Hey, guys. Sorry for the long update time and the short chapter, but… life kind of hit like a club. 2021 took two of my family members with it in the last month and I'm also job hunting so… Yeah.
But enough about that, let's talk about Klaus:
- Without Stefan to keep him company, Klaus undaggers Rebekah for companionship/help on his little werewolf hunt.
- Since Klaus already knows Elena's alive and isn't dealing with a fresh round of perceived betrayal (Stefan protecting Elena behind his back), he's less… um… aggressively psychotic. Although this is still Klaus on a warpath to create his hybrids. So…
Let's see how this plays out, shall we?
"If I knew you were going to be like this the whole trip, I would have left you daggered," Klaus complained, twisting the neck of the first hapless werewolf he'd fed his blood to. Ron? Randy? Ray? The longer Klaus lived, the harder it was to keep track of names until the person in question made themselves significant. Ray, yes I think that was it.
With a huff of indignation, his sister headbutted the man struggling in her arms, knocking him out cold. "Like what, Nik? Did you honestly think I would wake happy to see you after you completely disregarded my decision again?"
Your decision to leave me. A millennia of looking after her, and Rebekah had chosen a vampire she knew for less than a year over her own brother. Even if that vampire was Stefan, who Klaus admittedly enjoyed, that stung.
While Rebekah tilted the unconscious man's head back, Klaus held his arm above his lulling mouth, allowing his blood to drip into it. "Well, you're alive, aren't you? You're quite welcome."
Rebekah took the initiative in snapping this one's neck. It may have taken a few centuries, but eventually she had come to share Klaus' belief that rampant violence was, in fact, the best form of therapy. "I was in love! Do you have any idea what that's like? What you've taken from me?" It seemed one of the female members of the pack had decided to take a more aggressive approach, coming up behind Rebekah in what was meant to be a sneak attack. This ended poorly for her, given the Original's current mood. There would be no turning that one. "And you honestly wonder why Elijah would have turned against you?"
"Bekah, this is hardly the place for one of your tantrums. We have appearances to keep up and I need the wolves in working order."
"Oh you do, do you?!"
Klaus realized his mistake instantly. In the amount of time it took for him to restrain her, Rebekah managed to savage at least ten of his potential hybrids using a rather impressive combination of her hands, fangs, and simple brute force. She bloodied herself so much that just holding her in place from behind completely coated Klaus.
Though werewolf blood smelled mildly distasteful while his werewolf side was locked away (rather like fast food), it had recently taken on a kind of comforting aroma that was more difficult to identify. The fact that he was an alpha had come as no surprise, but this bone-deep, primal longing for a pack did.
"Rebekah," he growled, trying his best to stop himself from breaking her arms in pure frustration as most of the remaining werewolves scattered, "please don't make me dagger you so soon after waking you up."
"Again with the dagger?! You are just so- Auuugh!" Rebekah somehow managed to slip from his grip (apparently she was sufficiently lubricated), turn, and punch him through the gut with one hand, leaning in so their faces were inches apart and she could stare straight into his eyes. There was a cold fury in hers that would have made any other man break. "I am not some pathetic mutt you can train to roll over and play dead on command. I am your sister. Do I make myself clear?" With that statement, she smeared the blood of what were meant to be his faithful pack members all over his face.
Something inside him snapped.
When Klaus came back to his senses, Rebekah was temporarily dead (with an entire branch sticking straight out of her chest), the wolves that had been running littered the surrounding area (what was left of them, at least), and he found himself quite full. Bloated, even. Oops.
He turned back to the ten or so werewolves still cowering near the fire (apparently hoping their obedience would save them), and wiped his arm on the nearest's shirt to prevent the blood he was about to offer from mixing with the blood from their fallen friends. That would just be disrespectful.
"Right. Now that that's taken care of, who prefers immortality?"
The survivors formed an orderly line. "And someone bring me a cup! There's no reason to be barbaric about this."
A man in the back rushed off to the cooler near one of the tents, coming back with a solo cup.
It seemed the spat with his sister had been effective in weeding out the wolves who could follow orders from the foolishly rebellious. Perhaps there was something to be said for quality over quantity for his first group turned, anyway.
It's fine, Klaus reassured himself with a glance at Rebekah. She looked deceptively peaceful when she was dead. This is a good start.
Things were off to a very bad start.
Screams echoed from all over the campsite and the surrounding forest. Some of the living wolves sat amongst the corpses and limbs from Klaus' outburst, holding their heads or on all fours mid-transition. A few simply seized and died, choking on their own blood. The ones in the best health curled in on themselves and shivered, crying bloody tears. None had completely made it to their wolf forms, but a few had transitioned enough to pose a threat that needed to be disposed of.
One even managed to bite Rebekah, who currently rocked back and forth on the log that served as one of the seats around the fire. She kept spouting some nonsense about a boy who'd attempted to court her in her human days. If Klaus remembered correctly, he was one of the first villagers she accidentally ate when their mother turned them.
As punishment for just how miserable she had made the last few weeks, Klaus originally planned to let her suffer the hallucinations (they wouldn't actually kill her), but watching his baby sister burst into tears while her body obviously burned with poison and fever evoked the pesky protective instinct he'd tried and failed to shake over the centuries.
"Fine." With a resigned sigh, Klaus sat beside Rebekah and bit into his wrist (he would not have her drink from the same cup that brought death to so many- especially since he had no idea what had gone wrong). The veins beneath her eyes immediately protruded. He wondered whether her vampire sensed what might be the cure or simply lusted for more blood in an instinctive attempt to heal itself with what usually worked. "Drink." If nothing else, this was a good way to test his theory.
Klaus suppressed a shiver of mental revulsion as she lapped at the wound he left for her. At least she knew better than to use her fangs or attempt to draw more blood with her mouth, even in this state. They were already coming much too close to actual bloodsharing from the vein for his liking.
Ray began to crawl his way toward them, likely urged by his wolf instincts to take a bite out of the only vampire close enough to hunt. A low warning growl from Klaus caused him to retreat. When, moments later, Ray's body seized like the others, Klaus watched in silence.
Why did I assume the process would be the same? He wondered. Centuries of planning, and he'd not thought of this as a possibility. I should never have started with this many. Though Klaus hated the answer, he already knew; he'd been impatient. He had been eager to gift this pack with eternity, to free them from the pain of being forced to turn with each full moon, to welcome these lesser beings at the top of the food chain with him so he would no longer be the only one of his kind. Instead, he'd damned them to what seemed like a long, excruciating death.
To make matters worse, from the moment Klaus fed them his blood with the intent of turning them, it seemed his wolf had begun to think of them as his to look after. Not equal, but kin, nonetheless.
He looked away as Ray let out a gurgling gasp and clawed his own throat raw.
By the time Rebekah had recovered (oh, the possibilities this opened up), every wolf had died.
"Of course your blood would be the cure." Despite her usual sarcastic tone, her voice was weak.
"You're welcome again."
After a moment of blinking around the blood and body soaked campsite, she asked, "Nik, what on Earth happened here?"
"That's exactly what we're going to find out." Klaus looked around. What a mess. He felt exhausted, in more ways than one. "After a day or two off."
Rebekah nodded. Klaus tracked her gaze to Ray's bloodied cheeks.
It had been quite some time since something stunned her to silence like this. Particularly when she was in a mood and had the perfect opportunity to force him into a shopping trip to replace a ruined outfit.
"Come on," she finally said, and stood unevenly on venom-weakened legs. "The sooner we clean this mess, the sooner we can be on our way. I'm more than a little eager to put this entire experience behind me."
Klaus agreed with every part of her assessment wholeheartedly.
"No," Klaus growled. "There must be something else."
He and Rebekah had gone to visit Gloria, one of his more trusted witches at her bar in Chicago. The moment she laid eyes on them, she kicked all her other patrons out and locked the door.
The witch in question crossed her arms. "I'm sorry, but I can't contact the Original Witch without the necklace. You'll have to go retrieve it."
Klaus groaned and closed his eyes, allowing himself a moment to stew in his unhappiness. Recognizing the family heirloom immediately, he had plucked it from Elena's neck during the ritual, but quickly forgot about it when his forced transformation surprised him. Why on earth hadn't he gone back for the bloody thing? Right. Got caught up in the thrill of the hunt… That would teach him not to get too carried away in his triumph again.
And why, why, why did everything always lead back to that insignificant little mire of a town? It may have been home once, but he had truly come to despise it over the long course of his life. He swore the blasted place was a concentrated nexus of both supernatural energy and severe bad luck.
"Well, little sister, it looks like we may just get to kill two birds with one stone."
"Oh?" She raised an eyebrow in question.
"I get my answers, and you get the reunion you so desire."
"You mean Stefan?!" Her face lit up with childlike excitement and his heart sank. "So you know exactly where he is! Why didn't you tell me? I wouldn't have been nearly so cross with you!"
Oh, this was going to be difficult. Klaus measured his words carefully. "Before you get your hopes up, we need to have a little talk. You see, it's been decades, and with no memory of our time together in the twenties…"
"He's found someone else." The way her face immediately dropped would have been a death sentence to any other man who caused that expression. Had been a death sentence to many. But, this was Stefan, and it wasn't like Klaus could truly blame him for his misdeeds. "Just between us, I'm not sure it will last, but at the moment he's quite taken with the newest doppleganger."
"No." Rebekah's eyes widened. Gloria slid her a free drink, eyes full of concern. "No. No, no, no! What is it with the bloody dopplegangers and their incessant need to toy with every man around them?!"
Klaus had been wondering that himself. He'd concluded that it was either genetic, or some kind of curse. At least this one seemed completely unaware that she was falling into the same trap with Stefan's brother.
Rebekah slammed her empty glass back on the counter and asked for a shot of gin. She seemed quite upset. Klaus decided there was no need to inform her that history may be repeating itself yet again with her beloved. Particularly because there was one more thing he needed to confess.
"And… she most likely has the necklace."
Rebekah's hand shot to her throat. "She has my necklace?!" In her fury, she pounded the heel of her hand against the counter, and it made a loud cracking noise before the granite splintered like glass.
"Hey!" Gloria yelled.
"Send me an invoice," Klaus sighed. Honestly, if this was the extent of the damage from Rebekah's reawakening, he was getting off easy.
Gloria simply lifted an eyebrow as if to say "you'd better mean it."
"What is that... that... wench doing with my necklace?! That was our mother's!"
"I don't know. But that, at least, is something we can remedy."
"Well, what are we waiting for? We have a dopplebitch to go mug."
As Rebekah re-dressed for the weather, Gloria gave Klaus her best down the nose I-told-you-so look, complete with the hint of a smirk.
Decades after the Originals' flight from Mikael in the 20's, Klaus found himself in town and decided to pay her a visit, for old time's sake. Having witnessed the after effects of the raid on her speakeasy, Gloria berated Klaus for erasing Stefan's memories and forcing Rebekah to leave him behind. They were in love, and you separated them. These things have a way of coming back to bite you in the ass, she'd said. It's called karma.
Klaus truly hated it when the witches were right.
I know, I know, in the show Klaus and Rebekah didn't know where the necklace was and it turned into some weird dramatic plot thread for like two or three episodes, but to me, it just felt like a cheap gimmick to increase tension in the main love triangle and pad the runtime, so, I went ahead and changed it. Let's just assume Klaus lost track of the necklace when he wolfed out and Damon picked it up later because he went to sulk at the ritual site while Elena and Stefan were being lovey. BAM. Simplified plot, and that Delena moment everyone loves is still intact, more or less.
Speaking of Klaus, writing from his POV is challenging for me, and takes longer to do than Caroline's, but I have absolutely zero regrets in deciding to switch back and forth like I am. He's such an interesting character (basically a sarcastic, murder-happy mob boss with serious abandonment issues) that it feels like I can play with it in the way he thinks, and I sometimes feel like I'm writing almost-comedy in what could easily just be blah narrative. I truly wasn't expecting to enjoy it as much as I do. What do you guys think? Am I doing okay with him?
Veganwitch: Thank you so much! I'm glad I was able to convey the character nuances I was going for. I never thought about crossposting to AO3 before! I don't currently have an account, but I did just request an automated invitation today. The waitlist ETA puts me near the end of January.
Jennifer: Thank you for continuing to support this story! It means a lot!
A quick heads up about the next chapter: it is going to be very important, at least twice as long as this one, and it's content I'm super excited for. I'm aiming for an update next week, but if it takes longer, it just means I'm trying to get it right before I get it up. I hope you guys enjoy the finished product as much as I'm enjoying writing it.