Chapter 9: We're Never Done With Killing Time

We're never done with killing time
Can I kill it with you
'Til the veins run red and blue?
We come around here all the time
Got a lot to not do
Let me kill it with you
- 400 Lux (Lorde)


"I'm an Original." Kol said, taking in the boiling water that Davina was demonstrating her practice with. "Which means I'm a lot stronger than the average vampire, even the really old ones. Most of the vampires in this city aren't older than two hundred years - I'm pretty sure that Marcel is the oldest one here apart from me - so if you can get this spell to a point where you're able to stop me, you'll be able to do the same to any of the vampires, witches, werewolves or humans that might come after you." He paused for a second. "But even if you can't stop them, you'd easily be able to weaken them to a point where you can have them at your mercy anyway, and give you time to break their necks with your magic."

"So volatile." Davina said, stopping her spell on the water that was in a bowl between them.

"I'm a vampire." He shrugged. "Plus, I'm pretty sure volatile is a fundamental part of my personality."

"And charming." She shook head, laughing a little at his modesty.

"Hey, darling, I can be very charming when I want to be."

He could actually. He'd been know throughout history as the most unpredictable Original, even up against Nik, simply because he could go from charming to volatile without a change of expression. But what could he say? He liked keeping people unsure of him, and part of him just liked being destructive. He'd accepted a long time ago that the only way to cope with being a vampire would be to stop caring, and in the end, that decision had suited him greatly.

Davina snorted. "I'll believe that when I see it." She stood up, looking down at where Kol was still casually laying on the ground. "So, are we going to try this spell or not?"

"Are you that eager to try and hurt me?" Kol questioned in mock horror, though he stood up as well.

"Who knows?" Davina replied, airily. There was no way she was giving a definite answer to that one, much preferring to try and retain some mask of mystery about her. She had no idea how much of an affect that she'd be able to have on Kol though.

To be honest though, she was eager to see what she could do with her powers and this was something she hadn't even considered until Kol brought the spell back from wherever he'd hurried off to.

They both stood at opposite ends of the attic and Davina raised her hand, ready to harness her magic.

"I won't hurt you of course, but try to stop me before I get to you." Kol told her. There were quite a few feet between the two of them, but she knew how fast he could move, and had doubts that she would actually be able to stop him if he used all of his speed. "And I mean, actually stop me. Break my neck if that's what it takes."

She raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything about his apparent 'death wish'. "I'm ready." She told him.

Kol grinned and stood across from her for a few moments before running forward. He was surprised at how instant her attack was. He hardly got a few steps - about halfway towards her - because he hit a block and his body started to burn from the inside. It was incredibly painful - which was a good thing in the end - but he was still able to keep moving and while she tried to increase the intensity, he was able to quickly stop the spell by pushing her against the wall.

"Did that even work?" She questioned, looking over him for signs of interior blood boiling.

"Trust me." Kol said. "It worked alright, but what you should have done is increased the intensity before I started moving towards you again. If you'd done that, my advance would have been even slower and you could have used your other hand to direct your power to break my neck."

Davina nodded as he released her and took a few deep breaths to focus herself again.

"Did you ever practice offensive magic?" She asked him as he returned to his original starting point.

He shook his head. "No, but I have had plenty of it used on me." It happened when one spent a lot of time with witches. Inevitably, they would feel the need to demonstrate exactly how powerful they were to him, even if he'd never doubted it in the first place. It usually happened when he annoyed someone to a point of extremity. "Come on Davina, let's try it again."

He made towards her like the time before, only this time she managed to block him off earlier, incapacitating him with a higher surge of heat that sent him to his knees.

Everything went black a second later.


Their village was small enough that when someone new passed through or there was a event in the square, everyone knew about it. Still, only Kol and Rebekah made their way to the square that night. Their parents weren't interested, Finn and Elijah were doing something for their father - Kol hadn't paid attention - and Mikael deemed Niklaus too pathetic to be seen, and Henrik too young to go.

Both of them had felt bad for their brother, but there wasn't much they could do, or risk the same treatment themselves. As they made their way to where they were meeting Rebekah's friends, Kol wondered if things would be different if the rest of them stood up for Niklaus more often.

Perhaps if they were all to show their dislike of Mikael's treatment, things might change, but they were all too scared of their father to really consider it.

Still, he did wonder.

"There they are!" Rebekah pointed out the brother and sister that were standing a few feet away from one of the fires burning where everyone was gathering with music and drinks. Hearing her words, they both looked up. Erika, the girl, was quite lovely, with blonde hair a similar length to Rebekah's, but longer and unrestricted, unlike the braid his sister wore.

"She's lovely." Kol whispered to Rebekah who smiled.

"What do you think of him?" She nodded towards the brother, her words low as well. Kol glanced at him, not really caring what he was like, his lack of interest obvious.

"Bron? He's fine."

"Bjorn." Rebekah hissed the correction just as they reached the pair, but Kol cared little for his name. He hadn't come to meet with Rebekah's foreign suitor, which was obvious as he directed his smile at Erika.


Kol's eyes flickered a few times before he finally came to, the pain in his neck persisting for a few seconds after he pulled himself up off the ground. Davina was sitting on the small couch in the corner, watching as he came back to the land of the living. She looked both pleased, but also a little put out by her actions, which resulted in an expression that gave the impression she was trying not to smile or laugh.

He was actually surprised that she managed to take him down on her second go, but he had to remember that he was dealing with someone with the power of four witches, and access to ancestral magic. It didn't have the same give and take aspects of other magic, and she could draw up numerous amounts of power as she gradually was learning how to.

It was almost scary though, the ease in which she managed to take down an Original once she tapped into the idea of the spell.

It made him actually want to make sure he stayed on her good side, but that wasn't new. Collecting powerful witches had always been something that Kol was good at.

"Good job, Darling." Kol told her, trying to retain whatever dignity he had left after that, even though he'd been the one to teach her the spell and even encourage her to break his neck if she could.

"I'm sorry." Davina muttered, giggling a little and covering her mouth in an attempt to mask the sounds, though she wasn't fooling Kol.

"I'm glad you find my... demise so laughable." He said, though he was chuckling a little as well. It wasn't really anything to laugh about, but things had become quite lighthearted between the two of them compared to when he first met her not all that long ago.

"I really am sorry." She added, finally managing to stop laughing.

"Don't be." Kol replied, not that he thought she'd be sorry for doing the same thing to any of her enemies, so there was really no need to say it. Needing a breath of fresh air - having his blood boiled and neck broken was quite the best for even an immortal body - he moved to the window and opened it a tiny crack. He knew that Marcel didn't like her opening it, because the church - while safe for now - was still right in the middle of the French Quarter and a passerby might recognize her. Kol on the other hand, could move out of sight before anyone even glanced at him.

He looked out at the street below through the crack that he'd made, breathing in the air and taking in all of the city and shop lights that were flickering around. After a few seconds, he closed it again and turned back to face Davina, looking at her with a sudden interest.

"What's wrong?" Davina questioned, looking a little incredulous, like she didn't believe that anything could trouble a thousand year old vampire, that perhaps there was a point in life where you really had seen it all and nothing had the power to surprise. She glanced around her, suddenly wondering if there was something behind her or something like that, but that wasn't what was occupying Kol's mind.

Kol glanced away for a moment, looking back at the window before he turned to her, his face void of any expression as he asked, "When was the last time you left this attic?"


"The city had walls that ran all around it, protecting it from attacks by the sea in front, and from the land behind." Bjorn said, waving a hand as he spoke about the walls of this fortress city the two of them had visited shortly before coming to the New World. Kol rolled his eyes at the physical demonstration that was obviously for the sake of impressing his sister. It was working though, and her eyes were wide as he continued to talk.

They were sitting around a smaller fire, drinks in their hands, and Kol deliberately turned away from his love struck sister and her suitor to face Erika.

"So, this walled city," he began, certain that such a pretty girl would be able to tell him more about the world than the annoyance on his other side, "tell me what it was like."

Erika smiled a little, her eyes flickering towards her brother and then back to meet Kol's.

"I want to hear it from you." He told her.

She laughed. "My brother can be a little over the top, however I don't think he rivals having five siblings other than yourself." Kol nodded in agreement before she continued. "My brother is right. The walls were majestic and they would protect the city from anything, but I don't much fancy acts of war." Erika made a face. "What he should be telling your sister about is the view from the top of them, looking out over the ocean. The water was like nothing here. It was such a deep blue, but clear enough in spots that you could see fish swimming around if you tried. And the people were lovely, like none that I've ever met before, eager to invite us into their homes and share stories."

Erika had a faint accent as she spoke, Kol's language obviously not her first, but she spoke it well, though the pronunciation of her words only helped to make her description better.

"It sounds wonderful." Kol muttered, forgetting about his other reasons for being there as the image she described formed itself in his mind. Hearing of the world from others did little to quell the desire he had to see it all for himself.

"Have you been anywhere?" She asked him.

He shook his head. "But I want too. I want nothing more than to leave all of this behind and start again somewhere new."

"Where would you go then?" Despite the fact that he had nothing to offer in the way of stories, she seemed very interested anyway, and he happily told her.

"Back to the Old World. My father and mother both came from there - they left when the plague killed their first son - but we were born here and haven't seen any of it."

"Go." Was all she said before taking another sip of her drink, in a manner that was delicate compared to the crowd drinking around them.

"One day."


It had been surprisingly easy to get Davina out of the attic, even though it was night. The darkness may have been home to hundreds of night walker vampires, but Kol had always had the gift of speed, and was able to move fast enough that none of them even noticed him, and neither did the witches.

Once they were out of the French Quarter, things got a little easier. They didn't have to worry about speed and he was able to let her walk alongside him. He knew that Davina had grown up in the city - so there wasn't anything that she really hadn't seen - but his goal wasn't to take surprise her, just to give her some fresh air.

They made their way across the river, ending up on the other side of the Mississippi, looking out over the French Quarter and the rest of the city, the sky lit up by the lights all around them.

She smiled.

"It's been months." Davina said, looking at the world around her. "It's kind of crazy to think that I haven't stepped foot out of New Orleans since the Harvest, but it feels like I've been away the whole time." She paused for a moment, glancing at Kol. "Though, it does remind me how glad I'll be to be rid of this city when things are over."

The corners of his lips turned up as he recalled her desire to see the world.

"You'll get everywhere that you want to go." He said simply, taking a few steps forward so that he was directly beside her, watching the city as well. They stood like that, in silence, for a few minutes before he caught her frown out of the corner of his eye.

Davina finally turned to him, her expression the most serious that he'd ever seen it.

"Kol," she began, not giving him time to question her sudden change of mood. "I know you looked at my memories, a few nights ago, while I was asleep."

He grimaced.

"I felt it, like it was a dream happening to me. You were digging through my memories of the Harvest." There was no question there, no way that he could explain it away as a coincidence.

"I wanted to know what happened that night." He said simply, trying not to make a big deal about it.

He didn't realize that she'd experience it again through her dreams, otherwise he wouldn't have done it, but Kol wasn't comfortable with apologies and didn't say anything else, his unspoken sorry hanging in the air awkwardly.

Before either of them could say anything else, the telltale sign of another vampire suddenly overtook his senses and he flinched as a mass of brown curls flashed past him, grabbing Davina.

Katerina.

He quickly turned to meet the doppelgangers eyes.


(So, I planned to post this on the 9th while I was writing it and then I've been college procrastinating with writing all afternoon and wanted to post it before the 9th. Don't know why it mattered, but I was determined to stick to the date I'd chosen to put it up... so I spent the last house watching the clock and waiting for it to tick over to midnight on the 9th of August just so I could post. I'm messed up lol)

Thanks again everyone for the lovely comments! If you're wondering about the apparent random timing of these flashbacks (it's been a few chapters since the last one), it's because Kol goes on memory lane whenever he's being reminded of what it was like to be a human/witch, mostly when he's around Davina, and there is a storyline going on there that I want to line up with a certain chapter when it ends. I hope you enjoyed this chapter and look forward to the next update!