A.N.: Thank you all for the reviews! I really appreciate them, even if I haven't gotten around to replying yet.


Machiavelli's Daughter

08

Dom


"Don't think you can distract me with Dom Pérignon!" Giulia hid her smirk, as Caroline scooped up a flute of champagne. "Okay, I am mad!"

Caroline sipped the champagne, the tiny bubbles sparkling in the light.

They were overdue their talk. Caroline had given them both a reprieve to enjoy the vintage-festival - and then there was the clean-up, which kept Caroline busy as she organised everything and court-marshalled the indolent. But now…now was the time: Enzo was out on a date, and Zita was at a sleepover at the Saltzmans' house, which she had been looking forward to all week.

Caroline had Giulia's undivided attention: After a simple supper together, they had discussed work, their projects, organising their next few weeks. It was now officially summertime: It was their busiest time of year, both with their projects, and socially. The bulk of the work on their renovations was completed between March and September, especially when they had bought up lots at auction. Thankfully, the Founders' parties were the ordinary annual events, the Founders' parade and exclusive party at the end of June, not the protracted schedule of events they had endured when they were in high-school for the sesquicentennery of the town's founding… She still adored that word.

They had tidied up from dinner, finished their work, and Caroline had gotten that look on her face. That look that had appeared several times over the last week; Giulia had known the eruption was imminent.

Giulia felt the same way she had after the tiny little snafu at Whitmore College. It was only the one building she had reduced to ash - by the way Caroline had berated her, it may as well have been the entire college campus and the small town it was nestled beside!

"Why did you do it?" Caroline blurted. She stood before Giulia, frowning, hand on her hip, the other clasped around a champagne flute, and Giulia had to stifle the smirk that teased the corners of her lips, reminded so vividly of being scolded by Carol Lockwood when she was fifteen, caught fondling in the library with Tyler.

"I…thought it'd be…fun?" She smiled winningly at Caroline: Her best-friend was not impressed.

"Giulia," Caroline said sharply, and Giulia winced at the look on her friend's face. "We had ten years with nothing. Why would you wake the Originals - why would you steal them from Klaus in the first place? You had to know he'd find out and come for you! Why would you do something that stupid?!"

"It wasn't stupid. It was calculated," Giulia told her, sipping her own champagne. "I freed the Originals because I made Elijah a promise. And because Klaus isn't what he used to be; I was able to take his family from right under his nose because the sacrifice ritual…did everything he wanted, but not what he anticipated."

"I don't understand what that means."

"Over a thousand years, Klaus made up his mind that removing his mother's spell would mean one thing for him; that he would have power beyond measure, that he would become invulnerable. By the time we met him, Klaus had convinced himself that he knew exactly what would happen when he lifted the spell," Giulia sighed, shaking her head. Stefan had once sent Giulia a video of Klaus' transformations - he never fully transformed into a wolf, not the way Tyler, Mason and Hayley could. He was stuck, in a hideously painful place between man and wolf, his werewolf nature warring with the vampire instincts overlaid by his mother's magic. It was truly harrowing to watch: a tiny bud of sympathy had started to blossom, deep down - but it was no more than Klaus had earned for himself.

"So he got exactly what he deserved, lifting the spell," Caroline said thoughtfully, "not what he wanted." In a nutshell, that was exactly it.

"The outcome wasn't what he had convinced himself it would be," Giulia said sadly. "He's more vulnerable than he has ever been in a millennium; that's why he keeps Stefan around. Stefan's been his enforcer, his…his nanny."

"Did Stefan help you steal the Originals?"

"Actually, no; he doesn't know anything about them. He'd be too much of a liability. For all he and Klaus know, Klaus's siblings are still sleeping in the coffins they've been carting all over North America with them," Giulia said, sighing. "But if Stefan had learned what I was up to…I doubt he would have stopped me."

"He seemed different."

"He's on human-blood again."

"Great! So not only do we have a horde of Originals, we also get Ripper!Stefan to deal with!" Caroline blurted indignantly, jumping up from her seat.

"I don't know…he's had to adjust," Giulia said thoughtfully. "Klaus didn't want anyone learning his secrets, his weaknesses: Stefan's had to learn how to cover their tracks. He's on human-blood, but I don't think he's the Ripper of Monterrey."

"But he's still dangerous."

"Of course he's still dangerous. Just as you and I are dangerous," Giulia reminded Caroline. She sighed heavily. "We make choices."

"And you chose to bring the Originals back to Mystic Falls."

The accusation stung, but Giulia knew she had made the right decision. "I did. Because he's their brother; they can deal with Klaus. So we don't have to."

"You woke them to free Stefan?"

"I woke them because I made a promise to Elijah. And, hopefully…it will destroy the status quo irrevocably."

"The status quo?"

"Amongst the Originals… The one thing Klaus fears above anything else, possibly, is that his family learns the truth about him. I stole the Originals, and I woke them, I gave them a home, helped them acclimate, and I told them the terrible truth Klaus has hidden for a millennium."

"What'd he do?" Caroline breathed.

Giulia sipped her champagne, glancing over at Caroline. "He murdered their mother. Ripped her heart out of her chest." Caroline's blue eyes widened, and she sank onto the sofa, letting out a stunned breath.

"He killed his mom?" she whispered.

"And then he told his brothers and sisters that it was their father who did it," Giulia said. "It was a long, violent story but Elijah…told me it, when we were together."

"Told you?"

"He was under the influence of werewolf-venom; he got inside my head," Giulia winced. "One night, Klaus had snuck out of the jarlshall to meet a girl…it was a full-moon night, none of the villagers were supposed to leave the jarlshall. His younger brother Henrik followed, trying to pull him back to the jarlshall. Henrik was mauled to death by werewolves."

"My god," Caroline sighed, shaking her head. She had been with Tyler on his first transformation, just as Giulia had; they remembered only too vividly the violence of the wolf, the pain of the transformation.

"Henrik's death provoked a war between the villagers and their neighbours…after ambushes and plagues decimated the village, Elijah's mother performed a spell on her children, hoping to protect them," Giulia said, and Caroline's eyes widened with realisation: She had created vampires.

"They were new vampires - is that why - ?" Giulia shook her head.

"When Klaus made his first human kill as a vampire, he triggered his werewolf curse," she explained. "Whatever magic Esther had used to create vampires, it wasn't strong enough to subdue the werewolf transformation…but the two natures clashed."

"What do you mean?"

"If Klaus had been born what he is, part werewolf, part vampire, Nature would have created a balance. The…kinks would've been worked out, before he even left the womb," Giulia said, and Caroline gave her a loaded look: The kinks had been worked out for Giulia. "But Klaus was made. He was created a vampire, and after that, he triggered his werewolf nature. Imagine Tyler's instincts, with yours laid over the top. Both fighting for dominance; they are in eternal conflict… So Esther performed the ritual which suppressed Klaus's werewolf side."

"He killed her for it?"

"Truthfully, I'm not sure. But when he triggered his curse, Klaus realised he hadn't been fathered by his mother's husband, but by another man. This proved unforgiveable," Giulia sighed. "Klaus ripped out his mother's heart, then tracked down and slaughtered his biological father, his wife, and all of their children… Then he blamed it on their father."

"He - !"

"Klaus manipulated the strain that already existed between his siblings and their father," Giulia said sadly. "Wielded their dread of him like a weapon: He told them Mikael had murdered their mother, and because Mikael was a violent, cruel man, they had no trouble believing the worst of him. Klaus told them he had witnessed it, told them all Mikael had said that Esther had broken his heart, so he would have hers, before he ripped it out of her chest… Klaus has been using his siblings as protection against their own father for a millennium… He's built up an army of enemies over the centuries to pad out that protection, making it harder and harder for Mikael to get to him while his other enemies circle him, hoping to exploit a weakness."

"So…what makes you think his family would believe all this?"

"A thousand years of his brutal abuse," Giulia sighed heavily. "They know exactly what Klaus is capable of… I was doing research on the Underground Railroad when we were still at school; I found these…ancient pictograms, Native paintings. When Elijah told me his family-history, I remembered them… When I showed Elijah the paintings, he realised the same thing I had. His family's bond had been built on Klaus's lie; and he'd had the nerve, over ten centuries, to brutalise them for the loyalty he had manipulated from them."

"So you stole the Originals back here to tell them the truth?"

"And made sure they have the time to absorb it, without Klaus having opportunity to manipulate it to his benefit," Giulia said. That was the most important thing: That the Originals were allowed their reactions to the truth. That they made up their minds how they would spend the next thousand years, free of their obligation to Klaus. He had negated any loyalty he had demanded of them.

Caroline took a long drink from her flute. "Won't they just kill him? I mean - I didn't spend nearly as much time with Elijah as you did, obviously, but…I got the impression he doesn't forgive, or forget."

"I doubt they'll kill him," Giulia said honestly. "They'll want him to suffer."

"Just as long as other people aren't caught in the middle," Caroline said.

"Well, that's the hope."

"That's why you told the Originals the truth," Caroline realised. "Wind them up, and let them tear each other to pieces?"

"Klaus will hopefully be so distracted with his siblings that he won't notice Stefan isn't by his side," Giulia said.

"Wake the Originals, to free Stefan," Caroline sighed. "That's pretty extreme."

"It's their business how they deal with Klaus, but it's about time things changed," Giulia said. "The world can't handle things continuing as they have - the extreme violence, the lack of remorse, the complete denial of any kind of culpability."

Over the last decade, Giulia had developed a distaste for violence: There were far more creative ways to solve problems. And if she wanted things to change, she had to set a standard code of behaviour: She refused to act like a vampire. She wasn't one; and Caroline herself proved that everything a 'vampire' was had been indoctrinated over centuries, rather than instinctual. Caroline craved blood, but she was no sadist: She was what a vampire could be, if they chose to be. Everything else - the violence, the manipulation - that was learned; and affected by individual personalities, especially personalities forged in medieval times, or during the Spanish Inquisition; even up to the era when Jane Austen was writing her novels. The world had evolved; vampires had not. Until Giulia's birth.

"Aren't you worried things won't go the way you want?" Caroline asked, and it was a fair question.

"Their family dynamic is so dysfunctional, Klaus has ruled them with shocking brutality, emotional terror and psychological abuse; after all this time, all he has inflicted on them, his power over them is brittle," Giulia said thoughtfully. "They're always on edge."

"Like battered wife's syndrome," Caroline murmured. Giulia nodded.

"And sometimes the wife snaps, for her own protection… All it takes is for the Originals to realise Klaus is not all-powerful; that has punished them for eternity over his lie… Just a push, and everything collapses."

"You watch too much Game of Thrones," Caroline accused her, and Giulia smiled grimly.

"While this is true, it's also quite apt. Klaus…is the Cersei in this scenario," Giulia said, smiling to herself. "I suppose that almost makes Elijah our Jaime."

"Does that make you Daenerys?"

"Seven hells, no!" Giulia gasped, insulted. "I'm Tyrion." Caroline rolled her eyes. "Perhaps Lord Varys."

"Oh. A dwarf or a eunuch."

"But devoted to doing the best they can for as many as they can," Giulia said, smiling victoriously as Caroline rolled her eyes.

"Just promise me no-one gets hurt," Caroline sighed.

"You know I can't do that," Giulia said, "regardless of the Originals. There's no guarantee."

"I know… So that's it, huh?"

"That's it."

"How… I mean, how will this even work? How do we handle this?" Caroline asked.

"Just like anything else: One day at a time," Giulia said. She reached over and refilled Caroline's glass. "You still mad at me?"

"Yes."

"That's fair."

"I think we might need another bottle."

"Yep, definitely mad," Giulia grimaced. A second bottle of Dom on an ordinary Thursday-night?

"Shouldn't we be toasting to your boyfriend's birthday or something?" Caroline asked, and Giulia froze, glancing over at Caroline. For a second, her mind went to Fabian - they had met and married so quickly, Caroline hadn't had time to catch up; she kept slipping up and calling Fabian her 'boyfriend' for months. But she realised…Caroline meant Elijah. The joking, happy smile disappeared from Caroline's face. "Did you see him?"

"He's awake."

"And how…?" Caroline asked. "How was he?"

"The last time he saw me was at the quarry," Giulia murmured. "He had no idea I'd…survived."

"He doesn't know?" Caroline's eyes were wide. Giulia shook her head, and uncorked the bottle, remembering a friend saying that the sound of a champagne cork popping should be 'as delicate as a duchess's fart'. The thought made her smile, and she refilled their glasses, Caroline staring at her.

"I left Kol with them," Giulia said quietly. "I'm sure Elijah has heard more than I care for him to hear about me."

"Especially from Kol," Caroline snickered. Giulia's friendship with Kol had established itself and flourished over the last ten years; like Enzo, he was a sort of brother-figure she adored, was often irritated by, but loved. They were very close, especially after that business in New Orleans, Kol's home: Her loyalty to her friends, and the smack-down she had given a coven of witches who deserved it, had impressed Kol. They shared a love of food and drink, an obsession with magic, and the discomfort of feeling alien in their own skin - Kol because he was a born witch, turned into a vampire against his will, disconnected from Nature; Giulia, because of what she had evolved into after her first two deaths. They appreciated each other on a fundamental level: Next to Caroline, Giulia would say that Kol was her best-friend.

Her bond with Enzo, of course, was something else entirely: They were family.

"I didn't tell him about Zita," Giulia confessed, and she felt a guilty twist in her stomach; she didn't want one of the others letting it slip to Elijah. But there was no ideal time to tell him she had become a mother in his desiccation. He knew she was married, had felt the rings on her fingers; how was she supposed to explain her circumstances to Elijah when she was still trying to reconcile them herself?

Caroline sipped her champagne thoughtfully, her eyes bright as her mind whirred. "I think that's okay… Elijah's been desiccating for a decade, and…you've…matured. Your relationship has to be different than it was; and with the Klaus of everything…maybe it's a good thing to set some boundaries…at least to start off with. Especially as it concerns Zita." Giulia nodded, agreeing.

"I'm trying to…work out whether I can dissociate Elijah from everything that happened back then," Giulia said quietly. "Can they be two separate things - and could we build something without all the other distractions? Would we have become what we were, if not for the ritual, and everything we had to do for it?"

"Probably not, not as quickly," Caroline said honestly. "But I'm pretty sure Elijah knew how extraordinary you are before he heard about Elena and the moonstone. You can't build a relationship on quicksand - or compulsion - and expect for it to last: you had something real before all that nonsense with the sacrifice ritual. And you know you did, because you never had memories seep back after you transitioned, from your time with him. It was real. The sacrifice was only something you had to endure; you didn't base your entire relationship on it."

"How's Jesse?" Giulia asked quietly.

"He's…getting agitated, I guess," Caroline sighed, glancing over at Giulia. "You know, it's…it's weird, we're still so young, and we don't...we don't live like vampires…he started talking about…things… I had to remind him…"

"How upset was he?" Giulia winced. They only really noticed that Caroline was a vampire when things like marriage and babies cropped up in the conversation; then, she'd get really quiet. Because what could she have to say? She was biologically incapable of getting pregnant. And as for marriage…'till death do us part' was a pretty heavy promise for a vampire to make. Caroline was the very best of what being a vampire could mean: But she was a vampire. She was denied certain privileges of being human. And because she had taught Jesse so well, sometimes he forgot, too, forgot that they weren't human, couldn't have the kind of lives they desperately wanted. He struggled more than Caroline, who had secretly committed herself to watching the children of her best-friends grow up, protecting them, guiding them…for generations. She would be the ultimate fairy-godvampire.

Giulia half-expected Caroline to announce that she would return to high-school when Zita and Ruth were old enough, to protect them from Mean Girls, bad fashion-choices and unintentionally contracting STDs getting drunk at the post-Homecoming party and giving into the pressure of the pretty-eyed fullback. Also, to tip off their parents when the girls were planning something, like sleeping in a stranger's van in a Richmond parking-lot after sneaking in to a concert...their mothers' daughters, indeed.

"I don't…I don't know how long he can keep doing this," Caroline confessed, and Giulia jolted in her seat, staring at Caroline, whose eyes were downcast as she sipped miserably at her Dom Pérignon.

"It's that bad?"

"He misses being human," Caroline said quietly. And Giulia knew…there were some aspects of being human that Caroline missed - or rather, missed out on, like giving birth to her own children - but Caroline liked being a vampire: She was extraordinary at it.

"I don't know what to say," Giulia said honestly, and Caroline gave a sad smile, half-shrugging as she contemplated her champagne.

"There really is nothing you can say," she said hoarsely. "I said, you know…there's so much more to being what we are, so much we can do…but…"

"But you want to stay here," Giulia acknowledged. Caroline wasn't going anywhere…not while Liz was still healthy and whole. Not while she still had a family. This was her only lifetime to enjoy having one. Caroline wasn't going to forfeit time with her mother to chase adventures and breath-taking views half a world away: She could do that in forty, a hundred years. After. Now, Caroline appreciated every moment she got to spend with her mother. An eternity seemed a more daunting prospect when she considered she wouldn't be sharing it with her mom. Those memories might take her through the next millennium.

"We have time," Caroline sighed, "I just…don't know that he can wait that long… I don't think he can…see it..."

"If he can't see it, you talking yourself blue in the face isn't going to help him," Giulia said quietly, and Caroline nodded, her lips trembling delicately.

"It just…it's not his fault," Caroline said quietly, and Giulia couldn't help wonder, not for the first time, whether it mightn't have been kinder not to have dived back into the burning building for Jesse. He made the effort for Caroline, whom he adored, but everyone could see the brittleness of his smiles sometimes, the strain. Jesse suffered from the not unheard of disconnect between vampires and - well, the world. His nature had been fundamentally altered, without his consent - for a science experiment, a zealous scientist turning him to watch the process and take notes. He had studied vampire blood and its healing properties, trying to find a way to cheat Nature, make unquantifiable leaps and bounds in medicine: Giulia had set him straight. Before a freed Enzo snapped his neck. The fire had been Giulia's fault, admittedly; but they had to destroy everything, make sure not one single thumb-drive or syringe survived the purge. Augustine had died in that fire; but before they fled the building, they had heard Jesse, found him in his cage, newly-turned, bewildered.

He had been on one date with Caroline. Suddenly they were living together; and bonded by a secret they could never share with anyone else. Jesse had fallen on his feet with Caroline as a vampmentor, and he knew it, but that didn't mean he didn't struggle.

Not everyone was suited to vampirism like Caroline, to suffer the vulnerabilities of the very best and the very worst of their personalities being heightened, with dignity, a cheerful smile and a wise word.

"It's not his fault," Giulia agreed sadly. She had spent enough time with Jesse over the years to know that good days with Caroline might not be enough to outweigh the bad days as a vampire.

She had to wonder what came next for them, for Caroline and Jesse. For all of them.

"I'm…gonna go to bed, I think," Caroline sighed, refilling her glass, and Giulia nodded, kissing her fingertips and pressing them to Caroline's lips as she approached, looping her arms around her from behind, giving her a cuddle.

"It's all gonna be okay," she whispered, giving a little squeeze. Caroline sighed, glancing around at Giulia, who perched her chin on Caroline's shoulder. She kissed Giulia's temple, and Giulia disentangled herself, watching Caroline weave toward the stairs. Giulia watched her friend pad upstairs to the guest-bedroom, which was more like Caroline's bedroom in the house; she topped off her glass, and spent a half-hour checking her voicemails, replying to emails, and setting time aside in her calendar to go and have her quarterly meeting with Rose to discuss the Boarding House, take Matt out to lunch and transferred the funds for Zita's aerial lessons over the summer, her day-camp activities and workshops at the Edible Farmyard and the public library, their Mommy-and-me yoga classes, and fired off a quick reply to Jenna's text about swimming lessons, remembering.

She glanced at the manila folders full of Caroline's ideas for their upcoming projects; the empty space on her dresser in the office. She gathered up the dogs, put on their high-vis collars and lights, pulled on her sneakers, and went for a short walk in the cool evening air, the stars twinkling benignly, trying to focus on nothing but her breathing, and the scents all around her. It was a habit she had developed, focusing on scents or sounds in the night to refocus and refresh herself, after a long day. She knew the path so well, she could walk the dogs with her eyes closed. And she did it with confidence; she was one of the creatures that went bump in the night, after all.

Caroline was still playing on her iPad when Giulia got home; she unleashed the dogs, gave them their bedtime biscuit and a cuddle, settled them down, turned on the nightlights on the stairs out of habit, and finished off the last half-glass of champagne as she padded into her room. It was odd that Enzo hadn't draped himself in the doorway for a pre-bedtime chat; stranger still, that Zita's tiny little snores couldn't be heard from her bedroom, the door ajar to let in the light from the nightlight, guiding her to the bathroom. Giulia's routine was always thrown off when Zita was gone: Sleepovers at the Saltzman house were a new development, and Giulia wasn't sure she liked the quiet without her!

Yawning, she changed into her pyjamas, turned off the main lights, and climbed into bed, sipping her champagne, raising her eyebrows when her phone pinged. Reaching over, she grabbed her phone from the nightstand, and smiled to herself. A text from Enzo, saying goodnight. And she groaned at the dozen WhatsApp messages from Kol, but read them, and grinned as she tapped rapid-fire replies.

Draining a glass of water, she sank back against the pillows, and almost choked when Kol shared a photograph: Finn and Elijah, in jeans and t-shirts, smiling, their arms around each other, sun-drenched and relaxed.

Giulia smiled to herself, saved the photograph to her phone, and settled in to sleep: Her days as an insomniac had become numbered the moment she committed to earning the first of her undergraduate degrees. They had been obliterated the moment she became a mother. All Giulia wanted to do now was sleep!


A.N.: Everything's not so sunshiny in paradise. I get into a big discussion with my best-friend about how much she abuses her characters: I'm trying to be mean to mine. And I've come up with some not-so-nice things to crop up in this story that you probably won't expect of me!