BKBK

After he walked out on her the rest of the week passed without much discussed between them. She did as she was told, performed whatever he wanted and in the evenings they separated. He would go off into the woods to do what hybrids do in the woods and she would stay in scouring the house for clues as to what happened to his sister and her lover.

On the first night of their routine, she walked around with the locket rubbing the metal raw in her hands as she searched around the house.

What she found was a locked room opposite hers. There were only torn canvases strewn about the floor, their colorful images slashed beyond recognition; and a simple wooden armoire that creaked when she opened it. She rummaged through the men's jackets and thick linen and silken shirts, hats and black leather boots that were buffed to mirrors until her fingers hit the bottom panel of the furniture and she heard the hollow thud.

Curiously, she pushed at the edge of the panel and was delighted when it popped up enough for her to slip her fingers and flip it up to reveal a pile of letters.

Dear Niklaus

She read, as many as she could for there were many and some in languages she did not understand.

Letters from Elijah. Letters from Rebekah. Letters from Marcel.

She devoured their lines, she imagined herself as the writers, writing to this Klaus that was being stitched together in her mind with each letter she finished.

Before midnight she would pack up everything to how she found it and lock the door behind her and tip-toe to her room to dream about Nicklaus Mikaelson.

BKBK

Bonnie didn't believe it could get much hotter than it had been but Louisiana was up for the challenge. She kept the intermittent snowfall in the house but unfortunately for her Klaus demanded that most of her practices be done outside.

It had been a particular grueling day.

"Bring it to life for me."

He wanted her to play God. Pushing seeds into the earth he chided her to make herself useful by making something grow. "Come on with it, Bonnie,"

But she had broke her rule last evening and took one of the letters to bed with her (risking herself to be found out) because in it Elijah was detailing their latest escape from their father, horror after horror, and although she didn't cry, she believes the overwhelming anxiety and fear she read about has exhausted her energy.

She circles her palms over the buried seed and a miniscule leaf of green shoots from the earth.

"A start; but I was hoping for something more like a tree, love."

Taking a break by the swamp's edge, under the shade of ancient oaks she picks at wildflowers aimlessly while he rambles of the weekend to come. The air is so thick that she struggles to breath and makes a comment about it to him.

"The rain will soon come," He smiles, reclining in the sun, closing his eyes.

Restless, she intertwines stems of wildflowers, accosted by scenes of Klaus and his siblings traipsing around Europe to outrun their tormentor, their monster. And she wants to tell him she knows things, she knows these things about him and she will keep them for him. She knots each thin stalk over her thumbs and through her nails. Tiny bows are made and the fresh flowers become a wreath of golden yellow and lilac.

She places the wreath on Klaus's head, "Your crown, Sir."

Opening his eyes, he crinkles his forehead as he holds the wreath in his hand, and he inches up on to his elbows, "Why did you make this?"

"I know how you were able to bring me back."

And Klaus mutters another question but he is tuned into the sound of his own skin prickling and a distant ringing in his ears. Was this fear? He scans her mossy green eyes and sees they are open and vulnerable, exposing her jugular, palms open, arms wide.

She smiles wide, throwing him off, "The resurrection would have only worked if there was a match in the blood. Metaphorically speaking. You and I aren't so different, Klaus. "

Her words take a moment to resonate and the fear fades.

His face crumbles into disgust, "I hate to break this to you, love. But you are wrong, that is not how I was able to bring you back to life." He springs up to his feet, "And now I can see I have misjudged your progress. You are not prepared to take on Marcel's witches, you're not prepared to take on any business of mine, really."

"Wha-" She hops up from the grass to follow him, "What's the matter with you? I thought you'd be doing cartwheels to hear that I'm like you.

"You've gone mad, love."

Her eyes widen, "All the talks and positioning to get me to think and move like you, with your, 'this is how you hide a body, Bonnie', to your 'this is the best poison to make it look like an accident, Bonnie'. Every moment since I took my first freaking breath has been you telling me what I should be more of and it all points to you."

He wants to get as far away from her as possible as he hears her recount instance after instance of his meticulous molding of her.

"Let's rewind a moment, please," She pleads and he forces himself to stop from storming off for her, from running away.

"What I'm trying to say by saying all of this is I know you want me to believe that you're some kind of monster, but I see you," She says, her crooked mouth sliding into a slight smile," You did what you had to do because you were hurt or scared, and…."

She jumbles his thoughts. He should have left her in the sewer. He should drop to his knees and bury his face in her lap, he should; he should; he should. All of the shoulds' dart across the periphery of his sanity. He quickly crowds her, corners her like prey until her back smacks against a tree, "Madness," he spits, " You're nothing like me, Bonnie," he says over and over, bewildered by her admission. He shakes his head, "You think because you killed some wolves that threatened your life that makes you a killer? I thought you were smarter than this, Bonnie."

She reaches for his hand and he jerks it away.

He continues, "I thought my mentoring and coaching would make you understand the machinations of the world you will have to navigate as the great witch I hoped you would become, but a great witch would know the distinction between herself and me. You have no clue what I have done or who I am, you wake up a few days ago and drink my blood and suddenly you believe yourself to have this great insight into my soul, where how's this Bonnie, I don't have one, I kill because I enjoy it."

Bonnie yells over him and in the distance are the voices of children, peals of laughter, interrupting Bonnie's rebuttal, like tiny bells in between her words, "You," DING, "Can't". DING. "Hide." DING. "From." DING. "Me." DING. Bonnie places her hands on either side of his face, wanting him to look at her, relentless that he not dismiss her, and there is the swift rustling of the tall grass as the girl children voices grow nearer and nearer, yelling out for a Sparkles. SPARKLES!SPARLES!SPARKLES! And the Sparkles that the children are yelling after runs up to the sparring couple; it is a little shaggy brown dog. And Klaus quickly demonstrates to his protégé their marked difference. He scoops up the dog and snaps its neck.

Bonnie opens her mouth to scream but two little raven head girls run up between the tall grass to the scene of their dead dog and two scary strangers. They don't speak, but they immediately reach for the hand of the other. Bonnie forces a smile through the water in her eyes, "Is this your dog, sweetie," She asks the older one, putting herself in between them and the dog so they can't see its dead eyes.

"What's wrong with him?" The younger one cries, wiping tears with the back of her arm.

Bonnie looks back over her shoulder at Klaus, his yellow eyes beaming at her and the children, and for a split second she thinks she might have to shield them from Klaus and she hates it. She hates that this is the feeling that she has to have. The girls immediately began to wail for Bonnie to let them see their dog. The tears brimming in Bonnie's lashes slowly roll down her cheeks. "Sparkles is sleeping girls," She says over and over, running her hands over their plaits and ponytails, "But I know how to wake him up."

The girls choke back their sobs as Bonnie tells them to hold each other's hand and to then place their free hand on to either side of her shoulder. They follow her command and she is overwhelmed by the charge of their little broken hearts. "Close your eyes, girls and repeat after me." She chants a rhyme, a silly rhyme that would make them forget this moment, but a powerful enough rhyme for them to hear the jingle of Sparkles collar as he rolled over to nuzzle the youngest tennis shoe.

The girls' eyes flashed open. Awestruck, the eldest bundled up their resurrected dog into the bottom of her t-shirt and grabbed her sister's hand to run home.

Klaus is gone.

He had left when Bonnie became a force field between him and the world.

She finds him sitting in the dark corners of the parlor.

But she turns on the balls of her feet to go get a glass of water from the kitchen. Bringing dead things to life has made her parched.

Looking out the kitchen window, she sees the swollen black clouds threatening to wring out above the house.

He fills the doorway with his silent presence and she takes another sip squaring her shoulders.

"I will not kill innocent beings for you nor will I harm any being who you feel has slighted you or has bruised your fragile ego."

Taking a seat at the kitchen table, he considers her as she blocks the window, drinking her water.

"When I set this house on fire, they were asleep," He starts, his words grabbing her attention, "She couldn't detect me, you see, she couldn't detect me because it is my blood that animates her as a vampire. She perhaps considered me a shadow, a haunting." He smirks as Bonnie takes the seat across from him. "Are you hearing this correctly, Bonnie? I set this house on fire. It was I. I am a being that will set a house on fire while his sister and her lover sleep."

She doesn't flinch or faint. She doesn't call him names or reach for his hand like she had earlier.

He doesn't tell her but she gives him exactly what he needs to proceed. "She wanted to turn him and I had forbade it. But she was in the process. He had swallowed her blood and would soon turn," He snorts, "And the very next week my father mysteriously discovers where my siblings and I are residing and attempts to massacre us all."

"Her lover betrayed her?"

"He had betrayed us all. We fled in the night with the clothes on our backs and traveled the world over until we made our way into Chicago and then another saga began.

She finished her drink and places the empty sweaty glass on the table, "Look at me," She says softly, "You are right. I am not you, " She starts as she remembers the yellow in his eyes from earlier, "But, I am a part of you, and I need you to find some peace with that instead of acting out."

Rain begins to spatter against the windowpanes.

He nods and she pushes herself from the kitchen table, "I'm tired."

And before she makes it to the staircase, his voice booms through the walls, "I made you a promise, Bonnie. That's how I was able to resurrect you."

She stalls on the stairs, thinking of her bed and how heavy she felt from all what he has revealed to her, but she calls back to him, "How'd you get me to come back, Klaus?"

And the walls speak again.

"To give you what you give me."

BKBK

The rain poured and poured and Bonnie slept soundlessly, exhausted by the day and she dreamed of fire and little girls and wicked mothers and fathers too. She drifted to far away lands, Scandinavia and the Orient and a city named Chicago and she saw herself in the dream, sleeping in a tower only to be awakened by a dragon.

Author's Note

I received a lovely private message from a reader which made me blow off the dust on this story. Thank you for that.