Really, their story is all about genealogy: Klaus hates her because she's her mother's daughter, because he didn't turn her himself, because she couldn't be his daughter instead; and she hates him because she's her mother's daughter and hatred for him is a thing that is etched in her bones, a thing as essential as hunger.

Of course you could say that backwards. You could say love, instead of hatred. It wouldn't change much.

There's family and then there's what they are, the five of them. A tribe, a grapple, a horde - five long-fanged children with a thirst for blood, and Klaus, the thirstiest of them all, the cruelest, the most dangerous.

If Rebekah had thought about it, she would have known. Of course it couldn't end well. There's always that one rule in myths and fairytales, that there's never more fantastically terrifying thing than this: the beast is human, and it has risen from the dead, therefore breaking the two sacred rules: the beast must be alien, to fit into the evil of otherness; and death is the only barrier that can't be broken backwards.

Of course they're not allowed to all exist at the same time. Atlas's shoulders would yield.

Klaus cuts his way to a trinity. He used to fight his brothers head-on, with a sword, and could never win; but he learned from the humiliation and now he's cunning, he plots and schemes and brews the darkness in a careful alchemy. Rebekah figures she's safer at his side, and she's right.

She watches Finn fall, first, then Kol and then, later, Elijah - if she could predict the future she would see it right there, the endless cycle of life's horrors, daggers escalating into stakes made from ash and oak, fire. Klaus will grow to like fire.

For now, she keeps silent. The world is newborn, and Klaus shoulders the grief easily, like a strength; he packs his bag and takes with him three wooden coffins, his sister and the ghost of their dead mother, dark cloak wrapped around him, pilgrim-like.

(You don't forget it so easily, being a maiden. Rebekah tries, starts, she doesn't drink blood, she can't - She wears her hair in braids and for a while she pretends like nothing's changed, even plays house with a boy. But the boy turns out to be a vampire hunter and there won't be babies and flowers after all. "It was silly to believe," Klaus tells her instead of I'm sorry, even as she wrecks her throat with sobs, her head against his chest.

He takes her face in his hands, then. There's blood everywhere, but Rebekah's coming to understand that's what life is for them now, branded with blood. "I will never let anyone hurt you again," he growls at her, his eyes ablaze, not knowing, of course, that he'll be the one to hurt her the most.)

For the first hundreds of years he's older than her, more cruel, but sweeter: he leaves her in immense brick houses and she languishes until he comes back with lunch, a German peasant girl with round eyes and a rounder bosom. He feeds her with laps of his tongue, cleans her, takes care of her - loves her the only way he knows how, like a child, like an animal.

But she grows bored. She goes to him and she says, "I'm a monster too, I want my pound of flesh."

She still remembers his face when she said that. She thought it was going to split in two, open and reveal someone new, someone even more monstrous, their father - but instead he took a step towards her, another and another until she was pressed against the crummy, damp wall of the abandoned castle where they were staying, and he said, "Yes."

He breathed her in, the skin at the juncture of her neck, where he likes to bite. He didn't bite. He stayed there for a moment, enough that she could've killed him if she'd wanted, stabbed him in the back with this dagger she always keeps, and when he pulled away his eyes were shining.

He took a step back. "We shall hunt together, then," he said, sounding ferocious.

She wouldn't leave him. He taught her everything she knows: the manipulation and the taste for fine clothing and finer meals, the hunting in dark forests and cloying cities, the jumping through centuries as though they didn't exist. He taught her to be a phoenix, and to always rise stronger; he taught her never to deny herself anything.

She'd like to say she taught him something in return, but if she did, it's only between the lines: sleeping uncoiled, his arm thrown over her waist, without jumping at the slightest noise; calm, sometimes, to admire the fragile stillness of beauty.

She wouldn't leave him. She'd be afraid he'd die, without disciples: without anyone to believe in him, she likes to think that he'd just fade away.

When photography is invented, Rebekah is fascinated by it. There's something almost magic about it, not their dark, indigenous blood magic, something else. Human magic. Klaus despises it, just like he despises everything that's human, but the set-up makes Rebekah shiver, the dark sheet you have to duck under, the muffled "Keep still," and then - flash. Immortalized.

Klaus buys her dresses and jewels to pose in and Rebekah pouts for the camera, now doubly immortal; she feels like the flashes add to her little stock of power, something she can keep locked in until it turns to diamond and then use to carve her name in her enemies' flesh.

In the end, Klaus buys her a photography studio, a little, glitzy thing in Paris with a dark chamber and plush velvet sofas. He gives her the key, leads her to the door in a blindfold, his arm draped possessively around her waist.

"Klaus," she breathes when she sees - just a second before a triumphant smile slices her face in two, of course, and then she -

she looks him in the eye and he's standing there, her brother before all, Klaus Mikaelson, she thought this name was ridiculous at first but now it sort of fits, and

she strides forward and hooks her elbows over his shoulders, kisses him like she's forgotten how to, like she wants to drain him of blood. He bites her lip, says she must really like photography, but

they are tangled and inseparable, undiscerning, beautifully misguided, two creatures, and they love each other like only Mikaelson siblings can love. Badly, but with panache.

Eternity has been kind to them. Klaus laughs and trips her onto the bed, pins her down and kisses her, blood still dripping from his fangs. He's ecstatic like always after hunting, he wants her and she wants him back, after all they're parallel, same blood same father same mother same everything, same devouring love for each other, same always and forever that is a beautiful, beautiful lie, same -

They kiss the same way, too. They kiss like they want to consume and confuse all at the same time, they want to burn brighter, higher, faster. Humanity is kindling.

"Do you ever miss it?" she asks after they're done, his head resting on her breast.

"No," he says without asking what she means - he knows. It irritates her that she does, makes her look weak in his eyes. Did he never read a story other than his own?

"Are you sure?" She sits up and in a second she's heaving over him, her breasts are grazing his chest and his wrists are pinned to the bedpost, the student teaching the master, yes, yes, her lips are red and wet but there are questions, concerns about the durability of forever.

"Yes," he growls. It'll mean no, later, but for now it's still yes. He's sure of everything then. Her, himself - everything that matters, at least.

The nineteenth century wasn't bad, in its grim American way, though it had nothing on the Renaissance. For such a long time Rebekah couldn't bring herself to like America, didn't get the sweeping landscapes and the felt hats, complained that it was dry, passionless. The twentieth, though - she dives into it with unlimited relish. Sometimes Klaus watches her and sometimes he's right there by her flank, drinking his fill with her, because as much as he tries to hide it Rebekah knows he likes it just as much as she does: the clothes are fabulous, the people are treacherous and start talking, spilling their secrets and there is the grit, the bite, the gold -

So it's perfect there for a while. They decimate entire villages and walk away unshackled, free, impious; they spit on God and there is no thunder; they're brother and sister and lovers and friends and everything else there is to be, nothing frightens them. They drip and douse, set fires, terrorize, love without restraint. If they believed in paradise, that's probably what they'd call it. As it is, they just say it's life, anchored by the hopeless belief that it can stay like that forever.

Nothing lasts forever, though, does it?

(But she wonders, sometimes: what happens when I'm not here? While I was running, what did I pass by? Was there a time-limited jewel, could I have liked death, and what about, what about... they don't look too unhappy, these humans, sometimes they have something tentative, something glorious, sometimes there's something shining in their eyes that you can't just take, it seems difficult but there's a longing... is it just me?

In the end it's always just her. She watches more closely from thereon in, goes to the movies and reads the books. Soaks it in. Melancholy isn't that unpleasant a feeling. Klaus frowns, says he's indulging her by not saying anything, and she lets him talk. They could destroy each other; it's fine as long as you don't get any ideas, Klaus says. Rebekah promises, makes a sign of cross behind her back.)

The first time Rebekah falls in love with someone who isn't Klaus, she doesn't fall in love with a man. She falls in love with a ticking time bomb.

He's a controlled, wicked one, a Gatsby-esque oiseau de proie with an ample mouth and a disgust for disguise who takes easily and rips with more ease still. She falls in love with his fearlessness, slips into their madness like she would into a hot bath. How can you not love someone who drinks his blood in a martini glass? Rebekah falls in love with paintings, and Stefan is the prettiest of them all. He passes for human in a way Klaus couldn't, because he doesn't trust it, doesn't commit to it - but Stefan from the outside looks like a bad man, charming, a young, greedy mafioso with no morals and a taste for expensive alcohol. He swaps his masks so well: honorable gentleman, shady Casanova, serial killer, and the last one, the one she likes almost on instinct - vampire.

"You're beautiful," he tells her once, rich and honeyed like a lie.

She laughs and asks him for a dance. Klaus is watching from the corner, he looks irritated, jealous even, and for a second Rebekah thinks about going back to him and telling him - we have forever. They do, they do. Stefan will die, like the others.

"I will give you everything," Klaus tells her when they go back to their house that first night, while he presses into her, his thumbs brushing the inside of her thighs. His teeth clamp down on her lips, it's desperation. If you don't leave me. Everything is a bargain with him.

Rebekah could be kind, but that's not how she was raised. "Will you?" she asks instead, raising an eyebrow. He makes her gasp for her trouble.

I can do everything, she would tell him if she had the mind to. I can love the whole world at once, and you'll still be the first.

"And more," he groans.

She keens, "Brother," and he looks her in the eye, smirks, better.

(It's like a tacit rule: once in a century, he allows her to go out of her way and try, really try, to get back what she's lost. She couldn't say exactly what that is, humanity or something more superficial, sartorial almost - a cotton cloak that'd be coarse against her skin, to draw out the sweat and blood. And this rule, like all the rules, has another one hidden underneath it: that she shouldn't succeed, ever. That she can come back with her head high or with her tail between her legs - but she has to come back.

Small price to pay, Klaus had said once, about something else, but now Rebekah thinks it's not. )

So, that's it? Your heart hurts and aches and you're disoriented, all that for a man, a man who isn't a man who isn't your brother, that's what real love is? It's not a gift, it's not a victory? It's weak and it breathes out like lungs just torn out of a chest? It heaves? It's out of luck? It's raw and pink-red, bloodless, it longs and yearns? Rebekah would like to say she doesn't want it after such a disappointing discovery. It's what Klaus would have said, after all - he would have spit it out, half-chewed, and crushed it under the heel of his boot. What use is such a despicable thing? he would have snarled.

But Rebekah wants it. She wants it before it's torn from her, and after. She even stands up to Klaus for it, says, "I will leave you, I will," and she sees the terror in his eyes, this violent flash of fear, like he really believes it, but she presses on, says -

A stake to the heart, then. It's kind of flattering, knowing that he'd rather have her dead than not have her at all.

He would be more tender, instead of cold-hearted. Their roots disentangle, grow new, more venomous flowers, but don't separate. Won't. Always and forever, now that's what it means. But affection for humanity (the simple-hearted pleasures, taste, smell, feeling) works its way into her, and he loses his humor, lets his cruelty go dry. He takes torture seriously. He wants to survive. It's pitiful.

She wakes up to his face, like she always knew she would. She's angry; that she hadn't foreseen.

"I hate you," she spits at his face, and he smirks, won't give in, is happy to have her back, despite everything.

"Welcome back, sis," he says.

He keeps his promise and doesn't let her walk away. She wouldn't have, but she likes this too, the way his arms close in on her like prison doors. Her love for Stefan has faded, was only a flag for something deeper and more fragile, and now all that's left is that and what she sees when she looks at Klaus, a monster she can't name.

Mystic Falls is boring.

"Mystic Falls is boring."

Klaus looks up from whatever he's doing, probably drawing - he does that now - to give her a sneering smile, uglier than he used to be. He's always wanted things, but this is overboard. It's strange, the way she still knows him by heart, could give a description more accurate than anyone else, and yet - he's changed. He's not the same.

Even the way he kisses her is different. He puts more thought into it; she has to train him again to carelessness, and she does. It's a painstaking process, but it works. Soon he's as jubilant as he used to be. It's a small relief.

Katerina Petrova, Katerina Petrova... if you say her name often enough it transforms, goes temptress from innocent and then back to Katherine Pierce. In a way Rebekah admires her, such a capacity for reinvention, such persistent survival. Such force, clinging and clawing her way out of death; it can only mean a childhood fear of darkness, the same question Rebekah used to ask herself before she realized she was truly immortal: what does Hell look like for monsters?

But still, Rebekah can't quite forgive her. She's thankful for the curse, this rigged illness that keeps Klaus from turning into a god, but the girl hurts, has razor skin and fascinates her men with disturbing ease. From the beginning, the peasant, maroon-wearing Bulgarian girl standing on their doorstep with coy eyes, Rebekah saw right through her. But she couldn't do anything; she should have learned from her, tasted villainy on her tongue and taken it from her, but that's Rebekah's biggest flaw, she's impatient, she wants to touch and she wants to touch now.

So instead of winning, that time, she saw Elijah fall for Katerina Petrova, she saw Klaus hover on the edge of fascination, and she took to disdain. The weak, she decided, can't make it out alive.

It's for her own safety.

There is a convergence point, Rebekah realizes. She had that idea that life would just go on forever, and she could keep hovering between possibilities, eternally wavering - but it won't. And she can't.

She hears Klaus talk to the blonde girl, Caroline. He's telling her he only regrets one thing about being human, and Rebekah can't believe it, he doesn't, he doesn't regret anything. If he regrets something, what does she regret? What has she lost? Now she wants life. She loved the twentieth century, and she missed more than half of it, she wants her money back. She asks Klaus how it was but he can't remember, or if he does he won't tell, keeps his teeth clamped shut on it, maybe to punish her.

In the meantime there are more and more dopplegängers, which is seriously getting old, Klaus should forget about his army and kill them all so they could this over with. The Elena girl is infuriating and Stefan's gone mushy for her, which Rebekah disapproves of. Klaus laughs at her, mocks her. She knows what it means: he gets to keep her. Before, she would've have thought, I don't want to leave but now she's not so sure.

"I don't know why you like this place so much," Klaus tells her once as they walk in the corridors of Mystic Falls High, leaving a trail of gasoline in their wake. He brushes a finger against a doorjamb, grimaces. "It's so... crummy."

Rebekah shrugs. She thinks about high school dances, puppy love, the smell of uncapped highlighters, the sunlight soaking your pores while you lounge in the yard. "You wouldn't understand."

In any other circumstance, Klaus would argue that yes, he can - he can do everything -, but fire makes him skittish and distracted. He licks his lips, his eyes full of unlit flames. Oh, but he's beautiful. He's so beautiful. If he wasn't, Rebekah would be either long gone or dead.

They walk outside with linked hands, she doesn't resist, she doesn't yield - just like he likes it she raises an unimpressed eyebrow and watches him drop the match. But she can't hold back the breathy gasp as the fire swallows the school. The horizon becomes ablaze, the wind is ripe with the scent of charred flesh. The night, around them, shakes with silent laughter.

"Oh," Klaus says, absent wonder. He's only ever awed by himself, but his hand creeps to the back of her neck, fingers closing over the undead flesh, spelling, sister.

After the hunt: he's hyper and wide-eyed, clutching at her hip, his fingers tracing ancient sigils on her hipbone. They learned God together. They were fascinated, amazed at the human mind. They took to church because it was fashionable, and she wore small rosaries and he tall hats. Another game of make-believe. They loved it.

"I want to be human," she says.

He startles, snorts. "No," he says.

She wonders what he's saying, if it's an interdiction or if he just doesn't believe her. She doesn't entirely believe herself. "I do."

"Why?" he snarls. Suddenly he's incensed, he finds her ungrateful, everything he worked so hard for. "You want to become weak again? You want to die? Life doesn't fit your stupid little romantic dream, Rebekah. You won't be able to have your way when you're human. You'll get crushed..." he joins two fingers, "like a bug." His eyes are mean. Can she justify everything with love? Sometimes it feels like she can.

But for now she's hurt; she storms out of the room, since she can still be capricious and over-emotional. He can go and stalk Caroline to pass the time, and she'll go back to him tomorrow. It doesn't matter.

Sometimes Rebekah wishes he'd ask her. Why do you want to be human again? He thinks he knows, he thinks she's sappy and misses innocence, which is true but not everything there is to it. She used to be so certain of him, but now she can see the invisible gangrene like a new promise taking root in chest and eating away at him. Love drifts - he only knows her when he's blind, finds his way with guessing hands. She wants to be his Christ, his redeeming savior, but knows he won't let her - he has to make his empty-heartedness his, pretend it's a strength, use it until it bleeds. She watches into his face and wishes she wasn't too intelligent to project the feelings she wants to see there.

"I love you," he says.

No, you're playing pretend.

"Always and forever."

That stopped meaning what you think it means a long time ago.

When she dreams, which isn't often, Rebekah dreams this: Let him build an army, if he must; then he'll be ripe with blood but finally sentient, and I'll be a perishable.

He says "your new caprice". Ostensibly it's for Matt, the blue-eyed wonder, but really it's humanity. He doesn't want her to find the cure. But she will.

The next day, as they're eating in the high-ceilinged living-room, their knees pressed too close, their teeth brutal and noisy on the silver cutlery, she thinks maybe she'll try and force it down his throat, too.

"Yes," she says to yet another order she didn't hear, and decides that if the humans could build God, there's no reason she can't build her own destiny.