I brought him to my room, making sure that my parents were both asleep before quietly closing the door behind us. Klaus looked around with an avid curiosity, his previous distress momentarily stayed by the fascination of my room and the abundance of drawings, sketches, pictures, knickknacks, ornaments and everything else which painted my personality into a single room. "You never paint." He finally noted, his fingers gracing over one of my portrait sketches with a near reverence as I quickly tidied up a little as to hide the fact I was a total slob.
Kicking clothes under the bed I threw some things into the trash that should have gone in ages ago, balls of scrunched up paper, empty cartons and such. "I don't know how to paint, not really. I don't get how to make the pigments I want to make something as realistic as my monochrome work, or how to translate what I want accurately enough." I tried to explain, rubbing my neck as I tried to discreetly slide some underwear out of sight.
"Have you tried?"
"A few times, nothing ever turned out very well. A five year old could have done better." This earned a hum of amusement, his eyes still searching around my room at everything. He moved onto my picture wall, filled with pins and photographs that spanned my entire life. In the back of my mind I remained acutely aware of the fact that I still had one of the daggers that could put down an Original vampire, but thankfully I'd had the good sense to put it away since Rebekah had chosen to leave it in my care as she trusted me with it.
"And this is your life?" He questioned, reaching up to point to a picture of me when I was small, maybe four, celebrating my little sister Juliet's first birthday. She had a mop of bright copper curls, just like me, with large doe eyes and a cherubic smile that just melted your heart. "Your sister, I can see the family resemblance."
"Yeah, we were all redheads." I agreed, smiling nostalgically as I sank onto my bed and tucked up a knee against my chest, holding it against me as I looked at the photos. "This is Juliet. That's my brother Ferdinand, and my parents there. My real parents." Before I knew it, I was telling Klaus everything about them and my life, the story behind every picture and smile, showing him my entire history without any reservation and the only other person to have been invited to know such details about me was Rebekah, and that had taken weeks.
For a while I had no idea why I was so willing to be open with Klaus. I had no pity for him, I mean, why would I? He was moody and dark like some kind of twisted man-child who threw tantrums that usually ended in blood, and yet here I was talking him through my entire childhood and life up until almost this very moment. Once I'd started, it was like I just couldn't stop. I wanted him to know. Wanted him to know me, and know that somewhere deep down, I really did not want to kill him, or even hurt him. We had our differences, but somehow our spirits seemed to align to one another, and I could see the frightened, lonely child I had once been tucked behind the veil of his eyes.
Stretching out on my bed, Klaus had taken up residence in my reading chair, the one sat by the window where the best natural light allowed me to read during the day until I would have to use the light of the lamp set upon the deep set window ledge almost like a perch. "I know about your mom." I finally spoke, knowing full well that Klaus didn't come here to look at my baby pictures. "And about your siblings. Guess things didn't really go according to plan, huh?"
"I built a home for them. I wanted it to be perfect for the moment they woke up, and we could be together again without my father looming over us like a nightmare." Klaus said to me sombrely, leaning back in the chair with a pensive expression as he stared off into the distance, white knuckled fists clenched until they were practically just bone. "But then…my mother appears, and says that she forgives me. We are to be a family again as I had hoped, but none of them are with me. I do not have anything I had hoped for."
"Well, you did kinda put all of them in a box for god knows how long." I reminded him unhelpfully as I sketched away in one of my many sketchpads, smudging the dark charcoal as I glanced up occasionally, tracing the lines of the rather imposing image Klaus presented, all morose and brooding like a morbid character in a tragedy. "There's bound to be some feelings of anger after that. I mean, you literally took away their freedom and tried to control them like dolls. You don't earn someone's love by ruling over them." A sharp look turned on me.
"I am their brother."
"Yes, and you were supposed to be theirs." If possible, I could have sworn his fists clenched even tighter and heard something crack. "Look, I'm not going to pity you, or coddle you, or tell you that everything's going to be alright and give you this dumb illusion of a perfect family and a happily ever after, because it's not going to happen." I told him bluntly, returning to my drawing. "Life is hard and family is even harder, but you're lucky that you have an eternity to work on that, Klaus. Some people don't even get half a lifetime with theirs. Are you going to give up now just because you've made all the wrong decisions before?"
"My decisions were always made with my family's best interest in mind…"
"Really? Stabbing them in the heart and leaving them to rot was in their best interests?" Again Klaus seemed infuriated that I cut across him, but I wasn't buying into this crap, nor was I going to tolerate any of his self serving nonsense right now. "Everything you did was because you were afraid. Afraid of your dad, afraid of being alone, afraid of being rejected, which ultimately you were." His eyes bore into me like he was contemplating ripping out my tongue just to make me shut up. "But that's okay, fear is normal in everyone, including vampires. Just because you guys are immortal doesn't mean you lose all your emotions. Being afraid of being lonely is a very human thing, actually. We crave closeness, we can't function right without other people in our lives. It is basic human nature to want to be loved, admired and desired. People just don't admit it."
Now he began to relax, taking slow and steady breaths to keep his temper under control as I prattled away, having been near enough in the exact same position he had been many years ago, only I had had to figure all this out on my own. "I fear nothing." He protested sharply but to me, it just sounded like a desperate cry so I looked up once more and offered him a soft, understanding smile as I shifted on my bed to face him more fully, swinging my feet leisurely in the air behind me.
"Sure you do. If you weren't afraid, you wouldn't have daggered your family and kept them in boxes for the past millennia or so. You can admit it you know, you're in a safe space here." Teasing him with a toothy grin, I looked down to consider my drawing, the outline now finished and began to work on the details, paying particular attention to his facial features. "If you weren't so afraid, then you wouldn't be here right now talking to me instead of being at home with your family who after said millennia, are finally all together again." For a while he said nothing, because he had no way to dispute the truth that I lay so clearly in front of him.
"Then what do you suggest I do?" Flicking his intense eyes across at me, Klaus studied me closely as I continued to glance up intermittently. "If you are the one with all the answers, the druid oracle who knows all, what should I do?" Hearing the mockery in his tone, Klaus probably didn't believe that I would know what he needed to do, and he was right. I hadn't a clue how you're supposed to even begin healing from a thousand years of running and torturing your siblings, but there had to be something. Some point where they could all begin to move forwards.
"Do you love them?" I asked him, full of curiosity to hear his answer, because honestly I wasn't even sure if this guy was capable of such a feeling. He was so cold and closed off, like everything but his negative emotions had been tuned out so that he didn't have to waste time feeling them, as if he knew that if he allowed himself to feel, he was only opening himself to more hurt. No one knew that feeling better than I did, that's probably why I understood him. "Do you love your family? Your mother, brothers, Rebekah?" Clenching his jaw, Klaus elected to turn away. "You can't even admit that you love your own family?"
"They betrayed me."
"You hurt them, Klaus." Remaining calm and full of reason, I began to wonder just how messed up his early life had to have been in order to make him into this person today. Looking up once more, I waited until he dared to meet my eyes again so that he could see just how fierce my beryl-shaded eyes could be. "You hurt them, and you have not apologised. Of course they're angry. Hell, I'd be pissed if it were me. You wouldn't even have legs to stand on if you'd done that to me." He twitched. "Look, you want my advice? Just be a brother to them. Bekah adores you, she loves you more than anything despite it all, and Elijah will forgive you if you give him a good reason to. I don't really know much about your other brothers, so I can't vouch for them, but at the end of the day, nothing is more important than family. They'll stick by you, so long as you prove that you'll also stand beside them through anything, but you need to learn to let go. Just breathe, Klaus. Your dad's dead, so he can't be an ass to you anymore. Breathe, and take it one step at a time." Wishing I had more elaborate and awe inspiring words to give him, all I had was a pathetically dumb smile. "You're going to be okay."
As if my words had cast a spell on him, Klaus released a deep breath he had been unwittingly holding. He breathed, just like I told him, and I could almost see the weight lifting off his shoulders as he tried his best to let go of the tenseness that gripped around him, the constant fear of being left behind, alone and abandoned. After a while of processing and deep thinking, Klaus looked back at me once more and a little light seemed to return to his eyes, a glint of mischievousness with a smirk quirking upon his lips. "Perhaps you are wiser than I give you credit for."
"Well…let's not get too far ahead of ourselves yet." Laughing lightly, I decided that I'd had enough of such soul searching talk and wanted to move onto something else. For the second time that night, I surprised myself at how open I was with Klaus, asking questions about him to prod under the tough hide he wore around himself like armour until I was able to learn a few of his interests and his tastes before then elaborating on them. We discussed culture, music, art and a great deal more. He was far deeper a person than I had first given him credit for, and behind that cold, calculative exterior lay a man who saw the world with wonder and a clear minded intelligence that I couldn't help but admire.
We talked so long that it was soon so late it was actually early, light beginning to gleam outside my window as I closed my eyes to rest for a second, listening to Klaus telling me about all the famous artists he had met and compelled to either paint for him or give him one of their works, listing off his extensive collection. I was very impressed, but I was also exhausted, and before I knew it closing my eyes had sent me off into sleep. My head rested against the curl of my arm, the other sprawled across the drawing I had finished hours ago of Klaus sitting in my reading chair.
Clearly realising that I had fallen asleep, I felt Klaus come over and carefully remove the book from underneath me, making me groan at the slight disturbance as I remained vaguely aware that he was near, but my perception of time had been completely thrown out of the loop so I no clue how long he stood there looking at me. After that indiscernible expanse of time, I then felt his hand brush lightly against my cheek, fingertips trailing against my skin before brushing aside my hair, and the last memory I possessed of that visit was him whispering silkily into my ear.
"Goodnight, sweet Ophelia."