As they sat there across from each other at the ornate mahogany dining table – eating ravioli of all things, déjà vu wouldn't even begin to cover the feeling she was having – Bella regarded her suitor with watchful eyes. He was terribly adept at dodging questions when he wanted to. But he could have easily been a renowned chef in any three Michelin starred restaurant if he ever put his mind to it that much she had to give him.
"How are you liking the dish?" Klaus asked to break the silence.
"It's exquisite. Have you ever thought about opening a restaurant?" the agent inquired half-jokingly.
"Haven't thought of that endeavor yet," he laughed, enjoying a private joke. "Feeding on humans is more like my forte than feeding them."
"I bet," she muttered sardonically with a roll of her eye.
"I sense you take some offense in that," the Original mused out loud between sips on his outrageously expensive wine.
"As a law enforcement agent, you can damn well count on that the utter lack of regard for human life won't earn brownie points with me," Bella told him sincerely, copying his actions with their drinks. They were already on their second bottle, but all she felt was a very vague sense of buzz.
"And as a vampire?" the vampire hybrid amended, finding amusement yet again in their banter.
"My answer is the same," the brunette replied irritatedly. She pondered if the centuries would ever cause her to become so desensitized to the problems of the weaker race and hoped very much that wouldn't be the case.
"Interesting. I take it you sate your thirst from the bag then? Wouldn't be my first choice. There is something unappetizing in the idea of fridge cold blood," Klaus speculated. He hadn't done that much homework on her it appeared. Good. Just the thought that he had been watching her for who knew how long made her shudder.
"Not that it's any of your business, but I don't drink human blood. Period," Bella revealed as she took another forkful of food towards he mouth, counting on the fact that this might cause the Original Hybrid to underestimate her in later encounters if it came to that.
"Stefan's evangelism has gotten to you?" he inquired, resting his face in his palm, half hiding his smirk with his fingers as he stroked his lower lip in enthralled interest.
"I've had other influences in my life besides him if you must know. But I'd rather talk about your plans with me, Klaus, than my dietary choices," the agent steered the conversation to her real concerns for the evening, instead of her previous run-in with a "vegetarian" cold one coven in the Olympic peninsula. However lovely this Prince Charming façade he was putting on was, she wasn't going to fall for it.
"Since we have established that I couldn't compel you due to the vervain in your system I think you already know the answer to that question," Klaus had all but abandoned the pretenses of eating, intently hanging on her every word.
Bella strived really hard to hide the surprise from her face. Klaus hadn't realized her gift. They thought she was protecting her mind from them with vervain.
"I'd like to hear the full explanation instead of my assumptions," the agent requested with a smirk to hide her elation at the other revelation, as she leaned back in her chair.
"In short, I'd like you by my side. As a companion, as my queen."
Wow, blunt and straightforward. What was the need for all that ploy and trickery to get her into town, then trying to make her forget his hints? What hadn't he been ready for yet in the morning yesterday?
"Okay, let me rephrase that. Why do you want me specifically? I'm sure you could get just about any girl, why go after the visibly unwilling one?" she crossed her arms just to emphasize that statement with her body language too.
"Dear Bella, unequivocally you have already grasped that you are not just any woman. One of a kind, the first vampire cold one hybrid in history."
Again how he possessed that knowledge was beyond her, but Bonnie found out through the spirits, so perhaps he had his own witches to consult with. The flattery was easy enough to ignore though.
"My question again, what is it that you want with me, knowing what you know about me? I pose no threat to you if that's what you are worried about. Of course on the condition that you leave my loved ones alone. I'm not in the business of pissing off powerful supernatural beings. I just want to live peacefully and enjoy what normalcy I can find," Bella reasserted. Why was this so hard to grasp?
"Like enforcing human laws? Chasing the bad guys?" his tone implied that he put himself in that category for the most part, despite the light teasing it held.
"What can I say? A family trait. I try to do good where I can. But alas your little stunt with James Sheridan and Joey Bates might have ruined that for me for a couple of decades."
The case was closed, but if there was anything that she might have overlooked, and Abby found something else on the syringe or from the swabs on the wounds, then NCIS might start looking again. And possibly stumble into her secret too in the process.
"My apologies. I hadn't realized it meant so much to you. How can I make it up to you?" the Original backpedaled, clearly determined on keeping her appeased. Or at least not openly hostile. Maybe he was just as wary of her unknown traits as she was of his intentions.
"Human life is precious and there nothing that could measure up to it. How do you propose to match that?" the agent decided to ride that train of thought, briefly considering if her involvement might keep the hybrid in check, sparing them future trouble. That's a sacrifice she could make right? Abide her time for a few decades or centuries with him.
"Our views clearly differ on the subject," Klaus allowed candidly.
"Clearly," Bella huffed in agreement. "As a meager start, you could answer my questions honestly."
"Anything, love," he quickly agreed. Eager much?
"Why do you need me? If my information is correct, you have a beautiful daughter, whom surely has a mother too," the brunette tried diverting his attention from her as a possible candidate to ease his loneliness.
"Hope is with her mother under protection, and it is in her best interest to not have contact with me for now. As for Hayley… nowadays people would call it a one-night stand. Never meant to have been serious. She is family now, that is all," Klaus explained with a shrug, but it was evident that he cared very deeply for his family. Would do anything to keep them out of harm's way. With him being who he was that must have been a difficult task, no doubt he had many powerful adversaries.
"What do you expect of me if I were to become your 'queen'?" she didn't appreciate the baggage or potentially drawing the attention of those enemies to herself.
"Like I said, companionship. Besides, no one would dare to mess with the hybrid couple of New Orleans."
That's what she had thought, she was an insurance policy of sorts. Not so inclined toward that sacrifice now. She hated being used.
"Klaus, let me speak frankly here. You are already virtually indestructible. Are you trying to compensate for something with this ridiculous power hunger?" the agent quirked her brow at him challengingly, although she could hardly imagine small penis being a problem here, nor was he short so Napoleonian complex was out of the question too.
His chuckle in response was not what she was expecting.
"What?" Bella inquired, puzzled over his reaction.
"You remind me of someone." Naming the person would have meant nothing to the girl, he knew. Cami, the late pretty blond psychologist in New Orleans who he had employed as sort of a personal therapist, had been just as inclined to speak her mind to him, without holding anything back, making him reevaluate many things in his life.
"Well then seek that someone out for your scheme and leave me alone," the agent irately responded, causing Klaus to flinch a bit, but since she would have had no way of knowing that wasn't possible anymore, he didn't hold it against her. "I have no intention of becoming the queen of your supernatural world. Especially not after what you have done to force me to come to this little negotiation."
"Again, I apologize for offending you. Would you have accepted my request if I sought you out in D.C. without all the added circumstances?" he dared to ask with a sliver of hope that it wasn't such a lost cause as Bella projected it.
"Honestly, no. I fully intend to remain single for the rest of my existence," she stated bluntly.
That was the god's honest truth. That was her intention. For a couple of months after her transformation she toyed around with the idea of trying to find the Cullens, but each time the stinging words of Edward telling her that he didn't want her resurfaced – despite them being human memories they were deeply etched into her psyche – and she decided against it. Alice most likely saw the outcome anyway and if they had been interested in her joining their family under these new conditions they surely would have sought her out already. They obviously hadn't, and she wasn't going to go begging.
"Who has hurt you so badly that you would close off your heart?" the Original somberly inquired. If someone he knew how being denied the love they felt they deserved felt like.
"Like I would tell you that. Do you expect me to believe that you wouldn't go and hunt them down in some misguided attempt to please me? If I'd wanted revenge, I could have taken it on my own." Not entirely accurate, even if she had known that she was much stronger than a cold one, she wouldn't have stood a chance in a seven-on-one fight, but Klaus had no way of knowing those odds.
"I didn't mean to imply that you wouldn't be capable. On the contrary," the werewolf hybrid backtracked again.
Silence once again hung between them like a curtain.
"Let me show you something," Klaus stood from his place, offering her a hand, seemingly having concluded that they were finished with dinner. He did promise her that he would let her take a peek at the man behind the monster. Talking wasn't exactly the best course of action for that.
The rest of the mansion was just as lavishly decorated. Works of several famous painters hung on the walls and Bella had an inkling of a suspicion that they might have been the real deal and not just reproductions by talented copycats.
He led her to an art studio of sorts, where on the many easels scattered about the room stood just as many paintings of varying sizes. Some more were resting along the walls. Klaus had released her hand, and she took that as a cue that it was alright to go and explore, though he intently stayed where he was right by the door.
Some were dark and twisted, seemingly depicting inner demons or a cruel, cold world. Some more were cheerful, of lush green hills, or still life of bowls of fruits. Others were of city skylines at night with the full moon. The techniques used showed inspirations and influence of periods spanning at least a millennium.
"Did you paint these?" the sudden realization came to her.
"Had to pass the time with something," he quipped with a small smile.
Bella walked in further, coming to a stop in front a piece about his family. They were all so painfully beautiful. That particular insecurity she hadn't been fully able to shake yet. After a few moments, he had come to join her by her side.
"Penny for your thoughts?" the Original hybrid asked her, searching her face for the reason why she looked so forlorn at that moment.
His question just made it worse. Was history repeating itself?
"Your paintings… uhm… they are powerful. You're very talented," she managed to say, trying to stuff visions of Edward back into that darker corner of her mind.
With an adoring face, he once again brought her hand up to kiss, then ran his thumb along her knuckles.
"You are young so forgive me if you are already aware, but did you know that vampires have the ability to enter the minds of others?" he paused briefly, assessing her face for signs of realization at what he was getting at. She knew alright. Her shield must be blocking him. "The only requirement is that their mind be stronger than their target's. Originals are said to have the strongest minds in the world, yet with you… I see nothing."
"I'd appreciate if you respected the privacy of my mind, and didn't experiment with that," Bella suggested in a soft tone.
Klaus was impossibly close to her now, their eyes locked on each other. She just now realized that his eyes were dark blue-green instead of grey like she had initially thought. All she could do was stand there mesmerized. Her hand was still in his left, and his right had come to rest on the small of her back, holding her as if they were about to dance to an imaginary tune.
Surprisingly so, she didn't feel uncomfortable in his arms. The look he was giving her held nothing but curiosity, admiration, interest, not even a hint of malice towards her. And for the first time in more than half a decade, something stirred inside her.
"You are really something else, aren't you?" Klaus mused in barely more than a whisper. His hand traveled up her side, coming to a halt at the edge of her face, buried in her hair, his thumb brushing her cheek softly.
It felt like electricity humming between them as he leaned in to kiss her.
And then her cell phone went off, breaking them out of the trance. They separated quickly, Klaus groaning in frustration, and Bella fished her phone out of her clutch purse.
Saved by the bells, one might say.
"Yes?" she answered without looking at the caller ID – because only a handful of people knew this number, most being in Mystic Falls – her voice a bit thick with the tension still.
"Bella? Sorry to bother you, but there is an Anthony DiNozzo and Abigail Sciuto here looking for you?" Caroline informed her reluctantly on the other end of the line.
Fuck, what were they doing here? This could go two ways if Abby was here. Either she found something crucial that reopened the case like she had feared, or she had asked Tony bring her here to confront her about standing her up for the birthday celebrations.
"I'll be right there," the agent replied humorlessly, regarding the Original hybrid with her eyes.
"No rush just wanted to let you know," the blonde tried to ease the tension she heard from her friend.
Without any goodbyes, Bella hung up.
"What did Caroline want? Who is here?" Klaus inquired anxiously, sensing the same uneasiness from her at the news. She ignored his questions.
"I need you to tell me exactly what happened with James Sheridan. Every detail. Is there any chance NCIS could have found anything that might link to the supernatural? There was a syringe at the crime scene. On that or the puncture wound from your bite perhaps?" she questioned, the crime scene analyst in her and her perfect recall of what might have been loose ends in the case kicking in.
"I wiped everything carefully. He tried stabbing me with the vervain but missed, and the contents just sloshed down beside my neck," he explained with a frown. He tried to be extra careful to cover his tracks, not something he usually bothered with when he killed a human.
"So there wouldn't be any DNA from your saliva in his neck?" Bella pushed on to reconfirm since he hadn't quite fully answered her concerns.
"Fuck," he cursed, should have thought of that. Modern advances in technology, forensic science and what it was capable of detecting still eluded him a bit. It was so much easier just twenty-thirty years ago. Far simpler times.
Bella sighed exasperatedly, and began pacing, trying to think of something that could explain this away. What would a thousand-year-old werewolf-vampire hybrid's DNA look like anyway? Does magic show up on that level like it did with cold ones? Could it be blamed on sample contamination? The body had been in the square for a few hours, would a stray wolf wandering into the town and licking the wound be plausible? Were there any real wolves in Virginia anyway?
"Wait. How did the petty officer know what would work against a vampire?" the brunette suddenly snapped her head up at the detail she hadn't paid attention to before.
"Didn't you know? He was a second cousin, once removed of Tyler Lockwood," the Original revealed. No, she didn't know. That was a far away enough familial connection that it didn't show up on their search, especially if he never actually lived here.
"Do you mean to tell me he was an untriggered werewolf?" the agent hissed. That was always a possibility where the Lockwoods were considered and since he wasn't reported to disappear every full moon from his post at the Navy that meant he wasn't full-fledged. Awfully hard to keep a no-kill record in the armed forces though.
"No, grandmaternal side, but as distantly related to one of the founding families he must have had some access to the stories passed down. And seems like he believed them," Klaus theorized, not looking too concerned.
"Why had he been looking for a witch?" she recalled that he had sought Bonnie out shortly before his demise.
"He had an incredibly strong mind for a human, must have realized that he was under compulsion to come to Mystic Falls and was looking for one to undo it. But he was the perfect candidate for my plans since he was loosely affiliated with the town so wouldn't have been odd for him to come here on his leave. Also a Navy officer, so his death ensured NCIS, and thus likely your involvement," the ancient vampire finally disclosed the whole ploy that he had been running.
Bella took another big breath and slowly exhaled. Yeah, perfect plan her ass. She wanted to rip him to shreds for all the trouble he had caused her with this.
"Alright, I'll try and handle this. You stay here, do you understand me? Under no circumstances show yourself in town until they are gone. I'll let you know when the coast is clear," the brunette somehow managed to keep her voice level and not let her vexation show through. Had she seriously almost let him kiss her?
"Your concern for me is heart-warming," Klaus smirked, misinterpreting her words, or just purposefully trying to grate on her nerves.
"Oh, believe me, it has nothing to do with you. I'm intent on protecting my friends and keeping them away from the supernatural for their own good," the agent huffed exasperatedly. She? Worried for Klaus? When hell freezes over!
"In any case, let me drive you back," he offered, suddenly intent on trying to somehow save this date from plummeting to even lower lows.
"No. I just told you to stay here, didn't I? I'll be faster on foot anyway."
On that note, she crouched down to unfasten the straps of her sandals and took them off. She didn't want to ruin Bonnie's shoes as she ran through the forest.
Without waiting for another word from the source of her current predicament, she whooshed out of the room with her purse and footwear in hand.
What are you doing, Bella? You can't be frolicking with the enemy! Geez, pull yourself together! And similar self-berating thoughts plagued her mind as she ran through the forest surrounding Mystic Falls towards the other side of town where the Boarding House was.
She had a hard time admitting it… but the evening had actually been kinda lovely, despite her resistance and the front she had put up. That is until reality suddenly set in, breaking up the fairy tale fantasy. Provided you were into the Beauty and the Beast sort of bedtime stories, except the beast, in this case, is a centuries-old Original vampire.
About halfway there, only a minute after she had left, something caught her attention. Noise, more precisely footsteps, although too light to be made by a mere human – they were just physically incapable of this level of stealth – and they weren't even coming from the direction of the town but from farther into the woods.
The brunette came to a sudden halt, trying to listen and figure out who – or what – it might be. The source of the light rustling stopped almost simultaneously. Whoever it was had noticed her too.
After an agonizingly tense ten seconds Bella almost facepalmed herself. Come on, there's practically nothing out there that could hurt you! She never actually got used to being at the top of the food chain in the last almost five years. She blended in with humans instead of hunting them, and in the supernatural world so far she had firmly believed that she was at her weakest being a newborn vampire and whatnot. A hypothesis that was thoroughly debunked last night.
"Who's there?" the agent called out when her own silliness became evident to her, taking a few slow steps towards the direction she had heard the noise from earlier.
The sound picked up again, coming closer, seemed like curiosity had won out over caution on that side too.
"Bella?"
A twenty-something looking guy with messy, curly honey blond hair stepped out from the cloaking of the trees. His voice held immense amount on disbelief, surprise, mixed in with gingerly carefulness.
He stopped breathing, Bella realized. Also that the newcomer was a cold one, one that knew her, so that could have only meant someone from the Olympic coven. Based on his hair and the vague familiarity of his voice, Jasper Hale was her safest bet. It also explained his precaution so as not to get a whiff of her scent by accident. Their last encounter was on her 18th birthday six years ago – her still being human – when a slight papercut sent him into a frenzy and attacked her.
He clearly registered that she was barefoot in a forest nonetheless and thus took this – though now utterly unnecessary – precaution in case she cut herself again to avoid history repeating itself. Since she was downwind from him, he must not have realized that she was a vampire. It was a distinct possibility that he might not have met one before and her beating heart surely confused him in his assessment even if he noticed that she wasn't quite human anymore.
Her slight pause at recognizing her almost-would-be-brother-in-law was due to the fact that he looked so different to her heightened eyes. Bella knew of his scars, but she distinctly remembered them being almost unnoticeable, yet now they seemed to be his most defining feature, jumping out at her from every visible surface of his skin.
After a few seconds that must have seemed like a while to the other party, the vampire hybrid became conscious of being rude by not answering.
"Hi, Jasper," she greeted in the friendliest voice she could manage, trying to subdue the hurt that bubbled up to the surface. "You can breathe, I won't smell appetizing."
The agent noted that his eyes were amber, he didn't fall off the wagon – or at least had gotten back on – at least that was something. The townspeople should be safe.
"How? What are you?" the blond cold one asked incredulously as he caught her scent as the wind shifted and realized that it held none of the appeal human blood should.
"A vampire," Bella stated, feeling no need to spring the hybrid thing on him.
"But…" he began perplexedly since they shared practically no similarities on the outside.
"Not that kind, we usually refer to yours as cold ones, just like the Quileutes," the brunette enlightened him.
"I see," he offered softly, although it was clear that this had been a huge new piece of information about the world to him. "I should offer my condolences I guess."
"That's kind of you, but there's no need. I have come to terms with my current state already. It's been almost five years," she told him with a small smile at the notion.
"Then why are you distressed?" Jazz suddenly inquired, looking at her sadly.
Bella chuckled darkly. "Of course. You can sense my emotions. I had almost forgotten about that."
A light tickling sensation enveloped her but did nothing to change her mood. Jasper must have noticed it too because he furrowed his brows.
"I can't affect you," he narrated the obvious, his frown deepening.
"Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm actually glad that my emotions stay my own even if you tried to make me feel better." Cool, her shield must have evolved since her transformation. Jasper had no problem calming her down on numerous occasions in the past. "What are you doing here?"
"I was visiting Peter and Charlotte. I'm on my way back to…" the blonde began to respond, but Bella cut him off.
"Stop, I don't want to know. I don't want to know where he is," Bella shook her head vigorously. She knew she would be too weak to resist if she were to find out where Edward was.
"We had been living separately since, but alright," he offered then seemed to be contemplating something. "This actually explains quite a lot. Why Alice hasn't been able to see you very well for a while."
"Alice has been searching for my future?" the agent snapped her head up. They had abandoned her! Then why waste the trouble?
"Not too actively, but yes. Just to make sure you were alright," Jasper admitted guiltily.
Good. They deserved all the shame in the world. They made her believe that they were her friends, family even. That she belonged. Then up and left without a word. Though she suspected Edward had a hand in that.
"Well, then she had done a piss poor job of it," Bella laughed out humorlessly.
She hadn't been alright her whole senior year in Forks. She had been exceptionally not hunky-dory when Laurent had attacked her in the meadow as a favor to Victoria, and from whom the shapeshifter wolves had had to rescue her. Or during her travels, most definitely not in the weeks leading up to the point where Damon had decided that the danger the redheaded cold one posed was too high to leave her human. But she was not in the mood at the moment to rehash all that.
"Look, I'm really in a hurry, but if you stick around… Actually, that might not be a good idea. There is a quite large vampire residence in town, they might take you for a threat. How about in Charlottesville? By the reservoir? I'll come by tomorrow. Not sure when I can get away though," she offered. Her anger wasn't really aimed at him. She had never held the events of her birthday against him. It was an accident.
"I'll wait. I'd love to talk to you. We all missed you," the blond cold one emphatically stated, hoping she would believe him.
"Gotta go," the vampire hybrid said instead of responding to that. It just hurt too much. As she turned to leave something else occurred to her. "Do me a favor and keep meeting me a secret from Alice until tomorrow if she missed it somehow. If not then ask her to keep quiet until then. Shouldn't be a problem if… he is not there to read her thoughts."
"Will do," he promised, hoping that his decision she could see even through the holes Bella presented in her vision and act accordingly.
"Okay. Bye," and she was gone through the thick of the trees.
Fuck life and all its complications. As if she didn't have enough on her plate already.