I laid awake that night, looking at the unfamiliar dark red ceiling of Marcel's old room. He slept soundly next to me, snoring slightly. Meanwhile, I was trying to feel some kind of emotion. It was difficult. My heart seemed to be filled with a dark emptiness. I wasn't even angry at Klaus. I wasn't sad. I was nothing. And so I kept looking up at the ceiling.
I didn't notice when the sun came up, and Marcel started shuffling around in the bed. He didn't say anything. I didn't say anything. But I felt him watching me. Finally, he got up and dressed, and left the room. He understood that I needed some time to think.
I think I fell asleep somewhere between noon and three p.m, but all I saw in my dreams was blood and death. Images of Roxy, dead and lifeless on the floor.
"Juliette? Sweetie?" Marcel came around a few hours later, probably. All I knew was that it was dark outside. He gently tapped my shoulder and spoke softly in my ear. "Klaus has called for a dinner feast."
"Okay."
"Are you coming down with me?"
"Sure." I mumbled, before sitting up and getting out of bed in almost robotic movements. Grabbed a lilac tank top, a pair of jeans. Brushed my hair. Followed Marcel down to the courtyard, where a big table had been set for a feast. Sat down next to Marcel and stared straight ahead of me.
I'm pretty sure that Klaus started speaking about his new rule over New Orleans, but I wasn't listening to him. I wouldn't grant him that privilege. Not until Marcel grabbed my hand did I snap out of it and listen to a few words Klaus said.
"After a thousand years, one might expect life to be less keenly felt, for its beauties and sorrows to diminish with time. But as vampires, we feel more deeply than humans could possibly imagine." With those words, my vision went blurry before disappearing completely, all sounds muffled.
"Hello, love." Medieval Klaus walked up to Rachel, who was once again painting. This time, she was standing next to the same apple tree under which Klaus and Sofia had sat in another vision. The blonde vampire glanced up and gave the Original a greeting smile. "Painting again?"
"I found this day too beautiful not to paint." Rachel looked down at the painting again, while I tried to figure out where I could place this moment. Was it before or after the vision with her and the trainer? I doubted my visions came in chronological order, though.
"You're quite right about that." Klaus smiled. The same fascination I often saw in his eyes when he watched me in present time was there, which was not a good sign. "May I see, love?" The sun shone against Klaus's leather coat, and it wasn't until then I realized that there was spots of blood on the white shirt underneath. Rachel didn't question him.
"That would ruin the mystery, wouldn't it, my lord?" She teased with a secretive smile, continuing to paint light strokes with her brush.
"I cannot argue with that." The Original sat down on the bench and clapped his hands together. "I fancy myself a painter too."
"You do?" He did? Rachel seemed as surprised as I was in that moment, and looked up from her painting. "What do you paint, then, my lord?"
"Things I deem beautiful." Klaus' gaze drifted over to the blonde again, warmth in his blue eyes. "Whether it is the sunset, the sea…" He stood up and walked over to Rachel slowly, looking deep into her eyes. "Your eyes."
"What about my eyes, my lord?" Rachel stood her ground, and she didn't blush. Oh… I saw it now. She was afraid of him. Even though she was masking it quite well, I could see it. In the way she was shaking slightly, how she had glanced past his shoulder several times when he hadn't been looking.
"Your two great eyes will slay me suddenly;
Their beauty shakes me who was once serene;
Straight through my heart the wound is quick and keen." Klaus spoke softly, raising his hand to brush aside a lock of Rachel's perfectly curled blonde hair. He towered over her, not letting her look away from his blue eyes. This was something entirely different from what had been exchanged between him and Sofia.
"Geoffrey Chaucer." The blonde spoke, breaking the silence and Klaus's gaze. She went back to her painting, seemingly unaffected by his attempts to woo her.
"One of my favorite poets." Klaus grinned, obviously not set back by her dismissal. The thrill of the chase, as they said. "Tell me, love. Would you let me paint your eyes one day?"
I snapped back to present time to find everyone staring at Klaus with wide mouths.
"To New Orleans." Diego said to my right. Everyone lifted their cups to toast. I didn't. I kept my eyes pinned on Klaus defiantly, not moving an inch. His gaze locked with mine, but his blue eyes were impossible to read.
"I understand some of you might have questions regarding the recent change in leadership." Klaus spoke, shifting his attention back to the others. Mainly Marcel. "And I invited you here tonight to assure you that you are not defeated. No, my intentions moving forward are to celebrate what we have." He moved closer to Marcel, wariness in his voice. "What Marcel in fact took…" He patted my fiancé on the shoulder. "And built, into this. A true community of vampires."
"What about her? The wolf?" Diego said, and that's when I finally turned to look at Hayley, seated at the end of the table. I didn't want to see her. She was the only reason that I wasn't attacking Klaus. Even though we might not have been friends, she'd been nice to me. Nevertheless, her kind gaze was a reminder that my friend was gone.
"Had you let me finish, Diego, you would know that there is of course one further matter I would like to address." Klaus smirked slightly as he strode over to Hayley, brushing close to me as if taunting me. I had to take a deep breath not to explode. "As many of you know," The hybrid looked down at the seemingly annoyed werewolf for a split second. "–the girl is carrying my child. Consequently, I trust that you will all pay her the appropriate respect." Oh, so now he wanted to be nice. What a hypocrite, what a fucking hypocrite– Oh God, how angry I was. Just looking at that his chiseled face contorted into a proud smile was enough to make me clench my fists.
I stood up abruptly after a flashing picture of Roxy's dead body had popped back into my head. Marcel's hand immediately reached for my arm, but I ripped it away from him. The whole table went silent. I couldn't let myself speak, or I knew I wouldn't stop screaming at Klaus. So I stared down his frown for a few seconds before stomping away across the stone floor, to the direction of the stairs. I could feel everyone's eyes on me as I made my way up along the railing, especially Klaus. But I ignored them all as I walked right back into the guestroom and shut the door behind me with a large impact.
A few minutes later, Marcel's head peaked into the room. He gently closed the door behind me and looked at me in silence for a few seconds. I hated that silence. The kind of silence when the other person is debating whether or not you will explode within the next second.
"I'm not in the mood." I told him quietly, groaning into my pillow. God, I was in such a situation. I wanted to kill Klaus. I wanted to rip his head off for taking Roxy away from me, yet I couldn't do anything because he had all the other people I cared about under his thumb.
"I'm going out with Klaus. We have some errands to run, meeting with Father Kieran and the human representatives." Marcel informed me, walking over to the bed and brushing my cheek gently.
I finally looked into his eyes and saw them fill with confusion at the glare on my face.
"Not you too." He groaned, shaking his head and pulling his warm hand away from my cheek.
With my brows raised, I sat up in the bed, my back resting against the wooden bedframe. Marcel rubbed his chin in silence, clearly not wanting to elaborate on what he'd been telling me. Finally, taking in my impatient expression, he cracked.
"Bekah's been beating me up for following his orders."
My heart turned to stone in my chest.
"Bekah, huh?" The stone twisted and turned as I pronounced her name, yet I looked away from the rolling eyes of Marcel.
"Julie…"
"No, it's fine." I lied, shaking my head and slumping down on the bed. In a quick motion, I pulled up the sheets to my chin and curled up in the comforting warmth. "Go ahead and suck up to the Mikaelsons. I'm sure that's exactly what they want."
Marcel didn't hang around to answer, but left the room with the door banging loudly behind him.
"Seriously, you've got to get a grip." My eyes shot open in half a second at the familiar voice from the doorway, and I turned around in the bed to squint at the daylight seeping into the room. Davina was leaning against the doorframe, looking at me with unyielding stubbornness. "Marcel told me you've been in here the whole day."
With a sigh, D let her arms fall to the side and walked over to the large bed, sitting down next to me. She reached out her hand to brush away a strand of hair from my forehead like I always did to her and smiled gently.
"I know it must be hard." I gulped, trying to swallow down the wave of emotions that was threatening to hit me. Roxy was dead. She would never come back. "But you can't just lay here and do nothing while Klaus is taking over your home."
"D, it's not like we stand a chance against him." I muttered, but nevertheless looked up into her blue eyes. "Why are you here? You should be in the attic, you're not safe here–" I started freaking out as I sat up in the bed.
The younger girl sighed and motioned for me to stop talking.
"It's Klaus. Well, Marcel says that I'll be safer here. But really, it's just Klaus that wants to keep a close watch on me." I saw from the clench of her jaw that Davina must have hated Klaus a lot too, and it fueled my anger that he was telling her what to do too.
"Oh God…" I sighed, rubbing my temples before looking around me in the room. "You're right, I have to stop this. That dick has some guts walking in here and doing whatever the hell he wants."
Pride shone in my friend's eyes as I stood up and threw the blanket away from me, before walking over to the closet on the opposite side of the room. Somehow, my clothes had been moved there over the night. With a huff, I pulled on a blue flannel shirt over my white tank top, and slipped on my black ripped jeans.
"You have to stay here." I told Davina as soon as I had brushed my hair, ready to go out. She sighed, and I walked up to her to put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "It's for–"
"–my own good, yes I know." The witch crossed her hands across her chest while I smiled sadly at her. I still felt her eyes on my back as I walked out of the door, and then down the stairs. As I descended them little by little, I realized that I had no idea where Klaus and Marcel where.
Once down in the courtyard, I decided that I would experiment a little bit with my awful power. I looked down at the sapphire ring on my right hand, and gently, I pulled it off the finger with my left hand. Once the piece of jewelry was in my palm, I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated on Marcel. It had to work, otherwise my power really was useless.
A picture of a room flashed by my eyes, and then gone as quickly as it came. I would recognize that bar anywhere. Rousseau's.
Did I have a plan? No. Frankly, I don't even think that I was using my brain in that moment, because what would I possibly tell Klaus? Yet Davina had been right, I couldn't either just stay there at the Abattoir and do nothing while he strutted around the place and killed my friends.
So I went to Rousseau's. Had I known that the bar would explode merely seconds after I entered, I might have stayed at the compound. But I didn't, so whatever fate awaited me was bound to happen.
I felt Sofia and Rachel trailing me all the way to the bar, even if I speeded the whole way. But for some reason, they didn't bother me that much anymore. They seemed to be waiting for something to be capture me, otherwise I would already be at their mercy. Maybe some otherworldly force had taken my loss into consideration and delayed their upcoming attack, but it didn't matter.
I'd come to the bar, and I needed to gather my thoughts before confronting Klaus. I needed to do that, so of course I didn't. Instead, I strode in through the door as if I was unstoppable and searched the room for the two familiar faces. Marcel saw me first, but his eyes were unreadable; I couldn't even tell if he was still angry at me for what I'd said earlier. And then it was Klaus, who had somehow already managed to send me a feline grin.
So naturally, I was going to punch him in the face. Only as I was about to advance on them, the bar exploded. The windows shattered and I instinctively shielded my eyes from the danger. As I turned, I saw that Marcel was in the far back of the room, helping Otto, who had caught on fire. A few feet away from me, Klaus was glaring at the window, where the sunlight washed into the room.
Then came the bullets. Wooden, laced with vervain. I felt the poison sear in my veins as the bullets hit me in several areas of my chest, and I fell to the ground. The pain was paralyzing, yet I knew that I had to get the bullets out.
Within half a second, Klaus was crouching over me, his face shadowed with worry as he located my wound. He himself seemed unharmed, save for his wide eyes.
"There's one close to your heart." He breathed out, while I tried to breathe through the blinding pain in my chest. So what, asshole, get it out instead of stating the obvious!, I wanted to scream at him, but my voice wasn't functioning. I was starting to feel my skin crackling and decaying when Klaus's hand shot into my chest and grabbed my heart in his hand.
It wasn't like an ordinary vision. Usually, I just saw pictures flashing by, and if it was a scene, I was watching it form an outside perspective, like a movie. What happened in that exact moment was completely different.
Imagine falling down a black well, falling and falling deeper into the earth. My subconscious was reaching out into Klaus's soul, but I had never thought that a human (or well... hybrid) soul could be so immense.
And then I landed, with a large boom. Though I felt no pain, my eyes were closed simply out of fear. When I opened them again, I found myself laying on a patch of green, humid grass. Slowly, I lifted my head to take in my surroundings. I seemed to have fallen into a round clearing in a forest, where tall pine trees lined the edges. Judging by the pink light that shone in through the sparse tree-tops on my right, the sun was setting. I could guess by the light layer of frost covering the muddy grass that it was a cold afternoon, yet my skin seemed to be brushed by a light, comfortable warm breeze.
There was a soft sound of sobbing coming from behind me. Turning around, I was met with the sight of a little boy, perched on top of a boulder. His pale hair shone golden in the warm light, and he was hugging his knees against his chest. Quietly, I stepped towards the crying figure.
"Hello?" I called out softly, and the startled boy looked up with wide blue eyes. His first instinct must have been to back away from me, according to the fear in his eyes. Then, he straightened his back and wiped his eyes, lifting his chin to meet my inquisitive gaze.
"Who are you?" The curious child demanded, his voice commanding even though he could not have been more than six years old. I kept walking towards him before I stood right across from him, getting a closer look at his face. He was a very handsome boy, with a sense of confidence in his gaze that was hard to come by in a boy of his age.
"My name is Juliette." I answered. I didn't know what it was with the boy, I had entirely forgotten where I was, but something about him was fascinating. So I tilted my head to the side and smiled at him. "Can I sit here with you?"
He eyed me suspiciously for a few seconds before he blew a strand of blond hair away from his angel eyes and shrugged. I took that as a yes and settled down next to him on the large rock.
The boy said nothing but leaned down and pulled something out of his sock. Two thoughts struck me; The first one was that he was wearing old-fashioned clothes. Old-fashioned as in medieval clothes, actually. The second thought was that the wool overcoat was ripped open in a long scar on the boy's back, and a well-familiar red liquid was seeping out of the wound. I couldn't suppress the gasp that escaped my lips.
The boy didn't seem to notice my shock, and I realized why when I saw that he was carving a piece of wood with the knife that he'd pulled out of his shoe.
"What are you making?" I asked him, trying to get a closer look at the wooden figure. The boy's head snapped up and he gave me a toothless proud smile, holding up the object in his hand for me to see.
"It's a chess piece. It's going to be the king. It's for my father." He spoke, and his angel locks once again fell into his eyes as he leaned back down to keep on working on the chess-piece-to-be. "Maybe then he'll forgive me for being a bad boy."
I debated whether or not to ask him about the wound on his back. Surely, it would just upset the boy if I reminded him. Then again, he was only a child. Someone should take care of him, and there was no one else around but me.
"Did your father do that to you?" My voice came out in nearly as whisper. The boy kept carving.
"I was a bad boy." He said, and my stomach churned with disgust. What kind of evil monster would do that to a child, a child that was willing to defend him for beating him? "Father just wants to help me become a man. A strong man, like him."
Still, fear and sadness had begun creeping back into the boy's voice. He stopped carving too, his hands shaking too much for the precise work he'd been doing.
Before I knew what I was doing, I reached out and brushed the boy's shoulder. He looked up at me with tear-filled eyes that tried so desperately not to show weakness. The boy gazed into my soul, waking up feelings that I wasn't yet ready to feel, that made me want to cry too.
"What's your name?" I asked, even though I already knew the answer. I had seen those eyes before.
"Niklaus." The boy whispered through a shaking voice. It became difficult to breathe, still I managed to smile through the tears that were running down my cheeks. My conflicted heart seemed to cry out in protest as I leaned down and grabbed the boy's face gently with my hands and looked deep into his eyes.
"Listen to me, Niklaus." I spoke. The boy said nothing, but his eyes assessed my every movement I made. "If your father did that to you, he's no strong man. He is weak, and you should strive to be so much better than that."
I didn't have time to see his response, because a second later, my vision went black.
When I opened my eyes again, I was staring into the same eyes, but in the grown man's face. Klaus was looking at me with the exact same expression, and time no longer existed. I couldn't make myself feel angry at him as he stared down at me.
"I saw you in a dream." He whispered, just loud enough for me to hear. His broken soul still seemed connected to mine in that awfully long moment when neither of us dared to speak.
"I–" I finally croaked out, but was interrupted by another face popping into vision.
"Julie!" Marcel exclaimed as he fell to his knees by my side, his voice breaking the momentary bond between Klaus and I. The hybrid backed away and wiped his face clean of emotions. He dropped four bullets to the floor, bullets that were coated with my blood. I didn't take my eyes off of him as he stood up and gazed around the room, his expression still completely unreadable.
Still, I felt him catching glances at me from the other side of the room while Marcel was fussing about. And no matter how much I tried to hate him, to blame him for Roxy's death, I only saw the little boy every time I looked at him.
Damn my weak emotional heart.
A/N: Helloooo lovely little readers! I am SO SO SO sorry for having been M.I.A. for a couple of months, but life got in the way, you know. We all get writing slumps, and I've just had no inspiration for this story. But I'm back for now, and I'll try to write as much as possible for you! Hope you liked the chapter, please leave a little comment below 3
~ Emma ~
