Chapter Seven: Nadir
/ˈnādər,ˈnādir/
Noun: The lowest point in the fortunes of a person
Days passed slowly in the cramped sigil. A narrow mattress took up the entire space, and the piles of books, spare blood bags, and drawing pads served to make the sigil feel even smaller. Worse than the confinement was the loneliness. Elijah had effectively scared off Vincent, and Elijah himself had been off cavorting with the locals as he hunted relentlessly for any sign of Marcel and Mikael in the city. Kol had been missing since the day the sigil was cast, having run off on his own after leaving Vincent's apartment, claiming to have seen someone familiar in the distance. Freya seemed like she simply couldn't be bothered with Klaus while she worked on deconstructing the ritual. At least he had Rebekah, who seemed to smile more freely every time she visited him for breakfast in the early mornings.
Klaus had been up all night as he poured through his collection of Stephen King. For centuries, fleeing from his father and carving out an empire had consumed his entire life. He scarcely had time to immerse himself in the luxury of reading. Although, over the past few days, Klaus found himself impressed by the creative writers and tropes that had come about in the last two hundred years. In particular, he enjoyed the subtle cultural commentary and moralism found in horror.
He began with The Shining late last night, and had picked up The Stand as dawn poured into the courtyard. While waiting for Rebekah to arrive with Nordic waffles, caviar paste, and smoked salmon, Klaus was stuck rereading a particular passage:
'No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side.
Or you don't.'
Klaus book marked the page and flipped onto his back to contemplate the chords that were struck by King's words. He felt that he was going through such a transition, but he wasn't sure that he could come out on the other side, nor that he wanted to.
As the heat of the day began to lull him into a half sleep, he heard a clanging on the iron gates. His stomach rumbled with thoughts of warm carbs and salty fish.
"You're late, 'Bekah," said Niklaus with a small smile. Truthfully, he was glad to be shaken out of such dreary thoughts.
He sat up to greet her, but the person at the gates made his heart stop.
There his father stood at the foot of the iron gates, staring through the cold black bars with eyes colder still.
Klaus absorbed this sight without thinking, without breathing. He simply existed in the burn in his lungs and the rapid pulse that begged for oxygen. It wasn't until he felt faint and swayed where he sat that Niklaus took a deep, shuddering breath. He knew this day would come. It had only been a matter of time before someone came looking for him when the siphoning failed.
Without breaking eye contact, Klaus backed away to the edge of the sigil, feeling that the extra three feet would provide some sort of additional protection. Vulnerability ate away at his stomach lining despite the heavy magical wards that Freya had placed upon the compound.
A sneer cut into Mikael's face.
"Your cowardice won't protect you for long, boy," said Mikael.
These words chilled Niklaus to the bone. Klaus knew that his father was right. He had been hiding for three months with Vincent, but that had not protected him. Now he was hiding in the compound, but his cowardice seemed worthless. It was only a matter of time.
"You should speak when spoken to," said Mikael as he looked down his nose at his son.
With petulance, Niklaus refused to speak. It was a waiting game. He assumed that Mikael would not want to be caught alone when the rest of his children returned, but Klaus didn't know how long he could maintain composure with this hateful man watching him from less than fifty feet away.
Mikael leaned against the gates and inspected the dirt beneath his fingernails.
"You can pretend to be stoic in your silent protest, but I know you're scared boy," said Mikael casually. "I can hear your heart racing. I can hear your breath hitch."
Klaus willed his heart to stop beating, but to no avail.
"You seem to have become a damsel in distress," said Mikael as he moved on to his second set of fingernails. "I can't help but feel ashamed, even if you aren't my blood."
Klaus looked down at his feet, still silent in his embarrassment.
"Honestly, it's hardly how I raised you," he mused
Klaus grimaced as Mikael baited him out of his silence.
"You hardly raised me at all," said Klaus as he crossed his arms.
His father huffed with indignation.
"I did my best," countered Mikael.
Klaus mulled over that statement, unsure of how to respond to that revelation.
His father was quiet for a moment as he closed his eyes and leaned his skulls against the iron bars. He closed his eyes and seemed to struggle with something in his own mind. Mikael sighed.
"I know I wasn't a good father to you, boy..." Mikael muttered and paused.
Klaus' eyebrows rose briefly in surprise, holding his breath as he hung on his father's last words. .
"I regretted our relationship...I hated myself for what I did to you," said Mikael as he frowned, and deep set wrinkles cut through his forehead.
Without invitation, a shy and painful hope flickered in Klaus' soul.
Was this the apology that he had craved as a child? After he lost count of the beatings and violations, Klaus had given up hoping that his father would ever love him like he loved the others. He had given up hope, but suddenly, a childlike innocence and a need to be loved by his father was overwhelming any hint of hatred.
"Father…" he whispered, nearly begging.
But Mikael grimaced at the words.
"Fatherhood did not come naturally to me," he went on with his eyes still closed. "And I had my own demons that I needed to overcome…"
Klaus stood and moved forward to the front of the sigil, wanting to see his father better, wanting to hear these words that he didn't know he still needed to hear.
"You were a gentle boy, Niklaus," said Mikael.
Klaus felt frozen in this moment that didn't feel real. Klaus had gone over this scenario time and time again. If given the chance, could he forgive his father? He had always concluded that forgiveness was impossible, but faced with the chance in real life, Klaus wasn't sure.
Mikael opened his eyes and watched his son for a few moments more.
"That gentleness angered me," said Mikael. "It tempted me."
"What?" balked Klaus as reality shattered this childhood dream.
The implication of fault hit Klaus like lightening. His eyes burned as he realized how foolish he had been. Mikael had obviously come to torment him, because his father could never love him. Could only ever hate him. Klaus turned his back on his father and his hope.
"Go fuck yourself," Klaus begged, but Mikael wasn't done.
"I regretted every time you made me lose my way, every night that you drew me away from the light of the Gods," said Mikael, and every word became a dagger in his son's heart. "I was caught in a war, Niklaus."
"Stop..." Klaus whispered, not wanting to hear anymore. Not wanting to feel this pain anymore. "I don't want to know why…"
Mikael continued unabated.
"A battle raged in me for years before you broke me," he said, "I needed to have you, to take you – my own supposed flesh and blood – but the temptation threatened to overwhelm me. I knew what I had to do to save myself from eternal damnation."
Klaus choked and started to sob. He bent forward and clutched his stomach as the tears finally rolled down his cheeks and his neck. These were the fears that existed only his nightmares, the fears that everything was his fault, and his fault alone. That something was intrinsically wrong with him that made his father do those horrible things.
"I knew...Niklaus, I knew that I had to beat you until there was neither gentleness, nor artistry, nor submission. I punished you for those sinful desires that you created simply through existing," said Mikael.
"Stop," begged Klaus again through heavy sobs and gasps. He had opened his heart, hoping for closure, and the pain of this accusation threatened to rip him apart.
"But it never worked, because you were always just...you," said Mikael, leaving the implication hanging in the air.
Just when Klaus thought that he couldn't hear anymore, and that just one more word would kill him, Mikael drove the last nail into his coffin.
"In the end, I just wanted you to know" said Mikael with an insidious smile, "that I forgive you, boy, for making me into the monster that I was. I forgive you."
Klaus froze in shock as if he had literally been slapped across the face. Had he really just heard those cruel words slip form his father's mouth? Klaus felt himself implode inwards. His knees buckled as he tried to contain his sobs, and he hunched his back until his forehead was pressed into the cobblestones.
"I hate you," whined Niklaus into the stones, too consumed by pain to be humiliated by his high pitched cry. His father was unfazed, having heard this so many times before.
Mikael watched grief wrack his son's body for only a few moments more. He relished the heat that rose in his loins and his fists. Longing and disgust mingled briefly before Mikael rid himself of those thoughts. They were mere distractions until he could figure out how to break down the obstacle in his way, but Mikael knew that the sigil wouldn't protect his bastard son for long. In fact, he was shocked by how stupid his children were for placing their brother out in the courtyard where any passerby could see him. The stupidity nearly offended him, had he not been grateful for how easy it made it to figure out why the talisman hadn't been working.
Mikael closed his eyes and listened to those muffled sobs. The weakness still irritated him to this day. "Pathetic child," he muttered before disappearing from the gates of the Mikaelson home.
Klaus lay curled on the ground until the sun went down. He hated himself for wanting to find peace with his father. Klaus was sickened by the simple notion that he even considered forgiving his father. He should have known better.
As the hours alone wore on, he went over his father's words again and again. He had always been a quiet and lithe child. His brothers had been warriors at heart. He had been pale and fair and slight before reaching puberty, but even then, his muscles had been lean and tight. Klaus had been built like a runner on the plains, not a Viking made for warfare and carpentry.
He had tried to climb the social hierarchy and he had tried to make his father proud, but he could never escape this body.
Even then, he was haunted by his tendency to see beauty in the world. His bittersweet sadness that drove him to capture that beauty through art and to preserve it for an eternity. No matter how he tried to suppress his true self, Klaus still found himself carving ornate trinkets when he should have been carving hunting knives and arrows. In the beginning, violence had not come easily to him. Hatred and war had not been a default setting until his father beat it into him.
The self-loathing burned him like fire. He couldn't be that gentle boy he was born to be. He couldn't feel safe or at ease in that vulnerable state. But he also couldn't be this war-mongering devil that his father had created. Every option seemed to be sullied, influenced by abuse and trauma. There was nowhere to go in his skin or his soul that had not been affected or pre-determined by each and every violation.
"Well fuck…" muttered Klaus up into the dusky sky. He rolled onto his back and waited for the stars to show up. "I guess I could always just kill myself."
Slowly, that quiet admission made him feel giddy and light. Like a bright and shiny exit sign that he could run to at any moment. An escape from his past and future. A reminder that if things ever got bad enough, it would be okay because it could all be over in an instant.
Perhaps in the light of day, those thoughts would have scared him. But now, as he stared up at the hollow darkness between stars, Klaus Mikaelson planned his death.