forever does not make loss forgettable, only bearable.
x
he looks for her in every swish of buttercream curls. girls will pass on the street. girls in jeans, girls in skirts, girls in shorts, girls in dresses. girls with alike blonde hair that falls easily with grace on collarbones, gets picked up by the gulf wind, shakes with the hustle and bustle of the city. he sees her watercolor eyes in the banks of the levees, an uncountable number of blues and indigos whirling with a current that sucks the life out of everything in its midst. he hears her giggle in the chiming of church bells and splatter of paint on a canvas, blocks it out some days like church hymns or his younger sister's whining.
forever is a long time to wait for fruition that will maybe never not could possibly happen.
he decides he likes red, pin straight hair and porcelain skin. he can feel hard lines of the body, little shape and grace that wasn't there before. he decides he will settle for distant hazel eyes and a trembling mouth where he used to remember there was strength. he allows himself to forget, let go, try and make peace.
(he doesn't succeed. most of his nights are drenched in sweat and blood and anger and eternity stretching out like last was going to be easy to achieve.
his poker face is impeccable though.)
x
champagne burns like vervain going down his throat and the midnight blue tie from graduation never lives to see the outside of his closet. he doesn't wear henleys that have rips and crimson splotches from past lifetimes in mountain valleys with a fallen hero with a permanent scowl and bottle green eyes. he doesn't look at his sketchbook, ever, rather files it away in a cabinet that he occasionally sees Elijah sneaking into. they are so alike in some ways.
(in the dead of night, the faintest sound of katerina echoes in the hallways. it only happens twice, but it's more than enough.)
he doesn't wear leather jackets or black and white tuxedos. he doesn't snark witty comments because he'd have no one to respond. he doesn't use the fireplace and he only does once to burn every single coat rack in the compound. his sister's gowns sit unused and collecting dust on the delicate jewels and stitches of lace. she's not coming back for them.
on occasion, he sits in her vanity with the bottles still collected in the ancient gilded mirror and breathes like a man and tastes rebekah. tangerine and poppy, like sunshine, he thinks, images blurry in his vision as he tries not to miss her.
x
he has a daughter. of course, he'd be cursed with a daughter and not a son because it would just be too simple. he lets Hayley name the girl. she's not really his anyway.
(he fights tooth and nail for the middle name for a perfect initial that the girl will always know was every bit of her father and none of her mother, and how he wished he could love her maybe if he was capable, but he gave his heart away a long time ago. Hayley refuses, but he sees the name written on the birth certificate and he hates himself for it.
it's not his to give away.)
x
one Saturday afternoon in march, he spends forty seven minutes in the confessional.
he doesn't feel forgiven when he leaves, but he's trying to.
x
the young witch is powerful and rude and bitter all before she even had the chance to be anything else. it doesn't remind him of anyone he knows. she was lovely and warm, all French press coffee skin and spell bounding eyes and the word sacrifice was stitched on her lips. she wasn't powerful because she was hard, she was powerful because she was soft when no one else knew how to be.
his apprentice is all bravado and charm and arrogance. the roguish grin whipped across those cheekbones and all he can see is skull cut jawline and easy cotton t shirts and weeks on the road with dirt on his motorcycle boots. but this isn't the 20's and a son is harder to teach than a brother is.
(even days where he's breathing elijah's air and his brother's hand is in his chest, so deep that he can feel the metal of his daylight ring on his ribcage, he wonders if there would ever be a day where Elijah would give everything in that role of hero or even savior for him the way he used to know.)
x
his sins weigh over and the rosary around his neck tightens like a noose.
new Orleans is rome and he is ceasar.
x
he reads fitzgerald in pirate's alley on an august evening with the sun mercifully setting in his wake. the air tastes like lilacs and the apple that eve gave to adam. it's been over a century and he has yet to leave the French quarter. his child has died and so has its mother. another generation of warlocks and witches and werewolves and nightwalkers has flourished and the city that he has never owned, has never ruled is still not home.
time heals wounds, but scar tissue never goes away.
he's been a king without a castle, a king without a queen for as long as he can recall now. maybe in another lifetime there was one woman with blonde hair and blue eyes and an angel's laughter that he will still yearn for until the end of the age comes.
he leaves new Orleans, doesn't look back and heads north, shackles breaking free from his wrists.
x
(Elijah visits Katherine pierce's grave every year on the eighteenth of October. he leaves yellow daises and thistle bark in a crown at its feet.
he has stopped calling her name in the night. or at least he has for the past twenty years.)
x
he doesn't immediately run to the boarding house. he finds his brother's grave, hand dug without super sonic speed, from three lifetimes ago in the courtyard by the bell tower. there is a bundle of vervain wrapped in white lace at its base and he knows his sister has put it there but how long ago he is uncertain. she never returned and never made him promise always and forever because she wasn't going to be always and forever.
more names are etched in granite and marble from Alaric Saltzman to Jeremy Gilbert and Bonnie Bennett, Matt Donovan and Elizabeth Forbes. his breath hitches in his throat, heart skips a beat. hasn't heard that name in eons. his chest aches.
Klaus. his name bangs out like a gunshot in an empty room. trees swaying haphazardly in the forest, littering pine needles on the carpeted dirty earth.
x
(a tongue has no bones but it can break a heart. when he lays eyes on her for the first last time his shatters. in every girl with blonde, in each levee with blue water, in all the church bells in the world, none of them are as real as she is standing in front of him. forever stuck in a filler year, strong beautiful and full of light, but so annoying and achingly irritating to the point of endearment.
yes forever lasts a long time and loss lasts even longer, but being found is far greater than he could have ever hoped for.)
x
so he gave her the things he wasn't even sure he had.
and then some, the kind that only mean last last forever.