Chapter 7: Goodbye, I Love You
"I love how blue the water is," I said, dipping my hand into the cold, crystal blue canal of Venice.
"I love how blue your eyes are," Kol said and I burst out laughing. "What?" he questioned sounding hurt and I grinned, kissing him in the lips.
"It's funny when you try to be sweet," I said and he rolled his eyes.
"I am sweet," he said defensively and I laughed again.
"I wish we can stay like this forever," I said.
"We can," Kol said. "Whatever you want, wherever you want, darling."
"For someone as old as you are, I'm scared you'll get boring," I said quietly and he kissed my hair.
"Being immortal doesn't get boring when you have someone to spend your forever with," he said and I smiled. "I could live another thousand years just to be with you."
"And I can't wait to spend a thousand years with you," I said, listening to his soft, steady heartbeat as he tightened his embrace around me, giving me warmth from the cold night air.
"I recommend drowning. There's nothing quite like the feeling of someone fighting for something as basic as human breath. And let me tell you, your mother was a fighter," I heard Klaus said snidely, smirking as Tyler seemed tortured by his taunting.
"Nessie," Tyler said as he saw me waking up. It took me a second to realize that last night wasn't a nightmare.
"Get out of my house," I said coldly and he looked at me apologetically before the back door opened.
"You're still here? What are you doing?" Caroline's voice was heard as she asked Tyler before her eyes met mine. She looked genuinely surprised like she didn't expect me to be there. Like she didn't expect that I would know of their plans to kill Kol.
"Nessie, I swear I don't know anything about it," she said hurriedly and I felt the dark veins under my eyes appeared.
"Don't lie to me," I seethed, my fangs showing. "You knew and you agreed with my sister."
"She had me convinced that Kol had been compelling you," Caroline said, almost to tears.
"And you're stupid enough to believe that?" I asked, knowing that Caroline knew what I had with Kol was special and true.
"I'm sorry," she said, sobbing and I scoffed, and plopped down the couch.
"Tyler's mother is dead. So is my brother. We're even. Call Bonnie. Get her to let us out of here," Klaus said as calmly as he could.
"I'm not going to help you," Caroline said to him, wiping her tears.
"Really love? You're just going to let Vanessa trapped in here with her lover's burnt corpse?" Klaus questioned her almost angrily. "What a lovely friend you are," Klaus stated in sarcasm and Caroline gulped, near tears again.
"Don't bother, Klaus. She doesn't see me as a friend anymore," I said.
"Nessie, no, please. Forgive me," Caroline begged and I flashed in front of her, right where the barrier stopped me.
"I swear on Kol's burnt corpse that all of you will know the torture of seeing the person you love dies screaming in agony. Once I get out of here, I will kill Tyler, or maybe I'll go for Mommy Dearest first? And I will force you to watch as I kill them, slowly and painfully, that their screams will burn in your mind for a thousand years," I seethed and Caroline's eyes widened in fear as she heard what I promised, knowing I wasn't joking around.
"Vanessa-" I hit the barrier, causing Caroline to jump and let out a small scream before Klaus cleared his throat.
"Vanessa love, why wait until then? You lot know how patience is not in my virtue," Klaus said and I turned to look at him, raising my eyebrow.
"What do you have in mind?" I asked, smiling coyly. Klaus broke the stand to a lamp next to him and stabbed Caroline with it, and swung her over into the barrier that confined us. His eyes flashed ambers, and with that, he sank his fangs into her neck and I couldn't help but feel surprised.
"Oh my God!" Caroline shrieked in horror once Klaus released his grip on her. "Oh my God!"
"Hey, hey, look at me. Look at me. I can fix this," Tyler said, trying to calm his girlfriend down.
"How? The only thing that can heal me is his blood! Oh my god..." Caroline said in distressed.
"I know. I'll fix it," Tyler said, trying to convince her. Tyler took a deep breath and faced Klaus. "She'll die if you don't heal her," Tyler stated.
"Okay," Klaus said and bit his wrist, and extended his arm with a smug grin. "Beg me to save her life."
"Is this what you want? To remind me that I'm powerless against you? Fine. You win. I'm nothing. Now save her. Please," Tyler begged.
"I'm sorry mate, I didn't quite catch that," Klaus taunted.
"Please…" Tyler pleaded.
"Please?"
"Please save her life," Tyler begged.
"See, now I think you're just telling me what I want to hear. I mean, you did call me pathetic earlier. And wouldn't it be more pathetic of me to help now, knowing that hours ago, you announced your plan to kill me in a manner in which you're debating because you want it to have a certain amount of flair? I'm just asking," Klaus said smugly.
"I'll be your slave again. I'll do whatever you want. Just help her," Tyler continued to beg and Klaus smirked.
"No," he announced and Caroline looked up at me with tears welled up in her eyes.
"V please, tell him to heal her," Tyler begged and I looked at him dead in the eyes.
"Karma's a bitch, isn't she? Unfortunately, so am I" I said and turned my back on them, hearing Caroline let out a loud sob, knowing her fate in a couple of hours.
"If you don't feed me your blood, I'll die," Caroline said weakly, breaking the silence after a while. Tyler had left, believing that if Caroline was alone with Klaus, he might heal her. Well, I wasn't going anywhere and I wasn't going to let her go easy.
"Then you'll die, and Tyler will have learned his lesson the hard way," Klaus said coldly, not even looking at her.
"How could you do this to him? To his mom? To me?" Caroline asked, looking at Klaus tearfully and I burst out laughing.
"Oh wow, pathetic till the end. Were you trying to use whatever feeling Klaus had for you out of boredom to weasel your way out of this?" I asked amused and Caroline looked hurt.
"Nessie, how could you do this to me?" Caroline sobbed again and I walked towards her slowly, before sighing and sitting on the table. I took her hand in mine slowly and bit my lower lip.
"I'm sorry, I-I don't know why I-Caroline-I would never do this to you," I said in regret and her eyes turned wide and lit up with hope. I leaned forward and looked at her sadly, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear, before looking at her coldly. "Once Kol is right next to me I'll make sure to get Klaus to heal you," I said and her face fell.
"Just like Kol to play with your food," Klaus said and I shrugged.
"Oh well, I'm bored."
"Did you turn it off?" Caroline asked meekly and I feigned surprise.
"Oh darling why would you think that?" I asked, placing my hand over my heart, pretending to be hurt.
"My friend Vanessa would never do this-"
"Well my friends and my siblings would never do this either! So I guess we're equally evil," I hissed.
"I swear…I did try to convince Elena not to go through with this," Caroline begged.
"Maybe you should try harder," I snapped and ran a hand over my face and sighed. "It hurts," I admitted. "This anger…I'm sorry I took it out on you," I said tiredly.
"It's okay," Care said, trying to console me. "Please, convince him to heal me."
"Of course, I can't see you suffer Care Bear. You're my friend," I said and Caroline sighed in relief before screaming in agony when I ripped through her chest, gripping her heart.
"Nessie, please," she said in shock and tried to search for Klaus's eyes, begging for help. "Klaus, please," she gasped tearfully and I laughed.
"Oh wow, as if Tyler didn't exist," I said and Klaus chuckled a little, amused.
"Can I heal her now, love?" Klaus asked, still amused and I shrugged, pulling my hand out of Caroline's weakened body and rose to my feet, giving Klaus some space.
"Sure," I said before walking towards Kol's burnt corpse and felt my heart wrenched. I sat as close as I could with his body and felt tears fell down to my cheeks.
"I miss you," I said softly, finally letting the emotions in again. I had been crying my hearts out last night, the kind of cry that shook your whole body and made your heart clenched in pain as Klaus hold me. He hadn't said anything, only stroking my hair. No lies that everything will be alright whatsoever. The two of us simply grieved of the sudden loss of our loved ones. And now I could feel my heart breaking all over again as his screams replayed in my head. His agony…
"I need you here, Kol. I really, truly need you," I said, exhausted from everything. I let out a heavy sigh and lie down on the floor, facing him.
"I miss you too, darling," Kol said and ran his hands over his face and hair before screaming in anger and frustration. He can't bear this. He hadn't been dead for even a day and he couldn't stand being here on the Other Side. He couldn't bear to see Vanessa like this. Even when she was playing with Caroline earlier, she wasn't enjoying it. She was just distracting herself from the pain. Like he used to do for a thousand years. His face fell at the realization.
She was becoming like him.
The old Kol Mikaelson who couldn't love.
And that'd be the last thing he wanted for her.
Kol sighed again and sat down slowly, before lying down next to Vanessa. He stroked her face and planted a ghostly kiss, another reminder that he couldn't touch her anymore. That he could never feel her warm lips against his anymore. Her touch…
"I need you here too, love," Kol confessed and watched as Vanessa closed her pained blue eyes, and drifted into a sleep.
"Well, if it isn't little orphan Lockwood. Come to show how laughably impotent you are against me?" Klaus announced as Tyler entered the kitchen with a laptop and a giant looking sword wrapped in a cloth. I got up lazily, joining Klaus.
"Great, you're here," Caroline said. As predicted, everything was chaos at the island with Jeremy, Bonnie, Shane missing and Damon apparently, being kidnapped. That left Rebekah, Stefan and Elena to search for the cure. What a team, I thought.
"I'm just trying to help my friends find the cure," Tyler said, being civil as Klaus had healed his girlfriend last night. "Found this in your attic," Tyler said to Klaus, unwrapping the sword.
"And you think finding the sword brings you closer to the cure?" Klaus asked.
"You tell me. I was playing around with the handle on the ride over, and I found this," Tyler said and unwrapped the leather on the handle of the sword.
"A cryptex?" I asked, intrigued.
"Yes, like in the The da Vinci Code, you turn the different sides to the different symbols to get the translation on the other side. And with the magic of the internet, Elena sent over these," Caroline holds up the prints out to Jeremy's tattoo. "So now all we have to do is cryptex away. If you happened to want to help, we wouldn't stop you," Caroline said and I turned to glance at Klaus.
"Right. Well, might I suggest using the magic of the internet to purchase an Aramaic-to-English dictionary from your nearest retailer," Klaus suggested with a smirk.
"What's Aramaic?" Tyler asked, brows furrowed in confusion.
"It's a dead language. It hasn't been used since the biblical times," I answered with a smirk. Klaus looked at me impressed and I rolled my eyes. "I read," I said defensively before turning to Caroline. "So why don't you internet away, Care?"
"You know, even if you had the best dictionary in the world, it could take days to translate. Perhaps weeks," Klaus said smugly before speaking in a weird language.
"What does that mean?" Caroline asked and I smirked before Klaus even answered.
"If only you spoke Aramaic," Klaus replied with a winning grin and Tyler's and Caroline's faces fell.
"Okay, this is it. We've translated all the symbols on the tattoo. "Passage inside...requires a young senator, and a pretty flower."," she read and I burst out laughing. "Okay, none of this makes sense!" she said, irritated.
"Requires a powerful witch and a hunter in full bloom," Klaus interrupted and everyone turned to him in surprise.
"What are you doing?" Tyler asked warily and I hid a smile. I didn't have to question Klaus. He knew what he was doing and I, trust him.
"Bring the sword over here," Klaus ignored Tyler and Tyler looked at Caroline.
"Do you want the cure, or not?" I asked them and Caroline nodded at Tyler to brought the sword as close as he could.
""Silas rests on the far side, the means of his destruction at hand."," Klaus glanced at the computer screen. "Turn the cryptex to the right. Stop. The top of the hilt reveals a key to a nautical map. Turn it to the left. Now turn the other piece." Klaus stopped and tilted his head to the side. "There's something else."
"Care to share?" I asked him and he smiled at me before speaking in Aramaic as he touched the side of my head, sharing the meaning of the words he had spoken. I couldn't help but smiled and turned to the frustrated Caroline.
"What does it mean? Klaus, what does it mean?" she asked urgently and Klaus only smiled at her, showing his dimples.
"Hey, it's Caroline. We have the translation of the tattoo. We're emailing you pictures of the map and instructions right now," she said over the phone to Rebekah.
"Got it, thanks," Rebekah said chirpily.
"Actually, it was me," Klaus chimed in.
"Nik, you helped?" Rebekah asked, surprised.
"You sound so surprise, little sister," Klaus said, slightly amused.
"Shouldn't I be? I mean, you don't want me to be human. You don't want any of us to be human. Why would you help us find the cure?" Rebekah asked.
"Maybe I finally realized the longer I stand in the way of what you want, the longer you'll continue to hate me. Perhaps I want my sister to finally know happiness," Klaus said, trying to sound sincere.
"Fool me once, shame on you; fool me a hundred times-" Rebekah said.
"No more fooling. No more games. I hope you get to live, and die, as you wish," Klaus said.
"So do I."
"There is one more thing, Rebekah. There is only one dose of the cure. You need to find it first and take it. It's the only way you'll-" Klaus spoke quickly and Tyler scrambled to end the call. Tyler and Caroline looked scared and surprise.
"How's that for a plot twist?" I asked them with a grin and Tyler ran a hand over his face and walked outside quickly with Caroline calling out to him, unable to run after him.
"Do you feel that?" Klaus suddenly asked me and I looked up, asking what did he mean. He walked over to the barrier and stepped outside. "Finally," he said and cracked his neck.
"It hadn't been three days," Caroline said.
"Well, like I had said countless of times, things must have gone sour on that island. Hopefully Bonnie's not dead," I said indifferently and walked out of the living room and upstairs to my room, leaving Klaus and Caroline to discuss mercy for Tyler.
As soon as I stepped into my room, I hardly recognized it. And it didn't even feel like my room anymore. It didn't feel like home. I sighed and rummaged through my things. Finding a picture of our family and I felt nothing. But I kept it anyway, sliding the picture out of the frame and folded it. I glanced around and saw the notebook that Jeremy gave me for my eighteenth birthday. I gazed over at the drawing of my vampire face, something that Jeremy drew to tell me that he accepted me for who I was. I remembered when we were in Denver. Jeremy truly was okay with me and Kol being together. I sighed.
This was all because of Elena.
I headed downstairs to see Caroline and Klaus staring at each other and I rolled my eyes.
"You ready?" I asked him and Caroline looked over me.
"Where are you going?" she asked and I glared at her.
"You don't expect me to stay here?" I asked her. She bit her lips and I watched as Klaus carefully lifted Kol's body of the floor. Caroline seemed like she wanted to apologize again so I ignored her, opening the door for Klaus.
Walking side by side with Klaus to his home, I didn't have to look back to see what I was leaving behind. Whatever memories happened in that house, will remain there and I shall have no regrets.
Klaus's Family Mansion
Kol's room in the mansion was half empty. He really didn't plan on staying here for long. I remembered the first time I met him, the first time we touch and kissed, and it was magical. It wasn't because of love really, but it was magical because perhaps my soul knew that I had found my soulmate.
I felt Klaus's presence at the door and I sighed. We had decided to throw a proper funeral and Klaus was wearing a suit. I too, was wearing a simple black dress and my hair was in a loose ponytail.
"Whenever you're ready, love," Klaus said and I took a deep breath, and followed him to the backyard. There, Kol lied in a new suit on a pyre and I looked away.
"I don't know if I can do this," I said and Klaus took my hand in his. I looked up to meet his eyes, my heart broke further at the pain that glazed his eyes.
"It will be okay," he told me reassuringly and I nodded. I wiped my tears and walked up to the pyre.
"Is Rebekah coming?" I asked and Klaus stayed silent. "Yeah, I don't think so either."
"Elijah send his condolences. He has a business to attend to," Klaus said.
"Business even more important than Kol?" I asked him sharply. Klaus didn't say anything and just placed his hand on my shoulder. "And you wonder why Kol is the way he is," I said.
"I do love him, you know. Even when he managed to annoy every single nerve in my body," Klaus said and smiled sadly.
"And he loves you too," I said. "Despite him annoying every single nerve in your body," I said and Klaus chuckled. I took Kol's charred hand and slipped out his daylight ring.
"We know that he is here, love. He wouldn't want to see you crying," Klaus said gently and I nodded.
"I'm pretty sure he's making fun of you for crying his death," I said and Klaus smiled.
"He always thought I would celebrate his demise for forty days forty night with music and liquor," Klaus said and I laughed.
"With people dancing around a large bonfire?" I asked and Klaus nodded, slightly laughing.
"Because that's how he would celebrate mine," Klaus said and sighed. "Well you thought wrong, little brother."
"Kol, my brother, you had been a pain in my ass for a millennium. But that did not mean that I loathe you. Yes, I had done terrible things to you, going behind your back a thousand times and is always paranoid with your intentions to me. Despite all the bad stuff that happened between us, Kol, you are a Mikaelson. Always and forever is not something you can weasel your way out of, brother," Klaus said and drank a gulp of bourbon before splashing some on Kol's body. He handed the bottle to me and I held myself from crying.
"I told you not to come back here," I began and laughed regretfully. "I need you here, Kol. I truly need you. I feel this hole in my heart and I just…I can't do this. I can't live like this. Immortality means nothing to me without you. The pain won't stop and I know time is not going to heal it. I want to turn it off but if I do, I know I won't feel the pain but I also won't feel the love I have for you. So I supposed I rather feel this indescribable pain and emptiness than not loving you. You are my everything, Kol Mikaelson. I love you," I said and kissed the tip of my fingers and placed them on his lips. Holding back a sob, I sipped the bourbon and splashed the liquor on Kol.
"It will be okay, love," Klaus said softly at me and I nodded. He lighted the torched and I watched as the fire touched Kol's body, before spreading and licking him. I let out a sob and Klaus sighed as he pulled me close to him.
Klaus and I were at the living room, him painting silently and me drinking blood from the neck of his servant. His phone rang again and I growled, pushing the human away from me.
"If it's Caroline for the hundredth time, I swear-"
"Calm down, sweetheart," Klaus said and pulled out his phone.
"What does she want?" I growled. I had already smashed my phone after the twenty-third missed call from Caroline and she had been calling Klaus for hours now.
"Yes, what can I help you with?" Klaus asked in annoyance. "Some people need to grieve after the loss of loved one and also being trapped in the living room for two days!" Klaus snapped.
"I need to talk to Vanessa," Caroline said, crying.
"She doesn't want to talk to you, hence her not picking up your calls," Klaus said and Caroline sighed.
"I really need to talk to her," Caroline pleaded.
"I'm here, what?" I said loudly.
"Nessie, I'm so sorry…Jeremy is gone," Caroline finally said and I felt my whole world turned silent. Klaus looked at me worriedly as my face turned blank and I walked to him, holding out my hand for his phone.
"Who killed him?" I asked, my tone flat. "Answer me," I raised my tone and she sobbed.
"Silas. You were right, Nessie, you-"
"Can I talk to Elena?" I asked her politely. A few minutes later, I heard my sister's voice and I felt my jaw clenched.
"Nessie, wait, Jeremy was wearing his ring, he'll wake up," Elena said hurriedly.
"Everyone I love is dead because of you. Mom, Dad, Jenna, John, Isobel, Alaric, Kol and Jeremy. I will not let you die human, Elena. You will live the rest of your life as a vampire and I promise you, I will not let you be happy. I promise you an eternity of misery, sister. You might want to get some advice on how to deal with that from Stefan," I said loathingly and hung up.
"Are you alright, love?" Klaus asked me and I turned to him, looking at him blankly. Klaus put down his brush and walked toward me, and pulling me into a hug.
"It's okay, sweetheart. It's okay," Klaus said softly, as he stroked my hair and I pulled him tighter to me.
I desperately want to turn it off.