"Take a step
Back for a minute, into the kitchen.
Floors are wet
And taps are still running, dishes are broken.
How did we get into this mess? Got so aggressive.
I know we meant all good intentions.

So pull me closer.
Why don't you pull me close?
Why don't you come on over?
I can't just let you go.

Baby, why don't you just meet me in the middle?
I'm losing my mind just a little."

The Middle: Grey feat. Maren Morris, Grey

"Chains with vervain? How'd you manage that?"

My eyes were still closed when I said this, but I had just barely come to when my wrists burning made sense, when my brain pieced together that someone had chained me up with chains covered in vervain. Just because I was a new vampire didn't mean I was stupid. I had seen what vervain did to vampires, heard the way it burned their skin.

This was definitely vervain.

"You underestimate just what I'd do for you, Darcy Gilbert."

At the sound of Kol's voice, soft and full of things I didn't want to hear right now, or even begin to try and understand, my eyes pulled open.

He sat on the floor of our bedroom, with one long leg stretched out and the other pulled to his chest. His hands rested on his knee, but his gaze was locked on me.

Though I was awake, there was a strange absence of strength. It wasn't the vervain on the chains, as I could feel the strength that came with being an Original vampire. Obviously I wasn't human, but I felt weakened, as if there was vervain in my bloodstream somehow.

I wouldn't have put it past Damon and Stefan. It was practically their trademark.

My eyes darted away from his eyes, instead moved lower to his lips, to the soft features of his jaw. He was seriously handsome, in a way that deserved to be boasted around to everyone, as he was so fond of doing.

"If you were gonna tie me up, you could've at least done it on the bed so we could have some fun with it."

One corner of his mouth started to pull up, but the other remained flat. There were so many emotions clouding around his eyes that I didn't dare take a look at them. I knew that Originals could feel things strongly, and right now, I did not want that rubbing off on me.

"Why do you want to keep your humanity off, love?"

"I told you exactly why." I straightened myself up, leaning back against the bed and ignoring the way the vervain burned against my skin the more I moved. Sometimes you had to hurt a bit to get comfortable. "I'm tired of the part of me that's locked away trying to claw its way out. I'd rather just kill someone and be free."

"You didn't care before," he reminded me. "When your humanity was on, you didn't want to kill anyone. I made a promise to you a long time ago, before I ever turned you, that I would absolutely kill anyone who got in our way so that you would never have to."

"Just stop." I shook my head, fighting the urge to grind my teeth together. "You can quit trying to remind me of the pain I put myself through so that someone else doesn't have to suffer, alright? I don't care. I just want this to be over."

I didn't know what he might say to that, but with his love for me getting in the way of his logic, it'd probably be something sweet, something that might trigger some kind of flicker of an emotional response, and I didn't want that.

Instead, I decided to use one of the first spells I truly learned, one that he had taught me. Tapping into the power of my blood, I began using the pain infliction spell on his mind, busting the blood vessels of his brain.

All it took was one glance, one moment of his visible pain, and it hit me. My weakness was Kol, and if anything was gonna make me feel something . . . so I stopped. I didn't wanna feel yet, and I could figure ways around this without hurting him. Pain was something that he had felt his entire life, so manipulating him through pain wasn't really the best option anyways.

"Why did you stop?"

Fuck.

Most of the time, my own love for Kol got in the way of seeing the man that he really was—ruthless, calculating, and above all else, lethal. He hadn't killed many people since I pulled the dagger from his chest, but that didn't change who he was inside.

He was a vampire, and it was time I learned what that meant. If I let my emotions get in the way of that, I would never know true peace. I would never know what it meant to be free.

I gave him the best smile I could, which without guilt or fear that he might see past the lie was a damn good innocent façade. "Mmm. I can think of something else I'd rather be doing with you."

"You are insatiable without humanity, aren't you?"

"Honey, I'm insatiable with humanity," I snorted. "I just let my humanity block it out because it might be rude to lock us away and fuck all day long."

He seemed surprised to hear that, but the smile that actually pulled across his lips was damn worth revealing what I might regret later, with my humanity back on. "Really now?"

"If I have to tell you that you're handsome, you're not as smart as I thought."

"Oh, I'm aware of that," he assured me, and he straightened his one leg out, pulling his bottom lip in with his teeth. "And I'm more than aware that you are one of the most stunning creatures I've ever met. Have you seen our children? Really?"

"You think talking about our family is gonna work?" I asked. "Because quite frankly, our family is exactly why I need to do this."

He shook his head. "No, I don't think that. I know for a fact that our family won't trigger your humanity. You proved that when you looked at the twins and simply stated that they were cute."

"Then what are we doing here, if it's not having fun with bondage?" I asked, and I tugged at the chains a bit. His body was alert, clearly expecting me to break through them, but what purpose did that serve right now? He was just gonna chase after me. "Because believe me, we can have some fun with this."

He let out a breath. "There was a time I would've taken you up on that offer."

"Oh?" I bit down onto my bottom lip, batted my eyelashes in the innocent way that he called his darkest temptation. "Why not now?"

When he tried to grab onto my gaze with his own, I knew better than to actually look into his eyes, so I began letting them graze across his body some more, thinking about all the yummy things that hid beneath his clothes. "Because I'm too in love with you to sleep with you when you don't care, when it means nothing to you."

"It's still with you," I pointed out.

He shook his head. "It doesn't matter. It will mean nothing, and every moment we have . . . Darcy, it all means something."

That was tragic, an entire relationship without a single moment of just not caring at all. If I thought about it, it would probably be something besides tragic, but tragic was what kept the emotions in check, hidden behind the flipped switch.

My mind was racing, trying to think of anything I might've learned to help me right now. With the vervain in my system, I didn't know if I was honestly strong enough to break the chains, with the strength of a vampire. I wasn't just a vampire, though.

Remembering one of the telekinetic spells that Shea had taught me, I broke the chains from around me and rushed to climb into his lap, to pull out the things Kol felt for me effortlessly. I didn't care to see the love right now. I just wanted all the lust, to get everything I wanted.

If I could get him to sleep with me, getting away to kill someone would be easy.

I began kissing down his jawbone, down the length of his neck, and I let my teeth scrape against the skin. Just when he thought I was going to pull away, I sank my teeth in and began to drink from him.

He ripped me away easily. "Oh no. You have no reason to stop."

"Why do I have to stop?" I poked my bottom lip out and batted my eyelashes. "I just wanna fuck you really bad right now, Kol. Come on! Just think about it for a second. Don't you wanna know what it's like when there's nothing holding me back? When all I want is to fuck for the pleasure of it all?"

I was suddenly laying on the bed, with Kol's body on top of mine, and his lips moved against me with a fervor of a horny lover. I refused to look in his eyes, but hot damn, his body was doing all the talking. Pressing me back into the bed, I was able to get his shirt from off his body.

He was letting me fuck him.

His lips were hungry, on a mission, and holy fuck, I was all for this mission. They moved down to the top of my dress, kissing along the breasts that were trying to poke out of the top of it.

The warmth of his fingers moving up the skin of my arms, moving to cradle my face so that he could kiss along the parts of my neck he loved to taste the most . . . .

I was a fucking idiot.

Seriously, I was the worst at this no humanity thing. Emotions had clouded over my life far too much, and I didn't know how to properly be without them.

Klaus had once told me that I would be the worst vampire in the world, and he was right. Even without humanity, I still couldn't just fucking kill someone.

My body jerked against the chains, which were tightly wrapped back around me, and I let my eyes open, let my glare harden at the smug face of a fully dressed Kol Mikaelson.

"You're gonna regret this."

The light in his eyes died a bit, but the smile remained. "No, love, I'm not. I'm actually ensuring that you don't regret this."

There were other ways to get what I wanted. Melting the chains from around me was easy enough, but before I could even get through the inner layer, Kol was on the bed behind me, both hands around my neck.

"I'll just keep breaking your neck until you realize that you're not going anywhere without your humanity turned back on."

This was far from over, but I did stop melting the chains, at least for now. He was too alert at the moment, and right now, that was the last thing I needed him to be.

"This is kinky." I turned up towards him and smirked. "Mmm. Why don't you choke me while you're at it? Ooh. This really is some hot kinky fetish, isn't it?"

"I have slept with women and then slit their throats as soon as I was done with them," he informed me. "I have brought two women to bed, compelled one to drink the blood of the other, and then killed them both when I was finished. No, Darcy, I have no kinky fetishes. I've lived them all, and they're nothing that I want. They never were."

This was a history lesson, one that I had never learned about Kol. I wondered if I would remember it when I had my humanity back, or if my emotions would see that it was just his past that didn't matter. I guess, even without humanity, his past didn't matter, except that his past was keeping him from letting me better my future.

His hands fell from around my neck, and he moved quickly to sit back in front of me. He was closer this time, with both legs pulled against him.

"Why do you feel things so strongly for me?" he whispered, but his eyes weren't on me. They were looking towards somewhere else in the room, the same thing he always did when his mind was on dark and painful things.

"My love for you won't bring my emotions back."

"That almost hurts." His lips pulled up a bit, and his eyes dared to dart my way. "I do deserve the pain, though. I've done a lot of horrible things in my life, but I think the thing I'm struggling with right now is what I've done to you. I do hope you won't forgive me so easily once this is all over. What I did was wrong."

His eyes moved away again, and I realized then exactly what was going on. When we were together, back before things got hard and real, he would tell me that I was the light in his life that he didn't deserve, but he didn't dwell too much on the past.

If he was diving into the hard parts of the past now, pulling out any semblance of pain he could feel, it was for a purpose.

I snorted. "That'd be sad if it was real."

"But it is real." His soft smile twisted into a large grin. "See, Darcy, even without your humanity, you still care far too much for me for your own good. My pain is what will trigger your humanity."

"I'm serious." I could feel the muscles of my face tighten, feel it twist into a glare that I didn't imagine I'd be capable of if I actually cared. "Leave me alone."

He rubbed his hand across his chin, but the grin didn't fade, not even a little. "See, when you stopped doing the spell and blowing up my mind, it almost perfectly confirmed the theory I already had about how to trigger your humanity. Seeing you deflect now, to pretend that you don't know this is real . . . it only confirms it."

"Just leave me alone," I said, but the words were whispers, meant to appeal to the part of him that loved me, not the part that was here now, doing whatever he could to stop and contain me. "I just wanna be free, to be who I was always meant to be. Why are you stopping me from that when it's the best thing for me?"

He took a deep breath. "When the woman I love has her humanity back and can tell me that same thing, we'll go kill someone together. We'll make a date of it."

I knew then that I had to get away, and in the back of mind, I began thinking through every spell I knew, anything I might could do to get the chains off of me. It would have to be instant, and it'd have to contain him somehow at that.

"It won't work," I told him, with as little fire in my words as I could manage. The more empty things sounded, the more he might believe what I was trying to tell him. All I wanted to do was kill someone.

"I know that," he said. "See, words don't mean anything, but daggers do, which is why I told my siblings where they were."

I could feel it, creeping in through my veins and moving up my body towards my heart, but shutting down fear was easy when it had to work so hard to be felt. "You wouldn't do that."

"One day, you will believe me when I say that I will do absolutely anything for you, Darcy."

He had . . . he had really done it. He had let his love for me cloud over his better judgement, and he had told them where to find the daggers, at least one. I didn't imagine they were all hidden together, but what did I really know? He never even told me where they were, not that I had ever bothered to ask. I didn't wanna know.

It clicked in my mind, the spell I was thinking of, and in an instant, I had the chains unraveling from my body and moving to wrap around his. It was fast enough that he couldn't break my neck, that he couldn't stop me, and I took that chance to get out of our room.

My feet were bare, empty of the shoes they had once worn, and that helped me move a lot more silently. As a vampire, I could move without being detected by even a vampire, but in heels, it was impossible, no matter how hard I tried.

Just as I got down the stairs, glancing over my shoulder to ensure no one was following me, I felt it, the pain of something piercing into me. It was a knife of some sort, maybe even the shape of one of the daggers, and it hurt. I had never been stabbed before, but I was a vampire, so it didn't hurt like I imagined it would've hurt a human.

Klaus' eyes were dark when he glared into mine. "I knew this wouldn't work."

Using magic to throw him off of me was easy, but the dagger remained in my chest. It completely ruined the nice dress that I wore, and for that, I was pissed.

"Fuck you!" I exclaimed, and I ripped the dagger out of me. "You ruined my dress. I actually liked this one." I held the dagger in one hand, studying it carefully. I wouldn't have put it past them to use something similar, something that might appear like a dagger, but this actually looked exactly like one of the daggers. "Was he really stupid enough to tell you where they were?"

Rebekah took a few steps forward, to reveal her presence to me. So far, all I had seen were the Originals, and I wondered if that had something to do with the fact that killing one of the other vampires would've triggered my curse.

I was a lot of things, but I knew what I would have to face eventually. Killing a random stranger? I could live with that. Killing someone I cared about? There was no way.

At some point during my captivity, night had fallen, so the lighting inside the living room was brighter than I was used to. I took a chance to look around, and with only Rebekah and Klaus in the room, I took comfort in that.

"He was, actually," she informed me. "Most were too far away to reach, but there was one he always kept on him."

I rolled my eyes and tightened my grip around the handle. "I can't believe I'm looking out for him when I don't care right now."

Rebekah had been watching me carefully, with a hint of a smile playing at the corners of her lips, but there was nothing holding it back now. "Except you do."

I did not wanna hear that, so I used some magic to break her neck, as Kol had so handily taught me to do to protect me from his brother.

That same brother Kol tried to protect me from was fighting the urge to laugh, and maybe it was because of how callously I had just snapped her neck, without even flinching at the sound of her bones cracking.

It didn't bother me any more than it bothered them to break mine, probably even less so. I knew she'd come back.

At the sound of bones breaking, however, the only other two Original brothers who had yet to make an appearance stepped into the room together, both wearing mirrored expressions of resolution, of two men who would stand tall and defeat the careless Original hybrid, who just wanted to make herself a tribrid.

I smirked at the duo and took a step back. "Ooh. Is this, like, some Original showdown? I feel like that's a movie or something. Of course, it's not talking about the Original vampires, but—"

Klaus's amusement at his sister's broken neck only grew the more I began to ramble pointlessly, to the point it shimmered in his usually dark eyes. "Most nights, Darcy, I would ignore my brother's warnings and let you go run, be free, but I'm feeling a bit of a familial love going on tonight. I've stationed hybrids at every exit, and they are to bite you if they see you."

"Cute." My eyebrows knit together, at the mention of his hybrids who I didn't even know by name. "Hey, if I kill a hybrid, would that trigger my curse?"

Some of his amusement died out, and the familiar darkness was scratching at the surface. "I don't recommend finding out."

At the feeling of an arm tightly wrapping around my neck, I didn't have to be a rocket scientist to know who was holding me by the throat. The chains were only meant to hold him long enough for me to get out of the house, but he had to have his siblings downstairs waiting.

Bastard.

His hand slid around me, down my arm to the hand which held the dagger tightly, but his lips got close to my ear. "Why do you have the dagger if you don't care about me?"

It was easy enough to push him away with magic, only far enough that I could turn and give him another warning glare.

"Leave it alone, Kol."

Seeing his smile . . . damn it, it was getting hard to not care, to only see an attractive man with a pretty smile. The things that I felt, for Kol especially, had started clawing out, maybe at the beginning, but they were undeniable the more that this went on, the more pain that he revealed to me.

Why had he gotten the daggers involved? It was his best kept secret, the most guarded protection he had on himself. His biggest fear, especially now, was his brother using the dagger against him, and he had just given it to him? Just like that?

At least I had fixed his mistake. He could hide it again, somewhere better this time.

"I won't leave it alone, Darcy," he whispered. "I want the woman that I love back. More than just trying to fix what I've screwed up, I would like to talk to you again, not the rather callous woman who drives a hard bargain for meaningless things."

I took a step back from him. "Well, you've effectively turned them all down, so I'm done trying."

"But I'm not."

Someone's phone began buzzing inside of their pockets, and it only took one glance towards Elijah and Finn to realize that it was Elijah's phone. He had been the sort of designated go to person if something was going wrong, the one that everyone agreed to call.

I felt another arm wrap around my neck, and Kol tensed with the sight of his brother holding me this way, threatening me this way. It was almost sweet, but it was annoying right now.

Kol held a hand up, the one that didn't currently hold the dagger. "Relax, Nik."

I didn't know if he was actually gonna do that, but I didn't give him much option. Using magic to hurt Kol just wasn't something I could do, but a pain infliction spell on Klaus? There were many parts of me, even with my humanity, that kinda wanted to hurt him a bit, even if I had let bygones be bygones.

Without humanity, I didn't care about bygones and revenge. I didn't care about anything—except Kol apparently.

No.

Klaus was brought to his knees instantly, and I could hear the pain through his clenched teeth.

Kol took a single glance at his brother before holding both hands out this time, in an attempt to stop me from moving any closer to the door. "You're an Original, love, and that has made this both difficult and fun, but we've got centuries of experience under our belts, experience you will never have. You won't get out of this house."

I gestured towards Klaus, still on his knees and moaning in pain. "Yeah, but I've got magic, so . . . ."

It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't shown Kol all the things that Shea and Prisca had shown me. The Gemini had a lot of sneaky spells, ranging from cloaking, blood swapping, illusion, and going all the way to their fucked up merge ceremony spell.

Only two of those would help me out in this current situation, so instead of inflicting pain on Klaus' brain, I decided to do something much more fun. First, I cloaked us both, and watching Kol's eyes widen so far that I wondered if they might pop out of his head was pretty hilarious.

Then I made Klaus reappear, but he looked like me, through a simple illusion spell. Kol, clearly catching on that I was capable of more things than even he knew, didn't hesitate to snap my neck.

Well, at least that's what he thought. I actually ran across the room, to sit on the mantle of the fireplace, to get the perfect view of the fun I was getting to have with him.

"Shea was right. Illusion spells are fun."

Kol looked at me for a moment, but then he looked back to the person he thought was me, the brother whose neck had been snapped because I made him look just like me.

I could feel my lips growing into the best smirk I knew how, and I began kicking my legs against the frame of the fireplace beneath me. "So are you gonna let me have my fun now, or are you gonna make this more difficult? I'm clearly capable of more than you know, sweetheart, and I will break this curse."

Elijah stepped back into the room before Kol even got a chance to answer me, but he wasn't just rejoining for the sake of containing me. He came into the room with a purpose, a vengeance, and with him glaring at Kol the moment he could see his brother, I knew who it was directed towards.

"We don't have time for this nonsense! If you had just waited—"

Kol let out a shaky breath, cutting his brother off immediately. "I know, Elijah, but what is going on?"

It was getting harder to tell the truth from the lies, especially seeing Elijah so angry with Kol. I didn't really know much about why they were so mad at him. Was it because of his rash decision to turn off my humanity?

He was . . . he was just trying to give me free will.

"This won't work." I said the words, but they were soft. I couldn't even believe them myself, and I knew for certain that they wouldn't believe a single one of them.

Elijah's glare shifted to me, though I still didn't think it was directed at me. "This isn't a trick. I just got a call from Prisca. They spotted a member of the Gemini coven in town, while they were all out at dinner letting us clean up Kol's mess. It wasn't just a random member either. It was one of their elite."

Fear . . . it was the last thing I wanted to feel, but it was the first thing to overpower me, to break through the already crumbling wall that had kept my humanity hidden away. It was back now. I didn't know if they were watching me, if they could even see it, but I could feel it coming out strong, could feel it pounding my heart inside my chest.

It felt like it weighed a million pounds, yet it was somehow being squeezed, tight enough that the blood in my veins began to freeze. More than fear, I felt pain. Everything Kol had done . . . and for what? For me to just waste the day, while the Gemini were closing in the entire time?

What was going on?

A/N: I used to think that I kinda liked cliffhangers, but I've come to realize that I'm actually really fond of them. I hate reading them, but . . . x3

Anyways, yay. Her humanity is back. :D I thought about making it a bit harder, but the next chapter would've just flipped it back on with Kol's pain being the trigger, so there wasn't much point in delaying it.

I hope you guys like where the story is going!

Read, review, and enjoy. :)