought you might like to see him for yourself," he said, with that same twisted kindness she'd seen in his eyes earlier. "To know he's still alive and well."
He's far from well, she thought, but didn't say.
"Thank you," she replied instead, like he'd done her a favour. Like he hadn't just reminded her of all she couldn't have because he wouldn't allow it.
She wondered sometimes, when it was that her brother had forgotten how to be gentle. Their father had taught them cruelty in its purest form, but the brother she remembered of old would still be kind.
These days even Nik's kindness felt like a blow.
"I'll be checking to see if our dear witch has some more answers for us," Nik told her, his eyes intent on her face. "I trust I can leave you here to keep an eye our brothers and wait for me, sweetheart?"
He phrased it like both a statement and a question but she knew better than to think she had any real choice. "Of course," she said, her lips pulling up into a smile that didn't reach her eyes.
Nik considered her for a moment. "You're still upset with me," he stated.
"You've been mean to me all day long," she replied, dropping her smile, "and just yesterday I had a dagger in my heart."
His eyes darkened. "Don't be petty now, Rebekah."
"Petty?" she repeated, incredulous.
"I thought you would at least appreciate this," he said, sounding displeased.
Her glare faltered.
The truth was that some part of her really did feel grateful to know Elijah was still alive. Better to know he was killed at her brother's hand with a silver dagger than dead for good after holding off the father she'd called to town. The knowledge eased a small dark part in her core that had been tight with fear and guilt for the past three – going on 93 – years.
He must have seen her reaction, because he looked away and heaved a frustrated sigh. When he looked back most of his irritation had faded from one moment to the next.
She was surprised when he reached out to touch her cheek briefly.
"Soon, sister," he said more gently, and quirked a smile at her confused look. "They won't be asleep forever."
Fingers lingering for a moment longer at the side of her jaw, he dropped his hand.
"I'll wake them up soon enough." His smile turned just a little bit more feral. "After I create my hybrid army, of course."
Of course. Despite herself she felt the corner of her lips pulling up to mirror him.
"I'll wait for Stefan to return, then," she said, changing the subject and effectively ending the conversation. "And you can go bother poor Gloria again for your answers."
Nik was definitely smirking now, baring sharp teeth.
"I knew you'd understand, little sister," he said. "I'm so glad I can count on you."
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A/N: This was started ages ago as a birthday present for ywhiterain on tumblr, because of the part where Klaus shows Rebekah their brother in the coffin, but considering it's been over two and a half years it probably counts as 'more than a little late' by now. Anyway.
Posted in the TO section because it really ties in more with the 1x15 flashbacks than the TVD storyline.
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