CW: Sexual themes and imagery. Food.
Dark Side.
Chapter 42: Memento Mori.
"If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.
You leave the same impression of something beautiful, but annihilating."
—excerpt of The Rival. Sylvia Plath.
The Kingdom of Navarre, Iberia, 1498.
The gown fit Cassandra like a glove.
The red velvet bodice was embroidered with gold thread down the front, and panels of deep green taffeta ran down the sides. The sleeves also were green and red, with golden accents at the cuffs. Gold cord tied the panels together loose enough for puffs of her chemise to peek through. Teensy rubies glittered along the neckline like fresh droplets of blood. A neckline that was low enough to hint at the soft fabric of her chemise underneath, a sliver of it visible right above those precious gems they had sown into the velvet.
It had been done at the behest of her betrothed, no doubt, for her people knew she was particular when it came to the use of crystals in her clothing. They also knew she was averse to green, yet the gown's skirts were the richest green taffeta, so vibrant and deep the colour could put a polished emerald to shame.
Arlessa and Camille had dressed and styled her. Profuse apologies had bled from their lips upon her protests, claiming that the order had come from the head of the abode and was not to be challenged. She had given them leave after that, too occupied with reining in her anger to register their slighted feelings.
Standing in front of a looking glass, Cassandra brushed light fingers over the neckline, feeling the lines and angles of the stones as she eyed her head. Her hair had been brushed with oils until it gleamed and then gathered up and fastened to the back of her head in braids and twists entwined with gold and green ribbons, strands tied with golden lace cascading down her back. It was intricate and unfamiliar, elegant and heavier on her neck than the braided style she oft preferred.
The large round looking glass presented her with an askew version of reality. It tainted everything an amber shade and somehow made her appear taller. She did not mind; her eyes recognised colour better than most, and she was well familiar with her true stature. She did not think, however, that her narrow waist was an effect of the looking glass' defects.
Her narrow waist had never been cause for concern, except now it was becoming fashionable to have a specific figure. One her body did not conform to. Even with the custom-made pair of bodies she had acquired, her waist was still narrower than the other women's in Navarre.
No matter how closer or farther she stepped from the looking glass, the effect was the same. The side panels of the fitted bodice kept drawing her eyes to her waist. She told herself she did not care. She had always been admired and respected by those around her, regardless of her garment.
Arguably, she had much bigger problems to contend with.
But Lord Kol was a menace masked with propriety. The lady Rebekah remained unapproachable, most times bordering on cold. Only Lord Elijah had been kind, had offered companionship. Her Lord Father had yet to reply to her letters, and Lord Niklaus had taken three and a half weeks instead of the assured two to return. She did not think the marriage would take place—there had been no talk of ceremony—but she wished for a good first impression, nonetheless.
A knock at the door marked the end of this leisurely time.
A good thing, considering she was one more glance away from changing gowns.
"Your Highness," Elijah greeted her as he did each morn, by bowing at the waist and pressing her knuckles to his forehead.
It was a habit she would soon ask him to forget. He treated her with the same regard he did his own sister, spoke to her with the same warmth that had coloured her own brother's tone. He offered her protection and amusement in this odd, new territory she had never before visited. She had enough cold formalities with Lady Rebekah, enough hostile distance with Lord Kol, she did not need the same from Elijah.
Instead of offering her an elbow, he allowed his eyes to roam her person. Cassandra breathed deep, readying herself for whatever comment he deemed polite enough to remark on her lacking figure. Lord Kol would surely have the most fun with it.
This day would be long.
"It would be remiss to not express how fortunate I consider myself to hold your favour, my lady," Elijah began. It was difficult to keep her surprise from showing on her face. "For it has granted me the honour of being the first to lay eyes upon your beauty each morn. Especially this day."
Relief warmed her blood, spreading all the way down to her toes. It was quite arduous, containing the smile threatening to tug at her lips.
She lifted her chin. "There is no need for flattery."
"It is no mere flattery." Elijah assured her. "You are a sight to behold, my lady, truly. My brother will be impressed."
"Am I to meet him to-day, then?"
A question she already had the answer to. She had grown accustomed to playing the fool Lord Kol believed her to be, though, and it was a mask she hoped to continue using for a while longer. In this land of gods and monsters, the more unsuspecting she appeared, the better.
Based on the look he levelled at her, Elijah was not fooled. Why would he? He had received her that first day before she had decided how to manoeuvre the situation; he had seen her for who she truly was.
"Yes, at last." He humoured her before gesturing with an outstretched arm. "Please."
She swept past him, her gown sighing against the floor as she went.
Elijah led her to a chamber she had never visited before.
Vast, with stone floors covered with embellished rugs, and ornamental tapestries hanging from the rafters of the tall, domed ceiling. Pillars on either side marked a clear path down the centre of the chamber, as pews did an aisle in a church. There was no furniture except for a large, high-backed wooden and velvet chair atop a dais at the very end of the room. Its legs and arms were carved with beautiful swirls and twists.
A throne room and a throne for an ambitious lordling.
Perhaps she had been wrong to assume they wanted her for her magic. Perhaps it was the other sort of power she possessed they craved.
Elijah stopped by the dais; his hands folded behind his back. She copied him, folding one hand above the other right where the bodice of her gown met the skirts, and looking around with curious eyes without moving her head a single inch. The room was empty except for them, but her hunter's instinct was alert. She would be remiss to ignore it.
"Thank you, brother. Leave us."
The voice came from the left. The entrance to some other chamber was obscured by a heavy tapestry depicting a lion on its hind legs, maw open in a roar. Above it, a mighty, pale-bellied dragon threatened to engulf the lion in flames.
Elijah nodded even when his brother was not there to see it. He sent her a lingering look, eyes heavy with a message her racing mind could not interpret, before excusing himself from the chamber by leaving through another hidden door.
Cassandra had been led to a trap from which she knew not all the exits.
She recalled not the last time her heart had beat this fast. Her palms moistened.
Steps echoed. She kept her eyes on that hidden entrance to the left, where his smooth, deep voice had travelled from.
At last, he half appeared, hovering in the darkness so she could see that he dressed in finery fit for a king and nothing more. His aura was so overpowering she sensed him from afar. It was more telling than he likely knew, or else he would have it dampened.
"I have been waiting a very long time for us to meet, my Lady Death." Her heart stuttered at the epithet, both surprised and aggrieved. She squeezed her own fingers with enough strength to bruise—a feeble attempt at keeping her composure. "A very long time, indeed."
Lord Niklaus Mikaelson stepped out of the shadows. The smile he granted her was as lovely as the sharp edge of a dagger.
Washington D.C., Virginia, Present Day.
The fast-food restaurant is an amalgamation of fluorescent lights and uncomfortable seating. The A.C. shoots from the grated shafts on the ceiling with the same fervor mid-winter air seeps into the bones. Pop music blares from the speakers in every corner. All proven tactics to ensure people understand this is not a place to stay, it is a place to eat cheap food and leave.
These do not work on them.
Damon and Cassandra sit on a booth by the floor-to-ceiling windows, the rain splattering and sliding down the glass. Flashes of thunder and lightning illuminate the darkened parking lot outside in sporadic bursts. The black table between them is littered with food wrappers and paper bags, half eaten food and soda drunk only halfway.
They've been at this Taco Bell for over an hour. It's on the outskirts of some nondescript city between Mystic Falls and D.C.. She did not bother reading the welcome sign, all she did was glance at Damon when they read there was a Taco Bell nearby. Next thing she knew, they were switching lanes and pulling up at the rest stop.
They got way too much food. Pretty much one of each. She doesn't remember the last time she racked up such a high bill at a fast-food restaurant, but dinner didn't exactly go as planned and the truth was she's famished.
At least Damon's eating as much as she is, she muses, watching him tear open a small paper bag and pull out a dough stick dusted with sugar and cinnamon. When he takes a bite out of it, a dash of sugar remains on his bottom lip. She wants to lick it away with her tongue. Not exactly appropriate for a first date, regardless of the fact that she's had her mouth on other parts of him already.
The sudden reminder nearly makes her choke on the chicken quesadilla she's nibbling at. Not because of how outrageous it is, because—sitting here with him wearing that finely-made ebony black shirt, its sleeves rolled up to just below his elbow, his raven hair brushed and soft, and those captivating blue eyes—she finds herself dying to do it again.
Inside this cold, much-to-bright Taco Bell, she wants to slide unto the sticky floor, and brush her hands up his thighs. She wants to kiss and graze the grooves of his abdomen with her tongue, get a feel of those strong muscles under soft skin. She wants to bite his hipbone. Wants to take a hold of him and drag her tongue up—
Stop it, she chastises herself. Fantasizing about him won't make not sleeping with him any easier. A decision that's starting to sound absurd the longer she spends time with him.
Desperate for a distraction from her body's eager reaction to that little daydream, she reaches over and pulls out another dough stick from the bag.
"Hands off my cinnamon twists!" Damon protests, covering the bag with a cupped hand.
"Uh, excuse me?" Cassandra raises an eyebrow. She takes a bite of 'his' cinnamon stick, slow and deliberate. "We are sharing."
"You're still eating that quesadilla," he's quick to point out, gesturing with pursed lips to the quesadilla she holds in her other hand.
Smug, he leans back and pops the rest of his dough stick into his mouth. His tongue darts out to catch the leftover sugar on his bottom lip. Freyja have mercy.
"And you haven't finished that burrito," she defends, keeping her eyes on the burrito to his left and as far away as possible from his mouth. The words leave her just a little breathy. "Same difference."
"I'm taking a break from the burrito so I may, at the very least, get a taste of these before you inhale them like you've done everything else."
"I have not!" Cassandra gasps. The words are wonky with laughter. "Take it back."
She squares her features into a serious frown. It likely defeats its purpose, since her mouth keeps quivering with contained laughter. Damon leans on the table with both arms, matching her feigned seriousness with a severe look of his own. He narrows his eyes, sways his head from left to right.
"I would but it'd be a lie." He leans even closer, eyes glinting with playful faux-concern, before adding for only her to hear: "you're a bottomless pit."
"You've had two tacos and half a burrito." She argues without missing a beat. Those are considerably larger than her quesadillas. Not to mention the waiter they shared behind the restaurant parking lot. So if anyone's a bottomless pit here… "Plus all my fries, since you insisted getting fries at Taco Bell was a disgrace."
"I didn't say disgrace." No, the word he used had been decidedly more scandalous. "And you haven't let me had a single slice of the two different quesadillas we got! Or the guacamole."
True. And she never planned to share the black bean quesadilla, not that he needs to know that. She eyes the quesadilla slice in her hand, and the two remaining slices laying one next to the other atop their paper wrapping.
"It appears we're at an impasse," she says.
His eyes appear brighter under the fluorescent lights of this place, reflecting the neon blues and purples of the signs inside. The combined colors turn the unabashed want in his gaze into molten mercury.
"Mmmhm, yep."
Fuck, how is she supposed to behave normally when he looks at her like he wants to eat her?
"Since you're appropriating those cinnamon twists," Cassandra begins, grappling for control even as she slips down the slope. "I'm claiming these nachos as mine."
She drops the quesadilla atop the other slices. With her cinnamon stick, she points at the cardboard tray housing the nachos and pops the little dough stick into her mouth, brushing any leftover sugar with the back of her fingers.
The truth is she doesn't care. The waiter and the quesadilla and a half have made it so Cassandra doesn't think she could have another bite of anything, let alone an entire tray of nachos. She's searching for a distraction from the hypnotising man in front of her, a way to remind herself why she needs to keep a cool head. Why she needs to tread lightly.
It's becoming increasingly difficult the longer she spends time with him.
"How very British of you."
She scoffs, grabbing a straw wrapper from the table.
Before she can throw it, Damon's fingers are wrapping around both her wrists. They're close enough that he needs no real strength to bring her closer, and it's not until that moment that she notices how they're leaning on the table with elbows and torsos angled toward each other.
One of her wrists, he keeps between them. The only real obstacle between her and his mouth. Something Cassandra's acutely aware of until he presses her other hand to his chest. Her finger pads catch on the crevice between his collarbone, palm flat against his sternum. Damon's heartbeat is a ghost of his human heart, fainter yet just as lively, steady but quickening the longer she studies him.
His thumb runs down the back of her hand, thumb to pinkie. It's a casual touch, yet intimate and sensual. Enough to rob Cassandra of breath. Her brain is a wide expanse of white; her heart, a pitter-patter across her chest.
Damon's clean shaven and smells heavenly and Cassandra's all too conscious of the wine staining her dress and rendering her straightened hair into lumps, of the sour grapey scent wafting from the strands despite her having rinsed them under the tap.
As if reading her mind, Damon's eyes travel from hers down to her neck, her shoulders, and what little of her champagne-colored silk dress the opening of his jacket reveals. His jacket. Which she has worn since the moment she returned from the restroom with wet hair and a red wine stain stretching down the front and side of her dress.
He releases her to grasp at the lapel of his jacket and hoist it up until her shoulder is once again covered. His other hand untucks her hair from the back. Her embarrassment is replaced by a different warmth at the thoughtful gesture. Cassandra laces her fingers together to stop herself from reaching and touching, rests both hands under her chin.
Damon looks back at her, lips parted. She knows that look well; it's the one he wears whenever he's gathering inner courage to speak his mind. She speaks before he can.
"Thank you."
He blinks, taken aback. "For what?"
"Tonight." She squeezes her fingers together. Ignoring the need to touch him didn't use to be this difficult. "It was fun."
Damon leans back on his seat with a furrow crinkling his mouth. "It was disastrous."
For a first date, maybe. Okay—definitively yes.
The restaurant was overpriced and limited in its dish options. The rain hasn't let up since they drove past the Mystic Falls exit sign, so they weren't able to sit outside by the river like Damon had wanted to. The waiter spilling an entire decanter of wine over her halfway through their teeny tiny starter course was so mortifying it was hilarious. But the drive up to D.C. had been fun, lovely with nervous excitement and tentative conversation that soon blended into the ease they have always had with each other.
Damon picked her up exactly when he said he would. He got her flowers. Purple and red tulips, dwarf sunflowers and ivy beautifully arranged and tied together with midnight blue ribbon. She's not sure if he got them because it was the only bouquet with sunflowers or if he took time to choose the flowers based on their meaning. Either way, it was a lovely gesture. She had no business smiling the way she had when she'd seen them.
"It was wonderful." Cassandra insists. "You got me flowers."
Damon smiles, tight-lipped and self-deprecating, like he understands he's disappointed her without her having voiced it.
"I always get you flowers."
He always has, since they first met.
It started as a silly thing. On a beautiful spring day. He had accompanied her to the town market under the premise that a young woman such as herself shouldn't walk to and from town on her own. She'd agreed because even then, so soon after meeting each other, she had craved his company.
They'd been on their way to the dressmaker's when the baskets upon baskets of freshly cut flowers the florist had set up outside caught her eye. Mainly, the giant sunflowers the florists must have sourced from out-of-state. They were so large the flower was the size of her face. She hadn't been able to contain her fascination, so Damon had bought her two.
It was the first time she smiled at him in anything other than politeness. The first time she allowed him to see a real part of herself, and not the sensible, private woman she offered the world, always so careful of propriety. A premeditated maneuver since she hadn't planned to form ties in Mystic Falls.
After that, Damon would buy her flowers each time they went into town. One sunflower, and whatever others piqued her interest. It opened a conversation to the elusive language of flowers, so popular in her homeland and beyond, how one might send private messages within a beautiful arrangement. A gift and a sentiment all at once. And so, they began exchanging thoughts a different way. An I thought of you today in the form of a purple violet tied with a thin red ribbon and placed on his pillow on days where they didn't see each other. Two beautiful heartsease, all purple, yellow and blue, appearing the following day on her bedside to say I think of you still.
I am angry. Leave me be. Please, forgive me. Yes, I will save you the first and last dance. I admire you. You are my dearest friend.
I hope you can forgive me. Remember me like I will always remember you. Goodbye, I love you had been the very last message she'd given him, with ivy putting the whole bouquet together as her innermost desire that he would in fact become a vampire, so they may hopefully meet again and be someday. She'd placed the arrangement on his bedside table during dinner, had walked out and never returned.
It was one of those things they reserved for one another. Damon never gave Katherine flowers, just like he never danced with anyone else but her, despite the clear message that sent. Cassandra never allowed anyone else to walk her to town. His flowers were the only ones she kept until they wilted.
It was second nature, sending him that bouquet asking him to kindly fuck off when he'd failed to defend her against all accusations that she had compelled Jenna. She never expected him to send one back begging forgiveness, claiming to miss her, professing maybe a tad more affection than he'd perhaps realised.
Yes, he has always gotten her flowers. Yes, dinner was a disaster. No, he has not disappointed her.
"Perhaps," she acquiesces. "But these were particular in their beauty."
She awaits his answer with bated breath, trusting his face to betray whether he'd chosen the flowers for their meaning or not.
Damon clears his throat, shrugging in a way she would mistake as self-conscious were it anyone else.
"Yeah, well…" it's his turn now to find the space between them interesting. That's a 'yes' to her unspoken question. She bites her bottom lip to stop a smile. "That still doesn't make up for a shitty dinner. Next time will be perfect."
Cassandra can't recall the last time she experienced a Damon this… hopeful. This vulnerable and all too aware of it. She didn't expect him to heed her words so readily. To be so willing to open up to her and work on this even when it's difficult for him to express sentiments as trustingly as he once did.
And if flowers are the only way he can express those sentiments, the only way he's confident to say please believe in me and my declaration, my feelings for you surpass adoration, I desire only you, always, then she'll take it.
For now.
"Next time?"
"Unless you don't want to." She doesn't think she's ever witnessed Damon stumble over his own words, and yet here he is, speaking so fast the words 'want to' become one. "I wouldn't blame you."
"I want to," Cassandra says before he finishes.
Damon's eyes widen a little, and when he exhales it is a relieved laugh. She smothers her giggle by turning her mouth into her palm, all too aware of the fluttering in her stomach and the way her chest is light with nerves.
She feels infinitely young, like anything and everything is possible. Such a contrast from last week, when she'd never been more aware of her five centuries.
"I have missed this." Cassandra confesses. When a tiny crease appears between his brows, and Damon keeps his intent eyes on her like he's trying hard to understand, she elaborates, "spending time with you, and not having it be because we're trying to keep the world from ending. Or because we're fighting."
His face clears, softens.
"Me too." He admits.
Were she not a vampire, the soft utterance would have been lost to a sea of electro-pop and the rumble of rain. The words aren't for the world to hear. They're just for her.
The moment hangs. Cassandra could make a home out of this moment, of the small eternity that bridges between them as their gaze lock and hold. She should look away, veer the conversation somewhere else. Perhaps it may be time to call it a night—four hours is pushing it for a first date, isn't it?—but Damon appears as reluctant as she is to move.
They could have had this a lifetime ago. The thought leaves her hollow.
"Anyway—" she clears her throat, leans her cheek on her hand. "Tell me about yourself."
The spell is broken. Damon snorts.
"What?"
"Well, since we've both agreed that we're having a lovely time," Cassandra starts, breath catching at his agreeing nod. "And the date part of the evening was, as you put it, disastrous, I'm extending it to this cold Taco Bell." She leans back, extends her hands around the table. Adds a teasing tilt to the words to halve some of the pressure building in her chest, some of the expectation. It doesn't work. "We barely had time to do first date things. So, tell me about yourself."
"Cassie, you already know me." Damon reminds her with a playful wiggle of his eyebrows and a canted head.
"Humor me." Cassandra requests with an exaggerated copy of his movements.
Their eyes meet. She raises her eyebrows, cheeky. Play with me, she silently wills him. The request is a double-edged blade. He's made a point of her reluctance to share her past more than once. This could very quickly move from surface sharing to a deeper commitment—after all, he's right; they already know each other—and she's not quite ready yet to open up about the topic he so yearns to hear about.
Regardless of whether he hopes to unearth that very past she keeps under lock and key, or he simply shares her desire to keep the night going for as long as possible, Damon agrees to play along.
He does not mention superfluous matters such as favorite colors or hobbies. Nor does he delve into delicate subjects like blood relations or their gruesome past, shared or otherwise.
Instead, Damon tells her about his brief stunt as a mechanic in the 80s. She shares some of her crazier stories from working as a photographer for the National Geographic. He embellishes his sole excursion to Nepal with quite the picturesque narrative. Cassandra's all pouts and grimaces as she recounts the time she found out vampirism does very little against the terrible sting of a bullet ant, even if it does burn the venom in minutes instead of hours.
Damon laughs through the story of how teaching Stefan to punch somehow ended up with him breaking his little brother's nose. Sobers up when he recalls the tears in Stefan's eyes as their father forced him to give up his teddy bear on his eleventh birthday, claiming men had no need of toys. His calm demeanor does nothing to belie the anger that still burns against his father. The fierce protectiveness he has for his brother, even after all this time.
So, Cassandra decides to chip away at one more piece of her armor. She grants him the story of the last time she saw her own brother alive, the day he gifted her with his ring. The very ring she still wears on her index finger.
As it often happens when discussing jewelry, Damon requests to inspect it closer. She's slipping it past her finger and handing it to him before the thought fully forms.
"I always wondered why you protected a man's ring so fervently," Damon comments.
He studies the stone for another moment before reaching out and slipping the ring back into her finger himself. The bubble of anxiety that had been growing in her chest since its departure pops and dissolves into nothing. Cassandra twirls the ring around the space between her knuckles, relishes the tingles of magic seeping into her skin again.
"I don't know about fervently." She dismisses with a wave of her hand.
"It was obsessive."
There's no malice to his tone. None of the harsh edges others would be received with had they laid such a confession at Damon's feet. It's more that he sees the frayed ends of the veil she wears, the bright and effortless veil that suggests this thing that belongs to the past no longer affects her, and catches them with a lazy smirk and a sassy comment before a small wind blows the whole fabric into rippling fragments.
She knocks her heeled foot against his calf, glares at him without any real heat.
"Well, now you know."
A silent thank you.
"Now I know."
Damon levels her with a look a tad too serious in comparison to their previous light-hearted banter. A silent I understand. Cassandra realizes she revealed more than she'd bargained for. It's okay. She doesn't mind being vulnerable if Damon is the one to witness it.
Eventually, they leave because—well, they have to go back to Mystic Falls sometime. Damon drops her off with nothing more than a promise to call the next day and a lingering kiss to her cheek.
Once inside, Cassandra makes her way into the kitchen. The bouquet Damon gave her is exactly where she left it, right in the centre. The ivy swoops unto the table like the train of a skirt. The mere sight of it renews the wild galloping of her heart, flips her stomach. Believe in me. I desire only you, always. She can't stop the secret smile that tugs at her mouth.
Fingering the sunflowers with a feather-light touch, Cassandra decides that, given the chance, she wouldn't change a single thing about tonight, ruined dinner and all.
The Kingdom of Navarre, Iberia, 1498.
Lord Niklaus Mikaelson was beautiful. A fickle observation, considering the danger he presented.
For the first moment of their meeting, however, that was all Cassandra registered.
His eyes, as blue-green as the summer sea, grazed her figure in no different a manner to a physical touch. He shared a forehead with his brothers, though not quite as prominent as Elijah's, or perhaps it was the added length to his face that which made it appear less so. For his face was longer than Kol's even, and more angular than any of the Mikaelson progeny combined, ending in a sharp yet strong jaw. Blond hair stretched across his lower cheek, chin, and upper lip, trimmed and well-groomed. His curls were oiled and brushed until they sat on his shoulders in a careful yet effortless manner. The colour an almost burnished gold, and still not quite, at times hinting more towards light brown. It depended on the light, Cassandra surmised when the hue of them shifted once again as he moved. Moved with elegance and command; strong, precise steps, his hands clasped behind his back.
All this paired with his tall, lythe body made him a fine specimen of virility.
Which was the opposite of what Cassandra had hoped. She wished he not be beautiful. Beauty was power of a different kind, this Cassandra knew well. In beauty, they shared equal standing. They need not stand beside the other as a Master of Art rendered them into eternity for her to see it—they were well matched.
Enraptured in her observing of him, Cassandra almost missed Lord Niklaus's own studying of her person. By the glint in his eye, he liked what he saw. Had reached the same conclusion Cassandra had.
"You are meant to curtsy right about now." He commented in a conversational tone.
A far cry from the low, almost sensual rumble he had received her with. Even then, it was a pleasure to hear. He had a way of smoothing out the words, caressing each syllable with discernible care. His accent was unmistakeably English and, just like his siblings', ambiguous in a way that impeded her from inferring where he hailed from. Regardless, Cassandra cared not for his command of the chamber.
She stacked up her spine and gathered herself.
"On the contrary, sire, you are the one meant to display all the deference I am owed. Especially since you are late." Her words earned her a contemplative frown from her companion. After a beat, she flicked her left foot behind her right and bent her knees in a slow curtsy nowhere near as low as she suspected would please him. "My lord."
She had gone mad. Sometime between stepping off the ship that had ferried her here and this moment, her mind had gone away from her.
Lord Niklaus approached her with that same slow elegance. The world would wait for him, not the other way around.
"My brother Elijah made a mention of your pride," he said.
His head tipped to one side, only just, giving her the impression of being a wild creature under the scrutiny of a hunter. Listened he to her heart? Was its wild scampering to blame for the minute quirk to his mouth?
"I mistook it for exaggeration."
He showed no intention of remedying the slight. Neither did she. Cassandra observed it amused him more than insulted him. It would suffice to say neither was what the other had expected.
"I suppose I ought to introduce myself." He added with a raise of an eyebrow.
"No need." Cassandra assured him. "I know exactly who you are."
Lord Niklaus exhaled a sound that was more a short-lived laugh than any sigh. Behind her back, Cassandra pressed her thumb and index finger on either side of her brother's ring, twisting it in a slow circle with enough pressure to smart, enough strength for the gold holding the stone in place to leave an indent in the pads of her fingers. It grounded her, refocused her mind.
"And I know you." She was all too aware of how close his stride had landed him. He peered down at her. His features smoothed in curiosity; it took years off his person. "Though, pardon my boldness, you are smaller than described."
Which was saying something, since Cassandra was certain Lord Kol had hesitated the length of a heartbeat before jesting about her stature. Her jaw clenched. Amusement tinted his eyes the same colour as the raw blue apatite she had slipped between her breasts.
"My stature hinders me not in any way, my lord." She managed through gritted teeth. "A truth I would be most glad to demonstrate."
The threat went right over his head. Or, for Cassandra doubted he missed much, it was one he simply chose to ignore.
"Nor does it diminish your fierceness, I see. You fear me not," Lord Niklaus said this as one would comment about rain in London town.
An erroneous conclusion, since her back was slick with sweat and her heart had not known peace since she awoke this morning. He had given no inclination that he planned to harm her. Neither had Kol, and yet deadly nightshade had found its way into her cup. Not enough to kill, but enough to incapacitate her for days had she drunk it. Kol had claimed it a joke, a game to test whether she was as good a huntress as was declared.
"I have killed vampires before." Cassandra reminded him.
She kept her eyes on his, her shoulders back. This was not a warning he would be able to sidestep. Of course, the root of the matter was that she could do nothing. The Mikaelsons were the Original vampires and as such were indestructible. She could not kill them, not in any permanent way. As a mortal, she would never get close enough or hold enough strength to rip out their hearts, to behead them. As a witch… after what had transpired five months past, she doubted she would ever dare use more than a quarter of her magic again. Even if she herself were immortal, her might would be fickle against theirs, given their age. Because of this, they terrified her—even Elijah, with whom she sometimes found herself treading lightly.
Something to Niklaus's expression, the most minute twitch to his eyebrows, an added tension to his left cheek alerted her that he was well aware of all this.
"I am unlike any vampire you have encountered in the past, my Lady Death." How she wished he would never call her his Lady Death again, not with that tone, with that piqued interest slithering beneath the politeness. "This is good. I would hate for my wife to fear me."
Her heart halted. Her mind was an abyss of white noise as roaring as the surf crashing against the rocky shore.
"Wife." She repeated. Her lips formed the word rather than spoke it. "Will we wed? I—"
The right words evaded her. I believed it a front sounded naïve. I am still in mourning for my late husband, a lie considering her selfish endeavours last autumn.
"That is the promise made to your family," said Niklaus.
He spoke as a lord would, triumphant in his merits, victorious in the battle that had commenced the moment Cassandra had stepped through the threshold. To him, he had already won the war, regardless of the other participant having been ignorant and unprepared when it'd begun. To her, his was a victory without honour. Lord Niklaus did not see it as such.
With a little smirk, secretive in its curve, he added: "besides, every king needs his queen."
For the first time since he had stepped into the light, Cassandra tore her eyes away from him for no other reason than her magic's attention had been snagged elsewhere with such force it brought her along. Her eyes landed on the tapestry by the secret door, the one with the lion and the dragon. No mere coincidence. No small choice of décor. She understood it for the warning and threat he had meant it as. She was the lion, he the dragon about to engulf her in flames.
"I will not make you King." She declared. "Husband or not, the Crown will be mine only."
It was a Queen's voice that rang through the chamber. He straightened before her. A cloud passed over his features.
Lord Niklaus was wrong. She was no mere lion. She was a Woodehouse—the sole Plantagenet line to make it out of the war with ample power to have significant sway in court, to remain in line for the throne. She was married into the Royal House of Stewart, a half-English, half-French girl dropped into the Highlands outnumbered, and manipulated them to her bidding. The Scots kneeled before her, not just because of her husband, may he drown in the River Styx. Cassandra was Lady Death. The Vicomtesse des Loupes. A huntress. And it just so happened that dragons were a creature she was no stranger to.
"I spoke not of a human throne, though I admire your ambition." Lord Niklaus dismissed. The storm clouds were yet to clear from the firmament of his face. "Give you me what I desire most, and I shall ensure you rule by my side forevermore."
He leaned in close. His inhale rustled the little hairs near her ear. His exhale spanned her neck and collarbone.
"You would be Queen Eternal."
It was a promise whispered at her ear. She shifted a hair's breadth, only so she could meet his gaze.
The biggest hunt of her life, Father had called it and then refused to reply to any of her letters involving the matter. Cassandra knew very well what this was: her only chance at absolution, at least in their eyes. Her coven's eyes, mind. The Grand Coven did not give a rat's ass what she had done to her own sister.
She figured out a way to rid the world of the Original Family and… what? There was no real home to return to when the coven leader repudiated her, no matter that she was his eldest daughter. Only daughter now. It was empty reassurances and a miserable existence. There was no saying what her lord father would do once she returned, successful or not.
Queen Eternal, Lord Niklaus promised and meant it. She had been born and bred for the title. He was willing to grant it, as long as she gave something in return.
Her curiosity increased tenfold. What could he possibly desire so ardently that would come at such a steep price? A supernatural throne for a supernatural queen implicated quite the large territory to rule over, and quite the war to secure it.
"Vampirism is not that which I desire most." Cassandra voiced the only detail that kept her from agreeing.
"Such contempt." Lord Niklaus hummed. "You think it so terrible?"
"My magic would be lost to me."
He took another step closer, so much closer that his warmth blanketed the entire right side of her. The midnight blue velvet of his tunic was delicately embroidered with golden thread at the seams. For the length of five of her quickened heartbeats, he merely studied her, head to toe. Not like before, when she'd been an interesting or unusual creature he had just encountered, a trophy to hang on the wall once he'd felled it. No—this was a comfortable and familiar gaze, like they had met in the past and were simply reacquainting.
When he spoke next, the question was a whisper in the way a confession is a whisper. To keep a secret from unwanted ears.
"Would it?"
She snapped her eyes away from his oddly alluring neck to lock gazes with him. Her heart lurched forward, a little thrill shot down her back as something inside of her tugged and spooled. There was no malice in his expression, but an open earnestness.
"My family would not forgive that crime," she explained.
To become a hybrid would be unforgivable, would mean persecution. Not just from her family, but from the Grand Coven as well. She was well acquainted with the fate that awaited true hybrids—it was not one she wanted for herself.
"I would be your family," he said, too easily for her to believe.
Cassandra was reminded of exactly who stood beside her, whose abode she resided in.
"Your brother detests me." It discredited any allusions of future kinship. "Your sister thinks me beneath her."
Lord Niklaus chuckled under his breath, suggesting the lady Rebekah's frigid treatment was more commonplace than Cassandra worried. "Rebekah is jealous you stole her brothers' attention. It shall pass."
He made no mention of Lord Kol's aversion, she noted.
Lord Niklaus extended a hand—long-fingered and beautiful like the rest of him. A hand meant for creation, even if it was oft used to destroy—and allowed it to hover between them. Both offer and agreement.
"You would have a home here with me. You have my word." He said it with such conviction she believed him.
A naïve notion, for their acquaintance was so young it was not enough to ensure that. The call in her blood for him, however, was not something she could continue to ignore.
He felt it, too. There could be no other reason for his insistence that this was where she belonged. After all there be no need for niceties; she had no home to return to, he was her only port in this storm. Yet it sounded not like a prison, this place, this marriage, not as it once had. Not if they understood each other. She had an inkling they did. It was as if he were a key and she a lock, and all they needed to reach their true potential was each other.
Besides, she was terribly curious of this business Lord Niklaus was in need of her for.
Cassandra slipped her hand into his and found it warmer and softer than she had imagined. Niklaus's features relaxed, softened. His lips parted a fraction, corners twitching into the beginning of a smile that never came fully into being. The boyish hope in his eyes turned them once more into the aquamarine hue of the summer sea.
Not for the first time, Cassandra found herself wondering at the man behind the monster. Wondering at the monster itself, and if it could ever be tamed.
Mystic Falls, Virginia, Present Day.
There are exactly 15,609 cracks in the cobweb-embellished ceiling of this underground tomb. Katherine Pierce has counted each and every one. Everyday for the past… month, maybe? Longer than a week, definitely.
There are 16,213 paces from the front steps of her house to the dusty entrance of this underground tomb. Cassandra Woodhouse has counted each and every one. An idle activity to distract herself from the conversation about to take place.
As both women regard each other, one free in more ways than one, the other a slave to a fate worse than death, this numeral data seems as inconsequential as a speck of dirt in the ground beneath their feet. Which is to say, tiny, barely indistinguishable in a sea of other specks of dirt, but all they can think of when it makes its way into their shoe.
To Katherine, these fifteen thousand six hundred and nine cracks are a visual representation of her defeat.
To Cassandra, these sixteen thousand two hundred and thirteen steps are each an individual marker for Katherine's betrayal. The one that took her a hundred and twenty-six years to discover. One that she got told about, didn't even figure out herself, because the idea that Katherine would stab her in the back had been absurd.
Better you die than I applied to everyone but her.
Little does she know, inside the tomb, Katherine is thinking the same thing. Thinking the same thing, while debating whether it was a mistake, considering how Cassandra repaid her.
"Have you come to gloat?" Katherine asks.
Her voice comes hoarse and brittle from both lack of use and hunger. She hates it. Hates that Cassandra stands by the entrance to her prison, pristine in a frilly sundress and combat boots with clean hair and smelling like a freaking prairie, while Katherine is gritty and dirty, hair tangled from who knows how many days without shampoo, tired from lack of blood, and mind reeling from inactivity. Even the fresh clothes Damon brought her are dusty after four consecutive days of use. The bottle full of blood he granted her is a dream of a memory.
"I should kill you." Cassandra muses like it has just occurred to her now that she's properly looking at Katherine.
Katherine narrows her eyes and stands up as straight as her leaden limbs can manage. Sunbeams bleed into the stone alcove through cracks in the decrepit ceiling, slip through the opening where the roof collapse who-knows-how-long-ago. She hopes it's dim enough to mask how weak she truly is.
"Why don't you come a little closer and we'll find out who stays standing?"
Without hesitance, Cassandra takes one long step, crossing the threshold of the tomb until she's standing a mere arm's length away from Katherine.
"So?" she dares when Katherine does nothing. "I didn't think so. You're looking a little grey."
Katherine fights the urge to spit at her. Or tug at her hair hard enough to rip the strands off her scalp. Or bite off her ear. Something spiteful and as humiliating as being forced to live in a tomb waiting to desiccate.
Cassandra looks around the round antechamber. Katherine is acutely aware of the dirt, the damp musty smell, and decides the only good thing about this situation is that she's so starved she basically has no bodily functions to speak of. That would not have been something she would have survived having Cassandra witness.
"I see you've earned some… creature comforts." Cassandra comments with a turned-up nose.
Katherine follows her gaze to her very limited number of possessions. The Petrova book. A grey zipper jacket. An empty plastic bottle stained a rusty red within. Two clear plastic hangers. The dress she wore to the Lockwood masquerade. Hardly creature comforts, which would explain why Cassandra struggled to find an apt name for the pathetic pile.
"It was the opposite of what I expected when I woke up to Damon in here. I was prepared for more violence." Katherine agrees. Cassandra hums. Her head sways to either side, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. "Unless… have you not told him?"
She's trying hard to be belittling, but it lacks intention when she's this tired and Cassandra so unaffected.
"I fail to see the point. He fell for you all by himself, regardless." Cassandra shrugs.
A side effect Katherine had not seen coming, but one she exploited all the same, until it became much too bothersome.
The truth was Damon Salvatore had defected from the war half in love with sweet, beautiful Cassie—ugh, just the memory of it makes Katherine gag—a would-be-simple to ignore issue, except Cassandra had fallen for the boring sap, too. And that would simply not do, because then she wouldn't have carried the plan to completion. She would have stayed. Would have let Klaus and The Grand Coven find her. Which in turn would have put Katherine in peril, too.
Cassandra didn't just need a reason to leave Mystic Falls behind, she needed to want to leave Mystic Falls behind.
It wasn't so much that she compelled Damon to not love Cassandra as it was that she… suggested he denied any realization. Via compulsion. The feelings were still there, just sort of hidden. Maybe. Whatever. She didn't pay much attention while doing it, and she doesn't care now. All she's sure of is that it was a fool-proof plan. When Damon turned, he'd forget that suggestion and therefore forget about his bothersome love for Katherine. Except Cassandra had everyone believe she had truly died, and Emily blabbed about the tomb, so Damon had mourned and held on. What a disaster.
"Maybe, but it still doesn't explain why he helped me."
For his benefit, of course, or at least he thinks so. He has no idea that Katherine lied, that Elijah dead is exactly what she wants. It had been so easy, too, because Katherine getting stuck forever inside this rotting cobweb-filled tomb was exactly what Damon had hoped to hear. She saw it the second he opened his mouth. Katherine didn't even have to try hard to sell it.
Still, had Cassandra explained why she worked behind the scenes to ensure she and Lucy ended up with the moonstone and Katherine lost, Damon Salvatore would have staked her, not fed her blood.
"He has no idea." She purrs around a serpentine smile, leaning on the tomb wall. To stop the world from spinning, but she hides it with some confident arrogance she's only just starting to mean. "Does he? About Nik."
Cassandra has half a mind to roll her eyes. It's enough that Elijah is proclaiming her still in love with Niklaus, she doesn't need Katherine doing the same.
Instead, she requests, "apologize to me."
"Excuse me?" Katherine demands, tucking her chin in and staring under her lashes.
On anyone else, the gesture would appear bashful. On Katherine, it is the nocking of the arrow. The aiming before the kill.
"For December 1883." Cassandra clarifies. "I want you to look me in the eye and apologize for selling me out."
Katherine swallows. She does not speak. They stare at each other, the air thick with tension and five hundred years of knowing diminished by a supercut of hurt. In the forest above, the caw of a crow rings out, soon answered by another.
"You've hurt me, too, you know," Katherine says.
Cassandra can't tell if the crack in her voice is emotion or fatigue.
Katherine isn't lying, of course. In over five centuries of knowing a person, of spending so much time with a person, there are bound to be misunderstandings, arguments that end with one or both parties with slighted feelings.
"Not like this." She voices what Katherine already knows, judging by the pinching of her features.
The pursed lips, the wrinkled chin, the wobbling of her eyebrows, Katherine looks both miserable and furious.
"Fine." Katherine bites. "I'm sorry."
Cassandra drags a booted foot through the dust and muck accumulating on the stone floor, right, down, up, right, left until the drag marks form a pentagram. She would have liked that apology with a little less condescension and a touch more sincere. Katherine reads the thought on her face and decides to play dirty instead of fair.
"I'm sorry that I told Klaus where to find you. I'm sorry that I saved you from another decade of torture and misery because you were too dissatisfied with life to catch the signs of someone following you." Katherine pauses, face coming alight with satisfaction at the minute flinch Cassandra can't quite hide. Wallachia is not something she likes discussed, least of all casually out in the open. "I'm so very sorry I didn't let you die."
"Oh, please." She pshaws. "You're better at lying that this."
Katherine will never admit it aloud, but the tightening in her chest is hurt. The sudden stinging in her eyes isn't caused by dust.
"I chose the less of two evils for you," she says, and it is not a lie. "I protected you. Something I don't do for many out there."
When she'd caught word that some resentful witch had written to that old crone Morrigan with Cassandra's general whereabouts, the decision had been obvious. If the Grand Coven caught Cassandra again, chances were they'd just carve her heart out instead of holding her in that castle full of the macabre for whatever reasons Cassandra still refuses to talk about. Katherine had managed to get enough out of her to infer it'd been a horrific, painful experience.
The only one powerful enough to deter them just so happened to be the vampire so blinded by her, he'd been willing to marry her as a mortal. Not many dared challenge the Originals, least of all the one known for being unhinged. So, yes, Katherine had contacted Klaus under an alias and had explained the situation. She gave him Cassandra's exact location, down to the hour and minute.
She had done it selflessly, because Cassandra had been distant, and she missed her friend. She saved Cassandra's life. And Cassandra repaid her by hexing her and abandoning her in this mangy tomb.
"Niklaus could have killed me." Cassandra argues. Whether she believes Katherine or not, is still unclear.
"Not right away!" Katherine sasses back. "You manipulated him once, I knew you could manipulate him again."
Manipulation, she calls it. My, what a small heart Katherine has, Cassandra thinks.
In a sing-song tone, Katherine adds: "which you did."
And death had never been Niklaus' plan for her, not that Cassandra is about to tell Katherine that. That smug little hop she just did is quite enough, thank you.
She doesn't know whether to believe her or not. The story does match some of what Niklaus told her regarding the nature of his collecting her, though. He'd mention an old enemy had been much too close for comfort, which is why he'd kept her hidden for two weeks. He'd explained he knew she would never come willingly, which is why he'd had her kidnapped. It'd made sense in a twisted sort of way because, well, it's what she would have done herself. She had just never imagined Katherine had been the one to tell him where to find her.
That's not something she sees herself forgiving.
"The dagger," she starts, changing to the other point she wants addressed.
"I told John to give it to Damon." Katherine interrupts.
"I figured as much." Cassandra nods. "Stefan would have used it in secret."
And died, she silently adds, since John made no mention of that tiny detail. The reason why she considered killing Katherine herself. If Alaric hadn't mentioned it in passing to her, Cassandra wouldn't have known Damon had it until it was too late.
"Do you know when Damon is planning to use it?" Katherine asks, borderline whines. "I've been waiting for days."
"Soon." She admits.
She keeps her eye on the pentagram she drew, drags the sole of her boot over it like an eraser and starts anew. This time, she draws a cartoonish crown, adds the silhouette of a frog beside it. It doesn't help much with what's truly on her mind: Damon did Katherine a kindness, and Katherine still failed to warn him about the dagger. Sure, she already had done so, but Katherine didn't know that. He may have been here to watch her squirm and panic over the prospect of never leaving this tomb, but he was still kind. It would have been so easy for him to torture the answers out of her, instead he'd fed her and given her a change of clothes.
"And when he does," Cassandra continues, watching Katherine get comfortable on the floor. "You are going to leave Mystic Falls and never return. You've done enough damage here."
Katherine straightens. Whatever ease she had permitted herself in Cassandra's presence evaporates into widened eyes and a pin-rod spine before being masked once again by bored aloofness.
"You can't order me around." Katherine scoffs.
"Sure I can."
A heavy hush falls over the forest above, approaching with every heartbeat. Soon, it morphs into the musical pitty-pat of rain drizzling over green leaves and the undergrowth. The crows call each other home.
They stare at one another, willing the other to back down, calling their bluff. Once more, those fifteen thousand cracks and sixteen thousand paces come to mind. How far they've come. How close, yet so far they are.
Katherine breaks first. She scrambles to her knees, pushing off the ground with both hands. When she speaks, she cannot hide the shard of fear that loosened from her heart and took over her blood.
"Staying is my only opportunity to barter with Klaus for my freedom."
"I don't care." Cassandra clips. "You either leave, or I will ensure bartering with Klaus is not an option."
She has no idea how. In fact, Cassandra's pretty sure Niklaus will grant her nothing, not even the time of day. Katherine doesn't need to know that. She keeps her gaze levelled and her chin high, does not let the doubt gnawing at her stomach show. Cassandra knows how to command a room. This rotten tomb should be no different.
"I will kill you." Katherine snarls. Undignified and desperate, she stumbles toward Cassandra. Her hands land on her shoulders in what Cassandra guesses is meant to be a menacing gesture. "I will kill you and everyone you love, starting with that obnoxious blonde pest you call a best friend all the way to that pompous professor in Cambridge. I will wear Damon's eyes around my neck like a necklace."
It is a threat Katherine means. But Cassandra just took down an entire pack of werewolves by herself, she resolved several issues with Elijah, and went on a lovely first date with Damon wherein both of them acknowledged it was a date. She's feeling pretty confident.
She pushes Katherine's hands off her shoulders. It requires such little effort Katherine should be embarrassed.
"Oh, come now, Katherine." Cassandra laughs. The sound chills Katherine's blood. "You should be thanking me. I'm protecting you."
Katherine's expression sours. Not so nice, is it? Cassandra thinks, bitter. She walks out of the tomb and into the small room leading up to the church. Rain drizzles from the hole above Bonnie accidentally created when she stepped on the rotten wood. The droplets look like mist in the refracting sunlight. Some sort of insect buzzes past her; its tiny wings brush against her cheek.
"You should enjoy this while you can," she turns back to the tomb entrance. "Yet again, your view is hardly five stars."
Katherine glowers at her, leaning as close to the threshold as the compulsion allows.
"You will regret this." She sneers. The words are a guttural rasp.
"I am quaking." Cassandra makes a face, voice dripping with sarcasm. "Bye, Kat."
Katherine is left alone with her fifteen thousand ceiling cracks and a couple dozen spiders to decorate them. She glares at the spot Cassandra occupied, replaying the words over and over. She should have left the little maggot to rot when she had the chance instead of helped her.
No matter, she's just going to have to tweak her plan here and there. She's going to need Isobel.
She is not leaving Mystic Falls.
A/N: Enjoy 10k ish words of what I'm calling 'not a love triangle, just two love stories being shown at once'. Hope you guys like this chapter!
If there are any typos, I'm sorry. I get really triggered when I read about food and proof-reading this was a nightmare.
Onto reviews!
clairerb: Thank you! Hope these flashbacks hold you over a little longer until we meet Klaus!
AB0918: I'm so glad you liked last chapter! I love Damon and Cassie when they're actually together and I can't wait for you all to experience it too!
essay guest: I'm happy to see you're still here! Your reviews always make me smile and laugh so, don't worry I don't think you're crazy or weird or anything lol I mean I also have a list of fics I just cycle through when I'm bored or avoiding important responsibilities so no judgement. Also, I command you for trying to stick to time management schedules! Thanks for your continued support and I hope you like this chapter!
Nerdalertwarning: aw thank you! Your words mean a lot, I can't believe you think this is novel level writing omg. Yes, Damon still has to patch up things but I promise you will see him put in the work! No proper Klaus reunion yet but a bunch of flashbacks are coming in soon! Hope you like this chapter x
Thanks all of you for your continued support and understanding when I disappear for months on end. Like I said last time, my tumblr is sawnsastark and you can come join me there if you ever wanna chat!
for the record, updated and edited on: 21/06/2021.