Chapter Four:

Impulses and Instincts

Part 1

I

"Is this a joke? Are we really back here?"

It was safe to say, Kol thought, standing before Mystic Fall's Grill at the cusp of twilight, that Henryka, frowning at the brick and glass, was less than impressed. Shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his jacket, Kol smirked.

"Relax, darling. This is the most popular spot in this quant little town. Mortals are always coming and going."

Henryka didn't bother to try and hide the sneer curling her top lip over a very, very sharp fang.

"But I'm not after Muggles. They smell awful. Not appetizing at all. I need something with more… Bite."

Kol slipped from the pavement, away from the waking lamplight, strolling across the road for the door of the Grill, Henryka huffing as she went to follow.

"Ah, first rule of hunting, know your prey. Where there are mortals…"

He turned, grasping the handle of the bar door, swivelling to the smaller of the duo, just in time to see the smile stretch across the dimpled cheeks of his sister.

"There are vampires. This is a watering hole for the antelope. The Lions will be lurking around the corner and-"

She slid through the open door, Kol's chuckle trailing her back.

"Out pops the tiger."

Kol winked.

"Bingo."

He went to enter after her, but a faint buzzing from his jean's back pocket halted his steps. He waved Henryka on.

Kol pulled out his phone, wincing at the name flashing on the screen.

Elijah.

Kol unrepentantly declined the call, turned his phone off, and tossed it in the nearby trash can by the Grill door as he entered.

Would you look at that. He'd gone and lost his phone.

Oops.

II

Elijah sighed as the phone pressed to his ears met a dead tone for the third time. Hanging up and dashing the device on the table in front of him, he turned to his siblings in various states of thought.

"Kol's not picking up his phone."

Klaus, reclined on the couch, rolled his pale eyes.

"So he doesn't want to be reached? He's always doing this. He's likely got his knickers in a twist about this or that superficial slight and has gone off on a tantrum. Leave him be and he'll turn up in a week or two, blood-stained but whole."

That was about when Rebekah joined her brother's in the living room of their mansion.

"I can't find Henryka. I've searched everywhere."

That seemingly cooled off Klaus's levity of the situation, a barely noticeable tension creeping into the corners of his eyes as Finn, the last inhabitant of the room, bleakly chuckled.

"What are the chances our two most reckless siblings are simply sleeping somewhere or reading a calm, easy book in a corner nook of this house someplace?"

Elijah stood from his seat, tugging on the hem of his expensive suit jacket.

"Kol? Unlikely. Henryka? From what we've seen? Even more doubtful."

Rebekah threw in her own penny onto the mounting pile of bad ones.

"I think the real question is what bloody mayhem are they cooking up wherever they are?"

Klaus sighed and slapped his hands down on his thighs before haggling himself to a stand.

"Mayhem I better go out and stop before they bring the roof down over our heads, or Henryka finds another aspiring Dark Lord to fist-fight."

Elijah shook his head.

"We do not know where they are or what they are up to, and perhaps we should hold off on storming out into the streets to-"

Klaus cut him off sharply, eyebrow cocked high.

"Ah, yes, Kol, our sibling renowned for his level-headed thinking, and Henryka, who from personally witnessing the memories of, we all know keeps herself far out of pandemonium, are both simultaneously missing and are clearly not causing hell out there in Mystic Falls right now. Excuse me while I also go and write to Saint Nicholas for the new watercolour set of paints I have been eyeing up for Yule this year."

Elijah glared hotly.

"No need for your marvellous witticism, Niklaus."

Rebekah sidled in between her scowling brothers.

"Bloody hell, will you two stop this nonsense for five minutes? It's simple enough. One of us goes out and finds them, and the rest will stay and guard Mother's coffin and… Whatever it is that… Creature is doing carting chests and boxes into the room upstairs."

Finn made his way for the door.

"I'll go and-"

Niklaus beat him there, already through the crux.

"You'll do no such thing. I'll go."

Rebekah laughed, and laughed loudly.

"Yes, let's send Nik out to calm the looming storm. Why didn't I think of that before? Oh, right, it's because adding gunpowder to an open flame is never the smart choice!"

Niklaus did not seem so affronted by the accusation. In truth, he did not have very much room to argue against it at all.

Niklaus was gunpowder, coarse and raw and dark on its own but relatively innocuous when unprovoked with outside stimuli. He never did things simply for doing them, rather, he moved with the time, the people, reacted to circumstance, yes, often violently and sensationally and far over the top as gunpowder was prone to do, but never without some form of causation, even if he was the only one to know what that was at any given time. Klaus was a reactionary forever battling against external incitements.

Henryka clearly was a flame, a tiny spark, a flash-fast strike that once lit grew in unpredictable, uncontrollable, ways. She knew how to start bonfires, how to goad and rouse and inflame, years of abuse granting her an uncanny sort of observation to see under people, in them, to know a man's triggers and prompts and what strings to pull for a desired affect. Henryka was an anarchistic revolutionary, rebellion in her bones, chaos at her fingertips, who couldn't stop herself from fighting for the contrary.

And Kol?

Kol was the boom. A clap of thunder, the crash of a wave against a hull of a ship, the sound of a bullet being shot, a warning of the rage above and below the skin. He never needed much to explode, never needed motivation beyond his own character, storms rage, bullets fly, and Kol would burst, it was the way of things, his nature, a sincere hedonist forever hunting for the next high.

The one thing that connected the three together?

If there was trouble, at least one would surely be in the very middle of it.

The problem was, Elijah found, Klaus knew this all too well too.

"And how else are you going to wrangle them back? Finn can mope at them, Elijah can dither and dawdle, and you, dear sister, can bat your pretty little eyes at them. I'm sure that will work and stop them both in their tracks."

Niklaus threw his arms out wide, grin brash and maybe, just maybe, when dealing with Kol and Henryka, especially together, overconfident.

"Face it, right now, whatever the two are doing, I'm the most likely to put a cork in it and get them home relatively quickly where we can sort out this Linking Spell mess and not worry about a revolt being instigated in the streets. Now, anyone else want to waste more time by debating the logistics of it all?"

Silence.

Klaus swivelled on his heel.

"Good. I find myself tired of the back and forth. Don't wait up."

III

The two siblings had quickly colonised a booth in the far back of the Grill, shrouded in a dark furthermost corner. Kol nursed a beer in his hand as Henryka pushed around her own tumbler of whiskey across the slightly tarnished table, bouncing it from one hand to the next with a slip and slide and an irrepressible sort of energy.

He jiggled the bottle of beer merrily in Henryka's direction.

"First part of having a good hunt is to blend in. Like a spider, find a corner and spin your web, but hide in the shadows. Wait for a thread to be plucked."

Henryka eyed her whisky before downing half of it in one gulp.

"Or, and hear me out here, instead of a long, tedious, boring wait around, we finish our drinks and then snatch whatever comes skirting across our paths first."

From the lethargic whirl of the fans to the resting light of eventide that would soon be starlit black, the bar soaked in the atmosphere of the night, and Henryka, in the darkest corner, looked like a burning wildfire sweeping the countryside.

And like a raging wildfire, if left alone, she would burn herself out too quickly and the fun would be over.

She needed to learn to smoulder.

"Your age is betraying you. Patience, little sister. Trust me. It's better when the chase is gradual. It's half the fun of it. You were the one who came to me for help, after all."

A gradual ascent was half the fun of many things, in truth. And Henryka had come to him. Not Elijah, with his clinical, almost sterile, duck and dine approach. Not Niklaus, with his over-the-top games, and convoluted theatrics. Not Rebekah and her almost stumbling-bumbling luck of the draw stalking. And, Odin forbid, not Finn with his incessant weeping and self-disgust.

She had come to Kol, and that meant… Something, surely?

Like when they were kids, and he used to pick her the best apples in the high-drawn trees.

Only the best, only the sweetest, only the rosiest.

Henryka flicked a blunt nail against the glass in her hand, nearly chipping the rim.

"Alright, okay. We'll do it your way, then."

The rest of the whisky went down a pale, slender throat, a bob on the swallow. She didn't even wince at the burn. The grin she gave was fire enough, Kol supposed.

"Do you think the rest have figured out we're not in the mansion yet?"

Mansion.

Not home.

That could come later too, Kol supposes.

Kol asserts.

Home would come later. First, food.

His grin matched her own.

"Elijah's most definitely sitting in the armchair by the fire, some old dusty book open on his lap, regretfully crooning neeeklaus in that grandiose way he does with a disappointed shake of his head."

Henryka chuckled, like soot in smoke, the kind that clings to skin and stains, and she saw Kol's game without him having to point it out, and joined in.

"Mani's prancing through the hallways shouting REBEKAAAAAH."

Kol snorts around a mouthful of beer.

"And our dearest sister is hissing bloody hell, Nik through her small, white teeth."

Henryka reached across and unrepentantly stole his beer. He lets her take it, maybe because she came to him and not the rest of their siblings, maybe because he was feeling oddly generous, and maybe, a dark little voice adds, that was not so little when it came to Kol Mikaelson, that there was something… Unreasonably satisfying in seeing her lips lock over the glass rim, right where his own had been moments before.

A kiss with an added step.

Kol didn't question it. He never did with his impulses.

Like a good chase, that was half the fun.

"And Finn?"

Kol shrugged.

"Waxing poetically about the nature of the human soul in some dark corner like his good ol' friend Byron."

Stretching over, Kol swiped the beer back, swigged, and there was a quaver, a tiny shiver, right at the base of his spine when his own mouth met warm glass.

"Finn… Do you think-… He's alright, now, isn't he? He's not going to…"

She lets it drop, maybe she can't bring herself to say it, and Kol already knew what she meant.

Finn did try and off himself not long ago. Tried to take the rest of them with him too, on dear Mama's orders. There's anger there, Kol felt. A bit of bitterness too. Most of all, however, most of all there's-

Sympathy.

Not a lot, compassion and empathy are not Kol's strongest suites, but just a dash of it, a teeny bud in his chest threatening to bloom, born from knowing personally what being locked in a coffin for centuries iwas like, how disorientating waking up to a whole new fucking world could feel, how… Being on the outside looking in can make a man feel.

Kol knows, he understands to some degree, but he does not, never, forgive or condone.

"He's fine. Finn… Finn's always needed his space. Give him a while to get his thoughts all in a row, and he'll stop the brooding. If not, I'm sure we'll figure a way out to get him out from under his gloom."

It's the best he can give, and it was little comfort. Still, they would keep an eye on their eldest brother. That's all they could do right then. Wait for Finn himself to think his own actions through, to get a grasp on his own tumultuous emotions, to understand himself so they could all begin to understand him too.

Kol shook his head.

"Now, concentrate, or we're going to be here all night before you catch a scent."

Henryka huffed, bright curls fluttering about her delicate shoulders with a shake and a grumble.

"Scent? That's what we're waiting for? I can already smell eight…"

She freezes, nostrils flaring minutely.

"A witch, six hybrids, and one vampire."

Kol's brows shot up.

"Bloody hell, darling. That's quite the nose you've got there. Why didn't you say something sooner?"

Henryka glared unapologetically.

"Spider, remember? I thought we we're meant to be waiting for one to stumble across us. That's typically how spiders work."

Kol downed the rest of his beer and pushed it away, all interest in the drink lost and gone.

The bottle was cold now, nothing but his own breath and taste left to mingle with the hops and barley.

Boring.

"No, I said we wait until the thread is plucked. Scent is a thread. Now come on."

Henryka stood with him, shimmied out the booth with him, ambled for the door with him, and there it was again, that thrill, that shiver, that victory.

With him.

"Where are we going now?"

Kol grinned, all teeth, all bite, all folly.

"To start the chase."

IV

Kol followed Henryka down the crooked, murky alley way, somewhere just on the outskirts of town as the buildings were beginning to thin out to the woodland bracken floor. The three they were trailing were heading for the thickets. He peeked his head around the corner, pulled it back just in time from one of the three up front from turning around and catching sight of him in the moonlight.

It was… different. Hunting something with senses only a shade duller than your own. Mortals were easy to fool, to trick, to trap. These were different. These had fangs. These had fight. Dangerous, maybe.

Deadly, even.

Fun, absolutely.

"And these are?"

Henryka was only a stride ahead, having led them here through her astute nose, close to the alley wall, watching, nimble fingers stippled on brick.

"Hybrids. They have the same… arboreous smell as Klaus, tinged with spice but lesser than him... Duller. Witches and wizards have a more citrusy aroma. Lemony, almost tart."

Kol slunk in closer to Henryka, chest to back nearly, voice low and hushed and deep. This close, she slotted underneath his chin, deceptively slight. If he wanted to, he could rest his chin on the crown of her head.

"And vampires?"

She finally took her gaze away from the three ahead, squinted over shoulder, up and right at him. A flare of a nostril, pupils blown in the night, black stars in an aurora borealis. Alert, focused, intent.

"Wine. Like… Warm mulled wine. The older the vamp, the sweeter the smell."

Kol didn't quite know how to take that titbit and wonders, idly, just how sweet his own scent is to Henryka. Vampire's, to him, smell like old books, paper-thin, aged. Dull. Witches have something of a watery scent, river-mud and river-reeds. Tedious. And Hybrids-

Wet cotton-rag-dogs.

Dreary.

Mortals smell different, each and every one. Some are meaty, some are sour, some, his favourite, have a spice to their heartbeat that blooms with the thrum, and Kol was always sure to get their heart thumping before a feast.

This close, he could smell Henryka clearly in the alley way.

There was something… Sizzling about it, heated but saccharine, like burnt honey peppered with cinnamon with only a dash of vanilla and something-

Something dark.

Something that reminded Kol of coals, or amber, or that clear, sharp-dark scent right before lightning strikes earth and sand and makes glass.

His gaze trickles back to the Hybrids up front, but he holds that scent in his nose, lets it settle in his lungs, a bit dizzying, a bit whirling, a bit soaring.

The Hybrids make it to the copse.

Klaus's merry little experiment.

Serves him right, then, what came next.

Kol grinned as they came to the end of the alley, watching the three hybrids clearly making there way to the little camp they had set up in the forest under Klaus's instructions.

Right by the Salvatore boarding house if Kol wasn't mistaken.

And he wasn't.

Klaus possibly thought he was sending a message there. Kol didn't care for it.

Henryka went to take a step forward, but Kol reached out and snatched an arm, gentle but firm.

"What are you doing? They're right there-"

"Not yet."

"No one's going to see out here-"

"Not yet."

The hand did not leave the arm, but a thumb gently stroked over pale, freckled skin, a sweep back and forth, a mimic of a heartbeat. Kol's chin lowered, nestled in the juncture of shoulder and neck, gaze ahead to the shrinking shadows of the men between the trees, a bloom of his and Henryka's breath miring together into one hollow cloud.

"This is it. This is the moment that makes or breaks a hunt. Take it too fast, and it's unfulfilling. Take it too slow, and not only do you risk the chance of spooking the prey, but you'll get tired of it yourself. Slow. Take it slow. Focus. There's no consequences. There's no plans. There's no reasoning. For once, ignore your thoughts and just… Feel."

The arm beneath his grip tightened for the barest of moments, a fight ready to be made, and then-

It eases.

A release.

A click of fangs, the exhale of a warm-burned-honey breath, the starkest of noises, echoes in the alley way.

Kol grinned and lets go, just as Henryka crouches and darts for the brush, skulking through the silhouettes, .

"There we go."

Kol sighs and, too, gives chase.

V

The Hybrid camp was small, condensed, barely a few haphazard tents pitched around a dying campfire.

A dying campfire Luke was trying to stoke back to life when he felt it. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He looked up, around, through the dark, silver glinted trees in the night. Nothing caught his eye in the shadows, and still-

"You feel that?"

Brian, crouching at his side, piling in the firewood in the heart of the stone circle, glanced up, frowning.

"Feel what?"

Luke shook his head.

"Oh, nothing."

He plucked up a twig by his boot, poking at the kindling, hoping the branches above would just catch fire and give him a break.

As if.

God, he was hungry.

He would need to go hunting soon.

He loved hunting, especially the small ones.

The thrill, the chase-

"Ugh-"

Brian grunted at his side. Luke scoffed. How heavy was a bundle of sticks, after all?

Little bitch.

"Stop complaining. I had wood duty last night and you didn't hear a peep out of me. Do you think we could head over-…"

Luke glanced over to his side.

His empty, barren side.

The branch in his hand fell to the wayside, into the fire and the ashes, catching. He stood, dusting his hands off on the thighs of his jeans.

"Brian? Bro?"

No one answered.

No one answered.

The woods were suddenly, irrevocably, unnaturally silent.

Jonathan was no longer by his tent, humming. Mary was no longer carrying the pitcher of water to the buffet table, scoffing and mumbling beneath her breath. Harley was no longer spooning out stew from the cooking pot, chuckling as he went.

The woods were bare. bare and dark, even to him, a Hybrid.

"Hello!"

Luke dared a step forward.

"This isn't funny, you Assholes-"

The flap of a tent fluttered in the breeze. A bloody handprint shimmered in the moonlight.

Luke froze, a crunch, and whirled.

A girl, or a woman, it was hard to see age beneath the blood, stood by the campfire, Brian bent and broken at her feet, right behind him.

Was she always there?

She was small, tiny really, more an explosion of colour than a form in the night. Red hair, red stained dress, red smeared skin, red smile.

She leant to the side and spat something out.

It plopped into the fire, sizzling. Wet.

He smelled burned flesh.

A chunk of flesh.

The chunk of flesh missing from Brian's broken, right-angled neck.

His friend stared blankly at him with unseeing eyes from the forest floor.

Luke braced, anger flooding through him, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling like a siren, a run, run, run shaking his bones.

He should have listened to that, that little voice in his head, that warning cutting over him.

He didn't.

"Stay back! You don't know who you are messing with! Niklaus Mikaelson is my Sire-"

The last thing Luke Fonti saw was the eyes. Yellow in the black, like suns rising at dusk. They didn't glow, not like a Hybrids, not like an Original, they… Reflected, gleamed, like a big cats when light catches pupil and iris just so.

The shine of death in the dark.

And as he was flung backwards, the woman-

The thing on him, as double-set fangs teared into his neck, he wonders, briefly, if this is how his own casualties felt, a searing pain, a frantic dash, and then a short sharp drop to nothingness.

VI

Kol Mikaelson whistled long and low as he came out of the treeline into the ravaged camp.

The campfire had spilled over in a struggle, burning the surrounding grass into the shape of a comet. A tent had been ripped from its pegs, left caught to flutter around a tree trunk. A table had been knocked over, legs broken, pots dropped.

"That was… That was something, darling. Even I don't think I could have cleared so many out in such a short amount of time."

Henryka, still stooped over the last broken body, finally pulled herself away from the bleeding neck with a pop and an almost annoyed growl. Impulses and instincts waning, she crashed to the floor, idly wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand.

It would do no good.

It only smeared the red into more red.

She was positively dripping in blood.

"That was… New."

Kol remembered his own first hunt, his real one, not the few and sparse confused, bumbling nibbles he had in the beginning weeks of his undead life. His had been a small mill family on the edge of their village.

They had never seen him coming, as the Hybrids had never had the chance to see Henryka.

He still remembered how… Dazed he had been afterwards, staggard, fogged down in the blood-rush that had lasted the entire night, still partially in that murky mind-space of hunt, hunt, hunt.

Stepping over a torn off arm, Kol shrugged out of his coat as he made the short crossing to Henryka's side.

"You'll get more control as you get older. Not a lot, mind you, but some if you're anything like the rest of us. If you're more like me, enough to know when to stop and to be able to do it. If push comes to shove. If you're more like Finn with his rather impressive control, you won't need to feed much at all beyond a sip. It all depends on your temperament before the change, Elijah thinks. Or, in your case, before the awakening. I never really knew when to stop, personally. Didn't really care enough to learn."

Softly, he held his coat out. Henryka looked up, down to the jacket, down to her torn, wrecked dress, winced, and took the offering. It drowned her as she slipped it on.

"On a scale of one to ten, how pissed is Mani going to be, do you think?"

Anew, he whistled, taking a lingering gander around the wreckage around them, the hands free from arms, the eyeball that had somehow ended up stuck on a tree branch, the frayed necks.

"Oh… Fifteen, at least. This was at least two-thirds of his Hybrids. Thirteen I counted, but I lost track of you from the tree top somewhere near the stove."

Kol grinned, but Henryka, again, winced.

"He's going to kill me."

She shook her head, cutting herself off.

"Or at least try to."

Once more, she glanced down to herself.

"Or Rebekah will when she sees the state of her dress I stole."

Kol huddled down, onto his haunches at her side, the light from the fire glistening in ochre and gilt on the planes of their faces.

"Hey, none of that. Who cares what they think?"

The wince rolled to a grimace.

"I care what they think. I've been here less then forty-eight hours, and I've just… I… I couldn't stop and…"

Searching the ground around him and finding nothing of use, Kol reached for the hem of his shirt and began to slip it over his head.

He didn't like the sudden turn in her voice, the worry, the fear.

Not here.

Not with him.

"They'll say nothing. They were just as hungry when they were younger. You should have seen the parish Nik wiped out in France… Now that was a blood bath, and an archaeological marvel when they dug it up a few years ago. They… They'll understand. We get it. Not all of us are Finn's or Elijah's."

With the cotton bundled up in his hand, Kol smiled, stretching over to dab and wipe at the blood coated, dripping face of his sister.

For the first time since snapping out of her hunt-seized daze, Henryka smiled, a flash of white and warmth.

"You used to do this before."

Kol cocked a brow, momentarily halted.

"When you brought me apples… I remember. I used to get apple juice all over the place, bits of it in my hair and between my fingers and over my face. You'd undo the sleeve of your doublet and dip it in the river water and wash it clean away."

He… He had not remembered that until now.

Now.

There was a now, between him and Henryka, and it hit him again suddenly as it had in that hallway back home. There wasn't only those memories anymore, but these ones too, ones that they would make in the future, between apples and blood and campfires.

The thought alone settled something thorny in his chest.

He smiled softly now, less like the fire and more like the ashes.

"What are brother's for if not for cleaning up your messes?"

He goes to dab again, but her hand folds over his own, thin, long fingered, scarred but as soft as petals, and she unwound the cotton from his hand, took it into her own, and-

And reaches up to dab at his own face, where the blood of her kill had splattered and hit him.

It's a soft movement, as this was a tender-soft moment, contrary, so fucking contrary, to the carnage lying dead around them, and that thorny thing, that terrible, thorny thing in his chest unravels with her touch, melts away, unfurls to something warmer, something brighter, something flowered.

"Sisters too, I think."

Him and she, cleaning up each other's messes.

Kol's never had that before. Elijah, Rebekah, Niklaus, even Finn, often left him to his own devices, left him-

Left him.

Kol reached up and clutched the hand at his face, but he did not pull it away, he did not take the ruined shirt, he did not lower it.

He just held the hand, looping fingers.

Held it and squeezed.

He felt oddly naked then, much more than being simply shirtless, as if Henryka could see right into his bones, right into his soul, whatever scrap of it he had left after all this time, and Kol thought…

Well, he thought he would have turned away, shied away, shielded that blackened bit, but he didn't.

Here it was.

Here I am.

And Henryka does not turn from it, does not snarl in disgust or regret. She just sees something, maybe even that little boy who dipped his sleeve in river water to clean her face, inside him, and she just squeezes just as tightly back.

What are siblings for, if not seeing the ugly parts of each other, and still holding on.

The moment was broken when Henryka glanced over his shoulder, frowning.

"I-… Klaus is coming. I can smell him."

Kol, begrudgingly, let go of the hand, but he did grin again, playfully tapping the end of her freckled nose.

"That wonderful nose of yours is going to take us places, darling."

The grin grew roguish along with a pop of a dark brow.

The night was young, and Kol wasn't going to let Niklaus shout curtain call now.

"Dine and dash?"

Henryka dropped the shirt to the grass.

"Dine and dash."

The pair chuckled as they stood, Henryka's pitching high when Kol swooped down, coiled an arm around the back of her legs and lifted.

"What do you bloody well think you're doing-"

Over his shoulder, Kol bounced her before darting for thicker trees.

"You may be fast, but I'm better at hiding and if you can smell him, Klaus is too close to outrun."

VII

The siblings huddled in the top limbs of a tall tree, a halo of stars as their ceiling, a vantage point that let the pair peer through the night to the campsite below. Their legs dangled over the end of the thick branch, thigh pressed to thigh, bare and pale in the moonlight, Henryka hooked into Kol's side, watching, waiting-

"You-… You Whahahawha-… My HYBRIDS!"

At Klaus clumsy and uncharacteristically ungainly cry from down below, Henryka snorted, chortling-

Kol tried to dash his own laughter as he bent a bare arm around her shoulders, smothering her laughter under his hand, holding it somewhere safe.

She only laughed harder, as he, himself, did too.

Klaus raged below.

"I can bloody well hear you two giggling! What-… My Hybrids! What have you done!?"

Knowing the game was up, but not over, never over, Henryka plucked Kol's hand from her mouth, shouting back.

"I was a bit peckish!"

Drawn by her voice, but still not quite sure where it was coming from in the echo of the forest, Kol watched Klaus draw closer to the campfire, searching with a keen eye and a snarl.

"You-… You ate my hybrids?!"

Henryka chuckled again, but Kol shushed her, noticing Klaus's head turn in their general direction.

How long would it take him to figure to look up?

Long enough to get a few jabs in.

"She did you a favour really! They were pretty useless! Barely put up a fight! Not much of an army at all!"

There we go, Kol thought. Klaus had pinned them in the shadows, in the right direction, but he still wasn't looking up.

"Oh, I bet. I also bet this was your idea, Kol. Couldn't stand the thought of me having anything-"

Kol didn't know when Henryka had gotten her hands on a pine-cone, not exactly, but he did know when she sent it sailing out the tree, right for Niklaus's head.

"Leave off. This isn't his fault. I'm the one who ate them."

Klaus caught it before it struck, fingers clenching, turning seed to dust with a scrunch. His eyes locked onto their tree. In a flash, Klaus sped off, right to the base, and peered up, eyes flickering yellow.

Henryka-

Henryka waved bashfully down at him from the gloom.

Kol threw his head back and laughed hard.

"Get down here. Now."

Laughter still aching pleasantly in his chest, along with things he couldn't quite name, Kol leaned over the branch, winking down to an irate Klaus.

"I don't think so. We're pretty comfortable up here, aren't we, darling?"

Henryka nodded.

"Quite."

Klaus ran a tired hand down his face, palm catching stubble, chest catching growl.

"Get down here or I'll knock this bloody tree down with you two in it! I have just spent the last four hours trying to track the pair of you down, and what do I find? A Salvatore dying of a bite my own blood barely fixed, and my Hybrids decimated."

Henryka shook her head.

"The Salvatore-thing doesn't count! I did that before I found you guys. And, anyway, now Darron or whatever owes you one for saving his life! You should be thanking me-"

Klaus spluttered.

"Thank you? Thank you?! You've led me on a merry adventure when I could have been-"

Ultimately, having enough of Klaus's indignant rage, and the recoiling of Henryka beside him under the flare of his anger, Kol intervened.

It was all too easy, given her fiery demeanour, to forget exactly where Henryka had been before here. But Kol remembered, and Kol wouldn't let Klaus forget.

Gentle steps, you bloody idiot.

"She was hungry, Niklaus. She's barely two-days turned, and had yet to have a proper meal. What did you think was going to happen? And what could you have been doing, aye? Marching about the house grumbling? Glaring at mother's coffin? Arguing with Elijah over Plato again?"

That cools Klaus's temper, at least enough to let it simmer instead of boil, as he must have remembered his own turning too, the insatiable… Appetite the first year is wrought with.

Still, Klaus squinted about himself, to his very, very dead Hybrids.

"But my Hybrids…"

This time, Kol turned cold.

"Are they more important than Henryka, Nik?"

Klaus's gaze shoots to him in the dark like an arrow, holds for a moment, before, slowly, falling to the redhead at his side-

The worried redhead he can now clearly see, worry hiding underneath bravado, underneath repartee.

His shoulders sag and his hackles drop, and there was something almost fractured in his face.

"Of course not. Henryka, you didn't think I was going to…"

Henryka, not surprisingly, tried to play it off.

"No."

Her answer comes too quick, however, too swift, too stiff. Klaus, at last, understands, as Kol had.

Henryka had grown up locked in a cupboard, scavenging scraps underneath the heavy fists of an adopted uncle, and the hawkish beak of an aunt.

She was used to violence when she thought she had made a mistake.

A mistake meant a beating.

A mistake meant a missing meal.

A mistake meant being locked away.

A mistake meant pain.

That was why Kol joked, why he hid them up a tree when he knew Klaus would find them there instead of letting the Hybrid hunt them down across town, why he grinned down at Klaus and turned it all into a game.

Something fun.

No violence.

No pain.

No missing meal.

Just laughter.

We're not them.

You're safe here.

Dead Hybrids or not.

Niklaus sighed and smiled up at the pair.

"They were rather hopeless… And I suppose Damon does owe me one now. I could get him to retrieve me some Petrova blood from the Doppelganger. Blood for blood, and all that. It seems fair."

From his side, Kol could feel Henryka unwind from the knot she had tied herself into. Klaus stepped back from the tree trunk.

"Come on down, you two."

Kol braced himself on the branch, readying to jump, but Henryka didn't so much as move a muscle.

Evidently, just like Kol, she didn't know when to quit.

"What do I get if I do?"

The skin below Klaus's left eye twitched.

"What do you get for killing my Hybrids? I ought to-"

Kol glared as he met his brother's eye.

Don't. She's not ready for that yet. She won't realize it's just idle warnings.

Klaus bit his tongue, and spoke through clenched teeth, and Kol enjoyed that image far too much.

"What do you want?"

Henryka leaned over to Kol, voice hushed, but not low enough for Klaus to not hear.

"What do you want?"

Kol chuckled.

"What do I want?"

Henryka nodded, as if it were as natural as breathing, if either of them were still human, to think about what Kol wanted.

Again, the lick of heat was back in his chest, and Kol leaned in, whispering in her ear.

Henryka bustled in the branches, and peered down at Klaus.

"We want your Bentley. The silver one."

Nik's hand clenched at his side.

"We is it? That's a priceless car I've had for nearly a century-"

"I suppose we can make a bed up here. Maybe get some cushions-"

"Fine-… Fine. You can have the bloody Bentley, but no more eating my Hybrids!"

"That will cost you extra. Maybe throw in the Aston Martin and we have a deal."

A beat.

"The Bentley and the Mercedes, and that's it, you imp."

Henryka disappeared in a puff of smoke, only to instantly appear in front of Klaus in the same pearl coloured fog, grinning from ear to ear, clapping him on the stunned shoulder as she strolled on passed with a bounce in her step.

She could bloody teleport this entire time?

And she… She still hadn't left Kol alone to face the brunt of Klaus's anger?

Warm. Yes, that feeling, that sense in his chest was warm, and slick.

"Deal."

Kol landed on the forest floor below with a thud, just as Klaus grumbled.

"How did I end up losing my Hybrids and my cars? And you-"

Klaus jabbed a finger in his direction.

"Henryka doesn't know better yet, but you do. I won't forget this."

Kol swaggered passed.

"I'll be sure to remember that when I'm driving around in your-… Sorry, my new Mercedes."

Klaus pinched the bridge of his nose, taking a, unneeded, steadying breath before following his siblings out of the forest, only to realize a moment later that, of course, Henryka was walking in the opposite direction.

"Where are you going? The Manor is this way."

Both Kol and Henryka ignored him, the latter glibly replying over her flank.

"Oh, I never agreed to go home yet. I only said I'd come out of the tree. Honestly, Mani, you have to pay more attention to how things are worded before you strike a deal."

go home yet.

home.

Henryka had called it home.

Kol swivelled, walking backwards, arms flung out.

"The nights still young brother, may as well enjoy it!"

"Why are you shirtless?"

Kol didn't answer, instead turning back around, looping an arm around Henryka's shoulder, their laughter following their retreating shadows.

Klaus-

Klaus sighed and reached into his back pocket, plucking out his phone, and hitting the speed dial.

Elijah answered on the third ring.

"Found them?"

Klaus hummed, as he moved to catch up with the pair practically dancing through the trees.

"There's a mess outside the Salvatore's, in the left flanking woods where I… Where I had my Hybrids stashed. I need you and Finn to come clean it up."

A crackle rang over the line.

"And then you three will be home, yes?"

Klaus grinned.

"The nights still young brother, may as well enjoy it!"

"Niklaus-"

Klaus hung up, and sped through the woods, towards the song of Kol and Henryka's laughter.

You know what they say.

If you can't beat them, join them.

VIII

Elijah Mikaelson threw his phone down on the table, shirking on his blazer.

"Finn, I need you to head to the Salvatore's. Take a shovel with you. I'm guessing there's bodies to be buried before daybreak."

Finn was already moving for the door, Rebekah, too, stood from her chair.

"Where are you going?"

Elijah made way for the foyer.

"You were right. Sending Niklaus to reign in Kol and Henryka was possible the worst lapse in judgement I have made in the last century. I'm going to rectify that."

Rebekah sped in front of him.

"I'm coming too-"

"No. I need you to stay here while Finn cleans up whatever mess is waiting for him in the forest. We need mother's coffin watched in case the Salvatore's or their allies have a momentary abysmal idea and think of trying to take it for this or that hairbrained scheme of theirs."

"But-"

"Rebekah, please. The night has barely started, there's already a body count, and now not only are we two siblings down, Niklaus has decided to join in on the madness. I need someone with half a brain to hold down the fort while I try to, perhaps in vein, mitigated whatever disaster our wonderstruck vagabonds are out there causing. Just-… Just stay put right now."

Rebekah held true, for a moment, before sighing and stepping aside.

"Alright, but you owe me."

Elijah sidled passed.

"That Louis Vuitton bag you've been eyeing all week will be making its way through the post to you come morning."

"And the shoes!"

"And the shoes."

The front door slammed shut behind him.

A.N: The author leant over the cooking pot, spoon in one hand, jar in another.

"And just a sprinkling of sexual tension."

She slipped on a character sheet, and the entire jar goes in. The whole thing blows up in her face, leaving behind a sticky Kol shaped mess.

"Of course. Kol knows nothing about subtext."

Lol. No, seriously, I have found writing to be a bit like cooking. You make a recipe you think might work, try and follow it, and sometimes, like this chapter, characters just don't listen to you and do their own thing as sometimes ingredients just do their own thing. I did originally want any attraction/tension to be very, very subtle in the beginning, but Kol, glorious, hedonistic Kol, wouldn't go along with it, and it just seemed out of character to make him so… Unaware of himself and demure almost. So this is what we get, folks.

Additionally, I've always pictured hunting and blood drinking, on the Vampire's part, to be very carnal. Its an act that stimulates the senses and gets the instincts going a mile-a-minute. I always picture it as something half-mindless, almost animalistic, driven by the hindbrain when it engages. Trying to make the sexual tension subtle would down play that head canon I have, and I really didn't want to do that as, at the end of the day, these beings aren't human. Not any longer. They work with a whole other set of impulses, senses, and desires constrained by a very non-human moral framework. Trying to then make them act human seemed incongruous.

Plus, it's fun, and if trying to write Kol has taught me anything, it's just go along with the fun wherever it takes you.

P.S: If you've seen that video of the woman and daughter, the "I spilt lipstick in your Valentino bag" "YOU SPILWYA WHA WYHA WYAHWH AHWY LIPSTICK IN MY VALENTINO WHITE BAG" that… That was Klaus this chapter with his Hybrids lmao.

As always, thank you all so much for the wonderous reviews! The favourites, and the follows too. I hope you all liked this chapter, and if you can, don't forget to drop a review, they'll keep Elijah from going grey after dealing with his siblings ;). Until next time, stay beautiful! ~AlwaysEatTheRude21