A/N: Yes this really is an update, your eyes are not decieveing you. This was originally part of a much, much longer piece that was supposed to be roughly 100 pages however, as I was writing I remembered that I hadn't updated in forever and yeah… people might not still want to read this story. Therefore, this is a short update that only covers the very very beginning of what I was going to cover.
If people still read this story than I'll write the rest of the update.
Chapter 1
1493
Spain
Kingdom of Aragon, Valencia
The girl's thick, dark hair spilt over Rebekah's fingers. She must have been staring at the girl for most of the evening, waiting for her to wake at any minute and be horrified. Ines's daughter was young, at most three and ten. Elpitia was plain, thin and altogether unremarkable; other than the fact that there was something truly wrong with the girl.
She was quiet, too much so. In fact so much so that it made Rebekah's skin crawl. The whole place, their little secret safe house seemed eerie. No matter how many candles Rebekah lit, no matter how many musicians she would compel to climb the three flights of stairs with their instruments, and crowd themselves into the little rooms of the home, nothing could fix the deafening silence. They would play all evening, into the morning, until their fingers bled, their voices hoarse from singing, and still in all of that noise of life; Rebekah felt as though she were haunting a tomb. Only the tomb was empty with not even ghosts to keep her company, no instead something decidedly more pathetic- just her and Elpitia wandering from room to room avoiding each other.
In the beginning she had tried, Rebekah had made every effort possible in those first few weeks to be civil and talk to the girl. Soon however, the weeks melded into months and still there was no response. When Rebekah spoke, the pale, dark haired girl stared at Rebekah with hollowed eyes and a blank face, as though she were deaf and missing every word.
She had tried to be polite. Rebekah had never been one to make exceptions for anyone besides her own brother but this time she did. In the beginning she tried to play the part of the hospital jailor, taking her male meals into the other rooms, she had removed the carcasses before dawn; but the longer the girl remained silent the more hostile Rebekah became. Now she no longer bothered to shield the girl from the realities of her situation. She led men into their little home, starry eyed and full of lust; she would parade them in front of that quiet innocent girl, leaving her with the guilt of being the last person that would see many of them alive. But still the girl would not even offer a warning to those poor fools.
Maybe because she knew it was hopeless, that no matter what she did or said they would meet the same end.
Close by Rebekah would toy with her male trophies. Making them strip naked, she'd have them pleasure her in whatever fashion she deemed to suit her whims for that evening. For some of them, it was simple instructions. She would order them to pick up everything she dropped, tidy the room. Others, the tasks were more laboured and focused. They would start at her feet, undressing her as she advised. Some would be force to simply stare at her naked, admiring her only as Rebekah would wish to be admired. She would smile as she watched them struggle against the compulsion, fighting it so they might for just a moment touch her and relieve their misery. Others she'd give the privilege, but only as she directed. She'd only allow them so far, their faces pressed between her legs, adrenaline pumping through their veins before she'd begin the feed.
Then there were other times when there were no games, no little shows, just a simple lunch, dinner and death. Those were guests she allowed Elpitia to keep company with. Those were the men she paraded out in front of the girl, with no shame or sense of benevolence as she slowly drained them to their early graves. Rebekah would suck them dry and watch as the girl squirmed, holding back her disgust, her face turning a pathetic sickly pallor.
Tonight though, this night was different. It had been four months and still Rebekah had not heard a word from Kol. If she didn't know any better she would fear that he'd been daggered, like Finn, but Kol wasn't like Elijah, Finn or even her. He was quick. Any move to silence him by Klaus and Kol would already be three steps ahead, easily evading her brother's rash temperaments.
No, the absence of letters, Kol's silence spoke of something much more sinister. Perhaps he had forgotten or perhaps something much worse. Perhaps Kol was lost again, as he was for those first hundred years past death. Disappearing into the great unknown without a word, he had resurfaced much later by his own free will changed from when she had seen him last. After the first hundred years of absence he had come back a different man from the little brother she'd known: all the soft parts of him, the sweetness that had been there when they were children- gone. His wit had sharpened from a simple playful humour to something much more dark and cold. He was slow to warm as they left Italy together, so closed, lost for so long that at times in those first few years Rebekah wondered if she would ever meet her brother again. Then before she knew it, they were one in the same, a twisted puzzle that was both her and him, as if the others had never existed: Elijah, just a thought; Finn, a sorrowful memory; and Klaus, a nightmare; that if pondered on for too long would draw them back in.
It wouldn't last though and Rebekah knew it as sure as Kol did. Sooner or later they would be forced back to Klaus and Elijah, magnets drawn to the chaos. And then the free life they had, had with each other: doing as they pleased, keeping whatever company they had chosen and living unburdened in their own little world, would be gone.
Rebekah would remember the promise the three of them had made, by their mother's grave: always and forever. And Kol, he would disappear. He had made no promise, no ties, only to Rebekah. It was an understanding that when the time came and one was in need, as she was when Alexander had died, that the other would come.
As she sat by the bed of the silent girl, whom she had held as her hostage for four months, Rebekah knew that he wasn't coming back. Not to that little home she had made nor would Kol come back to Spain. Something was wrong, very wrong, only this time he wouldn't reach out to her as she had him. He was gone and as for when she'd see Kol again, Rebekah didn't know which left the responsibility of tying off loose ends to her.
They had agreed that if he should not return within three months time that she'd kill Elpitia: blood for blood. Klaus needed his witch and the two of them, an eternity without the tyranny of Klaus or the threat of Mikael.
Now, however when left with the task, Rebekah wasn't able to go through with killing the girl. Perhaps it was a lingering inability to vanquish the last person she could keep close- even if it was under duress. And it was that, which had left her sitting by that rickety little bed, staring at the face of someone whom she'd never heard speak, admiring Elpitia almost as if she were her own sister- the perfect sister at that (perhaps because she was mute).
Untangling her fingers from the girl's hair she smiled at her own patheticness and stifled the small twinge of loss she felt with the idea of all the different little girls she could find that would be so much better than Ines's daughter. She'd pick a chatty one this time, one that Rebekah could dress up in pretty little clothes that would entertain her and love her like a sister or companion should.
Rebekah's hand slithered up the pillow, hovering just above the girl's throat. She'd make it quick and snap her neck. It didn't feel right to make Elpitia suffer, especially when she looked so peaceful.
"We all must go sometime little girl," Rebekah whispered as a promise, more to herself that she was doing the right thing than to comfort a sleeping young woman who had no inclination that she'd never see daylight again.
Closing her hand around Elpitia's neck, the girl's eyes snapped open staring at Rebekah silently but not in shock but something completely off putting and unfamiliar in circumstances such as these. Brown little marbles peered up at their captor not with fear but acceptance.
It was enough to stop Rebekah, her fingers flexing against the girl's neck and then releasing. Just as Rebekah was thinking of something to say, some kind of anecdote, the girl looked away her eyes gazing through the open door down the hall.
And then it came.
A great rapping noise boomed through the home as the front door to their apartment flew open, the wood cracking as it made contact with the stone wall. Light poured in from the lit torches on the balcony, sounds from the streets filtered inside. Standing in the doorway the shadow stretched down the hall making it seem as though It were seven feet tall.
Elpitia hadn't moved, her eyes returned to Rebekah, her face no longer expressionless but instead clearly smug. But Rebekah was far too perplexed to even notice.
"Who are-"
Stepping forward into the hall, long legs dressed in dark green leggings, much like what the stable boys would wear dipped into the light. The intruder was clad in brown boots and a white tunic that hung loosely across her chest revealing that it was a she but unlike any female Rebekah had seen. The woman's complexion was san brunette, her hair long and black as tar, twisted into a thick braid that hung over her shoulder.
"Time to go, Elpitia," the woman called, her accent thick and unplaceable as she spoke in the local dialect.
When the girl tried to move, Rebekah wrapped her hand around Elpitia's shoulder, her arm slamming her back down onto the bed.
Rebekah's fangs had dropped, grey veins of rage spiralling down from her eyes, "Who the hell are-"
Before she could finish her question and move onto threats, Rebekah felt herself lifting up off her chair, the words catching in her throat. Sighing, the creature moved away from the door. As she walked each graceful long step caused the doors along the short hallway to fly open. They rattled against their hinges, some snapping from the binding as they crashed against the walls repeatedly with each step she took.
Almond-shaped, chrysochlorous eyes glanced at Rebekah, as her feet started sliding backwards over wooden floors. Rebekah's head and shoulders bounced off the wall she was tossed into, her lips popping open with an indiscernible curse that had laid lodged in her throat.
"Time to go, Elpitia," the woman called to the young woman again, as she stepping into the room. Without hesitation this time, the girl tossed the blankets against the baseboard of the bed, crawled out and was walking towards her rescuer without question or fear.
"Is she alive?" Elpitia asked, looking up at the woman she'd never seen before but knew to trust. Elpitia knew her mother would eventually come for her and if she could not for whatever reason there would be another, someone else, a messenger from Silas.
A pause passed between the two, before the woman motioned to the hall behind her, "Go."
The girl hesitated for a moment, glancing back at Rebekah who struggled against whatever it was the held her to that wall. It was then for the first time in four months that Elpitia spoke directly to Rebekah, "Goodbye."
The veins in Rebekah's neck pulsed, her face flushed red with exertion. Gasping she spat out, "Now she speaks!"
The girl smiled, watching, enjoying those few small moments left that they had with one another. As Rebekah gritted her teeth together, flashing an irritated smile, one that spoke of the throats she planned on slicing through with her teeth, the blood she planned on smearing on those walls, she realized she was unwillingly giving the girl the exact thing she wanted perhaps more than her own freedom for those four months: recognition. Not in words, talk, endless attempts at conversation. No, the girl Rebekah had held there in those tiny rooms against her will, she wanted it to be known that she may have been a prisoner but it was Rebekah that was drowning, in fear of silence and the things it really spoke of.
As Elpitia left, Rebekah was left struggling against the wall, watching the loose end walk right out the front door. She could feel the enamel sloughing off her as she gritted her teeth together.
Damn Kol, that selfish prick. In that moment he was no better than Klaus or Elijah. Leaving her there to deal with shit like this, while he was off doing whatever it was that kept him from writing her: things that likely had nothing to do with detaching themselves from Klaus or eliminating their menacing deranged father.
After Elpitia had stepped out into the hall, the mysterious woman came closer, examining Rebekah's every move. She was coated in the smell of cinnamon and looked predatory, more than even Rebekah could have claimed of herself.
Leaning in until her mouth was inches from Rebekah's face she breathed, "Stop struggling," the words susurrating over Rebekah's cheek. Tilting her head, a queer smirk spread across her mouth as she watched Rebekah freeze, but from some compulsion or magic but the free will of distraction. Rebekah watched Farideh, enamoured ever so slightly never seeing a creature or woman quite like her before.
Licking her lips, Farideh's eyes traced Rebekah's face, "No brothers to save you? Poor girl, left to fight for yourself?" she clicked her tongue in mocking. Fingers reached out, touching the blonde hair that fell over Rebekah's shoulder. Collecting it in a bundle, she wrapped the hair around her hand like it was the tail of whip, forcing Rebekah's head to tilt as she gently tugged. Pulling a little too roughly, Rebekah's ear pressed clumsily against Farideh's mouth as she commented, "Maybe now you learn to survive alone… put up a better fight."
Releasing Rebekah's hair, she ran her finger teasingly down the side of her face, "Touch another witch again and I promise you, you will not look like this anymore."
Farideh lingered in front of Rebekah for a moment longer, before she turned to leave.
"The girl will die. My brother will find her!" Rebekah yelled out after her.
Turning Farideh questioned, "You think I am afraid of your brother?"
Still struggling against the wall, Rebekah answered, "You should be. If he wants her, he will find her and I promise she will be dead."
It was a weak threat, that Farideh should fear anything in this world when she had seen it all and lived four millennia more than the miscreant petty little vampire, Rebekah had threatened Farideh with. But it was obvious that Rebekah believed wholeheartedly in what she promised. It was clear that to her, this brother or perhaps brothers she used as a weapons were something she feared.
"Hmm… and why not you? Was she not your prisoner?" Farideh questioned stepping towards Rebekah, drawn back into conversation even as Elpitia waited outside.
Annoyed, Rebekah snapped, "I do not care if she lives or dies."
"Then why murder her?" It was a rhetorical questioned for Farideh knew the answer before she even bothered to ask. She was simply curious if Rebekah would admit the truth, if she even knew it yet herself.
Leaving an appropriate pause, Farideh broke out in a quick laugh, a smile flickering over her expression, "Your brother, the Halfling?" She laughed again only this time louder, not bothering to hide her clear amusement, before Farideh bridged the gap between her and Rebekah once more. Reaching out her finger wrapped around the talisman that hung from Rebekah's neck.
Struggling futilely to move from her grasp, Rebekah barked, "What are you doing?"
Farideh rubbed her fingers over the bobble that Rebekah had taken from Ayanna long ago and answered, "Shh… as long as Elpitia lives you will live… only without your brothers," pausing she made sure to make eye contact with Rebekah as she finished, "To remind you of what you almost took for no reason."
"What?"
"You heard what I said," Farideh answered looking back towards the open door where Elpitia waited. Lifting her hand, she rubbed her fingers over Rebekah's face, silencing her into a daze before she could say anything else.
"I am giving you a gift," Farideh whispered against her cheek, before she finished what she had promised and spelled Rebekah as she slept.
Hours later when Rebekah woke, she was lying on the floor, propped up against the wall. She felt as though she had drunk herself into a stupor the night before. Looking through the open doors however she knew it wasn't wine that had left her head pounding but instead an unfortunate encounter with a kind of witch she'd never met before.
The girl was gone, along with any previous plan Rebekah had formed the night before involving finding Kol or at the very least Elijah. Over the next few days Rebekah would repeatedly attempt to remove her necklace that Farideh had seemed so focused on, but fail to be able pry it from her neck.
She had been given gift, only it was one she didn't want. Although she felt no inclination to find any of her brothers Rebekah was determined to find the witch that had spelled her and so she would spend the next five centuries doing just that. Forever in the pursuit of the green eyed witch.
Chapter 2
1492-1495
Isle of Man, English Seas
When he was still a child, human and naïve, Kol saw them once in the fields. Maybe he hadn't been a kid but it had felt like it. One century was enough to dwarf any human memory but five had made everything in his human existence feel as though it were insignificant, infantile and callow. Whatever ideals a boy of eight and ten had; had nothing on the realities a man, of five hundred and fourteen years, knew.
Maybe he'd chosen to forget those things from his human life, dismiss them because they seemed irrelevant. What could Kol have brought from that life that could possibly compare to centuries of feeding, fucking and living as he pleased?
They couldn't, simple as that.
There was, however, one memory, one thing he'd held onto. One, of the few nightmare- free moments of his human life that he'd stored away deep in the recesses of his mind and it was of Elijah and Tatia.
Odd?
Yes, indeed, but the human mind was a strange maze, tightly gripping some things, making tunnels of endless little caches, while walling off other oh so seemingly more important paths.
The story would evolve over the years; to where it was Klaus whom was the victor and Elijah the fool but as all stories go, the truth is in the perspective. Perhaps Klaus chose to be blind, Rebekah forever self-involved and Kol's parents were so absorbed in their own little tragedies that they'd never noticed; but Kol had and he knew. Kol had always seen her as more in love with Elijah than Klaus. Not that any of that mattered now.
His memory was nothing special or odd. It had no great ending or beginning- nothing to distinguish it from the many others that he had in a human life, but still there was something about it. There was something that resonated with him. The image of Elijah walking through the fields that had grown over, riddled with weeds. He was looking for her and she- him. What a perfect metaphor, for it was their game (what little Kol understood): who would find the other first? Who was more willing to walk those extra steps and keep looking?
The answer was neither and both. Neither seemed to search; for they always seemed to know where the other was, where they would go and how they could be found. It was a question of who was willing to make the first move, to keep moving and pursuing even when the other had stopped.
Why, of all the memories Kol would hold on to from his human life, was that one so strangely familiar and important? Perhaps it was human innocence: youth not yet impregnated with the lascivious realities of the immortal. Whatever it was, Kol envied it, wanted it even before he understood. It was the idea that he would search for something and it for him.
The only problem was that he was immortal so why should he wait? It was difficult to unlearn pleasures already known. To forget the easiness of how things could be, to accept the difficulties of how things were.
And oh- how it would be difficult for him. What Kol hadn't understood when he was human, was that the search took more than just effort. It took patience, not only to find what one was looking for, but to wait for it to find him as well.
After Greyshaw had went up in smoke, Klaus- crazy with rage, Elijah- silent with grief; Kol had fled Harte Manor quicker than the church could collect the bodies of those fallen. Foolishly he travelled north, deep into the highlands thinking he would find her. He was hoping that Lilly had listened to him, that she would trust him just that once as she had before everything happened.
They had travelled west immediately, but not without looking back. Lyanna had told them to go there, travel to the islands, places Klaus wouldn't think to look and blindly Lilly had followed. They would have been better off to travel east or perhaps even north but Lilly refused.
It took Kol one week and two days to find Lilly and Elspeth on the Isle of Man. Wishfully they'd disregarded his instructions to go north as they headed west. Elspeth and Lilly paid the boatman every last piece of gold they had to take them to the island. What they would do when they arrived and how they would survive, the women hadn't considered.
Any future they had, involved Lyanna. Part of Lilly, the rationale side of her, knew after a week had passed that Lyanna was never coming- that all of her fears had come true. But the foolish part of her, the same girl that had cut her hair and climbed into that wagon alongside Elspeth, even though she knew she shouldn't leave- that girl, wouldn't allow herself to believe it.
If she stayed, she had convinced herself that eventually Lyanna would come and that was how Kol found both her and Elspeth on the Isle of Man: in complete denial. They huddled together, in what little shelter they could find amongst the rocks on the beach. The wind coming off the water nearly killed the two women from chill those first nights. Wrapped in what few blankets they could find, coaxing the fire to burn through the night, their tears froze on their face, their stomachs filled with salt water and fear.
Kol found Lilly on the beach, one winter morning. The bottom of her gown soaked through, along with her slippers. Wrapped in a blanket, she stood ankle deep in damp sand and looked out over the grey sea, at dawn as if she were waiting for Lyanna's ship to come to shore.
What he expected, Kol wasn't quite sure. Mayhaps he was wishing, just as much as she, that none of it was real. That he could go back, do things differently the only problem was that even if he could, there was nothing to be done- even then.
This moment was inevitable no matter what he did. Kol had a made a promise to Rebekah that they wouldn't live like they had for so long- waiting for Mikael to show up at their door as he had when they'd first left Elijah and Klaus in Italy. He promised her that they would never have to run again and he meant it.
He should have stayed with his serving girls: short meals and long naked afternoons. None of that would have led him to where he was now: abandoning Rebekah and ruining the only thing besides his sister, Kol had ever found worth keeping.
"I am sorry." It was a weak opener and even as he said it, Kol knew that whatever words of contrition he had for Lilly would never be enough.
Turning, she found him on the beach, clothing in perfect order, not a detail of his appearance amiss or showing any sign of distress, when her whole life was in disarray.
"You," Lilly sneered, the mere sight of Kol causing her muscles to tense, adrenaline and cortisol pumping through her veins.
He had prepared for this kind of reaction in theory, rehearsing conversations in his mind but as he stood there in front of her the words began to jumble until all he could offer was, "I told you to go north."
A grimace of disgust passed over Lilly's face as she turned back to the sea, not giving him the satisfaction of her full attention, "Lyanna is not going north."
"Lyanna is going nowhere," Kol replied, making no effort to subtly state the obvious. He wasn't good at this sort of thing. This was the type of conversation Elijah would know how to lead or Klaus how to force. Elijah would have said the right thing. He could have spun words of apology that could have relayed the kind of regret Kol felt. Elijah would have found some way to explain to Lilly, that what happened was so much bigger than the two of them. Elijah would have, at the very least, made the effort. And Klaus, Niklaus would have simply forced the issue. He would have bullied her, known how to query compliance, not cower like a child that was being scolded. Klaus wouldn't have given a fuck what kind of damage he had caused and he surely wouldn't feel the overwhelming conflict of justification mingling with bitter regret that Kol was swallowing now.
"Leave," Lilly demanded, turning her back to him wishing nothing more than to grieve in peace- to hold onto her hope without Kol's interjections of reality.
Trying again, Kol took a step forward and reached out without thinking, "Lilly you are not safe here."
She turned on him quickly, her eyes burning yellow, "Neither are you," she snapped in warning, meaning it whole heartedly as the blanket dropped from her shoulders and Kol could see muscles tensing under damp cloth.
More reservedly this time, Kol attempted, "Lilly…." He had to reason with her. Kol had to talk some kind of sense into her. She couldn't stay here waiting for Lyanna, for Lyanna Lockwood was nothing more than dirt and bone by now. Lilly and Elspeth had nowhere to stay. No way of feeding themselves or providing their own living. They were easy prey for whatever that may lay hidden on this island and would surely be discovered sooner, if not later, by the villagers.
The blanket slid into the damp sand, collecting at her feet as Lilly took an uneven step forward. Her hand shook with rage as she pointed at him, "If you do not leave, I will rip your limbs from your body."
Holding his ground, fully prepared for the encounter to end in a physical squabble, Kol tried again, "Lilly- Lyanna… she's gone. You cannot stay here, he will find you." As he watched Lilly tense again, fingers balling into fists, her teeth gritting together preparing for an altercation, she surprised him when she suddenly stop. Instead of lurching forward and attempting to make good on her threats, Lilly bent and retrieved her blanket from the sand. Wrapping it around her shoulders once more, she did something far worse than lash out him, she simply looked away again, indifferently answering, "Go away, we do not need you. Lyanna is coming."
She was in a state of disbelief, trying to navigate her way through grief and Kol could appreciate that- he could respect her loyalty because it was Lilly's most attractive quality. He could tolerate her hatred for him because he knew someday that it would fade. But he could not withstand indifference, not in matters such as this because if time was what she needed, Kol had it but if his brother were to find Lilly, Klaus would quickly take away any opportunity Kol had to be forgiven.
"And when she does not? When my brother comes instead?" he continued, cautiously.
Lilly's head dipped ever so slightly- an unconscious acknowledgment that part of her knew what he was saying to be true. Lilly was proud though, too proud to admit that he might be right but even more so, she was stubborn, "I do not fear you nor your brother. We are not leaving until she comes."
Kol's thin patience snapped, "She won't, Lilly."
"Go," she replied, seemingly unaffected by anything he said. As Kol stood there thinking of some other way he could attempt to explain, impart upon her how serious the threat truly was and how both she Elspeth had come too far to be killed now, Kol's thoughts were cut short.
"Go!" she yelled, her voice echoing across the empty beach.
He could have stayed, Kol could have argued the merit of the facts all morning and still the words he supplied would have fallen on deaf ears. She needed time. Lilly needed what little he could give her now, to grieve and then, he told himself, she would listen. Then maybe after a few months she could let go and with even more time, maybe Lilly could forgive and they could move on together.
That was the handicap of immorality, when a person had forever loss became a constant until soon death meant little but to a human, loss was everything. With such little time, life was so much more precious and the end of it tragic.
It wouldn't be months for Lilly or even years for her to let go of Lyanna. What Kol didn't seem to understand was that to Lilly, Lyanna was family, precious and couldn't simply be forgotten or replaced.
Three years Kol would spend following her everywhere as they assimilated into the village, watching, waiting and hoping that someday she would feel differently, possibly change her mind or even forgive. The people of the Isle of Man were especially kind to the women, accepting them into the community without question. Elspeth and Lilly were given small tasks that helped supply them food and shelter. They lived a simple life but a safe one. Neither ever went without food, shelter or wood to heat themselves when needed. Perhaps growing up privileged and sheltered Lilly thought all humans embraced strangers that way, Elspeth, likely knew better but was too old and too protective of Lilly to deny the help that Kol had so obviously provided them. Lilly may have refused to allow him into her life, as she and Elspeth eked out there humble existence on the Isle of Man but she was never without him. What influence Kol could use in the way of compulsion he did so without question, making sure that women were provided for and assisted in any way they needed within the community while allowing both Elspeth and Lilly to keep the illusion that they were completely autonomous from Kol.
He kept his distance, not at first. Imprudent, he tried repeatedly to approach but as time wore on and Lilly held her resolve Kol learned to play by her rules and respect her boundaries. He stayed out of sight and what he feared to be out of mind. But on the full moon frequently, he'd be bold. Lilly had found a place down on the beach where she would sequester herself on those nights. Elspeth's gnarled, arthritic hands helping to tether her to the boulders lodged against the walls of rock that lined parts of the beach.
In the spring the tide would be so high that Elspeth could not stay through the night as she usually would. It would force her, as the sun would dip below the horizon to crawl her way back from the beach to wait out the night in their hut. In her absence, Lilly would change. Bones snapping, her spine curling, fur bursting through the pores of her skin like spikes as the sea would come rushing up the shore beating against the rocks the water would come as high as Lilly's waist, leaving her fur to lie damp and matted against her shifting body.
The change was a grotesque, horrifying sight. Lilly never looked more pathetic than when she was tethered to those rocks. Her fur handing limp against her bowed legs. Her head jerking against the boulder in rage, she would slobber with anticipation, practically foaming at the mouth she would snap and growl at him as sat with her.
Those nights were the shortest. There was never enough time. At any moment, if a chain were to break she would rip out his throat or try. Lilly would have littered his body with venomous bites that left Kol dazed, nauseated and easy prey. It was piteous, no getting around it. She was a shadow of herself on those nights. Little remaining of who she was for Lilly on a full moon was only one salient thought: kill. And still Kol counted the days till the next full moon, each month in the spring. He waited until he'd have that time alone with her, even if it had to be like it was: her as something else and he an intruder.
Desperate men did lamentable things.
The day Elspeth died, Kol found her kneeling on the dirt floor of their hut. He had known it was coming for months. The old woman's body had deteriorated past the point of use. She could no longer walk; feed herself or control her own bowels. Perhaps it was illness that had caught her or age but surely some of it was heartbreak. Elspeth held on for three years after losing her daughter and only then because it was Lilly that had sustained her. Soon enough though, death had come calling for the old woman- the dream that she could go home. Back to Greyshaw Manor once again not as it was now but as it was then. That promise of possibly seeing Lyanna once again, was too great to hold her in this life, even for Lilly.
Elspeth passed in the summer months of the year of our Lord, 1495. There was no great cry that was sounded throughout the village to alarm Kol. It was the silence, the absence of Lilly's voice speaking to her, comforting her, the stillness that had fallen over their hut that told Kol it was time.
On the floor of their hut, Lilly held that old woman so close her, that from behind they looked as if they were one person. Kol must have stood there for close to a quarter of the evening, quietly waiting outside the door in the cover of darkness before Lilly finally called out to him, "I know you are there."
Moving further back into the shadows, Kol didn't respond. He had come to offer his respects and support, not to incite Lilly on today of all days.
Silence fell between them for great span of time before she addressed him again, "How long will you wait?"
It had been three years since Lilly had spoken him. She had made it as though Kol didn't exist, like she couldn't see him even when she had.
"I am not waiting," Kol replied.
"Then what is it that you are doing?" Lilly questioned, laying Elspeth's body back onto her tiny mat.
"Existing…." Kol was living the life he had been dealt and existing it was and just barely at that. He lived as he hadn't for centuries- like an animal. Kol slept in a shelter he'd made just off the shore. He kept himself separate from the human population, separate from Lilly. Respecting the life she'd made with Elspeth. He lived in seclusion. He fed on animals, the sick and the elderly. He spoke with no one, only to himself and those he compelled to forget would he could take the isolation no longer. It was a lowly woeful life. One his brothers surely would mock in disgust.
It was barely more pleasant than hell, but only so because of those moments in the spring on the shore. But it was surely a purgatory Kol was living in, one much more agonizing than the Christian version he'd heard of in his travels.
"What do I have left?" Lilly murmured to no one but herself. It was a reflection, a rambling thought of a distraught woman.
"Me," Kol replied a little too honestly, too eager and most certainly too soon. Selfishly he broke the boundary they'd held so well for years and tried to step inside but was stopped.
He was not welcome, then or now. The invisible wall held him separate still and he was not naïve enough to believe that even in a moment like this Lilly would invite him inside.
There was a pause, one that was too long to be thoughts of contrition and too short to be surrender on her part but just long enough to give Kol hope. Then Lilly shrugged her shoulder, rolling it upwards in disgust, "No," as though she were refusing his touch.
It was one word, one syllable and a definite refusal.
"Leave me," her words dripped with hate, a kind he was all too familiar with. And like a silly wounded creature, Kol felt himself harden with the rejection. Too proud to walk away though, and too in love to give up he stood there like a dog waiting to be kicked once more.
The silence stretched out between them for seconds again before Lilly yelled, "Go!" Elsepth crumpling in her arms. Tears spilled down her cheeks, snot running from her nose. At any moment Lilly was bound to break into hysterics, weep for all the things she'd not had the courage to do so for in the years previous: Lyanna, her home, Katerina, Elsepth and Kol. How she wanted to grieve for the death of everything she thought they were but she couldn't. Grief implied love and she didn't love him. She didn't think about someone that had taken from her everything she once had loved and she didn't miss him.
He needed to leave. Lilly needed Kol gone right that moment before she revealed just how weak she really was, swallowed her pride and admitted that she couldn't do it alone. Not with Lyanna gone and Elspeth leaving her as well.
Luckily it was Kol's pride that broke before her own.
"Fine!" he called back to her, like a petulant child, "Stay here in your rat hole. You think I care?"
"Go…." she whispered again, not concerned with his thoughts, she wrapped herself around Elspeth and rocked back and forth, reassuring herself once more as he left that she meant it.
He did care though and wasn't that just the crux of it all? Kol cared, so much more than what he wished to, because that was the story of him and Lilly. They would never be the passion of Rebekah and Alex, the tragedy of Klaus and the hunters, the dream of Elijah and Tatia or the promise of Finn and Sage. They were all of it- sometimes something else, something foreign and intimidating but certainly something more.
That was the sticking point, the thing that sat in the back of Kol's throat like a lump that couldn't be swallowed and tickled around the edges of his unconscious mind like the unscratchable itch that would drive him mad.
They were inevitable. The thing he couldn't run from. He could try for a thousand years, with a thousand different women, in hundreds of different countries, in even more beds. But all of it- every single last desire, need and want, would lead him back to this shit hole of a place-some dinky little island in a God forsaken sea.
One shitty little hut, in the middle of nowhere that held the only thing Kol was willing to wait for no matter how long it took.
Where Lilly went, Kol would go, and where she would stay he would live. Her people would be his and her God, his forever.
They lived like that for years, rats cobbled away in their little nests. The Isle of Man was a cruel place with harsh winters and fleeting summers. No man of any worth or a full set of teeth would settle there. For there were times…. oh so many, when Kol wasn't so dedicated, he wasn't so loyal- frankly he wasn't so pathetic as to wait for something that may never come and so he left. He'd travel to London, Glasgow and the occasional Dublin to feed and fuck as he pleased. He'd prey on any woman that was half attractive that he could find with long dark hair and dark eyes. Kol would stay, feeding, drinking and fucking as long as he could tolerate, as long as Kol could lie, telling himself that he was satisfied living any other kind of life. Inevitably however, he would always come to the same realization that he was not and wander back to the Isle of Man. Kol would return weeks later like a dog with his tail between his legs, perched outside her dingy little hut just within the cover of the trees, waiting for a glimpse of Lilly to tell him that he was right to come home, no matter what wreck of a place it might have been.
If life was simple or kind, this would be the part when Lilly would change her mind. When all the things that had come to pass at Greyshaw Manor would have been forgotten: fires unlit, tears uncried and lives put back together. But life was neither simple nor easy and neither would be their story.
Kol didn't wait one year, five or even fifteen. A prisoner of the Isle of Man, Kol waited fifty five years for denial to play its last cord and Lilly to accept that the family she waited for would never come. She was the stake and he the string, circling forever in the field that was the Isle of Man.
Inevitability- it is the thing one is unable to be avoid, evaded, or escape; a certain necessity, that is sure to occur, eventually happen and someday come true.
He and Lilly were unalterable, if for no other reason than because eventually one knew that after the first had made their move the other would eventually follow.
Chapter 3
1494
Kotel, Bulgaria
The day she died was the first time Katerina opened her eyes to whom she really was and what she could be in this world. There was grief in death, the stages a person must pass through to process loss and Katerina would be no different than any other that had come before her.
Her grief unlike so many others however, wasn't for dying and never again being human but instead for having survived. She lived and everything she knew had burned in her wake. Lyanna had told her not to look back and so she didn't. Kat woke in Grace's cottage and on instinct, fed from and hastily killed the old woman that had allowed her into her home and sheltered her. When she lay cold and dead on the floor, her eyes apart, the flesh of neck flayed open for viewing, Katerina knew it then, as perhaps she always had: she was a monster. The snake that had laid coiled and camouflaged under sweet smiles and pleasant words, now slithered from its cage- not be confined again.
The blood curdled for a moment in her stomach, a pathetic whimper whispered past her lips;a second of complete self-pity and hatred. It was only for a moment though, that she wallowed in regret before she crawled from that dirt floor and began running as soon as she saw the door. Night would be over soon; the smell of charred flesh and cries filtering throughout the thick forest would serve as a reminder of what she had left behind.
Katerina had no time to think on that however, she had to find shelter. She had to escape; but most of all, she had to survive. Katerina made it through that first night, finding her way to the edge of the forest and into the nearest village, as the sun began to burn her skin. She killed the first man she found. He had lived alone, his hut set slightly apart from the rest and as she fed from him, this time she'd felt no regret. Never one to look back for too long, Katerina grew leaps and bounds in her denial in even those first few hours after she awoke into her life of living dead.
For the first year, she did nothing but run and feed. Moving south, it was by chance that she missed the clans of wolves that would have sniffed her out and slaughtered her long before Klaus. Slowly, using the charm she had honed for years and compulsion, which she was quick to master, Katerina quietly crawled her way out of the Britain. On instinct she moved east, eventually reaching Poland but not daring to go further south: home. She may have been a child still, in her unnatural youth, but Katerina was still no fool to flee to the first place she would be easily found.
That first year was perhaps the worst. She knew not what had become of Lyanna, Lilly or Elspeth nor could she go home to her first family. Instead, she lived in relative seclusion. Relegated to only moving at night, she hid amongst the people. Killing the weak and elderly, taking shelter in their homes, teaching herself, discovering all the things a maker would and should have told her.
When the spring and summer months passed and the air turned chilly once more, Katerina could stand it no longer. The purgatory she lived in was worse than any hell Klaus could have subjected her to or even imagined. Let him find her if he wished. Let him kill or torture her. Katerina no longer cared. It was time-she had to go home.
It took her close to a month to travel south. Where before she would have stayed away from the roads, hid from crowds now she boldly led the horse she had stolen down the dirt path, that lead past the farmlands she had once carried water through as a child. A cloudless evening, Katerina could see the fence post where her green eyed boy had once left her flowers. Her hand reached out, fingers rubbing over the worn wood in memory.
Rough grass, soft hands and a patient voice- she gave him things no other man would take: a kind, uncalculating part of herself that had dried, cracked and broke when she was forgotten for the first time.
Katerina didn't know what to expect, as she turned the last corner down the lane where her home had once been. Perhaps, she thought, she'd see smoke rising from the chimney, the dog resting by the door. Her father would hear the horse and look out the window, watching her as she approached in the night. He'd open the door, lighting his pipe, the dog would rustling and bark once or twice from the ground sensing, like her father, that someone approached. He'd squint into the night, sucking on his pipe a little longer and wait for her to announce herself, until he saw her.
At first he would be so overcome with surprise that it would fall from his mouth as nothing louder than a whisper, Katerina…
He'd turn, looking into the warm light of the home and call to his wife, майка! Then her mother, meeting him at the door, looking out into the yard, would see that her eldest daughter, her Katerina, had finally returned. Mайка would drop the rag she held, her hands coming to her mouth in shock and then a smile would have spread over her face, tears in her eyes as she ran to Kat.
She would pull her from the horse, embracing her, just as Katerina had dreamt all those nights she was away. And then it would be her sisters running from the house. They would tug at her skirt and press their faces into her shoulder and neck, and things would be as they should have been always.
In her mind, Katerina would have been so overcome by love and relief that they wanted her, they cared that she was back, that it all would be forgiven- everything that had passed before. And that was when she would have looked up from her mother and sisters and found her father resting still in the doorway. It was then that little Katerina, would have been shy once more. She would have been unsure of herself, afraid that he was still mad- that her father hadn't forgiven, but in this dream, he had. He would reach out his hand and call to her, Katerina… my daughter. His daughter, she would be his once more and not some stranger that had been sent away. She would belong to someone once more when he embraced her, kissed her hair and didn't notice that this time her skin was cold, her reflexes too quick. Everything would have been as she imagined because in those moments Katerina would have told him all the things she was too proud to say before: I love you, Papa.
Never would she have had that regret in her fantasies because that was what Katerina had imagined every night that first year she was born into the living dead. That was the image she held onto and soon realized she would never have.
The further she passed down the lane, the more she worried that perhaps it was too dark and she had taken a wrong turn in her excitement. Perhaps her eyes had deceived her and she had missed her home but she wouldn't be so lucky.
When the dirt road could go no further, she tugged on the horse's reins, her leg slipping over the side as her feet touched the ground. Where there had once been a house, a home and love, there was nothing. The door was wide open, the dog nowhere to be found and not a light turned on. Stepping closer, across the small yard, the smell struck her before she had the chance to cross the threshold.
It was death- the rotting stank of putrid flesh.
Picking up her skirts Katerina stepped inside, only to find that no longer were there four walls, but only two. The whole back half of the structure had been burned or torn to the ground. Her feet, connected with a cold, dark mass lying on the floor. Hands shaking, Katerina ran back to the horse. Throwing open the side bag, she retrieved the flint stone with its striker and untied the tethered lantern. Lighting the wick, she moved cautiously back towards the house, afraid what she might find.
There, not three feet inside the door, laid the dog. Its black tongue hung from its mouth, eyes pecked out by birds or other animals. Disembowelled; maggots crawled around in its open flesh. Her arm shook furiously as she held the lantern out further, squinting as she peered into the darkness. It was there that she found them: spread out through the small kitchen and into the bedroom. The light dropped from her hand, clattering on the kitchen table not a half foot from where her sister laid. Faced down, her arm was outstretched against the wood as if she were trying to crawl away. There was a hole punched through her ribs, shattering the bones in its path.
Her heart, Katerina's dear loving sister's heart, lay where it had been tossed, next to her feet that dangled from the table.
"Pavla," her hand reached out to the little girl. Stepping forward, Katerina found her father mounted to the door. His sword skewered through his upper abdomen while his head hung by his shoulder like his limbs that dangled inches from the ground.
"Papa…" Katerina whispered, her lips trembling, tears rushing down her cheeks, dribbling over her lips.
And her mother, faithful as ever, had fallen only feet away from her father. On her stomach, she seemed to be lying on top of something. Dropping to the ground, Katerina gripped her shoulder and gently nudged the body back, finding her youngest sister, Nevena, lying underneath.
Her heart dangled outside her chest, holding on by a thin thread of tissue. Looking from her sister to her mother, whose throat had been ripped out, her eyes still wide open in horror as she' likely had tried to save her child, Katerina gagged and choked on vomit and her own cries. Grabbing her mother's lifeless body, she clutched her close to her chest as Katerina's hands pressed her mother's lifeless face against her cold inhuman neck.
"Mama!" Katerina cried, "Oh Mama, please… Mama!"
Frantically she rocked her rigid body, back and forth as her mother had done to her when she was sick as a child, "Please Mama," she stuttered, kissing her hair, tugging at her soiled clothing as though she'd respond, "I'm sorry…" Katerina gasped, mouth open eyes closed.
She could have been there for minutes or days, times stopped: a year of fear and power, hunger and loneliness drifting from her mind. It was gone, everything that she had dreamt of in those early nights, that had kept her going, kept Katerina moving, thinking, plotting of all the different things she would do that would make it okay for her to come home.
But perhaps that was why Katerina truly didn't come home. It wasn't because of Klaus. It wasn't the fear of what he'd do to her. It was knowledge of this- of what Katerina knew was likely true.
Klaus was never going to let her live. Katerina may have escaped that night, but he'd hunt her, kill everything she loved until there was nothing left for her in this world. He'd not stop until she surrendered if only to force it all to finally end. That was how Klaus hunted, how he preyed on his victims and how he killed those that betrayed him. It was the slow torture, the agonizing game that would bring them crawling back to him for relief. It was then that they would welcome his hands around their throats, his fingers crushing their hearts.
The wind had picked up slightly, the horse shifting its weight, the rustling of its mane against leather straps. Had Katerina been human, had she not had a year to adjust and hone her new abilities, she would have missed it.
Laying her mother's head across her lap she looked out, past the walls that had been burned to the ground, through the dark night and the fields. She had been happy here once. She had given birth to her child there, in that very bed, the same one in which she had dreamt of her green eyed boy.
It seemed now as though all of that was just a dream, so far gone that it was as though none of it ever existed.
Letting the tears trickle down her cheeks she questioned, "Have you come to kill me?"
"Have you come to kill me?"
Elijah stood just outside the light that spilt from the lantern and although she couldn't see him, Katerina could paint the expression he wore in her mind when he sighed and quietly replied, "Not today, Katerina."
She had disappeared as though she were made of ash and wind, part of something else once but now she was something much different: changed from the woman he'd chased around the gardens of Harte Manor.
It didn't take long for the brothers to realize that Rose and Trevor had disappeared the next morning. Grace, the widow from the woods, dead in her cottage, her throat ripped out carelessly as if she had been mauled by an animal.
If he hadn't thought it a thousand times before, he'd be fool to not know it now. She could sense him long before any natural means would allow. Katerina, the girl that could laugh for forever was gone now. Burnt to ash like everything else his brother had touched on English soil.
He'd followed her trail through London, into northern France before she had disappeared altogether. Klaus was less interested in wandering through woods, checking small villages. He went straight to the source. He followed what little he knew of Katerina and slowly traced his way back to her family. He was sure to leave a message, one the girl would never forget. He crushed the world around her and would wait for Elijah to bring back the wounded creature.
Sooner or later, she will come, he'd promised Elijah and he was right as he seemed to be on matters such as these. Elijah had picked up word of her in the southern lands of Poland. A beautiful woman traveling alone was a rare thing in those times. She had called herself Agatha. It was a strange name for her to choose. One that did not conjure images of a young, attractive woman but instead perhaps a mother or a widow.
Now she was an orphan.
"Today you grieve," he finished after much time.
Elijah couldn't see her face but he knew she was crying. Part of him was relieved that he was given only her back for part of him wished to hold onto the memory of the woman he'd met at Greyshaw Manor, the creature that could seduce a man at 20 paces, that laughed without apology and seemed to not understand loss. That was the woman that had been left in his mind, one that was untainted with this kind of sadness.
They would come, they would take and they would destroy; it seemed that death and sadness was the only thing that followed wherever the Mikaelsons went.
If Katerina Petrova was not destroyed by the curse or the fire, she'd be forever changed by this and perhaps that was the burden that Elijah was not yet ready to bear, the weight of his own responsibility as he was no longer able to hide behind his chivalrous facade. Klaus was right, somewhere lurking behind his loyalty and commitment to a cause was a small piece of humanity Elijah tried to keep hidden and safe. If Klaus's was lost, their siblings just as numb, then someone would have to keep what little their parents- their mother- had tried to preserve, alive but that person would not be Elijah, for he was no fool.
He knew he was no better than the rest.
"Why?" she whispered, her hands covering her mother's eyes and closing them to the world.
"It is all we have." Katerina had to die because she had been chosen long before she was born. Her family laid rotting in this home because she fought against inevitability and lost. Whatever moment of friendship and understanding they may have thought they had tried haphazardly to form in the past, was destroyed long before that house had burned in Scrathclyde.
Loyalty and family, it was all Esther's family had now and would for forever. The things that her children had become, the creatures their mother would have surely hated and their father hunted, were still the same four siblings that had once been part of a family; much like the one slain before him. Their humanity may have been lost and their empathy drained from them, like blood from a victim, but somewhere those children that grieved their brother's death were still there. If Mikael won, if they were killed before they could find the reason for it all- why they had been chosen, why nature had allowed them to survive, then it had all been for nothing.
There had been a time when Elijah embodied everything that Katerina wished to have in life but would forever be just out of her grasp. She would have betrayed Lyanna. She would have forsaken her second family. She would have given anything, if she had never had to pay the price she was now.
"Have you not come to kill me?"
"No," he answered, taking another step back. It was a lie, one of so many he had told her over their short acquaintance. He had come to kill her. Not directly, not by his own hand but Elijah had come to lead Katerina to death just the same. Now however, he had changed his mind. Elijah would let her live because that was what the man she had met years ago would have done.
Elijah did it because he was just as selfish as Klaus but perhaps much more naive because somewhere he still believed himself to be the better of the two. But if he were, if Elijah were truly the more benevolent of he and his brother, he would have killed Katerina then and not left her to live the rest of her existence with this memory.
"Then why are you here?"
Elijah had followed her for close to four days so that he could trap her amongst these rotting corpses and bring her to his brother so that he may do with her as he wished. Perhaps the witches could still perform the ritual. Elijah had come to discover where she had hidden the moonstone. There was a debt to be settled but when he saw her there on the floor, weeping over her mother all he could think of was Rebekah holding their own mother. How he had lied to both her and Kol, telling them both that it was their father that had slaughtered her. He had pushed the image of his Klaus's hand ripping their mother's heart from its cavity out of his mind and told his two youngest siblings what he thought they wanted to hear.
Even in that, it seemed Elijah was wrong.
He had come to settle a debt with his brother but instead he would so with a friend. Elijah gave Katerina this moment for all the moments that he had lied to her, manipulated her and used her in the past. He would do this for the innocent girl he'd chased through the garden, the one that carried something so honest and ugly inside her. He did it not for Agnes but for Katerina Petrova whom would soon be as dead as Elijah Mikaelson- the boy from a village in the New World for it was in that moment when he first realized that they were equal.
"You will have this but then you will need to run," he started, "I will hunt you. I will find you and when I do, I will take you to my brother so that he may finish what was started in Scrathclyde."
Perhaps Katerina should have been scared but to her his threats were meaningless, "Leave me."
Elijah paused, sparing another look at the girl he once thought he knew before he left, disappearing into the night. In the morning, the hunt would begin again and Katerina would likely not get far, but for now he would leave the dead to grieve those that would not rise again.
Katerina stayed on the floor in her childhood home for hours, soaking in her last moments with the family that knew who she really was before all of this had begun. When she could sense that morning was near, Katerina left that home at the end of the lane, passing the forests where she had made love to her green eyed boy. Moving through the neighboring village, she compelled two men to go back and bury her family, even the dog, for she couldn't do it herself. Katerina wouldn't see them go into the ground. She wouldn't see their bodies disappearing beneath dirt but she would visit their final resting place multiple times over the next century.
The first time Elijah had found Katerina there, he had given her amnesty and each time would be no different. Katerina would return home every so many decades. She compelled those that lived around the ruined house to leave the property as it was, without disturbance, as a memory of what was once there long ago.
When she would return to their memorial, Katerina would sometimes feel Elijah there or perhaps it was only her imagination. Regardless, he would not hunt her there not in that sacred place.
There was a time for debts and a time for grief and those that grieved would not have debts to be paid. That was the beginning of what would become Elijah and Katerina. They had met at Greyshaw Manor in 1492 when she was Katerina Petrova and he Lord Mikaelson, and over the years they would be many things to one another: enemies, competitors, one the cat and the other the mouse, companions, lovers and sometimes friends. But if they were nothing at once or anything ever again, they would always be equal.
A/N: Where is the hunter and where is Klaus? Well I didn't put those parts in yet. Like I warned however, many many moons ago the story from here on out will involve the siblings a great deal more and not be wholly focused on just the hunters and Klaus. The next update however will involve the hunters, the siblings, Farideh and Klaus.