go back to sleep


(a/n: For my gal, Trinity71)

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'don't fret, precious, i'm here
step away from the window
go back to sleep
i'll be the one to protect you from
your enemies and all your demons
i'll be the one to protect you from a will
to survive and a voice of reason
counting bodies like sheep
counting bodies like sheep
to the rhythm of the war drums
go back to sleep'
-'counting bodies like sheep (to the rhythm of the war drums)', a perfect circle

.

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She finds him curled up on the sofa, his legs curved underneath him and a comforter strewn over his lap. A book is in his hands and the firelight shines on his unneeded daylight ring, sending rays of blue crystal light dancing around the room.

Kol looks up from the book that is in his hands and a smile crosses his face. God, he's beautiful.

"Hey," she whispers. "How are you feeling?"

In answer to her question, the crackling fire roars up, making her jump slightly.

"Does that satisfy you?" he says, the corner of his mouth quirking up in a half smirk.

Bonnie rolls her eyes and shifts herself down onto the sofa beside him. She leans back against his knees, her gaze settling on the hissing flames in front of her. Kol doesn't move for fear to disturb her.

"Bonnie, what is it?" he finally says after nearly five minutes. His book has fallen to the floor, forgotten by both.

Bonnie doesn't take her eyes off of the fire. A heavy invisible weight settles onto her chest, pain rising in her heart.

"I'm sorry for the way I have been acting," she whispers, hot tears beginning to gather behind her eyes.

Kol finally sits up, gently shifting his knees out from behind her. He doesn't try to touch her, already seeing the signs of her shutting back down in front of him and that is something he wants to avoid. He wouldn't be able to stand it.

"For what, Bon?"

"For the way I have been acting since that night," Bonnie says. "For acting like I was the only one hurting."

"Jeremy was a big part of your life, Bonnie. I understand that."

"But he killed you," Bonnie spits out, turning to look at him.

"That was before all this happened," Kol supplies.

She sighs, glancing down at her clasped hands in her lap. "I know. Oh, god, I know."

"Then what is it?" he says. "Why have you been so distant? Do you blame me-?"

"Oh, no. No, absolutely not," Bonnie interrupts. Her eyes fly up to look into his honeyed orbs and she furiously swipes at her cheeks. "All I can think is-all I can really think about is how relieved I am that it wasn't you."

Kol is struck silent.

Bonnie doesn't really pay attention to his dumbstruck expression, shifting back to stare into the fire once again.

"Jeremy was my first love," she breathes, her tears coming to an end at last. "He made me feel so many things that I never thought I could feel. He made me feel...alive. Happy. Loved." Her voice catches in his throat. "And then I realized that I would never be first in his eyes. I would never be the one that he truly wanted."

Bonnie took a deep breath, feeling those stupid tears beginning to burn once again.

"I will always love him, until my dying day. He gave me so much. But—" Bonnie swallows deeply. "All I could think about that night after-after it happened is how relieved I was that it wasn't you."

Kol feels his soundly beating heart skip a couple of beats.

And then he shifts down onto his knees in front of Bonnie, catching her fingers in his. He looks up into her ivory jaded eyes, finally allowing himself to become vulnerable for the first time in centuries.

"I'm not going anywhere, Bonnie," Kol says, tightening his hands around hers. "Only if you ask me to leave, I will go. But you-listen to me, lamb. The first moment that I saw you in that hallway at the university, I knew. God, that sounds like a bad line out of one of those idiotic romance novels that Caroline and Rebekah read but it is the truth. I am in this. I'm not going anywhere."

Bonnie manages a half smile, hating just how incredibly exposed and weak she feels at this moment. But it's the good kind of exposed. With this man, she is open and flambéed in all the right ways.

She has never felt this way before and she doubts she will ever feel it again with any other man.

Bonnie goes down onto her knees then, switching their hands so she was holding his, palm to palm.

"What are you doing-?"

Bonnie shushes him, her eyelids falling closed.

The warmth begins at the tips of her toes and travels up her body. It spreads up her thighs and to her abdomen, coming right from the bottom of her gut and striking through the heart and down her arms.

Once that warmth, that amazing Power, reaches her fingers, it finds it's home in Kol's hands. She feels Kol gasp against her but doesn't let him break away, holding his hands even tighter as the magic continues it's course.

When it's over, they are both gasping for air.

"What-the hell-was that?" Kol asks, rising to his feet on shaking knees.

Bonnie flops down onto the couch, watching him through heavily lidded eyes as he stares at his hands.

"It's a little different from channeling," she says.

"What do you mean?"

"More magic. My magic. Consider it a loan."

"Bonnie, are you insane? Do you have any idea-?" Kol staggers over to the fireplace, leaning an arm on the mantle.

"I'm fully aware, Kol," Bonnie interrupts cleanly, delicately rising to her feet and approaching him. "And it's what you need because Silas is not going to get the upper hand again."

"I wasn't going to take your power," Kol says, glancing over at her.

"You're not. I'm giving you a little bit of mine. And you will take more from other witches. You are not going to be like a vampire and completely drain them. You will take when they offer and later on, when this hellish nightmare is over, you will give it back."

With Bonnie's magic running through his veins, he felt strange. No, not strange.

Alive.

God, he has never felt more alive.


He walks slowly through the thick fog. It surrounds him. Tries to choke him.

He lets out a small moan of fear, turning on his heel and peeling his eyes around. Trying to see anything. Anything at all.

A scream shatters the air and he takes off running.

As he reaches the clearing, he feels his fangs slip out. The blood rushes to his head and he sinks down into a predatory prowl. Even after turning, he had never been the actual killer. Hunting had gone through his bloodstream but with his desire to preserve life, he never killed unless he had too.

He hated who he was.

He never wanted to be a vampire. He never wanted to be a killer. He just wanted to live a normal life. It frightened him how much he hated his life. If someone plunged a stake through his chest tomorrow, he highly doubted he would blink an eye.

And then there's that girl.

That girl who had wanted him. The girl who gave him a kick in the ass when he needed it.

Damn that girl.

Another scream fills his ears and he speeds away, desperate to find the source of it.

His tattoo burns.

A hiss leaves his lips and he glances down at his arm.

The rising of the wolf.

A final scream rips through the air and he freezes, finally recognizing that voice.

"Rebekah."

The frozen doesn't last long and he takes off like a shot once again, stumbling into a clearing to find something that will remain with him until the end of time.

Rebekah is pinned to a tree, stakes through her wrists and feet, her blond hair matted with crimson blood. Her eyes are open merely a sliver, chilled tears slipping down her cheeks.

He stands there, just staring. Unable to take his eyes away.

But not just from his love.

From the person who put her there.

"Well, hello Matt. Nice of you to join the party."

And the final stake finds it's home.


"No! No, no, no, no! Oh, god no!"

"Matt! Matt, wake up!"

"No! Nonononono!"

One final shake and Matt jars away, finding himself looking into familiar and oh, so beautiful blue eyes.

A gasp later and Rebekah finds herself grasped in an iron embrace. She grunts uncomfortably, reaching a hand around and gently patting Matt on the back.

"Matty, what is it?" she whispers, managing to wrench her other hand free to return his embrace. "What happened?"

That face...oh, god, that face that he saw. He couldn't tell her.

"Something happened. Something bad," he breathes, finally allowing her to gently wriggle away from him.

"To me?" she asks.

Matt nods. A jolt of pain runs up his arm and he winces, glancing down. "Bekah, I think it's happening. Or going to happen soon."

Rebekah nods, carefully pulling the heavy quilts off of her legs. She rises, running a slightly trembling hand through her hair.

"Okay," she says, feeling more like trying to reassure herself more than Matt. "Okay." To her surprise, Matt takes charge.

"Get dressed," he says, getting to his feet as well, not even bothering to try and straighten the quilts on the bed. "I'll meet you downstairs."

With that final word, he disappears through the adjoining door to the bathroom, shutting it behind him.


"What's wrong?"

Of course, Bonnie reads him like a book.

"Bonnie, nothing's wrong," he lies.

The brunette shakes her head, touching his tattooed arm. Another flush of pain runs through his veins and he yanks his arm away with a hiss, his fangs slipping out for just a quick second. Fast enough to be unseen by the human eye.

But Bonnie Bennett isn't human.

She snatches his wrist just as he pulls it out of her grasp, her fingers closing around the heated skin. She pulls up his sleeve and just-stares.

The language that he doesn't understand and hopes he never will blazes with a light that is almost blinding.

Bonnie looks like a fish out of water for several seconds before she gathers her bearings.

"Matt, why-wha-why the hell haven't you said anything?!"

"Because it just happened last night, ok?" Matt snaps back, trying his best to keep his voice low even though he knows that the Originals in the house hear every word. "Just-just let it go. Say that you had a vision or something. Do not say that it was me."

"Matt, don't you understand? You are one of the Five and whether you like it or not, you are connected to Silas. You and J-Jeremy felt the burn of the tattoo at the first rising and now—now that you are the only one left, you will have it all. The visions, your tattoo burning—"

"Okay, okay, you can stop now!" Matt interrupts, his voice a little colder than he intended it to be. "So now what? Do we announce that I am having freaky visions of what's going to happen to that whole family? Or do we keep our mouths shut, this I prefer, and wait and see—"

"Matt, don't be stupid! You can't do that and you know it."

"Bonnie, you didn't see what I saw!"

"What did you see, Matt?" Bonnie's own voice drops slightly. "Tell me what you saw." Bonnie's fingers lace through her friend's. "Matt?"

"I saw Klaus...and it wasn't good."


Bonnie has a hard time pushing that mental image out of her head.

Seeing it, practically feeling it when she took the image from Matt's mind-it sickened her.

They didn't have much time before the next rising and it would only be a matter of days before they lost another of their number. Bonnie could almost taste the death that was sure to come from this.

And now seeing that in Matt's mind-

How the hell can you really warn your family about something like that? And when it something about one of your own...

Bonnie got her answer that night.


Silas likes the surprise effect.

Oddly enough, he had loved surprises when he was human. It was never often when he got to actually relax and enjoy being alive. There were those so few rare times where he was able to love, to live. To be free.

When she died, that all became meaningless. He tried to fight the blackness and the dark, to remain on the lighted side where he was supposed to be. He had thought that continuing to practice magic with Quetsiyah by his side would maybe help him want to live. To keep those demons away.

He became more and more attracted to those demons.

Being locked away in a box for two thousand years give a person time to think. He continuously dreamed about a life ruled by Hell power. A chance to take back all he gave up when he lost her, when Quetsiyah locked him away.

So when that moment arrived, he took it.

Surprisingly, it was quite easy to find the hybrid once again. Here he was, out in the open, unprotected by his warlock brother or any of his family. Silas could almost taste the glee in his mind because, really-? It was just too easy.

"Let's see how you like this," he murmurs as he slowly approaches him from behind.


"Klaus, are you out of your mind?! Where the hell did you go?!"

Kol freezes just as he is about to touch his brother's shoulder. Something isn't right.

God, nothing's ever right.

"Klaus?" He tries again, his voice dropping a few octaves. "Nik?"

His brother begins to turn around—and Kol sees it.

He feels it.

"Nik isn't here anymore." A voice that is not his brother's answers.

And then those sea blue eyes turn black.


Uh-oh!

Reviews are appreciated, my babies.