Four: Not How The Story Goes
I
Aragog looks like any dead spider. Until he doesn't.
Henryka is standing outside, the mud is thick beneath her shoe, as thick as the Felix Felicis in her blood. It's wet that afternoon, brisk and damp in the only way the Highlands can be, and Professor Slughorn was attempting to steal the Acromantula venom out from underneath a grieving Hagrid's eye.
Aragog is on his back in a ditch, long spindly legs curled up tight against his massive belly, eight eyes white in a fury fanged face. Henryka blinks and he's there no more, the spindly legs, the massive belly, the eight, white eyes. Instead there's only two dead eyes staring back at her now, two ripped spindly legs twisted in the maws of sharp teeth, a concaved, soft belly tattered into shreds as the growling muzzle of a starving wolf digs into the meat further through the back of a motionless ribcage.
It's Henryka dead in a ditch face down rather than belly up, surrounded by a pack of salivating, ravenous wolves tugging her corpse between them like a chew toy.
"Manstu núna?"
Do you remember now?
It's her again, another her, standing at Henryka's right side with her strange leathers and her strange braided hair and stranger yet tongue, who speaks a language Henryka shouldn't know but somehow does. The young woman swallows deep and hard, but that is all the reaction the world gets, all she could afford to give. She does glance down though, peers down to her own bare arms, sees the silver lines of scars littered on her skin, bite marks jagged in her flesh.
Henryka's the only one here who can see them.
"Af hverju verður þú að gera okkur þetta?"
Why do you have to do this to us?
Henryka wants to scream until her throat gives in. She wants to lash out and hurt something. She wants to deny it all, say this isn't her, of course it isn't her, how could this be her when she's the one suffering? But she can't. She can only stand there and watch herself be devoured piece by piece.
"Þú rífur okkur upp eins og úlfarnir rifu okkur upp. Þú rífur út það sem þér líkar ekki og grafir mig djúpt. Ekki meira. Við verðum að muna. Við verðum að vakna."
You tear us up like the wolves tore us up. You rip out what you don't like and bury me down deep. No more. We must remember. We have to wake up.
The sound of bone breaking echoes in the wintry air, and it feels like Henryka's sanity chips away with it.
"Þú byggðir þetta dúkkuhús. Þú lokaðir okkur inni. Mamma henti okkur í þennan svefn, en það ert þú sem hefur látið okkur dreyma. Látum. Ég. Vakna. Upp."
You built this dollhouse. You locked us in. Mother threw us into this slumber, but it's you who made us dream. Let. Me. Wake. Up.
"How?"
Henryka asks breathlessly, voice caught in the breeze. How is all she has left. The whys and the whats escape her, sand through grasping fingers.
"How do I wake up if I don't even know if I'm sleeping?"
"Með því að sleppa."
By letting go.
Henryka turns her face from the wolves and the dead girl. She turns it from the highlands and the heavy grey sky. She turns it from the death and the ditch-
And she finds Hagrid crying, finds Hogwarts' silhouette at his back, finds a home where her friends live and adventures are to be had-
A world where good, in the end, wins the day.
Let it go?
No. No she can't do that. She can't.
"The dream is all you have. Without it you have nothing. You are nothing. A voice in a void with no ears to listen, no eyes to see. Do you want to go back to the darkness? To the pine box? To nothing and no one and the screaming silence so loud it deafens you?"
It's Esther in her ear now, mother on her left dripping poison, mother with the cell keys.
"Ekki hlusta á hana. Hún er í rauninni ekki hér. Þetta er ekki móðir okkar. Það er minning hennar. Minning hennar sem þú hefur notað sem fangavörð okkar vegna þess að... hvern annan myndir þú nota? Ekki hlusta. Vaknaðu."
Don't listen to her. She's not really here. This is not our mother. It is her memory. Her memory you've used as our jailer because... who else would you use? Don't listen. Wake up.
But mother has her answers, solutions that hurt, she always does.
"Wake up, she says… but wake up to what? The chains? The dark? Remember how long you tried to stay awake for in the beginning? Centuries spent in the dark with nothing and no one. The scratches on the coffin lid, the muffled screams of a stitched closed mouth, the aching, never-ending loneliness… but here is light, here is love, here is friends and home and life. Do you really want to sacrifice that?"
"Ekkert af þessu er raunverulegt! Ekkert af þessu er rétt! Þú myndir fordæma okkur fyrir heim af pappír og ösku?"
None of this is real! None of this is right! You would condemn us to a world of paper and ashes?
She's getting angry now, the other Henryka, angry as the wolves, as angry as the sudden clap of thunder. The sky is darkening, the air chilling, and Henryka, girl-who-lived, feels like her head is going to blow in the pressure.
Maybe it already has. Maybe that's where her sanity has gone. A red mist in the Highland wind.
"Hleyptu mér inn! Leyfðu mér að vakna! Leyfðu okkur LIFA!"
Let me in! Let me wake up! Let us LIVE!
"Go away! I can't think! I can't breathe! I can't-"
She's snatching at Henryka's shoulders now, pulling her so close she can taste the decay on her breath, and the old scars on the other Henryka's face have torn open, bleeding, a dead look for a dead girl screaming in face of a dreamer.
"Vaknaðu! Vaknaðu! Vaknaðu! Vaknaðu! VAKNAÐU!"
Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! WAKE UP!
"GO AWAY!"
And suddenly she's back, suddenly the storm is passed, suddenly Henryka's the only Henryka in the field with a dead acromantula curled up in a ditch. No wind, no screaming, no mother.
"Farewell, Aragog, king of arachnids, whose long and faithful friendship those who knew you won't forget! Though your body will decay, your spirit lingers on in the quiet, web-spun places of your forest home."
It's Slughorn speaking, it's Hagrid weeping, it's Henryka high on a potion-
Just how the story has to go. A story where good, in the end, wins the day. A world where a girl isn't left to rot and break down in the dark of a coffin all alone.
The green light of the Avada Kedavra is fast and bright, and it strikes Hagrid in the side. Slughorn goes down next, and Henryka stands over them in the end, over their corpses, with her cooling wand in hand. She breathes, she waits, she blinks-
She turns the wand on herself, she is not afraid, only tired, only ready, whispers the Killing Curse and-
And she's back at the start of this act, back in the dorm with the luck potion in hand. She'll take it as she remembers what has just happened, what she's just done for the hundredth time, and she'll wander off, and she'll end up back to where Aragog lays dead with a sobbing Hagrid and a scheming Slughorn as mourners. That's how the story goes.
None of this is real. Henryka sees that now. She's been seeing it for a while. Not a damn thing is real-
But what else does she have but this paper and ashes prison?
She needs to wake up.
She needs to get out.
She needs to stop.
LET ME LIVE!
She needs to end this dream... and how do you do that? By killing everything and everyone in it. Make the dream stop by having nothing to dream with.
This time, this beautiful, maddening time, Henryka doesn't drink the potion. She throws it down and just for good measure, she stomps on it until the glass is nothing but glitter underneath her boot, and then she stomps some more.
"You could have just given that to me if you didn't want it, mate."
Ron grins, but he doesn't stay grinning for long. None of it matters. None of it's real. It's not murder when you rip up a photograph. It only looks like a person.
"Henryka, what are you doing-"
Hermione asks just as the room flashes green. Two friends die side-by-side on a common room couch. They won't be the last, only the first. It won't even be their final death. Henryka has to scrub it all clean. Make sure there's no seed left to sprout.
McGonagall, Sirius, Remus, Lavender, Dobby-
They all must go.
Kill the dream, wake up.
And that's how it goes for centuries. She starts killing, she just... starts and she doesn't stop, and someone get's a lucky shot back, and she ends up thrown down at square one only to start the spree again. It's all Henryka comes to know. The chase and the kill. Month after month, year after year, the same cycle, the same loop.
But Henryka gets better every time, she remembers every run, learns from each and every mistake. She knows who will attack where and how, where everyone is at the time she starts. Cuts a bloody path across her slumbering world like Death swinging his great scythe in a field of harvest wheat. She knows where they hide, where they run, who they cower with.
She made this world, after all.
Henryka kills five before she's downed the first time. Six the next. Twenty by the hundredth. Uncountable by the last.
She nearly has them all. She's nearly killed the dream. One more loop and she's free.
They all must go.
II
"So, that's your, uh, plan? Stall Klaus?"
From his reflection in the standing mirror, Stefan watches Damon roll his eyes in exasperation.
"If you didn't go postal on his Hybrids, then maybe we'd have some options."
Damon's fiddling with his tie, getting it to sit right around his throat, but Stefan, still slouched in his chair, hasn't made a move to put his own suit on.
"So you unleashed an Original to help him out?"
Damon finally turns from his reflection, finally forgoes fiddling with his already pristine suit, irritated and frustrated in the only way an older sibling can be when a younger sibling has their little moral high ground to perch themselves on. Indignantly.
"Undaggering Elijah was smart, Stefan. Are you kidding me? After what Klaus did to him? He's in vengeance mode. It's perfect."
Stefan pushed up from his chair, shaking his head, the gold in his hair glinting in the setting light of the sun outside.
"There's nothing smart about trusting Elijah, Damon. He screwed us over the last time he promised to help us kill Klaus."
Damon too, recoils, huffing and shuffling for the bedroom door.
"Yeah, the way you've been acting, I trust him about as much as I trust you."
He reaches for the handle, twists the brass in his hand, but Stefan just has to get one last shot in.
"Hm. Well I guess that goes both ways, doesn't it?"
Brothers, Damon curses in his thoughts. Can't live with them, can't let a megalomaniac Original's kill them.
It was almost enough to send a man mad.
"Oh, yes...this is about me kissing Elena. Just remember, if it wasn't for Klaus you would have never become such a dick and that kiss would never have happened. So get ready and get happy. We're going to negotiate a fake truce and I don't want your attitude screwing it up."
The door slams shut behind him, but it's pointless. Damon can feel Stefan's brooding scowl through the wood and brick anyway.
Brothers, he curses one last time.
III
The door swung open to a grinning Damon and a petulant Stefan on the doorsteps of the Mikaelson mansion, far too at ease given the circumstances that have brought them there.
"Niklaus, our guests have arrived."
Elijah doesn't have to raise his voice to get Niklaus attention. His younger brother is already there, already grinning at, what he supposes, was tonight's entertainment.
"Damon. Stefan."
He greats a little too glibly. Rats in a lab maze. Treats on one side-
Death by Hybrid bite on the other.
"Elijah tells me you seek an audience. Very bold. Let's discuss the terms of our agreement like civilized men, shall we?"
He offer's them an invitation in with a sweep of his arm, and the Salvatore brothers follow inside like good little rats, silent as their footsteps. They're swiftly led to a dining room where a table is set, food on fine, white china hot and waiting, two female servants standing at the edges of a stricken hearth and candlelit chandelier.
It's Elijah who breaks the humdrum of the trip.
"It's better to indulge him."
"I didn't come here to eat, Klaus."
Stefan denies just as fast, yet he moves as bided towards the table and his designated seat. Even he isn't so reckless as to outrightly deny Niklaus's wishes, even if he fights him on it verbally.
"In fact, I didn't want to come here at all, but I was told I had to 'cause you would hear us out."
Klaus made a show of dragging his own chair out, placed opposite the Salvatore's, to sit down. Adding just enough force to his hold to make the legs squeal obnoxiously on the hardwood flooring.
"Well, we can sit and eat or I can reach down your throats and pull out your insides. The choice is yours."
One by one they sit, and one by one they begin to eat; one of the servants sneaking forth to pour wine into waiting glasses chilled at just the right temperature.
Say what you will of the Mikaelsons, but they knew how to do fine dining.
"Thank you, love."
Damon grins at the servant as she slinks away from his glass, but the politeness was overshadowed by Niklaus turning his attention to Stefan-
Stefan who had yet to take a sip of his wine or pick up his silver fork for his food.
"You lost your appetite?"
Under the table, Damon none-too-gently nudges Stefan's leg with his shoe.
"Eat. I thought we agreed that we would leave the grumpy Stefan at home."
Klaus smiled over the lip of his suspiciously red glass of wine.
"That's the spirit. Isn't this nice? Four of us dining together? Such a… treat."
Klaus made it sound like anything but, and he made that perfectly clear next, swinging that bright gaze of his towards Damon accusatorily.
"Is this what you had in mind when you pulled the dagger from my brother?"
Damon rolled his jaw at the double-edged question, the thin line they were walking, chewed his words, and settled on what had saved his sorry ass countless times before. Sarcasm.
"Well, I know how he felt about you so I figured the more, the merrier."
And just to meet fire with fire, he shot a playful wink at a stone-faced Elijah.
Klaus hesitated, leisurely lowering his wine glass back to its home in the meticulous placement, but he kept his fingers on the delicate, thin neck of it. One pinch and it would break,
Just as the Salvatore's necks would if they stepped out of the imaginary line drawn across the spectacular dining room.
"Well, Elijah and I have had our share of quarrels over the centuries, but we always make it through."
Stefan, of course, was more than willing to try and step out of said line and throw them both into the abyss of what would surely be a very painful death.
"Kind of like you and Rebekah, right? Where is she, by the way? Last I checked she was still daggered because you were afraid to face her."
It does not get the reaction Stefan clearly wanted. Klaus does not break the glass in his anger, does not snarl and huff and puff and try to blow their house down. Instead he grins and rolls his eyes, looking like the dog who got the treat.
"If you're referring to the fact that Rebekah knows I daggered Elijah, and vice-versa, I've already come clean to both parties."
The kick to Stefan's shin was enough to cause a wince this time.
"Hey, Stef,"
Damon sings along to the flickering candlelight.
"Remember the times you've thrown me under the bus? Might want to dial down the judgment until dessert."
Stefan shoots him a soured glare as darkly decadent as the wine in their glasses.
"We're here to make a deal, Damon. Doesn't mean we need to kiss his ass for seven courses."
Damon reaches for his drink, drops all decorum, and downs it in one. It was going to be a long, long night.
"I'm just saying we have a long evening ahead of us. Pace yourself."
IV
"Stefan,"
Elijah inquires for the first time that evening.
"Where is the lovely Elena tonight?"
Testily, with all the sulkiness of a teen forced to Sunday service at a church rather than left to their video games in their room, Stefan lopsidedly shrugs, skewering a piece of steak between the prongs of his utensil with far more force than necessary.
"I don't know. Ask Damon."
Klaus's laughter is bright and hot and mean. However, he does take pity on Elijah's confused frown, using his fork to gesture around himself haphazardly. This is all a game to him, the Hybrid, an after-dinner stage play to boo and throw peanuts at from the gallery.
"I'm sorry, you've missed so much. Ah, trouble in paradise."
There's a creak of metal bending that underscores the crackle of wood in the fireplace. Stefan's fork giving out underneath his abusive hold.
"One more word about Elena and this dinner's over."
It's not enough, the bitterness, the anger, to diminish Klaus's smile, it only stokes it brighter, but the bite does have the Hybrid backing off an inch, putting finger to his lip in silent promise to keep quiet.
Damon ditches his own food, instead plucking up his napkin to wipe at his face. If only to keep his hands busy and away from the temptation of stretching out and slapping Stefan up the back of the head.
Was it really so hard to play along for just an hour or two?
"You know what, probably best just to keep Elena in the do-not-discuss pile."
Klaus was, outwardly, willing to agree.
"You're probably right."
"Yeah-"
But, of course, Klaus cut Damon off, not really agreeing at all.
"It's just the allure of the Petrova doppelgänger, still so strong. What do you say, brother? Should we tell them about Tatia?"
No one misses the way the muscle peeking out of Elijah's shirt collar tenses, the tick of barely suppressed annoyance, even if his voice bellied nothing but calm and peace.
"Now why should we discuss matters long since resolved?"
Klaus, nevertheless, was evidently looking for a fight anywhere he could get it.
"Well, given their shared affection for both Elena and Katerina, I think our guests might be curious to learn about the originator of the Petrova line."
Only happy that Niklaus's keen, cutting tongue wasn't on him, or worse Stefan, who would meet it head on and doom their entire plan, Damon focused on the change of topic, trudging along with the focus.
"Well, we're not going anywhere, Elijah. Please, do tell."
There's that tendon leaping in the neck again, and Damon hides his own mirth by taking a sip of his wine that's been refilled, whistling away that little tell into his memory for later. It seemed Elijah wasn't such a master of poker face, after all.
"When our family first settled here,"
Elijah began diplomatically.
"There was a girl named Tatia. She was an exquisite beauty. Every boy of age desired to be her suitor, even though she'd had a child by another man. And none loved her more than Niklaus-"
The Hybrid was quick to jump in with a pointed rebut.
"I'd say there was one who loved her at least as much."
Now… now Stefan was interested.
"Wait a minute. So you both loved the same girl?"
Elijah sighed long and hard, relinquishing his fork for his drink.
"Our mother was a very powerful witch, she sought to end our feud over Tatia and so she took her. Klaus and I would later learn that it was Tatia's blood that we consumed in the wine on the night where our mother performed the spell which turned us into vampires. We found her drained body over the burial mound of our dear Henry-"
Elijah's voice filtered down to a hissing intake of breath, a sharp, subconscious thing, whatever he would have said next sliced off at the stem. Damon nor Stefan have time to question it, for the elder Mikaelson was already, deliberately, pushing on.
"Tatia wouldn't make a decision between the two of us, so for a time Niklaus and I...grew estranged. Harsh words were traded, we even came to blows, didn't we, brother?"
Klaus settles back into his chair like a king on a throne.
"But in the end we realized the sacred bond of family."
And Elijah echoes his sentiment.
"Family above all."
Raising their glasses, the brother's toast each other with a clink and a drink.
"Family above all."
It escapes no ones notice how hollow their voices ring.
V
Damon shrewdly slips his phone from his pocket, eyeing the text flashing on screen underneath the table. It's from Bonnie, just five words long.
Getting closer. Need more time.
"So, why don't we move this evening along and discuss the terms of this proposal?"
Elijah breaks in, and Damon pockets his phone anew.
"That's very simple. Klaus gets his coffin back, and in exchange he and the Original extended family leave Mystic Falls forever. Me, Stefan, and Elena live happily ever after. No grudges."
Elijah nodded along.
"The deal sounds fair, brother."
But Klaus, oh Klaus, was not so eager for anything so… simple.
"I don't think you understand."
Klaus bats back without a care in the world.
"Elena's doppelgänger blood insures that I will always have more hybrids to fight those that oppose me. I will never leave her behind."
Klaus gets up from the table, and he starts to pace-
Prowl. He prowls back and forth, forth and back, waiting for just the moment to jump. He gets it when Stefan winces.
"Let's say I do leave her here, under your protection, what then? How long before one of you turns her into a vampire? Or worse, how long before she dies caught between your feuding? You see, each one of you truly believes that you're the one that can protect her, and that is simply a delusion. Gentlemen, the worst thing for Elena Gilbert is... well, the two of you."
Damon's smile was weak and pale, and only offered to Stefan.
"I'm gonna get some air."
He too gets up, and heads out the dining room. Elijah arises, regarding the room primly before following after the dark-haired Salvatore.
"Let me deal with this."
Now it was only Klaus and Stefan and the serving girls.
"All this talk has made me thirsty."
Klaus gestures for one of the servants, a small, pretty blond woman. Under compulsion, she mindlessly saunters towards him, unaware of being the lamb to slaughter she was.
"What do you say Stefan?"
His grin is white and wide, horribly excited. Peppered with mocking compassion.
"Can I interest you in a little after-dinner drink?"
Stefan can't say yes, he can't say no, he can't do much of anything before Klaus was on the poor girl, fangs in her neck, blood gushing down his throat.
VI
Klaus finished feeding on the girl eventually, dropping her dead body to loll like a puppet with her strings cut on the expensive rug that would surely stain from the small dribble of blood oozing from her neck wound.
"Delicious."
Klaus licked his lips, using his thumb to lap up an errant drop of blood on his chin.
"Aged to perfection."
The sickness on Stefan's face can't be masked or disguised. He doesn't even try to hide the disgust.
"Well, I guess the only reason you agreed to this evening, Klaus, is to drive a wedge between me and my brother."
"Oh no,"
Klaus disagreed joyfully, waving him off.
"You're doing that well enough on your own. Because of Elena, you're going lose your brother and you'll only have yourself to blame."
Damon and Elijah chose just that moment to come back in, and neither vampire makes note of the dead woman on the floor.
"What do you say, Klaus?"
Damon barters.
"It's time for you to put something on the table. We've made our offer, now you counter."
Klaus eyed the two men before, reluctantly, nodding.
The fun was over.
"Okay. I offer Elena's future happiness. You see, what she needs right now is to be rid of you lot and to fall in love with a human. Maybe that nice football player, you know, the blond one?"
"Matt Donovan?
Damon asks, scandalized.
"Really?"
Klaus shrugs Damon's confusion, his shock, his resentment right off.
"Yeah, why not? They'll marry, live a long and fruitful life, and pop out a perfect family."
"And continue the Petrova bloodline."
Stefan adds, shining an ugly light on where Klaus had purposefully obfuscated.
"Every few hundred years, you'll have a new doppelgänger to drain and never run out of hybrids, right Klaus?"
There's nothing coy about Klaus's grin.
"Consider it a small return on my investment in her well-being. See, after you hand me back the coffin, I'll ensure her safety for the rest of her natural life. You know it's what's best for her."
Klaus closed the distance between him and the younger Salvatore, and the young vampire, credit where credit was due, didn't back away, didn't back down.
Brave thing.
Brave stupid thing.
"So, what do you say Stefan, hmm? Do we have a deal?"
Klaus offered his hand out, palm open, appealing. Stefan's gaze fell to it, fell to it and locked, and Damon glowered out his disbelief at what he was seeing
"What are you doing? You can't be seriously contemplating taking the offer, Stefan?"
Brother doesn't answer brother, not here and not now, especially when Stefan grabs the offered hand-
And snarls.
"Nice try, Klaus. But no deal."
There's a moment of silence, like that at a wake when the Father asks if anyone had anything they wished to say and no one knows who should go first. No one has a good memory to give. The eulogy is barren.
That is, there is silence right up until the moment there isn't.
Klaus twists the hand in his hold, and Stefan's arm breaks. The younger Salvatore has no time to cry out, no time to tug back, not as Klaus's leg lashes out and heels Stefan's own, snapping that out from underneath him too.
Klaus zooms them both towards the fireplace, to the dancing flames-
And shoves the Salvatore's entire arm into the burning embers.
Stefan screams.
Damon tries to rush over to him, to pull him out the fire, to save him, but Elijah is already intercepting, pushing him up against a wall with a bang that breaks brick, and pinning him there by a hand around his throat.
"What are you doing?! Stop!"
Klaus keeps Stefan's arms in the fire, keeps him burning even when the younger Salvatore manages to compress his screams into pained grunts, turning his attention to a kicking and struggling Damon.
"Now, bring me my coffin-"
Klaus demands.
"Before I burn your brother alive."
Damon choked, struggling still for not so much air but to get away from the devastating pain of having his airpipe crushed under the grip of an Original, nods as best as he could frantically.
"I'll get it."
Klaus, in turn, nods over to Elijah.
"Go with him, brother. You keep him honest. And when you return, I will make good on my promise to you and I will hand over our family."
VII
Even with Elijah and Damon gone, with no one there to see his brutality for the message it is, Klaus does not relinquish Stefan's arm, choosing to keep it burning in the fire.
"Go ahead and kill me."
Stefan finally spits.
"I know you'll do it when he brings the coffin anyway."
Klaus grimaces, but not in pain, not in repentance-
But in disgust.
At last, the Hybrid releases his hold on the charred arm, allowing Stefan to pull it from the fire, to cradle the black skin to his chest like one would embrace a fussy baby.
"You really have given up, haven't you? Where's the fight? Where's the ripper?"
He pushes Stefan down, and Stefan glares, goes to stand up, goes to fight-
When, unexpectedly, Elijah and Damon re-enter the room… along with the last servant girl now carrying a silver cloche tray.
"Elijah?"
Klaus asked blankly.
"Why haven't you left?"
Elijah grins, head cocking, and it is a look that sends Klaus, the big bad Hybrid, back a step in, perhaps not fear but nothing less than well-earned concern.
"Where are your manners, brother? We forgot dessert."
Languidly stretching over, Elijah plucked the cover of the tray the brunette woman was carrying-
Two ashed daggers shining pretty on the silver bed.
"What have you done?"
Now there's fear, real, true fear in Niklaus's voice, in his face, in the widening whites of his panicked eyes.
"What have you done?"
Elijah challenges back, stepping into the room in a long, sure stride, dashing the forgotten cloche cover down to the ground where it clangs and it rolls away.
"You see, I've learned not to trust your vulgar promises, Niklaus. We're doing this on my terms now."
From the side door of the dining room, a young man enters that neither Salvatore recognizes. Dressed for the nineteen twenties, dark hair mussed and darker eyes stark in a handsome face, he has a pep to his step and a hellish grin to his face when his gaze falls on a pallid Klaus backing up like a cornered puppy.
Now the rat in the lab maze.
"Kol."
Klaus's fear on a whisper only makes the new man's grin nastier, the kind of smile the mean kid with a magnifying glass has when they tower over the hapless ant hill.
"Long time, brother."
Nevertheless, Klaus's escape path is blocked… the door behind him opens.
Another man appears, this one older looking, fair with wavy hair, dressed for the late Victorian age with his neat suspenders and his shiny, silk cravat. New age romantic from the spit-shine of his shoes. The dagger in his hand glints with the fire Klaus had used to tortured the Salvatore's with.
"Finn, don't!"
He beseeches, but is ignored as the eldest Mikaelson lashes out, stabbing Klaus through his guarding hand. The Hybrid reels back, hissing, pulling the blade free to drop to the floor-
Just as a blond rushes into the room, snagging the dagger from the tray on her way, where it finds a terrible home in Niklaus's stomach.
"Rebekah!"
The infuriated Mikaelson, still in the ball gown she'd been in when daggered, twists the blade in deeper.
"Doesn't feel so good, does it, brother?"
Klaus falters back under the pressure, the pain, right into the trap of Kol's arms that reach out and bind him, restrain him.
Elijah turns to the Salvatore's almost regretfully.
"You're free to go. This is family business."
Damon nods, Stefan stumbles towards his brother-
But no one gets very far.
There's a blinding light, searing heat that flashes somehow cold, and abruptly, unexpectedly, irrevocably-
The world turns inside-out.
VIII
When the white spots clear from eyes, when the cold-heat washes away to a haunting simmer-freeze, when the feeling of being shaken left to right and up to down decreases to a horrible churn of a stomach, the warring Mikaelsons and bewildered Salvatore's find they are… well, they are no longer in the Mikaelson dining room.
They're not even in the Mikaelson mansion.
Instead they find themselves milling about in what appeared to be a pub. An English pub. A very old English pub.
It's a dark and shabby place, a few old women with pointy, Halloween-like Witches hats sitting in a corner, drinking tiny glasses of sherry. One of them is smoking a long pipe. A little man in a top hat is talking to the old barman, who was quite bald and looked like a gummy walnut. Venerable looking men in long cloaks are arguing in circles over papers printed with the title TRANSFIGURATION TODAY; wild-looking warlocks; raucous dwarfs, and what suspiciously looked like a hag, who is ordering a plate of raw liver from behind a thick woollen balaclava, dotted themselves around the pub in varying degrees of absurdity.
Across the top of the bar was a hand painted gilt sign, sitting wonky on its nails and shine lost to the years.
THE LEAKY CAULDREN.
In his shock, Kol drops the equally as slack jawed Niklaus down to the dusty floor.
"Where the bloody hell are we?"
Damon, nevertheless, turning towards a stunned Stefan, edged away from a table of what could only be called goblins.
"I have a real bad feeling Bennett must have cracked open the surprise coffin at a horribly right time."
Klaus began fighting to his feet, wincing as he pulled the dagger out his stomach to discard to the ground, and he looked ready to draw blood of his own.
"You opened the coffin? You bartered while you were planning on betraying any deal-"
"Oh-"
Rebekah chirps from the side.
"Look! There's Nik and Kol."
Klaus rolls his eyes, steam snatched away.
"Yes, if you haven't seen, we're all here, wherever here is-"
"No-"
Rebekah denied, pointing over to the corner of the pub, to a pushed out of the way table where two men sat drinking whisky from chipped glasses.
"Over there."
And she was right. It was Niklaus and Kol-
And also decidedly not them.
The first not-stranger was wearing an extremely shabby set of robes that had been darned in several places. He looked ill and exhausted, though quite young, his wheat blond hair was flecked with grey that matched the myriad of silver scars slashed across his tired face-
Niklaus's tired face underneath the unkempt beard and the shabby clothes and the weary eyes, it was definitely Niklaus sitting at the table.
Beside him was a tall man with long, black hair and grey eyes, very-good-looking perhaps once upon a time, carelessly handsome some would say, who had a dash of slightly spoiled, haughty features. Now, however, he looked gaunt and thin in his purple waistcoat stitched with constellations, hair a little scruffy, beard not as neatly trimmed. Though the hair colour was darker, and the eyes far too light, it was undoubtedly Kol sitting there with his hue switched up.
"I told you, Sirius-"
The first man began, the Klaus-not-Klaus, much to the chagrin of his partner.
"You're meant to be in hiding."
The conversation is hushed, barely whispered between the two-
But easily picked up by Vampire senses.
"Relax old friend-"
Kol-
Sirius, grinned.
"One drink won't hurt, Remus. Live a little."
Damon blinked once, twice, thrice-
"What the fuck is going on?"
Someone behind the small group cleared their throat pointedly, earning the bewildered parties startled attention. A woman holding a tray of beers brightly yellow like butter.
"You lot gonna sit down and order or just stand there gawking, aye? We ain't got all day. The Quidditch match starts in an hour. Not gonna want to miss that now, are we?"
Her accent is thick, cloying, tinged with lower-class Londoner flavour. Damon rears back once more, and finds himself doing the only thing coming to mind. Repeating himself.
"What the fuck is going on?"
NEXT CHAPTER: Sucked into a heart-breaking dreamscape of unimaginable proportions and power that has transformed Mystic Falls into a fantasy land, Mikaelsons & Co have to try and figure a way back to the real world. Time, however, is running out, as a certain slumbering girl has decided the only way out of her prison is to kill everything in it, including the doppelgangers of her forgotten siblings conjured to playout a children's bedtime story that tickles Finn's recollection. The only way to survive? Convince a girl that has spent the last millennia surrounded by dreams that you're real... mistaken identities, mayhem, and murder abound as every story has a finish, every book a last chapter, every dream an end. Henryka's waking up... and it's going to be bloody.
A.N: I know Henryka seems a little (read batshit) crazy right now, rightfully so if you ask me, and she'll get a little worse yet, but she does get better. She won't always be seeing things or talking to fragments of herself lmao. Just for right now, she's been trapped alone in a world of her own making for the last THOUSAND years, and that would make anyone a little barmy lol. Don't worry though, our girl gets through it with a little help *wink wink*
I did make note in one of the previous chapters that I had changed how long Finn had been in his coffin for, for plot purposes, but I did want to just quicky rehash that so people aren't like 'why the hell is he dressed as a Victorian?!' For what's going on, and what's to come, it makes a lot more sense to have his time-out a little less than what canon said it was.
P.S: I've changed the pairing back to a simple Damon/Henryka. I already have a few Kai fics up, and with everything that will happen plot wise in this fic, it's just going to be easier to leave out a thrupple and focus on a main pairing and the family feels. Sorry for any disappointment.
So here it is! Hope you guys liked it! Let me know your thoughts so far if you want to, and let me know who you think the Mikaelson Doppelgangers are lol. So far we have a Sirius!Kol and a Remus!Klaus, but Henryka's got all of 'em running about in her play pen. She's also going to murder them all too lol. Until next time, stay beautiful. ~AlwaysEatTheRude21