Klaus woke up on the floor. His bones cracked when he moved and a groan escaped his mouth. He squeezed his eyes shut and held his head when he sat up. There was a low buzzing in his mind and a sour taste in his mouth. He drew a deep breath and waited for the buzzing to ebb away.

His tongue glided over his teeth and his mouth tasted like he drowned a bottle of vinegar.

He sighed when he remembered the night of heavy drinking that lay behind him.

The night where he had tried to drown his sorry in a yellow pool of scotch. When he inspected the room that looked like a war had raged within it last night he grimaced bitterly. His foot kicked debris of wood aside.
The whole room would need to be reconstructed and for a moment he was angry at himself for letting his control slip so much, but one part of him didn't care.

This wasn't his home, but some place he had to escape from again.

And between his heavy drinking and all those destructive tantrums he had realized that he needed help. He had no idea where he was or how he came to be here, not to mention how to escape and get back to his own reality.

There was only one thing he needed.

A witch.

But how to find a trustworthy witch in all this mess?

Ironically enough Bonnie Bennett would have been his first choice, but since he didn't know what happened to her and she wasn't bound to him by any loyalty, she was not an option.

Elena hadn't wanted to speak about her. She seemed to be quite upset.

Maybe he killed her?

Klaus shook his head while he dragged his feet into the kitchen. He would figure that out later.

He opened the fridge and grabbed a blood bag.

He needed a powerful witch who he could trust. Or at least one who wouldn't betray him.

The latch of the blood bag ripped off with a pop.

When the blood hit his tongue he felt better immediately.

His taste buds opened up and took the coppery taste in bringing it to all cells in his body. He kept a sip in his mouth and tasted it thoroughly.

His mind was clear and he felt revived with the fresh blood in his veins.

He sighed.

The door opened and he remembered that hybrid from yesterday.

He stepped into the kitchen but stopped at the threshold when he saw Klaus standing next to the fridge in a more than dishevelled state.

"Good morning, sire."

Klaus looked grimly at him. "More blood bags?"

"Yes, sire. Of course." Eyeing Klaus carefully he stepped slowly closer and stretched the bag out in front of him. The boy was scared.

Good.

It meant that he wouldn't question him.

He put the bag onto the table.

Klaus nodded. "You may go now."

The hybrid made a step backwards and nodded. "Yes, sire."

Klaus scrunched up his nose when the boy was gone and finished the blood bag in his hand.

A witch.

He needed a witch.

Suddenly his eyes widened.

Yes, there was a possibility.

But he would need help for this.

He pulled out his phone and waited for the signal.

"Klaus, what can I do for you?"

"Tyler, mate. I have urgent things to do today, which means that you are in charge. Now, I don't want to be disturbed today."

"What is so urgent that needs a whole day?"

Klaus smirked. "Let's call it family business."

"Oh, you wouldn't want to…"

"I believe that is none of your business, is it?" Klaus interrupted Tyler who backed off.

"Of course not."

Klaus grinned. Good boy. "Now, Tyler, do not disappoint me."

"Of course not."

Klaus ended the call and threw the empty blood bag into the trash on his way out of the kitchen. A shower was in order first, before he called in a family reunion.

His hair was still wet and the air around his head felt colder than it actually was.

He stared at the gray pointy dagger in his hand and pressed it lightly against the tip of his finger. It stung only a little bit. He had to admit that he felt a bit anxious.

He didn't know why he had daggered them, but he hoped that he could persuade them to help him.

He took another deep breath and threw a look at the open coffin.

He needed to talk to Kol. He had always been the witch sympathiser of the family and he hoped that he would be just that in this reality as well.

He looked into the coffin and noticed the small movement of the fingertip. He smiled.

It wouldn't be long now.

He waited for another five minutes when he heard a hiss and before he knew what was happening, he was pushed roughly against a wall.

A growl hit his face but he smiled.

"Hello sister."

Rebekah used all her force to push him harder against the wall. She growled and kicked him between the legs. Klaus face fell. The blow hit him totally unexpected and he sagged to the floor.

"I trusted you, you bastard!" Rebekah yelled with bloodshot eyes and pointed fangs.

She kicked him into the stomach and picked up the dagger that fell out of his hand.

"I hate you, Niklaus!" Klaus screamed when the dagger pierced his chest. "How could you do that!?"

She kicked him again, but Klaus tensed all of his muscles and forced himself to grab her foot.

Rebekah lost her stance and hit the floor.

This time was enough for Klaus to pull the dagger out of his chest with a painful groan.

Rebekah sprang to her feet again, but so did Klaus.

He held one hand in front of him and the dagger firmly in the other one.

"Bekah…" He said trying to sound calm.

"No, more lies! I am done with you! That was the last straw! I hope you rot in hell Nik!"

"Bekah, listen!" Klaus yelled.

"No!" Rebekah screamed. "I will kill you myself if I have to!"

Klaus was taken aback by the sentence which was why she had the chance to push him against the wall again. The air left his lungs with an 'ouf'.

Her fangs buried themselves in his shoulder and pain surged through his muscles.

He grabbed her and threw her off him.

His eyes followed hers and he quickly jumped in front of the door raising his hands to both of his sides. The dagger was lying somewhere on the floor.

"Rebekah, listen to me! Please!"

Rebekah stopped and frowned at him.

"Bekah, please!" He repeated and was a bit surprised how easily those words left his lips, but then again the two of them had become close again during those last years.

She pursed her lips slightly, but stopped.

"Rebekah, love, please hear me out." His voice was calm and Rebekah couldn't remember the last time that his voice hadn't dripped with venom.

She crossed her arms in front of her chest. "Now, why would I do that?" She squeezed her eyes together and waited for him to stab her in the back. But something was off about him, she noticed.

Of course she noticed it. She had been with him for a thousand years. She knew her brother in and out. And there was something in his eyes that she couldn't put anywhere.

What was that?

"Because…" Klaus swallowed. Rebekah was the one who would see through him first. That's why he needed to talk to her first, before he could even think about freeing Kol.

"…because I need your help!"

Rebekah kept staring at him and raised an eyebrow before she started to laugh out loud. "My help?" She kept laughing and her chest shook. "Why would I even consider helping you with anything?"

That was the moment where he looked her straight into the eyes.

"Because I do not belong here."

Rebekah tilted her head in confusion. She heard his words, but she didn't understand what he was saying.

"What? What are you talking about, Nik?"

"Can we talk about this upstairs? Please?" He added when he noticed her look.

But Rebekah took a step back. "What trick is this Nik? What are you up to?"

He raised his hands, palms open. "I promise you that I will neither dagger nor harm you again. I just want to talk to you and then you can decide if you want to help me or not."

Her shoulders slumped forward a little. "Are you giving me a choice?"

"The decision is yours." He said taking a page out of the Caroline Forbes handbook about how to gain true loyalty.

Truth.

That was all that counted.

He stepped aside and cleared the way towards the door.

"There are fresh blood bags upstairs."

Rebekah licked her lip. Her throat was suddenly dry and her tongue felt like sandpaper in her mouth.

She looked in his eyes again where this strange glint was still sleeping under the surface. The glint that she had never seen there before and it made her curious.

She raised her finger pointing at his chest. "Do not screw me over!"

"I promise you that I will not betray you, Bekah. No matter what I have done in the past." Which was not my past, he added bitterly.

Rebekah watched him carefully while she walked past him.

She finished her second blood bag and enjoyed the feeling of her reawakened senses.

Klaus watched her from across the table.

Rebekah swallowed the last drop and tossed the trash onto the table. She licked her lips and leaned back still enjoying the taste on her tongue.

Klaus was still watching her patiently and Rebekah started to feel a bit queasy. It made her nervous, because right now she felt like this was not her brother. But she didn't let him see her nervousness. Knowing him this was probably one of his games and he just waited for her to make a mistake.

"So, talk." She said as grimly as she could.

Klaus sighed. "I know that you noticed that I am different."

Rebekah stiffened. "I saw it in your stance and even now you are nervous about it. I know that you know that I am not the man who daggered you."

Rebekah sat up straighter. "Nik, what is this? What are you talking about?"

"The truth is, Rebekah, that I am not the man who daggered you."

She opened her mouth but didn't know what to say.

"I didn't dagger you, because this is not my time."

"What!?" She exclaimed. "From all of the things that you have done…"

"Bekah, let me finish! Yesterday I woke up in this house and I have no idea how I got here. I know that I cannot possibly proof myself, but I hope that you still believe me."

"But…then…what the hell are you telling me? That you are not my brother?"

"Yes. Yes, I am your brother, Rebekah. But the life I led so far was different from the one to which I woke up to and I don't know what happened."

Rebekah tried to understand, but this was too weird. What was he up to?

"Nik, what kind of game are you playing?"

"Rebekah, I promise you that this is no game! This." He gestured around. "Is like an alternate reality to the one that I used to live in and I just know that I want to go back and that I need your help, sister."

"Alternate reality? So, what? I am not real?"

"I…" He pinched the bridge of his nose. "I don't know. I just know that we used to live another life."

"We?"

"Yes. We. Our family."

She looked at him.

"I need to find a witch to figure out what happened."

She was smart enough to figure the rest out by herself then. "You need me to soothe Kol when you wake him up."

"Yes. And I need you to believe me!" He almost pleaded and Rebekah was speechless. Whatever he was telling her, however false it sounded, she knew for sure that this was not her brother.

She looked at him for another moment.

"I want to shower and put on fresh clothes." She demanded and Klaus just nodded.

"I believe all of your things are upstairs untouched."

Her face still held this mistrustful glance when she left the room, but Klaus knew that she knew that he wasn't like his old self. The one who used to live here.

This was far more complicated than he had thought.

It was almost five hours later when he heard footsteps on the floor in front of his studio.

He had waited as patiently as he could. A few brushes hadn't survived his patience but he could live with that outcome. Painting had calmed him down and distracted him a bit.

Once in a while he had thought that she had escaped the house and run off, but he had refused to go spying on her. If she found him spying then he would have lost her.

He knew Rebekah.

The door burst open without any warning, but then there on the threshold she suddenly hesitated because she didn't know what to do. Rebekah hadn't seen her brother painting for years and Klaus suspected as much, because there weren't any recent works of his around. They were all dated from two years ago.

Why hadn't he painted in two years time?

"You are painting." She stated a bit flabbergasted.

Klaus put the brush aside and dried his hands on a towel. "Yes." He answered.

His sister stepped closer hesitantly.

Klaus himself stepped back from his easel and looked at his work. He sighed because no painting could do reality any justice no matter how hard or how often he tried.

He would never be able to capture her soul on canvas.

Rebekah walked towards him and stepped around the easel to look at the canvas.

She seemed to freeze when she looked at the artwork. Her eyes looked up to him and back to the painting in confusion.

He mouth opened and Klaus had to bite his lip in order not to burst out laughing. It was a long time ago since he had seen his sister so speechless.

A sigh escaped her lips while she still tried to process what she was actually looking at. "Huh? Wha…Nik, what is that?" Her voice was quiet and Klaus turned towards the window so she wouldn't see the sad smile on his face.

"The reason why I need to find my way back." He answered honestly.

"But…but…that is…a girl!?" She exclaimed and Klaus couldn't hold the chuckle inside anymore.

"What? Did you expect me to fancy men rather than women?"

Rebekah's eyes widened. "No! Of course not, but…" She waved helplessly at the canvas. "…but…" She stared at the bright painting that showed a young blonde woman whose smile seemed to light up the whole room. Her beauty was radiating off the painting and her eyes were glowing and making her shudder. Those eyes. That look.

She frowned and looked to her brother. His blue eyes fixed her and suddenly she gasped putting a hand in front of her mouth.

"Nik…" Her throat was dry and she forgot to breathe. "You love her."

That was the strange look in his eyes. The one that she couldn't recognise, because she may have seen it in Elijah's eyes, but never in his.

And she swore that her heart missed a beat when he said those next words that rang in her ears until late at night.

"I do."

That was all he said. I do.

The admission lay heavy on her chest and Rebekah didn't know what to say.

Klaus smirked. "Drink?" He asked and Rebekah only nodded.

He had tried to tidy up his study as much as he could, but there was no use. It still looked like a bomb had exploded, but thank god the house had enough sitting rooms.

Rebekah watched her brother while she sipped her drink. But was this really her brother?

"Who is she?" She asked quietly.

There was an edge too Klaus' voice when he started to answer her questions.

"Her name is Caroline Forbes."

"Forbes? As in Liz Forbes?"

"Yes. The Sheriff is her mother."

Rebekah frowned. "The Sheriff has no daughter."

She saw how a dark cloud settled on his face. "I know. I figured out as much. But, where I come from, she has a daughter, beautiful, strong and full of light."

"But…" She was speechless. "I don't know what to say. Nik, this is not you!"

He sighed and looked up at her. "Yes, Bekah, this is me. I know this is hard to grasp, I know who you think I am and I was that person. I chased Katherine Pierce for five hundred years. I daggered Finn and Kol. I ran with you from Mikael.
I compelled Stefan Salvatore to forget you. I invented the sun and the moon curse in order to find myself a new doppelgänger. I killed our mother."

He looked into her eyes and Rebekah was still speechless at the emotion she saw. "I did all that, but when I found Elena a lot of things should have went another way than they did…"

She frowned at him and so Klaus started to tell her everything that happened since he came back to Mystic Falls.

He finished nearly one and a half hours later and Rebekah didn't know when her brother had told her that much.

She was silent for a while, while she contemplated all those words.

"So…" She finally said. "What you are telling me, is that this Caroline is the salvation that Elijah has been looking for for centuries now?"

Klaus chuckled amused. Elijah. He never gave up on him.

"It seems like it." He looked at the floor and tried not to let the sadness cloud his mind. Instead he looked at Rebekah again.

"And without her you daggered your siblings, built a hybrid army and seized not one but two kingdoms that you rule as a despot like you always dreamed of? And with her…with her you gave up all those dreams? Just because of her?"

He looked at her. "Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?"

Rebekah calculated his expression. "Yes!"

Klaus sighed and leaned forward. "Bekah. I told you everything that I know. Now, my question: Do you believe me?"

She looked into his eyes. With apprehension he waited for her answer.

Rebekah took her time though.

"I…maybe…"

"Will you help me get back?"

She stared at him. "You said we were all living together."

"Yes, we are. Not all the time, but we always return to our plantation in New Orleans. It is the closest to home that we ever had."

"Elijah, Kol, you and me."

He nodded. She had easily put Finn's death off since she had never been close to him because of the huge age gap. While there is still also a big gap between her and Elijah, Klaus and Elijah had taken care of her when Finn had been hunting with Mikael which had been all the time.

A small smile was seen on her lips and Klaus mirrored that smile. To her this sounded like a dream. Too good to be true. It was the life she had always wanted to lead. And maybe that was the reason why she gave in so easily, though, she knew she needed to be on her guard. Niklaus knew her desires too well!

He raised his eyebrows at her questioningly.

"Yes, okay. I will help you, but only tomorrow. I want to have a good night of sleep and consider everything you just told me."

He nodded and accepted her decision which surprised her once more. She thought she knew all of his schemes and she actually started to believe that this really was no scheme.

She stood up. "Goodnight, Nik."

"Sleep well, Rebekah."

She cocked her eyebrows knowing that she would never ever close one single eye for more than one second that night!

The two Mikaelson siblings stared at their dead brother.

Klaus reached for the dagger but Rebekah covered his hand. "Nik…"

He looked at her. "Before you do that, you need to know something…" She sounded guilty and Klaus frowned at her. He guessed that he was about to discover the true story why he daggered them.

Rebekah swallowed and looked into his eyes where she was searching for the glow she had seen yesterday. When she found it she collected new bravery and admitted silently. "Kol and I…we tried to kill you."

Klaus swallowed and his features hardened. The old feelings of betrayal and hurt bubbled up inside of him again. Everyone had always only betrayed him. Even his siblings.

He took a shaky breath and for a moment Rebekah thought that she had found out why he had played this game. Because he just wanted her to admit her betrayal. He would dagger her again after he had made her suffer for her betrayal.