The gardens out back of the Lockwood manor was the same as they'd always been, as far as I could remember. The same trees, same path, same little bridge over the stream, maybe a new bush here or a new flowerbed there. I'd seen this place so many times throughout my childhood, though it was still a pleasant enough stroll to enjoy whilst Elena and I learned the mysteries of Elijah's brother, Klaus. "So as you've seen, nothing can kill an Original. Not sun, not fire, not even a werewolf bite. Only the wood from one tree. A tree my family made sure burned." Elijah said as we all walked leisurely and I continued to listen, somehow keeping up with everything despite only having learned everything literally last night.
"That's where the white ash for the dagger comes from."
"Yes. The witches won't allow anything truly immortal to walk the earth. Every creature needs to have a weakness in order to maintain balance." So if the tree itself burned and the only thing that remains of it is the ash, then does that mean if that tree could be grown again then there would be a means to kill the Originals for good? That was…slightly alarming, because that meant I could be a potential threat to them. Part of my powers as a druid allowed me to grow any plant that I have touched before. I'm fairly certain even if I touched the ash of the white oak tree, I'd be able to grow another one within minutes. I can't let anyone know about this, especially not Klaus, not even Elijah. That would make me a liability, one that might be better off dead than alive to them. If they find out…there's no telling what they'd do.
"So if the sun can't kill an Original, why is Klaus so obsessed with breaking the sun and moon curse?" Elena asked, making a very good observation to which Elijah breathed a short laugh or scorn, scoffing at the mention of the curse.
"Right. The Curse of the Sun and the Moon. It's all so biblical sounding, don't you think?" Seeing the laughter and amusement, Elena only frowned further in bewilderment, unable to see the joke in all this.
"What's so funny?" Oh man, you have got to be kidding me. Somehow, I get the feeling I know where this is going.
"Klaus was the one who created the rumours about the curse, everywhere there is mention of a means to break the curse placed upon vampires and werewolves, Klaus and I had a hand in planting the rumours and every trail of evidence ever found over the past thousand years." Still Elena didn't understand what Elijah meant, making me roll my eyes in exasperation, already having figured it out.
"I don't understand. So Klaus drew the Aztec sketches about the curse?"
"Roman scrolls, African tribal etchings and any other culture or continent we felt like planting it in."
"But why?"
"The easiest way to discover the existence of a doppelganger, or to get your hands on some long lost moonstone, is to have every single member of two warring species on the lookout for it." Even with Elijah literally spelling it out for her, Elena could only grasp the fact that the curse wasn't Aztec, so I spoke up to put her out of her misery.
"The curse isn't real, Elena." I told her, making her look at me with those big Bambi eyes. "If Klaus was the one who made all those rumours and legends about the curse, then the thing about breaking the curse of the sun and moon is all just a myth, right?"
"Precisely, Ophelia." Elijah agreed, nodding his head towards me as I frowned slightly.
"But if the curse is fake, then what's the point of all this? Why does Klaus need Elena and the moonstone?" Gesturing towards me in order to silently acknowledge my question, Elijah continued walking on his way, prompting Elena and I to follow him.
"Klaus and I faked the Sun and Moon Curse dating back over a thousand years, as a means to gather together everything he would need to break the real curse that existed." Turning his head, Elijah looked back over his shoulder at us to deliver the answer to everything that so far, didn't quite add up. "The curse placed on Klaus." Now that, that made a great deal more sense, but even though it answered one question, it just opened up the floor to a whole new load of questions.
"What are you talking about? What is this curse?" It was then that Elijah decided that he was tired of walking and wanted to return to the house, making Elena all the more impatient and insist that he answered her question so he obliged her, though he took his time getting to the point of it all since it turned out there was a whole load of backstory to all this.
"You know, my family was quite close, but Klaus and my father did not get on too well. When we became vampires, we discovered the truth. Klaus was not my father's son." Wow, it's soap drama in the medieval age. Who knew? "My mother had been unfaithful many years before. This was her darkest secret, Klaus was from a different bloodline. Of course, when my father discovered this he hunted down and he killed my mother's lover and his entire family, not realising that he was igniting a war between species that rages until this day."
"A war between the species?" I had to admit, I was a little lost right about now as well.
"The vampires…and the werewolves." Wait, was Elijah saying that Klaus was actually born a werewolf?
"So Klaus's real father was from a werewolf bloodline? What does that make Klaus? A werewolf or a vampire?" Somehow, I got the feeling I wasn't going to like the answer to this one.
"He's both." Shocker. "A hybrid would be deadlier than any werewolf or vampire. Nature would not stand for such an imbalance of power. Therefore the witches, the servants of nature, saw to it that my brother's werewolf side would become dormant." Putting it all together, suddenly it all made sense to me.
"If the witches put the curse on Klaus, then that's what he wants to break, right? He wants to wake up his werewolf side to become a…what did you call it? A hybrid." By this point we had returned to the front room where I took a seat and Elena followed suit, the both of us sitting down as Elijah opted to stand by the mantelpiece, affirming my deductions.
"Yes Ophelia, that is Klaus's intention. He wants to trigger that part of him that's werewolf. If allowed, Klaus would sire his own bloodline. He'd build his own race endangering not just vampires
but everyone." Now that sounded like a majorly bad plan. I hadn't met any werewolves as of yet, though apparently Tyler had recently turned into one, but I knew first hand just how terrifying and strong a vampire was. To have both combined into one person? I doubt I'd ever sleep peacefully at night ever again.
"But you helped him." Elena pointed out, recalling everything he'd mentioned about Katerina and helping his brother locate all the pieces he needed to break the curse, including the moonstone.
"I helped him because I loved him." Elijah informed us both before that same melancholy expression darkened his features. "That's changed now, he must die." Getting up with a hopeful attitude, Elena pointed out that they had a dagger which could kill an Original, but Elijah told her bluntly that it wouldn't work, since the blade was made from silver. "When a werewolf is wounded by silver,
it heals. An Original can't be killed by anything but white oak ash on a silver dagger. See the conundrum? The dagger does not work."
"So what does that make Klaus, indestructible?" I asked from where I was still seated, frowning and mulling over everything carefully in my mind. "What if the dagger wasn't made from silver?"
"The wound would still heal, unless the stake was made completely out of white oak, but none is left in existence." Elijah informed the both of us and I flinched guiltily, knowing that I could easily solve this problem. Should I tell him? I can grow another tree then he could make a weapon to kill Klaus if he really wanted to, I could help him with that. "There's one way to kill any supernatural species. At the hands of the servants of nature themselves."
"A witch." Elena realised, and I suddenly had a daunting feeling crawl up my spine and make me shiver minutely as I realised that Elijah was looking right at me.
"Or a druid. If they can channel that much power." So this had been what he was after this entire time. God, I'm such an idiot. Of course Elijah just wanted to use my powers to kill someone, he was no better than the rest of them. He was going to manipulate me and use me from the very start, and I had been too blind to see it. How could I have missed this? I thought I knew how to recognise when someone had ulterior motives when they approached me, but I had been blindsided by his polite charms and interesting stories about history. Damn it Ophelia!
"But it would kill them." The two of them went back to talking as I sat there, boiling over and struggling to keep myself from just releasing hell on the both of them and being done with it. I refuse to be used like this, and I definitely don't want to kill anyone. I don't care if this Klaus guy was the big bad wolf with vampire fangs, I'm not killing anybody just because someone tells me too.
"The curse must be broken during the full moon when Klaus is in transition. That's when he'll be at his most vulnerable. A witch with enough power can kill Klaus." Yeah, a witch or a druid who could literally harness the power of nature and bend it to her will. I feel so stupid for not seeing this one coming.
"What if I told you that I knew a witch that could channel that much power?" Intrigued by her insinuation that she knew such a person, Elijah turned his undivided attention on Elena as I continued to listen on exactly what they planned to do.
"Then I would tell you there's one more thing that you should know. In order for the curse to be successfully broken, the doppelganger must die." This made me stop and look up, glancing between Elijah and Elena. "Not wanting for such a fate to befall Katerina, I requested that the witches find a way to save her life so that she would not have to be sacrificed, and so they created a means for Katerina to survive the breaking of the curse."
"You found a way to save the life of the doppelganger?"
"Yes, Elena. I did." There was an underlying tone of sadness so strong and deep set that I momentarily forgot that I was angry with him. "Unfortunately, Katerina took matters into her own hands first. I believe you already know how that played out." Katerina escaped, I guess, found a way to turn herself into a vampire and spent the next five hundred years running from Klaus. It's textbook really, almost too much a cliché.
"You cared about her, didn't you?" Recognising the sadness in his voice as having stemmed from strong feelings towards Katerina, or Katherine or whatever she called herself these days, I took a deep breath to calm down before getting up as Elijah assured Elena that it was a mistake and one that he had no intention of repeating. The story seemed to end there, so I waited for a couple of seconds, wanting to see if either of them had anything else to say but when they remained silent, I made a motion at them as I spoke.
"So that's it? That's the big story? Not only is the sun and moon curse actually fake, but you helped your brother to create the lie so that he could become an indestructible and immortal being." I began to say, summarising everything up into a condensed form as to skip over the unimportant parts. "And now that he's somehow pissed you off, you've decided to kill him and to do that, you figured you would find yourself someone with enough power to do the job for you, and that someone just so happens to be either me, or Bonnie."
"It doesn't have to end badly, Lia, if you and Bonnie work together neither of you will die from using too much power." Elena reasoned, coming towards me with a light smile as if everything was okay but I pulled back, lifting my hands away from her before she could reach out for me like she was intending to do.
"Don't. Just don't. Everything might be perfectly fine in your little world so long as everyone does what they're told, but I'm not going along with this. I don't want to kill anybody. Bad guy or not, I'm not a killer, yet you're just asking me to kill someone because it's convenient for you?" Getting angry and worked up over this, my breathing began to deepen and the strong connection I had to my own power began to thrive upon it, rising with every breath I took. "Is that's what it's going to be from now on, huh? Every time a new bad person rolls into town, you're going to call me up and ask me to kill them for you just so that none of your precious friends get hurt? 'Oh, go kill that person Ophelia, now go kill that one, don't forget him because he's dangerous, kill them, kill her, just kill them all'." Mimicking her voice as I continued to become overrun with anger and frustration, the lights began to flicker around us.
"No of course not, I'd never ask that of you…"
"Oh yeah? Because it sounds to me that that's exactly what you're asking of me. You want me to become a murderer, Elena. Tell you what. Why don't you go kill Klaus yourself if you're so desperate to have him gone." Seeing that I was starting to lose control, Elijah observed the flickering lights before attempting to calm me down.
"Ophelia please, calm down. We can discuss this rationally." I turned on him with a venomous hiss, wanting him to be as far away from me in particular.
"I don't feel like being rational right now. This whole time you just wanted to use me for your own gain. All that time getting to know me, talking to me, getting me to trust you, you just wanted me to kill your brother." Laughing dryly at the ridiculousness of it all, I could feel a storm beginning to gather overhead, the wind picking up and howling behind the windows. "And all this time, I was actually thinking of ways I could help you both without anyone needing to die, I was going to help you even if you didn't ask for it, but now, I don't feel like it."
"Wait what do you mean? What way? Please Lia you have to tell me. How can we kill Klaus without anyone else dying?" Elena begged me so I scoffed at her, glancing at her with disgust.
"Listen to yourself. All you can think about is killing Klaus. What I meant was that I was trying to figure out a way to help everyone without killing him. Neutralise him somehow, make him not so much of a threat. If I had enough time, I could probably figure something out, but now I think you lot can all screw yourselves and go to hell. I'm not some pawn in your little life and death games, and I sure as hell am not someone you can manipulate. You can forget about me helping you, I'm not becoming a killer for the likes of you, Elena Gilbert, or you." The last part was directed at Elijah, and from there I stormed out of the house, got into my car and drove away without looking back.
It took me a long time to calm down, and after the anger had simmered away I was just upset. Death was too closely associated to my life, and I wanted nothing to do with it, and that included killing other people. I mean, who even asks someone to kill a person? I get that this ritual was dangerous for Elena because she could die, but Elijah had literally just told her that some witches had found a way to save her. Isn't that enough? Just let Klaus become a hybrid or whatever and make his little army. It's not like he could take over the world without someone figuring out that he wasn't exactly human.
Wiping away the angry tears I'd been shedding, I cracked open the window slightly to let some fresh air in then cranked up the radio to drown out my thoughts, hoping to just drive and forget about everything even if it were just for a few minutes. A few blissful minutes of peace, where vampires didn't exist, I wasn't a witchy tree hugger person, that Elena wasn't going to be sacrificed in some nutcase's ritual, and the fact that every time I closed my eyes, the image of Niklaus didn't become all the clearer in my mind's eye.