I live in your warm life, and you shall die—die, sweetly die—into mine.
- Carmilla, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
"Your family name is Mikaelson?" She sounds much calmer than she had expected to, considering the storm of confusion and rage roiling inside her.
He waves a lazy hand down his form. "Has been all my life."
The world around them whips into a frenzy at her fingertips. The mild autumn day explodes with an eye-stinging wind. Klaus turns, squinting contemplatively at the bluster around them.
"You always were prone to your passions," he says, turning back to observe her with mild interest.
"If you're Mikaelson, then you're a…"
She doesn't get time to utter the world. In a heart-stopping second he is standing in front of her, his lips curved like a blade.
"That means…" she swallows, unable to look away from the dark depths of his eyes. "Your father...my grandmother…"
"He died by her hand." His lips are still dangerously curved, but his voice is flat.
The wind falters, and the world stutters to stillness once more. Her grandmother had not destroyed his son after all. But she had left him an orphan. Pain and relief cut through Bonnie's chest.
He watches her, the murky shadows of his eyes unreadable.
"Why - why did you come here?" Bonnie breathes, though she thinks she knows the answer.
His eyes flicker to her lips before catching on her gaze once more.
"I think you know," he says. He takes a step closer, bends his head down so that their breathing mingles. "I came to take my vengeance." The words are like a lover's caress. His voice is low and hypnotic, and the kiss that follows steals Bonnie's breath. His deliberate movements seem to Bonnie a mockery, and ire sparks in her. For the second time that day Klaus is blasted through the air and thrown on his back. This time, however, he is ready. He rolls with the force of her attack and pulls himself up, the lines of him sizzling with pent-up anger.
He runs at her, for some reason favouring ordinary speed over the inhuman ferocity with which he'd lunged at her earlier. Watching him, Bonnie recognises him for the hunter that he is, and with it comes the realisation that Robert and Leah are not only missing, but most likely dead. She hits him with a stunning charm just as he is almost upon her.
It only affects him for a moment. He shoots to his feet again with a snarl, and this time he does not bother to take his time. He is on her again, and the force of his anger sends both of them tumbling down the grassy slope. They come to a rough stop with him over her, pressing her into the grass.
"I came to kill you, Bonnie Bennett," he breathes against her cheek, nudging his nose against her temple. He pulls back, his eyes burning into hers. "I came to do what your grandmother could not. I came to put an end to my enemy's bloodline."
Bonnie feels her eyes flame, feels the anger lick at her fingertips. She grabs his arms and he hisses as the heat singes through the material of his jacket.
"Your grandmother was fond of her touch and memory spells," he says through gritted teeth.
"That's why you pulled me into bed last night," Bonnie says, with dawning realisation. "You wanted to force the trigger."
"You came to my chamber, Miss Bennett."
Before she can shove against his shoulders, he has her wrists clasped in his fingers and he pins them to the ground on either side of her head.
"You want me as much as I want you, darling," he whispers against her lips. She wants to turn away but finds she is unable to. "Let's not avoid the truth." Then he lowers his head close, kissing her with a gentleness that tears at her heart. His tongue stokes the fire in her, and when he pulls back the anger in his eyes is mixed with unabashed greed. "I could have seduced you that first night by the fire."
"Why didn't you?" she demands, bucking against him, and he grunts at the friction of it. She is trapped underneath him, but she is trembling with the fury of the discoveries of the past several minutes, the anger that she feels at herself and at him spiralling in her to uncontrollable degrees. She can feel pressure building in her and she knows the magic will burst out of her soon. She won't regret hurting him, she tells herself. "If you're so certain of yourself, why didn't you? In fact, why not have killed me right then and there?"
Klaus has gone still, and his eyes run slowly over her face. Their dark pools fill with the surprising trace of tenderness and it makes Bonnie's breath hitch. She shakes her head, an involuntary reaction to the unexpected softness of his gaze. She does not want to hear whatever it is he is about to say.
"You know the answer to that, too," he says, his voice muted.
Bonnie shakes her head again. She is horrified to discover that her eyes have filled with angry tears. More memories spill into her consciousness, one by one, like tentative stones skipping across the surface of her mind. It is breath-stealing, having a near-lifetime of lost memories flood her in a matter of minutes.
Their heads bent together over a book, their young shoulders lit by the rays that slant through the library windows, she solemn, trying to curb his wayward questions.
Thirteen year-old Bonnie frustratedly shoving away an incomprehensible prelude, mollified as Klaus picks it up and teases her about her anger, before guiding her through the notes.
Walks through the gardens at the Mikaelson estate, arguing over literature and the history and future of the supernatural world, walks which had quickly become excuses to steal hidden kisses behind the rose bushes.
A ballroom, glittering with floating candles, a dance with Klaus that feels far more sensual than any dance in the public eye ought to be.
Flashes of desire fulfilled, of longing met, course through her. The memory of loving, and being loved in return, of being with one who seemed to understand her. She has to gasp in air to make up for the breath that has been stolen from her.
Klaus lets go of one of her wrists to brush away a stray tear with the back of his hand.
"She robbed me of you. How can I forgive such a slight against me? Against us?" He dips his head, his tongue licking at the trails of her tears. His lips find hers, his tongue pushing at them until she is forced to taste the shameful, salty evidence of her sorrow. She sobs into the kiss, gasping for breath, inhaling what little air manages to slip in between the feverish joining of their lips. She feels her desire like a heavy stone in the pit of her stomach, wishes that she could imagine it away, but knows she can't.
The kiss ends softly, waning into little nips, as if he is reluctant to break their contact. The gentle honesty of the movements makes her feel as if the world has fallen out from beneath her, and it is this startling effect that forces out her next words.
"Am I supposed to be moved by that?" The challenge in her words is undermined by her broken voice. She has been subdued by the most innocent of kisses.
His gaze is steady, though a fierce, almost feral and hungry grin accompanies it. "Earlier I said you wanted me, Bonnie Bennet. But that isn't the only truth. You need me."
She steels her expression even as his seductive words leak into her like ink, a sinuous spreading that pushes aside all other thoughts.
The restless longing in her, the aimless wanderings cross her mind, the urgency of her recent years only having quietened due to the proximity of this man in the past few days. The knowledge is a whisper in her head that threatens to grow into a scream.
She had been avoiding his gaze, but his quiet patience pulls her eyes back to his, and it is the knowing satisfaction in them that has anger pooling in the pit of her belly.
"You think you can understand my needs?" she mutters, before blasting him with the full force of her anger.
He's thrown off her, tumbling and lying face first on the ground for a moment, but when he sits up, dark curls falling over his eyes, his smile is lazy and slow, like the bead of red that rolls from his cut lip. "For me, where you're concerned, there is no flimsy uncertainty of 'thinking.'" His eyes become heavy. "You forget. I know you." The weight of his gaze and his words recall the Klaus from her past, from her newly discovered old memories.
"If you think," she says, and her voice which trembles at the beginning of the speech solidifies in anger as she takes in the insolent slant of his shoulders, "that I'm going to forgive the man who intended to take the life of my grandmother-"
"But I didn't, in fact, take it," he counters with a wry tilt of his head, before leaping to the side to avoid the spell she fires at him.
"And you make a mockery of this? Of her death?" Bonnie has a tree ripped up by its roots, ready to send it hurtling at where he stands, when he flashes to stand mere inches from her. He grabs her arm that is directed at the tree, bending his head to capture her eyes.
"You forget," he breathes, "she meant to kill me, too. She meant to take my life."
The tree falls to the ground and the heavens open.
He continues to watch her in silence, the raindrops making his dark lashes stick together, pulling at the strands of his hair so they hang wetly around his temple.
Bonnie lets her tears mingle with the rainwater, grateful that the sobs she feels clogging at her throat don't do anything beyond that.
For the first time since the revelation, there is no sign of his swaggering confidence. His hand lifts, a thumb brushing away rain drops from her lips.
"Perhaps I hoped for too much," he says, his words so quiet that she just barely hears him above the temperamental downpour. "Perhaps -" he pauses, and his eyes drop to her lips, hovering there for so long that she braces herself for the kiss, heart skittering in anticipation. But instead his hand drops and he moves away, his head slowly straightening and he blinks against the raindrops in his eyes. He looks at her with something like lost desperation, and for a moment Bonnie sees the young man from her memories, touched with boyish vulnerability.
The bottom of her feet itch and she wants to go to him. Instead, she too blinks against the rain and holds his dark-eyed gaze.
The rain only continues to fall harder as he turns and walks away from her.