Chapter Five: rampant chaos, your reality
She doesn't say anything. She just takes her hands off the bathroom door handle and turns around to him, her face the portrait of a young life gone by all too quickly. Her hair isn't as golden and radiant as it used to be. No. It's dirty and greasy and stuck to her forehead. Her clothes are torn, caked with dark splatters of what he thinks is blood, and her lips are chapped and cracked. The scar that cuts across her left eyebrow that she's had since she was ten is more visible than ever before.
"Rebekah," Nik says again and slowly her eyes flicker across him like she can't believe it's actually him.
She's just imaging this. She has to be, because nothing has gone right for what seems like a century. Because the world is black and white and no one exists besides her and the walking dead. In this little world she is trapped in, she's already said goodbye to her brothers. There are no more of them. They have left her and she is all alone like she's always felt she's been. She's accepted this. When they were younger, they used to say "always and forever," but how foolish they were to believe that always and forever meant just that.
Rebekah shuts her eyes tightly and closes her hands over her ears. "You're not real," she says, forcing the hallucination out of her mind. "You're not real. You are notreal!"
Nik looks at her sadly and takes slow and short steps over to her. He stands before her, watching her repeat the same phrase over and over again and shake her head with tears falling out of her eyes. To her, he isn't real. He's not here. She's just alone and it's just her head playing tricks on her like it's been doing since she first started out on her own. She just wants it to leave. She doesn't want to get attached to a dream.
He takes her hands and pulls them away from her ears and tells her that it's okay. Everything is okay and he's here and he'll protect her. He doesn't even ask where Kol is because he doesn't want to know. Not yet. He doesn't think he can handle that news right now. He has Rebekah and that's all that matters right now.
Nik pulls her into him and Rebekah reluctantly gives in and starts to sob. This isn't fair, she thinks. It isn't fair how it feels so real, yet he'll fade away in a matter of seconds and she'll be alone again. He always does. They all do.
But he doesn't.
Rebekah quiets and takes a step back as she looks up at her brother. The outline of his figure doesn't blur, she can actually see his face clearly and all the stress that has burdened him for so long. It's him. It's really him.
"Nik," she chokes out and wraps her arms around his back. "It's you. It's really you!"
Nik can't even speak. She's alive, she's breathing, she's here. She's a thousand reasons to cry and another thousand not to.
"It's been so long," she whispers. "I wrote you letters, but you never wrote back."
His mind flashes back to all the unopened envelopes stacked in a neat pile up against the hard gray wall of that room. He didn't take them with him when he left.
"I couldn't find myself opening them," he tells her, which is true. "Too paranoid that something might have happened."
She smiles sadly and blinks away the last few remaining tears. "If something bad ever happened again, I would have flown across the pond just to tell you in person, Nik."
Silence passes between them for a moment before they both sit down on the edge of the bed. She twiddles her thumbs and looks down at her dirty sneakers and breathes quietly.
"I haven't seen a person in days," she tells him, still focused on her feet. "I don't think anyone's alive anymore."
"What happened to Kol?" he blurts out. Why did he ask? Why?
She bites her bottom lip hard and starts to pick at her fingernails. "We...," she starts, but stops herself short. She looks up and stares intently at the wall across from her as if it holds all the answers in the world. "We were driving and there was a riot. A mixedriot; dead and alive. He tried to go around them, but they just swarmed us. We couldn't move. They...broke the windows and some of them pulled us out." Her voice starts to crack and she's burning holes through that wall. "I was holding his hand, Nik, and they tore me away. They tore me away from him, and I tried to find him, but I couldn't. Someone took the car and I was shouting for him, but he never answered! I couldn't find him!"
"It's not your fault, Rebekah." He throws his arm around her shoulder, but it provides no comfort. "He's probably still looking for you. And he'll find you."
She shakes her head violently as more sobs erupt from her throat. "No," she screams. "No, Nik! I kept calling and calling him and I knew he couldn't have gotten that far, so it didn't make sense. So I kept walking around and looking everywhere and then I found him! He was just...just lying there in the gutter with this...with this bullet wound right over his heart."
Nik's breath catches in his chest.
In a daze, Rebekah gets up and brings a hand to her heart and closes it. She turns around to Nik and tilts her head to the side. "I didn't hear a gun go off amongst all the chaos. But it did. And I don't know why."
"Rebekah..."
She kneels down beside Kol and watches as the world continues pass by, yet she is frozen in time and space. Kneeling beside her dead brother, his cold head propped onto her lap, his eyes shut so loosely like he's just napping. She strokes his forehead with a finger and sings to him like a baby. She'll stay here forever if she has to. She'll stay and rock him in death. She won't leave him.
But then, suddenly, he takes a breath. She looks down into his eyes and sees nothing but white and ignorance and hunger. She presses her lips together and swallows down the sob that is fighting to escape her throat. He hasn't been bitten. How? How can he turn?
He bites at her and she slides backwards, her mouth quivering. This isn't real. No. Not her brother. Not Kol.
But it is real. It's all so real. So surreal. Strange. Kol turns around and gets to his knees and stalks towards her, but before he can reach her she gives him a good kick in the face. It eats her up inside as she watches him crumple to the ground but get right back up again. His face is gray and veiny and skin is already starting to rot and she can smell it, like sitting in a morgue with the air conditioning broken.
He hisses at her, raspy noises that have no words. She wants to cry, wants to run away from this madness and jump in the ocean and float out to sea. What else does she have to look forward to?
But she's a Mikaelson, and Mikaelsons don't give up. No. They fight until their hearts stop beating, until the blood runs cold in their veins.
"We'll remain together," she whispers as she picks herself up. Kol lunges for her, but his movements are slow and weak. He can't even recognize her anymore. "Always and forever."
She runs away from and never looks back. Never, ever looks back.
"We're infected," Nik states calmly. Dumbly. Why didn't he figure this out before? Of course he's infected. Of course. He should've known that it wasn't just a bite that could kill you.
"I didn't fight hard enough for him," she tells him and she believes it. She didn't look for him fast enough, she didn't call his name loud enough. She killed her brother and no one can tell her otherwise. She left him there like another common monster and didn't look back. She cried for him, but she never went back.
"We're infected," Nik says again. Infection means there's likely a cure, right? Some miracle drug that can help them. That can help save them.
"Did you ever think that it would end this way?" she asks, tapping her fingers on the television set. "That we would succomb to a deadly virus that turned us all into mindless cannibals?"
"We don't all get to choose our fate, now do we?"
"But this isn't our fate, Nik. It's punishment."
"Punishment?" he asks, cocking an eyebrow. "I've been punished, Rebekah, and this is no punishment."
"Our brother is dead, Nik! This isn't just our cruel fate! Yes, we were dealt a horrendous hand to play with, but we brought it on ourselves!"
"By ourselves, you mean me."
She bites her lip and folds her arms across her chest. She can't look at him after that, because it's true. It's so true, but she won't tell him that. She won't admit it to him, because she needs to spare the bit of sanity he has left for the sake of them both. So, she says it's not true. That nothing is all his fault. That all of them were in it together, not just him. That they plotted it down to a T; Nik was just the one to pull the trigger. Calm, calculated, and manipulative little children. The apples don't fall too far from the tree, do they?
"You say all those things, Bekah, but you don't believe them," he laughs, but it's nervous and his voice is cracking. His walls are falling. Everything is breaking down around him. His sister is here trying to tell him that nothing is his fault, his youngest brother is dead, he is infected with a virus that will turn him into a flesh eating monster, and he's never felt so alone.
"Nik," Rebekah whispers, meeting his watery gaze. "I should've stayed in England and waited for you. We all should have. I'm sorry. I'm sosorry."
"Is that what you think this is all about?" he snaps. "You think I'm angry about all of you leaving?"
"Then what else could it possibly be, Nik?"
He grips her shoulders hard and leans in not even two inches away from her face. She stares right back at him with a tight-lipped expression.
"Kol is dead, Rebekah," he says and her mouth quivers.
"I know," she says solemnly.
"We're going to end up just like him sooner than later."
"Not unless we don't fight, Niklaus!" she screams and tears start to roll down her cheeks once more. "Why are you so inclined to give up when we haven't even begun to live?"
"This isn't living, Rebekah," he hisses. Living? No. They're dying. They're becoming an extinct species, dying off every second of every single day and he isn't too sure anyone is doing anything to stop it.
"Maybe it isn't," Rebekah tells him, admittedly. "But I'm not going to sit here and say that it was Kol's fate that he left us that way. I'm not going to cry how we couldn't have prevented this, Nik. You know and I know."
He studies his sister hard. He's angry, he's upset, he's distraught. He could flip this motel upside down and go on a shooting rampage right now and take out a whole horde if he had to. His brother is dead and he never got to say goodbye.
Nik lets her go and goes back to sit on the bed. He holds his head in his hands and suddenly he can't breathe. It's like an elephant is standing on his throat, blocking all entry of air. He can't even scream. Guilt racks his mind and heart as images of Kol turning into one of those things and attacking Rebekah flood him so that he's afraid he'll drown. He should've been there. He should've been there with them and protected them like he used to do.
Maybe it is punishment, he thinks. Maybe being incarcerated wasn't enough for him. He had to find out that his younger brother was killed and his sister wasn't doing too much better on her own. He deserved this. He is shown no mercy. He has no saving grace. No salvation in any of this. No angel to redeem him. No-
His head snatches up and he bounds over to the bathroom must be scared out of her mind. How long has it been since she first went in? How much time has passed? What was she thinking when Rebekah was tugging on the door? She could've shot her.
"Caroline," he yells, pounding on the door. "Open up, sweetheart."
Rebekah's face twists into bafflement. Caroline? Caroline who? He can't mean Caroline Forbes, because that bitch must long be dead. She can't even find her way around a somersault (this is a lie since she's the cheerleading captain, but Rebekah must find joy in mocking a potential dead girl) let alone out of a zombie apocalypse.
The door opens slowly and Rebekah steps closer as the girl emerges. She's shaking and a gun weighs down her right hand. Dried tears stain her face and suddenly they make eye contact and all the sorrow in the world is gone and replaced with pure, unadulterated hatred.
It's Caroline Forbes. Of fucking course.
"What is she doing with you?" Rebekah spits venom.
Caroline doesn't say anything. She's not even angry. Just...confused. She's sat in the bathroom for an amount of time she's not even sure about and she's heard everything about Kol and punishment and something about plotting something down to a T. Family business, something or other.
"I invited her," Nik says quietly. "I needed her."
There's something that pangs in Caroline's chest at the word "need." She doesn't know whether it's a good thing or not. She still doesn't say anything. Just looks at Rebekah with a cocked eyebrow and regards her slowly. It's a good thing she's alive, for Nik's sake. Not for hers. She wonders what happened to Matt. She should ask, but then again, she doesn't really care.
"You needed her," Rebekah repeats, nodding her head and crossing her arms. "Right."
Nik rolls his eyes and turns back to Caroline. "Are you all right?"
"No, are you all right? I heard...about Kol..." Because she's so stupid and impulsive and actually seriously concerned, she brings a hand to the side of his face and she forces a sad smile.
He thinks to himself that he likes the feeling of her hands.
No, he's not all right. He's not fine. He's not good. Nothing is okay, and he knows she's not fine either. But she's putting on this brave face for whatever reason after all he's done is put her through shit the whole time they've been together. He can't figure her out. Caroline Forbes, an enigma.
Rebekah scoffs in the background as if she can't believe what she's seeing. God, what has gone wrong with the world? First zombies, and now this? This thing with this tramp? Oh no. No, no, no.
"This will not do," she says as she pushes Caroline hard into the wall.
Caroline grunts under the force as the gun slips out of her hand and goes off. A bullet hits the ceiling and chunks of drywall and dust fall down on top of them. Nik pulls Rebekah away and shoves Caroline back into the bathroom as the rest of the rot continues to fall.
A flurry of coughs and wheezes ensue before Caroline emerges covered in drywall. She looks down at Rebekah who's still on the floor pressed up against the opposite wall next to Nik. Rebekah is crying again and he has his arm wrapped around her shoulder and Caroline realizes that now he has someone, and she still doesn't. Maybe she never will, and that feeling sucks. She leans against the doorway and watches them, a silent reminder that she will never be put first. In this case, she doesn't expect it, but for however long Rebekah is with them, which will probably be forever, she should just get used to not being put first. Not that she ever was to begin with when it came to Nik, but still. She thought that maybe she would be. At some point. But not anymore. Miss Mystic Falls, second best always and forever; only first place for things that don't matter.
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A/N: More Carobekah drama, Klaroline awkwardness, and zombies next chapter. Really sorry aboout Kol :( Forgive me?