"At sixteen, you still think you can escape from your father. You aren't listening to his voice speaking through your mouth, you don't see how your gestures already mirror his; you don't see him in the way you hold your body, in the way you sign your name. You don't hear his whisper in your blood."
― Salman Rushdie, East, West
It was Elijah who said it first. "Mikael." The venom in his voice stung them all. "Cowardly brute crouching inside Bonnie." The wind shifted, currents sweeping up the aroma of the ritual's black bread in its wake. It was cruel how the scents stirred their earliest memories of home. Rebekah would flatten the dough rounds, cooking them on heated stones. Klaus recalled how he and his brothers would return from hunting, joking that it was merely flat blodpudding, and their sister wanted false tales of her cooking to reach the ears of a future husband.
Caroline would box his ears and tell him not to torment his sister. And then she showed Rebekah how to flavor the bread using hazelnuts from the Old Country.
The brief thought of Caroline stung Klaus more soundly than any insult Mikael could concoct. Had Mikael seen Caroline on the spirit plane? Was Caroline standing beside him now, her piercing blue gaze unseen? With a heavy heart, Klaus steeled himself for what was to come.
Bonnie's black eyes glittered with malice as she whipped her head around to study Elijah. It was disconcerting how Mikael's oily voice married with Bonnie's matter-of-fact tone to deliver a truly vicious punch. "That's father to you, boy." Heaving a great sigh, he mocked, "Always such a tedious lad, dedicating your miserable immortality to guiding your siblings down a righteous path. Filthy hypocrite — your shameful bloodlust and penchant for whoring is an indelible stain on our kinsmen."
Barely able to restrain Elijah when he lunged at Bonnie's cackling form, Klaus seethed, "You're no father, just a beastly coward who beat his family." The slight recoil of Bonnie's body and the bitter scowl on her face betrayed Mikael's torment, and Klaus welcomed the momentary victory.
"I was never your father, half-breed." Mikael raised Bonnie's limbs, clearly reveling in the witch's power as he levitated her body high above the flames. Klaus and his siblings stood in shock, mouths uncharacteristically agape at the spectacle. Did they know the witch could fly?
Kol elbowed Klaus, brown eyes going wide as he said in an awed whisper, "When do you think I should tell Bonnie about my Peter Pan fetish?"
Bloody wanker. Mikael had absconded with their witch, they were no closer to resurrecting Caroline, and all his foolish brother could think of was his libido. The thought of his Caroline trapped on the other side while this insipid nonsense raged on was maddening. Klaus snarled at his brother, "We've somehow summoned Mikael and now he's in our witch — perhaps now isn't the best time to entertain your idiotic flights of fancy."
Kol kicked aside a rune-engraved branch, muttering under his breath, "Mikael is not in Bonnie. Well, he's in her, but not in her in her, so everyone can bloody well stop pointing that out."
Bonnie jeered, "Ah, the buffoon. It was with deepest shame I heard of your disreputable exploits, ruining our once-proud name. So desperate to prove yourself a man, and yet you'll never be more than a petulant child." A fleeting glimpse of pain registered on Kol's face before his features smoothed once more. Klaus always had envied his younger brother's ability to carelessly brush aside such poison.
A spiteful surge of power emanated from Bonnie as Mikael used her to hurl flames from the ritual bonfires at Kol. Rebekah finally seemed to break from her frozen trance and leapt into action, knocking her brother out of the way. Lips twisted into a sneer as Mikael's voice taunted, "Always the frightened rabbit. What a trembling, useless daughter you've been — hiding behind your brothers. A true woman of our kinsmen would never be so weak." Rebekah's blonde head snapped back as though she'd been slapped, and it was the sight of her tears that caused Klaus to flash protectively to her side along with Elijah.
With a playful shrug, Bonnie mocked, "Of course, Niklaus' only saving grace was his woman. Quite the warrior she was — if only she hadn't been such a traitorous whore."
"Worthless old fuck, you don't speak of her!" Klaus' rage burned the night sky as he felt his heart bleed once more at the mention of his love. "Caroline bested you; you'll never be free of your torment," he swore.
Mikael coldly replied, "And neither will she. Caroline's soul rots with mine; she'll never be resurrected."
It didn't matter that their witch's shell was powerful and could uncover the magics long-buried to allow Caroline's escape from the other side. Red rage had him in a stranglehold and as his wolf nearly broke free, Elijah and Rebekah struggled to control him.
"Bonnie isn't to be harmed, Niklaus," Elijah hissed urgently. "Not only is she an invaluable resource to this family, but she also was Caroline's friend."
In the midst of the siblings' scuffle and Mikael's venomous taunts, Kol suddenly ripped away the keystone Bonnie had placed at the ritual's apex, grabbing fistfuls of dill and sage and hurling them into the closest bonfire.
With a choked gasp, Bonnie clawed at her throat, hurtling back to the ground where Kol valiantly swooped in to catch her. At his siblings' surprised expressions, he shrugged, explaining, "Any witch worth her cauldron keeps banishing herbs close by in case the spirits get grabby." His boyish face became uncharacteristically stern as he said, "I broke the link to Mikael — let's make sure we don't ever invite him back, yeah?"
Her curses were muffled against Kol's shirt as Bonnie lifted her head wearily. "Not my best performance, but we made some progress. I'll tell you guys what I figured out later." Grimacing as the black bled out of her gaze, she added raggedly, "After I vomit up all my innards and maybe sleep for 12 hours."
"You'll tell us now, witch," Klaus demanded, black veins crawling underneath his impatient glare. It surprised him how quickly Kol turned, his deadly vampire visage on display as he protectively held Bonnie tighter, backing away from the rest of his family.
"Bonnie said later. So, she gets as much later as she needs."
Despite his irritation, Klaus felt his lips twitch as his brother stomped away with Bonnie, Kol's tone hopeful as he asked, "Tell me, darling, any chance you packed a pair of green tights?"
Shaking her head, Rebekah followed after them, muttering about ensuring their brother didn't flirt his way into a permanent desiccation.
Klaus stooped to pick up the branch carved with runes, carefully setting it upright against a wide oak trunk. He started to follow Elijah's lead and gather the scattered ritual ingredients, but he couldn't seem to stop his hands from trembling. Mikael had tricked them. For a blissful, fleeting moment, he'd thought they'd found his beloved Caroline. He should've known better than to trust anything to easily fall into place. Not after his crimes.
Heaving a sigh, he slumped against a small rock ledge. Caroline deserved better than the immortality she wasted saving him. He needed to give her back the lifetimes he stole. As Elijah leaned on the rock next to him, Klaus quietly asked, "What do you think our witch discovered? Perhaps it was something our wretched father let slip?"
"The ritual opened a door to the other side; who knows what connections Bonnie made?" Elijah seemed deep in thought, only the slight twitch of his jaw revealed an internal struggle. The silence between them grew jagged, and the air somehow felt too heavy. When Elijah finally spoke again, it was a relief, even though what he said echoed Klaus' own fears. "Do you think Mikael was telling the truth?"
Klaus loathed the sympathy he saw in his older brother's gaze. Elijah always was so careful, so polite. It grated on Klaus' nerves and made his fangs itch to slash and tear. Elijah wouldn't speak the words, so Klaus did it for him. "Which part? That Caroline's soul is tied to that vile man's? That they rot together? Or that there's nothing I can do to save her from these torments?!" His wolf was restless as he began to pace across the dead leaves, a prickly coward who could do more for his beloved that snarl and cower at his father's vengeful spirit.
"I think he would like nothing more than for us to fail; it's always been our father's way," Elijah commented, his tone thoughtful as he stared up at the dark sky. "That's why you need to set it aside, Niklaus — your careless rage, this pitiful self-loathing you carry is a stone around your neck. The only way we can save Caroline is if you find your way back to that driven, domineering potentate who smugly laid claim to the whole world."
Despite his anguish, Klaus let out a dark chuckle. Ever the fixer, his brother. After Caroline staked herself, Klaus had unleashed his fury on Mystic Falls, tearing through brick and flesh alike as he failed to purge the madness that came from knowing everything he'd ever held to be true had been a lie. Caroline had been his enemy. Lie. Caroline betrayed him. Lie.
He unleashed a river of blood, polluting the charming streets with mangled corpses. When his beast had failed to be sated by the carnage, Klaus turned to ripping apart buildings in a tornado of claws and brute strength, hurtling his body through windows and walls. At first, Klaus' siblings had fled from his madness, but Elijah had returned in the wake of the destruction.
The details eluded him, but it appeared key government officials had been compelled (or bought) to scrub clean the evidence of Klaus' massacre, and announce a major disaster declaration. Humans were marvelously malleable with the right incentives, and now the whole country believed the unsuspecting residents had been victims of a gas leak or floods or fires. A shell company belonging to the Mikaelsons generously had purchased the town and announced it would be turned into a nature preserve.
Caroline would've been proud of Elijah for setting things right. And deeply ashamed of Klaus. Or perhaps ashamed of them both? Not that his beloved was without violence. While on the run in the early 1500s, Caroline had traveled to a series of islands that are now part of present-day Micronesia and Palau. While there, she apparently befriended a circle of shamans and put a violent, grisly stop to a series of unspeakable acts the recent colonizers had committed.
The few surviving members of the colony gratefully fled to Spain, only pausing long enough for the Basque navigator Toribio Alonso de Salazar to rename the islands the Carolines. Not that Klaus knew of any of this until centuries later. At the time, he foolishly believed the same stories everyone else did regarding widespread drought and famine and that the islands had been renamed to honor Carlos I and Charles V.
His Caroline. Always such a thorough, clever thing. Righting the world one massacre at a time with nary a whisper of the supernatural. Whereas he and Kol had run Elijah ragged cleaning up after their violent rampages over the centuries, sloppily compelling the masses to attribute the slaughters to plague or whatever war was conveniently being fought in that region.
"Perhaps now is not the time, but I've carried this with me for too long," Elijah unexpectedly said, pulling Klaus from his thoughts. With a pained sigh, he revealed, "My burden is this — I let Caroline go." At Klaus' confusion, his brother explained, "I was intrigued by Tamerlane and the Timurid Renaissance he established, and I eagerly traveled to Syria in 1400 to witness one of that era's greatest minds capture Damascus." With a note of awe, he added, "I watched his ruthless armies massacre the city, but they spared the artisans because Tamerlane commanded it. Even in the midst of empire-building, he knew enough to value the creators — the backbone of civilization."
Impatient to know what Elijah meant, Klaus asked sharply, "You met Caroline there? What happened?"
"I'd climbed atop a crumbling aqueduct, all that remained of the Roman empire's foothold, and watched as Tamerlane's army swept across the land. A glint in the sunlight caught my attention, and I was taken aback when I spied a woman wearing a fitted gold helmet. Before I realized it was Caroline, I was fascinated by her stillness. Human nature at its most raw, brutal form unfolded on that dusty plateau, and the woman merely observed it all. She was shrouded in loose garments, her hair pinned and wrapped beneath the helmet, and I was taken by her eagerness to absorb every detail of the battle."
Klaus hated how he held his breath, envious of his brother's memories. He tried to recall where he'd been in 1400, but it was a furious blur of bloodshed and booze. Bloody Kol.
"When she leaned forward, seemingly mesmerized by the efficient horse archers, her helmet toppled off, and I realized it was Caroline." Looking down at his clenched fists, Elijah added, "It was a momentary lapse; I'd been astonished to see her after all that time. I burned at the thought of her killing our mother and her supposed betrayal of our family, but there was just something so purely Caroline in that moment of her clumsiness and resulting temper as she stomped the sand rummaging for her wayward helmet. I couldn't bring myself to attack her."
His brown eyes were troubled as he glanced at Klaus, clearly concerned by how quiet he had grown. Elijah must've been expected quite the violent tirade, given how tense his body had grown.
Still reeling from Elijah keeping this memory from him all these centuries, Klaus immediately knew how he would've reacted before — unleashing his fury with claims of betrayal and likely would've ended with a dagger in Elijah's chest. Although now Klaus knew what an accomplished warrior Caroline had become, she may not have been able to best his brother all those centuries ago. Elijah had saved Caroline's life.
Klaus faintly whispered, "Thank you, brother."