Elijah studied Kol's face as his brother watched Beatrix walk out of the restaurant. He hadn't seen them interact before tonight, and although Bekah had been describing their relationship as genuine it was still strange to see Kol openly display such emotion to another.
Elijah could admit to himself that he wanted to stall the more dramatic portion of the following conversation so he asked in a bland tone, "She speaks French?"
Kol whipped his head around to look at him and seemed to assess Elijah's face. A second later, however, the waiter Kol had previously compelled returned with the four glasses filled with blood. The man quickly placed them on the table and left, so immediately Kol grabbed one to take a long drink.
When he had put it back down, he answered Elijah's question in an even, emotionless tone.
"Yes. We go back and forth equally between the two at home. She switches by accident very occasionally, but when she wants to make others uncomfortable and off-guard or insult them in a particularly crass manner she does it on purpose."
That certainly explained her sudden transition when she began to insult him. For a brief moment he felt a spark of curiosity for what the woman would have said if she hadn't been derailed – Elijah hadn't been properly insulted in French since New Orleans nearly a century ago.
Kol broke him from his errant thought when he leaned forward and placed both hands on the table, an angry expression on his face.
"Shall we continue to skirt around our actual conversational topics and blather on with false pleasantries, or should we actually bloody talk?"
Elijah let out a sigh, but ultimately understood why it was prudent to begin discussing their more serious issues.
"Kol, I truly understand why you feel the way you do." Seeing that his younger brother had opened his mouth to interrupt, he quickly continued, "I know that I cannot fathom it. But going against Niklaus is suicidal. You've gotten your wife back – leave with her. Retrieve your dagger. But don't put yourself and Beatrix in danger."
Kol's expression remained blank throughout Elijah's words, and when he finished speaking a tense silence settled over the table. This time it was Bekah who tried to step in.
"Bea is my sister. You know I already adore her. I've always been closer to Nik, I know, but the very last thing I want is you or her harmed. Nik undaggered us because he truly wanted us together again. Please do as Elijah says – she told me about the plans you'd made to travel. Go, and I – I understand if you never want to see any of us again."
When Kol responded, it was in a cold voice that never wavered.
"Why must I be the one to flee with my tail between my legs like a wounded dog? Why is it that Nik never has to pay for his crimes? He murdered Bea. And yet you two have done nothing but support him. Am I not owed vengeance? Is Bea?"
Dark veins had begun to spread beneath Kol's eyes, and with reluctance Elijah asked, "Can we take this conversation elsewhere?"
A sadistic smile covered his younger brother's face, and Elijah suppressed a wince when he said in a gleeful tone, "But of course brother. I'm hungry for dessert and haven't had a good slaughter in hours."
"I won't lie about Kol. I'll lie about anything else when I need to save my skin, but never about loving him."
"I just don't understand. How can you be with someone like him? He's- "
"Kol is everything to me. And I'm his everything, too."
Caroline could see the soft grin that covered Bea's face, only slightly tainted by the specks of her own blood at the corners of her lips. The woman had to be in pain, but her expression was almost giddy – like a teenager with a first love. For a brief second Caroline wondered if she would ever meet someone who would love her like that - unconditionally for a century.
Bonnie was gone and wouldn't be back for another twenty minutes – driving home quickly to grab a few supplies from Mystic Falls, and Caroline felt a spike of unease and self-doubt at what she was doing. Walking into the basement was awful – the vervain spores floating in the air had immediately burned at her skin like acid - but the low, delirious sigh of relief Bea had let out when Caroline had turned off the fans and the spores of vervain in the air dissipated after a few minutes had made her sure that the decision was the best one.
Bea hadn't been able to tell who it was in the basement with her right away, and Caroline had realized why with a surge of nausea when she'd seen the milky look of blindness due to Bea's eyes having been burned with the vervain. After talking to Klaus on the phone – well, Caroline was pretty sure that she and her friends were being the bad guys right now.
Caroline startled when Bea started speaking again. It was in an offhandedly amused tone, and seemed surprisingly genuine when she spoke.
"It doesn't matter what I say, you'll never see Kol the way I do. He thinks I'm waiting up for him at home right now, though obviously when he returns he'll have realized I'm not."
That was another blow. To hear it mentioned so casually, that she, Bonnie, Elena, and the Salvatores were the torturers keeping a woman from her husband right now was awful. It wasn't fair. They had only taken Bea because they thought she was trying to hurt Elena, and maybe she still was! When they'd been tying her up it had seemed more than justified – Caroline had seen it as the right thing to do to save people in town.
"We didn't- "
Bea croaked out a hoarse laugh, interrupting Caroline's attempt at an explanation and said, "Sweetheart, you did. This good-cop routine right now doesn't change the fact that I'm a prisoner to your little group. I'm in poisoned shackles. Your conscience doesn't change that. I might be a monster, but at least I'm upfront about it."
There was a lull, and Caroline struggled to keep her thoughts from wandering. Because truthfully? If she let herself consider the current situation too much, she might do something really, really stupid - like let Bea go.
"Don't worry your pretty little head, Miss Forbes." The woman let out a sign and leaned more fully against the wall behind her, a deceptively relaxed expression on her face. "You at least aren't as insufferable as the others."
Caroline scoffed and tried to sound unaffected when she said, "You're the one who just pointed out that I'm torturing you."
Bea snorted and waved her hand, as if Caroline had said something obviously foolish. However, the clanking sound of the chains she was being kept in made the gesture the opposite of dismissive of her treatment.
"Good people are capable of doing bad things."
Caroline thought about that for a second before responding, "Like you?"
When Bea turned to look at her dead in the eye, the entire atmosphere of the room felt like it shifted. Bea was the one chained to the wall, but Caroline felt like she was the captive when the woman slowly spoke with an almost disbelieving tone.
"No, not like me. There are very few people in the world with loose enough morals to consider me to be good. You're a child, Miss Forbes. This whole little group of yours sees the world in black and white – good guys and villains. It's frankly bizarre, what with two murderous vampires included in your band. But you judged me to be a villain, so it was okay for you to kidnap me. And right now you're trying to view me as a good guy because you want a reason to let me loose, seeing as suddenly you feel guilty about torturing me."
Caroline stiffened. This woman couldn't – Bonnie would be so mad already that Caroline had turned off the fans, Bea couldn't tell them that –
"You won't get one. Right now, I might seem helpless. Maybe like a love-struck girl who got in over her head with a bad man. But I'm not. The 'bad man' and I are perfectly compatible. I'm only here because the Salvatores managed to catch me off guard."
Caroline heard her phone go off and looked down to see a text she'd received. Apparently Bonnie would be back in a few minutes. When she looked back up, Bea was looking at her with a tight expression. With what looked like false bravado she said in a lofty voice, "Well, go on up now. And you'll be turning on the fans again, I'm sure. The Bennett cunt can't know you gave me reprieve."
Caroline's mouth fell open, an automatic defense of Bonnie ready, but realized there wasn't any point. With a resigned sigh and a lump in her throat, she did as Bea had predicted and walked toward the fans. She pressed her palm against her own mouth to avoid inhaling the spores that were about to fill the room once more.
Before the loud hum of the fans began, she heard Bea's tired-sounding whisper.
"For this, yours will be painless."
Bea was chained in a basement filled with vervain. Caroline had Bonnie, the Salvatores, Elena, and the rest of her friends as back up, while nobody knew where Bea was or even that she'd been taken captive. But still, as Caroline hurried back into the kitchen of the house they were in she felt like Beatrix Mikaelson somehow had the upper hand.