Are you truly a monster if you can live with yourself? If you can think over your decisions and know that you would commit the exact same crimes does that mean you have not yet toed the line, or that you are too far gone already?

Bea was many things. She knew what her gravestone should read. But the one that bore her maiden name in Louisiana had been commissioned by her sister's family for the young aunt they never knew.

Beatrix Lynch

Beloved sister and dearest friend

That wasn't quite true though, was it? Bea and Marie had drifted farther apart in Bea's final years of human life than they ever had been before. Kol had become her lifeline, and in turn the need for her big sister had faded. The blurry hole she had left in her sister's life when she had 'died' was an inaccuracy she was glad to give the Morris family. Bea was glad her sweet, passive sister had died without knowing what she'd become.

Beatrix Lynch Mikaelson

Never a mother, forever a wife. Protector of a not-sister.

Vicious. Immoral. Terrible. Violent.

But not cruel. As backwards as it may seem, ever since Bea had turned her switch back on she had not considered herself 'cruel'.

Bea knew most people would call her a monster – maybe she had been made to be a monster. But she would not have ever thought of herself as 'heartless'. There was a very, very faint line that she didn't cross. Atrocities that she refused to commit and deemed too inhumane.

And in the euphoria of getting Kol back – the love of her existence, the man she knew loved her just as much – she had forgotten something incredibly important.

Kol didn't have that line.

She couldn't stop running through the woods. It was her typical reaction and instinctive – especially in the half century of being a vampire when Bea had been by herself without anyone by her side. Then it had been a minor switch for her go-to reaction to become to check on Rigby then run in any stressful situation.

Bea had lost Kol about a mile back. Not due to her superior speed. No, it was the tree branch she had hurled backwards over her shoulder that had made a truly repulsive sound as it sunk into his flesh. She'd only been trying to slow him down, but Bea was now fairly sure that he'd be busy with splinters.

Kol was probably a mix between confused and angry. Bea felt a pang of regret at her actions when she considered how he must be feeling. The entire situation was fucked up. They were both 'wrong', if the word could be used to describe any part of the encounter.

The two of them should really sit down and talk. There were countless things that had to be said, but Bea and Kol had been doing a magnificent job thus far ignoring their problems and instead overcompensating with lightheartedness and joking. Their avoidance this past week had finally led to the inevitable breaking point.

Bea had gotten back from shopping with Rebekah. The day had been wonderful. Bekah – as she insisted on being called – was clearly eager for a sister figure and had been a riot to be around. Bea had given her an overview of her life with Kol, from their meeting to their disastrous first date and eventually their wedding. Bekah had been insistent on hearing all about the color schemes and whatnot.

The look of abject horror on the Original's face when she heard that she and Kol had a very small, simple wedding was hilarious. Bekah had immediately insisted on throwing a second wedding.

Such a sap.

They had dinner together at a small restaurant Bea and Rigby had grown obsessed with in the last few months, and she had gotten to hear snippets of the Originals' lives. The best part by far was hearing some embarrassing stories about Kol – she had planned to torment him with the most humiliating of the childhood tales.

But then she had walked through the front door of the apartment and seen what Kol had been up to that day while she was away. He had told her he would be doing some more catching up to the present before getting a bite to eat. But this –

An entire bachelorette party was on her living room floor. The woman who wore a sash declaring her the soon-to-be bride was dead, and three of her bridesmaids were as well. One remained wetly breathing through what Bea figured was a collapsed lung, while another was unconscious and battered.

It was probably because of the conversations that Bea had been having with Bekah all day, but she felt violently wrong standing in the midst of it. The woman had been about to marry – she had her own Kol somewhere who wouldn't know what happened to her. Bea knew a good person would have been able to empathize with the loss of human life on its own. But it only really impacted her when she thought about the couple in terms of her own life.

A cheerful note on the counter top let her know that Kol would be back within the next two hours, out trying to reconnect with the warlock descendant of a witch he had once worked with.

Bea had been gentle as she mindlessly fed the two left alive her blood and compelled them to forget what they had seen instead of merely their guaranteed silence. A small mercy, and one she wouldn't usually extend.

The bride's body was the first she cleaned with a wet paper towel before burying her, the dead bridesmaids following her. It was macabre, cleaning a body off only to bury it deep in the ground. Getting the bodies into her small car to drive to a deeper part of the forest had been a hassle. Kol had probably thought she would leave them until he came home, waiting to make him do it.

But she – fuck, she couldn't.

Bea loved violence. But violence for a purpose was always so much more fun. Ripping the head from a rapist – because Bea truly detested men who thought they could control women in any way – was grin-worthy, and draining dry anyone who wanted to hurt Rigby felt as natural as breathing. A good fight got her blood pumping and killing was just that – killing. It wasn't the extinguishing of potential or any other kind of bullshit, killing was an action that she committed with a serene expression.

Kol had gotten home just after she herself had returned from the makeshift gravesite. At that point, maybe Bea could have reasoned with herself to remain calm. After all, on a different day she might not have been bothered at all. It was merely because she had only just been talking about her own life of being married while human. But then Kol had spoken.

"Hi, love. You cleaned it up? Did you see that the bride's hair was the very same shade as yours?"

And so she ran.

Kol was mentally running through everything he had done in the last eight hours that could have made his wife pissed off enough to throw a fucking tree branch through his leg. Christ, he had just gotten these trousers. He'd invested in the denim clothing this century seemed obsessed with and had quickly seen the appeal.

Now they were beyond help, and bits of wood were still making their way out of his body.

It had to be the comment about her hair. Bea was sensitive about her hair, whenever any comments were made about it being 'red'. He had actually thought that she seemed over it, seeing as she'd grown it out a foot and spent nearly a half hour styling it every morning.

When he finally caught up to her, she was standing still in a clearing with her arms wrapped tightly around herself. She was facing him, but wouldn't meet his eyes. Kol made sure to approach slowly and deliberately, not wanting to catch her off guard in any way when she was clearly on edge.

"Sweetheart, I need you to tell me why you're upset. I'm not telepathic."

Bea finally looked and met his gaze with a blank expression on her face that directly contrasted her low, furious tone of voice.

"I'm not upset, okay? I'm angry. I'm so fucking mad right now and I don't want to look at your face. Just laisse-moi tranquille."

If Kol had learned anything after being with Bea for years, it was that when she asked to be left alone, she usually meant it. But right now he was more concerned with the fact that he could see tears building in her eyes, even if they were sparked by anger.

"No. I want to know why you're angry."

That seemed to be the cue she'd been waiting for.

"Fine. You know what? I'm going to talk now and I need you to shut up and not say anything until I'm done because I don't know if I can finish otherwise."

Betraying her words, Bea seemed to pause and look at him, as if waiting to see his reaction to what she was saying. Kol honestly felt a little bit taken aback. He had thought that he and Bea were doing perfectly, and his last few days had been spent re-establishing his network of connections whenever Bea wasn't around. This had clearly been building, and he hadn't noticed. So he gave a nod and said, "Alright, love."

She let out a strangled sound at that, something that turned into a harsh laugh, but began talking quickly in a fierce tone that practically dared him to interrupt her.

"That right there, is part of it. You're back and I am so, so happy I can't even see straight sometimes. Some days it's like I can't even breathe right without you. But then when you're not there and neither is anybody else I get so fucking angry. Je déteste ton frère but not just because you were daggered."

She was clearly struggling for words, but as promised, he didn't speak and instead gave her a minute to gather her thoughts.

"Okay, it is because you were daggered, but I'm mad for me. It's selfish and I hate myself when I think too much about it, but Klaus ruined my life too. He – we haven't talked about it, but he could have ended our marriage permanently. You weren't there, and I learned how to be a vampire by myself. I eat differently than you do normally and my switch is on, even if I love some violence to spice things up. I'm teaching you about the civil rights movement and the different decades but – I went to fucking college. Twice. I'm still me, but I'm different, too. I've lived without you for longer than I did with you. And you haven't seen it yet because we've been in a bubble."

Bea was breathing heavily, but even as her words seemed like they should be spoken through tears, she was instead getting closer to an enraged shriek. She had begun stomping around as she spoke, and Kol was mostly doing his best to follow what she was saying. Every time he was reminded of the time they weren't together he was bothered, and of course when Bea had noticed she'd stopped explicitly mentioning tales of her own adventures during the events she educated him on.

This was his every insecurity dragged out and thrown under a microscope. His wife had lived without him and become someone else. She was the same as he remembered but… was she? How much of her actions had been her acting like she thought he would be expecting?

Anger grew in him as an instinctive response to her words, and he approached her, wrapping her in his arms and rubbing her back. With a firm voice he said, "We'll get revenge on Niklaus. I sw –"

He hadn't been expecting Bea to shove him off, and he was almost thrown off balance.

"No! I'm not done! I'm angry at you, too! Some other day I wouldn't care, but I was just talking about our wedding with your sister today, when I was a fucking human, just like those women. But most of all I hate myself because I am so angry at you for getting daggered! You were daggered and I was killed after I told you to stay safe!"

When Bea had been a human, she would sometimes turn an argument into sex, a method Kol very quickly adapted himself. When they were finished and his very-human wife was a bit more tired, they could talk and settle their arguments. So when Kol saw her move toward him quickly, for a half second he was convinced she was going to initiate sex.

Instead, her fist collided with his face.

Rigby was laying naked on her back, staring up at the ceiling of the hotel and trying to remain calm. Bea would probably give her a high five for what she'd done, but Rigby was supposed to be the responsible one. And she knew that this would really fucking complicate things.

Truthfully, she could barely say how she'd gotten here. Of course the other woman was a resourceful bitch, but Rigby had no idea how she had gotten her phone number when they hadn't seen each other in years. Probably Slater at some point, may the creepy-but-harmless guy rest in peace.

It wasn't that Rigby was upset with what had happened. The opposite, actually. Whenever they spent time together they had a ton of fun and her conversations with the woman always left her feeling lighter. The sex had been just as good as she'd predicted it would be after they'd hooked up the last time they'd been together.

At the sound of the bathroom door opening, Rigby turned.

Katerina Petrova stood entirely naked in the doorway, a small smile on her face.

"Come and join me in the shower, Eleanor?"