The pain was unbelievable. It ripped through Carolines' body, causing her to tense her muscles against the agony of the next impact. Always with the torture, she thought to herself through gritted teeth. Why do I get staked so much? Was her next thought, swiftly overcome by the application of Vervain bandages which blistered where they touched. Seriously – one more bandage and I'm going to kick this guy into touch, she reasoned, a vamp can only be bait for so long before asserting herself. Or himself, she finished fairly.
"You vampires make me sick. Immortal? Look at you, you're nothing. You're less than nothing, and I'm going to show you just what immortality entails; the aching emptiness, the ever increasing monotony of life. That's immortality – dealing with the everyday commonplace forever."
Wallace twisted the bandage tighter on her wrists, satisfied by her moans of agony. He'd teach Klaus a lesson in manners; he'd teach all of them a lesson in manners. Respect for hierarchy. Respect for authority. Respect for him, the forgotten Original. The forgotten son. The first of Esthers' children - abandoned by his mother after her failed affair with an Other. Raised in the chains of servitude to his Sire; raised to hate his brothers, his sister, and all those who claimed bonds with them.
"Past reason yet, pup? Ready to call your master? Here's the phone, I've even bought you credit on it." Wallace sneered, his red tinged eyes glinting preternaturally in the darkness. He loosened the gag around her mouth.
She hadn't heard him creep up on her. No body ever heard him creep up on them. Their downfall, he reasoned. He'd snapped her neck quickly from behind and dragged her deep into the Bayou of New Orleans with ease without a murmur from her. So easy, so simple. It wasn't even that he knew her; he had sensed her connection to his errant family, and from that the next step had been simple logistics. A barter principle even a child could understand. He understood bargaining more than most. The pain of change, every day, keeping it at bay whilst his twin enjoyed a life he had never had. His identical twin.
Caroline peered closely; even though vampires had enhanced senses, sight and movement beyond that of natural creatures the complete blackness and closeness of the Bayou environment disturbed her; she focused through the pain. If there was anything Caroline Forbes was exceptionally good at it was control. Organised control. And party planning.
"Do I know you, jerk? Or is this some plan which I'm, as usual, not wholly aware of yet?" She spat the words at him "If so, let me just clarify, for your records – I'm not a hybrid werewolf 'pup' – and it's unlikely that I will ever have a 'Master'. So, let's get the torture bit out the way, and I'll just rescue myself this time, okay?"
Wallace laughed harshly. A bark in the silence of night almost, "Fine, love, fine. A plan I have and a plan to be executed with precision. Let's say it's a warning. So, you're not a pup? Good, at least you're not a mongrel. Can't stand cross-breeds, you know?" He lent back against one of the swamp tree stumps and crossed his arms over his chest. Nonchalant. Calculated. Exact.
Her pupils dilated slightly as she accustomed her eyesight to the level of wet wooded area. She made out the figure leaning against the stump. Recognised with a sickening sink in her stomach the outline of the man in front of her.
"Klaus?!"
The single name brought him up to her; one hand tight around her neck. His hazel eyes locked with her own. The vampire flared within her at his touch and she hissed at the aggressive contact, fangs displacing within her mouth. She tried futilely to shy away. His grip like iron and she wondered, briefly if he had forgotten that time, in the woods, in another place when his touch had inspired a different response. She blushed and pushed the thought away.
Wallace looked through the red mist which had descended upon him at the sound of his brothers' name. He noted her heightened colour and concentrated his mind upon the girl in front of him. No more than 18; eyes vivid blue and hair almost the lightest blonde in messed curls which flowed over her shoulders. Her gaze challenged him and contained hurt which kicked him in the gut. He let his mind go blank and swept it over her, seeking out information in her thoughts. Telepathy, a gift he could use as a weapon if he chose.
He carefully considered his position and withdrew his hand from her neck. His search over, he relaxed his guard in minutest movement of muscle measured to reassure her.
"Caroline. Care. Do you know what I've done? Do you know why you're here?" His words mimicked the sound of his fraternal doppelganger beautifully and he pushed the veil of belief and faith at her until her gaze dropped so slightly that he could read her mind as if it was a book synopsis.
Caroline felt the muddle of confusion in her head. Felt it battle out a place between the pain and the sense of betrayal. It settled her, mollified her, and she relented up to it. The sense of order fell away and her independence shuddered and crumbled inside.
With the tone of compulsion wrought in her answer she replied, "You asked me to come. You said I'd seek you out. That Tyler was my first love but that you'd be my last, and that I would come to you, in the end."
Wallace wondered what his brother saw in this girl that had caused such a glaring vulnerability to be exploited. In over a 1000 years there had been no chink and in the space of a year, there was now punched out holes in his nemesis' armour – the child, the family and now the girl. It was a triangle of tragedy that Wallace could exploit with ease. He had been the oldest, the first of the children with supernatural gifts. He hadn't honed them though familial love, as he supposed his siblings had. He had had them honed for use. For exploitation and now, a millennia forwards in time, he could use them himself for gain.
He focussed his gaze back in the present, his own thoughts a wall to every being in existence. He had made a decision. And that decision was a decadent play onto the stage of New Orleans.
Perhaps it was time to come out of the shadows. To show them that Silas had had other secrets. And other victims, and that revenge was best served slowly, burned over time.
"Yes, Caroline. You have. And you are mine."
Klaus swung back in the leather wingback chair. He pushed his feet up onto the top of the oak desk in front of him and glared around at his siblings. Disdain, bitterness and sibling rivalry fighting for supremacy over his features. He had been so underestimated, had felt so unloved for so long it was hard to accept companionship, even forced, from a time of loneliness that haunted him.
"Rebekah, what are you saying? That I'm weak? That all this that we're building – finally – is making me messy in my choices?"
Bekah sighed at the tone of her brother. Humanity, the switch that could be flicked on and off like the light and the dark of an electric bulb, warred within her. She left it on, and be damned by the consequence, she inwardly fumed, "I'm saying, brother dearest, that there are too many loose ends now. Too many threads that can be traced back to us that threaten us all. Have you forgotten so easily Silas? Forgotten that rogue, Marcel? Or the Salvatore brothers? You need to tidy up. Become the Alpha. And for God's sake, bring about a conclusion to your unending obsession!" Otherworldly rage churned in her briefly. She damped it as best she could. Her brother's fuse was legendarily short.
Klaus frowned at his younger sister. Always the romantic loose cannon, her hypocrisy cut him, "I'm presuming you mean Caroline Forbes?"
Rebekah glared at him. Neither confirming nor denying it. Watching like a cat her brother's reaction.
He eased himself out of the chair, graceful and lithe, and moved with undisguised power across the floor of the room to stand an inch away from her, looking down from his marginal height difference but which, to Rebekah, felt so much more obvious than it physically was. He was, without a doubt, the most dangerous of predators – part werewolf, part vampire and part arrogant narcissist she finished drily to herself.
"I would thank you, little sister, to keep your opinions on any subject of mine, to yourself. Your precocious past is enough to make me question whether I too should be sending you on an errand of self discovery. You'll do well to mind what I say and keep matters of no consequence -" This he said with more flippancy than he felt "- to a minimum. Now, tell me more about how Hayley is with my child?" The last part was a roar in her face. The werewolf in him loved to bark, Rebekah mused again, shutting off the intimidation she felt inside.
"Growing well. I think, I'm not exactly a maternal fount of knowledge, and considering the fact that you murdered mother at least once to my reckoning, I don't really have much of a reference point." She finished sarcastically.
Elijah straightened up from the corner where he lounged in obvious judgement, Klaus felt, and made to join the conversation, "She's right, brother. Much as you make it hidden to all but those who know you well, you're growing sentimentality is making our power fleeting here. I welcome the change in you, I do, yet I can't help feeling that it leaves us disadvantaged with those who would harm us."
Klaus sighed. He rarely felt comfortable discussing his thoughts with others, not least because it meant he had to share parts of himself he would rather forget existed. Yet, here were two of his siblings – the most antagonist, to his own peace of mind – voicing concerns about his new feelings of humanity which he had, for the longest time, tried vainly to keep in check and secret. He raked a hand through dark blonde curls, cropped unmanageably which framed strong square features. His hazel eyes flashed werewolf gold and then returned to deepest hazel. He pointed at his younger brother, "You. You, brother, I will never fathom. First, you berate me for not feeling. Now, berate me for beginning to feel at all. Make up your bloody mind." He swore in exasperation. His clipped English tone markedly brash.
Elijah shrugged, he was used to the passions of his brothers. If he was honest with himself, he envied that passion which caused such erratic and non-composed living; such a verve and surety which he did not feel in his own convictions and doubted in all others but masked with ease, "I'm only echoing truth. You are a candle with several wicks at the moment and we need to cut some out."
"Your concerns are flattering, they truly are," Klaus turned to the fireplace, placing a hand upon the mantel and a foot upon the fender, he looked from one to the other, his expression unreadable, "but you need to be protecting our interests. Which, Elijah, I am not unaware of your own concern in this matter. So, take your doting vampire gaze, and cast it over my child, and my Were, and make yourself useful. Now get out. Both of you, get out."
Rebekah and Elijah exchanged glances before moving to the door of the first floor lounge. Large open shuttered windows of New Orleans poured sunshine into the space and the light as it hit the wooden honeyed floor reminded Klaus reluctantly of hair the colour of wheat, he closed his eyes and flicked the switch off. It didn't hurt, now, just dulled background chronic pain he could function through.
Everyday monotony. Power struggles and play which he was restless for and lacking. His inner hackles felt raised but the unease was something he could not pinpoint. All wards and protection had been made for his sons' future. His Were-Omega guarded by her unrequited beau, his brother Elijah and an elite group of hybrids under compulsion and Sire bond but with the added strength of an amnesia spell.
As for Caroline, she had made it abundantly clear that the incident of the woods – that glorious tangle which was indelibly imprinted on his mind's eye (for she had been without a doubt, the most giving and loved of trysts) – was a slip in her judgement; an immoral moment not to be returned to. That hurt, that hurt even through the flicking off of feeling, her pride and her prejudice which was insurmountable to the happiness he would relish on her given the endless stretch of eternity. He smiled inwardly, his equal, his mirror that he would, and he had made the promise to himself, try to be nothing but himself around. He didn't have to try, she riled him enough to feel alive. To feel for once like he had expectations placed upon him to aspire. She had stripped that away, and it would take more millennia to heal. She would never conspire to be with him with Tyler in the picture. And she would certainly never condescend to the notion with the knowledge of a child she could never bear being born to an imaginary rival in her eyes. It was lost, this pipe-dream of she and him together. And so she was safe.