"Time goes by,
And I've been holding everything inside,
But now I've got nothing left to hide
When I'm with you, oh, you.

But I can see
How strong a man I'm gonna have to be
To do for you what comes so naturally.
It's in the way you move,

And all I want
Is a chance to prove,
Show all I can do.

I believe in starting over.
I can see that your heart is true.
I believe in good things coming back to you.
You're the light that lifts me higher.
So bright, you guide me through."

The nauseous feeling left me after I threw up again, but I didn't tell anyone that. For once, I let myself be the sick one who needed taken care of, complete with soup and warm honey tea.

Mostly, I just wanted to be left alone with my thoughts, and pretending that I still felt nauseous was the best way to get that.

Esther contradicted herself; she said that Kol didn't care about me, yet I had the power to destroy him. While everything she said made sense in my insecure brain, it didn't add up, but I couldn't shake what she had said. "My son is not who you think he is."

All I knew about Kol were the things he told me, and was I really so delusional as to believe that he wouldn't lie to me?

I had been, but there was still no way to know for sure if he had. I hadn't thought to ask him if he had killed anyone. The idea that he hadn't had been based on assumptions.

How many people had he killed, though? Was there a trail of bodies behind him, or was it the bloodlust that he still hadn't gotten under control? He mentioned that when he was around me, it was easy to forget, but he struggled sometimes when we weren't together. Maybe it had gotten the better of him a few times, or maybe it had all been a lie.

There was only one way to find out.

I wasn't left alone with my thoughts for long; the very man I was thinking about showed up with wide eyes, but when he saw me sitting on the bed, the tension in his body relaxed, his eyes softening.

"You're alright."

I let out a breath. "Sure. I think I'm coming down with something actually. I've thrown up twice already in the past hour."

His eyebrows furrowed, and he crossed the room to sit down on the bed beside me, barely remembering to close my door behind him. "Are you alright, love?

"I guess so," I said, but my eyes fell away from him while my mind spun with all the questions I was honestly terrified to ask. How could I make myself do it? What would it do to him if I doubted him, after everything?

I didn't notice what Kol was looking at when he walked over to my desk, but whatever it was grabbed his attention. One hand lingered on the edge of my desk, his fingers grazing the item, and all it took was one glance at him to understand.

He was looking at the invitation that his mother had brought over.

"My mother didn't just show up with an invitation," he said, letting out a deep sigh while those eyes moved away from the desk and back over to me. "What did she say to you?"

This was the fear that had been in his eyes when he came over. He somehow knew that his mother had been here, and that scared him.

What would he have to be afraid of? What words could she say to me that he didn't want me to hear? The truth maybe?

The nauseous feeling was coming back, but I didn't think I was actually sick. It felt like physical sickness, but it was probably something else, something that resembled fear. If the truth was anything different from what Kol told me, I didn't really want to hear it, but I had to, for my own good.

"She wanted to invite me to the ball," I said, and I made sure to clear my throat, to get any and everything that might stop me from saying what needed to be said out of the way.

A breath passed through his lips, which were slightly parted, before I could say anything. "She says she wants her family to be whole again."

For a moment, I had something to distract myself. "How do you feel about that?"

He shook his head. "I don't think we know how to be a family anymore."

It was just a moment of distraction, as the conversation died in an unusual way after that. We weren't the type to just stop talking and let conversations end uncomfortably, but there was only one thing on my mind right now, something I didn't wanna say out-loud.

"What's wrong, darling?"

My eyes moved away from him, towards the wall on the opposite side of the room, and my lungs filled with air one final time. "What is this?"

"What are you talking about?" he asked, and I felt the bed beside me shift a bit, as if someone had sat down on the edge of it.

I pressed my lips together. "Exactly like I said. What is this?"

"What did my mother say to you?" he asked again, but there was more fear in his voice now, enough that I couldn't look away from him anymore. The pain in his eyes made my heart feel as if it was being physically wringed out, like some sick way Klaus decided to get every drop of blood from my body.

Still, I had to hold strong. I couldn't let my emotions get the better of me right now, not until I knew for sure. "I asked a question. Please answer it."

"Darcy—"

"Answer me, Kol!" I interrupted, and I think that marked the first time I had ever raised my voice at him. We were always quiet, afraid anyone might overhear the wrong thing, but I didn't have it in me to be quiet right now.

"What do you want from me?" he demanded, and the volume of his voice was rising much higher than it probably should've as well, considering we weren't alone. "I've told you what this is! This is the first time since I turned that I've felt anything real, anything of actual value! I care about you. What did my mother say?"

"How many people have you killed since I took the dagger out?"

The silence that followed, paired with shifted glances, made my stomach twist up in a way that gave nauseous a new meaning.

It made my blood feel cold, the depths of my soul drain out and into the silent oblivion that was around us. These kinds of silences were the ones I always dreaded, with an aura of fear lingering. I had always hated horror movies for the very reason of silence; just before something scary was going to happen, everything grew silent, even the music most times. The fear that built up over the silence was far too intense, and I couldn't handle it.

This silence was different, as there was pain and heartbreak waiting on the other side of it instead of a scary scene in a movie, but it numbed me just the same.

"Two," he finally said, around the same time I struggled to breathe in a gasp of air.

The air that was currently in my throat got stuck there, the shock of his response causing every part of my body to tense up. "Two?"

"The first was the day you took the dagger out," he said, the words falling out of his lips faster than usual. "I was trying to leave them alive, but I wasn't able to do that with the first person I drank from. And I killed someone the day that Klaus started watching you, keeping me from you. It was wrong. I lashed out, and I shouldn't have. I was hurt and scared, and I imagine that person felt that a million times worse, even with my enhanced emotions."

Breaths were coming out a lot heavier now, warmer and less strained despite the rapid speed of them. Despite the heavier breaths, my chest felt lighter, the fear slipping away with each and every word Kol confessed to me.

"That's . . . remorse," I managed to say amongst the swelling in my chest.

"Yes."

A breath that probably resembled a laugh pushed out of my lips, which were trying to curl into a smile. "You . . . it's not in your character to feel remorse."

"You've given me a reason to feel remorse," he said, but his eyes found mine now, the warmth within them bringing back the pieces of my soul that the silence had stolen.

"This is real," I whispered.

One hand moved up to touch my cheek, his thumb tenderly rubbing across the icy skin. "I told you that it was."

"Your mom said that it wasn't, that you didn't know love and that it was just fun until you moved on," I said, and the words began pouring out of me without filter, without a second thought. This was Kol; it was all real, and Esther had lied about everything.

He killed two people, and while no, those two people probably didn't deserve to die, he felt remorse about it. He wanted to be better.

His brow tightened, the bridge of his nose crinkling a bit with the movement. "She's lying."

I tried to smile again, and I think it worked this time, as a small ray of light shimmered across the golden warmth within his eyes. "She said you need your family, that you need to fix yourself alone."

"I don't care what she says," he snorted. "Our family is broken."

My head was suddenly spinning as the words were catching back up to me, not out of regret but actual thoughts and logic. She wanted me to break up with Kol, despite the fact that I gave him a reason to feel remorse and do better. She talked about the horrible things she had watched her children do, so why wouldn't she want someone who made one of her children better to stick around?

The very idea that I needed to be out of the picture to make her family whole didn't sit well with me, and that icy touch of fear began creeping back into me, for a reason entirely different this time.

"Why would she want me to go away if she wanted you guys to be whole? If I'm making you better?"

He was just as confused as I felt, his body stiffening while the thought raced through his mind. "Maybe because she knows Nik won't react well?"

"Unless she doesn't want you guys to be whole at all. I think she wants to kill you all."

A/N: The lyrics are from I Believe In You by Michael Buble.

Read, review, and enjoy. :)